Gerard Langbaine was an English dramatic biographer and critic, best known for his An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691), the earliest work to give biographical and critical information on the playwrights of English Renaissance theatre

English Renaissance theatre

English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, refers to the theatre of England, largely based in London, which occurred between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642...

. He is sometimes called Junior or the Younger to distinguish him from his father

Gerard Langbaine the elder

Gerard Langbaine, the elder was an English academic and clergyman, known as a scholar, royalist, and Provost of Queen's College, Oxford during the siege of the city.-Life:...

 (1609–58) of the same name, a Doctor of Divinity who was Provost of Queens College, Oxford (1646–58) and Keeper of the University Archives.

Life

The younger Langbaine was born in the parish of St. Peter-in-the-East, Oxford; his father's second son, he was apprenticed to a bookseller in St. Paul's Churchyard in London, but was sent to University after his older brother William died in 1672. He was educated at University College, Oxford

University College, Oxford

.University College , is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2009 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £110m...

, married, and settled in the neighborhood of Oxford. In 1690 he acquired a post at the University, as "yeoman bedel in arts," and in the following year was promoted to "esquire bedel of law and architypographus." (In his post as "architypographus" or printer, he issued an Appendix to the University Catalogue of Graduates.)

Langbaine's widow Mary remarried after his death, to a Rev. Smith.

Works

Langbaine devoted his critical energies to the attempt to bring order and understanding to the stage drama of his era. He compiled A New Catalogue of English Plays (1688), in which he traced the sources of many plays of English Renaissance and Restoration drama, to the prose tales of Cinthio

Giovanni Battista Giraldi

Giovanni Battista Giraldi was an Italian novelist and poet. He appended the nickname Cinthio to his name and is commonly referred to by that name .Born at Ferrara, he was educated at the university there, and in 1525 became its professor of natural philosophy...

, Bandello

Matteo Bandello

-Biography:Matteo Bandello was born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona , c. 1480 or 1485. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in theology. For many years he lived at Mantua, and superintended the education of the celebrated Lucrezia...

, Belleforest

François de Belleforest

François de Belleforest was a prolific French author, poet and translator of the Renaissance. He was born in a poor family and his father was killed when he was seven...

 and similar authors, and ultimately to classical sources. Langbaine has been called "the only serious scholar in this field for many years...." By his own testimony (in A New Catalogue), Langbaine collected printed editions of 980 plays and masques

Masque

The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...

, not counting drolls

Droll

A droll is a short comical sketch of a type that originated during the Puritan Interregnum in England. With the closure of the theatres, actors were left without any way of plying their art. Borrowing scenes from well-known plays of the Elizabethan theatre, they added dancing and other...

 and interludes.

(Langbaine's Catalogue was first published in November 1687 under a false title, Momus Triumphans: or The Plagiaries of the English Stage — which mocked what others considered Langbaine's obsessive concern with plagiarism

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...

. In the correct edition that followed, Langbaine complained that "My friends may think me Lunatick." He blamed John Dryden

John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...

 for the trick, and became a determined enemy of the poet/dramatist.)

Langbaine was active in the period when the first attempts were being made to clarify and comprehend the lush confusion of English drama in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The first catalogues of plays had been printed by Richard Rogers and William Ley, in their edition of The Careless Shepherdess

The Careless Shepherdess

The Careless Shepherdess is a Jacobean era stage play, a pastoral tragicomedy generally attributed to Thomas Goffe. Its 1656 publication is noteworthy for the introduction of the first general catalogue of the dramas of English Renaissance theatre ever attempted.-Date and performance:The dates of...

(1656), and by Edward Archer, in his edition of The Old Law

The Old Law

The Old Law, or A New Way to Please You is a seventeenth-century tragicomedy written by Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, and Philip Massinger...

(also 1656). Francis Kirkman

Francis Kirkman

Francis Kirkman appears in many roles in the English literary world of the second half of the seventeenth century, as a publisher, bookseller, librarian, author and bibliographer...

 issued two subsequent, more complete lists in 1661 and 1671. Langbaine was a friend and confidant of Kirkman; in fact, the strongest criticism mounted against Langbaine is that he accepted Kirkman's attributions with too much credulity.

Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatic Poets was extended in subsequent editions. Both the Account and the New Catalogue were included in the 1711 edition of the plays of the Beaumont and Fletcher

Beaumont and Fletcher

Beaumont and Fletcher were the English dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, who collaborated in their writing during the reign of James I ....

 canon, the first since the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio

Beaumont and Fletcher folios

The Beaumont and Fletcher folios were two large folio collections of the stage plays of John Fletcher and his collaborators. The first was issued in 1647, and the second in 1679. The two collections were important in preserving many works of English Renaissance drama.-The first folio, 1647:The 1647...

 of 1679. As a result, the 1711 edition, printed in eight octavo

Book size

The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from "folio" , to "quarto" and "octavo"...

volumes, is sometimes known as the Langbaine edition — though Langbaine did not edit any plays, of Beaumont and Fletcher or anyone else.