v. 20; Law, 9):
‘We shall have a merry Christmas at Hampton Court, for both male and female maskes are all ready bespoken, whereof the Duke [of Lennox] is _rector chori_ of th’ one side and the La: Bedford of the other.’
I suppose Mr. Sanford to be Henry Sanford, who, like Daniel, had been of the Wilton household (cf. Aubrey, i. 311) and may well have lent him his aid.
The masks of lords on 1 Jan. and of Scots on 6 Jan. are not preserved. The latter is perhaps most memorable because Ben Jonson and his friend Sir John Roe were thrust out from it by the Lord Chamberlain (cf. ch. vi). Arabella Stuart briefly told Shrewsbury on 10 Jan. that there were three masks (Bradley, ii. 199). _Wilbraham’s Journal_ (_Camden Misc._ x), 66, records:
‘manie plaies and daunces with swordes: one mask by English and Scottish lords: another by the Queen’s Maiestie and eleven more ladies of her chamber presenting giftes as goddesses. These maskes, especialli the laste, costes 2000 or 3000^l, the aparells: rare musick, fine songes: and in jewels most riche 20000^l, the lest to my judgment: and her Maiestie 100,000^l. After Christmas was running at the ring by the King and 8 or 9 lordes for the honour of those goddesses and then they all feasted together privatelie.’
But the fullest description was given by Carleton to Chamberlain on 15 Jan. (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, vi. 21, printed by Law, 33, 45; Sullivan, 192).
‘On New yeares night we had a play of Robin goode-fellow and a maske brought in by a magicien of China. There was a heaven built at the lower end of the hall, owt of which our magicien came downe and after he had made a long sleepy speech to the King of the nature of the cuntry from whence he came comparing it with owrs for strength and plenty, he sayde he had broughte in cloudes certain Indian and China Knights to see the magnificency of this court. And theruppon a trauers was drawne and the maskers seen sitting in a voulty place with theyr torchbearers and other lights which was no vnpleasing spectacle. The maskers were brought in by two boyes and two musitiens who began with a song and whilst that went forward they presented themselves to the King. The first gave the King an Impresa in a shield with a sonet in a paper to exprese his deuice and presented a jewell of 40,000£ valew which the King is to buy of Peter Van Lore, but that is more than euery man knew and it made a faire shew to the French Ambassadors eye whose master would have bin well pleased with such a maskers present but not at that prise. The rest in theyr order deliuered theyr scutchins with letters and there was no great stay at any of them saue only at one who was putt to the interpretacion of his deuise. It was a faire horse colt in a faire greene field which he meant to be a colt of Busephalus race and had this virtu of his sire that none could mount him but one as great at lest as Alexander. The King made himself merry with threatening to send this colt to the stable and he could not breake loose till he promised to dance as well as Bankes his horse. The first measure was full of changes and seemed confused but was well gone through with all, and for the ordinary measures they tooke out the Queen, the ladies of Derby, Harford, Suffolke, Bedford, Susan Vere, Suthwell th’ elder and Rich. In the corantoes they ran over some other of the young ladies, and so ended as they began with a song; and that done, the magicien dissolved his enchantment, and made the maskers appear in theyr likenes to be th’ Erle of Pembroke, the Duke, Mons^r. d’Aubigny, yong Somerset, Philip Harbert the young Bucephal, James Hayes, Richard Preston, and Sir Henry Godier. Theyr attire was rich but somewhat too heavy and cumbersome for dancers which putt them besides ther galliardes. They had loose robes of crimsen sattin embrodered with gold and bordered with brood siluer laces, dublets and bases of cloth of siluer; buskins, swordes and hatts alike and in theyr hats ech of them an Indian bird for a fether with some jewells. The twelfe-day the French Ambassador was feasted publikely; and at night there was a play in the Queens presence with a masquerado of certaine Scotchmen who came in with a sword dance not vnlike a matachin, and performed it clenly.... The Sunday following was the great day of the Queenes maske.’
This Carleton describes at length; I only note points which supplement Daniel’s description.
‘The Hale was so much lessened by the workes that were in it, so as none could be admitted but men of apparance, the one end was made into a rock and in several places the waightes placed; in attire like savages. Through the midst from the top came a winding stayre of breadth for three to march; and so descended the maskers by three and three; which being all seene on the stayres at once was the best presentacion I have at any time seene. Theyre attire was alike, loose mantles and petticotes but of different colors, the stuffs embrodered sattins and cloth of gold and silver, for which they were beholding to Queen Elizabeth’s wardrobe.... Only Pallas had a trick by herself for her clothes were not so much below the knee, but that we might see a woman had both feete and legs which I never knew before.’
He describes the torchbearers as pages in white satin loose gowns, although Daniel says they were ‘in the like several colours’ to the maskers. The temple was ‘on the left side of the hall towards the upper end’. For the ‘common measures’ the lords taken out were Pembroke, Lennox, Suffolk, Henry Howard, Southampton, Devonshire, Sidney, Nottingham, Monteagle, Northumberland, Knollys, and Worcester.
‘For galliardes and corantoes they went by discretion, and the yong Prince was tost from hand to hand like a tennis bal. The Lady Bedford and Lady Susan tooke owt the two ambassadors; and they bestirred themselfe very liuely: speceally the Spaniard for the Spanish galliard shewed himself a lusty old reueller.... But of all for goode grace and goode footmanship Pallas bare the bell away.’
The dancers unmasked about midnight, and then came a banquet in the presence-chamber, ‘which was dispatched with the accustomed confusion’.
Carleton also mentions the trouble between the Spanish and French ambassadors, which is also referred to in a letter of O. Renzo to G. A. Frederico (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, vi. 37; cf. Sullivan, 195), and is the subject of several dispatches by and to the Comte de Beaumont (_King’s MSS._ cxxiv, ff. 328, 359^v, 363, 373, 381, 383^v, 389; cf. Reyher, 519, Sullivan, 193–5). was the object of the Court not to invite both ambassadors together, as this would entail an awkward decision as to precedence. Beaumont was asked first, to the mask on 1 Jan. He hesitated to accept, expressing a fear that it was intended to ask De Taxis to the Queen’s mask on Twelfth Night, ‘dernier jour des festes de Noël selon la facon d’Angleterre et le plus honnorable de tout pour la cérémonie qui s’y obserue de tout temps publiquement’. After some negotiation he extracted a promise from James that, if the Spaniard was present at all, it would be in a private capacity, and he then dropped the point, and accepted his own invitation, threatening to kill De Taxis in the presence if he dared to dispute precedence with him. On 5 Jan. he learnt that Anne had refused to dance if De Taxis was not present, and that the promise would be broken. He protested, and his protest was met by an invitation for the Twelfth Night to which he had attached such importance. But the Queen’s mask was put off until 8 Jan., a Scottish mask substituted on 6 Jan., and on 8 Jan. De Taxis was present, revelling it in red, while Anne paid him the compliment of wearing a red favour on her costume.
Reyher, 519, cites references to the Queen’s mask in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber and of the Office of Works. E. Law (_Hist. of Hampton Court_, ii. 10) gives, presumably from one of these, ‘making readie the lower ende with certain roomes of the hall at Hampton Court for the Queenes Maiestie and ladies against their mask by the space of three dayes’.
Allde’s edition must have been quickly printed. On 2 Feb. Lord Worcester wrote to Lord Shrewsbury (Lodge, iii. 87): ‘Whereas your Lordship saith you were never particularly advertised of the mask, I have been at sixpence charge with you to send you the book, which will inform you better than I can, having noted the names of the ladies applied to each goddess; and for the other, I would likewise have sent you the ballet, if I could have got it for money, but these books, as I hear, are all called in, and in truth I will not take upon me to set that down which wiser than myself do not understand.’
_Tethys’ Festival. 5 June 1610_
1610. Tethys Festiual: or the Queenes Wake. Celebrated at Whitehall, the fifth day of June 1610. Deuised by Samuel Daniel, one of the Groomes of her Maiesties most Honourable priuie Chamber. _For John Budge._ [Annexed with separate title-page to _The Creation of Henry Prince of Wales_ (q.v.). A Preface to the Reader criticizes, though not by name, Ben Jonson’s descriptions of his masks.]
_Edition_ in Nichols, _James_ (1828), ii. 346.
The maskers, in sky-blue and cloth of silver, were Tethys and thirteen Nymphs of as many English Rivers; the antimaskers, in light robes adorned with flowers, eight Naiads; the presenters Zephyrus and two Tritons, whom with the Naiads Daniel calls ‘the Ante-maske or first shew’, and Mercury. Torchbearers were dispensed with, for ‘they would have pestered the roome, which the season would not well permit’.
The locality was probably the Banqueting Room at Whitehall. The scene was supplemented by a Tree of Victory on a mount to the right of ‘the state’. A ‘travers’ representing a cloud served for a curtain, and was drawn to discover, within a framework borne on pilasters, in front of which stood Neptune and Nereus on pedestals, a haven, whence the ‘Ante-maske’ issued. They presented on behalf of Tethys a trident to the King, and a sword and scarf to Henry, and the Naiads danced round Zephyrus. The scene was then changed, under cover of three circles of moving lights and glasses, to show five niches, of which the central one represented a throne for Tethys, with Thames at her feet, and the others four caverns, each containing three Nymphs.
The maskers marched to the Tree of Victory, at which they offered their flowers, and under which Tethys reposed between the dances. Of these they gave two; then took out the Lords for ‘measures, corantos, and galliardes’; and then gave their ‘retyring daunce’. Apparently as an innovation, ‘to avoid the confusion which usually attendeth the desolve of these shewes’, the presenters stayed the dissolve, and Mercury sent the Duke of York and six young noblemen to conduct the Queen and ladies back ‘in their owne forme’.
This was a Queen’s mask, and Daniel notes ‘that there were none of inferior sort mixed among these great personages of state and honour (as usually there have been); but all was performed by themselves with a due reservation of their dignity. The maskers were the Queen (Tethys), the Lady Elizabeth (Thames), Lady Arabella Stuart (Trent), the Countesses of Arundel (Arun), Derby (Darwent), Essex (Lee), Dorset (Air), and Montgomery (Severn), Viscountess Haddington (Rother), and the Ladies Elizabeth Gray (Medway), Elizabeth Guilford (Dulesse), Katherine Petre (Olwy), Winter (Wye), and Windsor (Usk). The antimaskers were ‘eight little Ladies’. The Duke of York played Zephyrus, and two gentlemen ‘of good worth and respect’ the Tritons. ‘The artificiall part’, says Daniel, ‘only speakes Master Inago Jones.’
On 13 Jan. 1610 Chamberlain wrote to Winwood (iii. 117, misdated ‘February’) that ‘the Queen would likewise have a mask against Candlemas or Shrovetide’. Doubtless it was deferred to the Creation, for which on 24 May the same writer (Winwood, iii. 175) mentions Anne as preparing and practising a mask. Winwood’s papers (iii. 179) also contain a description, unsigned, but believed by their editor to be written by John Finett, as follows:
‘The next day was graced with a most glorious Maske, which was double. In the first, came first in the little Duke of Yorke between two great Sea Slaves, the cheefest of Neptune’s servants, attended upon by twelve [eight] little Ladies, all of them the daughters of Earls or Barons. By one of these men a speech was made unto the King and Prince, expressing the conceipt of the maske; by the other a sword worth 20,000 crowns at the least was put into the Duke of York’s hands, who presented the same unto the Prince his brother from the first of those ladies which were to follow in the next maske. This done, the Duke returned into his former place in midst of the stage, and the little ladies performed their dance to the amazement of all the beholders, considering the tenderness of their years and the many intricate changes of the dance; which was so disposed, that which way soever the changes went the little Duke was still found to be in the midst of these little dancers. These light skirmishers having done their _devoir_, in came the Princesses; first the Queen, next the Lady Elizabeth’s Grace, then the Lady Arbella, the Countesses of Arundell, Derby, Essex, Dorset, and Montgomery, the Lady Hadington, the Lady Elizabeth Grey, the Lady Windsor, the Lady Katherine Peter, the Lady Elizabeth Guilford, and the Lady Mary [Anne] Wintour. By that time these had done, it was high time to go to bed, for it was within half an hour of the sun’s, not setting, but rising. Howbeit, a farther time was to be spent in viewing and scrambling at one of the most magnificent banquets that I have seen. The ambassadors of Spaine, of Venice, and of the Low Countries were present at this and all the rest of these glorious sights, and in truth so they were.’
Brief notices in Stowe’s _Annales_ (902, paged 907 in error) and in letters by Carleton to Sir Thomas Edmondes (Birch, i. 114) and by John Noies to his wife (_Hist. MSS. Various Colls._ iii. 261) add nothing to Finett’s account. There were no very serious ambassadorial complications, as the death of Henri IV put an invitation to the French ambassador out of the question (cf. Sullivan, 59). Correr notes with satisfaction that, as ambassador from Venice, he had as good a box as that of the Spanish ambassador, while, to please Spanish susceptibilities, that of the Dutch ambassador was less good (_V. P._ xi. 507).
The mask was ‘excessively costly’ (_V. P._ xii. 86). Several financial documents relating to it are on record (Reyher, 507, 521; Devon, 105, 127; Sullivan, 219, 221; _S. P. D. Jac. I_, liii. 4, 74; lix. 12), including a warrant of 4 March, which recites the Queen’s pleasure that the Lord Chamberlain and Master of the Horse ‘shall take some paines to look into the emptions and provisions of all things necessarie’, another of 25 May for an imprest to Inigo Jones, an embroiderer’s bill for £55, and a silkman’s for £1,071 5_s._, with an endorsement by Lord Knyvet, referring the prices to the Privy Council, and counter-signatures by the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of the Horse. In this case the dresses of the maskers seem to have been provided for them. An allusion in a letter of Donne to Sir Henry Goodyere (_Letters_, i. 240) makes a sportive suggestion for a source of revenue ‘if Mr. Inago Jones be not satisfied for his last masque (because I hear say it cannot come to much)’.
JOHN DAVIDSON (1549?-1603).
A Regent of St. Leonard’s College, St. Andrew’s, and afterwards minister of Liberton and a bitter satirist on behalf of the extreme Kirk party in Scotland.
_The Siege of Edinburgh Castle. 1571_
James Melville writes s.a. 1571: ‘This yeir in the monethe of July, Mr. Jhone Davidsone an of our Regents maid a play at the mariage of Mr. Jhone Coluin, quhilk I saw playit in Mr. Knox presence, wherin, according to Mr. Knox doctrine, the castell of Edinbruche was besiged, takin, and the Captan, with an or two with him, hangit in effigie.’[656]
This was in intelligent anticipation of events. Edinburgh Castle was held by Kirkcaldy of Grange for Mary in 1571. On 28 May 1573 it was taken by the English on behalf of the party of James VI, and Kirkcaldy was hanged.
Melville also records plays at the ‘Bachelor Act’ of 1573 at St. Andrews.
SIR JOHN DAVIES (1569–1626).
Davies was a Winchester and Queen’s College, Oxford, man, who entered the Middle Temple on 3 Feb. 1588, served successively as Solicitor-General (1603–6) and Attorney-General (1606–19) in Ireland, and was Speaker of the Irish Parliament in 1613. His principal poems are _Orchestra_ (1594) and _Nosce Teipsum_ (1599). He was invited by the Earl of Cumberland (q.v.) to write verses for ‘barriers’ in 1601, and contributed to the entertainments of Elizabeth by Sir Thomas Egerton (cf. ch. xxiv) and Sir Robert Cecil (q.v.) in 1602.
_Collections_
_Works_ by A. B. Grosart (1869–76, _Fuller Worthies Library_. 3 vols.).
_Poems_ by A. B. Grosart (1876, _Early English Poets_. 2 vols.).
_Dissertation_: M. Seemann, _Sir J. D., sein Leben und seine Werke_ (1913, _Wiener Beiträge_, xli).
R. DAVIES (_c._ 1610).
Contributor to _Chester’s Triumph_ (cf. ch. xxiv, C).
FRANCIS DAVISON (_c._ 1575–_c._ 1619).
He was son of William Davison, Secretary of State, and compiler of _A Poetical Rapsody_ (1602), of which the best edition is that of A. H. Bullen (1890–1). He entered Gray’s Inn in 1593: for his contribution to the Gray’s Inn mask of 1595, see s.v. ANON. _Gesta Grayorum_.
JOHN DAY (_c._ 1574–_c._ 1640).
Day was described as son of Walter Dey, husbandman, of Cawston, Norfolk, when at the age of eighteen he became a sizar of Gonville and Caius, Cambridge, on 24 Oct. 1592; on 4 May 1593 he was expelled for stealing a book (Venn, _Caius_, i. 146). He next appears in Henslowe’s diary, first as selling an old play for the Admiral’s in July 1598, and then as writing busily for that company in 1599–1603 and for Worcester’s in 1602–3. Most of this work was in collaboration, occasionally with Dekker, frequently with Chettle, Hathway, Haughton, or Smith. From this period little or nothing survives except _The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_. Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, 126, doubts whether an acrostic on Thomas Downton signed ‘John Daye’, contributed by J. F. Herbert to _Sh. Soc. Papers_, i. 19, and now at Dulwich, is to be ascribed to the dramatist. Day’s independent plays, written about 1604–8, and his _Parliament of Bees_ are of finer literary quality than this early record would suggest. But Ben Jonson classed him to Drummond in 1619 amongst the ‘rogues’ and ‘base fellows’ who were ‘not of the number of the faithfull, i.e. Poets’ (Laing, 4, 11). He must have lived long, as John Tatham, who included an elegy on him as his ‘loving friend’ in his _Fancies Theater_ (1640), was then only about twenty-eight. He appears to have been still writing plays in 1623, but there is no trace of any substantial body of work after 1608. Fleay, i. 115, suggests from the tone of his manuscript pamphlet _Peregrinatio Scholastica_ that he took orders.
_Collection_
1881. A. H. Bullen, _The Works of John Day_.
_The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green. 1600_
_S. R._ 1657, Sept. 14. ‘A booke called The pleasant history of the blind beggar of Bednall Greene, declaring his life and death &c.’ _Francis Grove_ (Eyre, ii. 145).
1659. The Blind Beggar of Bednal-Green, with The merry humor of Tom Strowd the Norfolk Yeoman, as it was divers times publickly acted by the Princes Servants. Written by John Day. _For R. Pollard and Tho. Dring._
_Editions_ by W. Bang (1902, _Materialien_, i) and J. S. Farmer (1914, _S. F. T._).
The Prince’s men of the title are probably the later Prince Charles’s (1631–41), but these were the ultimate successors of Prince Henry’s, formerly the Admiral’s, who produced, between May 1600 and Sept. 1601, three parts of a play called indifferently by Henslowe _The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_ and _Thomas Strowd_. Payments were made for the first part to Day and Chettle and for the other two to Day and Haughton. On the assumption that the extant play is Part i, Bullen, _Introd._ 8 and Fleay, i. 107, make divergent suggestions as to the division of responsibility between Day and Chettle. At l. 2177 is the s.d. ‘Enter Captain Westford, Sill Clark’; probably the performance in which this actor took part was a Caroline one.
_Law Tricks, or Who Would Have Thought It. 1604_
_S. R._ 1608, March 28 (Buck). ‘A booke called A most wytty and merry conceited comedie called who would a thought it or Lawetrykes.’ _Richard Moore_ (Arber, iii. 372).
1608. Law-Trickes or, who would have Thought it. As it hath bene diuers times Acted by the Children of the Reuels. Written by John Day. _For Richard More._ [Epistle by the Book to the Reader; Epilogue.]
The name given to the company suggests that the play was on the stage in 1605–6. But I think the original production must have been in 1604, as the dispute between Westminster and Winchester for ‘terms’, in which Winchester is said to have been successful, ‘on Saint Lukes day, coming shalbe a twelue-month’ (ed. Bullen, p. 61) can only refer to the term held at Winchester in 1603. An inundation in July is also mentioned (p. 61), and Stowe, _Annales_ (1615), 844, has a corresponding record for 1604, but gives the day as 3 Aug.
_The Isle of Gulls. 1606_
1606. The Ile of Guls. As it hath been often playd in the blacke Fryars, by the Children of the Reuels. Written by Iohn Day. _Sold by John Hodgets._ [Induction and Prologue.]
1606. _For John Trundle, sold by John Hodgets._
1633. _For William Sheares._
The play is thus referred to by Sir Edward Hoby in a letter of 7 March 1606 to Sir Thomas Edmondes (Birch, i. 59): ‘At this time (_c._ 15 Feb.) was much speech of a play in the Black Friars, where, in the “Isle of Gulls”, from the highest to the lowest, all men’s parts were acted of two divers nations: as I understand sundry were committed to Bridewell.’ A passage in iv. 4 (Bullen, p. 91), probably written with _Eastward Ho!_ in mind, refers to the ‘libelling’ ascribed to poets by ‘some Dor’ and ‘false informers’; and the Induction defends the play itself against the charge that a ‘great mans life’ is ‘charactred’ in Damoetas. Nevertheless, Damoetas, the royal favourite, ‘a little hillock made great with others ruines’ (p. 13) inevitably suggests Sir Robert Carr, and Fleay, i. 109, points out that the ‘Duke’ and ‘Duchess’ of the dramatis personae have been substituted for a ‘King’ and ‘Queen’. It may not be possible now to verify all the men whose ‘parts’ were acted; evidently the Arcadians and Lacedaemonians stand for the two ‘nations’ of English and Scotch. I do not see any ground for Fleay’s attempt to treat the play, not as a political, but as a literary satire, identifying Damoetas with Daniel, and tracing allusions to Jonson, Marston, and Chapman in the Induction. Hoby’s indication of date is confirmed by references to the ‘Eastward, Westward or Northward hoe’ (p. 3; cf. s.vv. Chapman, Dekker), to the quartering for treason on 30 Jan. 1606 (pp. 3, 51), and conceivably to Jonson’s _Volpone_ of 1605 or early 1606 (p. 88, ‘you wil ha my humor brought ath stage for a vserer’).
_The Travels of Three English Brothers. 1607_
_S. R._ 1607, June 29 (Buck). ‘A playe called the trauailles of the Three Englishe brothers as yt was played at the Curten.’ _John Wright_ (Arber, iii. 354).
1607. The Travailes of The three English Brothers.
Sir Thomas } Sir Anthony } Shirley. Mr. Robert }
As it is now play’d by her Maiesties Seruants. _For John Wright._ [Epistle to the Family of the Sherleys, signed ‘Iohn Day, William Rowley, George Wilkins’, Prologue and Epilogue.]
The source was a pamphlet on the Sherleys by A. Nixon (S. R. 8 June 1607) and the play seems to have been still on the stage when it was printed. Some suggestions as to the division of authorship are in Fleay, ii. 277, Bullen, _Introd._ 19, and C. W. Stork, _William Rowley_, 57. A scene at Venice (Bullen, p. 55) introduces Will Kempe, who mentions Vennar’s _England’s Joy_ (1602), and prepares to play an ‘extemporall merriment’ with an Italian Harlaken. He has come from England with a boy. The Epilogue refers to ‘some that fill up this round circumference’.
_Humour out of Breath. 1607–8_
_S. R._ 1608, April 12 (Buck). ‘A booke called Humour out of breathe.’ _John Helme_ (Arber, iii. 374).
1608. Humour out of breath. A Comedie Diuers times latelie acted, By the Children Of The Kings Reuells. Written by Iohn Day. _For John Helme._ [Epistle to Signior Nobody, signed ‘Iohn Daye’.]
_Editions_ by J. O. Halliwell (1860), A. Symons in _Nero and Other Plays_ (1888, _Mermaid Series_).
The date must be taken as 1607–8, since the King’s Revels are not traceable before 1607. Fleay, i. 111, notes a reference in iii. 4 to the ‘great frost’ of that Christmas. The Epistle speaks of the play as ‘sufficiently featur’d too, had it been all of one man’s getting’, which may be a hint of divided authorship.
_The Parliament of Bees. 1608 < > 16_
[_MS._] _Lansdowne MS._ 725, with title. ‘An olde manuscript conteyning the Parliament of Bees, found in a Hollow Tree in a garden at Hibla, in a Strange Languadge, And now faithfully Translated into Easie English Verse by John Daye, Cantabridg.’ [Epistles to William Augustine, signed ‘John Day, Cant.’ and to the Reader, signed ‘Jo: Daye’.]
_S. R._ 1641, March 23 (Hansley). ‘A booke called The Parliam^t of Bees, &c., by John Day.’ _Will Ley_ (Eyre, i. 17).
1641. The Parliament of Bees, With their proper Characters. Or A Bee-hive furnisht with twelve Honycombes, as Pleasant as Profitable. Being an Allegoricall description of the actions of good and bad men in these our daies. By John Daye, Sometimes Student of Caius Colledge in Cambridge. _For William Lee._ [Epistle to George Butler, signed ‘John Day’, The Author’s Commission to his Bees, similarly signed, and The Book to the Reader. The text varies considerably from that of the manuscript.]
_Edition_ by A. Symons in _Nero and Other Plays_ (1888, _Mermaid Series_).
This is neither a play nor a mask, but a set of twelve short ‘Characters’ or ‘Colloquies’ in dialogue. The existence of an edition of 1607 is asserted in Gildon’s abridgement (1699) of Langbaine, but cannot be verified, and is most improbable, since the manuscript Epistle refers to an earlier work already dedicated by Day, as ‘an unknowing venturer’, to Augustine, and this must surely be the allegorical treatise _Peregrinatio Scholastica_ printed by Bullen (_Introd._ 35) from _Sloane MS._ 3150 with an Epistle by Day to William Austin, who may reasonably be identified with Augustine. But the _Peregrinatio_, although Day’s first venture in dedication, was not a very early work, for Day admits that ‘I boast not that gaudie spring of credit and youthfull florish of opinion as some other filde in the same rancke with me’. Moreover, it describes (p. 50) an ‘ante-maske’, and this term, so far as we know, first came into use about 1608 (cf. ch. vi). The _Bees_ therefore must be later still. On the other hand, it can hardly be later than about 1616, when died Philip Henslowe, whom it is impossible to resist seeing with Fleay, i. 115, in the Fenerator or Usuring Bee (p. 63). Like Henslowe he is a ‘broaker’ and ‘takes up’ clothes; and
Most of the timber that his state repairs, He hew’s out o’ the bones of foundred players: They feed on Poets braines, he eats their breath.
