cxxv. Ingram, 281, speaks of two 4tos and one 8vo of 1590, probably

through some confusion.]

1592. _R. Jones._ [Greg, _Masques_, cxxv, thinks that the date may have been altered in the B.M. copy from 1593. Langbaine mentions an edition of 1593.]

1597. [An edition apparently known to Collier; cf. Greg, _Masques_, cxxv.]

1605. _For Edward White._ [Part i.]

1606. _E. A. for E. White._ [Part ii.]

_Editions_ by A. Wagner (1885) and K. Vollmöller (1885) and of Part i by W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._).--_Dissertations_: C. H. Herford, _The Sources of M.’s T._ (_Academy_, 20 Oct. 1883); L. Frankel, _Zum Stoffe von M.’s T._ (1892, _E. S._ xvi. 459); E. Köppel in _Englische Studien_, xvi. 357; E. Hübner, _Der Einfluss von M.’s Tamburlaine auf die zeitgenössischen und folgenden Dramatiker_ (_Halle diss._ 1901); F. G. Hubbard, _Possible Evidence for the Date of T._ (1918, _M. L. A._ xxxiii. 436).

There is no real doubt as to Marlowe’s authorship of _Tamburlaine_, but the direct evidence is very slight, consisting chiefly of Greene’s (q.v.) _Perimedes_ coupling of ‘that atheist Tamburlan’ with ‘spirits as bred of Merlin’s race’, and Harvey’s allusion to its author as dying in 1593. Thomas Heywood, in his prologue to _The Jew of Malta_, speaks of Alleyn’s performance in the play. The entry printed by Collier in Henslowe’s _Diary_ of a payment to Dekker in 1597 ‘for a prolog to Marloes tambelan’ is a forgery (Warner, 159; Greg, _Henslowe_, i. xxxix). The Admiral’s produced ‘Tamberlan’ on 30 Aug. 1594. Henslowe marks the entry ‘j’, which has been taken as equivalent to ‘n. e.’, Henslowe’s symbol for a new play, and as pointing to a revision of the play. I feel sure, however (cf. _M. L. R._ iv. 408), that ‘j’ only means ‘First Part’. ‘Tamberlen’ was given fifteen times from 30 Aug. 1594 to 12 Nov. 1595, and the ‘2 pt. of tamberlen’ seven times from 19 Dec. 1594 to 13 Nov. 1595 (Henslowe, ii. 167). Tamburlaine’s cage, bridle, coat, and breeches are included in the inventories of the Admiral’s men in 1598 (_Henslowe Papers_, 116).

Greene’s _Perimedes_ reference suggests 1587 or early 1588 as the probable date of _Tamburlaine_. In his preface to the 1590 edition Richard Jones says that he has omitted ‘some fond and frivolous gestures’, but does not say whether these were by the author of the tragic stuff. The numerous references to the play in contemporary literature often indicate its boisterous character; e.g. T. M. _The Black Book_ (Bullen, _Middleton_, viii. 25), ‘The spindle-shank spiders ... went stalking over his head as if they had been conning of Tamburlaine’; T. M. _Father Hubburd’s Tales_ (ibid. viii. 93), ‘The ordnance playing like so many Tamburlaines’.

_Dr. Faustus, c. 1588_

_S. R._ 1592, Dec. 18. Herbert-Ames, _Typographical Antiquities_, ii. 1160, records the following decision of the Stationers’ Company not printed by Arber, ‘If the book of D^r. Faustus shall not be found in the Hall Book entered to R^d. Oliff before Abell Jeffes claymed the same, which was about May last, That then the said copie shall remayne to the said Abell his proper copie from the tyme of his first clayme’. [This can hardly refer to the prose _History of Faustus_, of which the earliest extant, but probably not the first, edition was printed by T. Orwin for Edward White in 1592.]

1601, Jan. 7 (Barlowe). ‘A booke called the plaie of Doctor Faustus.’ _Thomas Bushell_ (Arber, iii. 178).

1610, Sept. 13. Transfer from Bushell to John Wright of ‘The tragicall history of the horrible life and Death of Doctor Faustus, written by C. M.’ (Arber, iii. 442).

1604. The tragicall History of D. Faustus. As it hath bene Acted by the Right Honorable the Earle of Nottingham his seruants. Written by Ch. Marl. _V. S. for Thomas Bushell._

1609. _G. E. for John Wright._

1616. _For John Wright._ [An enlarged and altered text.]

1619.... With new Additions. _For John Wright._

1620; 1624; 1631.

1663.... Printed with New Additions as it is now Acted. With several New Scenes, together with the Actors names. _For W. Gilbertson._ [A corrupt text.]

Breymann mentions an edition of 1611 not now known, and Heinemann quotes from foreign writers mentions of editions of 1622, 1626, 1636, 1651, 1690 (1884, _Bibliographer_).

_Editions_ by C. W. Dilke (1814, _O. E. P._ i), A. Reidl (N.D. [1874]), W. Wagner (1877), A. W. Ward (1878, 1887, 1891, 1901), Anon. (1881, Zurich), H. Morley (1883), H. Breymann (1889), I. Gollancz (1897, _T. D._), W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._), J. S. Farmer (1914, _S. F. T._).--_Dissertations_: G. Herzfeld, _Zu M.’s Dr. F._ (1905, _Jahrbuch_, xli. 206); H. R. O. De Vries, _Die Überlieferung und Entstehungsgeschichte von M.’s Dr. F._ (1909); K. R. Schröder, _Textverhältnisse und Entstehungsgeschichte von M.’s F._ (1909); R. Rohde, _Zu M.’s D. F._ (1913, _Morsbach-Festschrift_); P. Simpson, _The 1604 Text of M.’s D. F._ (1921, _Essays and Studies_, vii); with much earlier literature summarized in Ward’s edition, to which also (1887, ed. 2) Fleay’s excursus on _The Date and Authorship of Dr. F._ was contributed.

The Admiral’s men played ‘Docter ffostose’ for Henslowe twenty-four times from 2 Oct. 1594 to Oct. 1597 (Henslowe, ii. 168). Their 1598 inventories include ‘j dragon in fostes’ (_Henslowe Papers_, 118). Alleyn (q.v.) played the title-rôle. The entry printed by Collier from Henslowe’s _Diary_ of a payment to Dekker on 20 Dec. 1597 ‘for adycyons to ffostus’ is a forgery (Warner, 159; Greg, _Henslowe_, i. xxxix), but Henslowe did pay £4 to William Bird and Samuel Rowley ‘for ther adicyones in doctor fostes’ on 22 Nov. 1602 (Henslowe, i. 172). Probably, therefore, the Admiral’s revived the play about 1602–3. These additions are doubtless the comic passages which appear for the first time in the 1616 text, although that may also contain fragments of the original text omitted from the 1,485 lines of 1604. The source of the play seems to be the German _Faustbuch_ (1587) through the English _History of Dr. Johann Faustus_, of which an edition earlier than the extant 1592 one is conjectured. A probable date is 1588–9. On 28 Feb. 1589 ‘a ballad of the life and deathe of Doctor Faustus the great Cungerer’ was entered on S. R. (Arber, ii. 516). There are apparent imitations of the play in _Taming of A Shrew_ (q.v.).

The reference in _The Black Book_ (_vide infra_) can hardly be taken as evidence that the original production was at the Theatre.

Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 168) gives some support to the view of Fleay (Ward, clxvii) that Marlowe is only responsible for part even of the 1604 text, and that the rest, including the comic matter, may have been contributed by Dekker. But he doubts whether Dekker worked upon the play before the date of a revision in 1594, for which there is some evidence, such as an allusion in xi. 46 to Dr. Lopez. Fleay thought Dekker to have been also an original collaborator, which his age hardly permits.

The play seems to have formed part of the English repertories in Germany in 1608 and 1626 (Herz, 66, 74).

It became the centre of a curious _mythos_, which was used to point a moral against the stage (cf. ch. viii). Of this there are several versions:

(_a_) 1604. T. M. _The Black Book_ (Bullen, _Middleton_, viii. 13), ‘Hee had a head of hayre like one of my Diuells in Dr. Faustus when the old Theater crackt and frighted the audience.’

(_b_) 1633. Prynne, _Histriomastix_, f. 556, ‘The visible apparition of the Devill on the stage at the Belsavage Play-house, in Queen Elizabeths dayes (to the great amazement both of the actors and spectators) while they were there prophanely playing the History of Faustus (the truth of which I have heard from many now alive, who well remember it) there being some distracted with that feareful sight.’

(_c_) N.D. ‘J. G. R.’ from manuscript note on ‘the last page of a book in my possession, printed by Vautrollier’ (1850, _2 Gent. Mag._ xxxiv. 234), ‘Certaine Players at Exeter, acting upon the stage the tragical storie of Dr. Faustus the Conjurer; as a certain nomber of Devels kept everie one his circle there, and as Faustus was busie in his magicall invocations, on a sudden they were all dasht, every one harkning other in the eare, for they were all perswaded, there was one devell too many amongst them; and so after a little pause desired the people to pardon them, they could go no further with this matter; the people also understanding the thing as it was, every man hastened to be first out of dores. The players (as I heard it) contrarye to their custome spending the night in reading and in prayer got them out of the town the next morning.’

(_d_) _c._ 1673. John Aubrey, _Natural History and Antiquities of Surrey_ (1718–19), i. 190, ‘The tradition concerning the occasion of the foundation [of Dulwich College] runs thus: that Mr. Alleyne, being a Tragedian and one of the original actors in many of the celebrated Shakespear’s plays, in one of which he played a Demon, with six others, and was in the midst of the play surpriz’d by an apparition of the Devil, which so work’d on his Fancy, that he made a Vow, which he perform’d at this Place’.

_The Jew of Malta, c. 1589_

_S. R._ 1594, May 17. ‘The famouse tragedie of the Riche Jewe of Malta.’ _Nicholas Ling and Thomas Millington_ (Arber, ii. 650). [On 16 May ‘a ballad intituled the murtherous life and terrible death of the riche Jew of Malta’ had been entered to John Danter.]

1632, Nov. 20 (Herbert). ‘A Tragedy called the Jew of Malta.’ _Nicholas Vavasour_ (Arber, iv. 288).

1633. The Famous Tragedy of the Rich Iew of Malta. As it was played before the King and Queene, in his Majesties Theatre at White-Hall, by her Majesties Servants at the Cockpit. Written by Christopher Marlo. _I. B. for Nicholas Vavasour._ [Epistle to Thomas Hammon of Gray’s Inn, signed ‘Tho. Heywood’; Prologues and Epilogues at Court and at Cockpit by Heywood; Prologue by Machiavel as presenter.]

_Editions_ in Dodsley^{2, 3}, viii (1780–1827), and by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ i), Reynell and Son (publ. 1810), S. Penley (1813), A. Wagner (1889), and W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._).--_Dissertations_: J. Kellner, _Die Quelle von M.’s J. of M._ (1887, _E. S._ x. 80); M. Thimme, _M.’s J. of M._ (1921).

An allusion in Marlowe’s prologue to the death of the Duc de Guise gives a date of performance later than 23 Dec. 1588. Strange’s men gave the play for Henslowe seventeen times from 26 Feb. 1592 to 1 Feb. 1593. Probably it belonged to Henslowe, as it was also played for him by Sussex’s men on 4 Feb. 1594, by Sussex and the Queen’s together on 3 and 8 April 1594, by the Admiral’s on 14 May 1594, by either the Admiral’s or the Chamberlain’s on 6 and 15 June 1594, and thirteen times by the Admiral’s from 25 June 1594 to 23 June 1596 (Henslowe, ii. 151). The 1598 inventories of the latter company include ‘j cauderm for the Jewe’ (_Henslowe Papers_, 118). On 19 May 1601 Henslowe advanced them money to buy ‘things’ for a revival of the play (Henslowe, i. 137). Heywood’s epistle and Cockpit prologue name Marlowe and Alleyn as writer and actor of the play. Fleay, i. 298, suggests that Heywood wrote the Bellamira scenes (III. i; IV. iv, v; V. i), the motive of which he used for the plot of his _Captives_, and Greg agrees that the play shows traces of two hands, one of which may be Heywood’s. The Dresden repertory of 1626 included a ‘Tragödie von Barabas, Juden von Malta’, but this was not necessarily the play ‘von dem Juden’ given by English actors at Passau in 1607 and Graz in 1608 (Herz, 66, 75).

_Edward the Second. c. 1592_

_S. R._ 1593, July 6 (Judson). ‘A booke, Intituled The troublesom Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, king of England, with the tragicall fall of proud Mortymer.’ _William Jones_ (Arber, ii. 634).

1593? [C. F. Tucker Brooke (1909, _M. L. N._ xxiv. 71) suggests that a manuscript t.p. dated 1593 and sig. A inserted in Dyce’s copy of 1598 may be from a lost edition, as they contain textual variants.]

1594. The troublesome raigne and lamentable death of Edward the second, King of England: with the tragicall fall of proud Mortimer. As it was sundrie times publiquely acted in the honourable citie of London, by the right honourable the Earl of Pembroke his servants. Written by Chri. Marlow. Gent. _For William Jones._

1598. _Richard Bradocke for William Jones._ [With an additional scene.]

1612. _For Roger Barnes._

1622.... As it was publikely Acted by the late Queenes Maiesties Servants at the Red Bull in S. Iohns streete.... _For Henry Bell._

_Editions_ in Dodsley^{1–3}, ii (1744–1825), and by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ i), W. Wagner (1871), F. G. Fleay (1873, 1877), O. W. Tancock (1877, etc.), E. T. McLaughlin (1894), A. W. Verity (1896, _T. D._), and W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._).--_Dissertations_: C. Tzschaschel, _M.’s Edward II und seine Quellen_ (1902, _Halle diss._); M. Dahmetz, _M.’s Ed. II und Shakespeares Rich. II_ (1904).

Pembroke’s men seem only to have had a footing at Court in the winter of 1592–3, and this is probably the date of the play. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 224) suggests that it may have had some ‘distant connexion’ with Chettle and Porter’s _The Spencers_ and an anonymous _Mortimer_ of the Admiral’s men in 1599 and 1602 respectively. But I think _Mortimer_ is a slip of Henslowe’s for _Vortigern_.

_The Massacre at Paris. 1593_

[_MS._] Collier, ii. 511, prints a fragment of a fuller text than that of the edition, but it is suspect (cf. Tucker Brooke, 483).

N.D. The Massacre at Paris: With the Death of the Duke of Guise. As it was plaide by the right honourable the Lord high Admirall his Seruants. Written by Christopher Marlow. _E. A. for Edward White._

Strange’s men produced ‘the tragedey of the gvyes’ as ‘n.e.’ on 26 Jan. 1593. The Admiral’s men also played it for Henslowe as ‘the Gwies’ or ‘the masacer’ ten times from 21 June to 27 Sept. 1594. Possibly in Nov. 1598 and certainly in Nov. 1601 Henslowe advanced sums for costumes for a revival of the play by the Admiral’s. The insertion by Collier of Webster’s name in one of these entries is a forgery and whether the lost _Guise_ of this writer (q.v.) bore any relation to Marlowe’s play is wholly unknown. On 18 Jan. 1602 Henslowe paid Alleyn £2 for the ‘boocke’ of ‘the massaker of france’ on behalf of the company (Henslowe, i. xlii; ii. 157). For the offence given in France by this play, cf. ch. x.

_Dido Queen of Carthage > 1593_

_With_ Thomas Nashe.

1594. The Tragedie of Dido Queene of Carthage: Played by the Children of her Maiesties Chappell. Written by Christopher Marlowe, and Thomas Nash. Gent. _Widow Orwin for Thomas Woodcock._

_S. R._ 1600, June 26. Transfer from Paul Lynley to John Flasket, ‘Cupydes Journey to hell with the tragedie of Dido’ (Arber, iii. 165). [Perhaps another book.]

_Editions_ in _Old English Drama_ (1825, ii), by J. S. Farmer (1914, _S. F. T._), and with _Works_ of Nashe.--_Dissertations_: J. Friedrich, _Didodramen des Dolce, Jodelle, und M._ (1888); B. Knutowski, _Das Dido-Drama von M. und Nash_ (1905, _Breslau diss._).

Tanner, _Bibl. Britanniae_ (1748), says, ‘Petowius in praefatione ad secundam partem Herois et Leandri multa in Marlovii commendationem adfert; hoc etiam facit Tho. Nash in _Carmine Elegiaco tragediae Didonis praefixo in obitum Christoph. Marlovii_, ubi quatuor eius tragediarum mentionem facit, necnon et alterius _de duce Guisio_’. The existence of this elegy is confirmed by Warton, who saw it either in 1734 or 1754 (_Hist. Eng. Poet._ iv. 311; cf. McKerrow, ii. 335). It was ‘inserted immediately after the title-page’, presumably not of all copies, as it is not in the three now known. Whether Nashe’s own share in the work was as collaborator, continuator, or merely editor, remains uncertain. Fleay, ii. 147, gives him only I. i. 122 to end, III. i, ii, iv; IV. i, ii, v; Knutowski regards him as responsible for only a few trifling passages. As, moreover, the play has affinities both to early and to late work by Marlowe, it cannot be dated. Beyond its title-page and that of the anonymous _Wars of Cyrus_ there is nothing to point to any performances by the Chapel between 1584 and 1600. It is true that Tucker Brooke, 389, says, ‘The one ascertained fact concerning the history of this company during the ten years previous to 1594 seems to be that they acted before the Queen at Croydon in 1591, under the direction of N. Giles, and Mr. Fleay assumes, apparently with no further evidence, that _Dido_ was presented on this ‘occasion’. But this only shows what some literary historians mean by an ‘ascertained fact’. A company played _Summers Last Will and Testament_ (q.v.) at Croydon in 1592 and said that they had not played for a twelvemonth. But the Queen was not present, and they are not known to have been the Chapel, whose master was not then Nathaniel Giles. Nor did they necessarily play twelve months before at Croydon; and if they did, there is nothing to show that they played _Dido_. There is nothing to connect the play with the Admiral’s _Dido and Aeneas_ of 1598 (Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 189).

_Lust’s Dominion. c. 1600_ (?)

1657. Lusts Dominion; Or, The Lascivious Queen. A Tragedie. Written by Christopher Marlowe, Gent. _For F. K., sold by Robert Pollard._

_Editions_ by C. W. Dilke (1814, _O. E. P._ i) and in Dodsley^4, xiv (1875).

The attribution of the play, as it stands, to Marlowe is generally rejected. Fleay, i. 272, supported by Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 211), suggests an identification with _The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy_, which Day, Dekker, and Haughton were writing for the Admiral’s in Feb. 1600, although the recorded payment does not show that this was finished. They think that a play in which Marlowe had a hand may perhaps underlie it, and attempt, not wholly in agreement with each other, to distribute the existing scenes amongst the collaborators.

_Lost Play_

_The Maiden’s Holiday_

Entered on the Stationers’ Register on 8 April 1654 (Eyre, i. 445) by Moseley as ‘A comedie called The Maidens Holiday by Christopher Marlow & John Day’, and included in Warburton’s list of burnt plays (_3 Library_, ii. 231) as ‘The Mayden Holaday by Chri[~s]. Marlowe’.

_Doubtful Plays_

Marlowe’s hand has been sought in _An Alarum for London_, _Contention of York and Lancaster_, _Edward III_, _Locrine_, _Selimus_, _Taming of A Shrew_, and _Troublesome Reign of King John_ (cf. ch. xxiv), and in Shakespeare’s _Titus Andronicus_, _Henry VI_, and _Richard III_.

JOHN MARSTON (_c._ 1575–1634).

Marston was son of John Marston, a lawyer of Shropshire origin, who had settled at Coventry, and his Italian wife Maria Guarsi. He matriculated at Brasenose College, Oxford, aged 16, on 4 Feb. 1592, and took his degree on 6 Feb. 1594. He joined the Middle Temple, and in 1599 his father left law-books to him, ‘whom I hoped would have profited by them in the study of the law but man proposeth and God disposeth’. He had already begun his literary career, as a satirist with _The Metamorphosis of Pygmalion’s Image and Certain Satires_ (1598) and _The Scourge of Villainy_ (1598). For these he took the pseudonym of W. Kinsayder. Small, 64, has refuted the attempts to find in them attacks on Jonson, and H. C. Hart (_9 N. Q._ xi. 282, 342) has made it plausible that by ‘Torquatus’ was meant, not Jonson, but Gabriel Harvey. This view is now accepted by Penniman (_Poetaster_, xxiii). On 28 Sept. 1599 Henslowe paid £2, on behalf of the Admiral’s, for ‘M^r Maxton the new poete’. The interlineated correction ‘M^r Mastone’ is a forgery (Greg, _Henslowe_, i. xlii; ii. 206), but probably Marston was the poet. The title of the play was left blank, and there was no further payment. It seems clearer to me than it does to Dr. Greg that the £2 was meant to make up a complete sum of £6 10_s._ for _The King of Scots_, and that Marston was the ‘other Jentellman’ who collaborated with Chettle, Dekker, and Jonson on that lost play. The setting up of the Paul’s boys in 1599 saved Marston from Henslowe. For them he successively revised the anonymous _Histriomastix_ (q.v.), wrote the two parts of _Antonio and Mellida_ and _Jack Drum’s Entertainment_, helped Dekker with _Satiromastix_, and finally wrote _What You Will_. This probably accounts for all his dramatic work during Elizabeth’s reign. In the course of it he came into conflict with Jonson, who told Drummond in 1619 (according to the revision of the text of Laing, 20, suggested by Penniman, _War_, 40, and Small, 3) that ‘He had many quarrells with Marston, beat him, and took his pistol from him, wrote his Poetaster on him; the beginning of them were, that Marston represented him in the stage’. Marston’s representation of Jonson as Chrysoganus in _Histriomastix_ was complimentary, that as Brabant senior in _Jack Drum’s Entertainment_ offensive; and it was doubtless the latter that stirred Jonson to retaliate on Marston, perhaps as Hedon in _Cynthia’s Revels_, certainly as Crispinus in _The Poetaster_. Marston’s final blow was with Lampatho Doria in _What You Will_. When the theatres reopened in 1604 Marston seems to have left the Paul’s boys and taken a share in the syndicate formed to exploit the Queen’s Revels, for whom the rest of his plays were written. He was now on friendly terms with Jonson, to whom he dedicated his _Malcontent_ and for whose _Sejanus_ he wrote congratulatory verses. Possibly further friction arose over the unfortunate collaboration of Jonson, Marston, and Chapman in _Eastward Ho!_, for the chief indiscretion in which Marston seems to have been responsible, and may have stimulated a sarcasm on Jonson in the Epistle to _Sophonisba_. In 1608 Marston’s career as a dramatist abruptly terminated. An abstract of the Privy Council Register has the brief note on 8 June, ‘John Marston committed to Newgate’ (F. P. Wilson from _Addl. MS._ 11402, f. 141, in _M. L. R._ ix. 99). I conjecture that he was the author of the Blackfriars play (cf. ch. xii, s.v. Chapel) which hit at James’s explorations after Scottish silver. He disappeared, selling his interest in the Blackfriars company, then or in 1605, to Robert Keysar, and leaving _The Insatiate Countess_ unfinished. He had taken orders by 10 Oct. 1616 when he obtained the living of Christchurch, Hampshire. This he resigned on 13 Sept. 1631. In 1633 he was distant from London, but died on 25 June 1634 in Aldermanbury parish. He had married Mary, probably the daughter of William Wilkes, one of James’s chaplains, of whom Jonson said in 1619 (Laing, 16) that ‘Marston wrott his Father-in-lawes preachings, and his Father-in-law his Commedies’. If we trust the portrait of Crispinus in _The Poetaster_, he had red hair and little legs. A letter from Marston to Sir Gervase Clifton, endorsed ‘Poet Marston’, is calendared in _Hist. MSS. Various Coll._ vii. 389; it is undated, but must, from the names used, be of 1603–8.

_Collections_

1633. Tragedies and Comedies collected into one volume. Viz. 1. Antonio and Mellida. 2. Antonio’s Revenge. 3. The Tragedie of Sophonisba. 4. What You Will. 5. The Fawne. 6. The Dutch Courtezan. _A. M. for William Sheares._ [Epistle to Viscountess Falkland, signed ‘William Sheares’.]

1633. The Workes of Mr. Iohn Marston, Being Tragedies and Comedies, Collected into one Volume. _For William Sheares._ [Another issue.]

1856. J. O. Halliwell, _The Works of John Marston_. 3 vols. [Contains all the works, except _Jack Drum’s Entertainment_.]

1879. A. B. Grosart, _The Poems of John Marston_. [Contains _Pygmalion’s Image_ and the satires.]

1887. A. H. Bullen, _The Works of John Marston_. 3 vols. [Contains all the works, except _Jack Drum’s Entertainment_.]

_Dissertations_: W. von Scholten, _Metrische Untersuchungen zu Marston’s Trauerspielen_ (1886, _Halle diss._); P. Aronstein, _John Marston als Dramatiker_ (_E. S._ xx. 377; xxi. 28); W. v. Wurzbach, _John Marston_ (1897, _Jahrbuch_, xxxiii. 85); C. Winckler, _John Marston’s litterarische Anfänge_ (1903, _Breslau diss._) and _Marston’s Erstlingswerke und ihre Beziehungen zu Shakespeare_ (1904, _E. S._ xxxiii. 216).

PLAYS

_Antonio and Mellida. 1599_

_S. R._ 1601, Oct. 24. ‘A booke called The ffyrst and second partes of the play called Anthonio and Melida provided that he gett laufull licence for yt.’ _Matthew Lownes and Thomas Fisher_ (Arber, iii. 193).

1602. The History of Antonio and Mellida. The first part. As it hath beene sundry times acted, by the Children of Paules. Written by I. M. _For Mathew Lownes and Thomas Fisher._ [Epistle to Nobody, signed ‘J. M.’, Induction, Prologue, and Epilogue.]

1602. Antonio’s Reuenge. The second part. As it hath beene sundry times acted, by the children of Paules. Written by I. M. _For Thomas Fisher._ [Prologue.]

_Editions_ by C. W. Dilke (1814, _O. E. P._ ii) and W. W. Greg (1921, _M. S. R._).

In V. i of Part i a painter brings in two pictures, one dated ‘Anno Domini, 1599’, the other ‘Aetatis suae 24’. I agree with Small, 92, that these are probably real dates and that the second indicates Marston’s own age. As he must have completed his twenty-fourth year by 3 Feb. 1600 at latest, Part i was probably produced in 1599. The prologue of Part ii speaks of winter as replacing summer, and probably therefore Part i is to be dated in the summer, and Part ii in the early winter of 1599. Clearly the painter scene cannot, as Fleay, ii. 75, suggests, be motived by a casual allusion to a painter in _Cynthia’s Revels_ (F_{1}) 2673 or the painter scene added on revision to Kyd’s _Spanish Tragedy_, since both are later. The ‘armed Epilogue’ of Part i seems to me clearly a criticism of the armed prologue of Jonson’s _Poetaster_ (1601); it may have been an addition of 1601. Part ii, prol. 13, 23, calls the theatre ‘round’ and ‘ring’.

_What You Will. 1601_

_S. R._ 1607, Aug. 6 (Buck). ‘A commedie called What you will.’ _Thomas Thorp_ (Arber, iii. 358).

1607. What You Will. By Iohn Marston. _G. Eld for Thomas Thorpe._ [Induction and Prologue.]

_Edition_ by C. W. Dilke (1814, _O. E. P._ ii).--_Dissertation_: F. Holthausen, _Die Quelle von Marston’s W. Y. W._ (1905, _Jahrbuch_, xli. 186).

Bullen, Fleay, ii. 76, Small, 101, and Aronstein agree in regarding the play as written in 1601 by way of answer to _Cynthia’s Revels_, and they are probably right. Small shows that, in spite of the fact that Quadratus calls Lampatho Doria a ‘Don Kynsader’ (II. i. 134), Lampatho must stand for Jonson, and Quadratus to some extent for Marston himself. Perhaps Simplicius Faber is the unidentified Asinius Bubo of _Satiromastix_. Both Fleay and Small think that the play has been revised before publication, partly because of confusion in the names of the characters, and partly because of the absence of the kind of Marstonian language which Jonson satirized. Small goes so far as to suggest that the seventeen untraceable words vomited by Crispinus in _The Poetaster_ came from _What You Will_, and that Marston rewrote the play and eliminated them. The rest of Fleay’s conjectures about the play seem to me irresponsible. If the play dates from 1601, it may reasonably be assigned to the Paul’s boys. The induction, with its allusions to the small size of the stage and the use of candles, excludes the possibility of an adult theatre.

_The Dutch Courtesan. 1603–4_

_S. R._ 1605, June 26. ‘A booke called the Dutche Curtizan, as yt was latelie presented at the Blackeffryers Provyded that he gett sufficient Aucthoritie before yt be prynted.’ _John Hodgettes_ (Arber, iii. 293). [A further note, ‘This is alowed to be printed by Aucthoritie from Master Hartwell’.]

1605. The Dutch Courtezan. As it was played in the Blacke-Friars. by the Children of her Maiesties Reuels. Written by Iohn Marston, _T. P. for John Hodgets_. [Prologue.]

_S. R._ 1613, April 19. Transfer to Hodgettes of Eleazer Edgar’s interest in the play (Arber, iii. 520).

As a Queen’s Revels play, this must have been on the stage at least as late as 1603, and the clear proof of Crawford, ii. 1, that several passages are verbal imitations of Florio’s translation of Montaigne, published in that year, make it difficult to put it earlier, although Wallace, ii. 75, says that he has evidence, which he does not give, for production in 1602. On the other hand, C. R. Baskervill (_M. L. A._ xxiv. 718) argues that the plot influenced that of _The Fair Maid of Bristow_, which was performed at Court during the winter of 1603–4. The play is referred to with _Eastward Ho!_ (q.v.) as bringing trouble on Marston by A. Nixon, _The Black Year_ (1606). It was revived for the Court by the Lady Elizabeth’s on 25 Feb. 1613, under the name of _Cockle de Moye_ from one of the characters, and repeated on 12 Dec. 1613 (cf. App. B).

_The Malcontent. 1604_

_S. R._ 1604, July 5 (Pasfield). ‘An Enterlude called the Malecontent, Tragicomoedia.’ _William Aspley and Thomas Thorpe_ (Arber, iii. 266, 268). [Entry made on the wrong page and re-entered.]

1604. The Malcontent. By Iohn Marston. _V. S. for William Aspley._ [Two editions. Inscription ‘Beniamino Jonsonio, poetae elegantissimo, gravissimo, amico suo, candido et cordato, Iohannes Marston, Musarum alumnus, asperam hanc suam Thaliam D.D.’ and Epistle to Reader.]

1604. The Malcontent. Augmented by Marston. With the Additions played by the Kings Maiesties servants. Written by Ihon Webster. _V. S. for William Aspley._ [A third edition, with the Induction, which is headed ‘The Induction to the Malcontent, and the additions acted by the Kings Maiesties servants. Written by Iohn Webster’, and the insertions I. i. 146–88, 195–212, 256–303; I. iii; II. ii. 34, 57–71; III. i. 33–156; IV. ii. 123–37; V. i; V. ii. 10–39, 164–94, 212–26; V. iii. 180–202.]

_Editions_ by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ ii) and W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._); and with _Works_ of Webster (q.v.).--_Dissertation_: E. E. Stoll, _John Webster_ (1905), 55, and _Shakspere, Marston, and the Malcontent Type_ (1906, _M. P._ iii. 281).

The induction, in which parts are taken by Sly, Sinklo, Burbadge, Condell, and Lowin, explains the genesis of the enlarged edition.

_Sly._ ... I would know how you came by this play?

_Condell._ Faith, sir, the book was lost; and because ’twas pity so good a play should be lost, we found it and play it.

_Sly._ I wonder you would play it, another company having interest in it.

_Condell._ Why not Malevole in folio with us, as Jeronimo in decimosexto with them? They taught us a name for our play; we call it _One for Another_.

_Sly._ What are your additions?

_Burbadge._ Sooth, not greatly needful; only as your salad to your great feast, to entertain a little more time, and to abridge the not-received custom of music in our theatre.

Stoll, 57, rightly argues that Small, 115, is not justified in ignoring the evidence of the title-page and assigning the insertions, as well as the induction, to Webster rather than Marston. On the other hand, I think he himself ignores the evidence of Burbadge’s speech in the induction, when he takes the undramatic quality of the insertions as proof that Marston did not write them first in 1604, but revived them from his original text, which the boy actors had shortened. He puts this original text in 1600, because of the allusion in one of the insertions (I. iii. 20) to a ‘horn growing in the woman’s forehead twelve years since’. This horn was described in a pamphlet of 1588. I do not share his view that ‘twelve’ must be a precise and not a round number. Sly says in the induction:

‘This play hath beaten all your gallants out of the feathers: Blackfriars hath almost spoiled Blackfriars for feathers.’

It is clear therefore that the original actors were the Blackfriars boys, and there is nothing else to suggest a connexion between Marston and these boys during Elizabeth’s reign. Small, 115, points out a reference to the Scots in V. iii. 24 which should be Jacobean. I think that this is Marston’s first play for the Queen’s Revels after the formation of the syndicate early in 1604, and that the revision followed later in the same year. It is not necessary to assume that the play was literally ‘lost’ or that Marston was not privy to the adoption of it by the King’s. Importance is attached to the date by parallels to certain plays of Shakespeare, where Stoll thinks that Shakespeare was the borrower. I do not see how it can be so. The epilogue speaks of the author’s ‘reformed Muse’ and pays a compliment to ‘another’s happier Muse’ and forthcoming ‘Thalia’, perhaps Jonson’s _Volpone_.

_The Fawn. 1604 < > 6_

_S. R._ 1606, March 12. ‘A playe called the ffaune provided that he shall not put the same in prynte before he gett alowed lawfull aucthoritie.’ _William Cotton_ (Arber, iii. 316).

1606. Parasitaster, Or The Fawne, As it hath bene diuers times presented at the blacke Friars, by the Children of the Queenes Maiesties Reuels. Written by Iohn Marston. _T. P. for W. C._ [Epistle to the Equal Reader, signed ‘Jo. Marston’, Prologue, and Epilogue.]

1606.... and since at Paules.... And now corrected of many faults, which by reason of the Author’s absence were let slip in the first edition. _T. P. for W. C._ [A further Epistle to the Reader states that the writer has ‘perused this copy’ and is about to ‘present ... to you’ the tragedy of _Sophonisba_.]

Modern edition by C. W. Dilke (1814, _O. E. P._ ii).

As a Queen’s Revels play, this must date from 1604 or 1605; presumably it was transferred to Paul’s by Edward Kirkham, when he took charge of them for the Christmas of 1605–6. Small, 116, refutes Aronstein’s suggested allusion to Jonson’s _Volpone_ of 1605 or 1606. Bolte, _Danziger Theater_, 177, prints from a seventeenth-century Dantzig MS. a German play, _Tiberius von Ferrara und Annabella von Mömpelgart_, which is in part derived from _The Fawn_ (Herz, 99). If, as the titles suggest, the performances of _Annabella, eines Hertzogen Tochter von Ferrara_ at Nördlingen in 1604, of _Annabella, eines Markgraffen Tochter von Montferrat_ at Rothenburg in 1604, and of _Herzog von Ferrara_ at Dresden in 1626 (Herz, 65, 66), indicate intermediate links, _The Fawn_ cannot be later than 1604. Yet I find it impossible not to attach some value to the argument of Stoll, _Webster_, 17, for a date later than the execution of Sir Everard Digby on 30 Jan. 1606 (Stowe, _Annales_, 881), which appears to be alluded to in IV. i. 310, ‘Nay, heed me, a woman that will thrust in crowds,--a lady, that, being with child, ventures the hope of her womb,--nay, gives two crowns for a room to behold a goodly man three parts alive, quartered, his privities hackled off, his belly lanched up’. It is true that there were also quarterings for treason on 29 Nov. 1603 (Stowe, _Annales_, ed. Howes, 831), but these were in Winchester; also that contemporary notices, such as that in Stowe and the narratives in J. Morris, _Catholics under James I_, 216, and in _Somers Tracts_ (1809), ii. 111, which describes the victims as ‘proper men, in shape’, afford no confirmation of indecent crowds in 1606, but the cumulative effect of the quadruple allusions here, in Day’s _Isle of Gulls_ (q.v.), in Sharpham’s _Fleir_ (q.v.), and in Middleton’s _Michaelmas Term_ (q.v.) is pretty strong. The passage quoted by Crawford, ii. 40, from Montaigne is hardly particular enough to explain that in the _Fawn_. I do not like explaining discrepancies by the hypothesis of a revision, but if Kirkham revived the _Fawn_ at Paul’s in 1606, he is not unlikely to have had it written up a bit. The epistle refers to ‘the factious malice and studied detractions’ of fellow-dramatists, perhaps an echo of Marston’s relations with Jonson and Chapman over _Eastward Ho!_

_The Wonder of Women_, or _Sophonisba_. _1606_

_S. R._ 1606, March 17 (Wilson). ‘A booke called the wonder of woemen, or the Tragedie of Sophonisba, &c.’ _Eleazar Edgar_ (Arber, iii. 316).

