Momus Triumphans:
OR,
THE PLAGIARIES
OF THE ENGLISH STAGE

GENERAL EDITORS

William E. Conway, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

David S. Rodes, University of California, Los Angeles

ADVISORY EDITORS

Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Earl Miner, University of California, Los Angeles
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
Curt A. Zimansky, State University of Iowa

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

Edna C. Davis, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Jean T. Shebanek, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

[Pg i]

INTRODUCTION

Gerard Langbaine's Momus Triumphans, Or the Plagiariesof the English Stage (1687) is significant for a number of reasons.It is, first of all, the most comprehensive catalogue ofthe English theatre to its time, a list of surprising bibliographicalcompetence and extent for its subject and periodand a source study which is still of some use today. Secondly,it serves as the strong and carefully articulated skeletonfor Langbaine's elaborately expanded Account of the EnglishDramatick Poets published some three years later in 1691,and itself a catalogue which remains "a major work of literaryscholarship that is immune from obsolescence."[1] Thirdly, andmore privately, Momus stands as both a partial record and efficientcause of a quarrel whose claim to our attention is itsconnection with Dryden. It is a quarrel minor in itself and ofwhich few details are known. Indeed, to call it a quarrel atall is to give a corporeality to Langbaine's adversaries whichfacts will not directly support, but Langbaine's prejudicesagainst Dryden in Momus and their resulting intensificationin the Account suggest a matrix of literature, alliances oftaste, politics and religion interestingly characteristic of lateseventeenth-century England.

Momus Triumphans is based on four prior literary catalogues:[2]