The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 4

by E. K. Chambers

A. PLAYS

An Alarum for London > 1600

S. R. 1600, May 27. ‘Allarum to London’ is included in a memorandum of ‘my lord chamberlens menns plaies Entred’ and noted as entered on this day to J. Roberts (Arber, iii. 37).

1600, May 29. ‘The Allarum to London, provided that yt be not printed without further Aucthoritie.’ John Roberts (Arber, iii. 161).

1602. A Larum for London, or The Siedge of Antwerpe. With the ventrous actes and valorous deeds of the lame Soldier. As it hath been playde by the right Honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. For William Ferbrand. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

Editions by R. Simpson (1872), J. S. Farmer (1912, T.F.T.), and W. W. Greg (1913, M.S.R.).

The play has been ascribed to Shakespeare by Collier, to Shakespeare and Marston by Simpson, and to Lodge by Fleay, Shakespeare, 291, but no serious case has been made out for any of these claims. Bullen, Marlowe, 1, lxxiv, says that Collier had a copy with doggerel rhymes on the t.p. including the line,

Our famous Marloe had in this a hand,

which Bullen calls ‘a very ridiculous piece of forgery’.

Albion Knight > 1566

S. R. 1565–6. ‘A play intituled a merye playe bothe pytthy and pleasaunt of Albyon knyghte.’ Thomas Colwell (Arber, i. 295).

Fragment in Devonshire collection.

[The t.p. is lost, but the seventeenth-century play lists (Greg, Masques, xlvii) include an interlude called Albion. A fragment on Temperance and Humility, conjecturally assigned by Collier, i. 284, to the same play, is of earlier printing by thirty years or so (M.S.C. i. 243).]

Editions by J. P. Collier (1844, Sh. Soc. Papers, i. 55) and W. W. Greg (1910, M. S. C. i. 229).—Dissertations: M. H. Dodds, The Date of A. K. (1913, 3 Library, iv. 157); G. A. Jones, The Political Significance of A. K. (1918, J. G. P. xvii. 267).

Collier suggests that this was the play disliked at court on 31 Dec. 1559, but, as Fleay, 66, points out, that would hardly have been licensed for printing. Dodds thinks it motived by the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536–7) and written shortly after.

Alice and Alexis

A fragment (to iii. 1) of a play on the loves of Alice and Alexis, thwarted by Tanto, with an argument of the whole, is in Douce MS. 171 (Bodl. 21745), f. 48^v. The date ‘1604’ is scribbled amongst the pages. The manuscript also contains sixteenth-century accounts. There seems nothing to connect this with Massinger’s Alexius, or the Chaste Lover, licensed by Herbert on 25 Sept. 1639 and apparently included in Warburton’s list of burnt plays (3 Library, ii. 232, 249).

Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany > 1636

S. R. 1653, Sept. 9. ‘A play called Alphonso, Emperor of Germany, by John Poole.’ H. Moseley (Eyre, i. 428).

1654. The Tragedy of Alphonsus Emperour of Germany. As it hath been very often Acted (with great applause) at the Privat house in Black-Friers by his late Maiesties Servants. By George Chapman Gent. For Humphrey Moseley. [Epistle to the Reader. The B.M. copy of the play is dated ‘Novemb. 29, 1653’.]

Editions by K. Elze (1867) and H. F. Schwarz (1913), and in collections of Chapman (q.v.).

