"A Supplement to Public Laws": Arthur Murphy, David Garrick, and Hamlet, with Alterations

Abstract

The career of Arthur Murphy (1727-1805) bears exceptional witness not only to the precarious financial and legal condition of dramatic authors in Georgian England, but also—and more importantly—to the theatre's capacity to reconceive the author's position within the burgeoning culture of print. Murphy, who was both a playwright and a practicing barrister, spent his entire career trying to redefine the professional status of dramatic authors. He failed in the law; he succeeded in the drama. The unlikely vehicle for his success was Hamlet, with Alterations (1772)—a play neither published nor performed in its author's lifetime. The play, a parody of Garrick's radical adaptation of Hamlet, succeeded not in changing the law but in changing the discourse about the relationship between a dramatic author and the commodity of a dramatic text.

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