Introduction

Summary

Encountering The Gentle Shepherd in 1791

From its publication in 1725, The Gentle Shepherd (hereafter, GS) was a major commercial and, for the most part, a critical success. Over 100 imprints appeared before 1800; it was ‘translated’ into English 5 times in the eighteenth century alone; and it was performed on stages ranging from London to Edinburgh to Scarborough to New York to Alexandria, Virginia. Its songs were separately printed and reprinted, and it inspired a wide range of visual representations. To get a clearer sense of the text's reach and the discussions around it, let us consider one year—1791—from the history of its reception. It has not been chosen at random; 1791 was a relatively good year for mentions of and access to GS, but it is not too far from the norm for the play's reception in the eighteenth century, and its ubiquity almost 70 years after its appearance gives some sense of its vitality.

On April 14, 1791, Robert Cumming delivered an essay in verse at the Pantheon—an Edinburgh debating society—in response to the question, ‘Whether have the Exertions of Allan Ramsay or Robert Ferguson [sic] done most Honour to Scottish Poetry.’1 In a footnote at the start, he acknowledges, with bracing honesty, that ‘The Author of this Essay, when speaking of Allan Ramsay, alludes to his Gentle Shepherd, as he is unacquainted with his other works’ (1n.). The forthcoming volumes of The Works of Allan Ramsay will show how wrongheaded it is to take GS for the whole of Ramsay. Still, in the spirit of Ramsay's own insights into the relationship between wealth and literacy, Cumming may be forgiven for not being familiar with Ramsay's other works, since, as a staymaker, his income was limited, though there were accessible versions of The Tea-Table Miscellany, The Tale of Three Bonnets and Proverbs available in the decade before, further belying the insufficiency of GS to stand for the whole of Ramsay.2 Whatever his essay's faults, it remains useful for revealing the significance of GS for Scottish literature as a whole at the time.