Alphonsus may reasonably be identified with the Alfonso given before the Queen and the Elector Palatine at the Blackfriars on 5 May 1636 (Cunningham, xxiv). The ascription on the title-page to Chapman is repeated therefrom by Langbaine who rejects that of Kirkman in 1661 and 1671 (Greg, Masques, xlviii) to Peele, but the intimate knowledge of German shown in the dialogue has led Elze and Ward, ii. 428, to give Chapman a German collaborator, conceivably one Rudolf Weckerlin of Würtemberg, who after a preliminary visit before 1614 settled permanently in England about 1624 and obtained political employment, which he varied with literary exercises. Later critics are inclined to reject Chapman’s authorship altogether, and the case against it has been effectively put by E. Koeppel, Quellen-Studien zu den Dramen Chapman’s, 78, and Parrott. The ascription to Peele has been revived by Robertson, T. A. 123, and though Parrott does not accept the full argument, he agrees in regarding the play as originally of Peele’s date, possibly by him, with or without a collaborator, and drastically revised at a later period, perhaps by Weckerlin in 1636. Fleay, ii. 156, 311, also accepts Peele and identifies the play with Harry of Cornwall, revived by Strange’s for Henslowe on 25 Feb. 1592, but, as Greg (Henslowe, ii. 151) points out, the character in Alphonsus is not Henry, but Richard of Cornwall. It must be observed that no critic has noticed the S. R. ascription to John Poole, which may quite well be the origin of Kirkman’s ‘Peele’. Who John Poole was, I do not know.

Apius and Virginia > 1567–8

S. R. 1567–8. ‘A Tragedy of Apius and Virgine.’ Richard Jones (Arber, i. 357).

1575. A new Tragicall Comedie of Apius and Virginia, Wherein is liuely expressed a rare example of the vertue of Chastitie, by Virginias constancy, in wishing rather to be slaine at her owne Fathers handes, then to be deflowred of the wicked Iudge Apius. By R. B. William How for Richard Jones. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

Editions in Dodsley^{3, 4} (1825–76), and by J. S. Farmer (1908, T. F. T.) and R. B. McKerrow (1911, M. S. R.).

‘Haphazard, the Vice’ is a character. The stage-directions name ‘the stage’, ‘the scaffold’. A prologue addresses ‘lordings’; an epilogue has a prayer for the queen, nobles, and commons. The play is not controversial, but the tone is Protestant. Fleay, 61, thinks it a Westminster play of 1563–4; but no Westminster play of 1563–4 is on record. If Fleay means 1564–5, the Westminster play of that Christmas was Miles Gloriosus. There is nothing but the initials to identify the author with Richard Bower of the Chapel (q.v.), but the suggestion is more plausible than that of Wallace, i. 108, who gives the play to Richard Edwardes (q.v.), finding that the ‘R. E.’ subscribed to some of his manuscript poems is capable of being misread ‘R. B.’.

Arden of Feversham > 1592

S. R. 1592, April 3 (Bishop of London). ‘The tragedie of Arden of Feuersham and Blackwall.’ Edward White (Arber, ii. 607). [See s.v. Kyd, Spanish Tragedy, for the record of a piracy of the play in 1592 by Abel Jeffes.]

1592. The Lamentable and True Tragedie of M. Arden of Feuersham in Kent. Who was most wickedlye murdered, by the meanes of his disloyall and wanton wyfe, who for the love she bare to one Mosbie, hyred two desperat ruffins Blackwill and Shakbag, to kill him. Wherin is shewed the great mallice and discimulation of a wicked woman, the vnsatiable desire of filthie lust and the shamefull end of all murderers. For Edward White. [Epilogue.]

1599. J. Roberts for Edward White.

1633. Eliz. Allde.

Editions by E. Jacob (1770), A. H. Bullen (1887), R. Bayne (1897, T. D.), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), and in Sh. Apocrypha.—Dissertations: C. E. Donne, Essay on the Tragedy of A. of F. (1873); C. Crawford, The Authorship of A. of F. (1903, Jahrbuch, xxxix. 74; Collectanea, i. 101); W. Miksch, Die Verfasserschaft des A. of F. (1907, Breslau diss.); K. Wiehl, Thomas Kyd und die Autorschaft von ... A. of F. (1912, E. S. xliv. 356); H. D. Sykes, Sidelights upon Shakespeare, 48 (1919); L. Cust, A. of F. (1920, Arch. Cant. xxxiv. 101).