1606. The Wonder of Women Or the Tragedie of Sophonisba, as it hath beene sundry times Acted at the Blacke-Friers. Written by Iohn Marston. _John Windet._ [Epistle to the General Reader by the author, but unsigned, Argumentum, Prologue, and Epilogue.]

_S. R._ 1613, April 19. Transfer from Edgar to John Hodgettes (Arber, iii. 521).

The mention of Blackfriars without the name of a company points to a performance after Anne’s patronage had been withdrawn from the Revels boys, late in 1605 or early in 1606, not, as Fleay, ii. 79, suggests, to one by the Chapel in 1602–3. Some features of staging (cf. ch. xxi) raise a suspicion that the play may have been taken over from Paul’s. The resemblance of the title to that of _Wonder of a Woman_ produced by the Admiral’s in 1595 is probably accidental. The epistle glances at Jonson’s translations in _Sejanus_ (1603).

_The Insatiate Countess. c. 1610_

1613. The Insatiate Countesse. A Tragedie: Acted at White-Fryers. Written by Iohn Marston. _T. S. for Thomas Archer._

1616. _N. O. for Thomas Archer._

1631.... Written by William Barksteed. _For Hugh Perrie._

1631.... Written by Iohn Marston. _I. N. for Hugh Perrie._ [A reissue.]

_Dissertation_: R. A. Small, _The Authorship and Date of the Insatiate Countess_ in _Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature_, v (_Child Memorial Volume_), 277.

It is generally supposed that Marston began the play and that Barksted (q.v.) finished it. Two lines (V. ii. 244–5) appear verbatim in Barksted’s _Mirrha_ (1607). Small traces several other clear parallels with both _Mirrha_ and _Hiren_, as well as stylistic qualities pointing to Barksted rather than to Marston, and concludes that the play is Barksted’s on a plot drafted by Marston. It may be conjectured that Marston left the fragment when he got into trouble for the second time in 1608, and that the revision was more probably for the Queen’s Revels at Whitefriars in 1609–11 than for the conjoint Queen’s Revels and Lady Elizabeth’s in 1613. Hardly any of the suggestions on the play in Fleay, ii. 80, bear analysis.

_Lost Plays_

On _The King of Scots_, _vide supra_. Rogers and Ley’s list of 1656 (Greg, _Masques_, lxxii) ascribes to Marston a _Guise_, which other publishers’ lists transfer to Webster (q.v.). Collier, _Memoirs of Alleyn_, 154, assigns to Marston a _Columbus_, on the basis of a forgery.

_Doubtful Plays_

Marston doubtless had a hand in revising the anonymous _Histriomastix_ and in _Jack Drum’s Entertainment_, and attempts have been made to find him in _An Alarum for London_, _Charlemagne_, _London Prodigal_, _Puritan_ (cf. ch. xxiv), and as a collaborator in Dekker’s _Satiromastix_.

MASKS

_Ashby Entertainment. Aug. 1607_

[_MSS._] (_a_) _Bridgewater House_, with title, ‘The honorable Lorde & Lady of Huntingdons Entertainment of their right Noble Mother Alice: Countesse Dowager of Darby the first night of her honors arrivall att the house of Ashby’. [Verses to Lady Derby signed ‘John Marston’; includes a mask of Cynthia and Ariadne.]

(_b_) _B.M. Sloane_ 848, f. 9. [Speech of Enchantress only, with date Aug. 1607.]

_Extracts_ in H. J. Todd, _Works of Milton_, v. 149 (1801), and Nichols, _James_, ii. 145 (1828).

On arrival, in the park, at an ‘antique gate’ with complimentary inscriptions, were speeches by Merimna an enchantress, and Saturn; at the top of the stairs to the great chamber another speech by Merimna and a gift of a waistcoat.

Later in the great chamber was a mask by four knights and four gentlemen, in carnation and white, and vizards like stars, representing sons of Mercury, with pages in blue, and Cynthia and Ariadne as presenters. A traverse ‘slided away’, and disclosed the presenters on clouds. Later a second traverse ‘sank down’, and the maskers appeared throned at the top of a wood. They danced ‘a new measure’, then ‘presented their shields’, and took out the ladies for measures, galliards, corantos and lavoltas. ‘The night being much spent’, came their ‘departing measure’.

At departure were an eclogue by a shepherd and a nymph, and a gift of a cabinet by Niobe in the little park.

_Mountebank’s Mask. 1618_ (?)

The ascription to Marston of this Gray’s Inn mask rests on an unverifiable assertion by Collier (cf. Bullen, _Marston_, iii. 418; Brotanek, 356), and the known dates of Marston’s career render it extremely improbable.

JOHN MASON (1581–2--?).

The degree boasted on his title-page leads to the identification of Mason as a son of Richard Mason, priest, of Cavendish, Suffolk, and pupil of Bury St. Edmunds school, who matriculated from Caius College, Cambridge, as a sizar at the age of fourteen on 6 July 1596, and took the degree of B.A. in 1601 and M.A. in 1606 from St. Catharine’s Hall. He was a member of the King’s Revels syndicate in 1608, and nothing further is known of him, since the combination of names is too common to justify his identification with the schoolmaster of Camberwell, Surrey, whose school-play is described in _Princeps Rhetoricus_ (1648; cf. C. S. Northup in _E. S._ xlv. 154).

_The Turk. 1607–8_

_S. R._ 1609, March 10 (Segar). ‘A booke called The tragedy of the Turke with the death of Borgias by John Mason gent.’ _John Busby_ (Arber, iii. 403).

1610. The Turke. A Worthie Tragedie. As it hath bene diuers times acted by the Children of his Maiesties Reuels. Written by Iohn Mason Maister of Artes. _E. A. for John Busbie._ [Prologue and Epilogue.]

1632. An excellent Tragedy of Mulleasses the Turke, and Borgias Governour of Florence. Full of Interchangeable variety; beyond expectation.... _T. P. for Francis Falkner._

_Edition_ by J. Q. Adams (1913, _Materialien_, xxxvii).--_Dissertation_: G. C. Moore Smith, _John Mason and Edward Sharpham_ (1913, _M. L. R._ viii. 371).

As a King’s Revels play this may be put in 1607–8. An earlier date has been thought to be indicated by _Eastward Ho!_ (1605), II. ii. 41, ‘_Via_, the curtaine that shaddowed Borgia’, but if the reference is to a play, Borgia may well have figured in other plays. A play ‘Vom Turcken’ was taken by Spencer to Nuremberg in 1613 (Herz, 66).

CHARLES MASSEY.

For his career as an actor, cf. ch. xv.

He apparently wrote _Malcolm King of Scots_ for the Admiral’s, to which he belonged, in April 1602, and began _The Siege of Dunkirk, with Alleyn the Pirate_ in March 1603. Neither play survives.

PHILIP MASSINGER (1583–1640).

Massinger, baptized at Salisbury on 24 Nov. 1583, was son of Arthur Massinger, a confidential servant of Henry, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. He entered at St. Alban Hall, Oxford, and left without a degree in 1606. Little is known of him for some years thereafter. He is conjectured to have become a Catholic and thus to have imperilled his relations with the Herbert family, at any rate until the time of Philip, the 4th earl, who was certainly his patron. He was buried at St. Saviour’s on 18 March 1640 and left a widow. The greater part of his dramatic career, to which all his independent plays belong, falls outside the scope of this notice, but on 4 July 1615 he gave a joint bond with Daborne for £3 to Henslowe, and some undated correspondence probably of 1613 shows that he was collaborating in one or more plays with Daborne, Field, and Fletcher.

_Collections_

T. Coxeter (1759), J. M. Mason (1779), W. Gifford (1805), H. Coleridge (1840, 1848, 1851), F. Cunningham (1871, 3 vols.). [These include _The Old Law_, _The Fatal Dowry_, and _The Virgin Martyr_, but not any plays from the Beaumont and Fletcher Ff.]

_Selections_

1887–9. A. Symons, _The Best Plays of P. M._ 2 vols. (_Mermaid Series_). [Includes _The Fatal Dowry_ and _The Virgin Martyr_.]

1912. L. A. Sherman, _P. M._ (_M. E. D._).

_Dissertations_: S. R. Gardiner, _The Political Element in M._ (1876, _N. S. S. Trans._ 314); J. Phelan, _P. M._ (1879–80, _Anglia_, ii. 1, 504; iii. 361); E. Koeppel, _Quellenstudien zu den Dramen G. Chapman’s, P. M.’s und J. Ford’s_ (1897, _Q. F._ lxxxii); W. von Wurzbach, _P. M._ (1899–1900, _Jahrbuch_, xxxv. 214, xxxvi. 128); C. Beck, _P. M. The Fatal Dowry_ (1906); A. H. Cruickshank, _Philip Massinger_ (1920).

It is doubtful how far Massinger’s dramatic activity began before 1616. For ascriptions to him, s.v. Beaumont and Fletcher (_Captain_, _Cupid’s Revenge_, _Coxcomb_, _Scornful Lady_, _Honest Man’s Fortune_, _Faithful Friends_, _Thierry and Theodoret_, _T. N. K._, _Love’s Cure_), Anthony Brewer (_The Lovesick King_), and _Second Maiden’s Tragedy_ (ch. xxiv). It has also been suggested that a _Philenzo and Hypollita_ and an _Antonio and Vallia_, ascribed to him in late records, but not extant, may represent revisions of early work by Dekker (q.v.).

FRANCIS MERBURY (_c._ 1579).

At the end of the epilogue to the following play is written ‘Amen, quoth fra: Merbury’. The formula may denote only a scribe, but a precisely similar one denotes the author in the case of Preston’s _Cambyses_ (q.v.).

_A Marriage between Wit and Wisdom. c. 1579_

[_MS._] _Brit. Mus. Addl. MS._ 26782, formerly _penes_ Sir Edward Dering.

_Editions_ by J. O. Halliwell (1846, _Sh. Soc._), J. S. Farmer (1909, _T. F. T._).

The MS. has a title-page, with the date 1579, an arrangement of the parts for six actors and the title ‘The ---- of a Marige betweene wit and wisdome very frutefull and mixed full of pleasant mirth as well for The beholders as the Readers or hearers neuer before imprinted’. There are nine Scenes in two Acts, with a Prologue and Epilogus. The characters are almost wholly allegorical. Idleness is ‘the vice’. The stage-directions mention a ‘stage’. Halliwell prints the mutilated word left blank in the title above as ‘Contract’, no doubt rightly. Conceivably the play was in fact printed in 1579, as ‘Mariage of wit and wisdome’ is in Rogers and Ley’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, _Masques_, lxxxvii).

The play might be identical with the lost Paul’s moral of _The Marriage of Mind and Measure_ (cf. App. B), which also belongs to 1579. Fleay, ii. 287, 294, infers from a not very conclusive reference to a ‘King’ in sc. iv that it dates from the time of Edward VI. He also identifies it with the _Hit Nail o’ th’ Head_ named in _Sir Thomas More_ (q.v.) because that phrase is quoted in the Epilogus, curiously disregarding the fact that the _Sir Thomas More_ list names the play under its existing title as distinct from _Hit Nail o’ th’ Head_. Most of the plays in the _Sir Thomas More_ list seem to be pre-Elizabethan; cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 200.

THOMAS MIDDLETON (_c._ 1570–1627).

Thomas Middleton was a Londoner and of a gentle family. The date of his birth can only be roughly conjectured from the probability that he was one of two Thomas Middletons who entered Gray’s Inn in 1593 and 1596, and of his earlier education nothing is known. His first work was _The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased_ (1597), and he may be the T. M. of _The Black Book_ (1604) and other pamphlets in prose and verse. He appears as a dramatist, possibly as early as 1599 in _The Old Law_ and certainly in Henslowe’s diary during 1602, writing an unnamed play for Worcester’s men, and for the Admiral’s _Caesar’s Fall or The Two Shapes_ with Dekker (q.v), Drayton, Munday, and Webster, and by himself, _Randal Earl of Chester_, and a prologue and epilogue to Greene’s _Friar Bacon_ (q.v.). This work is all lost, but by 1604 he had also collaborated with Dekker for the Admiral’s in the extant _Honest Whore_. From 1602, if not from 1599, to the end of their career in 1606 or 1607, he was also writing diligently for the Paul’s boys. I think he is referred to with their other ‘apes and guls’, Marston and Dekker, in Marston’s _Jack Drum’s Entertainment_ (1600), IV. 40:

How like you _Musus_ fashion in his carriage? O filthilie, he is as blunt as _Paules_.

Brabant, the speaker, represents Jonson, who told Drummond in 1619 that he was ‘not of the number of the Faithfull, i. e. _Poets_, and but a base fellow’ (Laing, 12). Occasional plays for several companies and the beginnings of employment in city pageantry occupied 1607–16, and to later periods belong a fruitful partnership with William Rowley for Prince Charles’s men, and some slight share in the heterogeneous mass of work that passes under the names of Beaumont and Fletcher. He also wrote a few independent plays, of which _A Game at Chess_ (1624) got him into political trouble. At some time before 1623 a few lines of his got interpolated into the text of _Macbeth_ (cf. _Warwick_ edition, p. 164). In 1620 he obtained a post as Chronologer to the City. He married Maria Morbeck, had a son Edward, and dwelt at Newington Butts, where he was buried on 4 July 1627.

_Collections_

1840. A Dyce, _Works of T. M._ 5 vols.

1885–6. A. H. Bullen, _Works of T. M._ 8 vols. [Omits _The Honest Whore_.]

1887–90. H. Ellis, _The Best Plays of T. M._ 2 vols. (Mermaid Series). [Includes _Trick to Catch the Old One_, _Chaste Maid in Cheapside_, _Widow_, _Roaring Girl_, _Mayor of Queenborough_, and later plays.]

_Dissertations_: J. Arnheim, _T. M._ (1887, _Archiv_, lxxviii. 1, 129, 369); P. G. Wiggin, _An Inquiry into the Authorship of the Middleton-Rowley Plays_ (1897, _Radcliffe College Monographs_, ix); H. Jung, _Das Verhältniss T. M.’s zu Shakspere_ (1904, _Münchener Beiträge_, xxix).

PLAYS

_The Old Law. 1599_

1656. The Excellent Comedy, called The Old Law; Or A new way to please you. By Phil. Massenger. Tho. Middleton. William Rowley. Acted before the King and Queene at Salisbury House, and at severall other places, with great Applause. Together with an exact and perfect Catalogue of all the Playes, with the Authors Names, and what are Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Pastoralls, Masks, Interludes, more exactly Printed than ever before. _For Edward Archer._

_Editions_ with Massinger’s _Works_ (q.v.).--_Dissertation_: E. E. Morris, _On the Date and Composition of T. O. L._ (_M. L. A._ xvii. 1).

It is generally supposed that in some form the play dates from 1599, as in III. i. 34 a woman was ‘born in an. 1540, and now ’tis 99’. Of the three authors only Middleton can then have been writing. Morris, after elaborate study of the early work and the versification of all three, concludes that Rowley (_c._ 1615) and Massinger (_c._ 1625) successively revised an original by Middleton. The Paul’s plays began in 1599, but it cannot be assumed that this was one of them. Stork, 48, doubts the 1599 date and is inclined to assume collaboration between the three writers _c._ 1615.

_Blurt Master Constable. 1601–2_

_S. R._ 1602, June 7. ‘A Booke called Blurt Master Constable. _Edward Aldee_ (Arber, iii. 207).

1602. Blurt Master Constable. Or The Spaniards Night-walke. As it hath bin sundry times priuately acted by the Children of Paules. _For Henry Rocket._

_Edition_ [by W. R. Chetwood] in _A Select Collection of Old Plays_ (1750).

Bullen suggests that V. iii. 179, ‘There be many of your countrymen in Ireland, signior’, said to a Spaniard, reflects the raid of Spaniards in Sept. 1601. They were taken at Kinsale in June 1602. A parallel in III. i. 104 with _Macbeth_, II. ii. 3, cannot be taken with Fleay, ii. 90, as proof of posteriority.

_The Phoenix. 1603–4_

_S. R._ 1607, May 9 (Buck). ‘A Booke called The Phenix.’ _Arthur Johnson_ (Arber, iii. 348).

1607. The Phoenix, As It hath beene sundry times Acted by the Children of Paules. And presented before his Maiestie. _E. A. for A. I._

1630. _T. H. for R. Meighen._

The only available performance before James was on 20 Feb. 1604, and the imitation of _Volpone_ (1605) suggested by Fleay, ii. 92, is not clear enough to cause any difficulty. Knights are satirized in I. vi. 150, II. iii. 4, and there is an allusion to the unsettled state of Ireland in I. v. 6.

_A Trick to Catch the Old One. 1604 < > 6_ (?)

_S. R._ 1607, Oct. 7 (Buck). ‘Twoo plaies ... thother A trick to catche the old one.’ _George Eld_ (Arber, iii. 360).

1608. A Trick to Catch the Old One. As it hath beene lately Acted, by the Children of Paules. _George Eld._

1608.... As it hath beene often in Action, both at Paules, and the Black Fryers. Presented before his Maiestie on New yeares night last. Composed by T. M. _G. E. sold by Henry Rockett._ [Another issue.]

1616.... By T. Middleton. _George Eld for Thomas Langley._

_Editions_ in _O. E. D._ (1830, iii) and by C. W. Dilke (1814, _O. E. P._ v) and W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._).

The date of Q_{1} is doubtless 1608/9 and the Court performance that by the Children of Blackfriars on 1 Jan. 1609. They must have taken the play over from Paul’s when these went under in 1606 or 1607. The title is probably proverbial, and therefore the phrase ‘We are in the way to catch the old one’ in _Isle of Gulls_, II. v, hardly enables us to date the play with Fleay, ii. 92, before Day’s, which was in Feb. 1606.

_A Mad World, my Masters. 1604 < > 6_ (?)

_S. R._ 1608, Oct. 4. ‘A Booke called A Mad World (my Maysters).’ _Walter Burre and Eleazar Edgar_ (Arber, iii. 391). [The licenser is Segar, ‘Deputy of Sir George Bucke’.]

1608. A Mad World, My Masters. As it hath bin lately in Action by the Children of Paules. Composed by T. M. _H. B. for Walter Burre._

_S. R._ 1613, April 19. Transfer to John Hodgettes of Edgar’s share (Arber, iii. 520).

1640.... A Comedy. As it hath bin often Acted at the Private House in Salisbury Court, by her Majesties Servants.... _For J. S., sold by James Becket._ [Epistle to Reader, signed ‘J. S.’]

_Edition_ by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ ii).

The epistle says ‘it is full twenty years since it was written’, which is absurd. A pamphlet of the same title by Breton in 1603, hits at the Jacobean knightings in I. i. 64, II. v. 41, and the Family of Love in I. ii. 73, and the disappearance of Paul’s in 1606 or 1607 are the only indications of date. In Acts IV and V the duplicate names Once-Ill-Brothel, Hargrave-Harebrain, Shortrod-Harebrain suggest revision.

_Michaelmas Term. 1606_ (?)

_S. R._ 1607, May 15 (Buck). ‘A Comedy called Mychaelmas terme.’ _Arthur Johnson_ (Arber, iii. 349).

1607. Michaelmas Terme. As it hath been sundry times acted by the Children of Paules. _For A. I._ [Induction.]

1630.... Newly corrected. _T. H. for R. Meighen._

Allusions in II. iii. 226, 376 to the presence of women at a quartering for treason may suggest, as in the case of Marston’s _Fawn_ (q.v.), a date after that of 30 Jan. 1606. There is no reference in II. i. 63 to the leap-year of 1604, as suggested by Fleay, ii. 91. Knightings are satirized in I. i. 191; III. i. 46.

_Your Five Gallants. 1607_

_S. R._ 1608, March 22 (Buck). ‘A Plaie called the ffyve Wittie Gallantes as it hath ben acted by the Children of the Chappell.’ _Richard Bonyon_ (Arber, iii. 372).

N.D. Your fiue Gallants. As it hath beene often in Action at the Blacke-friers. Written by T. Middleton. _For Richard Bonian._ [Induction with ‘Presenter or Prologue’ in dumb-show.]

This may have been in preparation for Paul’s when they ceased playing and taken over by Blackfriars. In any case a reference to closure for plague in IV. ii. 29 and to fighting with a windmill (like Don Quixote) in IV. viii. 7 fit in with a date in 1607.

_The Family of Love. 1604 < > 7_ (?)

_S. R._ 1607, Oct. 12 (Buck). ‘A playe called the family of Loue as yt hath bene Lately acted by the Children of his Maiesties Reuelles.’ _John Browne and John Helme_ (Arber, iii. 360).

1608. The Famelie of Love. Acted by the Children of his Maiesties Reuells. _For John Helmes._ [Epistle to Reader, Prologue, Epilogue.]

The prologue apologizes that ‘expectation’ hath not ‘filled the general round’. The King’s Revels can hardly have existed before 1607. Fleay, ii. 94, thinks that they inherited the play from Paul’s and assigns it to 1604 ‘when the Family of Love were such objects of public attention’. His chief reason is that the epistle regrets that the play was ‘not published when the general voice of the people had sealed it for good, and the newness of it made it much more desired than at this time’. It had ‘passed the censure of the stage with a general applause’. This epistle is clearly by the author, who says ‘it was in the press before I had notice of it, by which means some faults may escape in the printing’. I agree that there must have been some interval between production and publication. But there is no special virtue in the date 1604. References to the Family of Love are to be found in _Sir Giles Goosecap_ (_1601–3_), II. i. 263; _Dutch Courtesan_ (_1603–4_), I. i. 156, I. ii. 18; _Mad World, My Masters_ (_1604–6_), I. ii. 73; _Isle of Gulls_ (_1606_), p. 26; _Every Woman in Her Humour_ (?), p. 316. The sect was well known in England as early as 1574–81, when an act was passed for its suppression. It petitioned James _c._ 1604 and was answered in _A Supplication of the Family of Love_, printed at Cambridge in 1606. On its history, cf. Fuller, _Church History_ (1868), iii. 239; F. Nippold, _Heinrich Niclaes und das Haus der Liebe_ (1862, _Z. f. Hist. Theol._); R. Barclay, _Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth_ (1876), 25; A. C. Thomas, _The Family of Love_ (1893); R. M. Jones, _Studies in Mystical Religion_ (1909), 428; E. B. Daw, _Love Feigned and Unfeigned_ (1917, _M. L. A._ xxxii. 267).

_The Roaring Girl. c. 1610._

_With_ Dekker (q.v.).

_A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. 1611._

_S. R._ 1630, April 8 (Herbert). ‘A play called The Chast Mayd of Chepeside.’ _Constable_ (Arber, iv. 232).

1630. A Chast Mayd in Cheape-side. A Pleasant conceited Comedy neuer before printed. As it hath beene often acted at the Swan on the Banke-side by the Lady Elizabeth her Seruants By Thomas Midelton Gent. _For Francis Constable._

It is not known where the Lady Elizabeth’s played during 1611–13, and it may very well have been at the Swan. Nor is there anything improbable in the suggestion of Fleay, 186, that this is the _Proud Maid’s Tragedy_ acted by them at Court on 25 Feb. 1612 (App. B).

_No Wit, no Help, like a Woman’s. 1613_ (?)

_S. R._ 1653, Sept. 9. ‘No witt, no helpe like a Woman. Mr. Tho. Midleton.’ _H. Moseley._ (Eyre, i. 428).

{ Wit } 1657. No { Help } like a Womans. A Comedy. By Tho. Middleton, Gent. _For Humphrey Moseley._ [Prologue and Epilogue.]

The text represents a revival by Shirley in 1638, but Fleay, ii. 96, refers the original to 1613 as in III. i. 286 a character, after referring to the almanac for 1638, says he has ‘proceeded in five and twenty such books of astronomy’. Bullen accepts the date, but I feel no confidence in the argument. Stork, 47, attempts to trace Rowley’s hand.

_The Widow_ (?)

_S. R._ 1652, Apr. 12 (Brent). ‘A play called The Widdow, written by John Fletcher & Tho: Middleton gent.’ _Moseley_ (Eyre, i. 394).

1652. The Widdow A Comedie. As it was Acted at the private House in Black Fryers, with great Applause, by His late Majesties Servants. Written by Ben: Jonson John Fletcher. Tho: Middleton. Gent. Printed by the Originall Copy. _For Humphrey Moseley._ [Epistle to Reader by Alexander Gough. Prologue and Epilogue.]

Bullen places this ‘from internal evidence’ _c._ 1608–9, but thinks it revised at a later date, not improbably by Fletcher, although he cannot discover either Jonson’s hand or, ‘unless the songs be his’, Fletcher’s. Allusions to ‘a scornful woman’ (I. ii. 104) and to ‘yellow bands’ as ‘hateful’ (V. i. 52) are consistent with a date _c._ 1615–16.

_The Mayor of Quinborough_ (?)

[_MS._] A copy of the play, said to be ‘of no great antiquity’, is described in an appendix to _Wit and Wisdom_ (_Sh. Soc._), 85.

_S. R._ 1646, Sept. 4 (Langley). ‘Maior of Quinborough.’ _Robinson and Moseley_ (Eyre, i. 244).

1661, Feb. 13. ‘A Comedie called the Maior of Quinborough, By Tho: Middleton. _Henry Herringham_ (Eyre, ii. 288).

1661. The Mayor of Quinborough: A Comedy. As it hath been often Acted with much Applause at Black Fryars, By His Majesties Servants. Written by Tho. Middleton. _For Henry Herringham._ [Epistle to Gentlemen.]

There is a mention (V. i. 112) of Fletcher’s _Wild-Goose Chase_ (1621), and the introduction of a ‘rebel Oliver’ suggests a much later date. But Bullen thinks this an old play revised, and Fleay, ii. 104, attempts to identify it with an anonymous play called both _Vortigern_ and _Hengist_ (Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 181) which was produced by the Admiral’s on 4 Dec. 1596 and bought by the same company from Alleyn in 1601. There is not, however, much to support a theory that Middleton was writing for the stage so early as 1596. Stork, 46, thinks that Middleton and Rowley revised the older play _c._ 1606, ‘at a time when plays of ancient Britain were in vogue’.

_Doubtful Plays_

Middleton’s hand has been sought in _Birth of Merlin_, _Puritan_, and _Second Maiden’s Tragedy_ (cf. ch. xxiv) and in _Wit at Several Weapons_ of the Beaumont (q.v.) and Fletcher series.

_Lost Mask_

_Mask of Cupid. 4 Jan. 1614_

Writing to Carleton on 5 Jan. 1614 of the festivities at the Earl of Somerset’s wedding (Birch, i. 288; cf. s.v. Campion, _Mask of Squires_), Chamberlain notes that the King had called on the City to entertain the bridal pair, which they had done, though reluctantly, on 4 Jan. in Merchant Taylors’ hall, with a supper, a play and a mask, and a banquet. Howes in Stowe, _Annales_, 1005, says there were ‘2 seuerall pleasant maskes & a play’. Bullen, _Middleton_, i. xxxix, gives from the City _Repertory_, xxxi. 2, f. 239^v, an order of 18 Jan. 1614 for payment to Thomas Middleton in respect of the ‘late solemnities at Merchant Tailors’ Hall’ for ‘the last Mask of Cupid and other shows lately made’ by him.

ENTERTAINMENTS

_Running Stream Entertainment. 29 Sept. 1613_

1613. The Manner of his Lordships [Sir Thomas Middleton’s] Entertainment on Michaelmas day last, being the day of his Honorable Election, together with the worthy Sir Iohn Swinarton, Knight, then Lord Maior, the Learned and Iuditious, Sir Henry Montague, Maister Recorder, and many of the Right Worshipfull the Aldermen of the Citty of London. At that most Famous and Admired Worke of the Running Streame from Amwell Head, into the Cesterne neere Islington, being the sole Inuention, Cost, and Industry of that Worthy Maister Hugh Middleton, of London Goldsmith, for the generall good of the Citty. By T. M. _Nicholas Okes._ [Appended to reissue of _The Triumphs of Truth_.]

_The Triumphs of Truth. 29 Oct. 1613_

_S. R._ 1613, Nov. 3. ‘A booke called the tryumphs of truth of all the showes pagiantes Chariots &c. on the Lord Maiours Day octobris 29, 1613.’ _Nicholas Okes_ (Arber, iii. 536).

1613. The Triumphs of Truth. A Solemnity vnparalleld for Cost, Art, and Magnificence, at the Confirmation and Establishment of that Worthy and true Nobly-minded Gentleman, Sir Thomas Middleton, Knight; in the Honorable Office of his Maiesties Lieuetenant, the Lord Maior of the thrice Famous Citty of London. Taking Beginning at his Lordships going, and proceeding after his Returne from receiuing the Oath of Maioralty at Westminster, on the Morrow next after Simon and Iudes day, October 29. 1613. All the Showes, Pageants, Chariots; Morning, Noone, and Night-Triumphes. Directed, Written, and redeem’d into Forme, from the Ignorance of some former times, and their Common Writer, by Thomas Middleton. _Nicholas Okes._

1613.... Shewing also his Lordships Entertainment on Michaelmas day last, ... [etc.]. _Nicholas Okes._ [Reissue, with _Running Stream Entertainment_ added.]

_Edition_ in Nichols, _James_ (1828), ii. 679, with _Running Stream_.

_Civitatis Amor. 4 Nov. 1616_

1616. Ciuitatis Amor. The Cities Loue. An entertainement by water, at Chelsey, and Whitehall. At the ioyfull receiuing of that Illustrious Hope of Great Britaine, the High and Mighty Charles, To bee created Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornewall, Earle of Chester, &c. Together with the Ample Order and Solemnity of his Highnesse creation, as it was celebrated in his Maiesties Palace of Whitehall on Monday, the fourth of Nouember, 1616. As also the Ceremonies of that Ancient and Honourable Order of the Knights of the Bath; And all the Triumphs showne in honour of his Royall Creation. _Nicholas Okes for Thomas Archer._ [Middleton’s name follows the account of the ‘entertainment’.]

ALEXANDER MONTGOMERY (_c._ 1556–_c._ 1610).

A Scottish poet (cf. _D. N. B._) who has been suggested as the author of _Philotus_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

ROGER MORRELL (_c._ 1597).

Possibly the author of the academic _Hispanus_ (cf. App. K).

RICHARD MULCASTER (_c._ 1530–1611).

A contributor to the Kenilworth entertainment (cf. ch. xxiv, C). For his successive masterships of Merchant Taylors and St. Paul’s, see ch. xii.

ANTHONY MUNDAY (_c._ 1553–1633).

Anthony was son of Christopher Munday, a London Draper. He ‘first was a stage player’ (_A True Report of ... M. Campion_, 1582), but in Oct. 1576 was apprenticed for eight years to John Allde, stationer. Allde went out of business about 1582, and Munday never completed his apprenticeship, probably because his ready pen found better profit in the purveyance of copy for the trade. He began by a journey to Rome in 1578–9, and brought back material for a series of attacks upon the Jesuits, to one of which _A True Report of ... M. Campion_ is an answer. According to the anonymous author, Munday on his return to England ‘did play extempore, those gentlemen and others whiche were present, can best giue witnes of his dexterity, who being wery of his folly, hissed him from his stage. Then being thereby discouraged, he set forth a balet against playes, but yet (o constant youth) he now beginnes againe to ruffle upon the stage’. For the ballad there is some corroborative evidence in a S. R. entry of 10 Nov. 1580 (cf. App. C, No. xxvi), which, however, does not name Munday, and it is a possible conjecture that he also wrote the _Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies_ issued in the same year (cf. App. C, No. xxvii). If so, he was already, before 1580, doing work as a playwright; but of this, with the doubtful exception of the anonymous _Two Italian Gentlemen_ (q.v.), there is no other evidence for another fifteen years. His experiences as an actor may have been with the company of the Earl of Oxford, whose ‘servant’ he calls himself in his _View of Sundry Examples_ (1580). From 1581 he was employed by Topcliffe and others against recusants, and as a result became, possibly by 1584 and certainly by 1588, a Messenger of the Chamber. He still held this post in 1593, and was employed as a pursuivant to execute the Archbishop of Canterbury’s warrants against Martin Marprelate in 1588. J. D. Wilson (_M. L. R._ iv. 489) suggests that he may also have taken a hand in the literary and dramatic controversy, as ‘Mar-Martin, John a Cant: his hobbie-horse’, who ‘was to his reproche, newly put out of the morris, take it how he will; with a flat discharge for euer shaking his shins about a maypole againe while he liued’ (_Protestation of Martin Marprelate_, _c._ Aug. 1589). Certainly Munday’s official duties did not interfere with his literary productiveness, as translator of romances, maker of ballads, lyrist, and miscellaneous writer generally. He is traceable, chiefly in Henslowe’s diary, as a busy dramatist for the Admiral’s men during various periods between 1594 and 1602, and there is no reason to suppose that his activities were limited to these years. Meres in 1598 includes him amongst ‘the best for comedy’, with the additional compliment of ‘our best plotter’. But he was evidently a favourite mark for the satire of more literary writers, who depreciated his style and jested at his functions as a messenger. Small, 172, has disposed of attempts to identify him with the Deliro or the Puntarvolo of _E. M. O._, the Amorphus of _Cynthia’s Revels_, the In-and-In Medley of the _Tale of a Tub_, and the Timothy Tweedle of the anonymous _Jack Drum’s Entertainment_. But he may reasonably be taken for the Poet Nuntius of _E. M. I._ and the Antonio Balladino of _The Case is Altered_ (q.v.); and long before Jonson took up the game, an earlier writer had introduced him as the Posthaste of the anonymous _Histriomastix_ (c. 1589). Posthaste suggests the formation of Sir Oliver Owlet’s men, and acts as their poet (i. 124). He writes a _Prodigal Child_ at 1_s._ a sheet (ii. 94). He will teach the actors to play ‘true Politicians’ (i. 128) and ‘should be employd in matters of state’ (ii. 130). He is always ready to drink (i. 162; ii. 103, 115, 319; vi. 222), and claims to be a gentleman, because ‘he hath a clean shirt on, with some learning’ (ii. 214). He has written ballads (v. 91; vi. 235). The players jeer at ‘your extempore’ (i. 127), and he offers to do a prologue extempore (ii. 121), and does extemporize on a theme (ii. 293). He writes with

no new luxury or blandishment But plenty of Old Englands mothers words (ii. 128).

The players call him, when he is late for rehearsal, a ‘peaking pageanter’, and say ‘It is as dangerous to read his name at a play door, as a printed bill on a plague door’ (iv. 165). The whole portrait seems to be by the earlier author; Marston only adds a characteristic epithet in ‘goosequillian Posthast’ (iii. 187). But it agrees closely with the later portraits by Jonson, and with the facts of Munday’s career. I do not think that ‘pageanter’ means anything more than play-maker. But from 1605 onwards Munday was often employed by city companies to devise Lord Mayor’s pageants, and it has been supposed that he had been similarly engaged since 1592 on the strength of a claim in the 1618 edition of John Stowe’s _Survey of London_, which he edited, that he had been ‘six and twenty years in sundry employments for the City’s service’. But there were other civic employments, and it is doubtful (cf. ch. iv) how far there were pageants during the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign for Munday to devise. On the title-pages of his pageants he describes himself as a ‘Cittizen and Draper of London’. The Corporation’s welcome at the creation of Henry as Prince of Wales in 1610 (cf. ch. iv) also fell to him to devise. How long he continued to write plays is unknown. He had several children in St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, between 1584 and 1589, and was buried on 10 Aug. 1633 at St. Stephen’s, Coleman Street.

_Dissertations_: J. D. Wilson, _A. M., Pamphleteer and Pursuivant_ (1909, _M. L. R._ iv. 484); W. W. Greg, _Autograph Plays by A. M._ (1913, _M. L. R._ viii. 89); M. St. C. Byrne, _The Date of A. M.’s Journey to Rome_ (1918, _3 Library_, ix. 106), _The Shepherd Tony--a Recapitulation_ (1920, _M. L. R._ xv. 364), _A. M. and his Books_ (1921, _4 Library_, i. 225); E. M. Thompson, _The Autograph MSS. of A. M._ (1919, _Bibl. Soc. Trans._ xiv. 325).

