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A New Witness of the Restoration Stage, 1670—1680

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

John Orrell
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Extract

Between 1657 and 1680 the Florentine agent in London was Giovanni Salvetti. His weekly reports to Florence include many references to the Restoration stage, some of which I published in Vol. II, No. 1 of Theatre Research International. The present article gives translations of passages of interest to the theatre historian taken from the dispatches of the decade 1670–1680. The original letters are in the Archivio Mediceo, held at the Archivio di Stato in Florence, but they are accurately transcribed in B.L. Additional MS 27962 A-W, and it is from these transcripts that I have made the translations. Each of the following entries begins with the volume and folio reference to the British Library transcript; then comes the date of the dispatch as given by Salvetti in the new style, followed by the old-style date (in brackets) then in use in England. All the letters from which I have quoted are addressed to the secretariat in Florence.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , February 1977 , pp. 86 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1977

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References

Notes

1. Historical Manuscripts Commission, Fleming MSS, 12th Report, Part VII, p. 70.

2. B.L. Add. MS 36916, fol. 182r.

3. ed. Verney, Margaret M. (London, 1899), iv. 201Google Scholar. The vagueness persists in the shorter third edition (London, 1925), ii. 297.

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9. Commons Journals IX (1667–1687), pp. 188 and 189.

10. ibid., p. 185.

11. B.L. Add. MS 36916, fol. 231r, letter dated 3 October 1671.

12. Athenae Oxoniensis, 3rd edition (London, 1820), iv. 209.

13. B.L. Add. MS 36916, fol. 234v, letter dated 9 December 1671.

14. The journal of the Earl of Anglesey, entry for 25 January 1671/72, in H.M.C., 13th Report, Part VI, p. 270; a newsletter among the Bulstrode Papers, i. 217; a letter dated 27 January 1671/72, in H.M.C., 2nd Report, App., p. 22a; and Sylvester, Matthew, Reliquiae Baxterianae (London, 1696), iii. 89–90Google Scholar. See Van Lennep, , p. 192.Google Scholar

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33. Margoliouth, (ed.), Poems and Letters of Andrew Marvell, ii. 320.Google Scholar

34. See Jusserand, J. J. (ed.), Recueil des instructions données aux ambassadeurs … de France … (Paris, 1929), ii. 169–97.Google Scholar

35. Hatton Correspondence, Camden Society New Series XXII (London, 1878), p. 155, cited by Van Lennep, , p. 264.Google Scholar

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