Jacob first claimed the authorship for Shakespeare. In spite of the advocacy of Swinburne (Study of Sh., 129) modern criticism remains wholly unconvinced. The play has tragic merit, but it is not of a Shakespearian character, and it is impossible to fit its manner, before 1592, into any coherent theory of Shakespeare’s development. More plausible is the case for Kyd, suggested by Fleay, ii. 28, who puts the date as far back as 1585 on quite unreliable grounds of improbable guess-work, and supported by Robertson, T. A. 151, and elaborately argued by Crawford and Sykes. But Boas, Kyd, lxxxix, thinks that the author was more likely an imitator of Kyd, and opinion remains divided. Oliphant (M. P. viii. 420) suggests Kyd and Marlowe, possibly with a third. The theme may also have been that of the Murderous Michael played at court by Sussex’s in 1579.

The Birth of Hercules. 1597 <

[MS.] B.M. Add. MS. 28722. ‘The birthe of hercules.’ [Prologus Laureatus; Mercurius Prologus; after text, ‘Testamentum poetae, ad peleum. Comoedarum pariter et histrionum princeps Peleu, tuo pro iudicio, volo hanc meam Comoediam, vel recitari, vel reticeri: hoc est: aut vivere aut mori. Scripsi, nec poeta, nec moriens: et tamen poeta moriens’. Written in one hand, with stage-directions by a second and corrections by a third and possibly a fourth, on paper datable by the watermark in 1597.]

Editions by M. W. Wallace (1903) and R. W. Bond (1911, M. S. R.).

This is pretty clearly a University play, and any connexion with the Hercules of the Admiral’s men in 1595 is highly improbable. As George Peele died in 1596, it seems difficult to identify him with the Peleus of the MS. Bond thinks that ‘the styles of composition and writing agree in placing a date before 1600 out of the question’.

Caesar’s Revenge > 1606

S. R. 1606, June 5. ‘A booke called Julius Caesars reuenge.’ J. Wright and N. Fosbrook, licensed by Dr. Covell and the wardens (Arber, iii. 323).

N.D. The Tragedie of Caesar and Pompey Or Caesars Reuenge. G. E. for Iohn Wright.

1607.... Priuately acted by the Studentes of Trinity Colledge in Oxford. For Nathaniel Fosbrook and Iohn Wright. [Re-issue with cancel t.p.]

Editions by F. S. Boas (1911, M. S. R.) and W. Mühlfeld (1911, 1912, Jahrbuch, xlvii. 132; xlviii. 37), and J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.).—Dissertations: T. M. Parrott, The Academic Tragedy of C. and P. (1910, M. L. R. v. 435); H. M. Ayres, C. R. (1915, M. L. A. xxx. 771); G. C. Moore Smith, The Tragedy of C. R. (1916, 12 N. Q. ii. 305).

There is no traceable connexion between this and any other of the several plays on Caesar, extant and lost, which are upon record. C. Crawford (M. S. C. i. 290) indicates some parallels which suggest a date of authorship between 1592 and 1596.

Charlemagne or The Distracted Emperor c. 1600

[MS.] Egerton MS. 1994. At the end is the note, ‘Nella Φ δ Φ ν ρ la B’ = ‘Nella fedeltà finirò la vita’.

Editions by A. H. Bullen (1884, O. E. P. iii) and F. L. Schoell (1920).—Dissertation: F. L. Schoell, Un Drame Élisabéthain Anonyme C (1912, Revue Germanique, viii. 155).

Bullen suggests that the author was Chapman, and also thinks Tourneur or Marston conceivable. He quotes Fleay’s opinion in favour of Field. Fleay, ii. 319, withdraws Field and substitutes Dekker. He identifies the play with the ‘King Charlemagne’ of Peele’s Farewell of 1589 (cf. s.v. Peele, Battle of Alcazar). Schoell makes an elaborate case for Chapman, and thinks that the play might be The Fatall Love, a French Tragedy, entered as his in S. R. on 29 June 1660, and included, without author’s name, in Warburton’s list of burnt plays (3 Library, ii. 231). A date later than 1584 is indicated by the use of Du Bartas’s Seconde Semaine of that year. It may be added that the style points to c. 1600 rather than c. 1590.

