Dryden and Lee, Oedipus: A Probable Performance in January or February 1697/98

Oedipus: A Tragedy was written by John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee, Dryden being responsible for the first and third acts, and Lee for the second, fourth, and fifth. It was first performed by the Duke of York's company at the Dorset Garden Theatre in the autumn of 1678. The premiere was a success, and the company's leading actor, Thomas Betterton, and his wife, Mary Betterton, won special praise for their performances as Oedipus and Jocasta. (1) The play was not soon forgotten. Dryden's editors count 29 performances in the eighteenth century, the last in 1740. (2) However, the record of performances between the premiere and 1700 is scanty. Only two are documented. At a performance in October 1692 the actor Samuel Sandford accidentally inflicted a serious stab-wound on his colleague George Powell. (3) Christopher Rich's company performed the play at Drury Lane on 26 November 1698. (4) The sequence of printed editions, from the first (1679; Wing D2322), through the second (1682; Wing D2323), third (1687; Wing D2324), fourth (1692; Wing D2325) to the fifth (1696; Wing D2326), points to additional probable revivals in 1682, 1687, and 1696. (5) (A sixth edition appeared in 1701.) The purpose of this note is to present evidence that the play was performed by Betterton's company at Lincoln's Inn Fields early in 1698. In 1695, the year of their breakaway from the United Company of Christopher Rich, Betterton's company performed The She-Gallants, the first play by George Granville (1666-1735; from 1712, Baron Lansdowne). They performed his second, Heroick Love: A Tragedy, either very late in 1697 or, more probably, in January 1698. The text of the play was published a month or six weeks later; it was advertised in the London Gazette of 17-21 February 1697/98. In his Preface, Granville complains bitterly about the abridgement of the final act by the players: it might 'more properly [be] said to have been Murder'd than Cut, for the Convenience of Acting...'. (6) Neither actors nor audience had understood his play, and he reflects that audiences typically respond most positively to what is worst in plays: When we observe how little notice is taken of the noble and sublime Thoughts and Expressions of Mr. Dryden in Oedipus, and what Applause is given to the Rants and Fustian of Mr. Lee, what can we say, but that Madmen are only fit to write, when nothing is esteem'd Great and Heroick but what is unintelligible. (A4) It is possible that Granville, writing shortly after the performance of his play, looked back eighteen months or more to a performance of Oedipus in 1696 for his comparison, but it seems altogether more likely that he had in mind, and expected his readers to have in mind, a much more recent performance, probably by the same actors who had mangled his play. Some confirmation may be found in the commendatory verses Dryden wrote for the first edition of Heroick Love. His praise of the play reinforces Granville's Preface: the play is too good for the present state of the theatre. The stage 'so declines, that shortly we may see/ Players and plays reduc'd to second infancy'. Dryden then comments on the players, whose venal ways represent a hazard to the established writer as well as to the newcomer: Thus they jog on; still tricking, never thriving; And Murd'ring Plays, which they miscal Reviving. …