Here are two prints of comedian Joe Haines delivering an epilogue on an ass (click on either to upscale). One is artistically superior to the other, but does this mean that it is superior historically? The print on the left prefaces a probably unperformed play A Fatal Mistake (published 1692) but has no other connection to it.[1] The other image of what appears to be the same performance is included in the 1720 edition of Thomas Brown’s Works, where it is entitled “Joe Haines Epilogue”.[2] The epilogue in question is for Thomas Scott’s tragedy The Unhappy Kindness, which was probably first performed at Drury Lane in 1696. Although printed in 1720, the ‘superior’ print cannot refer to the Drury Lane stage after 1700, because Haines’s last season at Drury Lane was in 1700 and he died in 1701.[3] (The difference between the women’s hairstyles in the prints suggests that the later artist was imagining a contemporary performance.)

If contrasted at all, the prints are usually reproduced as if the earlier was a crude version of the later, implying that play, stage, and date are the same. This may be the case, but it is not certain. If the theatre is Drury Lane, both prints show a square stage front, rather than the “Semi-oval Figure” described by Colley Cibber in his autobiography.[4] A curved stage is shown in the Ariadne print, and may be implied in the ‘Wren’ section (sectional drawing of a playhouse attributed to Sir Christopher Wren) by a dotted line just upstage of the solid line at the end of the forestage (under the third pilaster, but difficult to see in reproductions). Cibber is describing the original Drury Lane stage before the then manager Christopher Rich modified it. According to Cibber, Rich cut back and squared the forestage to increase seating capacity in the pit. Cibber’s is the only account of this modification and he does not provide a date. According to his recollection it occurred “about forty Years ago”.[5] Cibber is vague, but if we count back from the date of publication of Cibber’s autobiography (1740) and allow for him writing that passage a few years earlier, we arrive at a range bounded by Haines’s last season in 1700 and Rich’s takeover as manager of Drury Lane in December 1693. The editors of The London Stage argue that The Unhappy Kindness was performed at Drury Lane in the summer of 1696 or 1697, with the earlier date the more likely.[6] If we accept this, 1696 would seem to be the best date for Rich’s modification. If both prints show the Drury Lane stage, both must clearly date from after the alteration. However, as noted above, the earlier print prefaces A Fatal Mistake published in 1692. The online catalogue of the British Library provides the most likely answer to this discrepancy. It states that the print is a later insertion, though it is ambiguous about which editions contain it. It may be unique to the Library’s 1692 copy, as it is not in the Harvard Library copy of the same edition, nor does it appear in either of the two British Library copies of a 1696 edition.