Claudius Tiberius Nero > 1607

S. R. 1607, April 10 (Buck). ‘A booke called the tragicall Life and Death of Claudius Tiberius Nero.’ Francis Burton (Arber, iii. 346).

1607. The Tragedie of Claudius Tiberius Nero, Rome’s greatest Tyrant. Truly represented out of the purest Records of those Times. For Francis Burton. [Epistle to Sir Arthur Mannering, son of Sir George of Eithfield, Shropshire; Verses Ad Lectores.]

1607. The Statelie Tragedie of Claudius Tiberius Nero.... For Francis Burton. [Another issue.]

Edition by J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.).

The play, which is on Tiberius, not Nero, is to be distinguished from Nero (1624). The epistle, not apparently by the author, says that the play’s ‘Father was an Academician’.

Club Law. 1599–1600

[MS.] St. John’s College, Cambridge, MS. S. 62. [Without t.p. and imperfect; probably identical with a MS. of the play owned by Richard Farmer.]

Edition by G. C. Moore Smith (1907). [Epilogue.]—Dissertation: G. C. Moore Smith, The Date of C. L. (1909, M. L. R. iv. 268).

The play is described by Fuller, Hist. of Cambridge (1655), 156, as given at Clare Hall in 1597–8. But J. S. Hawkins, in his edition of Ruggle’s Ignoramus (1787), xvi, gives the alternative date 1599, and this has now been confirmed by the discovery of manuscript annals of Cambridge, probably by Fuller himself, with the entry, under the academic year 1599–1600, ‘Aula Clarensis. Club Law fabula festivissima data multum ridentibus Academicis, frustra Oppidanis dolentibus’. The play is a satire on the townsmen, and especially the anti-gown mayor of 1599–1600, John Yaxley. Fuller says that the townsmen were invited to the performance and made to sit it through, and that they complained to the Privy Council, who first ‘sent some slight and private check to the principall Actors therein’, and then, when pressed, said that they would come to Cambridge, and see the comedy acted over again in the presence of the townsmen. The fact that there is no record of these letters in the extant register of the Council hardly disproves the substance of Fuller’s story. Hawkins ascribed the play to Ruggle (q.v.) on the authority of an eighteenth-century memorandum.

Sir Clyomon and Clamydes c. 1570

1599. The Historie of the two valiant Knights, Syr Clyomon knight of the Golden Sheeld, sonne to the King of Denmarke: And Clamydes the White Knight, sonne to the King of Suauia. As it hath been sundry times Acted by her Maiesties Players. Thomas Creede. [Prologue.]

Editions by W. W. Greg (1913, M. S. R.) and J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.), and in collections of Peele.

Subtle Shift ‘the vice’, Providence, and Rumour are among the characters.

Dyce ascribed the play to George Peele on the strength of a manuscript note ‘in a very old hand’ on a copy of the 1599 edition. Bullen thinks it of earlier date than Peele. Greg agrees, regarding it as about contemporary with Common Conditions. L. Kellner, in Englische Studien, xiii. 187, compares the language and style at great length with Peele’s and concludes against his authorship, unless indeed he wrote it in a spirit of parody. His arguments are challenged by R. Fischer in Englische Studien, xiv. 344. Fleay, 70, assigned it, with Common Conditions, to R. Wilson. Later (ii. 295), he substituted R[ichard] B[ower]. He noted a parallel to Thomas Preston’s Cambyses, and suggested as a date 1570 or 1578, the years, according to him, of the original production and of a revival of Cambyses. G. L. Kittredge, in Journal of Germanic Philology, ii. 8, suggests that Preston himself was the author of Sir Clyomon and Clamydes. If the ‘her Maiesties Players’ of the title-page means the later company of that name, the play, if not written, must have been revived 1583–94. Fleay, ii. 296, further identifies it with The Four Kings licensed for Henslowe (i. 103) in March 1599; but an old Queen’s play would not have needed a licence. An Anglo-German repertory of 1626 includes a ‘Tragikomödie vom König in Dänemark und König in Schweden’ (Herz, 66, 72).

