Southey, Coleridge and Islam

Abstract

In 1744, Mahomet the Impostor opened at the Theatre Drury Lane. The published text of the play, it is acted at the Theatre Royal, was a free adaptation for the London stage of Voltaire's Mahomet le prophete, presented by the Comedie Francaise at Paris in 1742--and banned after three performances. Bristol Library has a copy of the English version, though the date of accession is uncertain, and neither poet seems to have borrowed it. But Bristol's Theatre Royal staged two performances of Mahomet in July 1766, with the nine characters all dress'd in new Turkish Habits (Smith's Theatre scrapbooks, 2, part 1: 61, 68). The Bristol theatre revived Mahomet for several performances in 1783 (Barker, Theatre Royal Bristol, 53), when Southey (still barely nine) was a Bristol schoolboy, and when his Bath aunt had a large collection of theatrical playbills (Speck 10). In December, 1797, Coleridge signed out a volume of the French 1782 edition of Rousseau's works (Borrowings, 3), but by then Southey's religious views already owed more to Rousseau than to Voltaire. In July, 1793, Southey dismisses Voltaire as an atheist, while Rousseau's Savoyard Curate is the of rational Xtianity (CLRS 1: 54; omitted in NL 1: 27-30). Within days, Southey tells Grosvenor Bedford that, as a law-maker, he would build a temple to the One Universal God, my national creed should he God is one--Christ is the saviour of Mankind (CLRS 1: 55; NL 1: 31; omitted in LG 424; SL 1: 77). The English translation by George Sale had appeared in 1734, and a French translation (le Coran avec la Vie de Mahomet) in 1786. The French edition appears in the sale catalogue of Southey's library (RSLC item 738), and his own copies of Sale's translation are the Bath edition of 1795, and the London edition of 1801 (RSLC items 1573-4). …