Author: DODSLEY (Robert):
Title: The King and the Miller of Mansfield. A Dramatic Tale.
Description: London: Printed for teh Author, at Tully's Head..., 1737. FIRST EDITION. 8vo (in 4s), 188 x 115 mms., pp. [3 - 9] 10 -51 [52 adverts], including half-title, recent boards, green cloth spine, with title in gilt on green background on front cover. A fine copy for a modern binding. Theophilus Cibber produced the first performance of Dodsley's play in 1737, and it was immediately successful. The story is not uncommon: a royal person loses his way and meets someone who doesn't recognize the identity of his social superior. In the 19th century, Mark Twain used this conceit, or meme, for his novel, The Prince and the Pauper (1881). In a useful note published almost a hundred years ago, Olav K. Lundeberg comments, "Dodsley was content to follow the ballea narrative for his main motif, but he added a secondary theme, the love story, to make the material more acceptable in dramatized form.3 This love-story, not found in the ballad, occurs almost in identical form in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, first published in 1566 and containing the first English versions of the Decameron, the Heptameron, and the Novelie of Bandello. Two stories in Painter's collection show a striking resemblance to Dodsley's secondary theme. A tale en- titled Alexander de Medice and the Miller's Daughter relates in brief: "The just act of Alexander, Duke of Florence, upon a gentleman whom he favored who having ravished the daughter of a poor myller, caused him to marry hir, for the greater honor and celebration whereof he appointed a rich and honorable dowry." Painter quotes the source of this story as the Novelle of Bandello, III, xv." Olav K. Lundeberg, "The True Sources of Robert Dodsley's The King and the Miller of Mansfield," Modern Language Notes (1924).

Keywords: Drama theatre literature


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