Common Conditions > 1576

S. R. 1576, July 26. ‘A newe and pleasant comedie or plaie after the maner of common condycons.’ John Hunter (Arber, ii. 301). [Clearly ‘maner’ is a misreading of the ‘name’ of the t.p.]

Q₁, N.D. An excellent and pleasant Comedie, termed after the name of the Vice, Common Condicions, drawne out of the most famous historie of Galiarbus Duke of Arabia, and of the good and eeuill successe of him and his two children, Sedmond his sun, and Clarisia his daughter: Set foorth with delectable mirth, and pleasant shewes. William How for John Hunter. [T.p. adds ‘The Players names’ and ‘Six may play this Comedie’; Prologue.]

Q₂. Fragment, without t.p. or date, under r.t. ‘A pleasant Comedie called Common Conditions’.

Editions in Brandl, 597 (1898), and by J. S. Farmer (1908, Five Anonymous Plays) from Q₂, and by Tucker Brooke (1915, Yale Elizabethan Club Reprints, i) from Q₁.

The prologue refers to the audience ‘that sit in place’ and the ‘actours’ that ‘redy stand’. Fleay, ii. 296, suggests the authorship of Richard Bower, on grounds of style.

The Contention of York and Lancaster > 1592

S. R. 1594, March 12. ‘A booke intituled, the firste parte of the Contention of the twoo famous houses of York and Lancaster with the deathe of the good Duke Humfrey and the banishement and Deathe of the Duke of Suffolk and the tragicall ende of the prowd Cardinall of Winchester, with the notable rebellion of Jack Cade and the Duke of Yorkes ffirste clayme vnto the Crowne. Thomas Millington (Arber, ii. 646). [Part i.]

1602, April 19. Transfer from T. Millington to T. Pavier, ‘The first and Second parte of Henry the Vj^t, ij bookes’ (Arber, iii. 204). [Parts i and ii.]

1594. The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, with the death of the good Duke Humphrey: And the banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the Tragicall end of the proud Cardinall of Winchester, with the notable Rebellion of Iacke Cade: And the Duke of Yorkes first claime vnto the Crowne. Thomas Creede for Thomas Millington. [Part i.]

1595. The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of good King Henrie the Sixt, with the whole contention betweene the two Houses Lancaster and Yorke, as it was sundrie times acted by the Right Honourable the Earle of Pembrooke his seruants. P. S. for Thomas Millington. [Part ii.]

1600. Valentine Simmes for Thomas Millington. [Part i.]

1600. W. W. for Thomas Millington. [Part ii.]

[1619] N.D. The Whole Contention betweene the two Famous Houses, Lancaster and Yorke. With the Tragicall ends of the good Duke Humfrey, Richard Duke of Yorke, and King Henrie the sixt. Diuided into two Parts: And newly corrected and enlarged. Written by William Shakespeare, Gent. For T. P. [Parts i and ii, printed continuously with Pericles, 1619 (q.v.).]

Editions by J. O. Halliwell (1843, Sh. Soc.), Wright and Clark (1863–6, 1893, Cambridge Shakespeare), W. C. Hazlitt (1875, Sh. Libr. v, vi), F. J. Furnivall and T. Tyler (1886, 1889, 1891, Sh. Q), and J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.).—Dissertations: E. Malone, On the Three Parts of Hen. 6 (1821, Variorum, xviii. 553); R. Grant White, On the Authorship of Hen. 6 (Works of Sh. 1859–65, vii); J. Lee, On the Authorship of 2, 3 Hen. vi and their Originals (N. S. S. Trans. 1875–6, 219); C. F. T. Brooke, The Authorship of 2, 3 Hen. 6 (1912, Trans. of Connecticut Academy, xvii. 141).

