Anglo-American Shakespearian actor Henry Scharf’s prompt copy annotated for performance by himself and his brother, George Scharf, later the founding Director of the National Portrait Gallery. Small octavo bound in robust contemporary calf and diced blue cloth. The play has been interleaved with blueish paper (’W H Tucker 1836’ watermark) with additional preliminary and terminal interleaves. The title page has lost the top right corner, no doubt removing an ownership inscription but retains in red ink ‘72 From R S Boxiel [?]’ in the middle of the title page. Below the printed Dramatis Personae is written in faded brown ink by Scharf (and transcribed opposite in pencil): ‘This play ws performed on... 1838 at our house, I performing the part of Peter Spyk, this being my fourth attempt at acting - H[enry] Scharf 1838’. Next to the line for Captain Amersoft is written ‘G[eorge] Scharf’ with ‘H Scharf’ below and other actors’ names, slightly trimmed, further down. The prompter’s annotations appear on text pages and the interleaves, written in both ink and pencil, so ‘Exit dancing & singing “In Verity, etc.”’ and ‘Ready at Clock to strike 2.’ Scharf has added an 11 line epilogue in dialogue form before signing the final leaf after the printed text. A later ownership inscription of Bill Royall of Williamsburg appears on the first flyleaf - much of whose collection is now at William and Mary libraries. Henry Scharf (1822-1887) would have been 16 when this play was performed in his father London home. George Johann Scharf was a Bavarian Miniature Painter living in England; Henry Scharf continued from this juvenile role onto the London stage in 1844 achieving success in Shakespearian productions before settling in New York around 1850 where he appeared on the American stage and took on a professorship at the University of Virginia. Strangely, Scharf returned to the stage in the 1880s at the National Theatre in Washington D.C. Henry’s older brother George who’s involvement in this 1838 production of The Loan of a Lover is recorded in this copy went on to be an art critic and illustrator who was made secretary and first director of the National Portrait Gallery in 1857.
