Item 17 - Letter from Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch to R. B. McKerrow

1 folded sheet, 1 envelope

The Haven, Fowey, Cornwall.—Proposes a subject for the Harness Prize.

(With envelope.)

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Transcript

The Haven, Fowey, Cornwall
April 24th 1918

Dear Sir

Harness Prize

‘The art of Dramatic Protasis, or opening of the fable, in English Comedy & Tragedy down to the death of Shakespeare.’

That is quite plain, I think, and it’s a capital subject. Yes The Alchemist would be as good as good could be, if The Tempest Scenes 1 & 2 weren’t better.

I don’t think Protasis should be a difficult term for anyone who professes an acquaintance with the subject (and moreover, we explain it sufficiently.)

A good man—though we confine it to English Drama—will have to work in the Greek Prologue, Rumour painted full of tongues, ancient Gower etc, & we may safely leave him to it.

I forget which of us two is the Senior Examiner. Most likely you are & it falls to you to send in the subject to the Registrary. But I am going up at the end of this week & will call on him, anyway, to make sure.

Yours very faithfully
Arthur Quiller-Couch

[Direction on envelope:] Dr R. B. McKerrow | Enderley | Little Kingshill | Great Missenden | Bucks

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The envelope, which was postmarked at Fowey, Cornwall, at 5.45 p.m. on 25 April 1918, has been marked by Malcolm McKerrow: ‘Re the Harness Prize for which RBMcK was an Examiner in 1919. (Cambridge)’.

{1} The Harness Prize was established in 1871 in memory of the Rev. William Harness (1790–1869), editor of the works of Shakespeare (8 vols., 1825) and the dramatic works of Massinger (‘adapted for family reading, and the use of young persons’, 3 vols., 1830–1) and Ford (1831). (For the other activities of his life, including his friendship with Byron, see the ODNB.) A committee of subscribers gave the university £500 to found the prize, which was to be given every third year to the author of ‘the best English Essay upon some subject connected with Shakespearean Literature’. The annual interest of the subscribed sum was to be presented to the winner. The value of the prize in 1919 was about £50 (Cambridge University Calendar for the Year 1918–1919 (1918), p. 138; it was the same the following year). Previous winners of the prize had included C. H. Herford (1880), John Dover Wilson (1904), and Rupert Brooke (1910) (J. R. Tanner (ed.), Historical Register of the University of Cambridge (1917), pp. 331–2). The 1918–19 Calendar (p. 298) records that: ‘The subject of the Essay is selected and the Prize adjudged by the Vice-Chancellor, the Master of Christ’s College, and two persons appointed by Grace of the Senate in the Lent Term of every third year. Each of the Examiners appointed by Grace of the Senate shall receive the sum of three guineas payable from the University Chest, except in cases where no Essay is sent in.’ (A. E. Shipley was at this time both Vice-Chancellor and Master of Christ’s. The same details are recorded in the Calendar for the following year.) Unfortunately for the examiners’ pockets, there were no candidates for the prize on this occasion (Calendar, 1920–1, p. 155).

{2} Rumour and Gower appear at the beginnings of Henry IV, Part 2 and Pericles respectively.

{3} John Neville Keynes, University Registrary from 1910 to 1925.