The various claims of Marlowe, Kyd, Greene, Peele, Lodge, and Shakespeare himself to the Contention can only be discussed in relation to Shakespeare’s revision of them as 2, 3 Henry VI, which probably belongs approximately to the date of 1 Henry vi, produced by Strange’s on 3 March 1592.

Thomas Lord Cromwell > 1602

S. R. 1602, Aug. 11 (Jackson). ‘A booke called the lyfe and Deathe of the Lord Cromwell, as yt was lately Acted by the Lord Chamberleyn his servantes.’ William Cotton (Arber, iii. 214).

1602. The True Chronicle Historie of the whole life and death of Thomas Lord Cromwell. As it hath beene sundrie times publikely Acted by the Right Honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. Written by W. S. For William Jones.

S. R. 1611, Dec. 16. Transfer from William Jones to John Browne of a ‘booke called the lyfe and death of the Lord Cromwell, by W: S.’ (Arber, iii. 474).

1613.... As it hath been sundry times publikely Acted by the Kings Maiesties Seruants. Written by W. S. Thomas Snodham.

1664; 1685. [Parts of F₃ and F₄ of Shakespeare.]

Editions printed by R. Walker (1734) and by T. E. Jacob (1889, Old English Dramas), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), and in Sh. Apocrypha.—Dissertation: W. Streit, The L. and D. of T. L. C. (1904, Jena diss.).

The W. S. of the title-page was interpreted as William Shakespeare in Archer’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, lx). No modern critic accepts the attribution, except Hopkinson, who thinks that the original author was Greene, and that Shakespeare revised his work. Heywood was suggested by R. Farmer, and Drayton by Fleay, Shakespeare, 298; B.C. i. 152, 160. The guesses at Wentworth Smith and William Sly rest merely on their initials.

King Darius > 1565

S. R. 1565–6. ‘A playe intituled of the story of kyng Daryous beyinge taken oute of the iij^de and iiij^th chapeter of the iij^de boke of Esdras &c.’. Thomas Colwell (Arber, i. 298).

1565, October. A Pretie new Enterlude both pithie & pleasaunt of the Story of Kyng Daryus, Beinge taken out of the third and fourth Chapter of the thyrd booke of Esdras. Colwell. [On t.p. ‘Syxe persons may easely play it’.]

1577. Hugh Jackson. [B.M. C. 34, i. 21, from Irish sale of 1906.]

Editions by J. O. Halliwell (1860), A. Brandl (1898), 359, J. S. Farmer (1907, 1909, T. F. T.).

The characters, other than Darius and Zorobabell, are mainly abstract, and include Iniquitie, ‘the Vyce’. There is a Prolocutor.

The Dead Mans Fortune > 1591

[MS.] Add. MS. 10449. ‘The plotte of the deade mans fortune.’ [Probably from Dulwich.]

The text is given by Steevens, Variorum (1803), iii. 414; Boswell, Variorum (1821), iii. 356; Greg, Henslowe Papers, 133; and a facsimile by Halliwell, The Theatre Plats of Three Old English Dramas (1860).

The names of actors who took part in the play point to a performance by the Admiral’s, about 1590–1 (cf. ch. xiii).

The Reign of King Edward the Third > 1595

S. R. 1595, Dec. 1. ‘A book Intitled Edward the Third and the Blacke Prince their warres with kinge John of Fraunce.’ Burby (Arber, iii. 55).

1596. The Raigne of King Edward the third: As it hath bin sundrie times plaied about the Citie of London. For Cuthbert Burby.

