James Ralph's Second Adaptation from John Banks

Abstract

JAMES RALPH (1705?-1762) was a miscellaneous writer whoturned his pen to almost any branch of craft that might earn him a living. At different stages in his checkered career he was political writer, essayist, historian, poet, and playwright. Most of his writing for stage, such as it was, was done in early 1730's, at a time when a derisive reference to his poetry, in second edition of Dunciad, had made it difficult for him to get employment with booksellers. Ralph made an adaptation of The Unhappy Favourite: or Earl of Essex, one of best plays of Restoration dramatist John Banks. This adaptation, which Ralph sent into world with a prayer that Banks's Genius might so transform his own Tinsel as to placate the Critick's Rage was not successful, and when it was printed in 173 I Ralph did not subscribe his name to it. I now want to place to Ralph's credit a second and better adaptation from Banks, this time of she-tragedy,' Vertue Betray'd: or, Anna Bullen (published i682). The adapted play, called Anna Bullen, was apparently never performed or printed. Yet it is one of more attractive of eighteenth-century improvements on Banks, not because of any great dramatic qualities, but because of grace and strength of poetry. One particular change in wording, which I shall describe later, makes it possible to guess (though to do no more than guess) that Ralph made this adaptation about I735. Anna Bullen apparently exists only in an anonymous MS copy in Huntington Library,' and it has been previously held to be not an eighteenth-century adaptation, but seventeenth-century source of Banks's play.2 This theory, however, is fairly easy to disprove. From outset it is needlessly complicated, since it must find an