PLAYS

_John a Kent and John a Cumber. 1594_

[_MS._] Autograph MS. in possession of Lord Mostyn, with title ‘The Booke of John a Kent and John a Cumber’, and at end the signature ‘Anthony Mundy’, and in another hand the date ‘---- Decembris 1596’. A mutilation of the paper has removed the day of the month and possibly some memorandum to which the date was appended. The wrapper is in part formed of a vellum leaf of which another part was used for _Sir Thomas More_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

_Editions_ by J. P. Collier (1851, _Sh. Soc._) and J. S. Farmer (1912, _T. F. T._).

The date has been misread ‘1595’. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 172) agrees with Fleay, ii. 114, that the play, of which the scene is at West Chester, must be _The Wise Man of West Chester_, produced by the Admiral’s on 3 Dec. 1594 and played to 18 July 1597. Their inventory of 1598 (_Henslowe Papers_, 117) includes ‘Kentes woden leage’. This is not required by the extant text, but two or three leaves of the MS. appear to be missing. If the identification is correct, it is not easy to see how the MS. can be earlier than 1594, although Sir E. M. Thompson’s warning that the date of 1596 may be a later addition is justified. On 19 Sept. 1601 the Admiral’s bought the book from Alleyn. Greg further suggests that _Randal Earl of Chester_, written by Middleton for the same company in Oct. and Nov. 1602, may have been a ‘refashioning’ of the earlier play, in which Randal is a character.

_The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. 1598_

_S. R._ 1600, Dec. 1. ‘The Downe falle of Robert Erle of Huntingdone after Called Robin Hood.’ _Leake_ (Arber, iii. 176).

1601. The Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington, Afterward called Robin Hood of merrie Sherwodde: with his loue to chaste Matilda, the Lord Fitzwaters daughter, afterwardes his faire Maide Marian. Acted by the Right Honourable, the Earle of Notingham, Lord high Admirall of England, his seruants. _For William Leake._ [Induction.]

_Editions_ by J. P. Collier (1833, _Five Old Plays_), in Dodsley^4 viii (1874), and by J. S. Farmer (1913, _S. F. T._).--_Dissertation_: A. Ruckdeschel, _Die Quellen des Dramas ‘The Downfall and Death of Robert, Earle of Huntington, otherwise called Robin Hood’_ (1897).

Henslowe paid Munday £5 on behalf of the Admiral’s for ‘the firste parte of Robyne Hoode’ on 15 Feb. 1598. From 20 Feb. to 8 March he paid Munday and Chettle sums amounting to £5 in all for a ‘seconde parte’, called in the fullest entry ‘seconde parte of the downefall of earlle Huntyngton surnamed Roben Hoode’. The books and apparel and properties are in the Admiral’s inventories of March 1598 (_Henslowe Papers_, 114, 115, 120, 121). Both parts were licensed for performance on 28 March. On 18 Nov. he paid Chettle 10_s._ for ‘the mendynge of’ the first part, and on 25 Nov., apparently, another 10_s._ ‘for mendinge of Roben Hood for the corte’. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 190) suggests that the last payment was for the second part, and that the two Court performances by the Admiral’s at Christmas 1598 are of these plays. However this may be, Henslowe’s _1, 2 Robin Hood_ are doubtless the extant _Downfall_ and _Death_. There is an allusion in _The Downfall_, IV. ii, to the ‘merry jests’ of an earlier play, which may be _The Pastoral Comedy of Robin Hood and Little John_, entered in S. R. on 14 May 1594, but not now known. Fleay, ii. 114, thinks that Chettle, besides revising some of Munday’s scenes, added the Induction and the Skeltonic rhymes.

_The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. 1598_

_With_ Chettle.

_S. R._ 1600, Dec. 1. ‘The Death of Robert Earle of Huntingdon with the lamentable trogidye of Chaste Mathilda.’ _Leake_ (Arber, iii. 176).

1601. The Death of Robert, Earle of Huntington. Otherwise called Robin Hood of merrie Sherwodde: with the lamentable Tragedie of chaste Matilda, his faire maid Marian, poysoned at Dunmowe by King Iohn. Acted by the Right Honourable, the Earle of Notingham, Lord high Admirall of England, his seruants. _For William Leake._ [_Epilogue._]

_Editions_ and _Dissertation_ with _The Downfall_ (q.v.).

This is a sequel to _The Downfall_ (q.v.). Fleay, ii. 115, gives Munday the scenes dealing with Robin Hood’s death and Chettle those dealing with Maid Marian’s. The play contains discrepancies, but Henslowe’s entries afford no evidence that Munday revised Chettle’s work, as Fleay thinks. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 191) points out that Davenport borrowed much of his _King John and Matilda_ (1655) from _The Death_.

_1 Sir John Oldcastle. 1599_

_With_ Drayton (q.v.), Hathway, and Wilson.

_Lost Plays_

The following is a complete list of the plays in which Henslowe’s diary shows Munday to have written between 1597 and 1602. All were for the Admiral’s:

(i) _Mother Redcap._

With Drayton, Dec. 1597–Jan. 1598.

(ii), (iii) _1, 2 Robin Hood._

_Vide supra._

(iv) _The Funeral of Richard Cœur-de-Lion._

With Chettle, Drayton, and Wilson, June 1598, probably as a sequel to _Robin Hood_ (cf. Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 190).

(v) _Valentine and Orson._

With Hathway (q.v.), July 1598.

(vi) A ‘comodey for the corte’, for the completion of which Drayton was surety, Aug. 1598, but the entry is cancelled, and presumably the play was not finished, unless it is identical with (vii).

(vii) _Chance Medley._

With Chettle or Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson, Aug. 1598.

(viii), (ix) _1, 2 Sir John Oldcastle._

With Drayton (q.v.), Hathway, and Wilson, Oct.–Dec. 1599.

(x) _Owen Tudor._

With Drayton, Hathway, and Wilson, Jan. 1600, but apparently not finished.

(xi) _1 Fair Constance of Rome._

With Dekker, Drayton, Hathway, and Wilson, June 1600.

(xii) _1 Cardinal Wolsey._

With Chettle, Drayton, and Smith, Aug.–Nov. 1601.

(xiii) _Jephthah._

With Dekker, May 1602.

(xiv) _Caesar’s Fall, or The Two Shapes._

With Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, and Webster, May 1602.

(xv) _The Set at Tennis._

Dec. 1602. The payment, though in full, was only £3; it was probably, therefore, a short play, and conceivably identical with the ‘[sec]ond part of fortun[es Tenn?]is’ of which a ‘plot’ exists (cf. ch. xxiv) and intended to piece out to the length of a normal performance the original _Fortune’s Tennis_ written by Dekker (q.v.) as a ‘curtain-raiser’ for the Fortune on its opening in 1600. [This is highly conjectural.]

Munday must clearly have had a hand in _Sir Thomas More_, which is in his writing, and has been suggested as the author of _Fedele and Fortunio_ and _The Weakest Goeth to the Wall_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

ENTERTAINMENTS

_The Triumphs of Reunited Britannia. 29 Oct. 1605_

N.D. The Triumphes of re-vnited Britania. Performed at the cost and charges of the Right Worship: Company of the Merchant Taylors, in honor of Sir Leonard Holliday kni: to solemnize his entrance as Lorde Mayor of the Citty of London, on Tuesday the 29. of October. 1605. Deuised and Written by A. Mundy, Cittizen and Draper of London. _W. Jaggard._

_Edition_ in Nichols, _James_ (1828), i. 564.

_London’s Love to Prince Henry. 31 May 1610_

See ch. xxiv.

_Chryso-Thriambos. 29 Oct. 1611_

1611. Chruso-thriambos. The Triumphes of Golde. At the Inauguration of Sir Iames Pemberton, Knight, in the Dignity of Lord Maior of London: On Tuesday, the 29. of October. 1611. Performed in the harty loue, and at the charges of the Right Worshipfull, Worthy, and Ancient Company of Gold-Smithes. Deuised and Written by A. M. Cittizen and Draper of London. _William Jaggard._

_Himatia Poleos. 29 Oct. 1614_

1614. Himatia-Poleos. The Triumphs of olde Draperie, or the rich Cloathing of England. Performed in affection, and at the charges of the right Worthie and first honoured Companie of Drapers: at the enstalment of Sr. Thomas Hayes Knight, in the high office of Lord Maior of London, on Satturday, being the 29. day of October. 1614. Deuised and written by A. M. Citizen and Draper of London. _Edward Allde._

_Metropolis Coronata. 30 Oct. 1615_

1615. Metropolis Coronata, The Triumphes of Ancient Drapery: or, Rich Cloathing of England, in a second Yeeres performance. In Honour of the aduancement of Sir Iohn Iolles, Knight, to the high Office of Lord Maior of London, and taking his Oath for the same Authoritie, on Monday, being the 30. day of October. 1615. Performed in heartie affection to him, and at the bountifull charges of his worthy Brethren the truely Honourable Society of Drapers, the first that receiued such Dignitie in this Citie. Deuised, and written, by A. M. Citizen, and Draper of London. _George Purslowe._

_Edition_ in Nichols, _James_, iii. 107.

_Chrysanaleia. 29 Oct. 1616_

_S. R._ 1616, Oct. 29. ‘A booke called the golden Fishing of the showes of Sir John Leman Lord Maiour.’ _George Purslowe_ (Arber iii. 597).

1616. Chrysanaleia: The Golden Fishing: Or, Honour of Fishmongers. Applauding the aduancement of Mr. Iohn Leman, Alderman, to the dignitie of Lord Maior of London. Taking his Oath in the same authority at Westminster, on Tuesday, being the 29. day of October. 1616. Performed in hearty loue to him, and at the charges of his worthy Brethren, the ancient, and right Worshipfull Company of Fishmongers. Deuised and written by A. M. Citizen and Draper of London. _George Purslowe._

_Editions_ in Nichols, iii. 195, and by J. G. Nichols (1844, 1869) with reproductions of drawings for the pageant in the possession of the Fishmongers.

_Doubtful Entertainment_

The _Campbell_ mayoral pageant of 1609 (q.v.) has been ascribed to Munday.

ROBERT NAILE (_c._ 1613).

Probable describer of the Bristol entertainment of Queen Anne in 1613 (cf. ch. xxiv, C).

THOMAS NASHE (1507–>1601).

Nashe was baptized at Lowestoft, Suffolk, in Nov. 1567, the son of William Nashe, minister, of a Herefordshire family. He matriculated from St. John’s, Cambridge, on 13 Oct. 1582, took his B.A. in 1586, and left the University probably in 1588. According to the _Trimming_ (Harvey, iii. 67), he ‘had a hand in a Show called Terminus & non terminus, for which his partener in it was expelled the Colledge: but this foresaid Nashe played in it (as I suppose) the Varlet of Clubs; which he acted with such naturall affection, that all the spectators tooke him to be the verie same’. He went to London, and his first book, _The Anatomie of Absurditie_, was entered in S. R. on 19 Sept. 1588. In actual publication it was anticipated by an epistle ‘To the Gentlemen Students of Both Universities’, which he prefixed to the _Menaphon_ (1589) of Robert Greene (cf. App. C, No. xlii). This contains some pungent criticism of actors, with incidental depreciation of certain illiterate dramatists, among whom is apparently included Kyd, coupled with praise of Peele, and of other ‘sweete gentlemen’, who have ‘tricked vp a company of taffata fooles with their feathers’. Evidently Nashe had joined the London circle of University wits, and henceforth lived, partly by his pen, as dramatist and pamphleteer, and partly by services rendered to various patrons, amongst whom were Lord Strange, Sir George Carey, afterwards Lord Hunsdon, and Archbishop Whitgift. His connexion with this last was either the cause or the result of his employment, with other literary men, notably Lyly, in opposition to the anti-episcopalian tracts of Martin Marprelate and his fellows. His precise share in the controversy is uncertain. He has been credited with _An Almond for a Parrot_, with a series of writings under the name of Pasquil, and with other contributions, but in all cases the careful analysis of McKerrow, v. 49, finds the evidence quite inconclusive.

McKerrow, too, has given the best account (v. 65) of Nashe’s quarrel with Gabriel and Richard Harvey. This arose out of his association as an anti-Martinist with Lyly, between whom and Gabriel there was an ancient feud. It was carried on, in a vein of scurrilous personal raillery on both sides, from 1590 until it was suppressed as a public scandal in 1599. One of the charges against Nashe was his friendship with, and in the Harveian view aping of, Robert Greene, with whom, according to Gabriel’s _Four Letters_ (_Works_, i. 170), Nashe took part in the fatal banquet of pickled herrings and Rhenish which brought him to his end. Nashe repudiated the charge of imitation, and spoke of Greene in _Have With You to Saffron Walden_ (iii. 132), as ‘subscribing to mee in anything but plotting Plaies, wherein he was his crafts master’. Unless _Dido_ is early work, no play written by Nashe before Greene’s death on 3 Sept. 1592 is known to us. But he is pretty clearly the ‘young Iuuenall, that byting Satyrist, that lastly with mee together writ a Comedie’ of Greene’s posthumous _Groats-worth_ (cf. App. C, No. xlviii), and the tone of his own Defence of Plays in _Pierce Penilesse_ of 1592 (cf. App. C, No. xlvi) as compared with that of the _Menaphon_ epistle suggests that he had made his peace with the ‘taffata fooles’. His one extant unaided play belongs to the autumn of 1592, and was apparently for a private performance at Croydon. Internal evidence enables us to date in Aug.–Oct. 1596, and to ascribe to Nashe, in spite of the fact that his name at the foot is in a nineteenth-century writing, a letter to William Cotton (McKerrow, v. 192, from _Cott. MS. Julius C._ iii, f. 280) which shows that he was still writing for the stage and gives valuable evidence upon the theatrical crisis of that year (App. D, No. cv). To 1597 belongs the misadventure of _The Isle of Dogs_, which sent Nashe in flight to Great Yarmouth, and probably ended his dramatic career. He is mentioned as dead in C. Fitzgeffrey, _Affaniae_ (1601).

_Collections_

1883–5. A. B. Grosart, _The Complete Works of T. N._ 6 vols. (_Huth Library_).

1904–10. R. B. McKerrow, _The Works of T. N._ 5 vols.

PLAYS

_Summer’s Last Will and Testament. 1592_

_S. R._ 1600, Oct. 28 (Harsnett). ‘A booke called Sommers last Will and testament presented by William Sommers.’ _Burby and Walter Burre_ (Arber, iii. 175).

1600. A Pleasant Comedie, called Summers last will and Testament. Written by Thomas Nash. _Simon Stafford for Walter Burre._ [Induction, with Prologue and Epilogue.]

_Edition_ in Dodsley^{3–4} (1825–74).--_Dissertations_: B. Nicholson, _The Date of S. L. W. and T._ (_Athenaeum_, 10 Jan. 1891); F. G. Fleay _Queen Elizabeth, Croydon and the Drama_ (1898).

The play was intended for performance on the ‘tyle-stones’ and in the presence of a ‘Lord’, to whom there are several other references, in one of which he is ‘your Grace’ (ll. 17, 205, 208, 587, 795, 1897, 1925). There are also local references to ‘betweene this and Stretham’ (l. 202), to ‘Dubbers hill’ near Croydon (l. 621), to Croydon itself (ll. 1830, 1873), and to ‘forlorne’ Lambeth (l. 1879). The conclusion seems justified that ‘this lowe built house’ (l. 1884) was the palace of Archbishop Whitgift at Croydon.

There was a plague ‘in this latter end of summer’ (l. 80); which had been ‘brought in’ by the dog-days (l. 656), and had led to ‘want of terme’ and consequent ‘Cities harm’ in London (l. 1881). Summer accuses Sol of spiting Thames with a ‘naked channell’ (l. 545) and Sol lays it on the moon (l. 562):

in the yeare Shee was eclipst, when that the Thames was bare.

Two passages refer to the Queen as on progress. Summer says (l. 125):

Haruest and age haue whit’ned my greene head:

* * * * *

This month haue I layne languishing a bed, Looking eche hour to yeeld my life and throne; And dyde I had in deed vnto the earth, But that _Eliza_, Englands beauteous Queene, On whom all seasons prosperously attend, Forbad the execution of my fate, Vntill her ioyfull progresse was expir’d. For her doth Summer liue, and linger here.

And again, at the end of the play (l. 1841):

Vnto _Eliza_, that most sacred Dame, Whom none but Saints and Angels ought to name, All my faire dayes remaining I bequeath, To waite vpon her till she be returnd. Autumne, I charge thee, when that I am dead, Be prest and seruiceable at her beck, Present her with thy goodliest ripened fruites.

The plague and absence of term from London might fit either 1592 or 1593 (cf. App. E), but I agree with McKerrow, iv. 418, that the earlier year is indicated. In 1593 the plague did not begin in the dog-days, nor did Elizabeth go on progress. And it is on 6 Sept. 1592 that Stowe (1615), 764, records the emptying of Thames. I may add a small confirmatory point. Are not ‘the horses lately sworne to be stolne’ (l. 250) those stolen by Germans in the train of Count Mompelgard between Reading and Windsor and referred to in _Merry Wives_, IV. v. 78. The Count came to Windsor on 19 Aug. 1592 (Rye, xcix). Now I part company with Mr. McKerrow, who thinks that, although the play was written in 1592, it may have been revised for performance before Elizabeth in a later year, perhaps at her visit to Whitgift on 14 Aug. 1600. His reasons are three: (_a_) Sol’s reference to the Thames seems to date it in a year earlier than that in which he speaks; (_b_) the seasonal references suggest August, while Stowe’s date necessitates September at earliest, and the want of term points to October; (_c_) the references to Elizabeth imply her presence. I think there is something in (_a_), but not much, if the distinction between actual and dramatic time is kept in mind. As to (_b_), the tone of the references is surely to a summer prolonged beyond its natural expiration for Eliza’s benefit, well into autumn, and in such a year the fruits of autumn, which in this country are chiefly apples, will be on the trees until October. As to (_c_), I cannot find any evidence of the Queen’s presence at all. Surely she is on progress elsewhere, and due to ‘return’ in the future. I may add that Elizabeth was at Croydon in the spring of 1593, and that it would, therefore, have been odd to defer a revival for her benefit until another seven years had elapsed. The 1592 progress came to an end upon 9 Oct. and I should put the performance not long before. When Q_{1} of _Pierce Penilesse_ (S. R. 8 Aug. 1592) was issued, Nashe was kept by fear of infection ‘with my Lord in the Countrey’, and the misinterpretations of the pamphlet which he deprecates in the epistle to Q_{2} (McKerrow, i. 154) are hinted at in a very similar protest (l. 65) in the play.

The prologue is spoken by ‘the greate foole _Toy_’ (ll. 10, 1945), who would borrow a chain and fiddle from ‘my cousin Ned’ (l. 7), also called ‘Ned foole’ (l. 783). The epilogue is spoken (l. 1194) and the songs sung (ll. 117, 1871) by boys. Will Summer (l. 792) gives good advice to certain ‘deminitiue urchins’, who wait ‘on my Lords trencher’; but he might be speaking either to actors or to boys in the audience. The morris (l. 201) dances ‘for the credit of Wostershire’, where Whitgift had been bishop. The prompter was Dick Huntley (l. 14), and Vertumnus was acted by Harry Baker (l. 1567). There is a good deal of Latin in the text. On the whole, I think that the play was given by members of Whitgift’s household, which his biographer describes as ‘a little academy’. The prologue (l. 33) has ‘So fares it with vs nouices, that here betray our imperfections: we, afraid to looke on the imaginary serpent of Enuy, paynted in mens affections, haue ceased to tune any musike of mirth to your eares this twelue-month, thinking that, as it is the nature of the serpent to hisse, so childhood and ignorance would play the goslings, contemning and condemning what they vnderstood not’. This agrees curiously in date with the termination of the Paul’s plays. Whitgift might have entertained the Paul’s boys during the plague and strengthened them for a performance with members of his own household. But would they call themselves ‘nouices’?

_Dido, Queen of Carthage > 1593_

_With_ Marlowe (q.v.).

_Lost Plays_

_Terminus et non Terminus. 1586 < > 8_

_Vide supra._ McKerrow, v. 10, thinks that the name of Nashe’s alleged part may be a jest, and points out that the identification by Fleay, ii. 124, of the play, of which nothing more is known, with the ‘London Comedie’ of the _Cards_ referred to in Harington’s _Apology_ (cf. App. C, No. xlv) is improbable.

_The Isle of Dogs. 1597_

Meres, _Palladis Tamia_ (S. R. 7 Sept. 1598), writes:

‘As _Actaeon_ was wooried of his owne hounds: so is _Tom Nash_ of his _Isle of Dogs_. Dogges were the death of _Euripedes_, but bee not disconsolate gallant young _Iuuenall_, _Linus_, the sonne of _Apollo_ died the same death. Yet God forbid that so braue a witte should so basely perish, thine are but paper dogges, neither is thy banishment like _Ouids_, eternally to conuerse with the barbarous _Getes_. Therefore comfort thy selfe sweete _Tom_, with _Ciceros_ glorious return to Rome, & with the counsel _Aeneas_ giues to his seabeaten soldiors.’

We learn something more from _Nashes Lenten Stuffe_ (S. R. 11 Jan. 1599), where he tells us that he is sequestered from the wonted means of his maintenance and exposed to attacks on his fame, through ‘the straunge turning of the Ile of Dogs from a commedie to a tragedie two summers past, with the troublesome stir which hapned aboute it’, and goes on to explain the ‘infortunate imperfit Embrion of my idle houres, the Ile of Dogs before mentioned ... was no sooner borne but I was glad to run from it’; which is what brought him to Yarmouth. In a marginal note he adds ‘An imperfit Embrion I may well call it, for I hauing begun but the induction and first act of it, the other foure acts without my consent, or the least guesse of my drift or scope, by the players were supplied, which bred both their trouble and mine to’ (McKerrow, iii. 153). Of this there is perhaps some confirmation in the list of writings on the cover of the _Northumberland MS._ which records the item, not now extant in the MS., ‘Ile of doges frmn^t by Thomas Nashe inferior plaiers’. This MS. contains work by Bacon (q.v.), and if the entry is not itself based on _Lenten Stuffe_, it may indicate that Bacon was professionally concerned in the proceedings to which the play gave rise. McKerrow, v. 31, points out that the evidence is against the suggestion in the _Trimming of Thomas Nashe_ (S. R. 11 Oct. 1597) that Nashe suffered imprisonment for the play. The Privy Council letter of 15 Aug. 1597 (cf. App. D, No. cxi) was no doubt intended to direct his apprehension, but, as I pointed out in _M. L. R._ iv. 410, 511, the actor and maker of plays referred to therein as actually in prison must have been Ben Jonson, who was released by the Council on 3 Oct. 1597 (cf. App. D, No. cxii). The connexion of Jonson (q.v.) with the _Isle of Dogs_ is noted in _Satiromastix_. With him the Council released Gabriel Spencer and Robert Shaw, and the inference is that the peccant company was Pembroke’s (q.v.) at the Swan on Bankside. The belief that it was the Admiral’s at the Rose only rests on certain forged interpolations by Collier in Henslowe’s diary. These are set out by Greg (_Henslowe_, i. xl). The only genuine mention of the affair in the diary is the provision noted in the memorandum of Borne’s agreement of 10 Aug. 1597 that his service is to begin ‘imediatly after this restraynt is recaled by the lordes of the counsell which restraynt is by the meanes of playinge the Ieylle of Dooges’ (_Henslowe_, i. 203). The restraint was ordered by the Privy Council on 28 July 1597 (App. D, No. cx), presumably soon after the offence, the nature of which is only vaguely described as the handling of ‘lewd matters’. Perhaps it is possible, at any rate in conjecture, to be more specific. By dogs we may take it that Nashe meant men. The idea was not new to him. In _Summer’s Last Will and Testament_ he makes Orion draw an elaborate parallel between dogs and men, at the end of which Will Summer says that he had not thought ‘the ship of fooles would haue stayde to take in fresh water at the Ile of dogges’ (l. 779). But there is nothing offensive to authority here. Nashe returns to the question of his indiscretion in more than one passage of _Lenten Stuffe_, and in particular has a diatribe (McKerrow, iii. 213) against lawyers who try to fish ‘a deepe politique state meaning’ out of what contains no such thing. ‘Talke I of a beare, O, it is such a man that emblazons him in his armes, or of a woolfe, a fox, or a camelion, any lording whom they do not affect it is meant by.’ Apparently Nashe was accused of satirizing some nobleman. But this was not the only point of attack. ‘Out steps me an infant squib of the Innes of Court ... and he, to approue hymselfe an extrauagant statesman, catcheth hold of a rush, and absolutely concludeth, it is meant of the Emperor of Ruscia, and that it will vtterly marre the traffike into that country if all the Pamphlets bee not called in and suppressed, wherein that libelling word is mentioned.’ I do not suppose that Nashe had literally called the Emperor of Russia a rush in _The Isle of Dogs_, but it is quite possible that he, or Ben Jonson, had called the King of Poland a pole. On 23 July 1597, just five days before the trouble, a Polish ambassador had made representations in an audience with Elizabeth, apparently about the question, vexed in the sixteenth as in the twentieth century, of contraband in neutral vessels, and she, scouring up her rusty old Latin for the purpose, had answered him in very round terms. The matter, to which there are several allusions in the Cecilian correspondence (Wright, _Eliz._ ii. 478, 481, 485), gave some trouble, and any mention of it on the public stage might well have been resented. A letter of Robert Beale in 1592 (McKerrow, v. 142) shows that the criticisms of Nashe’s _Pierce Penilesse_ had similarly been due to his attack upon the Danes, with which country the diplomatic issues were much the same as with Poland. In _Hatfield MSS._ vii. 343 is a letter of 10 Aug. 1597 to Robert Cecil from Richard (misdescribed in the Calendar as Robert) Topcliffe, recommending an unnamed bearer as ‘the first man that discovered to me that seditious play called The Isle of Dogs’.

_Doubtful Play_

Nashe has been suggested as a contributor to _A Knack to Know a Knave_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

THOMAS NELSON.

The pageant-writer is probably identical with the stationer of the same name, who is traceable in London during 1580–92 (McKerrow, 198).

_Allot Pageant. 29 Oct. 1590_

1590. The Deuice of the Pageant: Set forth by the Worshipfull Companie of the Fishmongers, for the right honourable Iohn Allot: established Lord Maior of London, and Maior of the Staple for this present Yeere of our Lord 1590. By T. Nelson. _No imprint._

Speeches by the riders on the Merman and the Unicorn, and by Fame, the Peace of England, Wisdom, Policy, God’s Truth, Plenty, Loyalty and Concord, Ambition, Commonwealth, Science and Labour, Richard the Second, Jack Straw, and Commonwealth again, representing Sir William Walworth, who was evidently the chief subject of the pageant.

_Edition_ by W. C. Hazlitt (1886, _Antiquary_, xiii. 54).--_Dissertation_: R. Withington, _The Lord Mayor’s Show for 1590_ (1918, _M.L.N._ xxxiii. 8).

ALEXANDER NEVILLE (1544–1614).

Translator of Seneca (q.v.).

THOMAS NEWTON (_c._ 1542–1607).

Translator of Seneca (q.v.).

RICHARD NICCOLS (1584–1616?).

This writer of various poetical works and reviser in 1610 of _The Mirror for Magistrates_ may have been the writer intended by the S. R. entry to Edward Blount on 15 Feb. 1612 of ‘A tragedye called, The Twynnes tragedye, written by Niccolls’ (Arber, iii. 478). No copy is known, and it is arbitrary of Fleay, ii. 170, to ‘suspect’ a revival of it in William Rider’s _The Twins_ (1655), which had been played at Salisbury Court.

HENRY NOEL (_ob._ 1597).

A younger son of Andrew Noel of Dalby on the Wolds, Leicestershire, whose personal gifts and extravagance enabled him to make a considerable figure as a Gentleman Pensioner at Court. He may have been a fellow author with Robert Wilmot (q.v.) of _Gismond of Salerne_, although he has not been definitely traced as a member of the Inner Temple, by whom the play was produced.

THOMAS NORTON (1532–84).

Norton was born in London and educated at Cambridge and the Inner Temple. In 1571 he became Remembrancer of the City of London, and also sat in Parliament for London. Apparently he is distinct from the Thomas Norton who acted from 1560 as counsel to the Stationers’ Company. He took part in theological controversy as a Calvinist, and was opposed to the public stage (cf. App. D, No. xxxi). In 1583 he escaped with some difficulty from a charge of treason. His first wife, Margaret, was daughter, and his second, Alice, niece of Cranmer.

_Ferrex and Porrex_, or _Gorboduc_. _28 Jan. 1562_

_S. R._ 1565–6. ‘A Tragdie of Gorboduc where iij actes were Wretten by Thomas Norton and the laste by Thomas Sackvyle, &c.’ _William Greffeth_ (Arber, i. 296).

1565, Sept. 22. The Tragedie of Gorboduc, Where of three Actes were wrytten by Thomas Nortone, and the two laste by Thomas Sackuyle. Sett forthe as the same was shewed before the Quenes most excellent Maiestie, in her highnes Court of Whitehall, the .xviij. day of Ianuary, Anno Domini .1561. By the Gentlemen of Thynner Temple in London. _William Griffith._ [Argument; Dumb-Shows.]

N.D. [_c._ 1571] The Tragidie of Ferrex and Porrex, set forth without addition or alteration but altogether as the same was shewed on stage before the Queenes Maiestie, about nine yeares past, _viz._, the xviij day of Ianuarie 1561, by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple. Seen and allowed, &c. _John Day._ [Epistle by ‘The P. to the Reader’.]

1590. _Edward Allde for John Perrin._ [Part of _The Serpent of Division_.]

_Editions_ in Dodsley^{1–3} (1744–1825), and by Hawkins (1773, _O. E. D._ ii), W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ i), W. D. Cooper (1847, _Sh. Soc._), R. W. Sackville-West, _Works of Sackville_ (1859), L. T. Smith (1883), J. M. Manly (1897, _Spec._ ii. 211), J. S. Farmer (1908, _T. F. T._), J. W. Cunliffe and H. A. Watt (1912, _E. E. C. T._).--_Dissertations_: E. Köppel (_E. S._ xvi. 357); Koch, _F. und P._ (1881, _Halle diss._); H. A. Watt, _G.; or F. and P._ (1910, _Wisconsin Univ. Bulletin_, 351).

Day’s epistle says that the play was ‘furniture of part of the grand Christmasse in the Inner Temple first written about nine yeares agoe by the right honourable Thomas now Lorde Buckherst, and by T. Norton, and after shewed before her Maiestie, and neuer intended by the authors therof to be published’. But one W. G. printed it in their absence, ‘getting a copie therof at some yongmans hand that lacked a litle money and much discretion’. Machyn, 275, records on 18 Jan. 1561 ‘a play in the quen hall at Westmynster by the gentyll-men of the Tempull, and after a grett maske, for ther was a grett skaffold in the hall, with grett tryhumpe as has bene sene; and the morow after the skaffold was taken done’. Fleay, ii. 174, doubts Norton’s participation--Heaven knows why.

Malone (_Var._ iii. 32) cites the unreliable Chetwood for a performance of _Gorboduc_ at Dublin Castle in 1601.

For the Inner Temple Christmas of 1561, at which Robert Dudley was constable-marshal and Christopher Hatton master of the game, cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, i. 415. It was presumably at the mask of 18 Jan. that Hatton danced his way into Elizabeth’s heart.

THOMAS NUCE (_ob._ 1617).

Translator of Seneca (q.v.).

OWEN AP JOHN (_c._ 1600).

A late sixteenth-century MS. (_Peniarth MS._ 65 = _Hengwrt MS._ 358) of _The Oration of Gwgan and Poetry_ is calendared as his in _Welsh MSS._ (_Hist. MSS. Comm._), i. 2. 454, and said to be ‘in the form of interludes’. He may be merely the scribe.

PHILIP PARSONS (1594–1653).

Fellow of St. John’s, Oxford, and later Principal of Hart Hall (_D. N. B._), and author of the academic _Atalanta_ (cf. App. K).

MERCURIUS (?) PATEN (_c._ 1575).

Gascoigne names a ‘M. [Mr.] Paten’ as a contributor to the Kenilworth entertainment (cf. ch. xxiv, C.). He might be the Patten described in _D. N. B._ as rector of Stoke Newington (but not traceable in Hennessy) and author of an anonymous _Calendars of Scripture_ (1575). But I think he is more likely to have been Mercurius, son of William Patten, teller of the exchequer and lord of the manor of Stoke Newington, who matriculated at Trinity, Cambridge, in 1567 and was Blue Mantle pursuivant in 1603 (_Hist. of Stoke Newington_ in _Bibl. Top. Brit._ ii; _Admissions to T. C. C._ ii. 70).

GEORGE PEELE (_c._ 1557–96).

As the son of James Peele, clerk of Christ’s Hospital and himself a maker of pageants (vol. i, p. 136; _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 166), George entered the grammar school in 1565, proceeded thence to Broadgates Hall, Oxford, in 1571, and became a student of Christ Church in 1574, taking his B.A. in 1577 and his M.A. in 1579. In Sept. 1579 the court of Christ’s Hospital required James Peele ‘to discharge His howse of his sonne George Peele and all other his howsold which have bene chargable to him’. This perhaps explains why George prolonged his residence at Oxford until 1581. In that year he came to London, and about the same time married. His wife’s business affairs brought him back to Oxford in 1583 and in a deposition of 29 March he describes himself as aged 25. During this visit he superintended the performance before Alasco at Christ Church on 11 and 12 June of the _Rivales_ and _Dido_ of William Gager, who bears testimony to Peele’s reputation as wit and poet in two sets of Latin verses _In Iphigeniam Georgii Peeli Anglicanis versibus redditam_ (Boas, 166,180). Presumably the rest of his life was spent in London, and its wit and accompanying riot find some record in _The Merry Conceited Jests of George Peele_ (S. R. 14 Dec. 1605: text in Bullen and in Hazlitt, _Jest Books_, ii. 261, and Hindley, i), although this is much contaminated with traditional matter from earlier jest books. It provided material for the anonymous play of _The Puritan_ (1607), in which Peele appeared as George Pyeboard. His fame as a dramatist is thus acknowledged in Nashe’s epistle to Greene’s _Menaphon_ (1589):

‘For the last, though not the least of them all, I dare commend him to all that know him, as the chief supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of poetry, and _primus verborum artifex_; whose first increase, the Arraignment of Paris, might plead to your opinions his pregnant dexterity of wit and manifold variety of invention, wherein (_me iudice_) he goeth a step beyond all that write.’

Some have thought that Peele is the

Palin, worthy of great praise, Albe he envy at my rustic quill,

of Spenser’s _Colin Clout’s Come Home Again_ (1591). It seems difficult to accept the suggestions of Sarrazin that he was the original both of Falstaff and of Yorick. An allusion in a letter to Edward Alleyn (cf. ch. xv) has unjustifiably been interpreted as implying that Peele was actor as well as playwright, and Collier accordingly included his name in a forged list of housekeepers at an imaginary Blackfriars theatre of 1589 (cf. vol. ii, p. 108). He was, however, clearly one of the three of his ‘quondam acquaintance’ to whom Greene (q.v.) addressed the attack upon players in his _Groats-worth of Wit_ (1592). In 1596 Peele after ‘long sickness’ sent a begging letter by his daughter to Lord Burghley, with a copy of his _Tale of Troy_. He was buried as a ‘householder’ at St. James’s, Clerkenwell, on 9 Nov. 1596 (_Harl. Soc. Registers_, xvii. 58), having died, according to Meres’s _Palladis Tamia_, ‘by the pox’. He can, therefore, hardly be the Peleus of _Birth of Hercules_ (1597 <).

_Collections_

1828–39. A. Dyce. 3 vols.

1861, 1879. A. Dyce. 1 vol. [With Greene.]

1888. A. H. Bullen. 2 vols.

_Dissertations_: R. Lämmerhirt, _G. P. Untersuchungen über sein Leben und seine Werke_ (1882); L. Kellner, _Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamides_ (1889, _E. S._ xiii. 187); E. Penner, _Metrische Untersuchungen zu P._ (1890, _Archiv_, lxxxv. 269); A. R. Bayley, _P. as a Dramatic Artist_ (_Oxford Point of View_, 15 Feb. 1903); G. C. Odell, _P. as a Dramatist_ (1903, _Bibliographer_, ii); E. Landsberg, _Der Stil in P.’s sicheren und zweifelhaften dramatischen Werken_ (1910, _Breslau diss._); G. Sarrazin, _Zur Biographie und Charakteristik von G. P._ (1910, _Archiv_, cxxiv. 65); P. H. Cheffaud, _G. P._ (1913).

