Add MS 64060

RESTORATION SONGS: anonymous collection of approximately one hundred and three English songs and ballads chiefly of the Restoration period and drawn in part from plays; copied circa 1686-circa 1694. The manuscript falls into two main sections: the first (ff. 1-32) was copied circa 1686-circa 1688 in a single hand, while the second (ff. 33v-48) was transcribed circa 1688-circa 1694 in four distinct hands. In the former the writer most heavily represented is Thomas D'Urfey, with thirty-five pieces (ff. 11v-21v and 27v-29v) of which twenty-seven were first printed as follows: those on ff. 11v-18 in D'Urfey's New Collection of Songs (1683), pp. 5-80 passim; on ff. 18v-20 in his Choice New Songs (1684), pp. 2-6 and 16-17; and on ff. 20-21v in his Third Collection of New Songs (1685), pp. 7-22 passim. Three further songs by D'Urfey occur in the second section (ff. 43v-47). In the first section nine songs by John Dryden (ff. 1-2, 4, 8, 9) are drawn from six plays performed between 1665 and 1679. The other playwrights represented here are Thomas Shadwell (ff. 2v-3), Sir George Etherege (ff. 3v-4), Nathaniel Lee (f. 4v), John Crowne (ff. 4v-5v), Aphra Behn (ff. 5v-6, 9v), William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle (f. 7), Thomas Jevon (ff. 9v-10) and Thomas Southerne (ff. 21v-22). At ff. 29v-30v occurs 'A Song, on my Ld Lovelace's Entring into Oxford from Glocester' that is dated to 1688 in Margaret Crum's First-Line Index of English Poetry 1500-1800 in Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library (Oxford, 1969), no. A 224. Among the songs that are included in the second section, the earliest is a copy (ff. 41-43) of some verses by Sir John Suckling (d.1642), beg. 'I tell thee, Dick, where I have been' and entitled 'A Parly between two West Country men on Sight of a Wedding' and the latest a song (ff. 38-38v) from D'Urfey's Don Quixote that was first performed circa May 1694. The contents of the manuscript are listed in the First-Line Index of English Verse in British Library Manuscripts acquired 1894-1990 (printout available in the Manuscripts Students' Room). Formerly belonged (see pencil note on f. i verso) to Sir Francis Freeling, 1st Bart.: see sale-cat. of his library, Evans, 25 Nov. 1836, lot 1156. Press-mark 'P.B. 14' on f. i verso. Auctioneer's label numbered '591' at foot of spine. Purchased from Leo S. Olschki, 6 Nov. 1986.

Paper; ff. ii+55. 172 x 107mm. 18th-cent. binding of brown calf, lettered on spine 'M.S. / Poems'.