Annotation:Country Attorney (The)

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COUNTRY ATTORNEY, THE. English, Country Dance (2/4 time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). AABB. The Country Attorney was a comic play by Richard Cumberland (1732-1811), staged at London's Theatre Royal in the Hay-Market, July 7th, 1787. Unfortunately, it was not well received and ran only a half-dozen nights. Cumberland reworked much of the same material a few years

later for his The School for Widows (1789). He was not regarded in the first rank of playwrights, even by his peers. Thomas Davis acerbically dismissed him:

Mr. Cumberland is unquestionably a man of very great abilities; it is his misfortune to rate them greatly above their value.

Country dance directions appear in Nancy Shepley's Book, a small copybook of dance figures compiled by Nancy Shepley of Pepperell, Massachusetts, c. 1794.

Source for notated version:

Printed sources: Samuel, Ann & Peter Thompson (Compleat Collection of 200 Favourite Country Dances, vol. 5), 1788; p. 2.

Recorded sources:

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