PLAYS

_The Arraignment of Paris, c. 1584_

1584. The Araygnement of Paris A Pastorall. Presented before the Queenes Maiestie, by the Children of her Chappell. _Henry Marsh._ [Prologue and Epilogue.]

_Editions_ by O. Smeaton (1905, _T. D._) and H. H. Child (1910, _M. S. R._).--_Dissertation_: F. E. Schelling, _The Source of P.’s A. of P._ (1893, _M. L. N._ viii. 206).

Fleay, ii. 152, assigns the play to 1581 on the assumption that the Chapel stopped playing in 1582. But they went on to 1584. Nashe’s allusion (_vide supra_) and the ascription of passages from the play to ‘Geo. Peele’ in _England’s Helicon_ (1600) fix the authorship.

_The Battle of Alcazar, c. 1589_

[_MS._] _Addl. MS._ 10449, ‘The Plott of the Battell of Alcazar’. [Probably from Dulwich. The fragmentary text is given by Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, 138, and a facsimile by Halliwell, _The Theatre Plats of Three Old English Dramas_ (1860).]

1594. The Battell of Alcazar, fought in Barbarie, betweene Sebastian king of Portugall, and Abdelmelec king of Marocco. With the death of Captaine Stukeley. As it was sundrie times plaid by the Lord high Admirall his seruants. _Edward Allde for Richard Bankworth_. [Prologue by ‘the Presenter’ and dumb-shows.]

_Edition_ by W. W. Greg (1907, _M. S. R._).

Interest in Sebastian was aroused in 1589 by the expedition of Norris and Drake to set Don Antonio on the throne of Portugal. This started on 18 April, and Peele wrote _A Farewell_, in which is a reference to this amongst other plays (l. 20, ed. Bullen, ii. 238):

Bid theatres and proud tragedians, Bid Mahomet’s Poo and mighty Tamburlaine, King Charlemagne, Tom Stukeley and the rest, Adieu.

There are some possible but not very clear allusions to the Armada in the play. From 21 Feb. 1592 to 20 Jan. 1593 Strange’s men played fourteen times for Henslowe _Muly Mollocco_, by which this play, in which Abdelmelec is also called Muly Mollocco, is probably meant (Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 149). The ‘plot’ must belong to a later revival by the Admiral’s, datable, since both Alleyn and Shaw acted in it, either in Dec. 1597 or in 1600–2 (cf. ch. xiii).

The authorship has been assigned to Peele, both on stylistic evidence and because ll. 467–72 appear over his name in R. A.’s _England’s Parnassus_ (1600), but R. A. has an error in at least one of his ascriptions to Peele, and he ascribes l. 49 of this play to Dekker (Crawford, _E. P._ xxxv. 398, 474; _M. S. C._ i. 101).

_Edward I > 1593_

_S. R._ 1593, Oct. 8. ‘An enterlude entituled the Chronicle of Kinge Edward the firste surnamed Longeshank with his Retourne out of the Holye Lande, with the lyfe of Leublen Rebell in Wales with the sinkinge of Quene Elinour.’ _Abel Jeffes_ (Arber, ii. 637).

1593. The Famous Chronicle of king Edwarde the first, sirnamed Edwarde Longshankes, with his returne from the holy land. Also the life of Lleuellen, rebell in Wales. Lastly, the sinking of Queene Elinor, who sunck at Charingcrosse, and rose againe at Potters-hith now named Queenehith. _Abel Jeffes, sold by William Barley._ [At end, ‘Yours. By George Peele, Maister of Artes in Oxenford’.]

1599. _W. White._

_Edition_ by W. W. Greg (1911, _M. S. R._).--_Dissertations_: W. Thieme, _P.’s Ed. I und seine Quellen_ (1903, _Halle diss._); E. Kronenberg, _G. P.’s Ed. I_ (1903, _Jena diss._).

Fleay, ii. 157, makes the date 1590–1, on the ground that lines are quoted from _Polyhymnia_ (1590). A theory that Shakespeare acted in the play is founded on ll. 759–62, where after Baliol’s coronation Elinor says:

Now, brave John Baliol, Lord of Galloway And King of Scots, shine with thy golden head! Shake thy spears, in honour of his [i.e. Edward’s] name, Under whose royalty thou wearest the same.

This is not very convincing.

A play called _Longshank, Longshanks_, and _Prince Longshank_ was played fourteen times by the Admiral’s, from 29 Aug. 1595 to 14 July 1596. It is marked ‘ne’, and unless there had been substantial revision, can hardly be Peele’s play. ‘Longe-shanckes sewte’ is in the Admiral’s inventory of 10 March 1598. On 8 Aug. 1602 Alleyn sold the book of the play to the Admiral’s with another for £4. (Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 176; _Henslowe Papers_, 113.)

_David and Bethsabe > 1594_

_S. R._ 1594, May 14. ‘A booke called the book of David and Bethsaba.’ _Adam Islip_ (Arber, ii. 649). [Islip’s name is cancelled and Edward White’s substituted.]

1599. The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe. With the Tragedie of Absalon. As it hath ben divers times plaied on the stage. Written by George Peele. _Adam Islip._ [Prologue.]

_Editions_ by T. Hawkins (1773, _O. E. D._ ii), J. M. Manly (1897, _Specimens_, ii. 419), and W. W. Greg (1912, _M. S. R._).--_Dissertations_: B. Neitzel (1904, _Halle diss._); M. Dannenberg, _Die Verwendung des biblischen Stoffes von David und Bathseba im englischen Drama_ (1905, _Königsberg diss._).

Fleay, ii. 153, dates the play _c._ 1588 on the ground of some not very plausible political allusions. The text as it stands looks like a boildown of a piece, perhaps of a neo-miracle type, written in three ‘discourses’. It had choruses, of which two only are preserved. One is ll. 572–95 (at end of sc. iv of _M. S. R._ ed.). The other (ll. 1646–58; _M. S. R._ sc. xv) headed ‘Chorus 5’, contains the statement:

this storie lends vs other store, To make a third discourse of Dauids life,

and is followed by a misplaced fragment of a speech by Absalon.

In Oct. 1602 Henslowe (ii. 232) laid out money for Worcester’s on poles and workmanship ‘for to hange Absolome’; but we need not assume a revival of Peele’s play.

_The Old Wive’s Tale. 1591 < > 4_

_S. R._ 1595, Apr. 16. ‘A booke or interlude intituled a pleasant Conceipte called the owlde wifes tale.’ _Ralph Hancock_ (Arber, ii. 296).

1595. The Old Wiues Tale. A pleasant conceited Comedie, played by the Queenes Maiesties players. Written by G. P. _John Danter, sold by Ralph Hancock and John Hardie._

_Editions_ by F. B. Gummere (1903, _R. E. C._), W. W. Greg (1908, _M. S. R._), W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._), F. R. Cady (1916).--_Dissertation_: H. Dutz, _Der Dank des Tödten in der englischen Literatur_ (1894).

The Queen’s men had presumably produced the play by 1594, when they left London. Peele borrowed some lines and the name Sacrapant from Greene’s _Orlando Furioso_ (1591). The hexameters of Huanebango are a burlesque of Gabriel Harvey.

_Lost Plays_

_Iphigenia. c. 1579_

A translation of one of the two plays of Euripides, probably written at Oxford, is only known by some laudatory verses of William Gager, _In Iphigeniam Georgii Peeli Anglicanis versibus redditam_, printed by Bullen, i. xvii.

_Hunting of Cupid > 1591_

_S. R._ 1591, July 26 (Bp. of London). ‘A booke intituled the Huntinge of Cupid wrytten by George Peele, Master of Artes of Oxeford. Provyded alwayes that yf yt be hurtfull to any other Copye before lycenced, then this to be voyde.’ _Richard Jones_ (Arber, ii. 591).

Probably the play--I suppose it was a play--was printed, as Drummond of Hawthornden includes jottings from ‘The Huntinge of Cupid by George Peele of Oxford. Pastoral’ amongst others from ‘Bookes red anno 1609 be me’, and thereby enables us to identify extracts assigned to Peele in _England’s Parnassus_ (1600) and _England’s Helicon_ (1600) as from the same source. The fragments are all carefully collected by W. W. Greg in _M. S. C._ i. 307.

_The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek > 1594_

The _Merry Conceited Jests_ (Bullen, ii. 394) gives this as the title of a ‘famous play’ of Peele’s. Conceivably it, rather than Greene’s _Alphonsus_ (q.v.), may be the ‘Mahomet’s Poo’ of Peele’s _Farewell_ of 1589 (_vide supra_, s.v. _Battle of Alcazar_). An Admiral’s inventory of 10 March 1598 includes ‘owld Mahemetes head’. The Admiral’s had played _Mahomet_ for Henslowe from 16 Aug. 1594 to 5 Feb. 1595, and a play called _The Love of a Grecian Lady_ or _The Grecian Comedy_ from 5 Oct. 1594 to 10 Oct. 1595. In Aug. 1601 Henslowe bought _Mahemett_ from Alleyn, and incurred other expenses on the play for the Admiral’s (Henslowe, ii. 167; _Henslowe Papers_, 116). Possibly all the three titles of 1594–5 stand for Peele’s play. Jacob Ayrer wrote a play on the siege of Constantinople and the loves of Mahomet and Irene. This may have had some relation on the one hand to Peele’s, and on the other to a play of the siege of Constantinople used by Spencer (cf. ch. xiv) in Germany during 1612–14 (Herz, 73). Pistol’s ‘Have we not Hiren here?’ (_2 Hen. IV_, II. iv. 173) is doubtless from the play.

_The Knight of Rhodes_

This also is described in the _Merry Jests_ (cf. ch. xxiv, s.v. _Soliman and Perseda_).

_Doubtful Plays_

Peele’s hand has been sought in nearly every masterless play of his epoch: _Alphonsus of Germany_, _Captain Thomas Stukeley_, _Clyomon and Clamydes_, _Contention of York and Lancaster_, _George a Greene_, _Henry VI_, _Histriomastix_, _Jack Straw_, _Troublesome Reign of King John_, _Knack to Know a Knave_, _Leire_, _Locrine_, _Mucedorus_, _Soliman and Perseda_, _Taming of A Shrew_, _True Tragedy of Richard III_, _Wily Beguiled_, _Wisdom of Dr. Dodipoll_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

ENTERTAINMENTS

_Dixie Pageant. 29 Oct. 1585_

1585. The Device of the Pageant borne before Woolstone Dixi Lord Maior of the Citie of London. An. 1585. October 29. _Edward Allde._ [At end, ‘Done by George Peele, Master of Arts in Oxford’.]

_Editions_ in Nichols, _Eliz._ (1823), ii. 446, and F. W. Fairholt, _Lord Mayor’s Pageants_ (1843, _Percy Soc._ xxxviii).

_Polyhymnia. 17 Nov. 1590_

See s.v. Lee.

_Descensus Astreae. 29 Oct. 1591_

1591. Descensus Astreae. The Deuice of a Pageant, borne before M. William Web, Lord Maior of the Citie of London on the day he tooke his oath; beeing the 29. of October. 1591. Wherevnto is annexed A Speech deliuered by one clad like a Sea Nymph, who presented a Pinesse on the water brauely rigd and mand, to the Lord Maior, at the time he tooke Barge to go to Westminster. Done by G. Peele Maister of Arts in Oxford. _For William Wright._

_Edition_ in F. W. Fairholt, _Lord Mayor’s Pageants_ (1843, _Percy Soc._ xxxviii).

_Anglorum Feriae. 1595_

[_MS._] _Brit. Mus. Addl. MS._ 21432 (autograph). ‘Anglorum Feriae, Englandes Hollydayes, celebrated the 17th of Novemb. last, 1595, beginninge happyly the 38 yeare of the raigne of our soveraigne ladie Queene Elizabeth. By George Peele M^r of Arte in Oxforde.’

_S. R._ 1595, Nov. 18. ‘A newe Ballad of the honorable order of the Runnynge at Tilt at Whitehall the 17. of November in the 38 yere of her maiesties Reign.’ _John Danter_ (Arber, iii. 53). [This is not necessarily Peele’s poem.]

_Edition_ by R. Fitch (n.d. _c._ 1830).

This is a blank-verse description of tilting, like _Polyhymnia_; on the occasion, cf. s.v. Bacon.

_Lost Entertainment. 1588_

_S. R._ 1588, Oct. 28. ‘Entred for his copie vppon Condicon that it maye be lycenced, ye device of the Pageant borne before the Righte honorable Martyn Calthrop lorde maiour of the Cytie of London the 29th daie of October 1588 George Peele the Authour.’ _Richard Jones_ (Arber, ii. 504).

In the _Merry Conceited Jests_ it is said that Peele had ‘all the oversight of the pageants’ (Bullen, ii. 381).

_Doubtful Entertainment_

For the ascription to Peele of a Theobalds entertainment in 1591, see s.v. Cecil.

JOHN PENRUDDOCK (_c._ 1588).

The Master ‘Penroodocke’, who was one of the directors for the _Misfortunes of Arthur_ of Thomas Hughes (q.v.) in 1588, was presumably John Penruddock, one of the readers of Gray’s Inn in 1590, and the John who was admitted to the inn in 1562 (J. Foster, _Admissions to Gray’s Inn_).

WILLIAM PERCY (1575–1648).

Percy was third son of Henry Percy, eighth Earl of Northumberland, and educated at Gloucester Hall, Oxford. He was a friend of Barnabe Barnes, and himself published _Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia_ (1594). His life is obscure, but in 1638 he was living in Oxford and ‘drinking nothing but ale’ (_Strafford Letters_, ii. 166), and here he died in 1648.

PLAYS

[_MS._] Autograph formerly in collection of the Duke of Devonshire, with t.p. ‘Comædyes and Pastoralls ... By W. P. Esq.... Exscriptum Anno Salutis 1647’. [Contains, in addition to the two plays printed in 1824, the following:

_Arabia Sitiens, or A Dream of a Dry Year_ (1601). _The Aphrodysial, or Sea Feast_ (1602). _Cupid’s Sacrifice, or a Country’s Tragedy in Vacuniam_ (1602). _Necromantes, or The Two Supposed Heads_ (1602).]

[_Edition_] 1824. The Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants or The Bearing down the Inne. A Comædye. The Faery Pastorall, or Forrest of Elves. By W. P. Esq. (_Roxburghe Club_). [Preface by [Joseph] H[aslewood].]--_Dissertations_: C. Grabau, _Zur englischen Bühne um 1600_ (1902, _Jahrbuch_, xxxviii. 230); V. Albright, _P.’s Plays as Proof of the Elizabethan Stage_ (1913, _M. P._ xi. 237); G. F. Reynolds, _W. P. and his Plays_ (1914, _M. P._ xii. 241).

Percy’s authorship appears to be fixed by a correspondence between an epigram in the MS. to Charles Fitzgeffrey with one _Ad Gulielmum Percium_ in _Fitzgeoffridi Affaniae_ (1601), sig. D 2. 6.

_The Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants_ is dated 1601 and _The Faery Pastorall_ 1603. The other plays are unprinted and practically unknown, although Reynolds gives some account of _The Aphrodysial._ There are elaborate stage-directions, which contain several references to Paul’s, for which the plays, whether in fact acted or not, were evidently intended, as is shown by an author’s note appended to the manuscript (cf. ch. xii, s.v. Paul’s).

I feel some doubt as to the original date of these plays. It seems to me just conceivable that they were originally produced by the Paul’s boys before 1590, and revised by Percy after 1599 in hopes of a revival. Some of the s.ds. are descriptive in the past tense (cf. ch. xxii), which suggests actual production. The action of _C. and C. Errant_ is during the time of the Armada, but the composition must be later than the death of Tarlton, as his ghost prologizes. Here the author notes, ‘Rather to be omitted if for Powles, and another Prologue for him to be brought in Place’. _Faery Pastoral_ uses (p. 97) the date ‘1647’; it is in fairy time, but points to some revision when the MS. was written. There are alternative final scenes, with the note, ‘Be this the foresayd for Powles, For Actors see the Direction at later end of this Pastorall, which is separate by itself, Extra Olens, as they say’. Similarly in _Aphrodysial_ a direction for beards is noted ‘Thus for Actors; for Powles without’, and another s.d. is ‘Chambers (noise supposd for Powles) For Actors’. A reference to ‘a showre of Rose-water and confits, as was acted in Christ Church in Oxford, in Dido and Aeneas’ is a reminiscence of Gager’s play of 12 June 1583, and again makes a seventeenth-century date seem odd.

PETER (?) PETT (_c._ 1600).

Henslowe’s diary records a payment of £6 on 17 May 1600 for the Admiral’s ‘to pay Will: Haulton [Haughton] and Mr. Pett in full payment of a play called straunge newes out of Poland’. Fleay, i. 273, says: ‘Pett is not heard of elsewhere. Should it not be Chett., _i.e._ Chettle? The only Pett I know of as a writer is Peter Pett, who published _Time’s journey to seek his daughter Truth_, in verse, 1599.’ To which Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 213, replies: ‘Henslowe often has Cett for Chettle, which is even nearer, but only where he is crowded for room and he never applies to him the title of Mr.’

JOHN PHILLIP (> 1570–> 1626).

John Phillip or Phillips was a member of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and author of various ballads, tracts, and elegies, published between 1566 and 1591. I do not know whether he may be the ‘Phelypes’, who was apparently concerned with John Heywood and a play by Paul’s (q.v.) in 1559. A John Phillipps, this or another, is mentioned (1619) as a brother-in-law in the will of Samuel Daniel (_Sh. Soc. Papers_, iv. 157).

_Dissertation_: W. W. Greg, _J. P._--_Notes for a Bibliography_ (1910–13, _3 Library_, i. 302, 395; iv. 432).

_Patient Grissell. 1558–61_

_S. R._ 1565–6. ‘An history of meke and pacyent gresell.’ _Thomas Colwell_ (Arber, i. 309).

1568–9. ‘The history of payciente gresell &c.’ _Thomas Colwell_ (Arber, i. 385).

N.D. The Commodye of pacient and meeke Grissill, Whearin is declared, the good example, of her patience towardes her husband: and lykewise, the due obedience of Children, toward their Parentes. Newly. Compiled by Iohn Phillip. Eight persons maye easely play this Commody.... _Thomas Colwell._ [Preface; Epilogue, followed by ‘Finis, qd. Iohn Phillipp’.]

_Edition_ by R. B. McKerrow and W. W. Greg (1909, _M. S. R._).

The characters include Politic Persuasion, the ‘Vice’. Elizabeth is mentioned as Queen in the epilogue, and a reference (51) to the ‘wethercocke of Paules’ perhaps dates before its destruction in 1561.

JOHN PICKERING (_c._ 1567–8).

Brie records several contemporary John Pickerings, but there is nothing to connect any one of them with the play.

_Horestes. 1567–8_

1567. A Newe Enterlude of Vice Conteyninge, the Historye of Horestes, with the cruell reuengment of his Father’s death, vpon his one naturtll Mother. By John Pikeryng.... The names deuided for VI to playe.... _William Griffith._ [On the back of the t.p. is a coat of arms which appears to be a slight variant of that assigned by Papworth and Morant, _Ordinary of British Armorials_, 536, to the family of Marshall. Oddly enough, there was a family of this name settled at Pickering in Yorkshire, but they, according to G. W. Marshall, _Miscellanea Marescalliana_, i. 1; ii. 2, 139, had quite a different coat.]

_Editions_ by J. P. Collier (1866, _Illustrations of Old English Literature_), A. Brandl (1898, _Q. W. D._), J. S. Farmer (1910, _T. F. T._).--_Dissertation_: F. Brie, _Horestes von J. P._ (1912, _E. S._ xlvi. 66).

The play has a Vice, and ends with prayer for Queen Elizabeth and the Lord Mayor of ‘this noble Cytie’. Feuillerat, _Eliz._ 449, thinks it too crude to be the Court _Orestes_ of 1567–8, but the coincidence of date strongly suggests that it was.

JOHN POOLE (?).

Possible author of _Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

HENRY PORTER (_c._ 1596–9).

Porter first appears in Henslowe’s diary as recipient of a payment of £5 on 16 Dec. 1596 and a loan of £4 on 7 March 1597, both on account of the Admiral’s. It may be assumed that he was already writing for the company, who purchased five plays, wholly or partly by him, between May 1598 and March 1599. Meres, in his _Palladis Tamia_ of 1598, counts him as one of ‘the best for Comedy amongst vs’. He appears to have been in needy circumstances, and borrowed several small sums from the company or from Henslowe personally (Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 304). On 28 Feb. 1599, when he obtained £2 on account of _Two Merry Women of Abingdon_, ‘he gaue me his faythfulle promysse that I shold haue alle the boockes w^{ch} he writte ether him sellfe or w^{th} any other’. On 16 April 1599, in consideration of 1_s._ he bound himself in £10 to pay Henslowe a debt of 25_s._ on the following day, but could not meet his obligation. Porter is not traceable as a dramatist after 1599. His extant play, on the title-page of which he is described as ‘Gent.’, suggests a familiarity with the neighbourhood of Oxford, and I see no _a priori_ reason why he should not be the Henry Porter, son of a London gentleman, who matriculated from Brasenose on 19 June 1589 (Boase and Clark, ii. 2, 170), or the Henricus Porter, apparently a musician, of John Weever’s _Epigrammes_ (1599), v. 24, or the Henry Porter of Christ Church who became B.Mus. in July 1600 (Wood, _Fasti Oxon._ i. 284), or the Henry Porter who was a royal sackbut on 21 June 1603 (Nagel, 36), or the Henry Porter whose son Walter became Gentleman of the Chapel Royal on 5 Jan. 1616 and has left musical works (_D. N. B._). Gayley’s argument to the contrary rests on the unfounded assumption that the musician could not have been writing Bankside plays during the progress of his studies for his musical degree.

_The Two Angry Women of Abingdon > 1598_

1599. The Pleasant Historie of the two angrie women of Abington. With the humorous mirthe of Dicke Coomes and Nicholas Prouerbes, two Seruingmen. As it was lately playde by the right Honorable the Earle of Nottingham, Lord High Admirall, his seruants. By Henry Porter Gent. _For Joseph Hunt and William Ferbrand._ [Prologue. Greg shows this to be Q_{1}.]

1599. _For William Ferbrand._

_Editions_ in Dodsley^4 (1874), and by G. M. Gayley (1903, _R. E. C._ i), J. S. Farmer (1911, _T. F. T._), W. W. Greg (1912, _M. S. R._).

The play shows no signs of being a sequel, and is presumably the First Part, to which Porter wrote a Second Part (_vide infra_) in the winter of 1598–9. It was an Admiral’s play, and therefore one would expect to find it in Henslowe’s very full, if not absolutely exhaustive, chronicle of the company’s repertory. Of the plays named as his by Henslowe, _Love Prevented_ seems the only likely title. But he was in the pay of the company before the diary began to record the authorship of plays, and Part i may therefore be among the anonymous plays of 1596–7 or an earlier season. Gayley suggests _The Comedy of Humours_, produced 11 May 1597, but that is more plausibly identified with Chapman’s _Humorous Day’s Mirth_ (q.v.). Another possibility is _Woman Hard to Please_, produced 27 Jan. 1597.

_Lost Plays_

Henslowe’s diary records the following plays for the Admiral’s men, in which Porter had a hand in 1598 and 1599:

(i) _Love Prevented._

May 1598. _Vide Two Angry Women of Abingdon, supra._

(ii) _Hot Anger Soon Cold._

With Chettle and Jonson, Aug. 1598.

(iii) _2 Two Angry Women of Abingdon._

Dec. 1598–Feb. 1599.

(iv) _Two Merry Women of Abingdon._

Feb. 1599.

(v) _The Spencers._

With Chettle, March 1599.

THOMAS POUND (1538?-1616?).

Pound was of Beaumonds in Farlington, Hants, the son of William Pound and Anne Wriothesley, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Southampton. William Pound had a brother Anthony, whose daughter Honora married Henry, fourth Earl of Sussex (_V. H. Hants_, iii. 149; _Harl. Soc._ lxiv. 138; Berry, _Hants Genealogies_, 194; _Recusant Rolls_ in _Catholic Record Soc._ xviii. 278, 279, 330, 334). Thomas was in youth a Winchester boy, a Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, and a courtier of repute. About 1570 he left the world and became a fervent Catholic, and the record of his recusancy, of his relations with the Jesuit order, which he probably joined, of the help he gave to Edmund Campion, and of his long life of imprisonment and domiciliary restraint is written in H. Morus, _Historia Missionis Anglicanae Societatis Jesu_ (1660); D. Bartoli, _Dell’ Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu: L’Inghilterra_ (1667); N. Sanders and E. Rishton, _De Origine Schismatis Anglicani_ (1586); M. Tanner, _Societas Jesu Apostolorum Imitatrix_ (1694); R. Simpson in _2 Rambler_ (1857), viii. 29, 94; H. Foley, _Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus_, iii (1878), 567; J. H. Pollen, _English Catholics in the Reign of Elizabeth_ (1920), 333 _sqq._ I am only concerned with his worldly life and his quitting of it. As a Winchester _alumnus_, he is said to have delivered a Latin speech of welcome to Elizabeth (Bartoli, 51), presumably at her visit of 1560 (App. A), but he can hardly still have been a schoolboy; perhaps he was at New College. He had already been entered at Lincoln’s Inn on 16 Feb. 1560 (_Adm. Reg._ i. 66), and it was on behalf of Lincoln’s Inn that he wrote and pronounced two mask orations which are preserved in _Bodl. Rawl. Poet. MS._ 108, ff. 24, 29, whence they are described in E. Brydges, _British Bibliographer_, ii. 612. Both seem to have been before Elizabeth (cf. vol. i, p. 162, and App. A). The first, at the wedding of his cousin Henry, Earl of Southampton, in Feb. 1566, is headed in the manuscript ‘The copye of an oration made and pronounced by Mr. Pownde of Lyncolnes Inne, with a brave maske out of the same howse, all one greatte horses att the mariage off the yonge erle of South hampton to the Lord Mountagues dawghter abowt Shrouetyde 1565’. The second, at the wedding on 1 July 1566 of another cousin, Frances Radcliffe, is similarly headed ‘The copye of an oration made and pronounced by Mr. Pownd of Lincolnes Inne, with a maske att y^e marriage of y^e Earl of Sussex syster to Mr. Myldmaye off Lyncolnes Inne 1566’. From this, which is in rhyming quatrains, Brydges quotes 119 lines; they are of no merit. In 1580 Pound wrote from his prison at Bishop’s Stortford to Sir Christopher Hatton (_S. P. D. Eliz._ cxlii. 20) commending a petition to the Queen, ‘for her poeticall presents sake, which her Majesty disdayned not to take at poore Mercuries hands, if you remember it, at Killiegeworth Castle’. The reference must be to the Kenilworth visit of 1568, rather than 1573 or 1575, for soon after Thomas Pound’s days of courtly masking came to an abrupt end. The story is told in Morus, 46:

‘Natales Christi dies, ut semper solemnes, ita anno sexagesimo quarto fuere celeberrimi; dabantur in Curia ludi apparatissimi Thoma Pondo instructore. Inter saltandum, nudam eius manum manu nuda prensat Regina, tum ei caput, abrepto Leicestrie Comitis pileo, ipsa tegit, ne ex vehementi motu accensus subito refrigeraretur. Imposita ei videbatur laurea: cum (secundo eandem saltationis formam flagitante Regina) celerrime de more uno in pede circumuolitans, pronus concidit; Plausu in risum mutato, surge, inquit Regina, Domine Taure; ea voce commotus, surrexit quidem; at flexo ad terram poplite, vulgatum illud latine prolocutus, _sic transit gloria mundi_, proripuit se, et non longo interuallo Aulam spesque fallaces deseruit, consumptarum facultatum et violatae Religionis praemium ludibrium consecutus.’

There is a little difficulty as to the date. Morus puts it in 1564, but goes on to add that Pound was in his thirtieth year, and he was certainly born in 1538 or 1539. And Bartoli, 51, followed by Tanner, 480, gives 1569, citing, probably from Jesuit archives, a letter written by Pound himself on 3 June 1609. No doubt 1569, which may mean either 1568–9 or 1569–70, is right.

THOMAS PRESTON (> 1569–1589 <).

A Thomas Preston entered King’s, Cambridge, from Eton in 1553, and became Fellow in 1556, taking his B.A. in 1557 and his M.A. in 1561. At Elizabeth’s visit in 1564 he disputed with Thomas Cartwright before her in the Philosophy Act, and also played in _Dido_, winning such favour that she called him her ‘scholar’ and gave him a pension of £20 a year from the privy purse (Cunningham, xx; Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 270; Fuller, _Cambridge_, 137; Wordsworth, _Ecclesiastical Memorials_, iv. 322). He held his fellowship at King’s until 1581. In 1583 a newswriter reported him to be ‘withdrawen into Scotland as a malcontent and there made much of by the King’ (Wright, _Eliz._ ii. 215). In 1584 he became Master of Trinity Hall, and in 1589 was Vice-Chancellor. In 1592, with other Heads of Houses, he signed a memorial to Burghley in favour of the stay of plays at Cambridge (_M. S. C._ i. 192). It seems to me incredible that he should, as is usually taken for granted, have been the author of _Cambyses_, about which there is nothing academic, and I think that there must have been a popular writer of the same name, responsible for the play, and also for certain ballads of the broadside type, of which _A Lamentation from Rome_ (Collier, _Old Ballads_, _Percy Soc._) was printed in 1570, and _A Ballad from the Countrie, sent to showe how we should Fast this Lent_ (_Archiv_, cxiv. 329, from _Bodl. Rawl. Poet. MS._ 185) is dated 1589. Both are subscribed, like _Cambyses_, ‘Finis Quod Thomas Preston’. A third was entered on S. R. in 1569–70 as ‘A geliflower of swete marygolde, wherein the frutes of tyranny you may beholde’.

A Thomas Preston is traceable as a quarterly waiter at Court under Edward VI (_Trevelyan Papers_, i. 195, 200, 204; ii. 19, 26, 33), and a choirmaster of the same name was ejected from Windsor Chapel as a recusant about 1561 (cf. ch. xii).

_Cambyses > 1570_

_S. R._ 1569–70. ‘An enterlude a lamentable Tragedy full of pleasaunt myrth.’ _John Allde_ (Arber, i. 400).

N.D. [1569–84]. A Lamentable Tragedie, mixed full of pleasant mirth, containing the life of Cambises King of Percia ... By Thomas Preston. _John Allde._ [Arrangement of parts for eight actors; Prologue; Epilogue, with prayer for Queen and Council. At end, ‘Amen, quod Thomas Preston’.]

N.D. [1584–1628]. _Edward Allde._

_Editions_ by T. Hawkins (1773, _O. E. D._ i), in Dodsley^4, iv (1874), and by J. M. Manly (1897, _Specimens_, ii), and J. S. Farmer (1910, _T. F. T._).

Line 1148 mentions Bishop Bonner whose ‘delight was to shed blood’, and Fleay, 64, therefore dates the play 1569–70, as Bonner died 5 Sept. 1569. But he may merely be put in the past as an ex-bishop. Three comic villains, Huf, Ruf, and Snuf, are among the characters, and chronology makes it possible that the play was the _Huff, Suff, and Ruff_ (cf. App. A) played at Court during Christmas 1560–1. Preston may, however, have borrowed these characters, as Ulpian Fulwell borrowed Ralph Roister, from an earlier play.

_Doubtful Play_

Preston has been suggested as the author of _Sir Clyomon and Clamydes_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

DANIEL PRICE (1581–1631).

A student of Exeter College, Oxford, who became chaplain to Prince Henry (_D. N. B._), and described his _Creation_ in 1610 (cf. ch. xxiv, C).

RICHARD (?) PUTTENHAM (_c._ 1520–1601).

The author of _The Arte of English Poesie_ (1589; cf. App. C, No. xli) claims to have written three plays, no one of which is extant. He analyses at length the plot of his ‘Comedie entituled _Ginecocratia_’ (Arber, 146), in which were a King, Polemon, Polemon’s daughter, and Philino. He twice cites his ‘enterlude’, _Lustie London_ (Arber, 183, 208), in which were a Serjeant, his Yeoman, a Carrier, and a Buffoon. And he twice cites his ‘enterlude’, _The Woer_ (Arber, 212, 233), in which were a Country Clown, a Young Maid of the City, and a Nurse.

The author of _The Arte_ is referred to by Camden in 1614 (cf. Gregory Smith, ii. 444) as ‘Maister Puttenham’, and by E. Bolton, _Hypercritica_ (_c._ 1618), with the qualification ‘as the Fame is’, as ‘one of her Gentlemen Pensioners, Puttenham’. H. Crofts, in his edition (1880) of Sir Thomas Elyot’s _The Governour_, has shown that this is more likely to have been Richard, the elder, than George, the younger, son of Robert Puttenham and nephew of Sir Thomas Elyot. Neither brother, however, can be shown to have been a Gentleman Pensioner, and Collier gives no authority for his statement that Richard was a Yeoman of the Guard. Richard was writing as far back as the reign of Henry VIII, and the dates of his plays are unknown.

WILLIAM RANKINS (> 1587–1601 <).

The moralist who published _A Mirrour of Monsters_ (1587), _The English Ape_ (1588), and _Seven Satires_ (1598) is, in spite of the attack on plays (cf. App. C, No. xxxviii) in the first of these, probably identical with the dramatist who received payment from Henslowe on behalf of the Admiral’s for the following plays during 1598–1601:

(i) _Mulmutius Dunwallow._

Oct. 1598, £3, ‘to by a boocke’, probably an old one.

(ii) _Hannibal and Scipio._

With Hathway, Jan. 1601.

(iii) _Scogan and Skelton._

With Hathway, Jan.–Mar. 1601.

(iv) _The Conquest of Spain by John of Gaunt._

With Hathway, Mar.–Apr. 1601, but never finished, as shown by a letter to Henslowe from S. Rowley, bidding him let Hathway ‘haue his papars agayne’ (_Henslowe Papers_, 56).

Rankins has also been suggested as the author of _Leire_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

THOMAS RICHARDS (_c._ 1577).

A possible author of _Misogonus_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

HENRY ROBERTS (_c._ 1606).

A miscellaneous writer (_D. N. B._) who described the visit of the King of Denmark to England (cf. ch. xxiv, C). The stationer of the same name, who printed the descriptions, may be either the author or his son (McKerrow, 229).

JOHN ROBERTS (_c._ 1574).

A contributor to the Bristol Entertainment of Elizabeth (cf. ch. xxiv, C).

ROBINSON.

Henslowe paid £3 on behalf of the Admiral’s men on 9 Sept. 1602 ‘vnto M^r. Robensone for a tragedie called Felmelanco’. Later in the month he paid two sums amounting to another £3 to Chettle, for ‘his tragedie’ of the same name. The natural interpretation is that Chettle and Robinson co-operated, but Fleay, i. 70, rather wantonly says, ‘Robinson was, I think, to Chettle what Mrs. Harris was to Mrs. Gamp’, and Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 224, while not agreeing with Fleay, ‘It is, however, unlikely that he had any hand in the play. Probably Chettle had again pawned his MS.’

Dates make it improbable that this Robinson was the poet Richard Robinson whose lost ‘tragedy’ _Hemidos and Thelay_ is not likely to have been a play (cf. App. M).

SAMUEL ROWLEY (?-1624).

For Rowley’s career as an Admiral’s and Prince’s man, cf. ch. xv.

_Dr. Faustus_

For the additions by Rowley and Bird in 1602, cf. s.v. Marlowe.

_When You See Me, You Know Me. 1603 < > 5_

_S. R._ 1605, Feb. 12, ‘Yf he gett good alowance for the enterlude of King Henry the 8th before he begyn to print it. And then procure the wardens handes to yt for the entrance of yt: He is to haue the same for his copy.’ _Nathanaell Butter_ (Arber, iii. 283). [No fee recorded.]

1605. When you see me, You know me. Or the famous Chronicle Historie of King Henry the eight, with the birth and vertuous life of Edward Prince of Wales. As it was playd by the high and mightie Prince of Wales his seruants. By Samuell Rowly, seruant to the Prince. _For Nathaniel Butter._

1613; 1621; 1632.

_Editions_ by K. Elze (1874) and J. S. Farmer (1912, _S. F. T._).--_Dissertation_: W. Zeitlin, _Shakespeare’s King Henry the Eighth and R.’s When You See Me_ (1881, _Anglia_, iv. 73).

_The Noble Soldier_

Probably with Day and Dekker (q.v.).

