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Killigrew, Thomas (1612-1683) Comedies, and Tragedies.
London: Printed [by John Macock] for Henry Herringman, 1664.
First edition, folio, large paper copy with fine engraved portrait by Faithorne after Sheppard of the author at his desk, with his faithful dog in the foreground, and a portrait of King Charles II in the background; with surviving cancellandum [f]4 (two examples of [f]4, title page to The Prisoners in two states, corrected and uncorrected); each play with its own title page dated 1663; bound in full ornately gilt blue morocco by W. Pratt for J. Pearson, aeg, lightly rubbed; additional full-page engraved portrait of Killigrew by Abraham Bosse, L'homme fourré de malice, showing the melancholy sitter wearing a voluminous garment whose lining is decorated with dozens of women's faces, and a similarly melancholy monkey at his elbow, with verses in French at the bottom; margins trimmed within plate mark, removing publisher's and artist's names; ex libris Robert Hoe, C.L.F. Robinson, Beverly Chew, A.E. Newton, David & Lulu Borowitz, and Harold Greenhill, with bookplates inside front board; with a Maggs catalogue page describing another copy inscribed and signed by A.E. Newton, "Beverly Chew once told me this was the finest portrait in any book," loosely inserted, along with a 1923 handwritten letter from Beverly Chew to Newton; the Borowitz receipt from 1948 (listing Beaumont & Fletcher's folio, in error); purchased from the Heritage Book Shop in 1982; housed in custom slipcase; 12 3/8 x 7 5/8 in.
Killigrew was a theatre manager and playwright in the Restoration period of Charles II. A dissolute cavalier figure at court, he began his theatrical career as a child, working as an extra player at the Red Bull Theatre in exchange for free admission. The English verses that accompany a different version of the engraving, L'homme fourré de malice, attribute the subject's sadness to his sexual exploits. He boasts liaisons with "fower or five thousant by the yeare at least," whose faces now "face my gowne," followed by the complaint, "like a filthie beast [I] caught fowle diseases which consume mee sore." Killigrew was at court with John Wilmot, 2nd Earl Rochester (1647-1680), famous libertine who lost his life at the age of thirty-three to syphilis, alcholism, and complications from other sexually transmitted infections. In his Diary, Samuel Pepys notes, on 17 February 1669, "Among the rest of the King's company, there was that worthy fellow my lord of Rochester, and Tom Killigrew, whose mirth and raillery offended the former so much, that he did give Tom Killigrew a box on the ear in the King's presence, which do much give offence to the people here at Court, to see how cheap the King makes himself." (https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1669/02/17/)