1599. Simon Stafford for Cuthbert Burby.

Editions with Shakespeare Apocrypha, and by E. Capel (1759–60, Prolusiones), F. J. Furnivall (1877, Leopold Sh.), J. P. Collier (1878, Shakespeare), G. C. Moore Smith (1897, T. D.), J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.).—Dissertations: H. von Friesen, Ed. iii, angeblich ein Stück von Sh. (1867, Jahrbuch, ii. 64); J. P. Collier, K. Edw. III, a Historical Play by W. Sh. (1874); A. Teetgen, Sh’s. K. Edw. iii, absurdly called, and scandalously treated, as a ‘Doubtful Play’: an Indignation Pamphlet (1875); A. C. Swinburne, On the Historical Play of K. Edw. iii (1879, Gent. Mag., 1880, &c., Study of Sh.); G. von Vincke, K. Edw. iii, ein Bühnenstück? (1879, Jahrbuch, xiv. 304); E. Phipson, Ed. iii (1889, N. S. S. Trans. 58*); G. Liebau, K. Ed. iii von England und die Gräfin von Salisbury (1900, 1901), K. Ed. iii von England im Lichte europäischer Poesie (1901); R. M. Smith, Edw. III (1911, J. G. P. x. 90).

The authorship was first ascribed to Shakespeare (with that of Edw. IV and Edw. II!) in Rogers and Ley’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, lxiv). The theory was advocated by Capell, and has received much support, largely owing to the assent of Tennyson, against whose authority, however, may be set that of Swinburne. In its latest and not altogether unplausible form, Shakespeare is regarded as the author, not of the whole play, but of i. 2 and ii, which deal with the episode of the wooing of Lady Salisbury by the king, and are possibly, although by no means certainly, due to another hand than that of the chronicle narrative, to which they are only slightly linked. The style of these scenes is not demonstrably un-Shakespearian, and they, and in less degree the play as a whole, contain many parallels with Hen. V and other works of the ‘nineties, of which the repetition in II. i. 451 and in Sonnet XCIV of the line

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds

is the most striking. The controversy cannot be dealt with in detail here. Shakespeare’s contribution, if any, may with most probability be assigned to the winter of 1594–5; but it does not follow that the original play may not have been of earlier date. No importance is to be attached to the argument of Fleay (ii. 62; Shakespeare, 282) that the use of the phrase ‘Ave, Caesar’ in I. i. 164 caused its use in Greene’s Francesco’s Fortunes of 1590 (cf. App. C, no. xliii), but it is noteworthy that a play on the subject was produced, apparently under Anglo-German influence, at Danzig in 1591 (Herz, 5). Of non-Shakespearian authors, for the whole or a part of the play as extant, Marlowe is preferred by Fleay, Greene by Liebau and Robertson, and Kyd by Sarrazin.

Edward the Fourth > 1599

S. R. 1599, Aug. 28. ‘Twoo playes beinge the ffirst and Second parte of Edward the iiij^th and the Tanner of Tamworth With the history of the life and deathe of master Shore and Jane Shore his Wyfe as yt was lately acted by the Right honorable the Erle of Derbye his seruantes.’ John Oxonbridge and John Burby (Arber, iii. 147).

1600, Feb. 23. Transfer of Busby’s interest to Humphrey Lownes (Arber, iii. 156).

1600. The First and Second Parts of King Edward the Fourth. Containing His mery pastime with the Tanner of Tamworth, as also his loue to faire mistrisse Shoare, her great promotion, fall and miserie and lastly the lamentable death of both her and her husband. Likewise the besieging of London, by the Bastard Falconbridge, and the valiant defence of the same by the Lord Maior and the Citizens. As it hath diuers times beene publikely played by the Right Honorable the Earle of Derbie his seruants. F. K. for Humfrey Lownes and John Oxenbridge.

1605; 1613; 1619; 1626.