_Lost Plays_

(a) _Plays for the Admiral’s, noted in Henslowe’s diary._

_Judas._ With W. Bird, Dec. 1601, possibly a completion of the play of the same name left unfinished by Haughton (q.v.) in 1600.

_Joshua._ Sept. 1602.

(b) _Plays for the Palsgrave’s, licensed by Sir Henry Herbert_ (Chalmers, _S. A._ 214–17; Herbert, 24, 26, 27).

27 July 1623, _Richard III_.

29 Oct. 1623, _Hardshifte for Husbands_.

6 Apr. 1624, _A Match or No Match_.

_Doubtful Plays_

H. D. Sykes, _The Authorship of The Taming of A Shrew, etc._ (1920, _Sh. Association_), argues, on the basis of a comparison of phraseology with _When You See Me, You Know Me_ and some of the additions to _Dr. Faustus_, for Rowley’s authorship of (_a_) _The Famous Victories_, (_b_) the prose scenes of _A Shrew_, (_c_) the clowning passages in Greene’s _Orlando Furioso_, (_d_) the prose scenes of _Wily Beguiled_. He suggests that the same collaborator, borrowing first from Marlowe and then from Kyd, may have supplied the verse scenes both of _A Shrew_ and of _Wily Beguiled_. There is no external evidence to connect Rowley with the Queen’s, and he only becomes clearly traceable with the Admiral’s in 1598, but Mr. Sykes has certainly made out a stylistic case which deserves consideration.

WILLIAM ROWLEY (?-1625 <).

Of Rowley’s origin and birth nothing is known. He first appears as collaborator in a play of Queen Anne’s men in 1607, and, although he may have also acted with this company, there is no evidence of the fact. His name is in the patent of 30 March 1610 for the Duke of York’s men with that of Thomas Hobbes, to whom his pamphlet _A Search for Money_ (1609, _Percy Soc. ii_.) is dedicated. He acted as their payee from 1610 to 1615, and they played his _Hymen’s Holiday or Cupid’s Vagaries_, now lost, in 1612. _A Knave in Print_ and _The Fool without Book_, entered as his on 9 Sept. 1653 (Eyre, i. 428), might be their anonymous two-part _Knaves_ of 1613. He contributed an epitaph on Thomas Greene of the Queen’s to Cooke’s _Greene’s Tu Quoque_ (1614). From 1615 to March 1616 the Prince’s men seem to have been merged in the Princess Elizabeth’s. They then resumed their identity at the Hope, and with them Rowley is traceable as an actor to 1619 and as a writer, in collaboration with Thomas Middleton (q.v.), Thomas Ford, and Thomas Heywood, until 1621. In 1621 he wrote an epitaph upon one of their members, Hugh Attwell, apparently as his ‘fellow’. It was still as a Prince’s man that he received mourning for James on 17 March 1625. But in 1621 and 1622 he was writing, with Middleton and alone, for the Lady Elizabeth’s at the Cockpit, and in 1623 both writing and acting in _The Maid of the Mill_ for the King’s men, and prefixing verses to Webster’s _Duchess of Malfi_, which belonged to the same company. He had definitely joined the King’s by 24 June 1625 when his name appears in their new patent, and for them his latest play-writing was done. In addition to what was published under his name, he is generally credited with some share in the miscellaneous collection of the Beaumont and Fletcher Ff. His name is not in an official list of King’s men in 1629, but the date of his death is unknown. A William Rowley married Isabel Tooley at Cripplegate in 1637, but the date hardly justifies the assumption that it was the dramatist.

_Dissertations_: P. G. Wiggin, _An Inquiry into the Authorship of the Middleton-Rowley Plays_ (1897, _Radcliffe College Monographs_, ix); C. W. Stork, _William Rowley_ (1910, _Pennsylvania Univ. Publ._ xiii, with texts of _All’s Lost for Lust_ and _A Shoemaker a Gentleman_).

_A Shoemaker a Gentleman, c. 1608_

_S. R._ 1637, Nov. 28 (Weekes). ‘A Comedie called A Shoomaker is a gentleman with the life and death of the Criple that stole the weather cocke of Pauls, by William Rowley.’ _John Okes_ (Arber, iv. 400).

1638. A Merrie and Pleasant Comedy: Never before Printed, called A Shoomaker a Gentleman. As it hath beene sundry Times Acted at the Red Bull and other Theatres, with a general and good Applause. Written by W. R. Gentleman. _I. Okes, sold by Iohn Cooper._ [Epistle by Printer to Gentlemen of the Gentle Craft.]

_Edition_ by C. W. Stork (1910).

The epistle says that the play was still often acted, and ‘as Plaies were then, some twenty yeares agone, it was in the fashion’. This dating and the mention of the Red Bull justify us in regarding it as an early play for Queen Anne’s men.

_A New Wonder, A Woman Never Vexed_ (?)

_S. R._ 1631, Nov. 24 (Herbert). ‘A booke called A new wonder or a woman neuer vext (a Comedy) by William Rowley.’ _Constable_ (Arber, iv. 266).

1632. A new Wonder, A Woman never vext. A pleasant conceited Comedy: sundry times Acted: never before printed. Written by William Rowley, one of his Maiesties Servants. _G. P. for Francis Constable._

Fleay, ii, 102, and Greg (_H._ ii. 177) suggest revision by Rowley of the Admiral’s _Wonder of a Woman_ (1595), perhaps by Heywood (q.v.); Stork, 26, early work for Queen Anne’s men, under Heywood’s influence.

_A Match at Midnight_ (?)

_S. R._ 1633, Jan. 15 (Herbert). ‘A Play called A Match at midnight.’ _William Sheares_ (Arber, iv. 291).

1633. A Match at Midnight A Pleasant Comœdie: As it hath been Acted by the Children of the Revells. Written by W. R. _Aug. Mathewes for William Sheares._

Fleay, 203 and ii. 95, treats the play, without discussion, as written by Middleton and Rowley for the Queen’s Revels _c._ 1607. Bullen, _Middleton_, i. lxxxix, and Stork, 17, concur as to the date, the former regarding it as Middleton’s revised _c._ 1622 by Rowley, the latter as practically all Rowley’s. These views are evidently influenced by the mention of the Children of the Revels on the title-page. Wiggin, 7, noting allusions to the battle of Prague in 1620 and _Reynard the Fox_ (1621), thinks it alternatively possible that Rowley wrote it under Middletonian influence for one of the later Revels companies _c._ 1622. There was no doubt a company of Children of the Revels in 1622–3 (Murray, i. 198), but the name on a t.p. of 1633 would naturally refer to the still later company of 1629–37 (Murray, i. 279).

_The Birth of Merlin_ (?)

1662. The Birth of Merlin: Or, The Childe hath found his Father. As it hath been several times Acted with great Applause. Written by William Shakespear, and William Rowley. _Tho. Johnson for Francis Kirkman and Henry Marsh._

_Editions_ by T. E. Jacob (1889), J. S. Farmer (1910, _T. F. T._), and with _Sh. Apocrypha_.--_Dissertations_: F. A. Howe, _The Authorship of the B. of M._ (1906, _M. P._ iv. 193); W. Wells, _The B. of M._ (1921, _M. L. R._ xvi. 129).

Kirkman’s attribution to Shakespeare and Rowley was first made in his play-list of 1661 (Greg, _Masques_, liii). It is generally accepted for Rowley, but not for Shakespeare. But Fleay, _Shakespeare_, 289, on a hint of P. A. Daniel, gave Rowley a collaborator in Middleton, and later (ii. 105) treated the play as a revision by Rowley of the _Uther Pendragon_ produced by the Admiral’s on 29 April 1597. This view seems to rest in part upon the analogous character of _The Mayor of Quinborough_. Howe thinks that Rowley worked up a sketch by Middleton later than 1621, and attempts a division of the play on this hypothesis. But Stork, _Rowley_, 58, thinks that Rowley revised _Uther Pendragon_ or some other old play about 1608. F. W. Moorman (_C. H._ v. 249) suggests Dekker, and Wells Beaumont and Fletcher.

_Doubtful Plays_

The ascription to Rowley on the t.p. of _The Thracian Wonder_ is not generally accepted. His hand has been sought in _The Captain_, _The Coxcomb_, and _Wit at Several Weapons_ (cf. s.v. Beaumont) and in _Troublesome Reign of King John_ (cf. ch. xxiv) and _Pericles_.

MATTHEW ROYDON (> 1580–1622 <).

The reference to his ‘comike inuentions’ in Nashe’s _Menaphon_ epistle of 1589 (App. C, No. xlii) suggests that he wrote plays.

GEORGE RUGGLE (1575–1622).

Ruggle entered St. John’s, Cambridge, from Lavenham grammar school, Suffolk, in 1589, migrated to Trinity, where he took his B.A. in 1593 and his M.A. in 1597, and became Fellow of Clare Hall in 1598. He remained at Cambridge until 1620, shortly before his death.

_Ignoramus. 8 March 1615_

[_MSS._] _Bodl. Tanner MS._ 306, with actor-list; _Harl. MSS._ 6869 (fragmentary); and others.

_S. R._ 1615, April 18 (Nidd). ‘Ignoramus Comœdia provt Cantabrigie acta coram Jacobo serenissimo potentissimo magnae Britanniae rege.’ _Walter Burre_ (Arber, iii. 566).

1630. Ignoramus. Comœdia coram Regia Majestate Jacobi Regis Angliae, &c. _Impensis I. S._ [Colophon] _Excudebat T. P._ [Prologus Prior. Martii 8. Anno 1614; Prologus Posterior. Ad secundum Regis adventum habitus, Maii 6, 1615; Epilogus.]

1630.... Secunda editio auctior & emendatior. _Typis T. H. Sumptibus G. E. & J. S._ [Macaronic lines, headed ‘Dulman in laudem Ignorami’.]

1658.... Autore M^{ro} Ruggle, Aulae Clarensis A.M.

1659, 1668, 1707, 1731, 1736, 1737.

_Edition_ by J. S. Hawkins (1787).

Chamberlain, describing to Carleton James’s visit to Cambridge in March 1615, wrote (Birch, i. 304): ‘The second night [8 March] was a comedy of Clare Hall, with the help of two or three good actors from other houses, wherein David Drummond, on a hobby-horse, and Brakin, the recorder of the town, under the name of Ignoramus, a common lawyer, bore great parts. The thing was full of mirth and variety, with many excellent actors; among whom the Lord Compton’s son, though least, yet was not worst, but more than half marred by extreme length.’ On 31 March he told Carleton (Birch, i. 360) of the Oxford satires on the play, and of a possible second visit by the King, unless he could persuade the actors to visit London. And on 20 May he wrote to him (Birch, i. 363): ‘On Saturday last [13 May], the King went again to Cambridge, to see the play “Ignoramus”, which has so nettled the lawyers, that they are almost out of all patience.’ He adds that rhymes and ballads had been written by the lawyers, and answered. Specimens of the ‘flytings’ to which the play gave rise are in Hawkins, xxxvii, xlii, cvii, 259. Fuller, _Church History_ (1655), x. 70, reports a story that the irritation caused to the lawyers also led to John Selden’s demonstration of the secular origin of tithes. The authorship of _Ignoramus_ is indicated by the entry in a notice of the royal visit printed (Hawkins, xxx) from a manuscript in the library of Sir Edward Dering:

‘On Wednesday night, 2, _Ignoramus_, the lawyer, _Latine_, and part _English_, composed by M^r. _Ruggle_, _Clarensis_.’

_Ignoramus_ was largely based on the _Trappolaria_ (1596) of Giambattista Porta, into which Ruggle introduced his satire of the Cambridge recorder, Francis Brackyn, who had already been the butt of _3 Parnassus_.

_Doubtful and Lost Plays_

There is no justification for ascribing to Ruggle _Loiola_ (1648), which is by John Hacket, but Hawkins, lxxii, cites from a note made in a copy of _Ignoramus_ by John Hayward of Clare Hall, _c._ 1741:

‘N.B. M^r. Geo. Ruggle wrote besides two other comedies, _Re vera_ or _Verily_, and _Club Law_, to expose the puritans, not yet printed. MS.’

_Club Law_ (cf. ch. xxiv) has since been recovered.

THOMAS SACKVILLE (1536–1608).

Thomas Sackville became Lord Buckhurst in 1567 and Earl of Dorset in 1604. He is famous in literature for his contributions to ed. 2 (1559) of _A Mirror for Magistrates_, and in statesmanship as Lord Treasurer under Elizabeth and James I.

_Ferrex and Porrex_, or _Gorboduc_. _1562_

_With_ Thomas Norton (q.v.).

GEORGE SALTERNE (> 1603).

Author of the academic _Tomumbeius_ (cf. App. K).

JOHN SAVILE (_c._ 1603).

Describer of the coming of James I to England (cf. ch. xxiv, C).

ROBERT SEMPILL (_c._ 1530–95).

A Scottish ballad writer (_D. N. B._) and a suggested author of _Philotus_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

SENECAN TRANSLATIONS (1559–81).

_Troas_ (Jasper Heywood)

_S. R._ 1558–9. ‘A treates of Senaca.’ _Richard Tottel_ (Arber, i. 96).

1559. The Sixt Tragedie of the most graue and prudent author Lucius, Anneus, Seneca, entituled Troas, with diuers and sundrye addicions to the same. Newly set forth in Englishe by Iasper Heywood studient in Oxenforde. _Richard Tottel. Cum priuilegio ad imprimendum solum._ [Epistle to Elizabeth by Heywood; Preface to the Readers; Preface to the Tragedy.]

1559. _Richard Tottel._ [Another edition (B. M. G. 9440).]

N.D. [_c._ 1560]. _Thomas Powell for George Bucke._

_Thyestes_ (Jasper Heywood)

1560, March 26. The seconde Tragedie of Seneca entituled Thyestes faithfully Englished by Iasper Heywood, fellow of Alsolne College in Oxforde. [_Thomas Powell_?] ‘_in the hous late Thomas Berthelettes_’. [Verse Epistle to Sir John Mason by Heywood; The Translator to the Book; Preface.]

_Hercules Furens_ (Jasper Heywood)

1561. Lucii Annei Senecae Tragedia prima quae inscribitur Hercules furens.... The first Tragedie of Lucius Anneus Seneca, intituled Hercules furens, newly pervsed and of all faultes whereof it did before abound diligently corrected, and for the profit of young schollers so faithfully translated into English metre, that ye may se verse for verse tourned as farre as the phrase of the english permitteth By Iasper Heywood studient in Oxford. _Henry Sutton._ [Epistle to William, Earl of Pembroke, by Heywood; Argument; Latin and English texts.]

_Oedipus_ (Alexander Neville)

_S. R._ 1562–3. ‘A boke intituled the lamentable history of the prynnce Oedypus &c.’ _Thomas Colwell_ (Arber, i. 209).

1563, April 28. The Lamentable Tragedie of Oedipus the Sonne of Laius Kyng of Thebes out of Seneca. By Alexander Neuyle. _Thomas Colwell._ [Epistles to Nicholas Wotton by Neville, and to the Reader.]

_Agamemnon_ (John Studley)

_S. R._ 1565–6. ‘A boke intituled the eighte Tragide of Senyca.’ _Thomas Colwell_ (Arber, i. 304).

1566. The Eyght Tragedie of Seneca. Entituled Agamemnon. Translated out of Latin into English, by Iohn Studley, Student in Trinitie Colledge in Cambridge. _Thomas Colwell._ [Commendatory Verses by Thomas Nuce, William R., H. C., Thomas Delapeend, W. Parkar, T. B.; Epistle to Sir William Cecil, signed ‘Iohn Studley’; Preface to the Reader.]

_Medea_ (John Studley)

_S. R._ 1565–6. ‘A boke intituled the tragedy of Seneca Media by John Studley of Trenety Colledge in Cambryge.’ _Thomas Colwell_ (Arber, i. 312).

1566. The seuenth Tragedie of Seneca, Entituled Medea: Translated out of Latin into English, by Iohn Studley, Student in Trinitie Colledge in Cambridge. _Thomas Colwell._ [Epistle to Francis, Earl of Bedford, signed ‘Iohn Studley’; Preface to Reader; Commendatory Verses by W. P.; Argument.]

_Octavia_ (Thomas Nuce)

_Hercules Oetaeus_ (John Studley)

_S. R._ 1566–7. ‘A boke intituled the ix^{th} and x^{th} tragide of Lucious Anneas oute of the laten into englesshe by T. W. fellowe of Pembrek Hall, in Chambryge.’ _Henry Denham_ (Arber, i. 327).

1570–1. ‘iij^{de} part of Herculus Oote.’ _Thomas Colwell_ (Arber, i. 443).

N.D. The ninth Tragedie of Lucius Anneus Seneca called Octavia. Translated out of Latine into English, by T. N. Student in Cambridge. _Henry Denham._ [Epistles to Robert Earl of Leicester, signed ‘T. N.’, and to the Reader.]

This is B.M. C. 34, e. 48. C. Grabau in _Sh.-Jahrbuch_, xliii. 310, says that a copy in the Irish sale of 1906 was of an unknown edition, possibly of 1566.

_Hippolytus_ (John Studley)

_S. R._ 1566–7. ‘The iiij^{th} parte Seneca Workes.’ _Henry Denham_ (Arber, i. 336).

31 Aug. 1579. Transfer from Denham to Richard Jones and John Charlwood (Arber, ii. 359).

_The Ten Tragedies. 1581_

_S. R._ 1580–1. ‘Senecas Tragedies in Englishe.’ _Thomas Marsh_ (Arber, ii. 396).

1581. Seneca his Tenne Tragedies, Translated into Englysh. _Thomas Marsh._ [Epistle to Sir Thomas Heneage by Thomas Newton. Adds _Thebais_, by Thomas Newton, and, if not already printed, as S. R. entries in 1566–7 and 1570–1 suggest, _Hercules Oetaeus_ and _Hippolytus_, by John Studley. The _Oedipus_ of Neville is a revised text.]

_Reprint_ of 1581 collection (1887, _Spenser Soc._), and editions of Studley’s _Agamemnon_ and _Medea_, by E. M. Spearing (1913, _Materialien_, xxxviii), and of Heywood’s _Troas_, _Thyestes_, and _Hercules Furens_, by H. de Vocht (1913, _Materialien_, xli).--_Dissertations_: J. W. Cunliffe, _The Influence of S. on Elizabethan Tragedy_ (1893); E. Jockers, _Die englischen S.-Übersetzer des 16. Jahrhunderts_ (1909, _Strassburg diss._); E. M. Spearing, _The Elizabethan ‘Tenne Tragedies of S.’_ (1909, _M. L. R._ iv. 437), _The Elizabethan Translation of S.’s Tragedies_ (1912), _A. N.’s Oedipus_ (1920, _M. L. R._ xv. 359); F. L. Lucas, _S. and Elizabethan Tragedy_ (1922).

Of the translators, Jasper Heywood (1535–98) became Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, in 1558. He was son of John Heywood the dramatist, and uncle of John Donne. In 1562 he became a Jesuit, and left England, to return as a missionary in 1581. He was imprisoned during 1583–5 and then expelled. John Studley (_c._ 1547–?) entered Trinity, Cambridge, in 1563 and became Fellow in 1567. Alexander Neville (1544–1614) took his B.A. in 1560 at Cambridge. He became secretary successively to Parker, Grindal, and Whitgift, archbishops of Canterbury, and produced other literary work, chiefly in Latin. Thomas Nuce (_ob._ 1617) was Fellow of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, in 1562, and became Canon of Ely in 1585. Thomas Newton (_c._ 1542–1607) migrated in 1562 from Trinity, Oxford, to Queens’, Cambridge, but apparently returned to his original college later. About 1583 he became Rector of Little Ilford, Essex. He produced much unimportant verse and prose, in Latin and English, and was a friend of William Hunnis (q.v.).

For a fragment of another translation of _Hercules Oetaeus_, cf. s.v. Elizabeth. Archer’s play-list of 1656 contains the curious entry ‘Baggs Seneca’, described as a tragedy. Of this Greg, _Masques_, li, can make nothing.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564–1616).

No adequate treatment of Shakespeare’s life and plays is possible within the limits of this chapter. I have therefore contented myself with giving the main bibliographical data, in illustration of the chapters on the companies (Strange’s, Pembroke’s, Chamberlain’s, and King’s) and the theatres (Rose, Newington Butts, Theatre, Curtain, Globe, Blackfriars) with which he was or may have been concerned. I follow the conjectural chronological order adopted in my article on Shakespeare in the 11th ed. of the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

_Collections_

[1619]. It is probable that the 1619 editions of _Merry Wives of Windsor_ (Q_{2}), _Pericles_ (Q_{4}), and the apocryphal _Yorkshire Tragedy_ were intended to form part of a collection of plays ascribed to Shakespeare, and that the ‘1600’ editions of _Midsummer Night’s Dream_ (Q_{2}) and _Merchant of Venice_ (Q_{2}) bearing the name of the printer Roberts, the ‘1600’ edition of the apocryphal _Sir John Oldcastle_ bearing the initials T. P., the ‘1608’ edition of _Henry V_ (Q_{3}), the ‘1608’ edition of _King Lear_ (Q_{2}) lacking the name of the ‘Pide Bull’ shop, and the undated edition of _The Whole Contention of York and Lancaster_ were all also printed in 1619 for the same purpose. The printer seems to have been William Jaggard, with whom was associated Thomas Pavier, who held the copyright of several of the plays. Presumably an intention to prefix a general title-page is the explanation of the shortened imprints characteristic of these editions. The sheets of _The Whole Contention_ and _Pericles_ have in fact continuous signatures; but the plan seems to have been modified, and the other plays issued separately. The bibliographical evidence bearing on this theory is discussed by W. W. Greg, W. Jaggard, A. W. Pollard, and A. H. Huth in _2 Library_, ix. 113, 381; x. 208; and _3 Library_, i. 36, 46; ii. 101; and summed up by A. W. Pollard, _Shakespeare Folios and Quartos_, 81. Confirmatory evidence is adduced by W. J. Niedig, _The Shakespeare Quartos of 1619_ (_M. P._ viii. 145) and _False Dates on Shakespeare Quartos_ (1910, _Century_, 912).

_S. R._ 1623, Nov. 8 (Worrall). ‘Master William Shakspeers Comedyes Histories, and Tragedyes soe manie of the said Copies as are not formerly entred to other men. viz^t Comedyes The Tempest The two gentlemen of Verona Measure for Measure The Comedy of Errors As you like it All’s well that ends well Twelfe Night The winters tale Histories The thirde parte of Henry ye Sixt Henry the eight Tragedies Coriolanus Timon of Athens Julius Caesar Mackbeth Anthonie and Cleopatra Cymbeline’ _Blounte and Isaak Jaggard_ (Arber, iv. 107). [This entry covers all the plays in F_{1} not already printed, except _Taming of the Shrew_, _King John_, and _2, 3 Henry VI_, which were doubtless regarded from the stationer’s point of view as identical with the _Taming of A Shrew_, _Troublesome Reign of King John_, and _Contention of York and Lancaster_, on which they were based. The ‘thirde parte of Henry ye Sixt’ is of course the hitherto unprinted _1 Henry VI_.]

[F_{1}] 1623. M^{r}. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies Published according to the True Originall Copies. By _Isaac Iaggard and Ed. Blount_. [Colophon] _Printed_ [by W. Jaggard] _at the charges of W. Jaggard, Ed. Blount, I. Smethweeke, and W. Aspley_. [Verses to the Reader, signed B[en] I[onson]; Portrait signed ‘Martin Droeshout sculpsit London’; Epistles to the Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery and to the great Variety of Readers, both signed ‘Iohn Heminge, Henry Condell’; Commendatory Verses signed ‘Ben: Ionson’, ‘Hugh Holland’, ‘L. Digges’, ‘I. M.’; ‘The Names of the Principall Actors in all these Playes’; ‘A Catalogue of the seuerall Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies contained in this Volume’.]

_S. R._ 1627, June 19 [on or after]. Transfer from Dorothy widow of Isaac Jaggard to Thomas and Richard Cotes of ‘her parte in Schackspheere playes’ (Arber, iv. 182).

_S. R._ 1630, Nov. 16. Transfer from Blount to Robert Allot by note dated 26 June 1630 of his ‘estate and right’ in the sixteen plays of the 1623 entry (Arber, iv. 243).

[F_{2}] 1632. _Thomas Cotes, for John Smethwick, William Aspley, Richard Hawkins, Richard Meighen and Robert Allot._ [So colophon: there are t.ps. with separate imprints by Cotes for each of the five booksellers.]

[F_{3}] 1663. _For Philip Chetwinde._ [For the second issue of 1664, with _Pericles_ and six apocryphal plays added, cf. p. 203.]

[F_{4}] 1685. _For H. Herringman_ (and others).

Of later editions the most valuable for literary history are those by E. Malone, revised by J. Boswell (1821, the _Third Variorum Shakespeare_, 21 vols.); W. A. Wright (1891–3, the _Cambridge Shakespeare_, 9 vols.); F. J. Furnivall and others (1885–91, the _Shakespeare Quarto Facsimiles_, 43 vols.); H. H. Furness (1871–1919, the _New Variorum Shakespeare_, 18 plays in 19 vols. issued); E. Dowden and others (1899–1922, the _Arden Shakespeare_); A. T. Q. Couch and J. D. Wilson (1921–2, the _New Shakespeare_, 5 vols. issued). Of dissertations I can only note, for biography, J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps, _Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare_ (1890, ed. 9), and S. Lee, _A Life of William Shakespeare_ (1922, new ed.), and for bibliography, S. Lee, _Facsimile of F_{1} from the Chatsworth copy_ (1902, with census of copies, added to in _2 Library_, vii. 113), W. W. Greg, _The Bibliographical History of the First Folio_ (1903, _2 Library_, iv. 258), A. W. Pollard, _Shakespeare Folios and Quartos_ (1909) and _Shakespeare’s Fight with the Pirates_ (1920), A. W. Pollard and H. C. Bartlett, _A Census of Shakespeare’s Plays in Quarto_ (1916), and H. C. Bartlett, _Mr. William Shakespeare_ (1922).

_1 Henry VI. 1592_

[F_{1}] 1623. The first Part of Henry the Sixt.

_2, 3 Henry VI. 1592_ (?)

_S. R._ No original entry. [Probably these plays were regarded from a stationer’s point of view as identical with the anonymous _Contention of York and Lancaster_ (q.v.), on which they were based. Pavier had acquired rights over these from Millington in 1602.]

[F_{1}] 1623. The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, with the death of the Good Duke Humfrey. The Third Part of Henry the Sixt, with the death of the Duke of Yorke.

_S. R._ 1626, Aug. 4. Transfer from Mrs. Pavier to Edward Brewster and Robert Birde of ‘Master Paviers right in Shakesperes plaies or any of them’ (Arber, iv. 164).

_S. R._ 1630, Nov. 8. Transfer from Bird to Richard Cotes of ‘Yorke and Lancaster’ (Arber, iv. 242).

_Richard III. 1592–3_ (?)

_S. R._ 1597, Oct. 20 (Barlowe). ‘The tragedie of Kinge Richard the Third with the death of the Duke of Clarence.’ _Andrew Wise_ (Arber, iii. 93).

[Q_{1}] 1597. The Tragedy of King Richard the third. Containing, His treacherous Plots against his brother Clarence: the pittiefull murther of his iunocent nephewes: his tyrannical vsurpation: with the whole course of his detested life, and most deserued death. As it hath beene lately Acted by the Right honourable the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. _Valentine Sims for Andrew Wise._

[Q_{2}] 1598.... By William Shakespeare. _Thomas Creede for Andrew Wise._

[Q_{3}] 1602.... Newly augmented.... _Thomas Creede for Andrew Wise._ [There is no augmentation.]

_S. R._ 1603, June 25. Transfer from Andrew Wise to Mathew Lawe (Arber, iii. 239).

[Q_{4}] 1605. _Thomas Creede, sold by Mathew Lawe._

[Q_{5}] 1612.... As it hath beene lately Acted by the Kings Maiesties seruants.... _Thomas Creede, sold by Mathew Lawe._

[Q_{6}] 1622. _Thomas Purfoot, sold by Mathew Law._

[F_{1}] 1623. The Tragedy of Richard the Third: with the Landing of Earle Richmond, and the Battell at Bosworth Field. [_Running Title_, The Life and Death of Richard the Third. From Q_{1}-Q_{2}-Q_{3}-Q_{4} (+ Q_{3})-Q_{5}-Q_{6}, with corrections.]

[Q_{7}] 1629. _John Norton, sold by Mathew Law._

[Q_{8}] 1634. _John Norton._

_Comedy of Errors. 1593_ (?)

[F_{1}] 1623. The Comedie of Errors.

_Titus Andronicus. 1594_

_S. R._ 1594, Feb. 6. ‘A Noble Roman historye of Tytus Andronicus.’ _John Danter_ (Arber, ii. 644).

[Q_{1}] 1594. The most Lamentable Romaine Tragedie of Titus Andronicus: As it was Plaide by the Right Honourable the Earle of Darbie, Earle of Pembrooke and Earle of Sussex their Seruants. _John Danter, sold by Edward White and Thomas Millington._

[Q_{2}] 1600.... As it hath sundry times beene playde by the Right Honourable the Earle of Pembrooke, the Earle of Darbie, the Earle of Sussex, and the Lorde Chamberlaine theyr Seruants. _I[ames] R[oberts] for Edward White._

_S. R._ 1602, April 19. Transfer ‘saluo iure cuiuscunque’ from Thomas Millington to Thomas Pavier (Arber, iii. 204).

[Q_{3}] 1611. _For Edward White._

[F_{1}] 1623. The Lamentable Tragedy of Titus Andronicus. [From Q_{1}-Q_{2}-Q_{3}, with addition of III. ii.]

_S. R._ 1626, Aug. 4. Transfer from Mrs. Pavier of interest to Edward Brewster and Robert Bird (Arber, iv. 164).

_The Taming of The Shrew. 1594_

_S. R._ No entry. [Probably the play was regarded from the point of view of copyright as identical with the anonymous _Taming of A Shrew_ (q.v.), on which it was based.]

[F_{1}] 1623. The Taming of the Shrew.

[Q_{1}] 1631. A wittie and pleasant comedie called The Taming of the Shrew. As it was acted by his Maiesties Seruants at the Blacke Friers and the Globe. Written by Will. Shakespeare. _W. S. for Iohn Smethwicke._

_Love’s Labour’s Lost. 1594_ (?)

_S. R._ No original entry.

[Q_{1}] 1598. A Pleasant Conceited Comedie Called, Loues labors lost. As it was presented before her Highnes this last Christmas. Newly corrected and augmented By W. Shakespere. _W[illiam] W[hite] for Cutbert Burby._

_S. R._ 1607. Jan. 22. Transfer from Burby to Nicholas Ling (Arber, iii. 337).

_S. R._ 1607, Nov. 19. Transfer from Ling to John Smethwick (Arber, iii. 365).

[F_{1}] 1623. Loues Labour’s lost. [From Q_{1}.]

[Q_{2}] 1631.... As it was Acted by his Maiesties Seruants at the Blacke-Friers and the Globe.... _W[illiam] S[tansby] for John Smethwicke._

_Romeo and Juliet. 1594–5_ (?)

_S. R._ No original entry.

[Q_{1}] 1597. An Excellent conceited Tragedie of Romeo and Iuliet, As it hath been often (with great applause) plaid publiquely, by the right Honourable the L. of Hunsdon his Seruants. _John Danter._

[Q_{2}] 1599.... Newly corrected, augmented, and amended: ... _Thomas Creede for Cuthbert Burby._ [Revised and enlarged text.]

_S. R._ 1607, Jan. 22. Transfer by direction of a court from Burby to Nicholas Ling (Arber, iii. 337).

_S. R._ 1607, Nov. 19. Transfer from Ling to John Smethwick (Arber, iii. 365).

[Q_{3}] 1609.... by the King’s Maiesties Seruants at the Globe.... _For Iohn Smethwick._

[F_{1}] 1623. The Tragedie of Romeo and Iuliet. [From Q_{2}-Q_{3}.]

[Q_{4}] N.D. _For Iohn Smethwicke._ [Two issues.]

[Q_{5}] 1637. _R. Young for John Smethwicke._

_A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 1595_

_S. R._ 1600, Oct. 8 (Rodes). ‘A booke called A mydsommer nightes Dreame.’ _Thomas Fisher_ (Arber, iii. 174).

[Q_{1}] 1600. A Midsommer nights dreame. As it hath beene sundry times publickely acted, by the Right honourable, the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. Written by William Shakespeare. _For Thomas Fisher._

[Q_{2}] [1619]. ‘_Printed by Iames Roberts, 1600._’ [On the evidence for printing with false date by William Jaggard, cf. Pollard, 81.]

[F_{1}] 1623. A Midsommer Nights Dreame. [From Q_{2}.]

On the possible date and occasion of performance, cf. my paper in _Shakespeare Homage_ (1916).

_The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 1595_ (?)

[F_{1}] 1623. The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

_King John. 1595_ (?)

_S. R._ No entry. [Probably the play was regarded, from a stationer’s point of view, as identical with the anonymous _Troublesome Reign of King John_ (q.v.), on which it was based.]

[F_{1}] 1623. The life and Death of King John.

_Richard II. 1595–6_

_S. R._ 1597, Aug. 29. ‘The Tragedye of Richard the Second.’ _Andrew Wise_ (Arber, iii. 89).

[Q_{1}] 1597. The Tragedie of King Richard the second. As it hath beene publikely acted by the right Honourable the Lorde Chamberlaine his Seruants. _Valentine Simmes for Andrew Wise._

[Q_{2}] 1598.... By William Shakespeare. _Valentine Simmes for Andrew Wise._

[Q_{3}] 1598. _Valentine Simmes, for Andrew Wise._ [White coll.]

_S. R._ 1603, June 25. Transfer from Andrew Wise to Mathew Lawe (Arber, iii. 239).

[Q_{4}] 1608.... With new additions of the Parliament Sceane, and the deposing of King Richard. As it hath been lately acted by the Kinges Maiesties seruantes, at the Globe. _W[illiam] W[hite] for Mathew Law._ [Two issues with distinct t.ps., of which one only has the altered title. Both include the added passage IV. i. 154–318.]

[Q_{5}] 1615. _For Mathew Law._

[F_{1}] 1623. The life and death of King Richard the Second. [From Q_{1}-Q_{2}-Q_{3}-Q_{4}-Q_{5}, with corrections.]

[Q_{6}] 1634. _Iohn Norton._

_The Merchant of Venice. 1596_ (?)

_S. R._ 1598, July 22. ‘A booke of the Marchaunt of Venyce or otherwise called the Jewe of Venyce, Prouided that yt bee not prynted by the said James Robertes or anye other whatsoeuer without lycence first had from the Right honorable the lord Chamberlen.’ _James Robertes_ (Arber, iii. 122).

_S. R._ 1600, Oct. 28. Transfer from Roberts to Thomas Heyes (Arber, iii. 175).

[Q_{1}] 1600. The most excellent Historie of the Merchant of Venice. With the extreame crueltie of Shylocke the Iewe towards the sayd Merchant, in cutting a iust pound of his flesh: and the obtayning of Portia by the choyse of three chests. As it hath been diuers times acted by the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. Written by William Shakespeare. _I[ames] R[oberts] for Thomas Heyes._

[Q_{2}] [1619]. ‘_Printed by J. Roberts, 1600._’ [On the evidence for printing with false date by William Jaggard, cf. Pollard, 81.]

_S. R._ 1619, July 8. Transfer from Thomas to Laurence Heyes (Arber, iii. 651).

[F_{1}] 1623. The Merchant of Venice. [From Q_{1}.]

[Q_{3}] 1637. _M. P[arsons?] for Laurence Hayes._

[Q_{3}] 1652. _For William Leake._ [Reissue.]

_S. R._ 1657, Oct. 17. Transfer from Bridget Hayes and Jane Graisby to William Leake (Eyre, ii. 150).

_1 Henry IV. 1596–7_ (?)

_S. R._ 1598, Feb. 25 (Dix). ‘A booke intituled The historye of Henry the iiij^{th} with his battaile of Shrewsburye against Henry Hottspurre of the Northe with the conceipted mirthe of Sir John ffalstoff.’ _Andrew Wise_ (Arber, iii. 105).

[Q_{1}] 1598. The History of Henrie the Fourth; With the battell at Shrewsburie, betweene the King and Lord Henry Percy, surnamed Henrie Hotspur of the North. With the humorous conceits of Sir Iohn Falstalffe. _P[eter] S[hort] for Andrew Wise._

[Q_{2}] 1599.... Newly corrected by W. Shakespeare. _S[imon] S[tafford] for Andrew Wise._

_S. R._ 1603, June 25. Transfer from Wise to Mathew Law (Arber, iii. 239).