Now of the twelve Characters of the _Bees_, five (2, 3, 7, 8, 9) are reproduced, in many parts verbatim, subject to an alteration of names, in _The Wonder of a Kingdom_, printed as Dekker’s (q.v.) in 1636, but probably identical with _Come See a Wonder_, licensed by Herbert as Day’s in 1623. Two others (4, 5) are similarly reproduced in _The Noble Soldier_, printed in 1634 under the initials ‘S. R.’, probably indicating Samuel Rowley, but possibly also containing work by Dekker. The precise relation of Day to these plays is indeterminate, but the scenes more obviously ‘belong’ to the _Bees_ than to the plays, and if the _Bees_ was written but not printed in 1608–16, the chances are that Day used it as a quarry of material when he was called upon to work, as reviser or collaborator, on the plays. Meanwhile, Austin, if he was the Southwark and Lincoln’s Inn writer of that name (_D. N. B._), died in 1634, and when the _Bees_ was ultimately printed in 1641 a new dedicatee had to be found.
_Lost and Doubtful Plays_
For the Admiral’s, 1598–1603.
Day appears to have sold the company an old play _1 The Conquest of Brute_ in July 1598, and to have subsequently written or collaborated in the following plays:
1599–1600: _Cox of Collumpton_, with Haughton; _Thomas Merry_, or _Beech’s Tragedy_, with Haughton; _The Seven Wise Masters_, with Chettle, Dekker, and Haughton; _Cupid and Psyche_, with Chettle and Dekker; _1 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_, with Chettle; and the unfinished _Spanish Moor’s Tragedy_, with Dekker and Haughton.
1600–1: _2 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_, with Haughton; _Six Yeomen of the West_, with Haughton.
1601–2: _The Conquest of the West Indies_, with Haughton and Smith; _3 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_, with Haughton; _Friar Rush and The Proud Woman of Antwerp_, with Chettle and Haughton; _The Bristol Tragedy_; and the unfinished _2 Tom Dough_, with Haughton.
1602–3: _Merry as May Be_, with Hathway and Smith; _The Boss of Billingsgate_, with Hathway and another.
For Worcester’s men.
1602–3: _1 and 2 The Black Dog of Newgate_, with Hathway, Smith, and another; _The Unfortunate General_, with Hathway, Smith, and a third; and the unfinished _Shore_, with Chettle.
Of the above only _The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green_ and a note of _Cox of Collumpton_ (cf. ch. xiii, s.v. Admiral’s) survive; for speculations as to others see Heywood, _Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas_ (_Cupid and Psyche_), Marlowe, _Lust’s Dominion_ (_Spanish Moor’s Tragedy_), Yarington, _Two Lamentable Tragedies_ (_Thomas Merry_), and the anonymous _Edward IV_ (_Shore_) and _Fair Maid of Bristol_ (_Bristow Tragedy_).
Henslowe’s correspondence (_Henslowe Papers_, 56, 127) contains notes from Day and others about some of the Admiral’s plays and a few lines which may be from _The Conquest of the Indies_.
Day’s _Mad Pranks of Merry Mall of the Bankside_ (S. R. 7 Aug. 1610) was probably a pamphlet (cf. Dekker, _The Roaring Girl_). Bullen, _Introd._ 11, thinks the _Guy Earl of Warwick_ (1661), printed as ‘by B. J.’, too bad to be Day and Dekker’s _Life and Death of Guy of Warwick_ (S. R. 15 Jan. 1620). On 30 July 1623 Herbert licensed a _Bellman of Paris_ by Day and Dekker for the Prince’s (Herbert, 24). _The Maiden’s Holiday_ by Marlowe (q.v.) and Day (S. R. 8 April 1654) appears in Warburton’s list of burnt plays (_3 Library_, ii. 231) as Marlowe’s.
For other ascriptions to Day see _The Maid’s Metamorphosis_ and _Parnassus_ in ch. xxiv.
THOMAS DEKKER (_c._ 1572–_c._ 1632).
Thomas Dekker was of London origin, but though the name occurs in Southwark, Cripplegate, and Bishopsgate records, neither his parentage nor his marriage, if he was married, can be definitely traced. He was not unlettered, but nothing is known of his education, and the conjecture that he trailed a pike in the Netherlands is merely based on his acquaintance with war and with Dutch. The Epistle to his _English Villanies_, with its reference to ‘my three score years’, first appeared in the edition of 1632; he was therefore born about 1572. He first emerges, in Henslowe’s diary, as a playwright for the Admiral’s in 1598, and may very well have been working for them during 1594–8, a period for which Henslowe records plays only and not authors. The further conjecture of Fleay, i. 119, that this employment went as far back as 1588–91 is hazardous, and in fact led Fleay to put his birth-date as far back as 1567. It was based on the fact that the German repertories of 1620 and 1626 contain traces of his work, and on Fleay’s erroneous belief (cf. ch. xiv) that all the plays in these repertories were taken to Germany by Robert Browne as early as 1592. But it is smiled upon by Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 256) as regards _The Virgin Martyr_ alone. Between 1598 and 1602 Dekker wrote busily, and as a rule in collaboration, first for the Admiral’s at the Rose and Fortune, and afterwards for Worcester’s at the Rose. He had a hand in some forty-four plays, of which, in anything like their original form, only half a dozen survive. _Satiromastix_, written for the Chamberlain’s men and the Paul’s boys in 1601, shows that his activities were not limited to the Henslowe companies. This intervention in the _Poetomachia_ led Jonson to portray him as Demetrius Fannius ‘the dresser of plays’ in _The Poetaster_; that he is also Thersites in _Troilus and Cressida_ is a not very plausible conjecture. Long after, in 1619, Jonson classed him among the ‘rogues’ (Laing, 4). In 1604, however, he shared with Jonson the responsibility for the London devices at James’s coronation entry. About this time began his career as a writer of popular pamphlets, in which he proved the most effective successor of Thomas Nashe. These, and in particular _The Gull’s Hornbook_ (1609), are full of touches drawn from his experience as a dramatist. Nor did he wholly desert the stage, collaborating with Middleton for the Prince’s and with Webster for Paul’s, and writing also, apparently alone, for the Queen’s. In 1612 he devised the Lord Mayor’s pageant. In 1613 he fell upon evil days. He had always been impecunious, and Henslowe (i. 83, 101, 161) had lent him money to discharge him from the Counter in 1598 and from an arrest by the Chamberlain’s in 1599. Now he fell into the King’s Bench for debt, and apparently lay there until 1619. The relationship of his later work to that of Ford, Massinger, Day, and others, lies rather beyond the scope of this inquiry, but in view of the persistent attempts to find early elements in all his plays, I have made my list comprehensive. He is not traceable after 1632, and is probably the Thomas Decker, householder, buried at St. James’s, Clerkenwell, on 25 Aug. 1632. A Clerkenwell recusant of this name is recorded in 1626 and 1628 (_Middlesex County Records_, iii. 12, 19).
_Collections_
1873. [R. H. Shepherd], _The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker_. 4 vols. (_Pearson Reprints_). [Contains 15 plays and 4 Entertainments.]
1884–6. A. B. Grosart, _The Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker_. 5 vols. (Huth Library). [Contains nearly all the pamphlets, with _Patient Grissell_. A better edition of _The Gull’s Hornbook_ is that by R. B. McKerrow (1904); a chapter is in App. H.]
1887. E. Rhys, _Thomas Dekker_ (_Mermaid Series_). [Contains _The Shoemaker’s Holiday_, _1, 2 The Honest Whore_, _Old Fortunatus_, _The Witch of Edmonton_.]
_Dissertations_: M. L. Hunt, _Thomas Dekker: A Study_ (1911, _Columbia Studies in English_); W. Bang, _Dekker-Studien_ (1900, _E. S._ xxviii. 208); F. E. Pierce, _The Collaboration of Webster with Dekker_ (1909, _Yale Studies_, xxxvii) and _The Collaboration of Dekker and Ford_ (1912, _Anglia_, xxxvi, 141, 289); E. E. Stoll, _John Webster_ (1905), ch. ii, and _The Influence of Jonson on Dekker_ (1906, _M. L. N._ xxi. 20); R. Brooke, _John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama_ (1916); F. P. Wilson, _Three Notes on Thomas Dekker_ (1920, _M. L. R._ xv. 82).
PLAYS
_Old Fortunatus. 1599_
_S. R._ 1600, Feb. 20. ‘A commedie called old Fortunatus in his newe lyuerie.’ _William Aspley_ (Arber, iii. 156).
1600. The Pleasant Comedie of Old Fortunatus. As it was plaied before the Queenes Maiestie this Christmas, by the Right Honourable the Earle of Nottingham, Lord high Admirall of England his Seruants. _S. S. for William Aspley_. [Prologue at Court, another Prologue, and Epilogue at Court; signed at end Tho. Dekker.]
_Editions_ by Dilke (1814, _O. E. P._ iii), H. Scherer (1901, _Münchener Beiträge_, xxi), O. Smeaton (1904, _T. D._).
The Admiral’s revived, from 3 Feb. to 26 May 1596, ‘the 1 parte of Forteunatus’. Nothing is heard of a second part, but during 9–30 Nov. 1599 Dekker received £6 on account of the Admiral’s for ‘the hole history of Fortunatus’, followed on 1 Dec. by £1 for altering the book and on 12 Dec. £2 ‘for the eande of Fortewnatus for the corte’. The company were at Court on 27 Dec. 1599 and 1 Jan. 1600. _The Shoemaker’s Holiday_ was played on 1 Jan.; _Fortunatus_ therefore on 27 Dec. The Prologue (l. 21) makes it ‘a iust yeere’ since the speaker saw the Queen, presumably on 27 Dec. 1598. The S. R. entry suggests that the 1599 play was a revision of the 1596 one. Probably Dekker boiled the old two parts down into one play; the juncture may, as suggested by Fleay, i. 126, and Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 179), come about l. 1315. The Court additions clearly include, besides the Prologue and the Epilogue with its reference to Elizabeth’s forty-second regnal year (1599–1600), the compliment of ll. 2799–834 at the ‘eande’ of the play. The ‘small circumference’ of the theatrical prologue was doubtless the Rose. Dekker may or may not have been the original author of the two-part play; probably he was not, if Fleay is right in assigning it to _c._ 1590 on the strength of the allusions to the Marprelate controversy left in the 1600 text, e.g. l. 59. I should not wonder if Greene, who called his son Fortunatus, were the original author. A Fortunatus play is traceable in German repertories of 1608 and 1626 and an extant version in the collection of 1620 owes something to Dekker’s (Herz, 97; cf. P. Harms, _Die deutschen Fortunatus-Dramen_ in _Theatergeschichtliche Forschungen_, v). But Dekker’s own source, directly or indirectly, was a German folk-tale, which had been dramatized by Hans Sachs as early as 1553.
_The Shoemaker’s Holiday. 1599_
_S. R._ 1610, April 19. Transfer from Simmes to J. Wright of ‘A booke called the shoomakers holyday or the gentle crafte’ subject to an agreement for Simmes to ‘haue the workmanshipp of the printinge thereof for the vse of the sayd John Wrighte duringe his lyfe, yf he haue a printinge house of his owne’ (Arber, iii. 431).
1600. The Shomakers Holiday. Or The Gentle Craft. With the humorous life of Simon Eyre, shoomaker, and Lord Maior of London. As it was acted before the Queenes most excellent Maiestie on New yeares day at night last, by the right honourable the Earle of Notingham, Lord high Admirall of England, his seruants. _Valentine Simmes_. [Epistle to Professors of the Gentle Craft and Prologue before the Queen.]
1610, 1618, 1624, 1631, 1657.
_Editions_ by E. Fritsche (1862), K. Warnke and E. Proescholdt (1886), W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._), and A. F. Lange (1914, _R. E. C._ iii).
Henslowe advanced £3 ‘to bye a boocke called the gentle Craft of Thomas Dickers’ on 15 July 1599. Probably the hiatus in the Diary conceals other payments for the play, and there is nothing in the form of the entry to justify the suspicions of Fleay, i. 124, that it was not new and was not by Dekker himself. Moreover, the source was a prose tract of _The Gentle Craft_ by T. D[eloney], published in 1598. The Admiral’s were at Court on 1 Jan. 1600, but not on 1 Jan. 1601. A writer signing himself Dramaticus, in _Sh. Soc. Papers_, iv. 110, describes a copy in which a contemporary hand has written the names ‘T. Dekker, R. Wilson’ at the end of the Epistle, together with the names of the actors in the margin of the text. A few of these are not otherwise traceable in the Admiral’s. Fleay and Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 203) unite in condemning this communication as an obvious forgery; but I rather wish they had given their reasons.
_Patient Grissell. 1600_
_With_ Chettle and Haughton.
_S. R._ 1600, March 28. ‘The Plaie of Patient Grissell.’ _Cuthbert Burby_ (Arber, iii. 158).
1603. The Pleasant Comodie of Patient Grissill. As it hath beene sundrie times lately plaid by the right honorable the Earle of Nottingham (Lord high Admirall) his seruants. _For Henry Rocket._
_Editions_ by J. P. Collier (1841, _Sh. Soc._), A. B. Grosart (1886, _Dekker_, v. 109), G. Hübsch (1893, _Erlanger Beiträge_, xv), J. S. Farmer (1911, _T. F. T._).--_Dissertations_ by A. E. H. Swaen in _E. S._ xxii. 451, Fr. v. Westenholz, _Die Griseldis-Sage in der Literaturgeschichte_ (1888).
Henslowe paid £10 10_s._ to Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton for the play between 16 Oct. and 29 Dec. 1599, also £1 for Grissell’s gown on 26 Jan. 1600 and £2 ‘to staye the printing’ on 18 March 1600. The text refers to ‘wonders of 1599’ (l. 2220) and to ‘this yeare’ as ‘leap yeare’ (l. 157). The production was doubtless _c._ Feb.–March 1600. Fleay, i. 271, attempts to divide the work amongst the three contributors; cf. Hunt, 60. I see nothing to commend the theory of W. Bang (_E. S._ xxviii. 208) that the play was written by Chettle _c._ 1590–4 and revised with Dekker, Haughton, and Jonson. No doubt the dandy’s duel, in which clothes alone suffer, of Emulo-Sir Owen resembles that of Brisk-Luculento in _Every Man Out of his Humour_, but this may be due to a common origin in fact (cf. Fleay, i. 361; Penniman, _War_, 70; Small, 43). Fleay, followed by Penniman, identifies Emulo with Samuel Daniel, but Small, 42, 184, satisfactorily disposes of this suggestion. There seems no reason to regard _Patient Grissell_ as part of the _Poetomachia_. A ‘Comoedia von der Crysella’ is in the German repertory of 1626; the theme had, however, already been dealt with in a play of _Griseldis_ by Hans Sachs (Herz, 66, 78).
_Satiromastix. 1601_
_With_ Marston?
_S. R._ 1601, Nov. 11. ‘Vppon condicon that yt be lycensed to be printed, A booke called the vntrussinge of the humorous poetes by Thomas Decker.’ _John Barnes_ (Arber, iii. 195).
1602. Satiromastix. Or The vntrussing of the Humorous Poet. As it hath bin presented publikely, by the Right Honorable, the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants; and priuately, by the Children of Paules. By Thomas Dekker. _For Edward White._ [Epistle to the World, note _Ad Lectorem_ of _errata_, and Epilogue. Scherer, xiv, distinguishes two editions, but T. M. Parrott’s review in _M. L. R._ vi. 398 regards these as only variant states of one edition.]
_Editions_ by T. Hawkins (1773, _O. E. D._ iii), H. Scherer (1907, _Materialien_, xx), J. H. Penniman (1913, _B. L._).
The Epistle refers to the _Poetomachia_ between ‘Horace’ and ‘a band of leane-witted Poetasters’, and on the place of _Satiromastix_ in this fray there is little to be added to Small, 119. Jonson is satirized as Horace. Asinius Bubo is some unknown satellite of his, probably the same who appears as Simplicius Faber in Marston’s _What You Will_ (q.v.). Crispinus, Demetrius, and Tucca are taken over from Jonson’s _Poetaster_ (q.v.). The satirical matter is engrafted on to a play with a tragic plot and comic sub-plot, both wholly unconcerned with the _Poetomachia_. Jonson must have known that the attack was in preparation, when he made Tucca abuse Histrio for threatening to ‘play’ him, and Histrio say that he had hired Demetrius [Dekker] ‘to abuse Horace, and bring him in, in a play’ (_Poetaster_, III. iv. 212, 339). But obviously Dekker cannot have done much of his satire until he had seen _Poetaster_, to many details of which it retorts. It is perhaps rather fantastic to hold that, as he chaffs Jonson for the boast that he wrote _Poetaster_ in fifteen weeks (_Satiromastix_, 641), he must himself have taken less. In any case a date of production between that of _Poetaster_ in the spring of 1601 and the S. R. entry on 11 Nov. 1601 is indicated. The argument of Scherer, x, for a date about Christmas 1601, and therefore after the S. R. entry, is rebutted by Parrott. It is generally held that Marston helped Dekker with the play, in spite of the single name on the title-page. No doubt Tucca in _Poetaster_, III. iv. 352, suggests to Histrio that Crispinus shall help Demetrius, and the plural is used in _Satiromastix_ (_Epistle_, 12, and _Epilogue_, 2700) and in Jonson’s own _Apologetical Dialogue_ to _Poetaster_ (l. 141) of the ‘poetasters’ who were Jonson’s ‘untrussers’. Small, 122, finds Marston in the plot and characterization, but not in the style.
_Sir Thomas Wyatt. 1602_
_With_ Webster, and possibly Chettle, Heywood, and Smith.
1607. The Famous History of Sir Thomas Wyat. With the Coronation of Queen Mary, and the coming in of King Philip. As it was plaied by the Queens Maiesties Seruants. Written by Thomas Dickers and Iohn Webster. _E. A. for Thomas Archer._
1612. _For Thomas Archer._
_Editions_ by J. Blew (1876), and J. S. Farmer (1914, _S. F. T._) and with _Works_ of Webster (q.v.).
Henslowe, on behalf of Worcester’s men, paid Chettle, Dekker, Heywood, Smith, and Webster, for _1 Lady Jane_ in Oct. 1602. He then bought properties for _The Overthrow of Rebels_, almost certainly the same play, and began to pay Dekker for a _2 Lady Jane_, which apparently remained unfinished, at any rate at the time. One or both of these plays, or possibly only the shares of Dekker and Webster in one or both of them, may reasonably be taken to survive in _Sir Thomas Wyatt_. Stoll, 49, thinks the play, as we have it, is practically Dekker’s and that there is ‘no one thing’ that can be claimed ‘with any degree of assurance’ for Webster. But this is not the general view. Fleay, ii. 269, followed in the main by Hunt, 76, gives Webster scc. i-ix, Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 233) scc. i-x and xvi (with hesitation as to iii-v), Pierce, after a careful application of a number of ‘tests’ bearing both on style and on matter, scc. ii, v, vi, x, xiv, xvi; but he thinks that some or all of these were retouched by Dekker. Brooke inclines to trace Webster in scc. ii, xvi, Heywood in scc. vi, x, and a good deal of Dekker. Hunt thinks the planning due to Chettle.
_The Honest Whore. 1604, c. 1605_
_With_ Middleton.
_S. R._ 1604, Nov. 9 (Pasfield). ‘A Booke called The humors of the patient man, The longinge wyfe and the honest whore.’ _Thomas Man the younger_ (Arber, iii. 275).
1608, April 29 (Buck). ‘A booke called the second parte of the conuerted Courtisan or honest Whore.’ _Thomas Man Junior_ (Arber, iii. 376). [No fee entered.]
1630, June 29 (Herbert). ‘The second parte of the Honest Hoore by Thomas Dekker.’ _Butter_ (Arber, iv. 238).
1604. The Honest Whore, With, The Humours of the Patient Man, and the Longing Wife. Tho: Dekker. _V. S. for John Hodgets._ [Part i.]
1605, 1615, 1616, N.D. [All Part i.]
1630. The Second Part of the Honest Whore, With the Humors of the Patient Man, the Impatient Wife: the Honest Whore, perswaded by strong Arguments to turne Curtizan againe: her braue refuting those Arguments. And lastly, the Comicall Passages of an Italian Bridewell, where the Scaene ends. Written by Thomas Dekker. _Elizabeth Allde for Nathaniel Butter._ [Part ii.]
1635. The Honest Whore, With, The Humours of the Patient Man, and the Longing Wife, Written by Thomas Dekker, As it hath beene Acted by her Maiesties Servants with great Applause. _N. Okes, sold by Richard Collins._ [Part i.]
_Editions_ by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ i) and W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._).
Henslowe made a payment to Dekker and Middleton for ‘the pasyent man & the onest hore’ between 1 Jan. and 14 March 1604, on account of the Prince’s men, and the mention of Towne in a stage-direction to Part i (ed. Pearson, ii. 78) shows that it was in fact acted by this company. Fleay, i. 132, and Hunt, 94, cite some allusions in Part ii suggesting a date soon after that of Part i, and this would be consistent with Henslowian methods. There is more difference of opinion about the partition of the work. Of Part i Fleay gives scc. i, iii, and xiii-xv alone to Dekker, and Hunt finds the influence of Middleton in the theme and plot of both Parts. Bullen, however (_Middleton_, i. xxv), thinks Middleton’s share ‘inconsiderable’, giving him only I. v and III. i, with a hand in II. i and in a few comic scenes of Part ii. Ward, ii. 462, holds a similar view.
_Westward Ho! 1604_
_With_ Webster.
_S. R._ 1605, March 2. ‘A commodie called westward Hoe presented by the Children of Paules provided yat he get further authoritie before yt be printed.’ _Henry Rocket_ (Arber, iii. 283). [Entry crossed out and marked ‘vacat’.]
1607. Westward Hoe. As it hath beene diuers times Acted by the Children of Paules. Written by Tho: Decker, and Iohn Webster. _Sold by John Hodgets._
_Editions_ with _Works_ of Webster (q.v.).
The allusions cited by Fleay, ii. 269, Stoll, 14, Hunt, 101, agree with a date of production at the end of 1604. Fleay assigns Acts I-III and a part of IV. ii to Webster; the rest of Acts IV, V to Dekker. But Stoll, 79, thinks that Webster only had ‘some slight, undetermined part in the more colourless and stereotyped portions ... under the shaping and guiding hand of Dekker’, and Pierce, 131, after an elaborate application of tests, can only give him all or most of I. i and III. iii and a small part of I. ii and III. ii. Brooke finds traces of Webster in I. i and III. iii and Dekker in II. i, ii and V. iii, and has some useful criticism of the ‘tests’ employed by Pierce.
_Northward Ho! 1605_
_With_ Webster.
_S. R._ 1607, Aug. 6 (Buck). ‘A booke Called Northward Ho.’ _George Elde_ (Arber, iii. 358).
1607. North-Ward Hoe. Sundry times Acted by the Children of Paules. By Thomas Decker, and Iohn Webster. _G. Eld._
_Editions_ by J. S. Farmer (1914, _S. F. T._) and in _Works_ of Webster (q.v.).
The play is a reply to _Eastward Ho!_ which was itself a reply to _Westward Ho!_ and was on the stage before May 1605, and it is referred to with the other two plays in Day’s _Isle of Gulls_, which was on the stage in Feb. 1606. This pretty well fixes its date to the end of 1605. I do not think that Stoll, 16, is justified in his argument for a date later than Jan. 1606, since, even if the comparison of the life of a gallant to a squib is a borrowing from Marston’s _Fawn_, it seems probable that the _Fawn_ itself was originally written by 1604, although possibly touched up early in 1606. Fleay, ii. 270, identifies Bellamont with Chapman, one of the authors of _Eastward Ho!_ and Stoll, 65, argues in support of this. It is plausible, but does not carry with it Fleay’s identification of Jenkins with Drayton. Fleay gives Webster I. ii, II. i, III. i, and IV. i, but Stoll finds as little of him as in _Westward Ho!_ and Pierce, 131, only gives him all or most of I. i, II. ii, and the beginning of v and a small part of III. i. Brooke traces Webster in I. i and III. i and Dekker in IV. i.
_The Whore of Babylon 1605 < > 7_
_S. R._ 1607, April 20 (Buck). ‘A booke called the Whore of Babilon.’ _Nathanael Butter and John Trundell_ (Arber, iii. 347).
1607. The Whore of Babylon. As it was Acted by the Princes Seruants. Written by Thomas Dekker. _For N. Butter._ [Epistle to the Reader and Prologue.]
Fleay, i. 133, and Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 210) regard the play as a revision of _Truth’s Supplication to Candlelight_, for which Henslowe, on behalf of the Admiral’s, was paying Dekker in Jan. 1600 and buying a robe for Time in April 1600. Truth and Time, but not Candlelight, are characters in the play, which deals with Catholic intrigues against Elizabeth, represented as Titania, and her suitors. I do not feel sure that it would have been allowed to be staged in Elizabeth’s lifetime. In any case it must have been revised _c._ 1605–7, in view of the references, not only to the death of Essex (ed. Pearson, p. 246) and the reign of James (p. 234), but to the _Isle of Gulls_ of 1605 (p. 214). The Cockpit, alluded to (p. 214) as a place where follies are shown in apes, is of course that in the palace, where Henry saw plays. The Epistle and Prologue have clear references to a production in ‘Fortune’s dial’ and the ‘square’ of the Fortune, and the former criticizes players; but hardly proves the definite breach with the Prince’s suggested by Fleay and Greg.
_The Roaring Girl. c. 1610_
_With_ Middleton.
1611. The Roaring Girle. Or Moll Cut-Purse, As it hath lately beene Acted on the Fortune-stage by the Prince his Players. Written by T. Middleton and T. Dekkar. _For Thomas Archer._ [Epistle to the Comic Play-Readers, signed ‘Thomas Middleton’, Prologue and Epilogue.]
_Editions_ by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ ii), A. H. Bullen (1885, _Middleton_, iv. 1), and J. S. Farmer (1914, _S. F. T._).
Fleay, i, 132, thinks the play written about 1604–5, but not produced until 1610. This is fantastic and Bullen points out that Mary Frith, the heroine, born not earlier than _c._ 1584–5, had hardly won her notoriety by 1604. By 1610 she certainly had, and the ‘foule’ book of her ‘base trickes’ referred to in the Epilogue was probably John Day’s _Mad Pranks of Merry Mall of the Bankside_, entered on S. R. 7 Aug. 1610, but not extant. The Epilogue also tells the audience that, if they are dissatisfied,
The Roring Girle her selfe some few dayes hence, Shall on this Stage, give larger recompence.
