all but ignored his new rival.  With the exception of a brief allusion in The Theatre, No. 17 (an allusion which Falstaffe was quick to take up), Steele made no more references to the other periodical.  For a time Falstaffe continued to answer the arguments Steele advanced in protest against the Lord Chamberlain’s action, but finding that he was unable to provoke a response, he gave up the debate.  After his ninth number of March 14, he had little more to say about Steele or Drury Lane.

Falstaffe, however, did not stop writing when he ceased defending Newcastle’s action. The Anti-Theatre continued to come out twice a week until the fifteenth number appeared on Monday, April 4.  And in that paper there was no indication that the periodical was to end or was to be changed in any way.  But on the day after, April 5, Steele issued The Theatre, No. 28, signed with his own name, which he announced would be the last in the series.  As no more Anti-Theatres were known to have appeared after the fifteenth, it has generally been assumed (though as we now know, erroneously) that Falstaffe took his cue from Edgar and abandoned his own series.

But there has long been some reason to believe that Falstaffe did not cease writing completely after the fifteenth Anti-Theatre.  Though nothing was known of his later work, a newspaper advertisement of his The Theatre was noted.  But lacking any more definite information, scholars have doubted the existence of the periodical.  A volume in the Folger Shakespeare Library, however, removes the doubt.  There, bound with a complete set of the original Theatre by Sir John Edgar, are the ten numbers of the later Theatre which are reproduced here.  These papers include the entire run of Falstaffe’s “continuation” with the exception of one number, the nineteenth, which has apparently been lost.  So far as is known, the copies in the Folger are unique.

The continuation of The Theatre bears little trace of the controversial bitterness present in Steele’s paper of that name or in some of the early numbers of The Anti-Theatre.  Except in the mock will in No. 16, there is no reference to Steele’s dispute with Newcastle in the entire series.  Nor, in spite of the title, is there any discussion of theatrical matters.  As a source of information about the stage, it is virtually without value.  But if it be accepted as merely another of the gracefully written series of literary essays which were so abundant in the early eighteenth century, its value and charm are apparent.  The unidentified author was an accomplished scholar, and he wrote on a variety of subjects which have not lost their appeal.  The interest aroused by the essays is perhaps inseparable from our historical interest in the life and manners of the time, but it is none the less genuine.  Perhaps nowhere more than in the personal essays about subjects of contemporary importance—­of which these are examples—­is there a more pleasing record of the social and intellectual life of a period.