[Q_{3}] 1604. _Valentine Simmes for Mathew Law._

[Q_{4}] 1608. _For Mathew Law._

[Q_{5}] 1613. _W[illiam] W[hite] for Mathew Law._

[Q_{6}] 1622. _T[homas] P[urfoot], sold by Mathew Law._

[F_{1}] 1623. The First Part of Henry the Fourth, with the Life and Death of Henry Sirnamed Hot-spurre. [From Q_{1}-Q_{2}-Q_{3}-Q_{4}-Q_{5}.]

[Q_{7}] 1632. _John Norton, sold by William Sheares._

[Q_{8}] 1639. _John Norton, sold by Hugh Perry._

_2 Henry IV. 1597–8_ (?)

_S. R._ 1600, Aug. 23. ‘The second parte of the history of Kinge Henry the iiij^{th} with the humours of Sir John ffalstaff; wrytten by master Shakespere.’ _Andrew Wise and William Aspley_ (Arber, iii. 170).

[Q] 1600. The Second part of Henrie the fourth, continuing to his death, and coronation of Henrie the fift. With the humours of sir Iohn Falstaffe, and swaggering Pistoll. As it hath been sundrie times publikely acted by the right honourable, the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. Written by William Shakespeare. _V[alentine] S[immes] for Andrew Wise and William Aspley._ [Two issues, the first of which omits III. i.]

[F_{1}] 1623. The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, Containing his Death: and the Coronation of King Henry the Fift. [Distinct text from Q.]

_Much Ado About Nothing. 1598_ (?)

_S. R._ [1600], Aug. 4. ‘The commedie of muche A doo about nothing a booke ... to be staied’ (Arber, iii. 37).

_S. R._ 1600, Aug. 23. ‘Muche a Doo about nothinge.’ _Andrew Wise and William Aspley_ (Arber, iii. 170).

[Q] 1600. Much adoe about Nothing. As it hath been sundrie times publikely acted by the right honourable, the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. Written by William Shakespeare. _V[alentine] S[immes] for Andrew Wise and William Aspley._

[F_{1}] 1623. Much adoe about Nothing. [From Q, with corrections.]

_Henry V. 1599_

_S. R._ No original entry. [Possibly the play was regarded from a stationer’s point of view as identical with the anonymous _Famous Victories of Henry V_ (q.v.) entered by Creede on 14 May 1594.]

_S. R._ [1600], Aug. 4. ‘Henry the ffift, a booke ... to be staied’ (Arber, iii. 37).

[Q_{1}] 1600. The Chronicle History of Henry the fift, With his battell fought at Agin Court in France. Togither with Auntient Pistoll. As it hath bene sundry times playd by the Right honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. _Thomas Creede for Tho. Millington and Iohn Busby._

_S. R._ 1600, Aug. 14. Transfer to Thomas Pavier, with other ‘thinges formerlye printed and sett over to’ him (Arber, iii. 169).

[Q_{2}] 1602. _Thomas Creede for Thomas Pauier._

[Q_{3}] [1619]. ‘_Printed for T. P. 1608._’ [On the evidence for printing with false date by William Jaggard, cf. Pollard, _F. and Q._ 81.]

[F_{1}] 1623. The Life of Henry the Fift. [Distinct text from Qq.]

_S. R._ 1626, Aug. 4. Transfer from Mrs. Pavier to Edward Brewster and Robert Birde of interest in ‘The history of Henry the fift and the play of the same’ (Arber, iv. 164).

_S. R._ 1630, Nov. 8. Transfer from Bird to Richard Cotes of ‘Henrye the Fift’ and ‘Agincourt’ (Arber, iv. 242).

_Julius Caesar. 1599_

[F_{1}] 1623. The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar.

_The Merry Wives of Windsor. 1599–1600_ (?)

_S. R._ 1602, Jan. 18 (Seton). ‘A booke called An excellent and pleasant conceited commedie of Sir John ffaulstof and the merry wyves of Windesor.’ _John Busby._ Transfer the same day from Busby to Arthur Johnson (Arber, iii. 199).

[Q_{1}] 1602. A most pleasaunt and excellent conceited Comedie, of Syr Iohn Falstaffe, and the merrie Wiues of Windsor. Entermixed with sundrie variable and pleasing humors, of Syr Hugh the Welch Knight, Iustice Shallow, and his wise Cousin M. Slender. With the swaggering vaine of Auncient Pistoll, and Corporall Nym. By William Shakespeare. As it hath bene diuers times Acted by the right Honorable my Lord Chamberlaines seruants. Both before her Maiestie, and elsewhere. _T[homas] C[reede] for Arthur Iohnson._

[Q_{2}] 1619. _[William Jaggard] for Arthur Johnson._ [On its relation to other plays printed by Jaggard in 1619, cf. Pollard _F. and Q._ 81.]

[F_{1}] 1623. The Merry Wiues of Windsor. [Distinct text from Qq.]

_S. R._ 1630, Jan. 29. Transfer from Johnson to Meighen (Arber, iv. 227).

[Q_{3}] 1630. _T. H[arper] for R. Meighen._

_As You Like It. 1600_ (?)

[F_{1}] 1623. As you Like it.

_Hamlet. 1601_ (?)

_S. R._ 1602, July 26 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called the Revenge of Hamlett Prince Denmarke as yt was latelie Acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes.’ _James Robertes_ (Arber, iii. 212).

[Q_{1}] 1603, The Tragicall Historie of Hamlet Prince of Denmarke. By William Shakespeare. As it hath beene diuerse times acted by his Highnesse seruants in the Cittie of London: as also in the two Vniuersities of Cambridge and Oxford, and elsewhere. _[Valentine Simmes] for N[icholas] L[ing] and Iohn Trundell._

[Q_{2}] 1604.... Newly imprinted and enlarged to almost as much againe as it was, according to the true and perfect Coppie.... _I[ames] R[oberts] for N[icholas] L[ing]._ [Some copies are dated 1605. Distinct text from Q_{1}.]

_S. R._ 1607, Nov. 19. Transfer from Ling to John Smethwick (Arber, iii. 365).

[Q_{3}] 1611. _For Iohn Smethwicke._

[F_{1}] 1623. The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke. [Distinct text from Qq.]

[Q_{4}] N.D. [after 1611]. _W[illiam] S[tansby] for Iohn Smethwicke._

[Q_{5}] 1637. _R. Young for John Smethwicke._

_Twelfth Night. 1601–2_

[F_{1}] 1623. Twelfe Night, Or what you will.

_Troilus and Cressida. 1602_ (?)

_S. R._ 1603, Feb. 7. ‘Master Robertes, Entred for his copie in full Court holden this day to print when he hath gotten sufficient aucthority for yt, The booke of Troilus and Cresseda as yt is acted by my lord Chamberlens Men’ (Arber, iii. 226).

_S. R._ 1609, Jan. 28 (Segar, ‘deputye to Sir George Bucke’). ‘A booke called the history of Troylus and Cressida.’ _Richard Bonion and Henry Walleys_ (Arber, iii. 400).

[Q] 1609. The Historie of Troylus and Cresseida. As it was acted by the Kings Maiesties seruants at the Globe. Written by William Shakespeare. _G. Eld for R. Bonian and H. Walley._ [In a second issue the title became ‘The Famous Historie of Troylus and Cresseid. Excellently expressing the beginning of their loues, with the conceited wooing of Pandarus Prince of Licia’; and an Epistle headed ‘A neuer writer, to an euer reader. Newes’ was inserted.]

[F_{1}] 1623. The Tragedie of Troylus and Cressida. [A distinct text from Q.]

_All’s Well That Ends Well. 1602_ (?)

[F_{1}] 1623. All’s Well, that Ends Well.

_Measure for Measure. 1604_ (?)

[F_{1}] 1623. Measure, For Measure.

_Othello 1604_ (?)

_S. R._ 1621, Oct. 6 (Buck). ‘The Tragedie of Othello, the moore of Venice.’ _Thomas Walkley_ (Arber, iv. 59).

[Q_{1}] 1622. The Tragœdy of Othello, The Moore of Venice. As it hath beene diuerse times acted at the Globe, and at the Black-Friers, by his Maiesties Seruants. Written by William Shakespeare. _N[icholas] O[kes] for Thomas Walkley._ [Epistle by the Stationer to the Reader, signed ‘Thomas Walkley’.]

[F_{1}] 1623. The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice. [Distinct text from Q_{1}]

_S. R._ 1628, March 1. Transfer from Walkley to Richard Hawkins (Arber, iv. 194).

[Q_{2}] 1630. _A. M[athewes] for Richard Hawkins._

[Q_{3}] 1655.... The fourth Edition. _For William Leak._

_Macbeth. 1605–6_ (?)

[F_{1}] 1623. The Tragedie of Macbeth.

_King Lear. 1605–6_

_S. R._ 1607, Nov. 26 (Buck). ‘A booke called Master William Shakespeare his historye of Kinge Lear, as yt was played before the kinges maiestie at Whitehall vppon Sainct Stephens night at Christmas Last by his maiesties servantes playinge vsually at the Globe on the Banksyde.’ _Nathanael Butter and John Busby_ (Arber, iii. 366).

[Q_{1}] 1608. M. William Shakspeare: His True Chronicle Historie of the life and death of King Lear and his three Daughters. With the vnfortunate life of Edgar, sonne and heire to the Earle of Gloster, and his sullen and assumed humour of Tom of Bedlam: As it was played before the Kings Maiestie at Whitehall vpon S. Stephans night in Christmas Hollidayes. By his Maiesties seruants playing vsually at the Gloabe on the Banckeside. _[Nicholas Okes?] for Nathaniel Butter and are to be sold at ... the Pide Bull...._ [Sheets freely corrected during printing.]

[Q_{2}] [1619]. ‘_Printed for Nathaniel Butter, 1608._’ [On the evidence for printing with false date by William Jaggard, cf. Pollard, 81.]

[F_{1}] 1623. The Tragedie of King Lear. [From Q_{1} with corrections.]

[Q_{3}] 1655. _By Jane Bell._

_Antony and Cleopatra. 1606_ (?)

_S. R._ 1608, May 20 (Buck). ‘A booke Called Anthony and Cleopatra.’ _Edward Blount_ (Arber, iii. 378).

_S. R._ 1623, Nov. 8. ‘Anthonie and Cleopatra’, with other playes for F_{1} [_vide supra_]. _Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard_ (Arber, iv. 107).

[F_{1}] 1623. The Tragedie of Anthonie, and Cleopatra.

_Coriolanus. 1606_ (?)

[F_{1}] 1623. The Tragedy of Coriolanus.

_Timon of Athens. 1607_ (?)

[F_{1}] 1623. The Lyfe of Tymon of Athens.

_Pericles. 1608_ (?)

_S. R._ 1608, May 20 (Buck). ‘A booke called The booke of Pericles prynce of Tyre.’ _Edward Blount_ (Arber, iii. 378).

[Q_{1}] 1609. The Late, And much admired Play, Called Pericles, Prince of Tyre. With the true Relation of the whole Historie, aduentures, and fortunes of the said Prince: As also, The no lesse strange, and worthy accidents, in the Birth and Life, of his Daughter Mariana. As it hath been diuers and sundry times acted by his Maiesties Seruants, at the Globe on the Banck-side. By William Shakespeare. _[William White] for Henry Gosson._

[Q_{2}] 1609. _[William White] for Henry Gosson._ [‘Eneer’ for ‘Enter’ on A_{2}].

[Q_{3}] 1611. _By S[imon] S[tafford]._

[Q_{4}] ‘_Printed for T[homas] P[avier] 1619._’ [The signatures are continuous with those of _The Whole Contention_ printed n.d. in 1619. Probably the printer was William Jaggard; cf. Pollard, 81.]

[Q_{5}] 1630. _I. N[orton]for R. B[ird]._ [Two issues.]

[Q_{6}] 1635. _By Thomas Cotes._

[F_{3}] 1664. Pericles Prince of Tyre. [Distinct text from Qq.]

_Cymbeline. 1609_ (?)

[F_{1}] 1623. The Tragedie of Cymbeline.

_The Winter’s Tale. 1610_ (?)

[F_{1}] 1623. The Winters Tale.

_The Tempest. 1611_

[F_{1}] 1623. The Tempest.

_Henry VIII. 1613_ (?)

[F_{1}] 1623. The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight.

_Doubtful Plays_

Besides the seven plays printed in F_{3} (_vide supra_) Shakespeare has been credited (cf. ch. xxiv) with the authorship of or contributions to _An Alarum for London_, _Arden of Feversham_, _Fair Em_, _Merry Devil of Edmonton_, _Troublesome Reign of King John_, _Mucedorus_, _Second Maiden’s Tragedy_, _Taming of A Shrew_, and perhaps more plausibly, _Contention of York and Lancaster_, _Edward III_, _Sir Thomas More_, and _T. N. K._ (cf. s.v. Beaumont).

_Lost Plays_

Meres includes ‘Loue Labours Wonne’ in his list of 1598 (App. C, No. lii).

On 9 Sept. 1653 Humphrey Mosely entered in the Stationers’ Register (Eyre, i. 428), in addition to _The Merry Devil of Edmonton_ with an ascription to Shakespeare (cf. ch. xxiv):

‘The History of Cardenio, by M^r Fletcher & Shakespeare.’ ‘Henry y^e first, & Hen: the 2^d. by Shakespeare, & Davenport.’

On 29 June 1660 he entered (Eyre, ii. 271):

‘The History of King Stephen. } Duke Humphrey, a Tragedy. } by Will: Shakspeare.’ Iphis & Iantha or a marriage without } a man, a Comedy. }

Warburton’s list of burnt plays (_3 Library_, ii. 230) contains:

‘Henry y^e 1^{st}. by Will. Shakespear & Rob. Davenport’, ‘Duke Humphery Will. Shakespear’,

and in a supplementary list:

‘A Play by Will. Shakespear.’

Of _Henry II_, _Stephen_, _Duke Humphrey_, and _Iphis and Iantha_ nothing more is known.

_Cardenio_ is presumably the play given as ‘Cardenno’ and ‘Cardenna’ by the King’s men at Court in 1612–13 and again on 8 June 1613 (App. B). Its theme, from _Don Quixote_, Part I, chh. xxiii-xxxvii, is that of _Double Falsehood, or the Distressed Lovers_, published in 1728 by Lewis Theobald as ‘written originally by W. Shakespeare, and now revised and adapted to the stage by M^r. Theobald’. In 1727 it had been produced at Drury Lane. Theobald claimed to have three manuscripts, no one of which is now known. One had formerly, he said, belonged to Betterton, and was in the handwriting of ‘M^r. _Downes_, the famous Old Prompter’ (cf. App. I). Another came from a ‘Noble Person’, with a tradition ‘that it was given by our Author, as a Present of Value, to a Natural Daughter of his, for whose Sake he wrote it, in the Time of his Retirement from the Stage’. Theobald is much under suspicion of having written _Double Falsehood_ himself (cf. T. R. Lounsbury, _The First Editors of Shakespeare_, 145).

‘The Historye of Henry the First, written by Damport’ was licensed for the King’s men on 10 Apr. 1624 (_Var._ iii. 229, 319; Herbert, 27).

EDWARD SHARPHAM (1576–1608).

Edward was the third son of Richard Sharpham of Colehanger in East Allington, Devonshire, where he was baptized on 22 July 1576. He entered the Middle Temple on 9 Oct. 1594. He made his will on 22 Apr. 1608, and was buried on the following day at St. Margaret’s, Westminster. It may be inferred that he died of plague. Unless he is the E. S. who wrote _The Discoveries of the Knights of the Post_ (1597), he is only known by his two plays. There is no justification for identifying him with the Ed. Sharphell who prefixed a sonnet to the _Humours Heav’n on Earth_ (1605) of John Davies of Hereford, calling Davies his ‘beloued Master’, or, consequently, for assuming that he had been a pupil of Davies as writing-master at Magdalen, Oxford.

_Dissertations_: G. C. Moore Smith, _E. S._ (1908, _10 N. Q._ x. 21), _John Mason and E. S._ (1913, _M. L. R._ viii. 371); M. W. Sampson, _The Plays of E. S._ (1910, _Studies in Language and Literature in Celebration of the 70th Birthday of J. M. Hart_, 440).

_The Fleir. 1606_

_S. R._ 1606, May 13. ‘A Comedie called The fleare. Provided that they are not to printe yt tell they bringe good aucthoritie and licence for the Doinge thereof.’ _John Trundell and John Busby_ (Arber, iii. 321).

1606, Nov. 21. Transfer from Trundell to Busby and Arthur Johnson, with note ‘This booke is aucthorised by Sir George Bucke Master Hartwell and the wardens’ (Arber, iii. 333).

1607. The Fleire. As it hath beene often played in the Blacke-Fryers by the Children of the Reuells. Written by Edward Sharpham of the Middle Temple, Gentleman. _F. B._ [Epistle to the Reader, by the printer.]

1610; 1615; 1631.

_Edition_ by H. Nibbe (1912, _Materialien_, xxxvi).

The epistle says that the book has been ‘long lookt for’, that the author is ‘ith’ Country’ and that further ‘Comicall discourses’ from him are forthcoming. A date after the executions for treason on 30 Jan. 1606 is suggested, as in the case of Marston’s _Fawn_, by ii. 364, ‘I have heard say, they will rise sooner, and goe with more deuotion to see an extraordinarie execution, then to heare a Sermon’, and with this indication allusions to the Union (ii. 258) and _Northward Ho!_ (ii. 397) and resemblances to the _Fawn_ are consistent.

_Cupid’s Whirligig. 1607_

_S. R._ 1607, June 29 (Tylney). ‘A Comedie called Cupids Whirley-gigge.’ _John Busby and Arthur Johnson_ (Arber, iii. 354).

1607. Cupid’s Whirligig, As it hath bene sundry times Acted by the Children of the Kings Majesties Reuels. _E. Allde, sold by A. Johnson._ [Epistle to Robert Hayman, signed ‘E. S.’]

1611; 1616; 1630.

Baker, _Biographia Dramatica_, ii. 146, cites Coxeter as authority for a false ascription of the play to Shakespeare. But nobody could well have supposed Shakespeare to be indicated by the initials E. S., for which there is really no other candidate than Sharpham. The play must be the further ‘Comicall discourses’ promised by the same publishers in the epistle to _The Fleir_, and it may be added that Hayman (cf. _D. N. B._), like Sharpham, was a Devonshire man. The date may be taken to be 1607, as the King’s Revels are not traceable earlier.

SAMUEL SHEPPARD (> 1606–1652 <).

The known work of this miscellaneous writer belongs to 1646–52, and although it includes a political tract in dramatic form, it is only his vague claim of a share, possibly as amanuensis, in Jonson’s _Sejanus_ (q.v.), which suggests that he might be the unknown S. S. whose initials are on the title-page of _The Honest Lawyer_ (1616).

SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554–86).

Both his entertainments were printed for the first time with the third (1598) edition of the _Arcadia_.

_The Lady of May. 1579_ (?)

1598. The Countesse of Pembrokes Arcadia. Written by Sir Philip Sidney Knight. Now the third time published, with sundry new additions of the same Author. _For William Ponsonby._ [The description of the entertainment follows _Astrophel and Stella_ among the ‘new additions’, beginning at the head of sig. 3 B3^v, without title or date.]

Reprints in 1599, 1605, 1613, 1621, 1622, 1623, 1627, 1629, 1633, 1638, 1655, 1662, 1674 editions of the _Arcadia_.

_Editions_ in Nichols, _Elizabeth^{1, 2}_, ii. 94 (1788–1823), and Collections of Sidney’s _Works_.

The entertainment was in the Garden. As the Queen entered the grove, An Honest Man’s Wife of the Country delivered a speech and a written supplication in verse, for decision of the case of her daughter. Then came the daughter, chosen May Lady, and haled this way by six Shepherds on behalf of her lover Espilus and six Foresters on behalf of her lover Therion. The case was put to the Queen by Laius an old Shepherd, Rombus a Schoolmaster, and finally the May Lady herself. Espilus, accompanied by the Shepherds with recorders, and Therion, accompanied by the Foresters with cornets, sang in rivalry. A ‘contention’ followed between Dorcas, an old Shepherd, and Rixus, a young Forester, ‘whether of their fellows had sung better, and whether the estate of shepherds or foresters were the more worshipful’. Rombus tried to intervene. The May Lady appealed to the Queen, who decided for Espilus. Shepherds and Foresters made a consort together, Espilus sang a song, and the May Lady took her leave.

Nichols assigns the entertainment to Elizabeth’s Wanstead visit of 1578. But it might also belong to that of 1579, and possibly to that of 1582. In 1579, but not in 1578, the visit covered May Day. The references in the text are, however, to the month of May, rather than to May Day.

_Pastoral Dialogue, c. 1580_

1598. A Dialogue between two Shepherds, Vttered in a Pastorall Show at Wilton. [Appended to _Arcadia_; cf. _supra_.]

_Edition_ in A. B. Grosart, _Poems of Sidney_ (1877), ii. 50.

This dialogue between Dick and Will appears to belong to the series of poems motived by Sidney’s love for Penelope Devereux. It must therefore date between August 1577, when Sidney first visited his sister, Lady Pembroke, at Wilton, and his own marriage on 20 Sept. 1583. There is no indication that the Queen was present; not improbably the ‘Show’ took place while Sidney was out of favour at Court, and was living at Wilton from March to August 1580.

JOHN SINGER (?-1603 <).

On Singer’s career as an actor, see ch. xv.

On 13 Jan. 1603, about which date he apparently retired from the Admiral’s, Henslowe paid him £5 ‘for his playe called Syngers vallentarey’ (Greg, _Henslowe_, i. 173; ii. 226). I think the term ‘vallentarey’ must be used by Henslowe, rightly or wrongly, in the sense of ‘valedictory’. _Quips on Questions_ (1600), a book of ‘themes’, is not his, but Armin’s (q.v.).

WILLIAM SLY (?-1608).

On Sly’s career as an actor, see ch. xv.

He has been guessed at as the author of _Thomas Lord Cromwell_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

W. SMITH.

There are traceable (_a_) Wentworth Smith, who wrote plays for Henslowe’s companies, the Admiral’s, and Worcester’s during 1601–3 (_vide infra_) and witnessed the will of W. Haughton in 1605; (_b_) a W. Smith, who wrote _Hector of Germany_ and _The Freeman’s Honour_ (_vide infra_); (_c_) a ‘Smith’, whose _Fair Foul One_ Herbert licensed on 28 Nov. 1623 (Chalmers, _S. A._ 216; Herbert, 26); (_d_) if Warburton can be trusted, a ‘Will. Smithe’, whose _S^t George for England_ his cook burnt (_3 Library_, ii. 231). It is possible that (_a_) and (_b_) may be identical. A long space of time separates (_b_) and (_c_), and if (_d_) is to be identified with any other, it may most plausibly be with (_c_). There is nothing to connect any one of them with the William Smith who published sonnets under the title of _Chloris_ (1596), or with any other member of this infernal family, and the ‘W. S.’ of the anonymous _Locrine_ (1595), _Thomas Lord Cromwell_ (1602), _The Puritan_ (1607) is more probably, in each case, aimed at Shakespeare.

_The Hector of Germany, c. 1615_

_S. R._ 1615, April 24 (Buck). ‘A play called The Hector of Germany, or the Palsgraue is a harmeles thinge.’ _Josias Harrison_ (Arber, iii. 566). [The four last words of the title are scored through.]

1615. The Hector of Germaine, or the Palsgrave, Prime Elector. A New Play, an Honourable Hystorie. As it hath beene publikely Acted at the Red Bull, and at the Curtaine, by a Companie of Young Men of this Citie. Made by W. Smith, with new Additions. _Thomas Creede for Josias Harrison._ [Epistle to Sir John Swinnerton, signed ‘W. Smith’; Prologue; after text, ‘Finis. W. Smyth.’ Some copies have a variant t.p.]

_Edition_ by L. W. Payne (1906, _Pennsylvania Univ. Publ._).

The epistle says ‘I have begun in a former Play, called the Freemans Honour, acted by the Now-Seruants of the Kings Maiestie, to dignifie the worthy Companie of the Marchantaylors’. If the phrase ‘Now-Seruants’ implies production before 1603, the identification of W. Smith and Wentworth Smith becomes very probable. The prologue explains that the Palsgrave is not Frederick, since ‘Authorities sterne brow’ would not permit ‘To bring him while he lives upon the stage’, and apologizes for the performance by ‘men of trade’.

_Lost Plays_

Henslowe assigns to Wentworth Smith a share in the following plays:

_Plays for the Admiral’s, 1601–2_

(i) _The Conquest of the West Indies._

With Day and Haughton, Apr.–Sept. 1601.

(ii) _1 Cardinal Wolsey._

With Chettle, Drayton, and Munday, Aug.–Nov. 1601.

(iii), (iv) _1, 2 The Six Clothiers._

With Hathway and Haughton, Oct.–Nov. 1601. Apparently Part 2 was not finished.

(v) _Too Good to be True._

With Chettle and Hathway, Nov. 1601–Jan. 1602.

(vi) _Love Parts Friendship._

With Chettle, May 1602, conjectured to be the anonymous _Trial of Chivalry_ (q.v.).

(vii) _Merry as May be._

With Day and Hathway, Nov. 1602.

_Plays for Worcester’s, 1602–3_

(viii) _Albere Galles._

With Heywood, Sept. 1602, possibly identical with the anonymous _Nobody and Somebody_ (q.v.).

(ix) _Marshal Osric._

With Heywood, Sept. 1602, conceivably identical with _The Royal King and the Loyal Subject_, printed (1637) as by Heywood (q.v.).

(x) _The Three_ (or _Two_) _Brothers_.

Oct. 1602.

(xi) _1 Lady Jane._

With Chettle, Dekker, Heywood, and Webster, Oct. 1602. It is not certain that Smith, or any one but Dekker, had a hand in Part 2, which was apparently not finished. Part 1 is doubtless represented by the extant _Sir Thomas Wyatt_ of Dekker (q.v.) and Webster, in which nothing is at all obviously traceable to Smith.

(xii), (xiii) _1, 2 The Black Dog of Newgate._

With Day, Hathway, and another, Nov. 1602–Feb. 1603.

(xiv) _The Unfortunate General._

With Day and Hathway, Jan. 1602.

(xv) _The Italian Tragedy._

March 1603.

EDMUND SPENSER (1552–99).

The only record of Spenser’s dramatic experiments, unless they are buried amongst the anonymous plays of the Revels Accounts, is to be found in his correspondence of April 1580 with Gabriel Harvey, who wrote, ‘I imagine your Magnificenza will hold us in suspense ... for your nine English Commedies’, and again, ‘I am void of all judgment if your Nine Comedies, whereunto in imitation of Herodotus, you give the names of the Nine Muses (and in one mans fancy not unworthily) come not nearer Ariosto’s Comedies, either for the fineness of plausible elocution, or the rareness of Poetical Invention, than that Elvish Queen doth to his Orlando Furioso’ (_Two other Very Commendable Letters_, in Harvey’s _Works_, i. 67, 95). I can hardly suppose that the manuscript play of ‘Farry Queen’ in Warburton’s list (_3 Library_, ii. 232) had any connexion with Spenser’s comedies.

ROD. STAFFORD.

Probably the ‘Rod. Staff.’ who collaborated with Robert Wilmot (q.v.) in the Inner Temple play of _Gismond of Salerne_.

WILLIAM STANLEY, EARL OF DERBY (1561–1642).

Derby seems to have had players from 1594 to 1618, who presumably acted the comedies which he was said to be ‘penning’ in June 1599 (cf. ch. xiii), but none of these can be identified, although the company’s anonymous _Trial of Chivalry_ (1605) needs an author. A fantastic theory that his plays were for the Chamberlain’s, and that he wrote them under the name of William Shakespeare, was promulgated by J. Greenstreet in _The Genealogist_, n.s. vii. 205; viii. 8, 137, and has been elaborately developed by A. Lefranc in _Sous le Masque de ‘William Shakespeare’_ (1919) and later papers in _Le Flambeau_ and elsewhere. _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ was not impossibly written for his wedding on 26 Jan. 1595 (cf. App. A and _Shakespeare Homage_, 154).

JOHN STEPHENS (> 1611–1617 <).

A Gloucester man, who entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1611, but is only known by his slight literary performances, of which the most important are his _Essayes_ of 1615 (cf. App. C, No. lx).

_Cynthia’s Revenge > 1613_

1613. Cinthias Revenge: or Maenanders Extasie. Written by John Stephens, Gent. _For Roger Barnes._ [There are two variant t.ps. of which one omits the author’s name. Epistle to Io. Dickinson, signed ‘I. S.’; Epistle to the Reader; Argument; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘F. C.’, ‘B. I.’, ‘G. Rogers’, ‘Tho. Danet’.]

_Dissertation_: P. Simpson, _The Authorship and Original Issue of C. R._ (1907, _M. L. R._ ii. 348).

The epistle to the reader says that the author’s name is ‘purposly concealed ... from the impression’, which accounts for the change of title-page. Stephens claims the authorship in the second edition of his _Essayes_ (1615). Kirkman (Greg, _Masques_, lxii) was misled into assigning it to ‘John Swallow’, by a too literal interpretation of F. C.’s lines:

One Swallow makes no Summer, most men say, But who disproues that Prouerbe, made this Play.

JOHN STUDLEY (_c._ 1545–_c._ 1590).

Translator of Seneca (q.v.).

ROBERT TAILOR (_c._ 1613).

Tailor also published settings to _Sacred Hymns_ (1615) and wrote commendatory verses to John Taylor’s _The Nipping or Snipping of Abuses_ (1614).

_Hog Hath Lost His Pearl. 1613_

_S. R._ 1614, May 23, 1614 (Taverner and Buck). ‘A play booke called Hogge hath lost his pearle.’ _Richard Redmer_ (Arber, iii. 547).

1614. The Hogge hath lost his Pearle. A Comedy. Divers times Publikely acted, by certaine London Prentices. By Robert Tailor. _For Richard Redmer._ [Prologue and Epilogue.]

_Editions_ in Dodsley^{1–4} (1744–1875) and by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ iii).

Sir H. Wotton wrote to Sir Edmund Bacon (Wotton, ii. 13): ‘On Sunday last at night, and no longer, some sixteen apprentices (of what sort you shall guess by the rest of the story) having secretly learnt a new play without book, intituled _The Hog hath lost his Pearl_, took up the White-Fryers for their theatre: and having invited thither (as it should seem) rather their mistresses than their masters; who were all to enter _per bullettini_ for a note of distinction from ordinary comedians, towards the end of the play the sheriffs (who by chance had heard of it) came in (as they say) and carried some six or seven of them to perform the last act at Bridewel; the rest are fled. Now it is strange to hear how sharp-witted the City is, for they will needs have Sir John Swinerton, the Lord Mayor, be meant by the Hog, and the late Lord Treasurer [Lord Salisbury] by the Pearl.’ Swinnerton was Lord Mayor in 1612–13. The letter is only dated ‘Tuesday’, but refers to the departure of the King, which was 22 Feb. 1613, as on the previous day. This would give the first Sunday in Lent (21 Feb.) for the date of production. The phrase (I. i) ‘Shrove-Tuesday is at hand’ suggests 14 Feb., but the date originally intended was very likely altered. The Prologue refers to the difficulties of the producers. The play had been ‘toss’d from one house to another’. It does not grunt at ‘state-affairs’ or ‘city vices’. There had been attempts to ‘prevent’ it, but it ‘hath a Knight’s license’, doubtless Sir George Buck’s. In I. i is some chaff, apparently directed at Garlic and the Fortune, and an interview between a player and one Haddit, who writes a jig called _Who Buys my Four Ropes of Hard Onions_ for four angels, and a promise of a box for a new play. Fleay, ii. 256, identifies Haddit with Dekker, but his reasons do not bear analysis, and Haddit is no professional playwright, but a gallant who has run through his fortune. A passage in Act III (Dodsley, p. 465) bears out the suggestion of satire on the house of Cecil.

RICHARD TARLTON (?-1588).

On his career as an actor, cf. ch. xv.

_The Seven Deadly Sins. 1585_

[_MS._] _Dulwich MS._ xix, ‘The platt of The secound parte of the Seuen Deadlie sinns.’ [This was found pasted inside the boards forming the cover to a manuscript play of the seventeenth century, _The Tell Tale_ (_Dulwich MS._ xx).]

The text is given by Malone, _Supplement_ (1780), i. 60; Steevens, _Variorum_ (1803), iii. 404; Boswell, _Variorum_ (1821), iii. 348; Collier, iii. 197; Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, 129; and a photographic facsimile by W. Young, _History of Dulwich_ (1889), ii. 5.

The ‘platt’ names a number of actors and may thereby be assigned to a revival by the Admiral’s or Strange’s men about 1590 (cf. ch. xiii). The play consisted of three episodes illustrating Envy, Sloth, and Lechery, together with an Induction. This renders plausible the conjecture of Fleay, 83, supported by Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 153, that it is the _Four Plays in One_ revived by Strange’s for Henslowe on 6 March 1592. And if so, the original two parts may be traceable in the _Five Plays in One_ and the _Three Plays in One_ of the Queen’s men in 1585. Tarlton was of course a Queen’s man, and evidence of his authorship is furnished by Gabriel Harvey, who in his _Four Letters_ (1592, _Works_, i. 194) attacks Nashe’s _Pierce Penilesse_ (1592) as ‘not Dunsically botched-vp, but right-formally conueied, according to the stile, and tenour of Tarletons president, his famous play of the seauen Deadly sinnes; which most deadly, but most liuely playe, I might haue seene in London; and was verie gently inuited thereunto at Oxford by Tarleton himselfe’. Nashe defends himself against the charge of plagiarism in his _Strange News_ (1592, _Works_, i. 304, 318), and confirms the indication of authorship.

_Doubtful Play_

Tarlton has been suggested as the author of the anonymous _Famous Victories of Henry V_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

JOHN TAYLOR (1580–1653).

Known as the Water Poet. His description of the festivities at the wedding of Princess Elizabeth in 1613 (cf. ch. xxiv, C) is only one of innumerable pamphlets in verse and prose, several of which throw light on stage history. Many of these were collected in his folio _Workes_ of 1630, reprinted with others of his writings by the Spenser Society during 1868–78. There is also a collection by C. Hindley (1872).

CHARLES TILNEY (_ob._ 1586).

Said, on manuscript authority alleged by Collier, to be the author of _Locrine_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

THOMAS TOMKIS (> 1597–1614 <).

Tomkis entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1597, took his B.A. in 1600 and his M.A. in 1604, and became Fellow of Trinity in the same year. He has been confused by Fleay, ii. 260, and others with various members of a musical family of Tomkins.

_Lingua. 1602 < > 7_

_S. R._ 1607, Feb. 23 (Wilson). ‘A Commedie called Lingua.’ _Simon Waterson_ (Arber, iii. 340).

1607. Lingua: Or The Combat of the Tongue, And the fiue Senses. For Superiority. _G. Eld for Simon Waterson._ [Prologue.]

1617; 1622; n.d.; 1632; 1657.

_Editions_ in Dodsley^{1–4} (1744–1874) and by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ ii) and J. S. Farmer (1913, _S. F. T._).--_Dissertation_: F. S. Boas, _Macbeth and L._ (1909, _M. L. R._ iv. 517).

Winstanley (1687) assigned the play to Antony Brewer, but Sir J. Harington, in a memorandum printed by F. J. Furnivall from _Addl. MS._ 27632 in _7 N. Q._ ix. 382, notes ‘The combat of Lingua made by Thom. Tomkis of Trinity colledge in Cambridge’, and this is rendered plausible by the resemblance of the play to _Albumazar_. It is clearly of an academic type. As to the date there is less certainty. G. C. Moore Smith (_M. L. R._ iii. 146) supports 1602 by a theory that a compliment (IV. vii) to Queen Psyche is really meant for Elizabeth, and contains allusions to notable events of her reign. I do not find his interpretations very convincing, although I should not like to say that they are impossible. Fleay, ii. 261, starting from a tradition handed down by the publisher of 1657 that Oliver Cromwell acted in the play, conjectures that the play formed part of Sir Oliver Cromwell’s entertainment of James at Hinchinbrook on 27–9 April 1603, and that his four-year-old nephew took the four-line part of Small Beer (_IV._ v). Either date would fit in with the remark in _III._ v, ‘About the year 1602 many used this skew kind of language’. Boas, however, prefers a date near that of publication, on account of similarities to passages in _Macbeth_. The play was translated as _Speculum Aestheticum_ for Maurice of Hesse-Cassel in 1613 by Johannes Rhenanus, who probably accompanied Prince Otto to England in 1611; cf. P. Losch, _Johannes Rhenanus_ (1895).

