Adapted by Byron’s Friend and Banker
KINNAIRD, Douglas; [John FLETCHER].
The Merchant of Bruges; or, Beggar’s Bush. With considerable Alterations and Additions … Now performing, with universal Applause, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. London, Whittingham and Arliss, 1815.
8vo, pp. 6, [2], 84, with an incomplete list of ‘Popular Works, published by Whittingham and Arliss’ at the end (pp. [1–2] of [4]); title-page a little dusty, a few creased corners, but a good copy; stitched as issued, untrimmed; contemporary ink inscription ‘Mrs Edmeades | Brampton Place’ to title.
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The Merchant of Bruges; or, Beggar’s Bush. With considerable Alterations and Additions … Now performing, with universal Applause, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
First edition of the only literary work by Douglas Kinnaird (1788–1830), the intimate friend and banker of Lord Byron and dedicatee of Byron’s Hebrew Melodies in 1815.
Kinnaird was educated at Eton, Göttingen, and Trinity College, Cambridge, and was called by Byron ‘my trusty and trustworthy trustee and banker, and crown and sheet anchor’ (quoted in DNB). The play was produced at Drury Lane, where both he and Byron served on the Committee, was dedicated to Lady Caroline Lamb’s brother-in-law (who contributed three songs), and has a prologue and epilogue by John Cam Hobhouse.
A comedy by John Fletcher, possibly with the collaboration of Francis Beaumont and Philip Massinger, The Beggar’s Bush was acted at Court in 1622 and first published in the Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647. Kinnaird’s revision – with its rich Jacobean fare of mistaken identities, disguise, honour, betrayal, true love, and, in the beggars, knockabout rustic humour – was very popular on the stage, and it was its success at Drury Lane that led him to sanction publication.
Provenance:
With the ownership inscription of Mrs Edmeades of Brampton Place, Kent, likely Elizabeth Edmeades (née Allen, 1775–1836), wife of Captain William Edmeades of the East India Company, known for his Biographical Memoirs.