Don Quixote (1694), one of the first dramatisations of Miguel de Cervantes' celebrated novel. D'Urfey wrote tunes himself as well, although he admitted that they were not very good. Many of the songs' lyrics in Wit and Mirth are preceded by their melodies written in musical notation. He was a friend of the great essayists Joseph Addison and Richard Steele; but, as was not atypical of the time, he also quarreled energetically with other poets and writers. He wrote parodies, and was parodied in return. He stuttered slightly—except, it was said, when he sang or swore. At one point in his career, a jealous rival would respond to D'Urfey's play Love for Money with a parody called Wit for Money, or, Poet Stutterer. D'Urfey's songs met with royal approval. Addison (in The Guardian) related that he remembered seeing Charles II leaning on Tom d'Urfey’s shoulder and humming a song with him. Even William III liked to hear him sing his songs, and as a strong Tory he was sure of the favour of Princess Anne, who is said to have given Tom fifty guineas for a song on the Electress Sophia, then the next heir in succession to the crown. Although he was poor in his old age, his friends revived A Fond Husband in 1713, with a prologue written by Alexander Pope, which seems to have eased his difficulties. Death He was buried on the day of his death at St James's, Piccadilly, in London. His lasting achievement lay in his best songs: 10 of the 68 songs in The Beggar's Opera were by d'Urfey. Selected plays References Further reading Cyrus Lawrence Day, The Songs of Thomas D'Urfey, Volume IX, Harvard Studies in English, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933. Thomas D'Urfey, Lewd Songs and Low Ballads of the Eighteenth Century: Bawdy Songs From Thomas D'urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719), Boulder, Colorado, Bartholomew Press, 1991. Thomas D'Urfey, The Comical History of Don Quixote, Part I, with Introduction, Critical Edition and Notes by Luca Baratta, Spanish Translation by Aaron M. Kahn and Vicente Chacón Carmona, Presentation by Rafael Portillo García, Research Coordinator Agapita Jurado Santos, Firenze, Società Editrice Fiorentina, 2019 . External links Digitised copy of Wit and mirth, or, Pills to purge melancholy in six volumes from National Library of Scotland. 1653 births 1723 deaths English dramatists and playwrights Writers from Devon English male dramatists and playwrights English male