_Albumazar. 1615_

_S. R._ 1615, April 28 (Nidd). ‘Albumazar a comedie acted before his Maiestie at Cambridg 10^o Martii 1614.’ _Nicholas Okes_ (Arber, iii. 566).

1615. Albumazar. A Comedy presented before the Kings Maiestie at Cambridge, the ninth of March, 1614. By the Gentlemen of Trinitie Colledge. _Nicholas Okes for Walter Burre._ [Prologue.]

1615. _Nicholas Okes for Walter Burre._ [Another edition with the same t.p.]

1634.... Newly revised and corrected by a speciall Hand. _Nicholas Okes._

1634. _Nicholas Okes._

1668.... As it is now Acted at His Highness the Duke of York’s Theatre. _For Thomas Dring._ [Prologue by Dryden.]

_Editions_ in Dodsley^{1–4} (1744–1875) and by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ ii).

The play is assigned to ‘M^r Tomkis, Trinit.’ in an account of the royal visit given by S. Pegge from Sir Edward Dering’s MS. in _Gent. Mag._ xxvi. 224, and a bursar’s account-book for 1615 has the entry, ‘Given M^r. Tomkis for his paines in penning and ordering the Englishe Commedie at our Masters appoyntment, xx^{ll}’ (_3 N. Q._ xii. 155). Chamberlain wrote to Carleton (Birch, i. 304) that ‘there was no great matter in it more than one good clown’s part’. It is an adaptation of Giambattista Porta’s _L’Astrologo_ (1606). No importance is to be attached to the suggestion of H. I. in _3 N. Q._ ix. 178, 259, 302, that Shakespeare was the author and wrote manuscript notes in a copy possessed by H. I. Dryden regards the play as the model of Jonson’s _Alchemist_ (1610):

Subtle was got by our Albumazar, That Alchymist by our Astrologer.

Unless Dryden was mistaken, the performance in 1615 was only a revival, but the payment for ‘penning’ makes this improbable.

_Doubtful Later Play_

G. C. Moore Smith (_M. L. R._ iii. 149) supports the attribution by Winstanley to Tomkis of _Pathomachia or the Battle of Affections_ (1630), also called in a running title and in _Bodl. MS. Eng. Misc._ e. 5 _Love’s Load-stone_, a University play of _c._ 1616, in which there are two references to ‘Madame Lingua’.

CYRIL TOURNEUR (?-1626).

Tourneur, or Turnor, first appears as the author of a satire, _The Transformed Metamorphosis_ (1600), but his history and relationships to the Cecils and to Sir Francis Vere suggest that he was connected with a Richard Turnor who served in the Low Countries as water-bailiff and afterwards Lieutenant of Brill during 1585–96. His career as a dramatist was over by 1613, and from December of that year to his death on 28 Feb. 1626 he seems himself to have been employed on foreign service, mainly in the Low Countries but finally at Cadiz, where he was secretary to the council of war under Sir Edward Cecil in 1625. He died in Ireland and left a widow Mary.

_Collections_

1878. J. C. Collins, _The Plays and Poems of C. T._ 2 vols.

1888. J. A. Symonds, _Webster and Tourneur_ (_Mermaid Series_).

_Dissertations_: G. Goodwin in _Academy_ (9 May 1891); T. Seccombe in _D. N. B._ (1899).

_The Atheist’s Tragedy. 1607 < > 11_

_S. R._ 1611, Sept. 14 (Buck). ‘A booke called, The tragedy of the Atheist.’ _John Stepneth_ (Arber, iii. 467).

1611. The Atheist’s Tragedie: Or The honest Man’s Reuenge, As in diuers places it hath often beene Acted. Written by Cyril Tourneur. _For John Stepneth and Richard Redmer._

1612. _For John Stepneth and Richard Redmer._ [Another issue.]

Fleay, ii. 263, attempts to date the play before the close of the siege of Ostend in 1604, but, as E. E. Stoll, _John Webster_, 210, points out, this merely dates the historic action and proves nothing as to composition. Stoll himself finds some plausible reminiscences of _King Lear_ (1606) and suggests a date near that of publication.

LOST PLAYS

_The Nobleman. c. 1612_

_S. R._ 1612, Feb. 15 (Buck). ‘A play booke beinge a Trage-comedye called, The Noble man written by Cyril Tourneur.’ _Edward Blount_ (Arber, iii. 478).

1653, Sept. 9. ‘The Nobleman, or Great Man, by Cyrill Tourneur.’ _Humphrey Moseley_ (Eyre, i. 428).

The play was acted by the King’s at Court on 23 Feb. 1612 and again during the winter of 1612–13. Warburton’s list of plays burnt by his cook (_3 Library_, ii. 232) contains distinct entries of ‘The Great Man T.’ and ‘The Nobleman T. C. Cyrill Turñuer’. Hazlitt, _Manual_, 167, says (1892): ‘Dr. Furnivall told me many years ago that the MS. was in the hands of a gentleman at Oxford, who was editing Tourneur’s Works; but I have heard nothing further of it. Music to a piece called The Nobleman is in _Addl. MS. B.M._ 10444.’

For _The Arraignment of London_ (1613) v.s. Daborne.

_Doubtful Plays_

Tourneur’s hand has been sought in the _Honest Man’s Fortune_ of the Beaumont (q.v.) and Fletcher series, and in _Charlemagne_, _Revenger’s Tragedy_, and _Second Maiden’s Tragedy_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

NICHOLAS TROTTE (_c._ 1588).

A Gray’s Inn lawyer, who wrote an ‘Introduction’ for the _Misfortunes of Arthur_ of Thomas Hughes (q.v.) in 1588.

RICHARD VENNAR (_c._ 1555–1615?).

Vennar (Vennard), who has often been confused with William Fennor, a popular rhymer, was of Balliol and Lincoln’s Inn, and lived a shifty life, which ended about 1615 in a debtor’s prison. Its outstanding feature was the affair of _England’s Joy_, but in 1606 he is said (_D. N. B._) to have been in trouble for an attempt to defraud Sir John Spencer of £500 towards the preparation of an imaginary mask under the patronage of Sir John Watts, the Lord Mayor.

_England’s Joy. 1602_

[_Broadsheet_] The Plot of the Play, called England’s Joy. To be Played at the Swan this 6 of Nouember, 1602. [No. 98 in collection of Society of Antiquaries.]

_Reprints_ by W. Park in _Harleian Miscellany_ (1813), x. 198; S. Lee (1887, _vide infra_); W. Martin (1913, _vide infra_); W. J. Lawrence (1913, _vide infra_).--_Dissertations_: S. Lee, _The Topical Side of the Elizabethan Drama_ (_N. S. S. Trans._ 1887–92, 1); T. S. Graves, _A Note on the Swan Theatre_ (1912, _M. P._ ix. 431), _Tricks of Elizabethan Showmen_ (_South Atlantic Quarterly_, April 1915); W. Martin, _An Elizabethan Theatre Programme_ (1913, _Selborne Magazine_, xxiv. 16); W. J. Lawrence (ii. 57), _The Origin of the Theatre Programme_.

The document appears to be a ‘bill’. It is 12¾ by 7¾ inches, and contains a synopsis under nine heads, beginning with the civil wars from Edward III to Mary ‘induct by shew and in Action’, and continuing with episodes from the reign of Elizabeth, who is England’s Joy. In sc. viii ‘a great triumph is made with fighting of twelue Gentlemen at Barriers’, and in sc. ix Elizabeth ‘is taken vp into Heauen, when presently appeares, a Throne of blessed Soules, and beneath vnder the Stage set forth with strange fireworkes, diuers blacke and damned Soules, wonderfully discribed in their seuerall torments’. Apart from the bill, Vennar must have given it out that the performers were to be amateurs. Chamberlain, 163, writes to Carleton on 19 Nov. 1602:

‘And, now we are in mirth, I must not forget to tell you of a cousening prancke of one Venner, of Lincolns Inne, that gave out bills of a famous play on Satterday was sevenight on the Banckeside, to be acted only by certain gentlemen and gentlewomen of account. The price at cumming in was two shillings or eighteen pence at least; and when he had gotten most part of the mony into his hands, he wold have shewed them a faire paire of heeles, but he was not so nimble to get up on horse-backe, but that he was faine to forsake that course, and betake himselfe to the water, where he was pursued and taken, and brought before the Lord Chiefe Justice, who wold make nothing of it but a jest and a merriment, and bounde him over in five pound to appeare at the sessions. In the meane time the common people, when they saw themselves deluded, revenged themselves upon the hangings, curtains, chairs, stooles, walles, and whatsoever came in theire way, very outragiously, and made great spoile; there was great store of good companie, and many noblemen.’

Similarly John Manningham in his _Diary_, 82, 93, notes in Nov. 1602, how

‘Vennar, a gent. of Lincolnes, who had lately playd a notable cunni-catching tricke, and gulled many under couller of a play to be of gent. and reuerens, comming to the court since in a blacke suit, bootes and golden spurres without a rapier, one told him he was not well suited; the golden spurres and his brazen face uns[uited].’

On 27 Nov. he adds, ‘When one said that Vennar the graund connicatcher had golden spurres and a brazen face, “It seemes”, said R. R. “he hath some mettall in him.”’ Vennar’s own account of ‘my publique default of the Swan, where not a collier but cals his deere 12 pense to witnesse the disaster of the day’ was given many years later in ‘_An Apology_: Written by Richard Vennar, of Lincolnes Inne, abusively called Englands Joy. 1614’, printed by Collier in _Illustrations_ (1866), iii. It vies in impudence with the original offence. He had been in prison and was in debt, and ‘saw daily offering to the God of pleasure, resident at the Globe on the Banke-side’. This suggested his show, ‘for which they should give double payment, to the intent onely, men of ability might make the purchase without repentance’. He continues:

‘My devise was all sorts of musique, beginning with chambers, the harpe of war, and ending with hounds, the cry of peace, of which I was doubly provided for Fox and Hare. The report of gentlemen and gentlewomens actions, being indeed the flagge to our theater, was not meerely falcification, for I had divers Chorus to bee spoken by men of good birth, schollers by profession, protesting that the businesse was meerely abused by the comming of some beagles upon mee that were none of the intended kennell: I meane baylifes, who, siezing mee before the first entrance, spoke an Epilogue instead of a Prologue. This changed the play into the hunting of the fox, which, that the world may know for a verity, I heere promise the next tearme, with the true history of my life, to bee publiquely presented, to insert, in place of musicke for the actes, all those intendments prepared for that daies enterteinment.’

Later on he says, ‘I presented you with a dumbe show’, and jests on getting ‘so much mony for six verses’, which, I suppose, means that the performance was intended to be a spoken one, but was broken off during the prologue. Apparently the new entertainment contemplated by Vennar in 1614 was in fact given, not by him but by William Fennor, to whom John Taylor writes in his _A Cast Over Water_ (1615):

Thou brag’st what fame thou got’st upon the stage. Indeed, thou set’st the people in a rage In playing England’s Joy, that every man Did judge it worse than that was done at Swan.

* * * * *

Upon S. George’s day last, sir, you gave To eight Knights of the Garter (like a knave), Eight manuscripts (or Books) all fairelie writ, Informing them, they were your mother wit: And you compil’d them; then were you regarded, And for another’s wit was well rewarded. All this is true, and this I dare maintaine, The matter came from out a learned braine: And poor old _Vennor_ that plaine dealing man, Who acted England’s Joy first at the Swan, Paid eight crowns for the writing of these things. Besides the covers, and the silken strings.

Robin Goodfellow, in Jonson’s _Love Restored_ (_1612_), calls the absence of a mask ‘a fine trick, a piece of England’s Joy’, and three characters in the _Masque of Augurs_ (_1622_) are said to be ‘three of those gentlewomen that should have acted in that famous matter of England’s Joy in six hundred and three’--apparently a slip of Jonson’s as to the exact date. Other allusions to the ‘gullery’ are in Saville, _Entertainment of King James at Theobalds_ (1603); R. Brathwaite, _The Poet’s Palfrey_ (_Strappado for the Devil_, ed. J. W. Ebsworth, 160); J. Suckling, _The Goblins_ (ed. Hazlitt, ii. 52); W. Davenant, _Siege of Rhodes_, Pt. ii, prol. It may be added that Vennar’s cozenage was perhaps suggested by traditional stories of similar tricks. One is ascribed to one Qualitees in _Merry Tales, Wittie Questions and Quick Answeres_, cxxxiii (1567, Hazlitt, _Jest Books_, i. 145). In this bills were set up ‘vpon postes aboute London’ for ‘an antycke plaie’ at Northumberland Place and ‘all they that shoulde playe therin were gentilmen’. Another is the subject of one of the _Jests_ of George Peele (Bullen, ii. 389). W. Fennor, _The Compters Commonwealth_ (1617), 64, tells of an adventure of ‘one M^r. Venard (that went by the name of Englands Joy)’ in jail, where he afterwards died.

EDWARD DE VERE, EARL OF OXFORD (1550–1604).

Meres (1598) includes the earl in his list of ‘the best for Comedy amongst vs’ but although Oxford had theatrical servants at intervals from 1580 to 1602 (cf. ch. xiii), little is known of their plays, and none can be assigned to him, although the anonymous _The Weakest Goeth to the Wall_ (1600) calls for an author. J. T. Looney, _Shakespeare Identified_ (1920), gives him Shakespeare’s plays, many of which were written after his death.

FRANCIS VERNEY (1584–1615).

Francis, the eldest son of Sir Edmund Verney of Penley, Herts., and Claydon, Bucks., entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1600, and was knighted on 14 March 1604. As a result of family disputes, he left England about 1608, and became a pirate in the Mediterranean, dying at Messina on 6 Sept. 1615 (_Verney Memoirs^2_, i. 47). G. C. Moore Smith (_M. L. R._ iii. 151) gives him the following play.

_Antipoe. 1603 < > 8_

[_MS._] _Bodl. MS._ 31041, ‘The tragedye of Antipoe with other poetical verses written by mee Nic^o. Leatt Jun. in Allicant In June 1622’, with Epistles to James and the Reader by ‘Francis Verney’. Presumably Verney was the author, and Nicolas only a scribe.

ANTONY WADESON (_c._ 1601).

Henslowe made payments to him on behalf of the Admiral’s in June and July 1601 for a play called _The Honourable Life of the Humorous Earl of Gloucester, with his Conquest of Portugal_, but these only amounted to 30_s._, so that possibly the play was not finished.

_Doubtful Play_

The anonymous _Look About You_ (cf. ch. xxiv) has been ascribed to Wadeson.

LEWIS WAGER (_c._ 1560).

Wager became Rector of St. James Garlickhithe on 28 March 1560. Some resemblance of his style to that of W. Wager has led to an assumption that they were related. He was a corrector of books.

_The Life and Repentance of Mary Magdalene > 1566_

_S. R._ 1566–7. ‘An interlude of the Repentaunce of Mary Magdalen.’ _John Charlwood_ (Arber, i. 335).

1566. A new Enterlude, neuer before this tyme imprinted, entreating of the Life and Repentaunce of Marie Magdalene: not only godlie, learned and fruitefull, but also well furnished with pleasaunt myrth and pastime, very delectable for those which shall heare or reade the same. Made by the learned clarke Lewis Wager. _John Charlwood._ [Prologue.]

1567. _John Charlwood._ [Probably a reissue. Two manuscript copies in the Dyce collection seem to be made from this edition.]

_Editions_ by F. I. Carpenter (1902, 1904, _Chicago Decennial Publications_, ii. 1) and J. S. Farmer (1908, _T. F. T._).

A play of Protestant tone, with biblical and allegorical characters, including ‘Infidelitie the Vice’, intended for four [five] actors. There is a Prologue, intended for actors who have ‘vsed this feate at the vniuersitie’ and will take ‘half-pence or pence’ from the audience. Carpenter dates the play _c._ 1550; but his chief argument that the prologue recommends obedience ‘to the kyng’ is not very convincing.

See also W. Wager, s.v. _The Cruel Debtor._

W. WAGER (_c._ 1559).

Nothing is known of him beyond his plays and the similarity of his name to that of Lewis Wager (q.v.). Joseph Hunter, _Chorus Vatum_, v. 90, attempts to identify him with William Gager (q.v.), but this is not plausible. On the illegitimate extension of W. into William and other bibliographical confusions about the two Wagers, _vide_ W. W. Greg, _Notes on Dramatic Bibliographers_ (_M. S. C._ i. 324).

_The Longer Thou Livest, the More Fool Thou Art. c. 1559_

_S. R._ 1568–9. ‘A ballett the lenger thou leveste the more ffoole thow.’ _Richard Jones_ (Arber, i. 386).

N.D. A very mery and Pythie Commedie, called The longer thou liuest, the more foole thou art. A Myrrour very necessarie for youth, and specially for such as are like to come to dignitie and promotion: As it maye well appeare in the Matter folowynge. Newly compiled by W. Wager. _William Howe for Richard Jones._ [Prologue.]

_Editions_ by Brandl (1900, _Jahrbuch_ xxxvi. 1) and J. S. Farmer (1910, _S. F. T._).

A Protestant moral of 1,977 lines, with allegorical characters, arranged for four actors. Moros enters ‘synging the foote of many Songes, as fooles were wont’. Elizabeth is prayed for as queen, but the Catholic domination is still recent.

_Enough is as Good as a Feast. c. 1560_

N.D. A Comedy or Enterlude intituled, Inough is as good as a feast, very fruteful, godly and ful of pleasant mirth. Compiled by W. Wager. _By John Allde._ [The t.p. has also ‘Seuen may easely play this Enterlude’, with an arrangement of parts. The play was unknown until it appeared in Lord Mostyn’s sale of 1919. The seventeenth-century publishers’ lists record the title, but without ascription to Wager (Greg, _Masques_, lxvi).]

_Edition_ by S. de Ricci (1920, _Huntingdon Reprints_, ii).

F. S. Boas (_T. L. S._ 20 Feb. 1919) describes the play as ‘a morality with a controversial Protestant flavour’; at the end Satan carries off the Vice, Covetouse, on his back. Elizabeth is prayed for.

_The Cruel Debtor. c. 1565_

_S. R._ 1565–6. ‘A ballet intituled an interlude the Cruell Detter by Wager.’ _Thomas Colwell_ (Arber, i. 307).

N.D. Fragments. C. iii in Bagford Collection (_Harl. MS._ 5919); D and D 4(?) formerly in collection of W. B. Scott, now in B.M. (C. 40, e. 48).

_Editions_ by F. J. Furnivall (1878, _N. S. S. Trans._ 1877–9, 2*) and W. W. Greg (1911, _M. S. C._ i. 314).

The speakers are Rigour, Flattery, Simulation, Ophiletis, Basileus, and Proniticus.

R. Imelmann in _Herrig’s Archiv_, cxi. 209, would assign these fragments to Lewis Wager, rather than W. Wager, but the stylistic evidence is hardly conclusive either way, and there is no other.

_Lost Play_

Warburton’s list of manuscripts burnt by his cook (_3 Library_, ii. 232) includes ’Tis Good Sleeping in A Whole Skin W. Wager’.

GEORGE WAPULL (_c._ 1576).

A George Wapull was clerk of the Stationers’ Company from 29 Sept. 1571 to 30 May 1575. In 1584–5 the company assisted him with 10_s._ ‘towards his voyage unto Norembegue’ in America (Arber, i. xliv, 509).

_The Tide Tarrieth No Man > 1576_

_S. R._ 1576, Oct. 22. ‘An Enterlude intituled The tide tariethe noe man.’ _Hugh Jackson_ (Arber, ii. 303).

1576. The Tyde taryeth no Man. A Moste Pleasant and merry Commody, right pythie and full of delight. Compiled by George Wapull. _Hugh Jackson._ [Prologue.]

_Editions_ by J. P. Collier (1864, _Illustrations of Early English Literature_, ii), E. Ruhl (1907, _Jahrbuch_, xliii. 1), J. S. Farmer (1910, _T. F. T._).

A non-controversial moral, with allegorical and typical characters, including ‘Courage, the vice’, arranged for four actors.

WILLIAM WARNER (_c._ 1558–1609).

Warner was educated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and became an attorney. His chief work, _Albion’s England_ (1586), was dedicated to Henry Lord Hunsdon, and his _Syrinx_ (1585) to Sir George Carey, afterwards Lord Hunsdon.

_Menaechmi > c. 1592_

_S. R._ 1594, June 10. ‘A booke entituled Menachmi beinge A pleasant and fine Conceyted Comedye taken out of the moste excellent wittie Poett Plautus chosen purposely from out the reste as leaste harmefull and yet moste delightfull.’ _Thomas Creede_ (Arber, ii. 653).

1595. Menaecmi, A pleasant and fine Conceited Comædie, taken out of the most excellent wittie Poet Plautus: Chosen purposely from out the rest, as least harmefull, and yet most delightfull. Written in English, by W. W. _Thomas Creede, sold by William Barley._ [Epistle by the Printer to the Readers; Argument.]

_Editions_ by J. Nichols (1779, _Six Old Plays_, i), W. C. Hazlitt (1875, _Sh. L._ ii. 1), and W. H. D. Rouse (1912, _Sh. Classics_).

This translation is generally supposed to have influenced the _Comedy of Errors_. If so, Shakespeare must have had access to it in manuscript, and it must have been available before _c._ 1592. The epistle speaks of Warner as ‘having diverse of this Poetes Comedies Englished, for the use and delight of his private friends, who in Plautus owne words are not able to understand them’. No others are known.

THOMAS WATSON (_c._ 1557–92).

An Oxford man, who took no degree, and a lawyer, who did not practise, Watson became an elegant writer of English and Latin verse. He won the patronage of Walsingham at Paris in 1581, and became a member of the literary circle of Lyly and Peele. His most important volume of verse is the _Hekatompathia_ (1582) dedicated to the Earl of Oxford. At the time of his death in Sept. 1592 he was in the service of William Cornwallis, who afterwards wrote to Heneage that he ‘could devise twenty fictions and knaveryes in a play which was his daily practyse and his living’ (_Athenaeum_, 23 Aug. 1890). This suggests that the poet, and not the episcopal author of _Absalon_ (_Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 458), is the Watson included by Meres in 1598 amongst our ‘best for Tragedie’. But his plays, other than translations, must, if they exist, be sought amongst the anonymous work of 1581–92, where it would be an interesting task to reconstruct his individuality. In _Ulysses upon Ajax_ (1596) Harington’s anonymous critic says of his etymologies of Ajax, ‘Faith, they are trivial, the froth of witty Tom Watson’s jests, I heard them in Paris fourteen years ago: besides what balductum [trashy] play is not full of them’. In the meantime Oliphant (_M. P._ viii. 437) has suggested that he may be the author of _Thorny Abbey, or, The London Maid_, printed by one R. D. with Haughton’s _Grim, the Collier of Croydon_ in _Gratiae Theatrales_ (1662) and there assigned to T. W. Oliphant regards _Thorny Abbey_ as clearly a late revision of an Elizabethan play.

TRANSLATION

_Antigone > 1581_

_S. R._ 1581, July 31 (Bp. of London). ‘Aphoclis Antigone, Thoma Watsono interprete.’ _John Wolfe_ (Arber, ii. 398).

1581. Sophoclis Antigone. Interprete Thoma Watsono I. V. studioso. Huic adduntur pompae quaedam, ex singulis Tragoediae actis deriuatae; & post eas, totidem themata sententiis refertissima; eodem Thoma Watsono Authore. _John Wolf._ [Latin translation. Verses to Philip Earl of Arundel, signed ‘Thomas Watsonus’. Commendatory Verses by Stephanus Broelmannus, Ἰωαννης Κωκος, Philip Harrison, Francis Yomans, Christopher Atkinson, C. Downhale, G. Camden.]

JOHN WEBSTER (?-> 1634).

There is little clue to the personal history of John Webster beyond the description of him on the title-page of his mayoral pageant _Monuments of Honour_ (1624) as ‘Merchant Taylor’, and his claim in the epistle to have been born free of the company. The records of the Merchant Taylors show that freemen of this name were admitted in 1571, 1576, and 1617, and that one of them was assessed towards the coronation expenses in 1604. A John Webster, Merchant Taylor, also received an acknowledgement of a 15_s._ debt from John and Edward Alleyn on 25 July 1591 (Collier, _Alleyn Papers_, 14). A John Webster married Isabel Sutton at St. Leonard’s Shoreditch on 25 July 1590, and had a daughter Alice baptized there on 9 May 1606. It has been taken for granted that none of the sixteenth-century records can relate to the dramatist, although they may to his father. This presumably rests on the assumption that he must have been a young man when he began to write for Henslowe in 1602. It should, however, be pointed out that a John Webster, as well as a George Webster, appears amongst the Anglo-German actors of Browne’s group in 1596 (cf. ch. xiv) and that the financial record in the _Alleyn Papers_ probably belongs to a series of transactions concerning the winding up of a theatrical company in which Browne and the Alleyns had been interested (cf. ch. xiii, s.v. Admiral’s). It is conceivable therefore that Webster was an older man than has been suspected and had had a career as a player before he became a playwright.

Gildon, _Lives of the Poets_ (1698), reports that Webster was parish clerk of St Andrew’s, Holborn. This cannot be confirmed from parish books, but may be true.

As a dramatist, Webster generally appears in collaboration, chiefly with Dekker, and at rather infrequent intervals from 1602 up to 1624 or later. In 1602 he wrote commendatory verses for a translation by Munday, and in 1612 for Heywood’s _Apology for Actors_. In 1613 he published his elegy _A Monumental Column_ on the death of Prince Henry, and recorded his friendship with Chapman. His marked tendency to borrow phrases from other writers helps to date his work. He can hardly be identified with the illiterate clothworker of the same name, who acknowledged his will with a mark on 5 Aug. 1625. But he is referred to in the past in Heywood’s _Hierarchie of the Angels_ (1635), Bk. iv, p. 206, ‘Fletcher and Webster ... neither was but Iacke’, and was probably therefore dead.

_Collections_

1830. A. Dyce. 4 vols. 1857, 1 vol. [Includes _Malcontent_, _Appius and Virginia_, and _Thracian Wonder_.]

1857. W. C. Hazlitt. 4 vols. (_Library of Old Authors_). [Includes _Appius and Virginia_, _Thracian Wonder_, and _The Weakest Goeth to the Wall_.]

1888. J. A. Symonds, _W. and Tourneur_ (_Mermaid Series_). [_The White Devil_ and _Duchess of Malfi_.]

1912. A. H. Thorndike, _Webster and Tourneur_. (_N. E. D._) [_White Devil_, _Duchess of Malfi_, _Appius and Virginia_.]

_Dissertations_: E. Gosse, _J. W._ (1883, _Seventeenth-Century Studies_); A. C. Swinburne, _J. W._ (1886, _Studies in Prose and Poetry_, 1894); C. Vopel, _J. W._ (1888, _Bremen diss._); M. Meiners, _Metrische Untersuchungen über den Dramatiker J. W._ (1893, _Halle diss._); W. Archer, _Webster, Lamb, and Swinburne_ (1893, _New Review_, viii. 96); W. von Wurzbach, _J. W._ (1898, _Jahrbuch_, xxxi. 9); J. Morris, _J. W._ (_Fortnightly Review_, June 1902); E. E. Stoll, _J. W._ (1905); L. J. Sturge, _W. and the Law; a Parallel_ (1906, _Jahrbuch_, xlii, 148); C. Crawford, _J. W. and Sir Philip Sidney_ (1906, _Collectanea_, i. 20), _Montaigne, W., and Marston: Donne and W._ (1907, _Collectanea_, ii. 1); F. E. Pierce, _The Collaboration of W. and Dekker_ (1909, _Yale Studies_, xxxvii); H. D. Sykes, _W. and Sir Thomas Overbury_ (1613, _11 N. Q._ viii. 221, 244, 263, 282, 304); A. F. Bourgeois, _W. and the N. E. D._ (1914, _11 N. Q._ ix. 302, 324, 343); R. Brooke, _J. W. and the Elizabethan Drama_ (1916).

_Sir Thomas Wyatt. 1602_

_With_ Chettle, Dekker (q.v.), Heywood, and Smith, for Worcester’s.

_The Malcontent. 1604_

Additions to the play of Marston (q.v.) for the King’s.

_Westward Ho! 1604_

_With_ Dekker (q.v.) for Paul’s.

_Northward Ho! 1605_

_With_ Dekker (q.v.) for Paul’s.

_Appius and Virginia. c. 1608._

_S. R._ 1654, May 13. ‘A play called Appeus and Virginia Tragedy written by John Webster.’ _Richard Marriott_ (Eyre, i. 448).

1654. Appius and Virginia. A Tragedy. By Iohn Webster. [_No imprint._]

1659. _For Humphrey Moseley._ [A reissue.]

1679.

_Edition_ by C. W. Dilke (1814–15, _O. E. P._ v).--_Dissertations_: J. Lauschke, _John Webster’s Tragödie A. und V. Eine Quellenstudie_ (1899, _Leipzig diss._); H. D. Sykes, _An Attempt to determine the Date of Webster’s A. and V._ (1913, _11 N. Q._ vii. 401, 422, 466; viii. 63); R. Brooke, _The Authorship of the Later A. and V._ (1913, _M. L. R._ viii. 433), more fully in _John Webster_ (1916); A. M. Clark, _A. and V._ (1921, _M. L. R._ xvi. 1).

The play is in Beeston’s list of Cockpit plays in 1639 (_Var._ iii. 159), Webster’s authorship has generally been accepted, but Stoll, 197, who put the play 1623–39, because of resemblances to _Julius Caesar_ and _Coriolanus_ which he thought implied a knowledge of F_{1}, traced a dependence upon the comic manner of Heywood. Similarly, Sykes is puzzled by words which he thinks borrowed from Heywood and first used by Heywood in works written after Webster’s death. He comes to the conclusion that Heywood may have revised a late work by Webster. There is much to be said for the view taken by Brooke and Clark, after a thorough-going analysis of the problem, that the play is Heywood’s own, possibly with a few touches from Webster’s hand, and may have been written, at any date not long after the production of _Coriolanus_ on the stage (_c._ 1608), for Queen Anne’s men, from whom it would naturally pass into the Cockpit repertory.

_The White Devil. 1609 < > 12_

1612. The White Divel; Or, The Tragedy of Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, With The Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian Curtizan. Acted by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by Iohn Webster. _N. O. for Thomas Archer._ (Epistle to the Reader; after text, a note.)

1631.... Acted, by the Queenes Maiesties seruants, at the Phœnix, in Drury Lane. _I. N. for Hugh Perry._

1665; 1672.

_Editions_ in Dodsley^{1–3} (1744–1825) and by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ iii) and M. W. Sampson (1904, _B. L._).--_Dissertations_: B. Nicholson, _Thomas Adams’ Sermon on The W. D._ (1881, _6 N. Q._ iii. 166); W. W. Greg, _W.’s W. D._ (1900, _M. L. Q._ iii. 112); M. Landau, _Vittoria Accorambona in der Dichtung im Verhältniss zu ihrer wahren Geschichte_ (1902, _Euphorion_, ix. 310); E. M. Cesaresco, _Vittoria Accoramboni_ (1902, _Lombard Studies_, 131); P. Simpson, _An Allusion in W._ (1907, _M. L. R._ ii. 162); L. MacCracken, _A Page of Forgotten History_ (1911); H. D. Sykes, _The Date of W.’s Play, the W. D._ (1913, _11 N. Q._ vii. 342).

The epistle apologizes for the ill success of the play, on the ground that ‘it was acted in so dull a time of winter, presented in so open and blacke a theater, that it wanted ... a full and understanding auditory’, and complains that the spectators at ‘that play-house’ care more for new plays than for good plays. Fleay, ii. 271, dates the production in the winter of 1607–8, taking the French ambassador described in III. i. 73 as a performer ‘at last tilting’ to be M. Goterant who tilted on 24 March 1607, since ‘no other Frenchman’s name occurs in the tilt-lists. It is nothing to Fleay that Goterant was not an ambassador, or that the lists of Jacobean tilters are fragmentary, or that the scene of the play is not England but Italy. Simpson found an inferior limit in a borrowing from Jonson’s _Mask of Queens_ on 2 Feb. 1609. I do not find much conviction in the other indications of a date in 1610 cited by Sampson, xl, or in the parallel with Jonson’s epistle to _Catiline_ (1611), with which Stoll, 21, supports a date in 1612. The Irish notes which Stoll regards as taken from B. Rich, _A New Description of Ireland_ (1610), in fact go back to Stanyhurst’s account of 1577, and though there is a pretty clear borrowing from Tourneur’s _Atheist’s Tragedy_, that may have been produced some time before its publication in 1611. Nor was Dekker necessarily referring to Webster, when he wrote to the Queen’s men in his epistle before _If this be not a Good Play_ (1612): ‘I wish a _Faire_ and _Fortunate Day_ to your _Next New-Play_ for the _Makers-sake_ and your _Owne_, because such _Brave Triumphes_ of _Poesie_ and _Elaborate Industry_, which my _Worthy Friends Muse_ hath there set forth, deserue a _Theater_ full of very _Muses_ themselves to be _Spectators_. To that _Faire Day_ I wish a _Full_, _Free_ and _Knowing Auditor_.’

Webster’s own epistle contains his appreciation ‘of other mens worthy labours; especially of that full and haightned stile of Maister _Chapman_, the labor’d and understanding workes of Maister _Johnson_, the no lesse worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Maister _Beamont_, & Maister _Fletcher_, and lastly (without wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious industry of M. _Shakespeare_, M. _Decker_, & M. _Heywood_’. In the final note he commends the actors, and in particular ‘the well approved industry of my friend Maister Perkins’.

_The Duchess of Malfi. 1613–14_

1623. The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy. As it was Presented priuately, at the Black-Friers; and publiquely at the Globe, By the Kings Maiesties Seruants. The perfect and exact Coppy, with diuerse things Printed, that the length of the Play would not beare in the Presentment. Written by John Webster. _Nicholas Okes for Iohn Waterson._ [Epistle to George Lord Berkeley, signed ‘John Webster’; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘Thomas Middletonus Poëta et Chron: Londinensis’, ‘Wil: Rowley’, ‘John Ford’; ‘The Actors Names. Bosola, _J. Lowin_. Ferdinand, _1 R. Burbidge_, _2 J. Taylor_. Cardinall, _1 H. Cundaile_, _2 R. Robinson_. Antonio, _1 W. Ostler_, _2 R. Benfeild_. Delio, _J. Underwood_. Forobosco, _N. Towley_. Pescara, _J. Rice_. Silvio, _T. Pollard_. Mad-men, _N. Towley_, _J. Underwood_, _etc._ Cardinals M^{is}, _J. Tomson_. The Doctor, etc., _R. Pallant_. Duchess, _R. Sharpe_.’]

1640; 1678; N.D.

_Editions_ by C. E. Vaughan (1896, _T. D._), M. W. Sampson (1904, _B. L._), and W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._).--_Dissertations_: K. Kiesow, _Die verschiedenen Bearbeitungen der Novelle von der Herzogin von Amalfi des Bandello in den Literaturen des xvi. und xvii. Jahrhunderts_ (1895, _Anglia_, xvii. 199); J. T. Murray, _The D. of M. List of the King’s Company_ (1910, _E. D. C._ ii. 146); W. J. Lawrence, _The Date of the D. of M._ (_Athenaeum_ for 21 Nov. 1919); W. Archer, _The D. of M._ (_Nineteenth Century_ for Jan. 1920).

The actor-list records two distinct casts, one before Ostler’s death on 16 Dec. 1614, the other after Burbadge’s death on 13 March 1619, and before that of Tooley in June 1623. Stoll, 29, quotes the _Anglopotrida_ of Orazio Busino (cf. the abstract in _V. P._ xv. 134), which appears to show that the play was on the stage at some date not very long before Busino wrote on 7 Feb. 1618:

Prendono giuoco gli Inglesi della nostra religione come di cosa detestabile, et superstitiosa, ne mai rappresentano qualsivoglia attione pubblica, sia pura Tragisatiricomica, che non inserischino dentro uitij, et scelleragini di qualche religioso catolico, facendone risate, et molti scherni, con lor gusto, et ramarico de’ buoni, fu appunto veduto dai nostri, in una Commedia introdur’un frate franciscano, astuto, et ripieno di varie impietà, cosi d’avaritia come di libidine: et il tutto poi ruiscì in una Tragedia, facendoli mozzar la vista in scena. Un altra volta rappresentarono la grandezza d’un cardinale, con li habiti formali, et proprij molti belli, et ricchi, con la sua Corte, facendo in scena erger un Altare, dove finse di far oratione, ordinando una processione: et poi lo ridussero in pubblico con una Meretrice in seno. Dimostrò di dar il Velleno ad una sua sorella, per interesse d’honore: et d’ andar in oltre alla guerra, con depponer prima l’habito cardinalitio sopra l’altare col mezzo de’ suoi Cappellani, con gravità, et finalmente si fece cingere la spada, metter la serpa, con tanto garbo, che niente più: et tutto ciò fanno in sprezzo, delle grandezze ecclesiastice vilipese, et odiate a morte in questo Regno. Di Londra a’ 7 febaio 1618.

