?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
Kirke, John (d. 1643) The Seven Champions of Christendome. Acted at the Cocke-pit and at the Red-Bull.
London: Printed by J. Okes and are to be sold by James Becket, 1638.
First and only edition, quarto, woodcut printer's device to title page, a fine and clean copy, complete with original first and last blanks present, with large margins showing deckle edges; bound in neat half morocco with buckram boards; blank lower corner of I3 torn away or missing due to paper defect, no loss of text; 7 1/4 x 5 1/2 in.
STC 15014; Greg II 545; Pforzheimer 574; rare at auction.
Kirke was an actor himself, and is remembered as a playwright in this, his only published work. Its appearance in print was necessitated by a severe outbreak of the plague that closed public theatres in the years just before 1638. "Judging by the quality of The Seven Champions of Christendom, Kirke was of the school of Heywood and Will Rowley (actor-dramatists both) and had glibly learnt his lesson. All the popular ingredients are skillfully compounded, combats, witches, ghosts, hobgoblins, deeds of enchantment, thunder and lightning, heavy witted clownery, uproarious song. Romance runs wild in this undeniably effective theatre-piece; it was admirably calculated to grip the unthinking public." (cf. W.J. Lawrence's "John Kirke, the Caroline Actor-Dramatist," in Studies in Philology Vol. 21, No. 4 (Oct., 1924), pp. 586-593, University of North Carolina Press [https://www.jstor.org/stable/4171896].