I think this can only refer to a contemplated personal appearance of Mary Frith on the stage; it has been interpreted as referring to another forthcoming play. Moll Cutpurse appears in Field’s _Amends for Ladies_, but this was not a Fortune play. Bullen (_Middleton_, i. xxxv) regards the play as an example of collaboration, and gives Dekker I. II. ii, and V; Middleton, with occasional hesitation, the rest. Fleay, i. 132, only gives Middleton II. ii, IV. i, V. ii.
_If It be not Good, the Devil is in It. 1610 < > 12_
1612. If It Be Not Good, the Diuel is in it. A New Play, As it hath bin lately Acted, with great applause, by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants: At the Red Bull. Written by Thomas Dekker. _For I. T. sold by Edward Marchant._ [Epistle to the Queen’s men signed Tho: Dekker, Prologue, and Epilogue. The running title is ‘If this be not a good Play, the Diuell is in it’.]
The Epistle tells us that after ‘Fortune’ (the Admiral’s) had ‘set her foote vpon’ the play, the Queen’s had ‘raised it up ... the Frontispice onely a little more garnished’. Fleay, i. 133, attempts to fix the play to 1610, but hardly proves more than that it cannot be earlier than 14 May 1610, as the murder on that day of Henri IV is referred to (ed. Pearson, p. 354). The Epistle also refers to a coming new play by Dekker’s ‘worthy friend’, perhaps Webster (q.v.). In the opening scene the devil Lurchall is addressed as Grumball, which suggests the actor Armin (cf. ch. xv). Daborne (q.v.) in the Epistle to his _Christian Turned Turk_ seems to claim a share in this play.
_Match Me in London_ (?)
_S. R._ 1630, 8 Nov. (Herbert). ‘A Play called Mach mee in London by Thomas Decker.’ _Seile_ (Arber, iv. 242).
1631. A Tragi-Comedy: Called, Match mee in London. As it hath beene often presented; First, at the Bull in St. Iohns-street; And lately, at the Priuate-House in Drury Lane, called the Phoenix. Written by Tho: Dekker. _B. Alsop and T. Fawcet for H. Seile._ [Epistle to Lodowick Carlell signed ‘Tho: Dekker’.]
Herbert’s diary contains the entry on 21 Aug. 1623, ‘For the L. Elizabeth’s servants of the Cockpit. An old play called Match me in London which had been formerly allowed by Sir G. Bucke.’ On this, some rather slight evidence from allusions, and a general theory that Dekker did not write plays during his imprisonment of 1613–19, Fleay, i. 134, puts the original production by Queen Anne’s men _c._ 1611 and Hunt, 160, in 1612–13. As there are some allusions to cards and the game of maw, Fleay thinks the play a revision of _The Set at Maw_ produced by the Admiral’s on 15 Dec. 1594. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 172) points out the weakness of the evidence, but finds some possible traces of revision in the text.
_The Virgin Martyr. c. 1620_
_With_ Massinger.
_S. R._ 1621, 7 Dec. (Buck). ‘A Tragedy called The Virgin Martir.’ _Thomas Jones_ (Arber, iv. 62).
1622. The Virgin Martir, A Tragedie, as it hath bin divers times publickely Acted with great Applause, By the seruants of his Maiesties Reuels. Written by Phillip Messenger and Thomas Deker. _B. A. for Thomas Jones._
1631, 1651, 1661.
The play is said to have been ‘reformed’ and licensed by Buck for the Red Bull on 6 Oct. 1620 (Herbert, 29). An additional scene, licensed on 7 July 1624 (_Var._ i. 424), did not find its way into print. Fleay, i. 135, 212, asserts that the 1620 play was a refashioning by Massinger of a play by Dekker for the Queen’s about 1611, itself a recast of _Diocletian_, produced by the Admiral’s on 16 Nov. 1594, but ‘dating from 1591 at the latest’. He considers II. i, iii, III. iii, and IV. ii of the 1620 version to be still Dekker’s. Ward, iii. 12, and Hunt, 156, give most of the play to Dekker. But all these views are impressionistic, and there is no special reason to suppose that Massinger revised, rather than collaborated with, Dekker, or to assume a version of _c._ 1611. As for an earlier version still, Fleay’s evidence is trivial. In any case 1591 is out of the question, as Henslowe marked the _Diocletian_ of 1594 ‘n.e.’ Nor does he say it was by Dekker. A play on Dorothea the Martyr had made its way into Germany by 1626, but later German repertories disclose that there was also a distinct play on Diocletian (Herz, 66, 103; Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 172). Greg, however, finds parts of _The Virgin Martyr_, ‘presumably Dekker’s’, to be ‘undoubtedly early’. Oliphant (_E. S._ xvi. 191) makes the alternative suggestion that _Diocletian_ was the basis of Fletcher’s _Prophetess_, in which he believes the latter part of IV. i and V. i to be by an older hand, which he cannot identify. All this is very indefinite.
_The Witch of Edmonton. 1621_
_With_ Ford and W. Rowley.
_S. R._ 1658, May 21. ‘A booke called The witch of Edmonton, a Tragicomedy by Will: Rowley, &c.’ _Edward Blackmore_ (Eyre, ii. 178).
1658. The Witch of Edmonton, A known true Story. Composed into a Tragi-Comedy By divers well-esteemed Poets; William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, John Ford, &c. Acted by the Princes Servants; often at the Cock-Pit in Drury Lane, once at Court, with singular Applause. Never printed till now. _J. Cottrel for Edward Blackmore._ [Prologue signed ‘Master Bird’.]
_Editions_ with _Works_ of John Ford, by H. Weber (1811), W. Gifford (1827), H. Coleridge (1840, 1848, 1851), A. Dyce (1869), A. H. Bullen (1895).
I include this for the sake of completeness, but it is based upon a pamphlet published in 1621 and was played at Court by the Prince’s men on 29 Dec. 1621 (Murray, ii. 193). It is generally regarded as written in collaboration. Views as to its division amongst the writers are summarized by Hunt, 178, and Pierce (_Anglia_, xxxvi. 289). The latter finds Dekker in nearly all the scenes, Ford in four, Rowley perhaps in five.
_The Wonder of a Kingdom. 1623_
_Possibly with_ Day.
_S. R._ 1631, May 16 (Herbert). ‘A Comedy called The Wonder of a Kingdome by Thomas Decker.’ _John Jackman_ (Arber, iv. 253).
1636, Feb. 24. ‘Vnder the hands of Sir Henry Herbert and Master Kingston Warden (dated the 7th of May 1631) a Play called The Wonder of a Kingdome by Thomas Decker.’ _Nicholas Vavasour_ (Arber, iv. 355).
1636. The Wonder of a Kingdome. Written by Thomas Dekker. _Robert Raworth for Nicholas Vavasour._
Herbert’s diary for 18 Sept. 1623 has the entry: ‘For a company of strangers. A new comedy called Come see a wonder, written by John Daye. It was acted at the Red Bull and licensed without my hand to it because they were none of the 4 companies.’ As _The Wonder of a Kingdom_ contains scenes which are obviously from Day’s _Parliament of Bees_ (_1608–16_) it is possible either to adopt the simple theory of a collaboration between Day and Dekker in 1623, or to hold with Fleay, i. 136, and Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 174, that Day’s ‘new’ play of 1623 was a revision of an earlier one by Dekker. The mention of cards in the closing lines seems an inadequate ground for Fleay’s further theory, apparently approved by Greg, that the original play was _The Mack_, produced by the Admiral’s on 21 Feb. 1595.
_The Sun’s Darling. 1624_
_With_ Ford.
1656. The Sun’s-Darling: A Moral Masque: As it hath been often presented at Whitehall, by their Majesties Servants; and after at the Cockpit in Drury Lane, with great Applause. Written by John Foard and Tho. Decker Gent. _J. Bell for Andrew Penneycuicke._
1657. Reissue with same imprint.
1657. Reissue with same imprint.... ‘As it hath been often presented by their Majesties Servants; at the Cockpit in Drury Lane’....
_Editions_ with _Works_ of John Ford, by H. Weber (1811), W. Gifford (1827), H. Coleridge (1840, 1848, 1851), A. Dyce (1869), A. H. Bullen (1895).
The play was licensed by Herbert for the Lady Elizabeth’s at the Cockpit on 3 March 1624 (Chalmers, _S. A._ 217; Herbert, 27) and included in a list of Cockpit plays in 1639 (_Variorum_, iii. 159). Fleay, i. 232, Ward, ii. 470, and Pierce (_Anglia_, xxxvi. 141) regard it as a revision by Ford of earlier work by Dekker, and the latter regards the last page of Act I, Acts II and III, and the prose of Acts IV and V as substantially Dekker’s. It is perhaps a step from this to the theory of Fleay and Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 190) that the play represents the _Phaethon_, which Dekker wrote for the Admiral’s in Jan. 1598 and afterwards altered for a Court performance at Christmas 1600. There are allusions to ‘humours’ and to ‘pampered jades of Asia’ (ed. Pearson, pp. 316, 318) which look early, but Phaethon is not a character, nor is the story his. A priest of the Sun appears in Act I: I am surprised that Fleay did not identify him, though he is not mad, with the ‘mad priest of the sun’ referred to in Greene’s (q.v.) Epistle to _Perimedes_. The play is not a ‘masque’ in the ordinary sense.
_The Noble Soldier > 1631_
_With_ Day and S. Rowley?
_S. R._ 1631, May 16 (Herbert). ‘A Tragedy called The noble Spanish Souldier by Thomas Deckar.’ _John Jackman_ (Arber, iv. 253).
1633, Dec. 9. ‘Entred for his Copy vnder the handes of Sir Henry Herbert and Master Kingston warden _Anno Domini_ 1631. a Tragedy called _The Noble Spanish soldior_ written by master Decker.’ _Nicholas Vavasour_ (Arber, iv. 310).
1634. The Noble Souldier, Or, A Contract Broken, justly reveng’d. A Tragedy. Written by S. R. _For Nicholas Vavasour._
_Editions_ by A. H. Bullen (1882, _O. E. P._ i) and J. S. Farmer (1913, _S. F. T._).
The printer tells us that the author was dead in 1634.
The initials may indicate Samuel Rowley of the Admiral’s and Prince Henry’s. Bullen and Hunt, 187, think that Dekker revised work by Rowley. But probably Day also contributed, for II. i, ii; III. ii; IV. i; V. i, ii, and parts of I. ii and V. iv are drawn like scenes in _The Wonder of a Kingdom_ from his _Parliament of Bees_ (1608–16). Fleay, i. 128, identifies the play with _The Spanish Fig_ for which Henslowe made a payment on behalf of the Admiral’s in Jan. 1602. This Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 220) thinks ‘plausible’, regarding the play as ‘certainly an old play of about 1600, presumably by Dekker and Rowley with later additions by Day’. He notes that the King is not, as Fleay alleged, poisoned with a Spanish fig, but a Spanish fig is mentioned, ‘and it is quite possible that such may have been the mode of poisoning in the original piece’. Henslowe does not name the payee for _The Spanish Fig_, and it was apparently not finished at the time.
_Lost and Doubtful Plays_
It will be convenient to set out all the certain or conjectured work by Dekker mentioned in Henslowe’s Diary.
(a) _Conjectural anonymous Work before 1598_
(i) _Philipo and Hippolito._
Produced as a new play by the Admiral’s on 9 July 1594. The ascription to Dekker, confident in Fleay, i. 213, and regarded as possible by Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 165), appears to be due to the entry of a _Philenzo and Hypollita_ by Massinger, who revised other early work of Dekker, in the S. R. on 29 June 1660, to the entry of a _Philenzo and Hipolito_ by Massinger in Warburton’s list of burnt plays (_3 Library_, ii. 231), and to the appearance of a _Julio and Hyppolita_ in the German collection of 1620. A copy of Massinger’s play is said (Collier, _Henslowe_, xxxi) to be amongst the _Conway MSS._
(ii) _The Jew of Venice._
Entered as a play by Dekker in the S. R. on 9 Sept. 1653 (_3 Library_, ii. 241). It has been suggested (Fleay, i. 121, and _Sh._ 30, 197; Greg in _Henslowe_, ii. 170) that it was the source of a German play printed from a Vienna MS. by Meissner, 131 (cf. Herz, 84). In this a personage disguises himself as a French doctor, which leads to the conjectural identification of its English original both with _The Venetian Comedy_ produced by the Admiral’s on 27 Aug. 1594 and with _The French Doctor_ performed by the same men on 19 Oct. 1594 and later dates and bought by them from Alleyn in 1602. The weakest point in all this guesswork is the appearance of common themes in the German play and in _The Merchant of Venice_, which Fleay explains to his own satisfaction by the assumption that Shakespeare based _The Merchant of Venice_ on Dekker’s work.
(iii) _Dr. Faustus._
Revived by the Admiral’s on 30 Sept. 1594. On the possibility that the 1604 text contains comic scenes written by Dekker for this revival, cf. s.v. Marlowe.
(iv) _Diocletian._
Produced by the Admiral’s, 16 Nov. 1599; cf. s.v. _The Virgin Martyr_ (_supra_).
(v) _The Set at Maw._
Produced by the Admiral’s on 14 Dec. 1594; cf. s.v. _Match Me in London_ (_supra_).
(vi) _Antony and Valia._
Revived by the Admiral’s, 4 Jan. 1595, and ascribed by Fleay, i. 213, with some encouragement from Greg in _Henslowe_, ii. 174, to Dekker, on the ground of entries in the S. R. on 29 June 1660 and in Warburton’s list of burnt plays (_3 Library_, ii. 231) of an _Antonio and Vallia_ by Massinger, who revised other early work by Dekker.
(vii) _The Mack._
Produced by the Admiral’s on 21 Feb. 1595; cf. s.v. _The Wonder of a Kingdom_ (_supra_).
(viii) _1 Fortunatus._
Revived by the Admiral’s on 3 Feb. 1596; cf. s.v. _Old Fortunatus_ (_supra_).
(ix) _Stukeley._
Produced by the Admiral’s on 11 Dec. 1596. On Fleay’s ascription to Dekker, cf. s.v. _Captain Thomas Stukeley_ (Anon.).
(x) _Prologue to Tamberlaine._
This rests on a forged entry in Henslowe’s Diary for 20 Dec. 1597; cf. s.v. Marlowe.
(b) _Work for Admiral’s, 1598–1602_
(i) _Phaethon._
Payments in Jan. 1598 and for alterations for the Court in Dec. 1600; cf. s.v. _The Sun’s Darling_ (_supra_).
(ii) _The Triplicity or Triangle of Cuckolds._
Payment in March 1598.
(iii) _The Wars of Henry I or The Welshman’s Prize._
Payment, with Chettle and Drayton, March 1598. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 192) speculates on possible relations of the plays to others on a Welshman and on Henry I.
(iv) _1 Earl Godwin._
Payment, with Chettle, Drayton, and Wilson, March 1598.
(v) _Pierce of Exton._
Payment, with Chettle, Drayton, and Wilson, April 1598. Apparently the play was not finished.
(vi) _1 Black Bateman of the North._
Payments, with Chettle, Drayton, and Wilson, May 1598.
(vii) _2 Earl Godwin._
Payments, with Chettle, Drayton, and Wilson, May–June 1598.
(viii) _The Madman’s Morris._
Payments, with Drayton and Wilson, July 1598.
(ix) _Hannibal and Hermes._
Payments, with Drayton and Wilson, July 1598.
(x) _2 Hannibal and Hermes._
Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 195) gives this name to (xiii).
(xi) _Pierce of Winchester._
Payments, with Drayton and Wilson, July–Aug. 1598.
(xii) _Chance Medley._
Payments to Dekker (or Chettle), with Munday, Drayton, and Wilson, Aug. 1598.
(xiii) _Worse Afeared than Hurt._
Payments, with Drayton, Aug.–Sept. 1598.
(xiv) _1 Civil Wars of France._
Payment, with Drayton, Sept. 1598.
(xv) _Connan Prince of Cornwall._
Payments, with Drayton, Oct. 1598.
(xvi) _2 Civil Wars of France._
Payment, with Drayton, Nov. 1598.
(xvii) _3 Civil Wars of France._
Payments, with Drayton, Nov.–Dec. 1598.
(xviii) _Introduction to Civil Wars of France._
Payments, Jan. 1599.
(xix) _Troilus and Cressida._
Payments, with Chettle, April 1599. A fragmentary ‘plot’ (cf. ch. xxiv) may belong to this play.
(xx) _Agamemnon or Orestes Furious._
Payments, with Chettle, May 1599.
(xxi) _The Gentle Craft._
Payment, July 1599; cf. _The Shoemaker’s Holiday_ (_supra_).
(xxii) _The Stepmother’s Tragedy._
Payments, with Chettle, Aug.–Oct. 1599.
(xxiii) _Bear a Brain._
Payment, Aug. 1599; cf. s.vv. _The Shoemaker’s Holiday_ (_supra_) and _Look About You_ (Anon.).
(xxiv) _Page of Plymouth._
Payments, with Jonson, Aug.–Sept. 1599.
(xxv) _Robert II or The Scot’s Tragedy._
Payments, with Chettle, Jonson, ‘& other Jentellman’ (? Marston, q.v.), Sept. 1599.
(xxvi) _Patient Grissell._
Payments, with Chettle and Haughton, Oct.–Dec. 1599; cf. _supra_.
(xxvii) _Fortunatus._
Payments, Nov.–Dec. 1599; cf. s.v. _Old Fortunatus_ (_supra_).
(xxviii) _Truth’s Supplication to Candlelight._
Payments, Jan. 1600. Apparently the play was not finished; cf. s.v. _The Whore of Babylon_ (_supra_).
(xxix) _The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy._
Payment, with Day and Haughton, Feb. 1600. Apparently the play was not finished; cf. s.v. _Lust’s Dominion_ (Marlowe).
(xxx) _The Seven Wise Masters._
Payments, with Chettle, Day, and Haughton, March 1600.
(xxxi) _The Golden Ass_ or _Cupid and Psyche_.
Payments, with Chettle and Day, April-May 1600; on borrowings from this, cf. s.v. Heywood, _Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas_.
(xxxii) _1 Fair Constance of Rome._
Payments, with Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson (q.v.), June 1600.
(xxxiii) _[1] Fortune’s Tennis._
Payment, Sept. 1600. A fragmentary plot (cf. ch. xxiv) is perhaps less likely to belong to this than to Munday’s _Set at Tennis_.
(xxxiv) _King Sebastian of Portugal._
Payments, with Chettle, April-May 1601.
(xxxv) _The Spanish Fig._
Payment, Jan. 1602. The payee is unnamed; cf. _The Noble Soldier_ (_supra_).
(xxxvi) Prologue and Epilogue to _Pontius Pilate_.
Payment, Jan. 1602.
(xxxvii) Alterations to _Tasso’s Melancholy_.
Payments, Jan.–Dec. 1602.
(xxxviii) _Jephthah_.
Payments, with Munday, May 1602.
(xxxix) _Caesar’s Fall, or The Two Shapes_.
Payments, with Drayton, Middleton, Munday, and Webster, May 1602.
(c) _Work for Worcester’s, 1602_
(i) _A Medicine for a Curst Wife._
Payments, July–Sept. 1602. The play was begun for the Admiral’s and transferred to Worcester’s.
(ii) _Additions to Sir John Oldcastle._
Payments, Aug.–Sept. 1602; cf. s.v. Drayton.
(iii) _1 Lady Jane_, or _The Overthrow of Rebels_.
Payments, with Chettle, Heywood, Smith, and Webster, Oct. 1602; cf. s.v. _Sir Thomas Wyatt_ (_supra_).
(iv) _2 Lady Jane._
Payment, Oct. 1602. Apparently the play was not finished; cf. s.v. _Sir Thomas Wyatt_ (_supra_).
(v) _Christmas Comes but Once a Year._
Payments, with Chettle, Heywood, and Webster, Nov. 1602.
(d) _Work for Prince’s, 1604_
_The Patient Man and the Honest Whore._
Payments, with Middleton, Jan.–March 1602; cf. s.v. _The Honest Whore_ (_supra_).
The following plays are assigned to Dekker in S. R. but are now lost:
_The Life and Death of Guy of Warwick_, with Day (S. R. 15 Jan. 1620).
_Gustavus King of Swethland_ (S. R. 29 June 1660).
_The Tale of Ioconda and Astolso_, a Comedy (S. R. 29 June 1660).
The two latter are also in Warburton’s list of burnt plays (_3 Library_, ii. 231).
The following are assigned to Dekker in Herbert’s licence entries:
A French Tragedy of _The Bellman of Paris_, by Dekker and Day, for the Prince’s, on 30 July 1623.
_The Fairy Knight_, by Dekker and Ford, for the Prince’s, on 11 June 1624.
_The Bristow Merchant_, by Dekker and Ford, for the Palsgrave’s, on 22 Oct. 1624.
Fleay, i. 232, seems to have nothing but the names to go upon in suggesting identifications of the two latter with the _Huon of Bordeaux_, revived by Sussex’s on 28 Dec. 1593, and Day’s _Bristol Tragedy_ (q.v.) respectively.
For other ascriptions to Dekker see _Capt. T. Stukeley_, _Charlemagne_, _London Prodigal_, _Sir Thomas More_, _The Weakest Goeth to the Wall_ in ch. xxiv. He has also been conjectured to be the author of the songs in the 1632 edition of Lyly’s plays.
ENTERTAINMENTS
_Coronation Entertainment. 1604_
See ch. xxiv, C.
_Troia Nova Triumphans. 29 Oct. 1612_
_S. R._ 1612, Oct. 21. ‘To be prynted when yt is further Aucthorised, A Booke called Troia Nova triumphans. London triumphinge. or the solemne receauinge of Sir John Swynerton knight into the citye at his Retourne from Westminster after the taking his oathe written by Thomas Decker.’ _Nicholas Okes_ (Arber, iii. 500).
1612. Troia-Noua Triumphans. London Triumphing, or, The Solemne, Magnificent, and Memorable Receiuing of that worthy Gentleman, Sir Iohn Swinerton Knight, into the Citty of London, after his Returne from taking the Oath of Maioralty at Westminster, on the Morrow next after Simon and Iudes day, being the 29. of October, 1612. All the Showes, Pageants, Chariots of Triumph, with other Deuices (both on the Water and Land) here fully expressed. By Thomas Dekker. _Nicholas Okes, sold by John Wright._
_Edition_ in Fairholt (1844), ii. 7.
The opening of the description refers to ‘our best-to-be-beloved friends, the noblest strangers’. John Chamberlain (Birch, i. 202) says that the Palsgrave was present and Henry kept away by his illness, that the show was ‘somewhat extraordinary’ and the water procession wrecked by ‘great winds’. At Paul’s Chain the Mayor was met by the ‘first triumph’, a sea-chariot, bearing Neptune and Luna, with a ship of wine. Neptune made a speech. At Paul’s Churchyard came ‘the second land-triumph’, the throne or chariot of Virtue, drawn by four horses on which sat Time, Mercury, Desire, and Industry. Virtue made a speech, and both pageants preceded the Mayor down Cheapside. At the little Conduit in Cheapside was the Castle of Envy, between whom and Virtue there was a dialogue, followed by fireworks from the castle. At the Cross in Cheapside was another ‘triumph’, the House of Fame, with representations of famous Merchant Tailors, ‘a perticular roome being reserved for one that represents the person of Henry, the now Prince of Wales’. After a speech by Fame, the pageant joined the procession, and from it was heard a song on the way to the Guildhall. On the way to Paul’s after dinner, Virtue and Envy were again beheld, and at the Mayor’s door a speech was made by Justice.
THOMAS DELONEY (_c._ 1543–_c._ 1600).
A ballad writer and pamphleteer, who wrote a ballad on the visit to Tilbury in 1588. See ch. xxiv, C.
ROBERT DEVEREUX, EARL OF ESSEX (1566–1601).
It is possible that Essex, who sometimes dabbled in literature, had himself a hand in the device of _Love and Self-Love_, with which he entertained Elizabeth on 17 Nov. 1595, and of which some of the speeches are generally credited to Bacon (q.v.).
WILLIAM DODD (_c._ 1597–1602).
A Scholar and Fellow of St. John’s, Cambridge, and a conjectured author of _Parnassus_ (cf. ch. xxiv).
MICHAEL DRAYTON (_c._ 1563–1631).
Drayton was born at Hartshill in Warwickshire, and brought up in the household of Sir Henry Goodyere of Polesworth, whose daughter Anne, afterwards Lady Rainsford, is the Idea of his pastorals and sonnets. With _The Harmony of the Church_ (1591) began a life-long series of ambitious poems, in all the characteristic Elizabethan manners, for which Drayton found many patrons, notably Lucy Lady Bedford, Sir Walter Aston of Tixall, Prince Henry and Prince Charles, and Edward Earl of Dorset. The guerdons of his pen were not sufficient to keep him from having recourse to the stage. Meres classed him in 1598 among the ‘best for tragedy’, and Henslowe’s diary shows him a busy writer for the Admiral’s men, almost invariably in collaboration with Dekker and others, from Dec. 1597 to Jan. 1599, and a more occasional one from Oct. 1599 to May 1602. At a later date he may possibly have written for Queen Anne’s men, since commendatory verses by T. Greene are prefixed to his _Poems_ of 1605. In 1608 he belonged to the King’s Revels syndicate at Whitefriars. No later connexion with the stage can be traced, and he took no steps to print his plays with his other works. His Elegy to Henry Reynolds of _Poets and Poesie_ (C. Brett, _Drayton’s Minor Poems_, 108) does honour to Marlowe, Shakespeare, Jonson, and Beaumont, and tradition makes him a partaker in the drinking-bout that led to Shakespeare’s end. Jonson wrote commendatory verses for him in 1627, but in 1619 had told Drummond (Laing, 10) that ‘Drayton feared him; and he esteemed not of him’. The irresponsible Fleay, i. 361; ii. 271, 323, identifies him with Luculento of _E. M. O._, Captain Jenkins of Dekker and Webster’s _Northward Ho!_, and the eponym of the anonymous _Sir Giles Goosecap_; Small, 98, with the Decius criticized in the anonymous _Jack Drum’s Entertainment_, who may also be Dekker.
The collections of Drayton’s _Poems_ do not include his plays.--_Dissertations_: O. Elton, _M. D._ (1895, _Spenser Soc._, 1905); L. Whitaker, _M. D. as a Dramatist_ (1903, _M. L. A._ xviii. 378).
_Sir John Oldcastle. 1599_
_With_ Hathaway, Munday, and Wilson.
_S. R._ 1600, Aug. 11 (Vicars). ‘The first parte of the history of the life of Sir John Oldcastell lord Cobham. Item the second and last parte of the history of Sir John Oldcastell lord Cobham with his martyrdom,’ _Thomas Pavier_ (Arber, iii. 169).