The date of first production may reasonably be put in 1613–14. Crawford has pointed out the resemblances between the play and _A Monumental Column_ (1613) and definite borrowings from Donne’s _Anatomy of the World_ (1612), Chapman’s _Petrarch’s Seven Penitentiall Psalms_ (1612), and Chapman’s Middle Temple mask of 15 Feb. 1613. Lawrence thinks that Campion’s mask of 14 Feb. 1613 is also drawn upon. But it is not impossible that the extant text has undergone revision, in view of borrowings from the 6th edition (1615) of Sir Thomas Overbury’s _Characters_, to which Sykes calls attention, and of the apparent allusion pointed out by Vaughan in I. i. 5 to the purging of the French Court by Louis XIII after the assassination of Marshall d’Ancre on 14 April 1617. It need not be inferred that this is the ‘enterlude concerninge the late Marquesse d’Ancre’, which the Privy Council ordered the Master of Revels to stay on 22 June 1617 (_M. S. C._ i. 376).

_Later Plays_

_The Devil’s Law Case_ (1623).

_A Cure for a Cuckold_ (1661), with W. Rowley.

On the authorship and dates of these, cf. Brooke, 250, 255, and H. D. Sykes in _11 N. Q._ vii. 106; ix. 382, 404, 443, 463.

_Lost Plays_

The following are recorded in Henslowe’s diary:

For the Admiral’s:

_Caesar’s Fall or The Two Shapes._

With Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, and Munday, May 1602.

For Worcester’s:

_Christmas Comes but Once a Year._

With Chettle, Dekker, and Heywood, Nov. 1602.

In the epistle to _The Devil’s Law Case_, Webster says to Sir T. Finch, ‘Some of my other works, as The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi, Guise and others, you have formerly seen’, and a _Guise_ is ascribed to him as a comedy in Archer’s play-list of 1656 and included without ascription as a tragedy in Kirkman’s of 1661 and 1671 (Greg, _Masques_, lxxii). Rogers and Ley’s list of 1656 had given it to Marston (q.v.). Collier forged an entry in Henslowe’s diary meant to suggest that this was the _Massacre at Paris_ (cf. s.v. Marlowe).

In Sept. 1624 Herbert licensed ‘a new Tragedy called _A Late Murther of the Sonn upon the Mother_: Written by Forde, and Webster’ (Herbert, 29).

_Doubtful Plays_

The ascription to Webster on the t.p. of _The Thracian Wonder_ is not generally accepted. His hand has been suggested in _Revenger’s Tragedy_ and _The Weakest Goeth to the Wall_.

GEORGE WHETSTONE (1544?-87?).

Whetstone was a Londoner by origin. After a riotous youth, he turned to literature interspersed with adventure, possibly acting at Canterbury _c._ 1571 (cf. ch. xv), serving in the Low Countries in 1572–4, the Newfoundland voyage in 1578–9, and the Low Countries again in 1585–6. His chief literary associates were Thomas Churchyard and George Gascoigne.

After writing his one play, _Promos and Cassandra_, he translated its source, the 5th Novel of the 8th Decade of Giraldi Cinthio’s _Hecatomithi_ (1565) in his _Heptameron of Civil Discourses_ (1582). Both Italian and English are in Hazlitt, _Shakespeare’s Library_ (1875, iii). Like some other dramatists, Whetstone turned upon the stage, and attacked it in his _Touchstone for the Time_ (1584; cf. App. C, No. xxxvi).

_Promos and Cassandra. 1578_

_S. R._ 1578, July 31. ‘The famous historie of Promos and Casandra Devided into twoe Comicall Discourses Compiled by George Whetstone gent.’ _Richard Jones_ (Arber, ii. 334).

1578. The Right Excellent and famous Historye, of Promos and Cassandra; Deuided into two Commicall Discourses.... The worke of George Whetstones Gent. _Richard Jones._ [Epistles to his ‘kinsman’ William Fleetwood, dated 29 July 1578, and signed ‘George Whetstone’, and from the Printer to the Reader, signed ‘R.I.’; Argument; Text signed ‘G. Whetstone’; Colophon with imprint and date ‘August 20, 1578’.]

_Editions_ in _Six Old Plays_, i. 1 (1779), and by W. C. Hazlitt, _Shakespeare’s Library_, vi. 201 (1875), and J. S. Farmer (1910, _T. F. T._). There are two parts, arranged in acts and scenes. Whetstone’s epistle is of some critical interest (cf. App. C, No. xix). In the _Heptameron_ he says the play was ‘yet never presented upon stage’. The character of the s.ds. suggests, however, that it was written for presentation.

NATHANIEL WIBURNE (_c._ 1597).

Possible author of the academic _Machiavellus_ (cf. App. K).

GEORGE WILKINS (_fl._ 1604–8).

Lee (_D. N. B._) after personally consulting the register of St. Leonard’s Shoreditch, confirms the extract in Collier, iii. 348, of the burial on 19 Aug. 1603 of ‘George Wilkins, the poet’. It must therefore be assumed that the date of 9 Aug. 1613 given for the entry by T. E. Tomlins in _Sh. Soc. Papers_, i. 34, from Ellis’s _History of Shoreditch_ (1798) is an error, and that the ‘poet’ was distinct from the dramatist. Nothing is known of Wilkins except that he wrote pamphlets from _c._ 1604 to 1608, and towards the end of that period was also engaged in play-writing both for the King’s and the Queen’s men. A George Wilkins of St. Sepulchre’s, described as a victualler and aged 36, was a fellow witness with Shakespeare in _Belott v. Mountjoy_ on 19 June 1612 (C. W. Wallace, _N. U. S._ x. 289).

_The Miseries of Enforced Marriage. 1607_

_S. R._ 1607, July 31 (Buck). ‘A tragedie called the Miserye of inforced Marriage.’ _George Vyncent_ (Arber, iii. 357).

1607. The Miseries of Inforst Manage. As it is now playd by his Maiesties Seruants. By George Wilkins. _For George Vincent._

1611; 1629; 1637.

_Editions_ in Dodsley^{2–4} (1780–1874) and by W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ ii) and J. S. Farmer (1913, _S. F. T._).

The play, which was based on the life of Walter Calverley, as given in pamphlets of 1605, appears to have been still on the stage when it was printed. An allusion in III. ii to fighting with a windmill implies some knowledge of Don Quixote, but of this there are other traces by 1607. The Clown is called Robin in II. ii, and Fleay, ii. 276, suggests that Armin took the part. He comes in singing:

From London am I come, Though not with pipe and drum,

in reference to Kempe’s morris.

_Doubtful Plays_

Wilkins probably wrote Acts I, II of _Pericles_, and it has been suggested that he also wrote certain scenes of _Timon of Athens_; but the relation of his work to Shakespeare’s cannot be gone into here.

The anonymous _Yorkshire Tragedy_ has also been ascribed to him.

ROBERT WILMOT (> 1566–91 <).

A student of the Inner Temple, and afterwards Rector of North Ockendon, Essex, from 28 Nov. 1582 and of Horndon-on-the-Hill, Essex, from 2 Dec. 1585. William Webbe, _A Discourse of English Poetry_ (ed. Arber, 35), commends his writing.

_Tancred and Gismund. 1566_ (?)

Written with Rod. Staff[ord], Hen[ry] No[el], G. Al. and Chr[istopher] Hat[ton].

[_MSS._] (_a_) _Lansdowne MS._ 786, f. 1, ‘Gismond of Salern in Loue’.

(_b_) _Brit. Mus. Hargrave MS._ 205, f. 9, ‘The Tragedie of Gismond of Salerne’.

[Both MSS. have three sonnets ‘of the Quenes maydes’, and Prologue and Epilogue.]

(_c_) A fragment, now unknown, formerly belonging to Milton’s father-in-law, Richard Powell.

1591. The Tragedie of Tancred and Gismund. Compiled by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple, and by them presented before her Maiestie. Newly reuiued and polished according to the decorum of these daies. By R. W. _Thomas Scarlet, sold by R. Robinson._ [Epistles to Lady Mary Peter and Lady Anne Gray, signed ‘Robert Wilmot’; to R. W. signed ‘Guil. Webbe’ and dated ‘Pyrgo in Essex August the eighth 1591’; to the Inner and Middle Temple and other Readers, signed ‘R. Wilmot’; two Sonnets (2 and 3 of MSS.); Arguments; Prologue; Epilogue signed ‘R. W.’; Introductiones (dumb-shows). Some copies are dated 1592.]

_Editions_ in Dodsley^{1–4} (1744–1874) and by J. S. Farmer (1912, _S. F. T._) from 1591, and by A. Brandl (1898, _Q. W. D._) and J. W. Cunliffe (1912, _E. E. C. T._) and J. S. Farmer (_S. F. T._) from MS.--_Dissertations_: J. W. Cunliffe, _Gismond of Salerne_ (1906, _M. L. A._ xxi. 435); A. Klein, _The Decorum of These Days_ (1918, _M. L. A._ xxxiii. 244).

The MSS. represent the play as originally produced, probably, from an allusion in one of the sonnets, at Greenwich. The print represents a later revision by Wilmot, involving much re-writing and the insertion of new scenes and the dumb-shows. Webbe’s epistle is an encouragement to Wilmot to publish his ‘waste papers’, and refers to _Tancred_ as ‘framed’ by the Inner Temple, and to Wilmot as ‘disrobing him of his antique curiosity and adorning him with the approved guise of our stateliest English terms’. Wilmot’s own Epistle to the Readers apologizes for the indecorum of publishing a play, excuses it by the example of Beza’s _Abraham_ and Buchanan’s _Jephthes_, and refers to ‘the love that hath been these twenty-four years betwixt’ himself and Gismund. This seems to date the original production in 1567. But I find no evidence that Elizabeth was at Greenwich in 1567. Shrovetide 1566 seems the nearest date at which a play is likely to have been given there. Wilmot was clearly not the sole author of the original play; to Act I he affixes ‘_Exegit Rod. Staff._’; to Act II, ‘_Per Hen. No._’; to Act III, ‘_G. Al._’; to Act IV, ‘_Composuit Chr. Hat._’; to the Epilogue, ‘_R. W._’ Probably Act V, which has no indication of authorship, was also his own.

W. H. Cooke, _Students Admitted to the Inner Temple, 1547–1660_ (1878), gives the admission of Christopher Hatton in 1559–60, but Wilmot is not traceable in the list; nor are Hen. No., G. Al., or Rod. Staff. But the first may be Elizabeth’s Gentleman Pensioner, Henry Noel (q.v.), and Cunliffe, lxxxvi, notes that a ‘Master Stafford’ was fined £5 for refusing to act as Marshal at the Inner Temple in 1556–7.

_Doubtful Play_

Hazlitt assigns to Wilmot _The Three Ladies of London_, but the R. W. of the title-page is almost certainly Robert Wilson (q.v.).

ROBERT WILSON (> 1572–1600).

For Wilson’s career as an actor and a discussion as to whether there was more than one dramatist of the name, cf. ch. xv.

_The Three Ladies of London. c. 1581_

1584. A right excellent and famous Comœdy called the three Ladies of London. Wherein is notably declared and set foorth, how by the meanes of Lucar, Love and Conscience is so corrupted, that the one is married to Dissimulation, the other fraught with all abhomination. A perfect patterne for all Estates to looke into, and a worke right worthie to be marked. Written by R. W. as it hath been publiquely played. _Roger Warde._ [Prologue. At end of play ‘Paule Bucke’ (an actor; cf. ch. xv).]

1592. _John Danter._

_Editions_ by J. P. Collier, _Five Old Plays_ (1851, _Roxb. Club_), in Dodsley^4 (1874), vi, and by J. S. Farmer (1911, _T. F. T._).

The stylistic resemblance of this to the next two plays justifies the attribution to Wilson, although Hazlitt suggests Wilmot. Gosson describes the play in 1582 (_P. C._ 185) together with a play in answer called _London Against the Three Ladies_, but does not indicate whether either play was then in print. In B ii Peter’s pence are dated as ‘not muche more than 26 yeares, it was in Queen Maries time’. As the Act reviving Peter’s pence was passed in the winter of 1554–5, the play was probably written in 1581.

_The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London. c. 1589_

_S. R._ 1590, July 31 (Wood). ‘A comodie of the plesant and statelie morrall of the Three lordes of London.’ _Richard Jones_ (Arber, ii. 556).

1590. The Pleasant and Stately Morall, of the three Lordes and three Ladies of London. With the great Joy and Pompe, Solempnized at their Mariages: Commically interlaced with much honest Mirth, for pleasure and recreation, among many Morall obseruations and other important matters of due regard. By R. W. _R. Jones._ [Woodcut, on which cf. _Bibl. Note_ to ch. xviii; ‘Preface’, i.e. prologue.]

_Editions_ by J. P. Collier (1851, _Five Old Plays_), in Dodsley^4, vi. 371 (1874), and by J. S. Farmer (1912, _T. F. T._).--_Dissertation_: H. Fernow, _The 3 L. and 3 L. By R. W._ (1885, _Hamburg programme_).

Fleay, ii. 280, fixes the date by the allusions (C, C^v) to the recent death of Tarlton (q.v.) in Sept. 1588.

_The Cobbler’s Prophecy > 1594_

_S. R._ 1594, June 8. ‘A booke intituled the Coblers prophesie.’ _Cuthbert Burby_ (Arber, ii. 653).

1594. The Coblers Prophesie. Written by Robert Wilson, Gent. _John Danter for Cuthbert Burby._

_Editions_ by W. Dibelius (1897, _Jahrbuch_, xxxiii. 3), J. S. Farmer (1911, _T. F. T._), and A. C. Wood (1914, _M. S. R._).

The general character of this play, with its reference (i. 36) to an audience who ‘sit and see’ and its comfits cast, suggests the Court rather than the popular stage.

_Doubtful Plays_

Wilson’s hand has been sought in _Clyomon and Clamydes_, _Fair Em_, _Knack to Know a Knave_, _Pedlar’s Prophecy_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

_Lost Plays_

_Short and Sweet_ (_c._ 1579). _Vide Catiline’s Conspiracy_ (_infra_).

The following is a complete list of plays for the Admiral’s men in which a share is assigned to Wilson by Henslowe:

(i, ii) _1, 2, Earl Godwin and his Three Sons._

With Chettle, Dekker, and Drayton, March-June 1598.

(iii) _Pierce of Exton._

With Chettle, Dekker, and Drayton, April, 1598; but apparently unfinished.

(iv) _1 Black Bateman of the North._

With Chettle, Dekker, and Drayton, May 1598.

(v) _2 Black Bateman of the North._

With Chettle, June 1598.

(vi) _Funeral of Richard Cœur-de-Lion._

With Chettle, Drayton, and Munday, June 1598.

(vii) _The Madman’s Morris._

With Dekker and Drayton, July 1598.

(viii) _Hannibal and Hermes._

With Dekker and Drayton, July 1598.

(ix) _Pierce of Winchester._

With Dekker and Drayton, July–Aug. 1598.

(x) _Chance Medley._

With Chettle or Dekker, Drayton, and Munday, Aug. 1598.

(xi) _Catiline’s Conspiracy._

With Chettle, Aug. 1598; but apparently not finished; unless the fact that the authors only received one ‘earnest’ of £1 5_s._ was due to the play being no more than a revision of Wilson’s old _Short and Sweet_, which Lodge (cf. App. C, No. xxiii) contrasts about 1579 with Gosson’s play on Catiline.

(xii, xiii) _1, 2 Sir John Oldcastle._

With Drayton (q.v.), Hathaway, and Munday, Oct.–Dec. 1599.

(xiv) _2 Henry Richmond._

Nov. 1599, apparently with others, as shown by Robert Shaw’s order for payment (Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, 49), on which a scenario of one act is endorsed.

(xv) _Owen Tudor._

With Drayton, Hathaway, and Munday, Jan. 1600; but apparently not finished.

(xvi) _1 Fair Constance of Rome._

June 1600. The Diary gives the payments as made to Dekker, Drayton, Hathaway, and Munday, but a letter of 14 June from Robert Shaw (Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, 55) indicates that Wilson had a fifth share.

ANTHONY WINGFIELD (_c._ 1550–1615).

Possible author of the academic _Pedantius_ (cf. App. K).

NATHANIEL WOODES (?).

A minister of Norwich, only known as author of the following play.

_The Conflict of Conscience. > 1581_

1581. An excellent new Commedie Intituled: The Conflict of Conscience. Contayninge, A most lamentable example, of the dolefull desperation of a miserable worldlinge, termed, by the name of Philologus, who forsooke the trueth of God’s Gospel, for feare of the losse of lyfe, & worldly goods. Compiled, by Nathaniell Woodes, Minister, in Norwich. _Richard Bradocke._ [Prologue.]

_Editions_ by J. P. Collier (1851, _Five Old Plays_), in Dodsley^4, vi. 29 (1874), and by J. S. Farmer (1911, _T. F. T._).

The characters are allegorical, typical and personal and arranged for six actors ‘most convenient for such as be disposed either to shew this Comedie in private houses or otherwise’. Philologus is Francis Spiera, a pervert to Rome about the middle of the sixteenth century. The play is strongly Protestant, and is probably much earlier than 1581. It is divided into a prologue and acts and scenes. Act VI is practically an epilogue.

HENRY WOTTON (1568–1639).

Izaak Walton (_Reliquiae Wottonianae_, 1651) tells us that, while a student at Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1586, Wotton ‘was by the chief of that College, persuasively enjoined to write a play for their private use;--it was the Tragedy of Tancredo--which was so interwoven with sentences, and for the method and exact personating those humours, passions, and dispositions, which he proposed to represent, so performed, that the gravest of that society declared, he had, in a slight employment, given an early and a solid testimony of his future abilities’.

CHRISTOPHER WREN (1591–1658).

Author of the academic _Physiponomachia_ (cf. App. K).

ROBERT YARINGTON (_c._ 1601?).

Nothing is known of Yarington, but this is hardly sufficient reason for denying him the ascription of the title-page.

_Two Lamentable Tragedies. 1594 < > 1601_

1601. Two Lamentable Tragedies. The one, of the murder of Maister Beech a Chaundler in Thames-streete, and his boye, done by Thomas Merry. The other of a young childe murthered in a Wood by two Ruffins, with the consent of his Vnckle. By Rob. Yarington. _For Mathew Lawe._ [Running title, ‘Two Tragedies in One.’ Induction.]

_Editions_ by A. H. Bullen (1885, _O. E. P._ iv) and J. S. Farmer (1913, _S. F. T._).--_Dissertation_: R. A. Law, _Y.’s T. L. T._ (1910, _M. L. R._ v. 167).

This deals in alternate scenes with (_a_) the murder of Beech by Merry on 23 Aug. 1594, and (_b_) a version, with an Italian setting, of the Babes in the Wood, on which a ballad, with a Norfolk setting, was licensed in 1595. Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 208, following a hint of Fleay, ii. 285, connects the play with Henslowe’s entries of payments, on behalf of the Admiral’s, (i) of £5 in Nov. and Dec. 1599 to Day and Haughton for _Thomas Merry_ or _Beech’s Tragedy_, (ii) of 10_s._ in Nov. 1599 and 10_s._ in Sept. 1601 to Chettle for _The Orphan’s Tragedy_, and (iii) of £2 to Day in Jan. 1600 for an Italian tragedy. He supposes that (ii) and (iii) were the same play, that it was finished, and that in 1601 Chettle combined it with (i), possibly dropping out Day’s contributions to both pieces. Yarington he dismisses as a scribe. In the alternate scenes of the extant version he discerns distinct hands, presumably those of Haughton and Chettle respectively. Law does not think that there are necessarily two hands at all, finds imitation of _Leire_ (1594) in scenes belonging to both plots, and reinstates Yarington. Oliphant (_M. P._ viii. 435) boldly conjectures that ‘Rob. Yarington’ might be a misreading of ‘W^m Haughton’. Bullen thought that this play, _Arden of Feversham_, and _A Warning for Fair Women_ might all be by the same hand.

CHRISTOPHER YELVERTON (_c._ 1535–1612).

Yelverton entered Gray’s Inn in 1552. He is mentioned as a poet in Jasper Heywood’s verses before Thomas Newton’s translation (1560) of Seneca’s _Thyestes_, and wrote an epilogue to the Gray’s Inn _Jocasta_ of Gascoigne (q.v.) and Kinwelmershe in 1566. He also helped to devise the dumb-shows for the Gray’s Inn _Misfortunes of Arthur_ of Thomas Hughes (q.v.) on 28 Feb. 1588. He became a Justice of the Queen’s Bench on 2 Feb. 1602 and was knighted on 23 July 1603.

PRINTED IN ENGLAND AT THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Cf. ch. xxii.

[2] _Quarterly Review_ (April 1908), 446.

[3] A copy at Berlin of the Strassburg _Terence_ of 1496 has the manuscript note to the engraving of the _Theatrum_, ‘ein offen stat der weltlichkeit da man zu sicht, ubi fiunt chorei, ludi et de alijs leutitatibus, sicut nos facimus oster spill’ (Herrmann, 300). Leo Battista Alberti’s _De Re Edificatoria_ was written about 1451 and printed in 1485. Vitruvius, _De Architectura_, v. 3–9, deals with the theatre. The essential passage on the scene is v. 6, 8–9 ‘Ipsae autem scenae suas habent rationes explicitas ita, uti mediae valvae ornatus habeant aulae regiae, dextra ac sinistra hospitalia, secundum autem spatia ad ornatus comparata, quae loca Graeci περιάκτους dicunt ab eo, quod machinae sunt in his locis versatiles trigonoe habentes singulares species ornationis, quae, cum aut fabularum mutationes sunt futurae seu deorum adventus, cum tonitribus repentinis [ea] versentur mutentque speciem ornationis in frontes. secundum ea loca versurae sunt procurrentes, quae efficiunt una a foro, altera a peregre aditus in scaenam. genera autem sunt scaenarum tria: unum quod dicitur tragicum, alterum comicum, tertium satyricum. horum autem ornatus sunt inter se dissimili disparique ratione, quod tragicae deformantur columnis et fastigiis et signis reliquisque regalibus rebus; comicae autem aedificiorum privatorum et maenianorum habent speciem prospectusque fenestris dispositos imitatione, communium aedificiorum rationibus; satyricae vero ornantur arboribus, speluncis, montibus reliquisque agrestibus rebus in topeodis speciem deformati’; cf. G. Lanson, in _Revue de la Renaissance_ (1904), 72.

[4] ‘Tu enim primus Tragoediae ... in medio foro pulpitum ad quinque pedum altitudinem erectum pulcherrime exornasti: eamdemque, postquam in Hadriani mole ... est acta, rursus intra tuos penates, tamquam in media Circi cavea, toto consessu umbraculis tecto, admisso populo et pluribus tui ordinis spectatoribus honorifice excepisti. Tu etiam primus picturatae scenae faciem, quum Pomponiani comoediam agerent, nostro saeculo ostendisti’; cf. Marcantonius Sabellicus, _Vita Pomponii_ (_Op._ 1502, f. 55), ‘Pari studio veterum spectandi consuetudinem desuetae civitati restituit, primorum Antistitum atriis suo theatro usus, in quibus Plauti, Terentii, recentiorum etiam quaedam agerentur fabulae, quas ipse honestos adolescentes et docuit, et agentibus praefuit’; cf. also D’Ancona, ii. 65; Creizenach, ii. 1.

[5] D’Ancona, ii. 74.

[6] D’Ancona, ii. 84; Herrmann, 353; Flechsig, 51. The scenic wall is described in the contemporary narrative of P. Palliolo, _Le Feste pel Conferimento del Patriziato Romano a Giuliano e Lorenzo de’ Medici_ (ed. O. Guerrini, 1885), 45, 63, ‘Guardando avanti, se appresenta la fronte della scena, in v compassi distinta per mezzo di colonne quadre, con basi e capitelli coperti de oro. In ciascuno compasso è uno uscio di grandezza conveniente a private case.... La parte inferiore di questa fronte di quattro frigi è ornata.... A gli usci delle scene furono poste portiere di panno de oro. El proscenio fu coperto tutto di tapeti con uno ornatissimo altare in mezzo.’ The side-doors were in ‘le teste del proscenio’ (Palliolo, 98). I have not seen M. A. Altieri, _Giuliano de’ Medici, eletto cittadino Romano_ (ed. L. Pasqualucci, 1881), or N. Napolitano, _Triumphi de gli mirandi Spettaculi_ (1519). Altieri names an untraceable Piero Possello as the architect; Guerrini suggests Pietro Rossello.

[7] D’Ancona, ii. 128, from _Diario Ferrarese_, ‘in lo suo cortile ... fu fato suso uno tribunale di legname, con case v merlade, con una finestra e uscio per ciascuna: poi venne una fusta di verso le caneve e cusine, e traversò il cortile con dieci persone dentro con remi e vela, del naturale’; Bapt. Guarinus, _Carm._ iv:

Et remis puppim et velo sine fluctibus actam Vidimus in portus nare, Epidamne, tuos, Vidimus effictam celsis cum moenibus urbem, Structaque per latas tecta superba vias. Ardua creverunt gradibus spectacula multis, Velaruntque omnes stragula picta foros.

[8] D’Ancona, ii. 129.

[9] Ibid. 130.

[10] Ibid. 132, 135. The two Marsigli, with Il Bianchino and Nicoletto Segna, appear to have painted scenes and ships for the earlier Ferrarese productions.

[11] Ibid. 134.

[12] Ibid. 381, from G. Campori, _Lettere artistiche inedite_, 5, ‘Era la sua forma quadrangula, protensa alquanto in longitudine: li doi lati l’uno al altro de rimpecto, havevano per ciaschuno octo architravi con colonne ben conrespondenti et proportionate alla larghezza et alteza de dicti archi: le base et capitelli pomposissimamente con finissimi colori penti, et de fogliami ornati, representavano alla mente un edificio eterne ed antiquo, pieno de delectatione: li archi con relevo di fiori rendevano prospectiva mirabile: la largheza di ciascheuno era braza quactro vel cerca: la alteza proporzionata ad quella. Dentro nel prospecto eran panni d’oro et alcune verdure, si come le recitationi recerchavano: una delle bande era ornata delli sei quadri del Cesareo triumpho per man del singulare Mantengha: li doi altri lati discontro erano con simili archi, ma de numero inferiore, che chiascheuno ne haveva sei. Doj bande era scena data ad actorj et recitatorj: le doe altre erano ad scalini, deputati per le donne et daltro, per todeschi, trombecti et musici. Al jongere del’ angulo de un de’ grandi et minorj lati, se vedevano quactro altissime colonne colle basi orbiculate, le quali sustentavano quactro venti principali: fra loro era una grocta, benchè facta ad arte, tamen naturalissima: sopra quella era un ciel grande fulgentissimo de varij lumi, in modo de lucidissime stelle, con una artificiata rota de segni, al moto de’ quali girava mo il sole, mo la luna nelle case proprie: dentro era la rota de Fortuna con sei tempi: _regno_, _regnavj_, _regnabo_: in mezo resideva la dea aurea con un sceptro con un delphin. Dintorno alla scena al frontespitio da basso era li triumphi del Petrarcha, ancor loro penti per man del p^o. Mantengha: sopra eran candelierj vistosissimi deaurati tucti: nel mezo era un scudo colle arme per tucto della C^a. M^g.; sopra la aquila aurea bicapitata col regno et diadema imperiale: ciascheuno teneva tre doppieri; ad ogni lato era le insegne. Alli doi maiorj, quelle della S^{ta}. de N. S. et quelle della Cesarea Maestà: alli minorj lati quelle del C^o. Sig. Re, et quelle della Ill^{ma}. Sig^a. da Venetia; tra li archi pendevano poi quelle de V. Ex., quelle del Sig. duca Alberto Alemano: imprese de Sig. Marchese et Sig^a. Marchesana: sopre erano più alte statue argentate, aurate et de più colorj metallici, parte tronche, parte integre, che assai ornavano quel loco: poi ultimo era il cielo de panno torchino, stellato con quelli segni che quella sera correvano nel nostro hemisperio.’ Flechsig, 26, thinks that the architect was Ercole Albergati (Il Zafarano).

[13] D’Ancona, i. 485; _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 79, 83, 135.

[14] Ferrari, 50; D’Ancona, ii. 1, give examples of these at Ferrara and elsewhere. The _Favola d’Orfeo_, originally produced about 1471, seems to have been recast as _Orphei tragedia_ for Ferrara in 1486. It had five acts, _Pastorale_, _Ninfale_, _Eroico_, _Negromantico_, _Baccanale_; in the fourth, the way to hell and hell itself were shown--‘duplici actu haec scena utitur’.

[15] J. W. Cunliffe, _Early English Classical Tragedies_, xl; F. A. Foster, in _E. S._ xliv. 8.

[16] Herrmann, 280, 284; cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 208.

[17] Translation by Hans Nithart, printed by C. Dinckmut (Ulm, 1486); cf. Herrmann, 292, who reproduces specimen cuts from this and the other sources described.

[18] Edition printed by Johannes Trechsel (Lyons, 1493); cf. Herrmann, 300. The editor claims for the woodcuts that ‘effecimus, ut etiam illitteratus ex imaginibus, quas cuilibet scenae praeposuimus, legere atque accipere comica argumenta valeat’. Badius also edited a Paris _Terence_ of 1502, with _Praenotamenta_ based on Vitruvius and other classical writers, in which he suggests the use in antiquity of ‘tapeta ... qualia nunc fiunt in Flandria’.

[19] Edition printed by Johannes Grüninger (Strassburg, 1496); cf. Herrmann, 318.

[20] Editions printed by Lazarus Soardus (Venice, 1497 and 1499); cf. Herrmann, 346. The _Theatrum_ and other cuts are also reproduced in _The Mask_ for July 1909.

[21] Flechsig, 84, citing as possibly a stage design an example of idealized architecture inscribed ‘Bramanti Architecti Opus’ and reproduced by E. Müntz, _Hist. de l’Art pendant la Renaissance_, ii. 299. Bramante was at Rome about 1505, and was helped on St. Peter’s by Baldassarre Peruzzi. But there is nothing obviously scenic in the drawing.

[22] D’Ancona, ii. 394, ‘Ma quello che è stato il meglio in tutte queste feste e representationi, è stato tute le sene, dove si sono representate, quale ha facto uno M^o. Peregrino depintore, che sta con il Sig^{re}.; ch’ è una contracta et prospettiva di una terra cum case, chiesie, campanili et zardini, che la persona non si può satiare a guardarla per le diverse cose che ge sono, tute de inzegno et bene intese, quale non credo se guasti, ma che la salvaràno per usarla de le altre fiate’.

[23] Ibid., ‘il caso accadete a Ferrara’.

[24] Ibid. 102, ‘La scena poi era finta una città bellissima con le strade, palazzi, chiese, torri, strade vere, e ogni cosa di rilevo, ma ajutata ancora da bonissima pintura e prospettiva bene intesa’; the description has further details. Genga is not named, but Serlio (cf. App. G) speaks of his theatrical work for Duke Francesco Maria of Urbino (succ. 1508). Vasari, vi. 316, says that he had also done stage designs for Francesco’s predecessor Guidobaldo.

[25] Vasari, iv. 600. Some of Peruzzi’s designs for _Calandra_ are in the Uffizi; Ferrari (tav. vi) reproduces one.

[26] D’Ancona, ii. 89, ‘Sonandosi li pifari si lasciò cascare la tela; dove era pinto Fra Mariano con alcuni Diavoli che giocavano con esso da ogni lato della tela; et poi a mezzo della tela vi era un breve che dicea: _Questi sono li capricci di Fra Mariano_; et sonandosi tuttavia, et il Papa mirando con il suo occhiale la scena, che era molto bella, di mano di Raffaele, et rappresentava si bene per mia fè forami di prospective, et molto furono laudate, et mirando ancora il cielo, che molto si rappresentava bello, et poi li candelieri, che erano formati in lettere, che ogni lettera substenìa cinque torcie, et diceano: _Leo Pon. Maximus_’.

[27] Ariosto, _Orlando Furioso_, xxxii. 80:

Quale al cader de le cortine suole Parer, fra mille lampade, la scena, D’archi, et di più d’una superba mole D’oro, e di statue e di pitture piena.

This passage was added in the edition of 1532, but a more brief allusion in that of 1516 (xliii. 10, ‘Vo’ levarti dalla scena i panni’) points to the use of a curtain, rising rather than falling, before 1519; cf. p. 31; vol. i, p. 181; Creizenach, ii. 299; Lawrence (i. 111), _The Story of a Peculiar Stage Curtain_.

[28] Ferrari (tav. xii) reproduces from _Uffizi_, 5282, an idealization by Serlio of the _piazzetta_ of S. Marco at Venice as a _scenario_.

[29] Cf. App. G. Book ii first appeared in French (1545).

[30] De Sommi, _Dial._ iv (_c._ 1565, D’Ancona, ii. 419), ‘Ben che paia di certa vaghezza il vedersi in scena una camera aperta, ben parata, dentro a la quale, dirò così per esempio, uno amante si consulti con una ruffiana, et che paia aver del verisimile, è però tanto fuor del naturale esser la stanza senza il muro dinanzi, il che necessariamente far bisogna, che a me ne pare non molto convenirsi: oltre che non so se il recitare in quel loco, si potrà dire che sia in scena. Ben si potrà per fuggir questi due inconvenienti, aprire come una loggia od un verone dove rimanesse alcuno a ragionare’.

[31] Creizenach, ii. 271.

[32] Ferrari, 105, with engravings; A. Magrini, _Il teatro Olympico_ (1847). This is noticed by the English travellers, Fynes Morison, _Itinerary_, i. 2. 4 (ed. 1907, i. 376), ‘a Theater for Playes, which was little, but very faire and pleasant’, and T. Coryat, _Crudities_, ii. 7, ‘The scene also is a very faire and beautifull place to behold’. He says the house would hold 3,000. In _Histriomastix_, ii. 322, the ‘base trash’ of Sir Oliver Owlet’s players is compared unfavourably with the splendour of Italian theatres. A permanent theatre had been set up in the _Sala grande_ of the Corte Vecchia at Ferrara in 1529, with scenery by Dosso Dossi representing Ferrara, for a revival of the _Cassaria_ and the production of Ariosto’s _Lena_; it was burnt down, just before Ariosto’s death, in 1532 (Flechsig, 23; Gardner, _King of Court Poets_, 203, 239, 258).

[33] Probably some temporary additions to the permanent decoration of the _scena_ was possible, as Ferrari (tav. xv) gives a design for a _scenario_ by Scamozzi.

[34] Ferrari, 100.

[35] Engravings, by Jean de Gourmont and another, of this type of stage are reproduced by Bapst, 145, 153, and by Rigal in Petit de Julleville, iii. 264, 296; cf. M. B. Evans, _An Early Type of Stage_ (_M. P._ ix. 421).

[36] Cf. _Mediaeval Stage_, ii. 217.

[37] Baschet, 6; D’Ancona, ii. 456; H. Prunières, _L’Opéra Italien en France_ (1913), xx; A. Solerti, _La rappresentazione della Calandra a Lione nel 1548_ (1901, _Raccolta di Studii Critici ded. ad A. d’ Ancona_), from _La Magnifica et Triumphale Entrata del Christianissimo Re di Francia Henrico Secundo_ (1549).

[38] Cf. ch. xiv (Italians).

[39] D’Ancona, ii. 457.

[40] Brantôme, _Recueil des Dames_, i. 2 (_[OE]uvres_, ed. 1890, x. 47), ‘Elle eut opinion qu’elle avoit porté malheur aux affaires du royaume, ainsi qu’il succéda; elle n’en fit plus jouer’. Ingegneri says of tragedies, ‘Alcuni oltra dicio le stimano di triste augurio’.

[41] E. Rigal in _Rev. d’Hist. Litt._ xii. 1, 203; cf. the opposite view of J. Haraszti in xi. 680 and xvi. 285.

[42] Sainte-Marthe, _Elogia_ (1606), 175.

[43] G. Lanson in _Rev. d’Hist. Litt._ x. 432. In _Northward Hoe_,