(THEATRE). BOADEN, James.
The secret tribunal: a play. In five acts. As performed at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden.
London: G. Woodfall, for T. N. Longman, 1795.
8vo, pp. vi [i.e.iv, p. iv misnumbered vi], [4], 70, [2]. Disbound.
First edition. Boaden was an important exponent of the Gothic taste in the theatre and dramatised a number of key Gothic texts. "The Secret Tribunal opened on 3 June 1795, at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. Boaden's play, which is derived from Hermann von Unna (1788) by Benedikte Naubert, introduced the institution of the Secret Tribunal or Inquisition to Gothic fiction in English. The device was later employed by such writers as Ann Radcliffe in The Italian (1797), Mathew Gregory Lewis in The Monk (1795), and by Charles Robert Maturin in Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)". "James Boaden", in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 89: Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Dramatists, Third Series. Edited by Paula R. Backscheider, Gale Group, 1989, pp. 25-37.
Nicoll III, 238.
£150.00
US$297.87*
* Given as a guide only. Based on an exchange rate of £1 = US$1.985799 for the day 25 July 2008 but liable to fluctuate.
25 July 2008