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The Collation

Mors comoedia. A comedy a hundred years old brought to life again in 1726

Sheer chance is an important factor in research. Some sixteen years ago I was surveying a sammelband held at Antwerp University Library that contained 257 programs documenting theater performances in Jesuit schools in Flanders. 1 And now, just a month ago, one of the many Neo-Latin theater plays in the Folger collections unexpectedly helped me to identify the author of one of the largely anonymous texts. The author in question is the Jesuit dramatist and English recusant William Drury, who taught at the English Jesuit college in Douai. Two of Drury’s Neo-Latin plays were published in one volume in Douai in 1620, together with a poem entitled “De venerabili Eucharistia”: Aluredus sive Alfredus tragicomoedia and Mors comoedia. A third play, Reparatus, sive Depositum, was added to the second edition which also appeared in Douai (1628), and the so-called  “editio ultima ab ipso auctore recognite” (which suggests that Drury himself corrected this latest edition) was brought to light in Antwerp in 1641.  2 The Folger has a copy of the second and third editions. 3

Opening page of the comedy Mors in the 1628 and 1641 editions.

Opening page of the comedy Mors in the 1628 and 1641 editions. (Click this, and all the images in this post, to enlarge)

Let me first give you some background about the tradition of Jesuit school drama. Fairly quickly after the establishment of the first secondary schools for Latin and Greek by the Jesuit order (founded in 1540), the priests began to stage theater plays in Latin which were performed by their students. Soon it became a custom that each class would perform one play each school year. In addition, in Lent and at the end of the school year extra plays were staged. As a result the larger colleges, such as the Flemish ones in Antwerp, Brussels or Ghent, would stage seven regular school dramas which anyone could attend for free.

  1. For the results of this research, see Goran Proot, Het schooltoneel van de jezuïeten in de Provincia Flandro-Belgica tijdens het ancien régime (1575-1773), Doct. diss. Antwerpen: Universiteit Antwerpen, 2008.
  2. For a description of the 1641 Antwerp edition, see http://anet.ua.ac.be/record/stcvopac/c:stcv:6602987/E; a digital surrogate of the complete edition is available at http://anet.ua.ac.be/digital/opacua/uapreciosa/o:lvd:776015/N. Two more copies of the 1641 edition are available at Ghent University (Acc.001186 and BL.001490) and available through Google Books (copies 1 and 2). Both Ghent copies have Augustinian provenances: the first copy was acquired by father Ignatius de Dijckere, who in 1645 founded a convent in Bree. The book would later become part of the library of the Augustinian friars in Dendermonde. The second Ghent copy originally belonged to father F[ranciscus?] [van?] Reckendaele and was integrated in the library of the Ghent Augustinians (shelf mark 490/R). With thanks to Ellen Storms (Antwerp University Library) and Régine Dedecker (Ghent University Library). To learn about the foundation of the convent in Bree and the Augustinians in Dendermonde and Ghent, see Jürgen Vanhoutte [et al.], Latijnse scholen in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (16de-18de eeuw): repertorium en archiefgids Vlaanderen en Brussel. Brussel 2007.
  3. See shelf mark PA8135 D8 1628 Cage and PA8135 D8 1641 Cage.
  4. The situation in other provinces of the Jesuit order may differ. In France, for example, there seems to have been a growing problem with the ability of Jesuit teachers to teach in Latin in the eighteenth century. For the Flemish province—technically the Provincia Flandro–Belgica—I never came across undeniable indications that the main theater performances in Flemish Jesuit schools would not have been staged in Latin.
  5. The Dutch-language program is kept in the University Library Ghent (shelf mark Acc.001244/9), the Latin version in University Library Antwerp (shelf mark Ren Dra 156).
  6. Albert H. Tricomi, Robert Knightley. Alfrede or Right Reinthron’d. A Translation of William Drury’s Aluredus sive Alfredus. New York 1993, p. 8–9.

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