1600. The first part Of the true and honorable historie, of the life of Sir John Oldcastle, the good Lord Cobham. As it hath been lately acted by the right honorable the Earle of Notingham Lord high Admirall of England his seruants. _V. S. for Thomas Pavier._ [Prologue.]
1600.... Written by William Shakespeare. _For T. P._ [Probably a forgery of later date than that given in the imprint; cf. p. 479.]
1664. In Third Folio Shakespeare.
1685. In Fourth Folio Shakespeare.
_Editions_ in collections of the Shakespeare _Apocrypha_, and by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ i), P. Simpson (1908, _M. S. R._), J. S. Farmer (1911, _T. F. T._).
Henslowe advanced £10 to the Admiral’s as payment to Munday, Drayton, Wilson, and Hathway for the first part of ‘the lyfe of S^r Jhon Ouldcasstell’ and in earnest for the second part on 16 Oct. 1599, and an additional 10_s._ for the poets ‘at the playnge of S^r John Oldcastell the ferste tyme as a gefte’ between 1 and 8 Nov. 1599. Drayton had £4 for the second part between 19 and 26 Dec. 1599, and properties were being bought for it in March 1600. It is not preserved. By Aug. 1602 the play had been transferred to Worcester’s men. More properties were bought, doubtless for a revival, and Dekker had £2 10_s._ for ‘new a dicyons’. Fleay, ii. 116, attempts to disentangle the work of the collaborators. Clearly the play was an answer to _Henry IV_, in which Sir John Falstaff was originally Sir John Oldcastle, and this is made clear in the prologue:
It is no pampered glutton we present, Nor aged Councellour to youthfull sinne.
_Doubtful and Lost Plays_
For ascriptions see _Edward IV_, _London Prodigal_, _Merry Devil of Edmonton_, _Sir T. More_, and _Thomas Lord Cromwell_ in ch. xxiv.
The complete series of his work for the Admiral’s during 1597–1602 is as follows:
(i) _Mother Redcap._
Payments, with Munday, Dec. 1597–Jan. 1598.
(ii) _The Welshman’s Prize, or The Famous Wars of Henry I and the Prince of Wales._
Payments, with Chettle and Dekker, March 1598. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 192) thinks that the play may have had some relation to Davenport’s _Henry I_ of 1624 entered as by Shakespeare and Davenport in S. R. on 9 Sept. 1653.
(iii) _1 Earl Godwin and his Three Sons._
Payments, with Chettle, Dekker, and Wilson, March 1598.
(iv) _2 Earl Godwin and his Three Sons._
Payments, with Chettle, Dekker, and Wilson, May to June 1598.
(v) _Pierce of Exton._
Payment of £2, with Chettle, Dekker, and Wilson, April 1598; but apparently not finished.
(vi) _1 Black Bateman of the North._
Payments, with Chettle, Dekker, and Wilson, May 1598.
(vii) _Funeral of Richard Cœur-de-lion._
Payments, with Chettle, Munday, and Wilson, June 1598.
(viii) _The Madman’s Morris._
Payments, with Dekker and Wilson, July 1598.
(ix) _Hannibal and Hermes._
Payments, with Dekker and Wilson, July 1598.
(x) _Pierce of Winchester._
Payments, with Dekker and Wilson, July–Aug. 1598.
(xi) _Chance Medley._
Payments, with Chettle or Dekker, Munday, and Wilson, Aug. 1598.
(xii) _Worse Afeared than Hurt._
Payments, with Dekker, Aug.–Sept. 1598.
(xiii-xv) _1, 2, 3 The Civil Wars of France._
Payments, with Dekker, Sept.–Dec. 1598. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 198) suggests some relation with Chapman’s _Bussy D’Ambois_ (q.v.).
(xvi) _Connan Prince of Cornwall._
Payments, with Dekker, Oct. 1598.
(xvii) _William Longsword._
Apparently Drayton’s only unaided play and unfinished. His autograph receipt for a payment in Jan. 1599 is in Henslowe, i. 59.
[There is now a break in Drayton’s dramatic activities, but not in his relations with Henslowe, for whom he acted as a witness on 8 July 1599. On 9 Aug. 1598 he had stood security for the delivery of a play by Munday (Henslowe, i. 60, 93).]
(xviii-xix) _1, 2 Sir John Oldcastle._
See above.
(xx) _Owen Tudor._
Payments, with Hathway, Munday, and Wilson, Jan. 1600; but apparently not finished.
(xxi) _1 Fair Constance of Rome._
Payments, with Dekker, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson (q.v.), June 1600.
(xxii) _The Rising of Cardinal Wolsey._
Payments, with Chettle (q.v.), Munday, and Smith, Aug.–Nov. 1601.
(xxiii) _Caesar’s Fall, or The Two Shapes._
Payments, with Dekker, Middleton, Munday, and Webster, May 1602.
GILBERT DUGDALE (_c._ 1604).
Author of _Time Triumphant_, an account of the entry and coronation of James I (cf. ch. xxiv, C).
JOHN DUTTON (_c._ 1598–1602).
Perhaps only a ‘ghost-name’, but conceivably the author of _Parnassus_ (cf. ch. xxiv).
JOHN DYMMOCKE (_c._ 1601).
Possibly the translator of _Pastor Fido_ (cf. ch. xxiv).
RICHARD EDES (1555–1604).
Edes, or Eedes, entered Christ Church, Oxford, from Westminster in 1571, took his B.A. in 1574, his M.A. in 1578, and was University Proctor in 1583. He took orders, became Chaplain to the Queen, and was appointed Canon of Christ Church in 1586 and Dean of Worcester in 1597. Some of his verse, both in English and Latin, has survived, and Meres includes him in 1598 amongst ‘our best for Tragedie’. The Epilogue, in Latin prose, of a play called _Caesar Interfectus_, which was both written and spoken by him, is given by F. Peck in _A Collection of Curious Historical Pieces_, appended to his _Memoirs of Cromwell_ (1740), and by Boas, 163, from _Bodl. MS. Top. Oxon._ e. 5, f. 359. A later hand has added the date 1582, from which Boas infers that _Caesar Interfectus_, of which Edes was probably the author, was one of three tragedies recorded in the Christ Church accounts for Feb.–March 1582. Edes appears to have written or contributed to Sir Henry Lee’s (q.v.) Woodstock Entertainment of 1592.
RICHARD EDWARDES (_c._ 1523–1566).
Edwardes was a Somersetshire man. He entered Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 11 May 1540, and became Senior Student of Christ Church in 1547. Before the end of Edward’s reign he was seeking his fortune at Court and had a fee or annuity of £6 13_s._ 4_d._ (Stopes, _Hunnis_, 147). He must not be identified with the George Edwardes of Chapel lists, _c._ 1553 (ibid. 23; _Shakespeare’s Environment_, 238; Rimbault, x), but was of the Chapel by 1 Jan. 1557 (Nichols, _Eliz._ i. xxxv; _Illustrations_, App. 14), when he made a New Year’s gift of ‘certeigne verses’, and was confirmed in office by an Elizabethan patent of 27 May 1560. He succeeded Bower as Master of the Children, receiving his patent of appointment on 27 Oct. 1561 and a commission to take up children on 4 Dec. 1561 (Wallace, i. 106; ii. 65; cf. ch. xii). Barnabe Googe in his _Eglogs, Epytaphes and Sonettes_ (15 March 1563) puts his ‘doyngs’ above those of Plautus and Terence. In addition to plays at Court, he took his boys on 2 Feb. 1565 and 2 Feb. 1566 to Lincoln’s Inn (cf. ch. vii), of which he had become a member on 25 Nov. 1564 (_L. I. Admission Register_, i. 72). He appeared at Court as a ‘post’ on behalf of the challengers for a tilt in Nov. 1565 (cf. ch. iv). In 1566 he helped in the entertainment of Elizabeth at Oxford, and on Oct. 31 of that year he died. His reputation as poet and dramatist is testified to in verses by Barnabe Googe, George Turberville, Thomas Twine, and others and proved enduring. The author [Richard Puttenham?] of _The Arte of English Poesie_ (1589) couples him with the Earl of Oxford as deserving the highest price for comedy and enterlude, and Francis Meres in his _Palladis Tamia_ (1598) includes him amongst those ‘best for comedy’. Several of his poems are in _The Paradise of Dainty Devices_ (1576). Warton, iv. 218, says that William Collins (the poet) had a volume of prose stories printed in 1570, ‘sett forth by maister Richard Edwardes mayster of her maiesties revels’. One of these contained a version of the jest used in the _Induction_ of _The Taming of the Shrew_ (q.v.). There is nothing else to connect Edwardes with the Revels office, and probably ‘revels’ in Warton’s account is a mistake for ‘children’ or ‘chapel’.
_Dissertations_: W. Y. Durand, _Notes on R. E._ (1902, _J. G. P._ iv. 348), _Some Errors concerning R. E._ (1908, _M. L. N._ xxiii. 129).
_Damon and Pythias. 1565_
_S. R._ 1567–8. ‘A boke intituled ye tragecall comodye of Damonde and Pethyas.’ _Rycharde Jonnes_ (Arber, i. 354).
Warton, iv. 214, describes an edition, not now known, as printed by William How in Fleet Street. The Tragical comedie of Damon and Pythias, newly imprinted as the same was playde before the queenes maiestie by the children of her grace’s chapple. Made by Mayster Edwards, then being master of the children. _William How._ [Only known through the description of Warton, iv. 214.]
1571. The excellent Comedie of two the moste faithfullest Freendes, Damon and Pithias. Newly Imprinted, as the same was shewed before the Queenes Maiestie, by the Children of her Graces Chappell, except the Prologue that is somewhat altered for the proper vse of them that hereafter shall haue occasion to plaie it, either in Priuate, or open Audience. Made by Maister Edwards, then beynge Maister of the Children. _Richard Jones._
1582. _Richard Jones._
_Editions_ in Dodsley^4, iv (1874), and by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ i) and J. S. Farmer (1908, _T. F. T._).--_Dissertation_: W. Y. Durand, _A Local Hit in E.’s D. and P._ (_M. L. N._ xxii. 236).
The play is not divided into acts or scenes; the characters include Carisophus a parasite, and Grim the Collier. The prologue [not that used at Court] warns the audience that they will be ‘frustrate quite of toying plays’ and that the author’s muse that ‘masked in delight’ and to some ‘seemed too much in young desires to range’ will leave such sports and write a ‘tragical comedy ... mixed with mirth and care’. Edwardes adds (cf. App. C, No. ix):
Wherein, talking of courtly toys, we do protest this flat, We talk of Dionysius court, we mean no court but that.
A song at the end wishes Elizabeth joy and describes her as ‘void of all sickness, in most perfect health’. Durand uses this reference to date the play in the early months of 1565, since a letter of De Silva (_Sp. P._ i. 400) records that Elizabeth had a feverish cold since 8 Dec. 1564, but was better by 2 Jan. 1565. He identifies the play with the ‘Edwardes tragedy’ of the Revels Accounts for 1564–5 (cf. App. B), and points out that there is an entry in those accounts for ‘rugge bumbayst and cottone for hosse’, and that in _Damon and Pythias_ (Dodsley, iv. 71) the boys have stuffed breeches with ‘seven ells of rug’ to one hose. A proclamation of 6 May 1562 (_Procl._ 562) had forbidden the use of more than a yard and three-quarters of stuff in the ‘stockes’ of hose, and an enforcing proclamation (_Procl._ 619) was required on 12 Feb. 1566. Boas, 157, notes a revival at Merton in 1568.
Fleay, 60, thinks that the play contains attacks on the Paul’s boys in return for satire of Edwardes as Ralph Roister in Ulpian Fulwell’s _Like Will to Like_ (q.v.).
_Lost Play_
_Palamon and Arcite. 1566_
This play was acted in two parts on 2 and 4 Sept. 1566, before Elizabeth in the Hall of Christ Church, Oxford (cf. ch. iv). The first night was made memorable by the fall of part of the staircase wall, by which three persons were killed. The Queen was sorry, but the play went on. She gave Edwardes great thanks for his pains. The play was in English. Several contemporary writers assign it to Edwardes, and Nicholas Robinson adds that he and other Christ Church men translated it out of Latin, and that he remained two months in Oxford working at it. Bereblock gives a long analysis of the action, which shows that, even if there is no error as to the intervening Latin version, the original source was clearly Chaucer’s _Knight’s Tale_. W. Y. Durand, _Journ. Germ. Phil._ iv. 356, argues that Edwardes’s play was not a source of _Two Noble Kinsmen_, on the ground of the divergence between that and Bereblock’s summary.
There is no evidence of any edition of the play, although Plummer, xxi, says that it ‘has been several times printed’.
_Doubtful Plays_
Fleay, ii. 295, assigns to Edwardes _Godly Queen Hester_, a play of which he had only seen a few lines, and which W. W. Greg, in his edition in _Materialien_, v, has shown with great probability to date from about 1525–9. His hand has also been sought in R. B.’s _Apius and Virginia_ and in _Misogonus_ (cf. ch. xxiv).
ELIZABETH (1533–1603).
H. H. E. Craster (_E. H. R._ xxix. 722) includes in a list of Elizabeth’s English translations a chorus from Act II of the pseudo-Senecan _Hercules Oetaeus_, extant in _Bodl. MS. e Museo_, 55, f. 48, and printed in H. Walpole, _Royal and Noble Authors_ (ed. Park, 1806), i. 102. It probably dates later than 1561. But he can find no evidence for a Latin version of a play of Euripides referred to by Walpole, i. 85.
RICHARD FARRANT (?-1580).
Farrant’s career as Master of the Children of Windsor and Deputy Master of the Children of the Chapel and founder of the first Blackfriars theatre has been described in chh. xii and xvii. It is not improbable that he wrote plays for the boys, and W. J. Lawrence, _The Earliest Private Theatre Play_ (_T. L. S._, 11 Aug. 1921), thinks that one of these was _Wars of Cyrus_ (cf. ch. xxiv), probably based on W. Barker’s translation (1567) of Xenophon’s _Cyropaedia_, and that the song of Panthea ascribed to Farrant in a Christ Church manuscript (cf. vol. ii, p. 63) has dropped out from the extant text of this. Farrant’s song, ‘O Jove from stately throne’, mentioning Altages, may be from another play. I think that _Wars of Cyrus_, as it stands, is clearly post-_Tamburlaine_, and although there are indications of lost songs at ll. 985, 1628, there is none pointing to a lament of Panthea. But conceivably the play was based on one by Farrant.
GEORGE FEREBE (_c._ 1573–1613 <)
A musician and Vicar of Bishop’s Cannings, Wilts.
_The Shepherd’s Song. 1613_
_S. R._ 1613, June 16. ‘A thinge called The Shepeherdes songe before Queene Anne in 4. partes complete Musical vpon the playnes of Salisbury &c.’ _Walter Dight_ (Arber, iii. 526).
Aubrey, i. 251, says ‘when queen Anne came to Bathe, her way lay to traverse the famous Wensdyke, which runnes through his parish. He made severall of his neighbours good musitians, to play with him in consort, and to sing. Against her majesties comeing, he made a pleasant pastorall, and gave her an entertaynment with his fellow songsters in shepherds’ weeds and bagpipes, he himself like an old bard. After that wind musique was over, they sang their pastorall eglogues (which I have, to insert into Liber B).’ Wood’s similar account in _Fasti_ (1815), i. 270, is probably based on Aubrey’s. He dates the entertainment June 11 (cf. ch. iv. and App. A, s. ann. 1613), and gives the opening of the song as
Shine, O thou sacred Shepherds Star, On silly shepherd swaines.
Aubrey has a shorter notice in another manuscript and adds, ‘He gave another entertaynment in Cote-field to King James, with carters singing, with whipps in their hands; and afterwards, a footeball play’.
GEORGE FERRERS (_c._ 1500–79).
A Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, son of Thomas Ferrers of St. Albans, who was Page of the Chamber to Henry VIII, and acted as Lord of Misrule to Edward VI at the Christmases of 1551–2 and 1552–3 (_Mediaeval Stage_, i. 405; Feuillerat, _Edw. and M._ 56, 77, 90). He sat in Parliaments of both Mary and Elizabeth, and wrote some of the poems in _The Mirror for Magistrates_ (1559–78). He contributed verses to the Kenilworth entertainment of 1575, must then have been a very old man, and died in 1579. Puttenham says of Edward VI’s time, ‘Maister _Edward Ferrys_ ... wrate for the most part to the stage, in Tragedie and sometimes in Comedie or Enterlude’, and again, ‘For Tragedie, the Lord of Buckhurst & Maister _Edward Ferrys_, for such doings as I haue sene of theirs, do deserue the hyest price’; and is followed by Meres, who places ‘Master Edward Ferris, the author of the _Mirror for Magistrates_’ amongst ‘our best for Tragedie’ (cf. App. C, Nos. xli, lii). Obviously George Ferrers is meant, but Anthony Wood hunted out an Edward Ferrers, belonging to another family, of Baddesley Clinton, in Warwickshire, and took him for the dramatist. He died in 1564 and had a son Henry, amongst whose papers were found verses belonging to certain entertainments, mostly of the early ‘nineties, which an indiscreet editor thereupon ascribed to George Ferrers (cf. s.v. Sir H. Lee).
NATHAN FIELD (1587–?).
For life _vide supra_ Actors (ch. xv).
_A Woman is a Weathercock. 1609_ (?)
_S. R._ 1611, Nov. 23 (Buck). ‘A booke called, A woman is a weather-cocke, beinge a Comedye.’ _John Budge_ (Arber, iii. 471).
1612. A Woman is a Weather-cocke. A New Comedy, As it was acted before the King in White-Hall. And diuers times Priuately at the White-Friers, By the Children of her Maiesties Reuels. Written by Nat: Field. _For John Budge._ [Epistles to Any Woman that hath been no Weathercock and to the Reader, both signed ‘N. F.’, and Commendatory verses ‘To his loved son, Nat. Field, and his Weathercock Woman’, signed ‘George Chapman’.]
_Editions_ in _O. E. D._ (1830, ii), by J. P. Collier (1833, _Five Old Plays_), in Dodsley^4 (1875, xi), and by A. W. Verity in _Nero and Other Plays_ (1888, _Mermaid Series_).
This must, I suppose, have been one of the five plays given at Court by the Children of the Whitefriars in the winter of 1609–10. Fleay, i. 185, notes that I. ii refers to the Cleve wars, which began in 1609. The Revels children were not at Court in 1610–11. In his verses to _The Faithful Shepherdess_ (1609–10) Field hopes for his ‘muse in swathing clouts’, to ‘perfect such a work as’ Fletcher’s. The first Epistle promises that when his next play is printed, any woman ‘shall see what amends I have made to her and all the sex’; the second ends, ‘If thou hast anything to say to me, thou know’st where to hear of me for a year or two, and no more, I assure thee’, as if Field did not mean to spend his life as a player.
_Amends for Ladies. > 1611_
1618. Amends for Ladies. A Comedie. As it was acted at the Blacke-Fryers, both by the Princes Seruants, and the Lady Elizabeths. By Nat. Field. _G. Eld for Math. Walbancke._
1639.... With the merry prankes of Moll Cut-Purse: Or, the humour of roaring A Comedy full of honest mirth and wit.... _Io. Okes for Math. Walbancke._
_Editions_, with _A W. is a W._ (q.v.).
The title-page points to performances in Porter’s Hall (_c._ 1615–16) by the combined companies of the Prince and Princess; but the Epistle to _A W. is a W._ (q.v.) makes it clear that the play was at least planned, and probably written, by the end of 1611. Collier, iii. 434, and Fleay, i. 201, confirm this from an allusion to the play in A. Stafford’s _Admonition to a Discontented Romanist_, appended to his _Niobe Dissolved into a Nilus_ (S. R. 10 Oct. 1611). Fleay is less happy in fixing an inferior limit of date by the publication of the version of the _Curious Impertinent_ story in Shelton’s _Don Quixote_ (1612), since that story was certainly available in Baudouin’s French translation as early as 1608. The introduction of Moll Cutpurse suggests rivalry with Dekker and Middleton’s _Roaring Girl_ (also _c._ 1610–11) at the Fortune, which theatre is chaffed in ii. 1 and iii. 4.
_Later Play_
_The Fatal Dowry_ (1632), a King’s men’s play, assigned on the title-page to P. M. and N. F., probably dates from 1616–19. C. Beck, _Philip Massinger, The Fatall Dowry, Einleitung zu einer neuen Ausgabe_ (1906, _Erlangen diss._), assigns the prose of II. ii and IV. i to Field. There is an edition by C. L. Lockert (1918).
_Doubtful Plays_
Attempts have been made to trace Field’s hand in _Bonduca_, _Cupid’s Revenge_, _Faithful Friends_, _Honest Man’s Fortune_, _Thierry and Theodoret_, and _Four Plays in One_, all belonging to the Beaumont (q.v.) and Fletcher series, and in _Charlemagne_ (cf. ch. xxiv).
JOHN FLETCHER (1579–1625).
Fletcher was born in Dec. 1579 at Rye, Sussex, the living of his father Richard Fletcher, who became Bishop of Bristol, Worcester, and in 1594 London. His cousins, Giles and Phineas, are known as poets. He seems too young for the John Fletcher of London who entered Corpus Christi, Cambridge, in 1591. After his father’s death in 1596, nothing is heard of him until his emergence as a dramatist, and of this the date cannot be precisely fixed. Davenant says that ‘full twenty yeares, he wore the bayes’, which would give 1605, but this is in a prologue to _The Woman Hater_, which Davenant apparently thought Fletcher’s, although it is Beaumont’s; and Oliphant’s attempt to find his hand, on metrical grounds, in _Captain Thomas Stukeley_ (1605) rests only on one not very conclusive scene. But he had almost certainly written for the Queen’s Revels before the beginning, about 1608, of his collaboration with Beaumont, under whom his later career is outlined. It is possible that he is the John Fletcher who married Joan Herring on 3 Nov. 1612 at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, and had a son John about Feb. 1620 in St. Bartholomew’s the Great (Dyce, i. lxxiii), and if so one may put the fact with Aubrey’s gossip (cf. s.v. Beaumont), and with Oldwit’s speech in Shadwell’s _Bury-Fair_ (1689): ‘I knew Fletcher, my friend Fletcher, and his maid Joan; well, I shall never forget him: I have supped with him at his house on the Bankside; he loved a fat loin of pork of all things in the world; and Joan his maid had her beer-glass of sack; and we all kissed her, i’ faith, and were as merry as passed.’ I have sometimes wondered whether Jonson is chaffing Beaumont and Fletcher in _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614), V. iii, iv, as Damon and Pythias, ‘two faithfull friends o’ the Bankside’, that ‘have both but one drabbe’, and enter with a gammon of bacon under their cloaks. I do not think this can refer to Francis Bacon. Fletcher died in Aug. 1625 and was buried in St. Saviour’s (_Athenaeum_, 1886, ii. 252).
For Plays _vide_ s.v. Beaumont, and for the ascribed lost play of _Cardenio_, s.v. Shakespeare.
PHINEAS FLETCHER (1582–1650).
Phineas Fletcher, son of Giles, a diplomatist and poet, brother of Giles, a poet, and first cousin of John (q.v.), was baptized at Cranbrook, Kent, on 8 April 1582. From Eton he passed to King’s College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. in 1604, his M.A. in 1608, and became a Fellow in 1611. He was Chaplain to Sir Henry Willoughby of Risley from 1616 to 1621, and thereafter Rector of Hilgay, Norfolk, to his death in 1650. He wrote much Spenserian poetry, but his dramatic work was purely academic. In addition to _Sicelides_, he may have written an English comedy, for which a payment was made to him by King’s about Easter 1607 (Boas, i. xx).
_Collections_
1869. A. B. Grosart, _The Poems of P. F._ 4 vols. (_Fuller Worthies Library_).
1908–9. F. S. Boas, _The Poetical Works of Giles Fletcher and P. F._ 2 vols. (_Cambridge English Classics_).
_Sicelides. 1615_
[_MSS._] _Bodl. Rawl. Poet. MS._ 214.
_Addl. MS. 4453._ ‘Sicelides: a Piscatorie made by Phinees Fletcher and acted in Kings Colledge in Cambridge.’ [A shorter version than that of Q. and the _Rawl. MS._]
_S. R._ 1631, April 25 (Herbert). ‘A play called Scicelides, acted at Cambridge.’ _William Sheeres_ (Arber, iv. 251).
1631. Sicelides A Piscatory, As it hath been Acted in Kings Colledge, in Cambridge. _I. N. for William Sheares._ [Prologue and Epilogue.]
A reference (III. iv) to the shoes hung up by Thomas Coryat in Odcombe church indicates a date of composition not earlier than 1612. The play was intended for performance before James at Cambridge, but was actually given before the University after his visit, on 13 March 1615 (cf. ch. iv).
FRANCIS FLOWER (_c._ 1588).
A Gray’s Inn lawyer, one of the devisers of dumb-shows and directors for the _Misfortunes of Arthur_ of Thomas Hughes (q.v.) in 1588, for which he also wrote two choruses.
JOHN FORD (1586–1639 <).
Ford’s dramatic career, including whatever share he may have had with Dekker (q.v.) in _Sun’s Darling_ and _Witch of Edmonton_, falls substantially outside my period. But amongst plays entered as his by Humphrey Moseley on 29 June 1660 (Eyre, ii. 271) are:
‘An ill begining has A good end, and a bad begining may have a good end, a Comedy.’
‘The London Merchant, a Comedy.’
These ascriptions recur in Warburton’s list of lost plays (_3 Library_, ii. 231), where the first play has the title ‘A good beginning may have A good end’. It is possible, therefore, that Ford either wrote or revised the play of ‘A badd beginininge makes a good endinge’, which was performed by the King’s men at Court during 1612–13 (cf. App. B). One may suspect the _London Merchant_ to be a mistake for the _Bristow Merchant_ of Ford and Dekker (q.v.) in 1624. The offer of the title in _K. B. P._ ind. 11 hardly proves that there was really a play of _The London Merchant_. Ford’s _Honor Triumphant: or The Peeres Challenge, by Armes defensible at Tilt, Turney, and Barriers_ (1606; ed. _Sh. Soc._ 1843) is a thesis motived by the jousts in honour of Christian of Denmark (cf. ch. iv). It has an Epistle to the Countesses of Pembroke and Montgomery, and contains four arguments in defence of amorous propositions addressed respectively to the Duke of Lennox and the Earls of Arundel, Pembroke, and Montgomery.
EDWARD FORSETT (_c._ 1553–_c._ 1630).
A political writer (_D. N. B._) and probable author of the academic _Pedantius_ (cf. App. K).
