Oct 27, 2020 - Sale 2549

Sale 2549 - Lot 42

Price Realized: $ 1,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
Dekker, Thomas (c. 1572-1632)
Lusts Dominion; or, The Lascivious Queen. A Tragedie.

London: Printed [by Jane Bell] for F. K[irkman] and are to be sold by Robert Pollard, at the sign of Ben. Johnsons head, on the back-side of the Old-Exchange, 1657.

First edition, one of two issues printed in 1657 with varying imprints, 12mo, all crediting Christopher Marlowe on the title, an attribution now discredited by scholarship, A2, B-12, G11 (lacking text leaf B2, provided in handwritten text; and final blank G12); each page individually cut and mounted into a paper window frame, extending the margins (a dozen or more leaves with break in the orginal leaf where joined to the mount), ex libris English actor John Philip Kemble (1757-1823), with a few marginal notes likely in his hand on extended margins; bound in full calf by Sangorski & Sutcliffe; 6 3/4 x 4 3/4 in.

Wing L-3504A; Pforzheimer 644, ESTC R7118; http://estc.bl.uk/R7118.
Lust's Dominion, long attributed to Marlowe, has now been identified as a work written by Dekker, thought lost, under the title, The Spanish Moor's Tragedy. An absolute attribution is uncertain, with rival theories crediting Henry Chettle or perhaps John Marston. In any case, the work is a revenge tragedy inspired by current political events and tensions between Spain and England circa 1600.