Robert D. Hume, 1944–2023

For over fifty years, Rob Hume dominated and indeed shaped our field. I doubt whether, in the 1960s, the critical study of theatre from 1660 to 1800 could be regarded as worthy of a lifetime’s dedication. Often, it was an appendix to the study of Renaissance drama, imposing fewer scholarly demands than the mother subject. To be a credible Shakespearean, one needed to read Marston and Dekker, but, to drop in from Shakespeare to write about Etherege and Wycherley, it was not obligatory to read Durfey and Shadwell. Generalizations about the entirety of Restoration drama were made on the basis of a handful of plays. Critics populated the late seventeenth-century stage with imaginary clones of Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675) and Etherege’s The Man of Mode (1676), talking airily of “the Dorimants and Horners” of Restoration comedy without putting a name to these mysterious doppelgängers.Norman N. Holland wrote in The First Modern Comedies: “[B]etween these two major writers [Wycherley and Congreve], the stage was filled by a host of rather minor writers, Edward Ravenscroft, for example, Mrs. Aphra Behn (the rather smutty ‘Incomparable Astraea’) and the not so minor Thomas Shadwell” (131). He said nothing further about these pygmies. They are not even mentioned in Virginia Ogden Birdsall’s Wild Civility and received only incidental mention in Dale Underwood’s Etherege and the Seventeenth-Century Comedy of Manners, whose chief points of reference are to earlier drama. None of these authors thought Restoration or eighteenth-century drama worthy of a second book. Studies of particular thematic strands, such as John Harrington Smith’s The Gay Couple in Restoration Comedy, cast their net wider, and an honorable exception to the general selectivity was Eric Rothstein’s Restoration Tragedy: Form and the Process of Change, though it is organized around ideas of ethos, tradition, and structure and does not describe the interactions of a living theatrical scene.Rob was, of course, not the first scholar to read and describe the whole repertoire: one thinks of John Genest, Montague Summers, Allardyce Nicoll, and the editors of The London Stage. His The Development of English Drama in the Late Seventeenth Century was, however, the first study conceived as an intellectual rather than an archival project, and he used his knowledge of the entire repertory to describe the interactions and cross-fertilizations of minor and major plays and, in the process, change our understanding of the known masterpieces. Nicoll’s History of Restoration Drama, 1660–1700—which The Development of English Drama superseded—commands continuing respect but is more concerned with classification than critical interpretation. Typical chapter titles are “The Comedy of Manners” and “Farce and Sentimentalism.” A characteristic Rob chapter title is “Sex, Horror, Farce, and Heroic Inclination in the Seventies.”What Rob did was to end—even outlaw—the disconnection between historical, archival scholarship and the close reading of selected plays exemplified by books such as Birdsall’s. One had to know one’s Durfey and Shadwell—and Behn. When Behn studies took off, there was at first a regression to uncontextualized study of individual plays, but by the time of Janet Todd’s edition and biography, in the mid-1990s, Behn scholars had caught up.Rob’s first book, Dryden’s Criticism, already showed interest in texts as reactive and contextual. Most of Dryden’s criticism, he wrote, “is occasional and reflects the quarrels and concerns of the moment” (2–3). The achievement of The Development of English Drama was to situate drama in the theatre, in the cut and thrust of competition, and in the context of rapid, unpredictable, and sometimes inexplicable changes in audience taste. Thus, Restoration comedy was not an unbroken run of dirty plays from 1660 until Jeremy Collier’s 1698 attack. Rather, consummated sex did not enter comedy until the 1670s, and by the spring of 1678 audiences were getting bored with it.Ably assisted by Judith Milhous, Rob went on expanding frontiers and overthrowing idols. Along with Arthur H. Scouten, he showed that the Restoration audience was not an aristocratic coterie. He exposed the myth of the rake in Restoration drama (no more “Dorimants and Horners”). Comedy in the eighteenth century was not predominantly sentimental. Facile assumptions about the cultural influence and status of Shakespeare were tested against the affordability of books. Rob challenged us to examine the basic assumptions underlying our critical interpretations. Were our interpretations of plays producible? What did historical criticism mean? For most of us, The London Stage possessed a quasi-biblical authority. Rob saw that it had flaws, and—with Judith Milhous—set about revising part 2. His output—of critical work and scholarly editing—was enormous. Particularly deserving of mention are the magisterial two volumes of Italian Opera in Late Eighteenth-Century London, which he wrote in collaboration with Curtis Price, Judith Milhous, and (for the second volume) Gabriella Dideriksen.I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Dryden’s tragedies under the supervision of a leading Shakespeare scholar. I then moved to the University of Warwick, where during my first year Arthur Scouten had a visiting professorship. New perspectives opened up. I remember him soundly telling me off for facile assumptions about the authorship of The Indian Queen (1664). Conversion of the Dryden thesis into Dryden’s Heroic Plays, however, was going slowly, and my senior eighteenth-century colleague Claude Rawson had an idea: he knew a young American scholar called Rob Hume. Why did I not seek his advice? I was of course familiar with Dryden’s Criticism. Rob was in England, so Claude arranged a meeting at his house. It was a sunny July day in 1975 (4 July, as it happens), and we sat in Claude’s garden. The Development of English Drama was not yet published, and Rob explained to me what he was doing. That conversation changed my view of what the study of Restoration theatre should be, though it was some years before I could act on the change: I had first to make my peace with Dryden’s heroic plays. Rob agreed to look at a chapter. A couple of months later, after he had returned to the United States, I sent him my chapter on Dryden’s Aureng-Zebe (1676). His detailed and helpful comments reached me with such speed that he must have replied by return post. This illustrates two more of Rob’s qualities: his formidable efficiency and his generosity to other scholars.Our paths kept crossing, and there were other occasions on which I sought his advice. I invited him to give a talk at Warwick. Then, when I had moved to Aberdeen, I invited him and Judy Milhous there. The University of Aberdeen was founded in 1495, and the historic holdings of its library had in my time not yet been properly cataloged. It was normal to show distinguished visitors the collections and not unusual for them to find some hitherto unobserved treasure. Rob continued the tradition, instantly finding some previously unknown items from Narcissus Luttrell’s collection.Rob Hume changed the way we look at our subject: we all learned from him. Most scholarly works have a shelf life. It is difficult to imagine that Rob’s will ever be dispensable.