ABRAHAM FRAUNCE (_c._ 1558–1633 <).
Fraunce was a native of Shrewsbury, and passed from the school of that place, where he obtained the friendship of Philip Sidney, to St. John’s, Cambridge, in 1576. He took his B.A. in 1580, played in Legge’s academic _Richardus Tertius_ and in _Hymenaeus_ (Boas, 394), which he may conceivably have written (cf. App. K), became Fellow of the college in 1581, and took his M.A. in 1583. He became a Gray’s Inn man, dedicated various treatises on logic and experiments in English hexameters to members of the Sidney and Herbert families during 1583–92, and appears to have obtained through their influence some office under the Presidency of Wales. He dropped almost entirely out of letters, but seems to have been still alive in 1633.
_Latin Play_
_Victoria. 1580 < > 3_
[_MS._] In possession of Lord De L’Isle and Dudley at Penshurst, headed ‘Victoria’. [Lines ‘Philippo Sidneio’, signed ‘Abrahamus Fransus’. Prologue.]
_Edition_ by G. C. Moore Smith (1906, _Materialien_, xiv).
The play is an adaptation of _Il Fedele_ (1575) by Luigi Pasqualigo, which is also the foundation of the anonymous _Two Italian Gentlemen_ (q.v.). As Sidney was knighted on 13 Jan. 1583, the play was probably written, perhaps for performance at St. John’s, Cambridge, before that date and after Fraunce took his B.A. in 1580.
_Translation_
_Phillis and Amyntas. 1591_
_S. R._ 1591, Feb. 9 (Bp. of London). ‘A book intituled The Countesse of Pembrookes Ivye churche, and Emanuel.’ _William Ponsonby_ (Arber, ii. 575).
1591. The Countesse of Pembrokes Yuychurch. Containing the affectionate life, and vnfortunate death of Phillis and Amyntas: That in a Pastorall; This in a Funerall; both in English Hexameters. By Abraham Fraunce. _Thomas Orwin for William Ponsonby._
_Dissertation_: E. Köppel, _Die englischen Tasso-Übersetzungen des 16. Jahrhunderts_ (1889, _Anglia_, xi).
This consists of a slightly altered translation of the _Aminta_ (1573) of Torquato Tasso, followed by a reprint of Fraunce’s English version (1587) of Thomas Watson’s _Amyntas_ (1585), which is not a play, but a collection of Latin eclogues. There is nothing to show that Fraunce’s version of _Aminta_ was ever acted.
WILLIAM FULBECK (1560–1603?).
He entered Gray’s Inn in 1584, contributed two speeches to the _Misfortunes of Arthur_ of Thomas Hughes (q.v.) in 1588, and wrote various legal and historical books.
ULPIAN FULWELL (_c._ 1568).
Fulwell was born in Somersetshire and educated at St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford. On 14 April 1577 he was of the parish of Naunton, Gloucestershire, and married Mary Whorewood of Lapworth, Warwickshire.[657]
_Like Will to Like. c. 1568_
_S. R._ 1568–9. ‘A play lyke Wyll to lyke quod the Devell to the Collyer.’ _John Alde_ (Arber, i. 379).
1568. An Enterlude Intituled Like wil to like quod the Deuel to the Colier, very godly and ful of pleasant mirth.... Made by Vlpian Fulwell. _John Allde._
1587. _Edward Allde._
_Editions_ in Dodsley^4, iii (1874), and by J. S. Farmer (1909, _T. F. T._).
A non-controversial moral. The characters, allegorical and typical, are arranged for five actors, and include Ralph Roister, and ‘Nicholas Newfangle the Vice’, who ‘rideth away upon the Devil’s back’ (Dodsley, iii. 357). There is a prayer for the Queen at the end.
This might be _The Collier_ played at Court in 1576. Fleay, 60; i. 235, puts it in 1561–3, assigns it to the Paul’s boys, and suggests that Richard Edwardes (q.v.) is satirized as Ralph Roister. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 228) suggests that Fulwell’s may be the play revived by Pembroke’s at the Rose on 28 Oct. 1600 as ‘the [devell] licke vnto licke’.
WILLIAM GAGER (> 1560–1621).
Gager entered Christ Church, Oxford, from Westminster in 1574, and took his B.A. in 1577, his M.A. in 1580, and his D.C.L. in 1589. In 1606 he became Chancellor of the diocese of Ely. He had a high reputation for his Latin verses, many of which are contained in _Exequiae D. Philippi Sidnaei_ (1587) and other University volumes. A large collection in _Addl. MS._ 22583 includes lines to George Peele (q.v.). Meres in 1598 counts him as one of ‘the best for comedy amongst vs’. His correspondence with John Rainolds affords a summary of the controversy on the ethics of the stage in its academic aspect.
_Latin Plays_
_Meleager. Feb. 1582_
1592. Meleager. Tragoedia noua. Bis publice acta in aede Christi Oxoniae. _Oxoniae. Joseph Barnes._ [Epistle to Earl of Essex, ‘ex aede Christi Oxoniae, Calendis Ianuarij MDXCII. Gulielmus Gagerus’; Commendatory verses by Richard Edes, Alberico Gentili, and I. C[ase?]; Epistle _Ad lectorem Academicum_; _Prologus ad academicos_; _Argumentum_; _Prologus ad illustrissimos Penbrochiae ac Lecestriae Comites_. At end, _Epilogus ad Academicos_; _Epilogus ad clarissimos Comites Penbrochiensem ac Lecestrensem_; _Panniculus Hippolyto ... assutus_ (_vide infra_); _Apollo_ προλογίζει _ad serenissimam Reginam Elizabetham 1592_; _Prologus in Bellum Grammaticale ad eandem sacram Maiestatem_; _Epilogus in eandem Comoediam ad Eandem_.]
The dedication says ‘Annus iam pene vndecimus agitur ... ex quo Meleager primum, octauus ex quo iterum in Scenam venit’, and adds that Pembroke, Leicester, and Sidney were present on the second occasion. _Meleager_ is ‘primogenitus meus’. The first production was doubtless one of those recorded in the Christ Church accounts in Feb. 1582 (Boas, 162), and the second during Leicester’s visit as Chancellor in Jan. 1585 (Boas, 192).
_Dido. 12 June 1583_
[_MSS._] _Christ Church, Oxford, MS_. [complete text].
_Addl. MS._ 22583. [Acts II, III only, with Prologue, Argument, and Epilogue.]
_Edition_ of B.M. fragment by A. Dyce (1850, _Marlowe’s Works_). _Abstract_ from _Ch. Ch. MS._ in Boas, 183.
The play was produced before Alasco at Christ Church on 12 June 1583. It is unlikely that it influenced Marlowe’s play.
_Ulysses Redux. 6 Feb. 1592_
1592. Vlysses Redux Tragoedia Nova. In Aede Christi Oxoniae Publice Academicis Recitata, Octavo Idus Februarii. 1591. _Oxoniae. Joseph Barnes._ [_Prologus ad Academicos_; Epistle to Lord Buckhurst, ‘ex aede Christi Oxoniae sexto Idus Maij, 1592 ... Gulielmus Gagerus’; Commendatory verses by Thomas Holland, Alberico Gentili, Richard Edes, Henry Bust, Matthew Gwinne, Richard Late-warr, Francis Sidney, John Hoschines (Hoskins), William Ballowe, James Weston; Verses _Ad Zoilum_; Epistle _Ad Criticum_. At end, _Prologus in Rivales Comoediam_; _Prologus in Hippolytum Senecae Tragoediam_; _Epilogus in eundem_; _Momus_; _Epilogus Responsiuus_.]
The play was produced on Sunday, 6 Feb. 1592, and an indiscreet invitation to John Rainolds opened the flood-gates of controversy upon Gager’s head (cf. vol. i, p. 251 and App. C, No. 1). Gager’s _Rivales_ was revived on 7 Feb. and the pseudo-Senecan _Hippolytus_, with Gager’s _Panniculus_, on 8 Feb. followed by a speech in the character of Momus as a carper at plays, and a reply to Momus by way of Epilogue. The latter was printed in an enlarged form given to it during the course of the controversy (Boas, 197, 234, with dates which disregard leap-year).
_Additions to Hippolytus. 8 Feb. 1592_
1592. Panniculus Hippolyto Senecae assutus, 1591. [Appended to _Meleager_; for Gager’s prologue, &c., cf. s.v. _Ulysses Redux_.]
These consist of two scenes, one of the nature of an opening, the other an insertion between Act I and Act II, written for a performance of the play at Christ Church on 8 Feb. 1592.
_Oedipus_
_Addl. MS._ 22583, f. 31, includes with other poems by Gager five scenes from a tragedy on _Oedipus_, of which nothing more is known.
_Lost Play_
_Rivales. 11 June 1583_
This comedy was produced before Alasco at Christ Church, on 11 June 1583. It is assigned to Gager by A. Wood, _Annals_, ii. 216, and referred to as his in the controversy with Rainolds (Boas, 181), who speaks of it as ‘the vnprinted Comedie’, and criticizes its ‘filth’. It contained scenes of country wooing, drunken sailors, a _miles gloriosus_, a _blanda lena_. The prologue to _Dido_ says of it:
Hesterna Mopsum scena ridiculum dedit.
It was revived at Christ Church on 7 Feb. 1592 (Boas, 197) and again at the same place before Elizabeth on 26 Sept. 1592, when, according to a Cambridge critic, it was ‘but meanely performed’. Presumably it is the prologue for this revival which is printed with _Ulysses Redux_ (q.v.).
BERNARD GARTER (_c._ 1578).
A London citizen, whose few and mainly non-dramatic writings were produced from 1565 to 1579. For his description of the Norwich entertainment (_1578_), cf. ch. xxiv.
THOMAS GARTER (_c._ 1569).
He may conceivably be identical with Bernard Garter, since Thomas and Bernard are respectively given from different sources (cf. _D. N. B._) as the name of the father of Bernard Garter of Brigstocke, Northants, whose son was alive in 1634.
_Susanna, c. 1569_
_S. R._ 1568–9. ‘Ye playe of Susanna.’ _Thomas Colwell_ (Arber, i. 383).
1578?
No copy is known, but S. Jones, _Biographica Dramatica_ (1812), iii. 310, says: ‘Susanna. By Thomas Garter 4^{to} 1578. The running title of this play is, _The Commody of the moste vertuous and godlye Susanna_.’ According to Greg, _Masques_, cxxiii, the original authority for the statement is a manuscript note by Thomas Coxeter (_ob._ 1747) in a copy of G. Jacob’s _Lives of the Dramatic Poets_ (1719–20). ‘Susanna’ is in Rogers and Ley’s list, and an interlude ‘Susanna’s Tears’ in Archer’s and Kirkman’s.
GEORGE GASCOIGNE (_c._ 1535–77).
George Gascoigne was son of Sir John Gascoigne of Cardington, Bedfordshire. He was probably born between 1530 and 1535, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Gray’s Inn. He misspent his youth as a dissipated hanger-on at Court, under the patronage of Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton and others, and won some reputation as a versifier. About 1566 he married Elizabeth Breton of Walthamstow, widow of a London merchant, and mother of Nicholas Breton, the poet. From March 1573 to Oct. 1574 he served as a volunteer under William of Orange in the Netherlands. In 1575 he was assisting in preparing shows before Elizabeth at Kenilworth and Woodstock. It is possible that he was again in the Netherlands and present at the sack of Antwerp in 1576. On 7 Oct. 1577 he died at Stamford.
_Collections_
N.D. [1573] A Hundreth sundrie Flowres bounde up in one small Poesie.... _For Richard Smith._ [Datable by a prefatory epistle of 20 Jan. 1573, signed ‘H. W.’ and a reference in Gascoigne’s own epistle of 31 Jan. 1575 to Q_{2}. Includes _Jocasta_, _Supposes_, and the Mask.]
1575. The Posies of George Gascoigne Esquire. Corrected, perfected, and augmented by the Authour. _H. Bynneman for Richard Smith._ [A second issue, _For Richard Smith_.]
1587. The whole workes of George Gascoigne Esquyre: Newlye compyled into one Volume.... _Abel Jeffes._ [Adds the _Princely Pleasures_. A second issue, ‘The pleasauntest workes....’]
1869–70. W. C. Hazlitt, _The Complete Poems of George Gascoigne_. 2 vols. (_Roxburghe Library_). [Adds _Glass of Government_ and _Hemetes_.]
1907–10. J. W. Cunliffe, _The Complete Works of George Gascoigne_. 2 vols. (_C. E. C._).
_Dissertation_: F. E. Schelling, _The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne_ (1893, _Pennsylvania Univ. Publ._).
_Jocasta. 1566_
_With_ Francis Kinwelmershe.
[_MS._] _B.M. Addl. MS._ 34063, formerly the property of Roger, second Lord North, whose name and the motto ‘Durum Pati [15]68’ are on the title.
1573. Iocasta: A Tragedie written in Greke by Euripides, translated and digested into Acte by George Gascoyne, and Francis Kinwelmershe of Grayes Inne, and there by them presented. 1566. _Henry Bynneman for Richard Smith._ [Part of _Collection_, 1573; also in 1575, 1587. Argument; Epilogue ‘Done by Chr. Yeluerton’.]
_Editions_ by F. J. Child (1848, _Four Old Plays_) and J. W. Cunliffe (1906, _B. L._, and 1912, _E. E. C. T._).--_Dissertation_: M. T. W. Foerster, _Gascoigne’s J. a Translation from the Italian_ (1904, _M. P._ ii. 147).
A blank-verse translation of Lodovico Dolce’s _Giocasta_ (1549), itself a paraphrase or adaptation of the _Phoenissae_ of Euripides (Creizenach, ii. 408). After Acts I and IV appears ‘Done by F. Kinwelmarshe’ and after II, III, V ‘Done by G. Gascoigne’. Before each act is a description of a dumb-show and of its accompanying music.
_Supposes. 1566_
1573. Supposes: A Comedie written in the Italian tongue by Ariosto, and Englished by George Gascoyne of Grayes Inne Esquire, and there presented. [Part of _Collection_, 1573; also in 1575 (with addition of ‘1566’ to title) and 1587. Prologue.]
_Editions_ by T. Hawkins (1773, _O. E. D._ iii), J. W. Cunliffe (1906, _B. L._), and R. W. Bond (1911, _E. P. I._).
A prose translation of Ludovico Ariosto’s _I Suppositi_ (1509). There was probably a revival at Trinity, Oxford, on 8 Jan. 1582, when Richard Madox records, ‘We supt at y^e presidents lodging and after had y^e supposes handeled in y^e haul indifferently’ (Boas, 161).
_The Glass of Government. c. 1575_
1575. The Glasse of Governement. A tragicall Comedie so entituled, bycause therein are handled aswell the rewardes for Vertues, as also the punishment for Vices. Done by George Gascoigne Esquier. 1575. Seen and allowed, according to the order appointed in the Queenes Maiesties Injunctions. _For C. Barker._ [Colophon] _H. M. for Christopher Barker._ [Epistle to Sir Owen Hopton, by ‘G. Gascoigne’, dated 26 Apr. 1575; Commendatory verses by B. C.; Argument; Prologue; Epilogue. A reissue has a variant colophon (_Henry Middleton_) and Errata.]
_Edition_ by J. S. Farmer (1914, _S. F._).--_Dissertation_: C. H. Herford, _G.’s G. of G._ (_E. S._ ix. 201).
This, perhaps only a closet drama, is an adaptation of the ‘Christian Terence’ (cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 216), with which Gascoigne may have become familiar in Holland during 1573–4. The prologue (cf. App. C, No. xiv) warns that the play is not a mere ‘worthie jest’, and that
Who list laye out some pence in such a marte, Bellsavage fayre were fittest for his purse.
MASK
_Montague Mask. 1572_
1573. A Devise of a Maske for the right honourable Viscount Mountacute. [Part of _Collection_, 1573; also in 1575, 1587.]
Anthony and Elizabeth Browne, children of Anthony, first Viscount Montague, married Mary and Robert, children of Sir William Dormer of Eythorpe, Bucks., in 1572 (cf. ch. v).
ENTERTAINMENTS
See s.v. Lee, _Woodstock Entertainment_ (_1575_) and ch. xxiv, s.v. _Kenilworth Entertainment_ (_1575_).
THOMAS GOFFE (1591–1629).
_Selimus_ and the _Second Maiden’s Tragedy_ have been ascribed to him, but as regards the first absurdly, and as regards the second not plausibly, since he only took his B.A. degree in 1613. His known plays are later in date than 1616.
ARTHUR GOLDING (1536–1605 <).
Arthur was son of John Golding of Belchamp St. Paul, Essex, and brother-in-law of John, 16th Earl of Oxford. He was a friend of Sidney and known to Elizabethan statesmen of puritanical leanings. Almost his only original work was a _Discourse upon the Earthquake_ (1580), but he was a voluminous translator of theological and classical works, including Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ (1565, 1567). Beza’s tragedy was written when he was Professor at Lausanne in 1550 (Creizenach, ii. 456).
_Abraham’s Sacrifice. 1575_
1577. A Tragedie of Abrahams Sacrifice, Written in french, by Theodore Beza, and translated into Inglish by A. G. Finished at Powles Belchamp in Essex, the xj of August, 1575. _Thomas Vautrollier._ [Woodcuts, which do not suggest a scenic representation.]
_Edition_ by M. W. Wallace (1907, _Toronto Philological Series_).
HENRY GOLDINGHAM (_c._ 1575).
A contributor to the Kenilworth and Norwich entertainments (cf. ch. xxiv, C) and writer of _The Garden Plot_ (1825, _Roxburghe Club_). Gawdy, 13, mentions ‘a yonge gentleman touard my L. of Leycester called Mr. Goldingam’, as concerned _c._ 1587 in a street brawl.
WILLIAM GOLDINGHAM (_c._ 1567).
Author of the academic _Herodes_ (cf. App. K).
HENRY GOLDWELL (_c._ 1581).
Describer of _The Fortress of Perfect Beauty_ (cf. ch. xxiv, C).
STEPHEN GOSSON (1554–1624).
Gosson was born in Kent during 1554, was at Corpus Christi, Oxford, 1572 to 1576, then came to London, where he obtained some reputation as playwright and poet. Meres in _Palladis Tamia_ (1598) commends his pastorals, which are lost. Lodge speaks of him also as a ‘player’.[658] In 1579 he forsook the stage, became a tutor in the country and published _The School of Abuse_ (App. C, No. xxii). This he dedicated to Sidney, but ‘was for his labour scorned’. He was answered the same year in a lost pamphlet called _Strange News out of Afric_ and also by Lodge (q.v.), and rejoined with _A Short Apology of the School of Abuse_ (App. C, No. xxiv). The players revived his plays to spite him and on 23 Feb. 1582 produced _The Play of Plays and Pastimes_ to confute him. In the same year he produced his final contribution to the controversy in _Plays Confuted in Five Actions_ (App. C, No. xxx). In 1591 Gosson became Rector of Great Wigborough, Essex, and in 1595 published the anonymous pamphlet _Pleasant Quips for Upstart Newfangled Gentlewomen_. In 1600 he became Rector of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate. In 1616 and 1617 he wrote to Alleyn (q.v.) as his ‘very loving and ancient friend’.[659] He died 13 Feb. 1624.
Gosson claims to have written both tragedies and comedies,[660] but no play of his is extant. He names three of them. Of _Catiline’s Conspiracies_ he says that it was ‘usually brought into the Theater and that ‘because it is known to be a pig of mine own sow, I will speak the less of it; only giving you to understand, that the whole mark which I shot at in that work was to show the reward of traitors in Catiline, and the necessary government of learned men in the person of Cicero, which foresees every danger that is likely to happen and forestalls it continually ere it take effect’.[661] Lodge disparages the originality of this play and compares it unfavourably with Wilson’s _Short and Sweet_[662] (q.v.). Of two other plays Gosson says: ‘Since my publishing the _School of Abuse_ two plays of my making were brought to the stage; the one was a cast of Italian devices, called, The Comedy of _Captain Mario_; the other a Moral, _Praise at Parting_. These they very impudently affirm to be written by me since I had set out my invective against them. I can not deny they were both mine, but they were both penned two years at the least before I forsook them, as by their own friends I am able to prove.’[663] It is conceivable that Gosson may be the translator of _Fedele and Fortunio_ (cf. ch. xxiv).
ROBERT GREENE (1558–92).
Robert Greene was baptized at Norwich on 11 July 1558. He entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1575 and took his B.A. in 1578 and his M.A. by 1583, when he was residing in Clare Hall. The addition of an Oxford degree in July 1588 enabled him to describe himself as _Academiae Utriusque Magister in Artibus_. He has been identified with a Robert Greene who was Vicar of Tollesbury, Essex, in 1584–5, but there is no real evidence that he took orders. The earlier part of his career may be gathered from his autobiographic pamphlet, _The Repentance of Robert Greene_ (1592), eked out by the portraits, also evidently in a measure autobiographic, of Francesco in _Never Too Late_ (1590) and of Roberto in _Green’s Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance_ (1592). It seems that he travelled in youth and learnt much wickedness; then married and lived for a while with his wife and had a child by her. During this period he began his series of euphuistic love-romances. About 1586, however, he deserted his wife, and lived a dissolute life in London with the sister of Cutting Ball, a thief who ended his days at Tyburn, as his mistress. By her he had a base-born son, Fortunatus. He does not seem to have been long in London before he ‘had wholly betaken me to the penning of plays which was my continual exercise’.[664] His adoption of his profession seems to be described in _The Groats-worth of Wit_. Roberto meets a player, goes with him, and soon becomes ‘famozed for an arch-plaimaking poet’.[665] Similarly, in _Never Too Late_, Francesco ‘fell in amongst a company of players, who persuaded him to try his wit in writing of comedies, tragedies, or pastorals, and if he could perform anything worthy of the stage, then they would largely reward him for his pains’. Hereupon Francesco ‘writ a comedy, which so generally pleased the audience that happy were those actors in short time, that could get any of his works, he grew so exquisite in that faculty’.[666] Greene’s early dramatic efforts seem to have brought him into rivalry with Marlowe (q.v.). In the preface to _Perimedes the Blacksmith_ (S. R. 29 March 1588) he writes: ‘I keep my old course to palter up something in prose, using mine old poesie still, Omne tulit punctum, although lately two Gentlemen Poets made two mad men of Rome beat it out of their paper bucklers: and had it in derision for that I could not make my verses jet upon the stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the mouth like the faburden of Bo-Bell, daring God out of heaven with that Atheist _Tamburlan_, or blaspheming with the mad priest of the Sun.... Such mad and scoffing poets that have poetical spirits, as bred of Merlin’s race, if there be any in England that set the end of scholarism in an English blank-verse, I think either it is the humour of a novice that tickles them with self-love, or too much frequenting the hot-house (to use the German proverb) hath sweat out all the greatest part of their wits.... I but answer in print what they have offered on the stage.’[667] The references here to Marlowe are unmistakable. His fellow ‘gentleman poet’ is unknown; but the ‘mad priest of the Sun’ suggests the play of ‘the lyfe and deathe of Heliogabilus’, entered on S. R. to John Danter on 19 June 1594, but now lost.[668] In 1589 Greene published his _Menaphon_ (S. R. 23 Aug.), in which he further alluded to Marlowe as the teller of ‘a Canterbury tale; some prophetical full-mouth that as he were a Cobler’s eldest son, would by the last tell where anothers shoe wrings’.[669] Doron, in the same story, appears to parody a passage in the anonymous play of _The Taming of A Shrew_, which is further alluded to in a prefatory epistle _To the Gentlemen Students of Both Universities_ contributed to Greene’s book by Thomas Nashe. Herein Nashe, while praising Peele and his _Arraignment of Paris_, satirizes Marlowe, Kyd, and particularly the players (cf. App. C, No. xlii). To _Menaphon_ are also prefixed lines by Thomas Brabine which tells the ‘wits’ that ‘strive to thunder from a stage-man’s throat’ how the novel is beyond them. ‘Players, avaunt!’[670] In the following year, 1590, Greene continued the attack on the players in the autobiographic romance, already referred to, of _Never Too Late_ (cf. App. C, No. xliii). In 1590 Greene, whose publications had hitherto been mainly toys of love and romance, began a series of moral pamphlets, full of professions of repentance and denunciations of villainy. To these belong, as well as _Never Too Late_, _Greene’s Mourning Garment_ (1590) and _Greene’s Farewell to Folly_ (1591). A preface to the latter contains some satirical references to the anonymous play of _Fair Em_ (cf. ch. xxiv.) One R. W. retorted upon Greene in a pamphlet called _Martine Mar-Sextus_ (S. R. 8 Nov. 1591), in which he abuses lascivious authors who finally ‘put on a mourning garment and cry Farewell’.[671] Similarly, Greene’s exposures of ‘cony-catching’ or ‘sharping’ provoked the following passage in the _Defence of Cony-catching_ (S. R. 21 April 1592) by one Cuthbert Conycatcher: ‘What if I should prove you a cony-catcher, Master R. G., would it not make you blush at the matter?... Ask the Queen’s players if you sold them not Orlando Furioso for twenty nobles, and when they were in the country sold the same play to the Lord Admiral’s men for as many more.... I hear, when this was objected, that you made this excuse; that there was no more faith to be held with players than with them that valued faith at the price of a feather; for as they were comedians to act, so the actions of their lives were camelion-like; that they were uncertain, variable, time-pleasers, men that measured honesty by profit, and that regarded their authors not by desert but by necessity of time.’[672] It is probable that the change in the tone of Greene’s writings did not correspond to any very thorough-going reformation of life. There is nothing to show that Greene had any share in the Martinist controversy. But he became involved in one of the personal animosities to which it led. Richard Harvey, the brother of Gabriel, in his _Lamb of God_ (S. R. 23 Oct. 1589), while attacking Lyly as Paphatchet, had ‘mistermed all our other poets and writers about London, piperly make-plaies and make-bates. Hence Greene, beeing chiefe agent for the companie [i.e. the London poets] (for hee writ more than foure other, how well I will not say: but _sat citò, si sat benè_) tooke occasion to canuaze him a little.’[673] Apparently he called the Harveys, in his _A Quip for an Upstart Courtier_ (S. R. 21 July 1592, cf. App. C, No. xlvii), the sons of a ropemaker, which is what they were.[674] In August Greene partook freely of Rhenish wine and pickled herrings at a supper with Nashe and one Will Monox, and fell into a surfeit. On 3 September he died in a squalid lodging, after writing a touching letter to his deserted wife, and begging his landlady, Mrs. Isam, to lay a wreath of bays upon him. These details are recorded by Gabriel Harvey, who visited the place and wrote an account of his enemy’s end in a letter to a friend, which he published in his _Four Letters and Certain Sonnets: especially Touching Robert Greene, and Other Parties by him Abused_ (S. R. 4 Dec. 1592).[675] This brought Nashe upon him in the _Strange News of the Intercepting of Certain Letters_[676] (S. R. 12 Jan. 1593) and began a controversy between the two which lasted for several years. In _Pierce’s Supererogation_ (27 Apr. 1593) Harvey spoke of ‘Nash, the ape of Greene, Greene the ape of Euphues, Euphues the ape of Envy’, and declared that Nashe ‘shamefully and odiously misuseth every friend or acquaintance as he hath served ... Greene, Marlowe, Chettle, and whom not?’[677] In _Have With You to Saffron Walden_ (1596), Nashe defends himself against these accusations. ‘I never abusd Marloe, Greene, Chettle in my life.... He girds me with imitating of Greene.... I scorne it ... hee subscribing to me in anything but plotting Plaies, wherein he was his crafts master.’[678] The alleged abuse of Marlowe, Greene, and Chettle belongs to the history of another pamphlet. This is _Green’s Groats-worth of Wit, Bought with a Million of Repentance_ (S. R. 20 Sept. 1592, ‘upon the peril of Henry Chettle’[679]). According to the title-page, it was ‘written before his death and published at his dying request’. To this is appended the famous address _To those Gentlemen, his Quondam Acquaintance, that spend their wits in making Plays_.[680] The reference here to Shakespeare is undeniable. Of the three playwrights warned, the first and third are almost certainly Marlowe and Peele; the third may be Lodge, but on the whole is far more likely to be Nashe (q.v.). It appears, however, that Nashe himself was supposed to have had a hand in the authorship. Chettle did his best to take the responsibility off Nashe’s shoulders in the preface to his _Kind-Hart’s Dream_ (S. R. 8 Dec. 1592; cf. App. C, No. xlix). In the epistle prefixed to the second edition of _Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the Devil_ (_Works_, i. 154), written early in 1593, Nashe denies the charge for himself and calls _The Groats-worth_ ‘a scald trivial lying pamphlet’; and it is perhaps to this that Harvey refers as abuse of Greene, Marlowe, and Chettle, although it is not clear how Marlowe comes in. There is an echo of Greene’s hit at the ‘upstart crow, beautified with our feathers’ in the lines of R. B., _Greene’s Funerals_ (1594, ed. McKerrow, 1911, p. 81):
Greene, gaue the ground, to all that wrote upon him. Nay more the men, that so eclipst his fame: Purloynde his plumes, can they deny the same?
