Scott probably did much reading in the drama in his early life. We know that by 1804 he had "long since" annotated his copy of Beaumont and Fletcher sufficiently so that he wished to offer it to Gifford, who, Scott erroneously understood, was about to edit their dramas.[130] The edition of Dryden, published in 1808, shows familiarity with Elizabethan as well as Restoration dramatists. He seems to have had first-hand knowledge of such men as Ford, Webster, Marston, Brome, Shirley, Chapman, and Dekker, whom he mentions as being "little known to the general readers of the present day, even by name."[131] But 1808 was the very year in which appeared Lamb's _Specimens of English Dramatic Poets_ and Coleridge's first course of lectures on Shakspere. The old dramatists were beginning to come to their own, through the sympathetic appreciation of the Romantic critics. Scott never refers, however, to the work of Lamb, Coleridge, or Hazlitt[132] in this field and we conclude that his researches in dramatic literature were the recreation of a man who realized that his business lay in another direction. But in preparing the _Dryden_, he doubtless read more widely in Restoration drama than he would otherwise have done. Throughout his life he continued to read plays at intervals, as we know from occasional references in the _Journal_; but after the _Dryden_ appeared we can point to no time in his career when such reading was his especial occupation. His familiarity with Elizabethan drama he showed even more emphatically than by serious critical writings on the subject, in his fragments from mythical "Old Plays,"[133] in his frequent references to single plays, and in the substance of some of the novels, particularly _The Fortunes of Nigel_ and _Woodstock_, which make use of settings, situations, and characterizations suggested by the drama.[134] Mr. Lang says of _The Fortunes of Nigel_, "The scenes in Alsatia are a distinct gain to literature, a pearl rescued from the unread mass of Shadwell."[135] His serious critical writings on the subject comprise little else than his _Essay on the Drama_, which appeared in the supplement to the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, published in 1819, and the discussions given in connection with Dryden's plays.[136] Although the Essay was written ten years later than the _Dryden_, we have no reason to think that Scott changed his views or added greatly to his knowledge in the interval, and using these two sources we may discuss his account of the drama in general without regard to the particular date at which his opinions were expressed.