Item 6a - Letter from G. E. Bentley to Sir Walter Greg

2 single sheets

Department of English, Princeton University.—Discusses the results of his investigation into the dates of Twelfth Night celebrations.

—————

Transcript

Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey Department of English
March 29, 1956

Sir Walter Greg
Tanners Knap
Petworth
Sussex, England

Dear Dr. Greg:

I am very sorry to have been so long in answering your inquiry about Twelfth Night. The truth is that I, too, was shocked to find that there was any doubt that Twelfth Night celebrations always occurred on the night of January 6th. As soon as I got your letter I referred to several places where I was sure that the identification of the two dates was obvious and found to my amazement that the original record said only Twelfth Night, and the date of the 6th of January, which had been attached to it, was in nearly every instance the work of some 19th or 20th century editor. In deep chagrin I set out to assemble all the evidence I could on the subject, and since this time of year is one in which pedagogical burdens are unusually heavy, it took me some time to assemble the information.

On separate sheets I am sending you what I have found. It is not so fully conclusive as one could wish, but it seems to me that the burden of the evidence pretty clearly indicates that the celebrations were on the night of the 6th, not the night of the 5th. I took it for granted that I could go at once to Sir Henry Herbert’s Office Book and by running through the lists of court performances find a number of examples which would prove my case. But I found, as you no doubt have found as well, that all those 6th of January dates seem to be the elucidations of Malone; his quotation marks seem to show that in the original manuscript which he saw Twelfth Night very seldom has a day of the month attached.

If you do not agree with me that the evidence I have assembled here makes it seem likely that the normal celebration was on the night of the 6th, I wish you would point it out to me. I have certainly gone on for a long time making an assumption with inadequate evidence.

The scurrying around of this search for dates has brought to my mind again how often I need some sort of chronological listing of events. I had always assumed that I would prepare a court† catalogue of performances at court to correspond with the one which Sir Edmund Chambers did for the earlier period, and that this court calendar would be printed in volume VI of the Jacobean and Caroline Stage. I am wondering now if it would not be much more helpful to do more than a court calendar; if it would not be helpful if I put in chronological order all the events directly connected with the production of plays or the affairs of acting troupes or performers. Perhaps this would be more of a job than I think, but as I envisage the work at the moment it could be done by taking every date from the five volumes already in print, and ordering them chronologically. This would need to be supplemented with a certain amount of material from the state papers and contemporary correspondence which I have been unable to identify by title, author, or acting company, and therefore have not been able to use at all in the studies I have made. Examples are occasional sentences in letters of John Chamberlain which say there was a mask at the Middle Temple, but indicates nothing more. Often such sentences can be attached by means of other chronological evidence to a known group or play but more often there is nothing to attach them to and I have had, therefore, to refrain from any discussion at all. Do you think such a list would be as helpful as I do?

It further occurred to me that if I could do such a list at once it might be helpful to publish it in some periodical—if I can persuade one to give me space—before volume six appears, and thus encourage interested scholars to notify me about dates I have omitted. All this is very tentative but it is an example of the way you have stirred me up on this January 6th matter. I am very grateful to you, thought† I was certainly uncomfortable for a time.

With all best wishes,
Sincerely yours,
[Signed:] G. E. Bentley
G. E. Bentley

GEB/ps

—————

Typed, except the signature and a correction.

† Sic.

Pinned to Greg 1/6a, with Greg 1/5 pasted to the front.

Formerly inserted in Greg's copy of his and Boswell's edition of the Records of the Court of the Stationers’ Company, 1576 to 1602 (1930) (V. 11. 125).

This description was created by A. C. Green in 2020.