It should be added that the theory that Greene himself was actor as well as playwright rests on a misinterpretation of a phrase of Harvey’s and is inconsistent with the invariable tone of his references to the profession.
_Collections_
1831. A. Dyce, _The Dramatic Works of R. G._ 2 vols.
1861, &c. A. Dyce, _The Dramatic and Poetical Works of R. G. and George Peele_.
1881–6. A. B. Grosart, _The Complete Works in Prose and Verse of R. G._ 15 vols. (_Huth Library_).
1905. J. C. Collins, _The Plays and Poems of R. G._ 2 vols.
1909. T. H. Dickinson, _The Plays of R. G._ (_Mermaid Series_).
_Dissertations_: W. Bernhardi, _R. G.’s Leben und Schriften_ (1874); J. M. Brown, _An Early Rival of Shakespeare_ (1877); N. Storojenko, _R. G.: His Life and Works_ (1878, tr. E. A. B. Hodgetts, in Grosart, i); R. Simpson, _Account of R. G., his Life and Works, and his Attacks on Shakspere_, in _School of Sh._ (1878), ii; C. H. Herford, _G.’s Romances and Shakespeare_ (1888, _N. S. S. Trans._ 181); K. Knauth, _Ueber die Metrik R. G.’s_ (1890, Halle diss.); H. Conrad, _R. G. als Dramatiker_ (1894, _Jahrbuch_, xxix. 210); W. Creizenach, _G. über Shakespeare_ (1898, _Wiener Festschrift_); G. E. Woodberry, _G.’s Place in Comedy_, and C. M. Gayley, _R. G., His Life and the Order of his Plays_ (1903, _R. E. C._ i); K. Ehrke, _R. G.’s Dramen_ (1904); S. L. Wolff, _R. G. and the Italian Renaissance_ (1907, _E. S._ xxxvii. 321); F. Brie, _Lyly und G._ (1910, _E. S._ xlii. 217); J. C. Jordan, _R. G._ (1915).
_Alphonsus. c. 1587_
1599. The Comicall Historie of Alphonsus King of Aragon. As it hath bene sundrie times Acted. Made by R. G. _Thomas Creede_.
There is general agreement that, on grounds of style, this should be the earliest of Greene’s extant plays. In IV. 1444 is an allusion to ‘mighty Tamberlaine’, and the play reads throughout like an attempt to emulate the success of Marlowe’s play of 1587 (?). In IV. i Mahomet speaks out of a brazen head. The play may therefore be alluded to in the ‘Mahomet’s poo [pow]’ of Peele’s (q.v.) _Farewell_ of April 1589, although Peele may have intended his own lost play of _The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek_. There is no reference in _Alphonsus_ to the Armada of 1588. On the whole, the winter of 1587 appears the most likely date for it, and if so, it is possibly the play whose ill success is recorded by Greene in the preface to _Perimedes_ (1588). The Admiral’s revived a _Mahomet_ on 16 Aug. 1594, inventoried ‘owld Mahemetes head’ in 1598, and revived the play again in Aug. 1601, buying the book from Alleyn, who might have brought it from Strange’s, or bought it from the Queen’s (Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 167; _Henslowe Papers_, 116). Collins dates _Alphonsus_ in 1591, on a theory, inconsistent with the biographical indications of the pamphlets, that Greene’s play-writing did not begin much before that year. A ‘Tragicomoedia von einem Königk in Arragona’ played at Dresden in 1626 might be either this play or _Mucedorus_ (Herz, 66, 78).
_A Looking Glass for London and England. c. 1590_
_With_ Lodge.
_S. R._ 1594, March 5. ‘A booke intituled the lookinge glasse for London by Thomas Lodg and Robert Greene gent.’ _Thomas Creede_ (Arber, ii. 645).
1594. A Looking Glasse for London and England. Made by Thomas Lodge Gentleman, and Robert Greene. In Artibus Magister. _Thomas Creede, sold by William Barley._
1598. _Thomas Creede, sold by William Barley._
1602. _Thomas Creede, for Thomas Pavier._
1617. _Bernard Alsop._
_Edition_ by J. S. Farmer (1914, _S. F. T._).
The facts of Lodge’s (q.v.) life leave 1588, before the Canaries voyage, or 1589–91, between that voyage and Cavendish’s expedition, as possible dates for the play. In favour of the former is Lodge’s expressed intention in 1589 to give up ‘penny-knave’s delight’. On the other hand, the subject is closely related to that of Greene’s moral pamphlets, the series of which begins in 1590, and the fall of Nineveh is referred to in _The Mourning Garment_ of that year. Fleay, ii. 54, and Collins, i. 137, accept 1590 as the date of the play. Gayley, 405, puts it in 1587, largely on the impossible notion that its ‘priest of the sun’ (IV. iii. 1540) is that referred to in the _Perimedes_ preface, but partly also from the absence of any reference to the Armada. It is possible that ‘pleasing Alcon’ in Spenser’s _Colin Clout’s Come Home Again_ (1591) may refer to Lodge as the author of the character Alcon in this play. _The Looking Glass_ was revived by Strange’s men on 8 March 1592. The clown is sometimes called Adam in the course of the dialogue (ll. 1235 sqq., 1589 sqq., 2120 sqq.), and a comparison with _James IV_ suggests that the original performer was John Adams of the Queen’s men, from whom Henslowe may have acquired the play. Fleay, ii. 54, and Gayley, 405, make attempts to distinguish Greene’s share from Lodge’s, but do not support their results by arguments. Crawford, _England’s Parnassus_, xxxii, 441, does not regard Allot’s ascription of the passages he borrowed to Greene and Lodge respectively as trustworthy. Unnamed English actors played a ‘comedia auss dem propheten Jona’ at Nördlingen in 1605 (Herz, 78).
_Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay_, _c. 1589_
_S. R._ 1594, May 14. ‘A booke entituled the Historye of ffryer Bacon and ffryer Boungaye.’ _Adam Islip_ (Arber, ii. 649). [Against this and other plays entered on the same day, Adam Islip’s name is crossed out and Edward White’s substituted.]
1594. The Honorable Historie of frier Bacon, and frier Bongay. As it was plaid by her Maiesties seruants. Made by Robert Greene Maister of Arts. _For Edward White._ [Malone dated one of his copies of the 1630 edition ‘1599’ in error; cf. Gayley, 430.]
1630.... As it was lately plaid by the Prince Palatine his Seruants.... _Elizabeth Allde_. [The t.p. has a woodcut representing Act II, sc. iii.]
1655. _Jean Bell._
_Editions_ by A. W. Ward (1878, &c.), C. M. Gayley (1903, _R. E. C._ i), W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._), and J. S. Farmer (1914, _S. F. T._).--_Dissertation_: O. Ritter, _De R. G. Fabula: F. B. and F. B._ (1866, _Thorn diss._).
Fleay, in _Appendix B_ to Ward’s ed., argues from I. i. 137, ‘next Friday is S. James’, that the date of the play is 1589, in which year St. James’s Day fell on a Friday. This does not seem to me a very reliable argument. Probably the play followed not long after Marlowe’s _Doctor Faustus_ (q.v.), itself probably written in 1588–9. The date of 1589, which Ward, i. 396, and Gayley, 411, accept, is likely enough. Collins prefers 1591–2, and notes (ii. 4) a general resemblance in tone and theme to _Fair Em_, but there is nothing to indicate the priority of either play, and no charge of plagiarism in the pamphlets (_vide supra_) to which _Fair Em_ gave rise. _Friar Bacon_ was revived by Strange’s men on 19 Feb. 1592, and again by the Queen’s and Sussex’s men together on 1 April 1594. Doubtless it was Henslowe’s property, as Middleton wrote a prologue and epilogue for a performance by the Admiral’s men at Court at Christmas 1602 (Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 149).
_Orlando Furioso. c. 1591_
[_MS._] The Dulwich MSS. contain an actor’s copy with cues of Orlando’s part. Doubtless it belonged to Alleyn. The fragment covers ll. 595–1592 of the Q_{q}, but contains passages not in those texts. It is printed by Collier, _Alleyn Papers_, 198, Collins, i. 266, and Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, 155.
_S. R._ 1593, Dec. 7. ‘A plaie booke, intituled, the historye of Orlando ffurioso, one of the xij peeres of Ffraunce.’ _John Danter_ (Arber, ii. 641).
1594, May 28. ‘Entred for his copie by consent of John Danter.... A booke entytuled The historie of Orlando furioso, &c. Prouided alwaies, and yt is agreed that soe often as the same booke shalbe printed, the saide John Danter to haue thimpryntinge thereof.’ _Cuthbert Burby_ (Arber, ii. 650).
1594. The Historie of Orlando Furioso One of the twelve Pieres of France. As it was plaid before the Queenes Maiestie. _John Danter for Cuthbert Burby._
1599. _Simon Stafford for Cuthbert Burby._
_Edition_ by W. W. Greg (1907, _M. S. R._).
The Armada (1588) is referred to in I. i. 87. Two passages are common to the play and Peele’s _Old Wive’s Tale_ (before 1595), and were probably borrowed by Peele with the name Sacripant, which Greene got from Ariosto. The play cannot be the ‘King Charlemagne’ of Peele’s (q.v.) _Farewell_ (April 1589), as Charlemagne does not appear in it. The appearance of Sir John Harington’s translation of Ariosto’s _Orlando Furioso_ in 1591 suggests that as a likely date. This also would fit the story (_vide supra_) of the second sale to the Admiral’s men, when the Queen’s ‘were in the country’ (cf. vol. ii, p. 112). Strange’s men played _Orlando_ for Henslowe on 22 Feb. 1592. Collins, i. 217, seems to accept 1591 as the date, but Fleay, i. 263, Ward, i. 395, and Gayley, 409, prefer 1588–9. So does Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 150) on the assumption that _Old Wive’s Tale_ (q.v.) ‘must belong to 1590’. A ‘Comoedia von Orlando Furioso’ was acted at Dresden in 1626 (Herz, 66, 77).
_James the Fourth. c. 1591_
_S. R._ 1594, May 14. ‘A booke intituled the Scottishe story of James the Ffourth slayne at Fflodden intermixed with a plesant Comedie presented by Oboron Kinge of ffayres.’ _Thomas Creede_ (Arber, ii. 648.)
1598. The Scottish Historie of Iames the fourth, slaine at Flodden. Entermixed with a pleasant Comedie, presented by Oboram, King of Fayeries: As it hath bene sundrie times publikely plaide. Written by Robert Greene, Maister of Arts. _Thomas Creede._
_Editions_ by J. M. Manly (1897, _Specimens_, ii. 327) and A. E. H. Swaen and W. W. Greg (1921, _M. S. R._).--_Dissertation_: W. Creizenach, _Zu G.’s J. IV_ (1885, _Anglia_, viii. 419).
There is very little to date the play. Its comparative merit perhaps justifies placing it, as Greene’s maturest drama, in 1591. Collins, i. 44, agrees; but Fleay, i. 265; Ward, i. 400; Gayley, 415, prefer 1590. Fleay finds traces of a second hand, whom he believes to be Lodge, but he is not convincing. In l. 2269 the name Adam appears for Oberon in a stage-direction, which, when compared with _A Looking-Glass_, suggests that the actor was John Adams of the Queen’s.
_Lost Play_
Warburton’s list of burnt plays (_3 Library_, ii. 231) contains the duplicate entries ‘His^t of Jobe by Rob. Green’ and ‘The Trag^d of Jobe. Good.’ Greg suggests a confusion with Sir Robert Le Grys, who appears in the list as ‘S^r Rob. le Green’.
The statement that Greene had a share in a play on Henry VIII (_Variorum_, xix. 500) seems to be based on a confusion with a Robert Greene named by Stowe as an authority for his _Annales_ (Collins, i. 69).
_Doubtful Plays_
Greene’s hand has been sought in _Contention of York and Lancaster_, _Edward III_, _Fair Em_, _George a Greene_, _Troublesome Reign of King John_, _Knack to Know a Knave_, _Thracian Wonder_, _Leire_, _Locrine_, _Mucedorus_, _Selimus_, _Taming of A Shrew_, _Thomas Lord Cromwell_ (cf. ch. xxiv), and Shakespeare’s _Titus Andronicus_ and _Henry VI_.
FULKE GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE (_c._ 1554–1628).
Greville’s father, Sir Fulke, was a cadet of the Grevilles of Milcote, and held great estates in Warwickshire. The son was born at Beauchamp Court ten years before he entered Shrewsbury School on 17 Oct. 1564 with Philip Sidney, of whom he wrote, _c._ 1610–12, a _Life_ (ed. Nowell Smith, 1907). In 1568 he went to Jesus College, Cambridge, and from 1577 was a courtier in high favour with Elizabeth, and entrusted with minor diplomatic and administrative tasks. He took part in the great tilt of 15 May 1581 (cf. ch. xxiv) and was a steady patron of learning and letters. His own plays were for the closet. He was knighted in 1597. James granted him Warwick Castle in 1605, but he was no friend of Robert Cecil, and took no great part in affairs until 1614, when he became Chancellor of the Exchequer. In 1621 he was created Lord Brooke. On 1 Sept. 1628 he was stabbed to death by his servant Ralph Haywood. D. Lloyd, _Statesmen of England_ (1665), 504, makes him claim to have been ‘master’ to Shakespeare and Jonson.
_Collections_
_S. R._ 1632, Nov. 10 (Herbert). ‘A booke called Certaine learned and elegant Workes of Fulke Lord Brooke the perticular names are as followeth (viz^t) ... The Tragedy of Alaham. The Tragedy of Mustapha (by assignment from Master Butter).... _Seile_ (Arber, iv. 288).
1633. Certaine Learned and Elegant Workes of the Right Honorable Fulke Lord Brooke, Written in his Youth, and familiar exercise with Sir Philip Sidney. The seuerall Names of which Workes the following page doth declare. _E. P. for Henry Seyle._ [Contains _Alaham_ and _Mustapha_.]
1670. The Remains of Sir Fulk Grevill Lord Brooke: Being Poems of Monarchy and Religion: Never before Printed. _T. N. for Henry Herringham._ [Contains _Alaham_ and _Mustapha_.]
1870. A. B. Grosart, _The Works in Verse and Prose Complete of the Lord Brooke_. 4 vols. (_Fuller Worthies Library_).
_Dissertations_: M. W. Croll, _The Works of F. G._ (1903, _Pennsylvania thesis_); R. M. Cushman (_M. L. N._ xxiv. 180).
_Alaham. c. 1600_ (?)
[_MS._] Holograph at Warwick Castle (cf. Grosart, iv. 336).
1633. [Part of _Coll._ 1633. Prologue and Epilogue; at end, ‘This Tragedy, called Alaham, may be printed, this 13 day of June 1632, Henry Herbert.’]
Croll dates 1586–1600 on metrical grounds, and Cushman 1598–1603, as bearing on Elizabethan politics after Burghley’s death.
_Mustapha. 1603 < > 8_
[_MSS._] Holograph at Warwick Castle (cf. Grosart, iv. 336). _Camb. Univ. MS._ F. f. 2. 35.
_S. R._ 1608, Nov. 25 (Buck). ‘A booke called the Tragedy of Mustapha and Zangar.’ _Nathanaell Butter_ (Arber, iii. 396).
1609. The Tragedy of Mustapha. _For Nathaniel Butter._
_S. R._ 1632, Nov. 10. Transfer from Butter to Seile (Arber, iv. 288) (_vide Collections_, _supra_).
Cushman dates 1603–9, as bearing on the Jacobean doctrine of divine right.
MATTHEW GWINNE (_c._ 1558–1627).
Gwinne, the son of a London grocer of Welsh descent, entered St. John’s, Oxford, from Merchant Taylors in 1574, and became Fellow of the College, taking his B.A. in 1578, his M.A. in 1582, and his M.D. in 1593. In 1592 he was one of the overseers for the plays at the visit of Elizabeth (Boas, 252). He became Professor of Physic at Gresham College in 1597 and afterwards practised as a physician in London.
LATIN PLAYS
_Nero > 1603_
_S. R._ 1603, Feb. 23 (Buckerydge). ‘A booke called Nero Tragedia nova Matheo Gwyn medicine Doctore Colegij Divi Johannis precursoris apud Oxonienses socio Collecta.’ _Edward Blunt_ (Arber, iii. 228).
1603. Nero Tragoedia Nova; Matthaeo Gwinne Med. Doct. Collegii Diui Joannis Praecursoris apud Oxonienses Socio collecta è Tacito, Suetonio, Dione, Seneca. _Ed. Blount._ [Epistle to James, ‘Londini ex aedibus Greshamiis Cal. Jul. 1603’, signed ‘Matthaeus Gvvinne’; commendatory verses to Justus Lipsius, signed ‘Io. Sandsbury Ioannensis’; Prologue and Epilogue.]
1603. _Ed. Blount._ [Epistle to Thomas Egerton and Francis Leigh, ‘Londini ex aedibus Greshamiis in festo Cinerum 1603’; Epilogue.]
1639. _M. F. Prostant apud R. Mynne._
Boas, 390, assigns the play to St. John’s, Oxford, _c._ Easter 1603, but the S. R. entry and the ‘Elisa regnat’ of the Epilogue point to an Elizabethan date.
_Vertumnus. 29 Aug. 1605_
[_MS._] _Inner Temple Petyt MS._ 538, 43, f. 293, has a _scenario_, with the title ‘The yeare about’.
1607. Vertumnus sive Annus Recurrens Oxonii, xxix Augusti, Anno. 1605. Coram Iacobo Rege, Henrico Principe, Proceribus. A Joannensibus in Scena recitatus ab vno scriptus, Phrasi Comica propè Tragicis Senariis. _Nicholas Okes, impensis Ed. Blount._ [Epistle to Henry, signed ‘Matthaeus Gwinne’; Verses to Earl of Montgomery; commendatory verses, signed ‘Guil. Paddy’, ‘Ioa. Craigius’, ‘Io. Sansbery Ioannensis’, ‘Θώμας ὁ Φρεάῤῥεος’; _Author ad Librum_. Appended are verses, signed ‘M. G.’ and headed ‘Ad Regis introitum, è Ioannensi Collegio extra portam Vrbis Borealem sito, tres quasi Sibyllae, sic (ut e sylua) salutarunt’, which are thought to have given a hint for _Macbeth_.]
This was shown to James during his visit to Oxford, and it sent him to sleep. The performance was at Christ Church by men of St. John’s.
STEPHEN HARRISON (_c._ 1604).
Designer and describer of the arches at the coronation of James I (cf. ch. xxiv, C).
RICHARD HATHWAY (_c._ 1600).
Practically nothing is known of Hathway outside Henslowe’s diary, although he was included by Meres amongst the ‘best for comedy’ in 1598, and wrote commendatory verses for Bodenham’s _Belvedere_ (1600). It is only conjecture that relates him to the Hathaways of Shottery in Warwickshire, of whom was Shakespeare’s father-in-law, also a Richard. He has left nothing beyond an undetermined share of _1 Sir John Oldcastle_, but the following plays by him are traceable in the diary:
(a) _Plays for the Admiral’s, 1598–1602_
(i) _King Arthur._
April 1598.
(ii) _Valentine and Orson._
With Munday, July 1598. It is uncertain what relation, if any, this bore to an anonymous play of the same name which was twice entered in the S. R. on 23 May 1595 and 31 March 1600 (Arber, ii. 298, iii. 159), was ascribed in both entries to the Queen’s and not the Admiral’s, and is not known to be extant.
(iii, iv) _1, 2 Sir John Oldcastle._
With Drayton (q.v.), Munday, and Wilson, Oct.–Dec. 1599.
(v) _Owen Tudor._
With Drayton, Munday, and Wilson, Jan. 1600; but apparently not finished.
(vi) _1 Fair Constance of Rome._
With Dekker, Drayton, Munday, and Wilson (q.v.), June 1600.
(vii) _2 Fair Constance of Rome._
June 1600; but apparently not finished.
(viii) _Hannibal and Scipio._
With Rankins, Jan. 1601. Greg, ii. 216, bravely suggests that Nabbes’s play of the same name, printed as a piece of Queen Henrietta’s men in 1637, may have been a revision of this.
(ix) _Scogan and Skelton._
With Rankins, Jan.–March 1601.
(x) _The Conquest of Spain by John of Gaunt._
With Rankins, Mar.–Apr. 1601, but never finished, as shown by a letter to Henslowe from S. Rowley, bidding him let Hathway ‘have his papars agayne’ (_Henslowe Papers_, 56).
(xi, xii) _1, 2 The Six Clothiers._
With Haughton and Smith, Oct.–Nov. 1601; but the second part was apparently unfinished.
(xiii) _Too Good To Be True._
With Chettle (q.v.) and Smith, Nov. 1601–Jan. 1602.
(xiv) _Merry as May Be._
With Day and Smith, Nov. 1602.
(b) _Plays for Worcester’s, 1602–3_
(xv, xvi) _1, 2 The Black Dog of Newgate._
With Day, Smith, and an anonymous ‘other poete’, Nov. 1602–Feb. 1603.
(xvii) _The Unfortunate General._
With Day, Smith, and a third, Jan. 1603.
(c) _Play for the Admiral’s, 1603_
(xviii) _The Boss of Billingsgate._
With Day and one or more other ‘felowe poetes’, March 1603.
CHRISTOPHER HATTON (1540–91).
Christopher Hatton, of Holdenby, Northants, entered the Inner Temple in Nov. 1559. He was Master of the Game at the Grand Christmas of 1561, and the mask to which he is said to have owed his introduction to Elizabeth’s favour was probably that which the revellers took to Court, together with Norton (q.v.) and Sackville’s _Gorboduc_ on 18 Jan. 1562. He became a Gentleman Pensioner in 1564, Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, Captain of the Guard in 1572, Vice-Chamberlain and Privy Councillor in 1578, when he was knighted, and Lord Chancellor on 25 April 1587. He was conspicuous at Court in masks and tilts, and is reported, even as Lord Chancellor, to have laid aside his gown and danced at the wedding of his nephew and heir, Sir William Newport, alias Hatton, to Elizabeth Gawdy at Holdenby in June 1590.
His only contribution to the drama is as writer of an act of _Gismond of Salerne_ at the Inner Temple in 1568 (cf. s.v. Wilmot).
WILLIAM HAUGHTON (_c._ 1575–1605).
Beyond his extant work and the entries in Henslowe’s diary, in the earliest of which, on 5 Nov. 1597, he appears as ‘yonge’ Haughton, little is known of Haughton. Cooper, _Ath. Cantab._ ii. 399, identified him with an alleged Oxford M.A. of the same name who was incorporated at Cambridge in 1604, but turns out to have misread the name, which is ‘Langton’ (Baugh, 15). He worked for the Admiral’s during 1597–1602, and found himself in the Clink in March 1600. Baugh, 22, prints his will, made on 6 June 1605, and proved on 20 July. He left a widow Alice and children. Wentworth Smith (q.v.) and one Elizabeth Lewes were witnesses. He was then of Allhallows, Stainings. He cannot be traced in the parish, but the name, which in his will is Houghton, is also spelt by Henslowe Harton, Horton, Hauton, Hawton, Howghton, Haughtoun, Haulton, and Harvghton, and was common in London. He might be related to a William Houghton, saddler, who held a house in Turnmill Street in 1577 (Baugh, 11), since in 1601 (_H. P._ 57) Day requested that a sum due to Haughton and himself might be paid to ‘Will Hamton sadler’.
_Englishmen for My Money_, or _A Woman Will Have Her Will. 1598_
_S. R._ 1601, Aug. 3. ‘A comedy of A woman Will haue her Will.’ _William White_ (Arber, iii. 190).
1616. English-Men For my Money: or, A pleasant Comedy, called, A Woman will haue her Will. _W. White._
1626.... As it hath beene diuers times Acted with great applause. _I. N., sold by Hugh Perry._
1631. _A. M., sold by Richard Thrale._
_Editions_ in _O. E. D._ (1830, i) and Dodsley^4, x (1875), and by J. S. Farmer (1911, _T. F. T._), W. W. Greg (1912, _M. S. R._), and A. C. Baugh, (1917).
