Author: [WALDRON (Francis)]:
Title: The Literary Museum: or, A Selection of Scarce Old Tracts: Viz., 1.The right Renoumyde Ladies, translated from Boccace. 2. A delicate Diet for daintymouthed Droonkardes, by Gascoyne. 3. Poems of Spenser, not in any Edition. 4. Peacham's Period of Mourning, in Six Visions. 5. Specimen of a New Edition of Ben Jonson. 6. Ceremonies used for healing the King's Evil, consecrating Cramp Rings, etc. 7. On Lydgate's Travelling into France. 8. The New Arcadia, by Belcher. 9. Downe's Roscius Anglicus; or, Theatrical history, &c. &c.
Description: London: Printed for th Editor, 1792. FIRST COLLECTED EDITION. 8vo, 224 x 137 mms., each item separately paginated, recent quarter calf, black leather labels, contemporary boards (rubbed and soiled), uncut. The separate parts were issued between 1789 and 1792, from the collection of the actor and playwright Francis Waldron (bap. 1743, d. 1818), employed by David Garrick in 1769 as a jobbing actor. His skills as a playwright were not impressive, and Trevor R. Griffiths, in his Oxford DNB entry "Waldron's strong literary and antiquarian interests were manifested in his completion of Ben Jonson's The Sad Shepherd (1783) and in editions of John Downes's Roscius Anglicanus (1789), Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (1796), and Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde (1802). His The Virgin Queen, an unperformed sequel to The Tempest, published in 1797, is generally regarded as one of the worst pieces of drama inspired by Shakespeare." The Monthly Review wasn't impressed: "The advertisement to this volume is signed Francic Godolphin Waldron; but it does not sufficiently explain the nature or extent of the undertaking. It appears to consist of articles entirely detached and separately paged; and as the Literary Museum Nos. I. and III. are incidentally mentioned, we are warranted to conclude the volume to be made up from some publication in numbers, of which we know nothing, but which either is, or ought to be, going on as two or three of the tracts are imperfect."Waldron (1714 - 1718) spent most of his life in the theatre, working initially for David Garrick. This very useful anthology reprints John Downe's Roscius Anglicanus of 1708, a very important source book for information abut the Restoration theatre. The introduction to Mary Astell's An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex is the first item in the collection. Many of the tracts have separate title-page and were separately printed, but the collection is one of the most useful compilations of its kind.

Keywords: theatre history anthology literature


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