ABSTRACT
Gerard Langbaine (1656-1692) was a son of the Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, and compiler of A New Catalogue of English Plays (1688). The Catalogue first appeared in November 1687 with a spurious title-page, Momus Triumphans: or, The Plagiaries of the English Stage, mocking Langbaine’s obsession with plagiarism. ‘My friends’, he said in an advertisement in the second issue with the correct title, ‘may think me Lunatick.’ He blamed Dryden for the hoax, and took his revenge in An Account of The English Dramatick Poets. Or, Some Observations and Remarks on the Lives and Writings of all those that have Published either Comedies, Tragedies … in the English Tongue (1691). See J. M. Osborn, John Dryden: Some Biographical Facts and Problems, revd. edn. (1965), pp. 234-240. The long entry on Dryden is substantially an arraignment for plagiarism, and of no serious critical interest. The opening paragraphs (pp. 130-134) are reprinted here for the historical record.