The evidence for Haughton’s evidence is in two payments in Henslowe’s diary of 18 Feb. and early in May 1598 on behalf of the Admiral’s. The sum of these is only £2, but it seems possible that at least one, and perhaps more than one, other payment was made for the book in 1597 (cf. Henslowe, ii. 191).
_Patient Grissell. 1599_
_With_ Chettle and Dekker (q.v.).
_Lost and Doubtful Plays_
The following plays by Haughton, all for the Admiral’s, are traceable in Henslowe’s diary:
(i) _A Woman Will Have Her Will._
See _supra_.
(ii) _The Poor Man’s Paradise._
Aug. 1599; apparently not finished.
(iii) _Cox of Collumpton._
With Day, Nov. 1599; on a ‘note’ of the play by Simon Forman, cf. ch. xiii (Admiral’s).
(iv) _Thomas Merry_, or _Beech’s Tragedy_.
With Day, Nov.–Dec. 1599, on the same theme as one of Yarington’s _Two Lamentable Tragedies_ (q.v.).
(v) _The Arcadian Virgin._
With Chettle, Dec. 1599; apparently not finished.
(vi) _Patient Grissell._
With Chettle and Dekker (q.v.), Oct.–Dec. 1599.
(vii) _The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy._
With Day and Dekker, Feb. 1600; but apparently then unfinished; possibly identical with _Lust’s Dominion_ (cf. s.v. Marlowe).
(viii) _The Seven Wise Masters._
With Chettle, Day, and Dekker, March 1600.
(ix) _Ferrex and Porrex._
March-April 1600.
(x) _The English Fugitives._
April 1600, but apparently not finished.
(xi) _The Devil and His Dame._
6 May 1600; probably the extant anonymous _Grim the Collier of Croydon_ (q.v.).
(xii) _Strange News Out of Poland._
With ‘M^r. Pett’, May 1600.
(xiii) _Judas._
Haughton had 10_s._ for this, May 1600; apparently the play was finished by Bird and S. Rowley, Dec. 1601.
(xiv) _Robin Hood’s Pennorths._
Dec. 1600–Jan. 1601; but apparently not finished.
(xv, xvi) _2, 3 The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green._
With Day (q.v.), Jan.–July 1600.
(xvii) _The Conquest of the West Indies._
With Day and Smith, April-Sept. 1601.
(xviii) _The Six Yeomen of the West._
With Day, May–June 1601.
(xix) _Friar Rush and the Proud Woman of Antwerp._
With Chettle and Day, July 1601–Jan. 1602.
(xx) _2 Tom Dough._
With Day, July–Sept. 1601; but apparently not finished.
(xxi, xxii) _1, 2 The Six Clothiers._
With Hathway and Smith, Oct.–Nov. 1601; but apparently the second part was not finished.
(xxiii) _William Cartwright._
Sept. 1602; perhaps never finished.
WALTER HAWKESWORTH (?-1606).
A Yorkshireman by birth, Hawkesworth entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1588, and became a Fellow, taking his B.A. in 1592 and his M.A. in 1595. In 1605 he went as secretary to the English embassy in Madrid, where he died.
LATIN PLAYS
_Leander. 1599_
[_MSS._] _T. C. C. MS._ R. 3. 9. _Sloane MS._ 1762. [‘Authore M^{ro} Haukesworth, Collegii Trinitatis olim Socio Acta est secundo A. D. 1602 comitiis Baccalaureorum ... primo acta est A. D. 1598.’ Prologue, ‘ut primo acta est’; Additions for revival; Actor-lists.]
_St. John’s, Cambridge, MS._ J. 8. [Dated at end ‘7 Jan. 1599’.]
_Emmanuel, Cambridge, MS._ I. 2. 30.
_Cambridge Univ. Libr. MS._ Ee. v. 16.
_Bodl. Rawl. Misc. MS._ 341.
_Lambeth MS._ 838.
The production in 1599 and 1603 indicated by the MSS. agrees with the Trinity names in the actor-lists (Boas, 399).
_Labyrinthus. 1603_ (?)
[_MSS._] _T. C. C. MS._ R. 3. 6.
_Cambridge Univ. Libr. MS._ Ee. v. 16. [Both ‘M^{ro} Haukesworth’. Prologue. Actor-list in _T. C. C. MS._]
_St. John’s, Cambridge, MS._ J. 8. _T. C. C. MS._ R. 3. 9. _Bodl. Douce MSS._ 43, 315. _Lambeth MS._ 838.
_S. R._ 1635, July 17 (Weekes). ‘A Latyn Comedy called Laborinthus &c.’ _Robinson_ (Arber, iv. 343).
1636. Labyrinthus Comoedia, habita coram Sereniss. Rege Iacobo in Academia Cantabrigiensi. _Londini, Excudebat H. R._ [Prologue.]
An allusion in the text (v. 5) to the marriage ‘_heri_’ of Leander and Flaminia has led to the assumption that production was on the day after the revival of _Leander_ in 1603; the actor-list has some inconsistencies, and is not quite conclusive for any year of the period 1603–6 (Boas, 317, 400).
MARY HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE (1561–1621).
Mary, daughter of Sir Henry, and sister of Sir Philip, Sidney, married Henry, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, in 1577. She had literary tastes and was a liberal patroness of poets, notably Samuel Daniel. Most of her time appears to have been spent at her husband’s Wiltshire seats of Wilton, Ivychurch, and Ramsbury, but in the reign of James she rented Crosby Hall in Bishopsgate, and in 1615 the King granted her for life the manor of Houghton Conquest, Beds.
_Dissertation_: F. B. Young, _Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke_ (1912).
TRANSLATION
_Antony. 1590_
_S. R._ 1592, May 3. ‘Item Anthonius a tragedie wrytten also in French by Robert Garnier ... donne in English by the Countesse of Pembrok.’ _William Ponsonby_ (Arber, ii. 611).
1592. A Discourse of Life and Death. Written in French by Ph. Mornay. Antonius, A Tragoedie written also in French by Ro. Garnier Both done in English by the Countesse of Pembroke. _For William Ponsonby._
1595. The Tragedie of Antonie. Doone ... _For William Ponsonby_.
_Edition_ by A. Luce (1897). The _Marc-Antoine_ (1578) of Robert Garnier was reissued in his _Huit Tragédies_ (1580).
ENTERTAINMENT
_Astraea. 1592_ (?)
In Davison’s _Poetical Rapsody_ (1602, S. R. 28 May 1602) is ‘A Dialogue betweene two Shepheards, Thenot and Piers, in Praise of Astrea. Made by the excellent Lady the Lady Mary Countesse of Pembrook at the Queenes Maiesties being at her house at ---- Anno 15--’.
S. Lee (_D. N. B._) puts the visit at Wilton ‘late in 1599’. But there was no progress in 1599, and progresses to Wilts. planned in 1600, 1601, and 1602 were abandoned. Presumably the verses were written for the visit to Ramsbury of 27–9 Aug. 1592 (cf. App. A).
JASPER HEYWOOD (1535–98).
Translator of Seneca (q.v.).
THOMAS HEYWOOD (_c._ 1570–1641).
Heywood regarded Lincolnshire as his ‘country’ and had an uncle Edmund, who had a friend Sir Henry Appleton. K. L. Bates has found Edmund Heywood’s will of 7 Oct. 1624 in which Thomas Heywood and his wife are mentioned, and has shown it to be not improbable that Edmund was the son of Richard Heywood, a London barrister who had manors in Lincolnshire. If so, Thomas was probably the son of Edmund’s disinherited elder brother Christopher who was aged 30 in 1570. And if Richard Heywood is the same who appears in the circle of Sir Thomas More, a family connexion with the dramatist John Heywood may be conjectured. The date of Thomas’s birth is unknown, but he tells us that he was at Cambridge, although a tradition that he became Fellow of Peterhouse cannot be confirmed, and is therefore not likely to have begun his stage career before the age of 18 or thereabouts. Perhaps we may conjecture that he was born _c._ 1570, for a Thomas Heywood is traceable in the St. Saviour’s, Southwark, token-books from 1588 to 1607, and children of Thomas Heywood ‘player’ were baptized in the same parish from 28 June 1590 to 5 Sept. 1605 (Collier, in _Bodl. MS._ 29445). This is consistent with his knowledge (App. C, No. lvii) of Tarlton, but not of earlier actors. He may, therefore, so far as dates are concerned, easily have written _The Four Prentices_ as early as 1592; but that he in fact did so, as well as his possible contributions to the Admiral’s repertory of 1594–7, are matters of inference (cf. Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 284). The editors of the _Apology for Actors_ (Introd. v) say that in his _Funeral Elegy upon James I_ (1625) he claims to have been ‘the theatrical servant of the Earl of Southampton, the patron of Shakespeare’. I have never seen the Elegy. It is not in the B. M., but a copy passed from the Bindley to the Brown collection. There is no other evidence that Southampton ever had a company of players. The first dated notice of Heywood is in a payment of Oct. 1596 on behalf of the Admiral’s ‘for Hawodes bocke’. On 25 March 1598 he bound himself to Henslowe for two years as an actor, doubtless for the Admiral’s, then in process of reconstitution. Between Dec. 1598 and Feb. 1599 he wrote two plays for this company, and then disappears from their records. He was not yet out of his time with Henslowe, but if _Edward IV_ is really his, he may have been enabled to transfer his services to Derby’s men, who seem to have established themselves in London in the course of 1599. By the autumn of 1602 he was a member of Worcester’s, for whom he had probably already written _How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad_. He now reappears in Henslowe’s diary both as actor and as playwright. On 1 Sept, he borrowed 2_s._ 6_d._ to buy garters, and between 4 Sept, and 6 March 1603 he wrote or collaborated in not less than seven plays for the company. During the same winter he also helped in one play for the Admiral’s. It seems probable that some of his earlier work was transferred to Worcester’s. He remained with them, and in succession to them Queen Anne’s, until the company broke up soon after the death of the Queen in 1619. Very little of his work got into print. Of the twelve plays at most which appeared before 1619, the first seven were unauthorized issues; from 1608 onwards, he himself published five with prefatory epistles. About this date, perhaps in the enforced leisure of plague-time, he also began to produce non-dramatic works, both in prose and verse, of which the _Apology for Actors_, published in 1612, but written some years earlier (cf. App. C, No. lvii), is the most important. The loss of his _Lives of All the Poets_, apparently begun _c._ 1614 and never finished, is irreparable. After 1619 Heywood is not traceable at all as an actor; nor for a good many years, with the exception of one play, _The Captives_, for the Lady Elizabeth’s in 1624, as a playwright, either on the stage or in print. In 1623 a Thomas Heywarde lived near Clerkenwell Hill (_Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xlvi. 345) and is probably the dramatist. In 1624 he claims in the Epistle to _Gynaikeion_ the renewed patronage of the Earl of Worcester, since ‘I was your creature, and amongst other your servants, you bestowed me upon the excellent princesse Q. Anne ... but by her lamented death, your gift is returned againe into your hands’. But about 1630 he emerges again. Old plays of his were revived and new ones produced both by Queen Henrietta’s men at the Cockpit and the King’s at the Globe and Blackfriars. He wrote the Lord Mayor’s pageants for a series of years. He sent ten more plays to the press, and included a number of prologues, epilogues, and complimentary speeches of recent composition in his _Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas_ of 1637. This period lies outside my survey. I have dealt with all plays in which there is a reasonable prospect of finding early work, but have not thought it necessary to discuss _The English Traveller_, or _A Maidenhead Well Lost_, merely because of tenuous attempts by Fleay to connect them with lost plays written for Worcester’s or still earlier anonymous work for the Admiral’s, any more than _The Fair Maid of the West_, _The Late Lancashire Witches_, or _A Challenge for Beauty_, with regard to which no such suggestion is made. As to _Love’s Mistress_, see the note on _Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas_. The Epistle to _The English Traveller_ (1633) is worth quoting. Heywood describes the play as ‘one reserued amongst two hundred and twenty, in which I haue had either an entire hand, or at the least a maine finger’, and goes on to explain why his pieces have not appeared as _Works_. ‘One reason is, that many of them by shifting and change of Companies, haue beene negligently lost, Others of them are still retained in the hands of some Actors, who thinke it against their peculiar profit to haue them come in Print, and a third, That it neuer was any great ambition in me, to bee in this kind Volumniously read.’ Heywood’s statement would give him an average of over five plays a year throughout a forty years’ career, and even if we assume that he included every piece which he revised or supplied with a prologue, it is obvious that the score or so plays that we have and the dozen or so others of which we know the names must fall very short of his total output. ‘Tho. Heywood, Poet’, was buried at St. James’s, Clerkenwell, on 16 Aug. 1641 (_Harl. Soc. Reg._ xvii. 248), and therefore the alleged mention of him as still alive in _The Satire against Separatists_ (1648) must rest on a misunderstanding.
_Collections_
1842–51. B. Field and J. P. Collier, _The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood_. 2 vols. (_Shakespeare Society_). [Intended for a complete edition, although issued in single parts; a title-page for vol. i was issued in 1850 and the 10th Report of the Society treats the plays for 1851 as completing vol. ii. Twelve plays were issued, as cited _infra_.]
1874. _The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood._ 6 vols. (_Pearson Reprints_). [All the undoubted plays, with _Edward IV_ and _Fair Maid of the Exchange_; also Lord Mayors’ Pageants and part of _Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas_.]
1888. A. W. Verity, _The Best Plays of Thomas Heywood_ (_Mermaid Series_). [_Woman Killed with Kindness_, _Fair Maid of the West_, _English Traveller_, _Wise Woman of Hogsdon_, _Rape of Lucrece._]
_Dissertations_: K. L. Bates, _A Conjecture as to Thomas Heywood’s Family_ (1913, _J. G. P._ xii. 1); P. Aronstein, _Thomas Heywood_ (1913, _Anglia_, xxxvii. 163).
_The Four Prentices of London. 1592_ (?)
_S. R._ 1594, June 19. ‘An enterlude entituled Godfrey of Bulloigne with the Conquest of Jerusalem.’ _John Danter_ (Arber, ii. 654).
1615. The Foure Prentises of London. With the Conquest of Ierusalem. As it hath bene diuerse times Acted, at the Red Bull, by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by Thomas Heywood. _For I. W._ [Epistle to the Prentices, signed ‘Thomas Heywood’ and Prologue, really an Induction.]
1632.... Written and newly reuised by Thomas Heywood. _Nicholas Okes._
_Editions_ in Dodsley^{2, 3} (1780–1827) and by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ iii).
The Prologue gives the title as _True and Strange, or The Four Prentises of London_. The Epistle speaks of the play as written ‘many yeares since, in my infancy of iudgment in this kinde of poetry, and my first practice’ and ‘some fifteene or sixteene yeares agoe’. This would, by itself, suggest a date shortly after the publication of Fairfax’s translation from Tasso under the title of _Godfrey of Bulloigne, or The Recouerie of Ierusalem_ in 1600. But the Epistle also refers to a recent revival of ‘the commendable practice of long forgotten armes’ in ‘the Artillery Garden’. This, according to Stowe, _Annales_ (1615), 906, was in 1610, which leads Fleay, i. 182, followed by Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 166), to assume that the Epistle was written for an edition, now lost, of about that date. In support they cite Beaumont’s _K. B. P._ iv. 1 (dating it 1610 instead of 1607), ‘Read the play of the _Foure Prentices of London_, where they tosse their pikes so’. Then, calculating back sixteen years, they arrive at the anonymous _Godfrey of Bulloigne_ produced by the Admiral’s on 19 July 1594, and identify this with _The Four Prentices_, in which Godfrey is a character. But this _Godfrey of Bulloigne_ was a second part, and it is difficult to suppose that the first part was anything but the play entered on the S. R. earlier in 1594. This, from its title, clearly left no room for a second part covering the same ground as _The Four Prentices_, which ends with the capture of Jerusalem. If then Heywood’s play is as old as 1594 at all, it must be identified with the first part of _Godfrey of Bulloigne_. And is not this in its turn likely to be the _Jerusalem_ played by Strange’s men on 22 March and 25 April 1592? If so, Heywood’s career began very early, and, as we can hardly put his Epistle earlier than the opening of the Artillery Garden in 1610, his ‘fifteene or sixteene yeares’ must be rather an understatement. There is of course nothing in the Epistle itself to suggest that the play had been previously printed, but we know from the Epistle to _Lucrece_ that the earliest published plays by Heywood were surreptitious.
Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 230, hesitatingly suggests that a purchase by Worcester’s of ‘iiij lances for the comody of Thomas Hewedes & M^r. Smythes’ on 3 Sept. 1602 may have been for a revival of _The Four Prentices_, ‘where they tosse their pikes so’, transferred from the Admiral’s. But I think his afterthought, that the comedy was Heywood and Smith’s _Albere Galles_, paid for on the next day, is sound.
_Sir Thomas Wyatt. 1602_
See s.v. Dekker.
_The Royal King and the Loyal Subject. 1602_ (?)
_S. R._ 1637, March 25 (Thomas Herbert, deputy to Sir Henry Herbert). ‘A Comedy called the Royall king and the Loyall Subiects by Master Heywood.’ _James Beckett_ (Arber, iv. 376).
1637. The Royall King, and the Loyall Subject. As it hath beene Acted with great Applause by the Queenes Maiesties Servants. Written by Thomas Heywood. _Nich. and John Okes for James Becket._ [Prologue to the Stage and Epilogue to the Reader.]
_Editions_ by J. P. Collier (1850, _Sh. Soc._) and K. W. Tibbals (1906, _Pennsylvania Univ. Publ._).--_Dissertation_: O. Kämpfer, _Th. Heywood’s The Royal King and Painter’s Palace of Pleasure_ (1903, _Halle diss._).
The Epilogue describes the play as ‘old’, and apparently relates it to a time when rhyme, of which it makes considerable use, was more looked after than ‘strong lines’, and when stuffed and puffed doublets and trunk-hose were worn, which would fit the beginning of the seventeenth century. An anonymous Marshal is a leading character, and the identification by Fleay, i. 300, with the _Marshal Osric_ written by Heywood and Smith for Worcester’s in Sept. 1602 is not the worst of his guesses.
_A Woman Killed With Kindness. 1603_
1607. A Woman Kilde with Kindnesse. Written by Tho: Heywood. _William Jaggard, sold by John Hodgets._ [Prologue and Epilogue.]
1617.... As it hath beene oftentimes Acted by the Queenes Maiest. Seruants.... The third Edition. _Isaac Jaggard._
_Editions_ in Dodsley^{1, 2, 3} (1744–1827) and by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ ii), J. P. Collier (1850, _Sh. Soc._), A. W. Ward (1897, _T. D._), F. J. Cox (1907), W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._), K. L. Bates (1919).--_Dissertation_: R. G. Martin, _A New Source for a Woman Killed with Kindness_ (1911, _E. S._ xliii. 229).
Henslowe, on behalf of Worcester’s, paid Heywood £6 for this play in Feb. and March 1603 and also bought properties for it. It is mentioned in T. M., _The Black Book of London_ (1604), sig. E3.
_The Wise Woman of Hogsdon. c. 1604_ (?)
_S. R._ 1638, Mar. 12 (Wykes). ‘A Play called The wise woman of Hogsden by Thomas Haywood.’ _Henry Sheapard_ (Arber, iv. 411).
1638. The Wise Woman of Hogsdon. A Comedie. As it hath been sundry times Acted with great Applause. Written by Tho: Heywood. _M. P. for Henry Shephard._
Fleay, i. 291, suggested a date _c._ 1604 on the grounds of allusions to other plays of which _A Woman Killed with Kindness_ is the latest (ed. Pearson, v. 316), and a conjectural identification with Heywood’s _How to Learn of a Woman to Woo_, played by the Queen’s at Court on 30 Dec. 1604. The approximate date is accepted by Ward, ii. 574, and others. It may be added that there are obvious parallelisms with the anonymous _How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad_ (1602) generally assigned to Heywood.
_If You Know not Me, You Know Nobody. 1605_
_S. R._ 1605, July 5 (Hartwell). ‘A booke called yf you knowe not me you knowe no body.’ _Nathaniel Butter_ (Arber, iii. 295).
1605, Sept. 14 (Hartwell). ‘A Booke called the Second parte of Yf you knowe not me you knowe no bodie with the buildinge of the exchange.’ _Nathaniel Butter_ (Arber, iii. 301).
[_Part i_]
1605. If you Know not me, You Know no bodie: Or, The troubles of Queene Elizabeth. _For Nathaniel Butter._
1606, 1608, 1610, 1613, 1623, 1632, 1639.
[_Part ii_]
1606. The Second Part of, If you Know not me, you know no bodie. With the building of the Royall Exchange: And the famous Victorie of Queene Elizabeth, in the Yeare 1588. _For Nathaniell Butter._
1609.... With the Humors of Hobson and Tawny-cote. _For Nathaniell Butter._
N.D. [1623?].
1632. _For Nathaniel Butter._ [With different version of Act V.]
_Editions_ by J. P. Collier (1851, _Sh. Soc._) and J. Blew (1876).--_Dissertation_: B. A. P. van Dam and C. Stoffel, _The Fifth Act of Thomas Heywood’s Queen Elizabeth: Second Part_ (1902, _Jahrbuch_, xxxviii. 153).
_Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas_, 248, has ‘A Prologue to the Play of Queene Elizabeth as it was last revived at the Cockpit, in which the Author taxeth the most corrupted copy now imprinted, which was published without his consent’. It says:
This: (by what fate I know not) sure no merit, That it disclaimes, may for the age inherit. Writing ’bove one and twenty; but ill nurst, And yet receiv’d, as well perform’d at first, Grac’t and frequented, for the cradle age, Did throng the Seates, the Boxes, and the Stage So much; that some by Stenography drew The plot: put it in print: (scarce one word trew:)
There is also an Epilogue, which shows that both parts were revived. The piracy may serve to date the original production in 1605 and the Caroline revival probably led to the reprints of 1632. As the play passed to the Cockpit, it was presumably written for Queen Anne’s. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 223) rightly resists the suggestion that it was the old _Philip of Spain_ bought by the Admiral’s from Alleyn in 1602. It is only Part i which has characteristics attributable to stenography, and this remained unrevised. According to Van Dam and Stoffel, the 1606 and 1632 editions of Part ii represent the same original text, in the first case shortened for representation, in the second altered by a press-corrector.
_Fortune by Land and Sea. c. 1607_ (?)
_With_ W. Rowley.
_S. R._ 1655, June 20. ‘Fortune by Land & sea, a tragicomedie, written by Tho: Heywood & Wm. Rowley.’ _John Sweeting_ (Eyre, i. 486).
1655. Fortune by Land and Sea. A Tragi-Comedy. As it was Acted with great Applause by the Queens Servants. Written by Tho. Haywood and William Rowly. _For John Sweeting and Robert Pollard._
_Edition_ by B. Field (1846, _Sh. Soc._).--_Dissertation_: Oxoniensis, _Illustration of Fortune by Land and Sea_ (1847, _Sh. Soc. Papers_, iii. 7).
The action is placed in the reign of Elizabeth (cf. ed. Pearson, vi, pp. 409, 431), but this may be due merely to the fact that the source is a pamphlet (S. R. 15 Aug. 1586) dealing with Elizabethan piracy. Rowley’s co-operation suggests the date 1607–9 when he was writing for Queen Anne’s men, and other trifling evidence (Aronstein, 237) makes such a date plausible.
_The Rape of Lucrece. 1603 < > 8_
_S. R._ 1608, June 3 (Buck). ‘A Booke called A Romane tragedie called The Rape of Lucrece.’ _John Busby and Nathanael Butter_ (Arber, iii. 380).
1608. The Rape of Lucrece. A True Roman Tragedie. With the seuerall Songes in their apt places, by Valerius, the merrie Lord amongst the Roman Peeres. Acted by her Maiesties Seruants at the Red Bull, neare Clarkenwell. Written by Thomas Heywood. _For I. B._ [Epistle to the Reader, signed ‘T. H.’]
1609. _For I. B._
1630.... The fourth Impression.... _For Nathaniel Butter._
1638.... The copy revised, and sundry Songs before omitted, now inserted in their right places.... _John Raworth for Nathaniel Butter._ [Note to the Reader at end.]
_Edition_ in 1825 (_O. E. D._ i).
Fleay, i. 292, notes the mention of ‘the King’s head’ as a tavern sign for ‘the Gentry’, which suggests a Jacobean date. The play was given at Court, apparently by the King’s and Queen’s men together, on 13 Jan. 1612. The Epistle says that it has not been Heywood’s custom ‘to commit my Playes to the Presse’, like others who ‘have used a double sale of their labours, first to the Stage, and after to the Presse’. He now does so because ‘some of my Playes have (unknowne to me, and without any of my direction) accidentally come into the Printers hands (and therefore so corrupt and mangled, copied only by the eare) that I have beene as unable to knowe them, as ashamed to challenge them’. A play on the subject seems to have been on tour in Germany in 1619 (Herz, 98). _The Rape of Lucrece_ was on the Cockpit stage in 1628, according to a newsletter in _Athenaeum_ (1879), ii. 497, and to the 1638 edition are appended songs ‘added by the stranger that lately acted Valerius his part’. It is in the Cockpit list of plays in 1639 (_Variorum_, iii. 159).
_The Golden Age > 1611_
_S. R._ 1611, Oct. 14 (Buck). William Barrenger, ‘A booke called, The golden age with the liues of Jupiter and Saturne.’ _William Barrenger_ (Arber, iii. 470).
1611. The Golden Age. Or The liues of Iupiter and Saturne, with the defining of the Heathen Gods. As it hath beene sundry times acted at the Red Bull, by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by Thomas Heywood. _For William Barrenger._ [Epistle to the Reader, signed ‘T. H.’ Some copies have ‘defining’ corrected to ‘deifying’ in the title.]
_Edition_ by J. P. Collier (1851, _Sh. Soc._).
The Epistle describes the play as ‘the eldest brother of three Ages, that haue aduentured the Stage, but the onely yet, that hath beene iudged to the presse’, and promises the others. It came to the press ‘accidentally’, but Heywood, ‘at length hauing notice thereof’, prefaced it, as it had ‘already past the approbation of auditors’. Fleay, i. 283, followed hesitatingly by Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 175), thinks it a revision of the _Olympo_ or _Seleo & Olempo_, which he interprets _Coelo et Olympo_, produced by the Admiral’s on 5 March 1595. The Admiral’s inventories show that they had a play with Neptune in it, but it is only at the very end of _The Golden Age_ that the sons of Saturn draw lots and Jupiter wins Heaven or Olympus. Fleay’s assumption that the play was revised _c._ 1610, because of Dekker, _If it be not Good_, i. 1, ‘The Golden Age is moulding new again’, is equally hazardous.
