playwrightn.

1605 Commendatory Poem in B. Jonson Sejanus sig. A2 The Crew Of common Play-wrights..are disgrac'd by thee.

1616 B. Jonson Epigrammes xlix, in Wks. I. 781 Play-wright, I loath to haue thy manners knowne In my chast booke: professe them in thine owne.

a1677 M. Clifford Notes Dryden's Poems (1687) iv. 16 Wherein you may..thrive better, than at this damn'd Trade of a Play-wright.

1716 A. Pope Corr. 21 Jan. (1956) I. 329 Horace's Rule for a Play, may as well be apply'd to him as a Playwright.

1761 L. Sterne Life Tristram Shandy III. xxiv. 123 My dear friend Garrick,..can it escape your penetration,—I defy it,—that so many play-wrights, and opificers of chit chat have ever since been working upon Trim's and my uncle Toby's pattern.

1806 ‘C. Caustic’ Democracy Unveiled (ed. 3) I. iii. 159 Behold the play wright Barney Bidwell.

1877 E. Dowden Shakspere (Macmillan Lit. Primers) v. 49 Shakspere's powers as a rising playwright must have been recognised.

1884 Pall Mall Gaz. 28 July 4/1 A playwright may take a month..and..only produce a carpentered thing at last.

1925 A. Loos Gentlemen prefer Blondes vi. 199 So according to Mr Montrose's opinion Shakespear is a very great playwrite, and he thinks that Hamlet is quite a famous tragedy.

1934 T. S. Eliot Elizabethan Ess. 178 Was he really a dramatist, or only a playwright through force of circumstances?

2002 O. Figes Natasha's Dance (2003) v. v. 345 In 1897 Tolstoy paid a visit to Chekhov. The playwright was gravely ill.

1831 T. Carlyle Let. 17 Aug. in Coll. Lett. T. &. J. W. Carlyle (1976) V. 337 Various Playwrightesses and Play-wrights.

1996 Sydney Morning Herald (Nexis) 12 Jan. 10 There are female actors who feel so strongly that the theatre is genderblind that they object to being called ‘actresses’. Female directors are not called ‘directoresses’. There are no ‘playwrightesses’.

1851 Fraser's Mag. 44 624 What is this but play-wrightry?