_The Silver Age > 1612_
1613. The Silver Age, Including. The loue of Iupiter to Alcmena: The birth of Hercules. And the Rape of Proserpine. Concluding, With the Arraignement of the Moone. Written by Thomas Heywood. _Nicholas Okes, sold by Beniamin Lightfoote._ [Epistle to the Reader, signed ‘T. H,’; Prologue and Epilogue.]
_Edition_ by J. P. Collier (1851, _Sh. Soc._).
The Epistle says, ‘Wee begunne with _Gold_, follow with _Siluer_, proceede with _Brasse_, and purpose by Gods grace, to end with _Iron_’. Fleay, i. 283, and Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 175) take this and _The Brazen Age_ to be the two parts of the anonymous _Hercules_, produced by the Admiral’s men on 7 and 23 May 1595 respectively. It may be so. But the text presumably represents the play as given at Court, apparently by the King’s and Queen’s men together, on 12 Jan. 1612. An Anglo-German _Amphitryo_ traceable in 1626 and 1678 may be based on Heywood’s work (Herz, 66; _Jahrbuch_, xli. 201).
_The Brazen Age > 1613_
1613. The Brazen Age, The first Act containing, The death of the Centaure Nessus, The Second, The Tragedy of Meleager: The Third The Tragedy of Iason and Medea. The Fourth. Vulcans Net. The Fifth. The Labours and death of Hercules: Written by Thomas Heywood. _Nicholas Okes for Samuel Rand._ [Epistle to the Reader; Prologue and Epilogue.]
Cf. s.v. _The Silver Age_.
_The Iron Age. c. 1613_ (?)
1632. [_Part i_] The Iron Age: Contayning the Rape of Hellen: The siege of Troy: The Combate betwixt Hector and Aiax: Hector and Troilus slayne by Achilles: Achilles slaine by Paris: Aiax and Vlesses contend for the Armour of Achilles: The Death of Aiax, &c. Written by Thomas Heywood. _Nicholas Okes._ [Epistles to Thomas Hammon and to the Reader, signed ‘Thomas Heywood’.]
1632. [_Part ii_] The Second Part of the Iron Age. Which contayneth the death of Penthesilea, Paris, Priam, and Hecuba: The burning of Troy: The deaths of Agamemnon, Menelaus, Clitemnestra, Hellena, Orestes, Egistus, Pillades, King Diomed, Pyrhus, Cethus, Synon, Thersites, &c. Written by Thomas Heywood. _Nicholas Okes._ [Epistles to the Reader and to Thomas Mannering, signed ‘Thomas Heywood’.]
_Dissertation_: R. G. Martin, _A New Specimen of the Revenge Play_ (1918, _M. P._ xvi. 1).
The Epistles tell us that ‘these were the playes often (and not with the least applause,) Publickely Acted by two Companies, vppon one Stage at once, and haue at sundry times thronged three seuerall Theaters, with numerous and mighty Auditories’; also that they ‘haue beene long since Writ’. This, however, was in 1632, and I can only read the Epistles to the earlier _Ages_ as indicating that the _Iron Age_ was contemplated, but not yet in existence, up to 1613. I should therefore put the play _c._ 1613, and take the three theatres at which it was given to be the Curtain, Red Bull, and Cockpit. Fleay, i. 285, thinks that Part i was the anonymous _Troy_ produced by the Admiral’s on 22 June 1596. More plausible is the conjecture of Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 180) that this was ‘an earlier and shorter version later expanded into the two-part play’. Spencer had a play on the Destruction of Troy at Nuremberg in 1613 (Herz, 66).
_Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas. 1630–6_ (?)
_S. R._ 1635, Aug. 29 (Weekes). ‘A booke called Pleasant Dialogues and Dramma’s selected out of Lucian Erasmus Textor Ovid &c. by Thomas Heywood.’ _Richard Hearne_ (Arber, iv. 347).
1637. Pleasant Dialogues and Dramma’s, selected out of Lucian, Erasmus, Textor, Ovid, &c. With sundry Emblems extracted from the most elegant Iacobus Catsius. As also certaine Elegies, Epitaphs, and Epithalamions or Nuptiall Songs; Anagrams and Acrosticks; With divers Speeches (upon severall occasions) spoken to their most Excellent Majesties, King Charles, and Queene Mary. With other Fancies translated from Beza, Bucanan, and sundry Italian Poets. By Tho. Heywood. _R. O. for R. H., sold by Thomas Slater._ [Epistle to the Generous Reader, signed ‘Tho. Heywood’, and Congratulatory Poems by Sh. Marmion, D. E., and S. N.]
_Edition_ by W. Bang (1903, _Materialien_, iii).
The section called ‘Sundry Fancies writ upon severall occasions’ (Bang, 231) includes a number of Prologues and Epilogues, of which those which are datable fall between 1630 and 1636. Bang regards all the contents of the volume as of about this period. Fleay, i. 285, had suggested that _Deorum Judicium_, _Jupiter and Io_, _Apollo and Daphne_, _Amphrisa_, and possibly _Misanthropos_ formed the anonymous _Five Plays in One_ produced by the Admiral’s on 7 April 1597, and also that _Misanthropos_, which he supposed to bear the name _Time’s Triumph_, was played with _Faustus_ on 13 April 1597 and carelessly entered by Henslowe as ‘times triumpe & fortus’. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 183) says of the _Dialogues and Dramas_, ‘many of the pieces in that collection are undoubtedly early’. He rejects Fleay’s views as to _Misanthropos_ on the grounds that it is ‘unrelieved tediousness’ and has no claim to the title _Time’s Triumph_, and is doubtful as to _Deorum Judicium_. The three others he seems inclined to accept as possibly belonging to the 1597 series, especially _Jupiter and Io_, where the unappropriated head of Argus in one of the Admiral’s inventories tempts him. He is also attracted by an alternative suggestion of Fleay’s that one of the _Five Plays in One_ may have been a _Cupid and Psyche_, afterwards worked up into _Love’s Mistress_ (1636). This he says, ‘if it existed’, would suit very well. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that it did exist. Moreover, P. A. Daniel has shown that certain lines found in _Love’s Mistress_ are assigned to Dekker in _England’s Parnassus_ (1600, ed. Crawford, xxxi. 509, 529) and must be from the _Cupid and Psyche_ produced by the Admiral’s _c._ June 1600 (_Henslowe_, ii. 212). There is no indication that Heywood collaborated with Dekker, Chettle, and Day in this; but it occurs to me that, if he was still at the Rose, he may have acted in the play and cribbed years afterwards from the manuscript of his part. I will only add that _Misanthropos_ and _Deorum Judicium_ seem to me out of the question. They belong to the series of ‘dialogues’ which Heywood in his Epistle clearly treats as distinct from the ‘dramas’, for after describing them he goes on, ‘For such as delight in Stage-poetry, here are also divers Dramma’s, never before published: Which, though some may condemne for their shortnesse, others againe will commend for their sweetnesse’. It is only _Jupiter and Io_ and _Apollo and Daphne_, which are based on Ovid, and _Amphrisa_, for which there is no known source, that can belong to this group; and Heywood gives no indication as to their date.
_Lost and Doubtful Plays_
On _How to Learn of a Woman to Woo_, see s.v. _The Wise Woman of Hogsden_. The author of _The Second Part of Hudibras_ (1663) names Heywood as the author of _The Bold Beauchamps_, which is mentioned with _Jane Shore_ in _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, Ind. 59.
The following is a complete list of the plays, by Heywood or conjecturally assigned to him, which are recorded in Henslowe’s diary:
_Possible plays for the Admiral’s, 1594–7_
For conjectures as to the authorship by Heywood of _Godfrey of Bulloigne_ (1594), _The Siege of London_ (>1594), _Wonder of a Woman_ (1595), _Seleo and Olympo_ (1595), _1, 2 Hercules_ (1595), _Troy_ (1596), _Five Plays in One_ (1597), _Time’s Triumph_ (>1597), see _The Four Prentices_, the anonymous _Edward IV_, W. Rowley’s _A New Wonder_, _The Golden Age_, _The Silver Age_, _The Iron Age_, _Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas_.
_Plays for the Admiral’s, 1598–1603_
(i) _War without Blows and Love without Suit._
Dec. 1598–Jan. 1599; identified, not plausibly, by Fleay, i. 287, with the anonymous _Thracian Wonder_ (q.v.).
(ii) _Joan as Good as my Lady._
Feb. 1599, identified, conjecturally, by Fleay, i. 298, with _A Maidenhead Well Lost_, printed as Heywood’s in 1634.
(iii) _1 The London Florentine._
With Chettle, Dec. 1602–Jan. 1603.
_Plays for Worcester’s, 1602–3_
(iv) _Albere Galles._
With Smith, Sept. 1602, possibly identical with the anonymous _Nobody and Somebody_ (q.v.).
(v) _Cutting Dick_ (additions only).
Sept. 1602, identified by Fleay, ii. 319, with the anonymous _Trial of Chivalry_, but not plausibly (Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 231).
(vi) _Marshal Osric._
With Smith, Sept. 1602, conceivably identical with _The Royal King and the Loyal Subject_ (q.v.).
(vii) _1 Lady Jane._
With Chettle, Dekker, Smith, and Webster, Oct. 1602, doubtless represented by the extant _Sir Thomas Wyatt_ of Dekker (q.v.) and Webster, in which, however, Heywood’s hand has not been traced.
(viii) _Christmas Comes but Once a Year_.
With Chettle, Dekker, and Webster, Nov. 1602.
(ix) _The Blind Eats many a Fly_.
Nov. 1602–Jan. 1603.
(x) [Unnamed play.]
With Chettle, Jan. 1603, but apparently not finished, or possibly identical with the _Shore_ of Chettle (q.v.) and Day. The title _Like Quits Like_, inserted into one entry for this play, is a forgery (Greg, _Henslowe_, i. xliii).
(xi) _A Woman Killed With Kindness_.
Feb.–March 1603. _Vide supra._
Heywood’s hand or ‘finger’ has also been suggested in the _Appius and Virginia_ printed as Webster’s (q.v.), in _Pericles_, and in _Fair Maid of the Exchange_, _George a Greene_, _How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad_, _Thomas Lord Cromwell_, and _Work for Cutlers_ (cf. ch. xxiv).
GRIFFIN HIGGS (1589–1659).
A student at St. John’s, Oxford (1606), afterwards Fellow of Merton (1611), Chaplain to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (1627), and Dean of Lichfield (1638). The MS. of _The Christmas Prince_ (_1607_) was once thought to be in his handwriting (cf. ch. xxiv, C).
THOMAS HUGHES (_c._ 1588).
A Cheshire man, who matriculated from Queens’ College, Cambridge, in Nov. 1571 and became Fellow of the College on 8 Sept. 1576.
_The Misfortunes of Arthur. 28 Feb. 1588_
1587. Certain deuises and shewes presented to her Maiestie by the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne at her Highnesse Court in Greenewich, the twenty-eighth day of Februarie in the thirtieth yeare of her Maiesties most happy Raigne. _Robert Robinson._ [‘An Introduction penned by Nicholas Trotte Gentleman one of the society of Grayes Inne’; followed by ‘The misfortunes of Arthur (Vther Pendragons Sonne) reduced into Tragicall notes by Thomas Hughes one of the societie of Grayes Inne. And here set downe as it past from vnder his handes and as it was presented, excepting certaine wordes and lines, where some of the Actors either helped their memories by brief omission: or fitted their acting by some alteration. With a note at the ende, of such speaches as were penned by others in lue of some of these hereafter following’; Arguments, Dumb-Shows, and Choruses between the Acts; at end, two substituted speeches ‘penned by William Fulbecke gentleman, one of the societie of Grayes Inne’; followed by ‘Besides these speaches there was also penned a Chorus for the first act, and an other for the second act, by Maister Frauncis Flower, which were pronounced accordingly. The dumbe showes were partly deuised by Maister Christopher Yeluerton, Maister Frauncis Bacon, Maister Iohn Lancaster and others, partly by the saide Maister Flower, who with Maister Penroodocke and the said Maister Lancaster directed these proceedings at Court.’]
_Editions_ in Collier, _Five Old Plays_ (1833), and Dodsley^4 (1874, iv), and by H. C. Grumbine (1900), J. S. Farmer (1911, _T. F. T._), and J. W. Cunliffe (1912, _E. E. C. T._).
Of the seven collaborators, three--Bacon, Yelverton, and Fulbecke--subsequently attained distinction. It is to be wished that editors of more important plays had been as communicative as offended dignity, or some other cause, made Thomas Hughes.
WILLIAM HUNNIS (?-1597).
[Nearly all that is known of Hunnis, except as regards his connexion with the Blackfriars, and much that is conjectural has been gathered and fully illustrated by Mrs. C. C. Stopes in _Athenaeum_ and _Shakespeare-Jahrbuch_ papers, and finally in _William Hunnis and the Revels of the Chapel Royal_ (1910, _Materialien_, xxix).]
The date of Hunnis’s birth is unknown, except as far as it can be inferred from the reference to him as ‘in winter of thine age’ in 1578. He is described on the title-page of his translation of _Certayne Psalmes_ (1550) as ‘seruant’ to Sir William Herbert, who became Earl of Pembroke. He is in the lists of the Gentlemen of the Chapel about 1553, but he took part in plots against Mary and in 1556 was sent to the Tower. He lost his post, but this was restored between Elizabeth’s accession in 1558 and the opening of the extant _Cheque Book_ of the Chapel in 1561, and on 15 Nov. 1566 he was appointed Master of the Children in succession to Richard Edwardes (q.v.). For the history of his Mastership, cf. ch. xii (Chapel). Early in 1559 he married Margaret, widow of Nicholas Brigham, Teller of the Exchequer, through whom he acquired a life-interest in the secularized Almonry at Westminster. She died in June 1559, and about 1560 Hunnis married Agnes Blancke, widow of a Grocer. He took out the freedom of the Grocers’ Company, and had a shop in Southwark. He was elected to the livery of the Company in 1567, but disappears from its records before 1586. In 1569 he obtained a grant of arms, and is described as of Middlesex. From 1576–85, however, he seems to have had a house at Great Ilford, Barking, Essex. His only known child, Robin, was page to Walter Earl of Essex in Ireland, and is said in _Leicester’s Commonwealth_ to have tasted the poison with which Leicester killed Essex in 1576 and to have lost his hair. But he became a Rider of the Stable under Leicester as Master of the Horse during 1579–83, and received payments for posting services in later years up to 1593. In 1562 William Hunnis became Keeper of the Orchard and Gardens at Greenwich, and held this post with his Mastership to his death. He supplied greenery and flowers for the Banqueting Houses of 1569 and 1571 (cf. ch. i). In 1570 the Queen recommended him to the City as Taker of Tolls and Dues on London Bridge, and his claim was bought off for £40. In 1583 he called attention to the poor remuneration of the Mastership, and in 1585 he received grants of land at Great Ilford and elsewhere. He died on 6 June 1597.
Hunnis published several volumes of moral and religious verse, original and translated: _Certayne Psalmes_ (1550); _A Godly new Dialogue of Christ and a Sinner_ (S. R. 1564, if this is rightly identified with the _Dialogue_ of Hunnis’s 1583 volume); _A Hive Full of Honey_ (1578, S. R. 1 Dec. 1577, dedicated to Leicester); _A Handful of Honnisuckles_ (N.D., S. R. 11 Dec. 1578, a New Year’s gift to the Ladies of the Privy Chamber); _Seven Sobbes of a Sorrowful Soule for Sinne_ (1583, S. R. 7 Nov. 1581, with the _Handful of Honnisuckles_, _The Widow’s Mite_, and _A Comfortable Dialogue between Christ and a Sinner_, dedicated to Lady Sussex); _Hunnies Recreations_ (1588, S. R. 4 Dec. 1587, dedicated to Sir Thomas Heneage). Several poems by Hunnis are also with those of Richard Edwardes and others in _The Paradyse of Daynty Deuises_ (1567); one, the _Nosegay_, in Clement Robinson’s _A Handfull of Pleasant Delites_ (1584); and it is usual to assign to him two bearing the initials W. H., _Wodenfride’s Song in Praise of Amargana_ and _Another of the Same_, in _England’s Helicon_ (1600).
The name of no play by Hunnis has been preserved, although he may probably enough have written some of those produced by the Chapel boys during his Mastership. That he was a dramatist is testified to by the following lines contributed by Thomas Newton, one of the translators of Seneca, to his _Hive Full of Honey_.
In prime of youth thy pleasant Penne depaincted Sonets sweete, Delightfull to the greedy Eare, for youthfull Humour meete. Therein appeared thy pregnant wit, and store of fyled Phraze Enough t’ astoune the doltish Drone, and lumpish Lout amaze, Thy Enterludes, thy gallant Layes, thy Rond’letts and thy Songes, Thy Nosegay and thy Widowes’ Mite, with that thereto belonges.... ... Descendinge then in riper years to stuffe of further reache, Thy schooled Quill by deeper skill did graver matters teache, And now to knit a perfect Knot; In winter of thine age Such argument thou chosen hast for this thy Style full sage. As far surmounts the Residue.
Newton’s account of his friend’s poetic evolution seems to assign his ‘enterludes’ to an early period of mainly secular verse; but if this preceded his _Certayne Psalmes_ of 1550, which are surely of ‘graver matters’, it must have gone back to Henry VIII’s reign, far away from his Mastership. On the other hand, Hunnis was certainly contributing secular verse and devices to the Kenilworth festivities (cf. s.v. Gascoigne) only three years before Newton wrote. Mrs. Stopes suggests, with some plausibility, that the Amargana songs of _England’s Helicon_ may come from an interlude. She also assigns to Hunnis, by conjecture, _Godly Queen Hester_, in which stress is laid on Hester’s Chapel Royal, and _Jacob and Esau_ (1568, S. R. 1557–8), which suggests gardens.
LEONARD HUTTEN (_c._ 1557–1632).
Possibly the author of the academic _Bellum Grammaticale_ (cf. App. K).
THOMAS INGELEND.
Lee (_D. N. B._) conjecturally identifies Ingelend with a man of the same name who married a Northamptonshire heiress.
_The Disobedient Child, c. 1560_
_S. R._ 1569–70. ‘An enterlude for boyes to handle and to passe tyme at christinmas.’ _Thomas Colwell_ (Arber, i. 398). [The method of exhaustions points to this as the entry of the play.]
N.D. A pretie and Mery new Enterlude: called the Disobedient Child. Compiled by Thomas Ingelend late Student in Cambridge. _Thomas Colwell._
_Editions_ by J. O. Halliwell (1848, _Percy Soc._ lxxv), in Dodsley^4 (1874, ii), and by J. S. Farmer (1908, _T. F. T._).--_Dissertation_: F. Holthausen, _Studien zum älteren englischen Drama_ (1902, _E. S._ xxxi. 90).
J. Bolte, _Vahlen-Festschrift_, 594, regards this as a translation of the _Iuvenis, Pater, Uxor_ of J. Ravisius Textor (_Dialogi_, ed. 1651, 71), which Holthausen reprints, but which is only a short piece in one scene. Brandl, lxxiii, traces the influence of the _Studentes_ (1549) of Christopherus Stymmelius (Bahlmann, _Lat. Dr._ 98). The closing prayer is for Elizabeth.
JAMES I (1566–1625).
_An Epithalamion on the Marquis of Huntly’s Marriage. 21 July 1588_
R. S. Rait, _Lusus Regis_ (1901), 2, printed from _Bodleian MS._ 27843 verses by James I, which he dated _c._ 1581. The occasion and correct date are supplied by another text, with a title, in A. F. Westcott, _New Poems of James I_ (1911). The bridal pair were George Gordon, 6th Earl and afterwards 1st Marquis of Huntly, and Henrietta Stuart, daughter of Esme, Duke of Lennox. The verses consist of a hymeneal dialogue, with a preliminary invocation by the writer, and speeches by Mercury, Nimphes, Agrestis, Skolar, Woman, The Vertuouse Man, Zani, The Landvart Gentleman, The Soldat. The earlier lines seem intended to accompany a tilting at the ring or some such contest, but at l. 74 is a reference to the coming of ‘strangers in a maske’.
Westcott, lviii, says that James helped William Fowler in devising a mimetic show for the banquet at the baptism of Prince Henry on 23 Aug. 1594.
JOHN JEFFERE (?-?).
Nothing is known of him, beyond his possible authorship of the following play:
_The Bugbears. 1563 <_
[_MS._] _Lansdowne MS._ 807, f. 57. [The MS. contains the relics of John Warburton’s collection, and on a slip once attached to the fly-leaf is his famous list of burnt plays, which includes ‘Bugbear C. Jo^n. Geffrey’ (Greg in _3 Library_, ii. 232). It appears to be the work of at least five hands, of which one, acting as a corrector, as well as a scribe, may be that of the author. The initials J. B. against a line or two inserted at the end do not appear to be his, but, as there was no single scribe, he may be writer of a final note to the text, written in printing characters, ‘Soli deo honor et gloria Johannus Jeffere scribebat hoc’. This note is followed by the songs and their music, and at the top of the first is written ‘Giles peperel for Iphiginia’. On the last page are the names ‘Thomas Ba ...’ and ‘Frances Whitton’, which probably do not indicate authorship. A title-page may be missing, and a later hand has written at the head of the text, ‘The Buggbears’.]
_Editions_ by C. Grabau (1896–7, _Archiv_, xcviii. 301; xcix. 311) and R. W. Bond (1911, _E. P. I._).--_Dissertation_: W. Dibelius (_Archiv_, cxii. 204).
The play is an adaptation of A. F. Grazzini, _La Spiritata_ (1561), and uses also material from J. Weier (_De Praestigiis Daemonum_) (1563) and from the life of Michel de Nôtredame (Nostradamus), not necessarily later than his death in 1566. Bond is inclined to date the play, partly on metrical grounds, about 1564 or 1565. Grabau and Dibelius suggest a date after 1585, apparently under the impression that the name Giles in the superscription to the music may indicate the composition of Nathaniel Giles, of the Chapel Royal, who took his Mus. Bac. in 1585. But the name, whether of a composer, or of the actor of the part of Iphigenia, is Giles Peperel. The performers were ‘boyes’, but the temptation to identify the play with the _Effiginia_ shown by Paul’s at Court on 28 Dec. 1571 is repressed by the description of _Effiginia_ in the Revels account as a ‘tragedye’, whereas _The Bugbears_ is a comedy. Moreover, Iphigenia is not a leading part, although one added by the English adapter.
LAURENCE JOHNSON (_c._ 1577).
A possible author of _Misogonus_ (cf. ch. xxiv).
BENJAMIN JONSON (1572–1637).
Benjamin Johnson, or Jonson, as he took the fancy to spell his name, was born, probably on 11 June 1572, at Westminster, after the death of his father, a minister, of Scottish origin. He was withheld, or withdrawn, from the University education justified by his scholastic attainments at Westminster to follow his step-father’s occupation of bricklaying, and when this proved intolerable, he served as a soldier in the Netherlands. In a prologue to _The Sad Shepherd_, left unfinished at his death in August 1637, he describes himself as ‘He that has feasted you these forty years’, and by 1597 at latest his connexion with the stage had begun. Aubrey tells us (ii. 12, 226) that he ‘acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of nursery or obscure play-house, somewhere in the suburbes (I thinke towards Shoreditch or Clarkenwell)’, and again that he ‘was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor’. The earliest contemporary records, however, show Jonson not at the Curtain, but on the Bankside. On 28 July 1597 Henslowe (i. 200) recorded a personal loan to ‘Bengemen Johnson player’ of £4 ‘to be payd yt agayne when so euer ether I or any for me shall demande yt’, and on the very same day he opened on another page of his diary (i. 47) an account headed ‘Received of Bengemenes Johnsones share as ffoloweth 1597’ and entered in it the receipt of a single sum of 3_s._ 9_d._, to which no addition was ever made. Did these entries stand alone, one would infer, on the analogy of other transactions of Henslowe’s and from the signatures of two Admiral’s men as witnesses to the loan, that Jonson had purchased a share in the Admiral’s company for £4, that he borrowed the means to do this from Henslowe, and that Henslowe was to recoup himself by periodical deductions from the takings of the company as they passed through his hands. But there is no other evidence that Jonson ever had an interest in the Admiral’s, and there are facts which, if one could believe that Henslowe would regard the takings of any company but the Admiral’s as security for a loan, would lead to the conclusion that Jonson’s ‘share’ was with Pembroke’s men at the Swan. The day of Henslowe’s entries, 28 July 1597, is the very day on which the theatres were suppressed as a result of the performance of _The Isle of Dogs_ (cf. App. D, No. cx), and it is hardly possible to doubt that Jonson was one of the actors who had a hand with Nashe (q.v.) in that play. The Privy Council registers record his release, with Shaw and Spencer of Pembroke’s men, from the Marshalsea on 3 Oct. 1597 (Dasent, xxviii. 33; cf. App. D, No. cxii); while Dekker in _Satiromastix_ (l. 1513) makes Horace admit that he had played Zulziman in Paris Garden, and Tucca upbraid him because ‘when the Stagerites banisht thee into the Ile of Dogs, thou turn’dst Bandog (villanous Guy) & ever since bitest’. The same passage confirms Aubrey’s indication that Jonson was actor, and a bad actor, as well as poet. ‘Thou putst vp a supplication’, says Tucca, ‘to be a poor iorneyman player, and hadst beene still so, but that thou couldst not set a good face vpon ’t: thou hast forgot how thou amblest (in leather pilch) by a play-wagon, in the high way, and took’st mad Ieronimoes part, to get seruice among the mimickes.’ Elsewhere (l. 633) Tucca taunts him that ‘when thou ranst mad for the death of Horatio, thou borrowedst a gowne of Roscius the stager, (that honest Nicodemus) and sentst it home lowsie’. This imprisonment for the _Isle of Dogs_ is no doubt the ‘bondage’ for his ‘first error’ to which Jonson refers in writing to Salisbury about _Eastward Ho!_ in 1605, and the ‘close imprisonment, under Queen Elizabeth’, during which he told Drummond he was beset by spies (Laing, 19). Released, Jonson borrowed 5_s._ more from Henslowe (i. 200) on 5 Jan. 1598, and entered into a relationship with him and the Admiral’s as a dramatist, which lasted intermittently until 1602. It was broken, not only by plays for the King’s men, whose employment of him, which may have been at the Curtain, was due, according to Rowe, to the critical instinct of Shakespeare (H.-P.