Edition by B. Field (1842, Sh. Soc.).—Dissertation: A. Sander, T. Heywood’s Historien von König Edward iv und ihre Quellen (1907, Jena diss.).

Sander and others date the play 1594, by an identification with the anonymous Siege of London revived by the Admiral’s on 26 Dec. 1594. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 173) more cautiously says that the play of 1594 ‘may underlie’ certain scenes of 1 Edward iv. He regards Edward iv, ‘on internal evidence, as unquestionably Heywood’s’. This is the usual view, but Fleay, ii. 288, had doubted it. There is no external evidence for Heywood’s authorship, or for any connexion between him and Derby’s men. Moreover, in May 1603, he authorized Henslowe, on behalf of Worcester’s, to pay Chettle and Day for ‘the Booke of Shoare, now newly to be written’, also described as ‘a playe wherein Shores wiffe is writen’. If this was a revision of his own play, he would hardly have left it to others. It is fair to add that in the previous January he had himself received payment with Chettle for an unnamed play, which might be the same (Henslowe, ii. 234). The ‘three-mans song’ on Agincourt in iii. 2 of Part I closely resembles Drayton’s Ballad of Agincourt (ed. Brett, 81), and must, I think, be his. Jane Shore is mentioned as a play visited by citizens in The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607), ind. 57, and ‘the well-frequented play of Shore’ in Pimlyco or Runne Redcap (1609). A play, apparently on the same subject, was performed by English actors at Graz on 19 Nov. 1607 (Herz, 98).

Every Woman in Her Humour. 1607–8?

1609. Everie Woman in her Humor. E. A. for Thomas Archer. [Prologue.]

Editions by A. H. Bullen (1885, O. E. P. iv) and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.).—Dissertation: J. Q. Adams, E. W. I. and The Dumb Knight (1913, M. P. x. 413).

Fleay, ii. 321, suggests a date c. 1602 on the ground of apparent reference to the Poetomachia. But this is not conclusive, and Adams points to the use of a song (p. 335) from Bateson’s Madrigals (1604). He thinks that Lewis Machin was the author, as the style resembles that of the comic part of The Dumb Knight (vide s. Markham), and two passages are substantially reproduced in the latter. If so, this also may be a King’s Revels play. Allusions on p. 270 to the ‘babones’ (cf. s.v. Sir Giles Goosecap) and on p. 316 to the Family of Love (cf. s.v. Middleton) are consistent with a date of 1603–8.

Fair Em c. 1590

N.D. For T. N. and I. W.

[In Bodleian. Greg says that this is ‘considerably earlier’ than 1631. The t.p. is as in 1631. Chetwood mentions three early editions, including one undated and one of 1619. This is not now known.]

1631. A Pleasant Comedie of Faire Em, the Millers Daughter of Manchester. With the loue of William the Conqueror. As it was sundry times publiquely acted in the Honourable Citie of London, by the right Honourable the Lord Strange his Seruants. For John Wright.

Editions by R. Simpson (1878, S. of S. ii), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), and in collections of Sh. Apocrypha.—Dissertations: R. Simpson, Some Plays Attributed to Sh. (1875–6, N. S. S. Trans. 155); K. Elze, Nachträgliche Bemerkungen zu Mucedorus und F. E. (1880, Jahrbuch, xv. 339); P. Lohr, Le Printemps d’Yver und die Quelle zu F. E. (1912).

The play has a double plot. One theme is the contest of William the Conqueror and the Marquess Lubeck for the loves of Princess Blanch of Denmark and of Mariana, a Swedish captive; the other is the contest of Manvile, Mountney and Valingford for Em, daughter of the Miller of Manchester. A ‘ballad intituled The Miller’s daughter of Manchester’ was entered on the Stationers’ Register by Henry Carr on 2 March 1581 (Arber, ii. 390). Fair Em has been included in the Shakespeare Apocrypha on the strength of a volume formerly in the collection of Charles II, and then in that of Garrick, in which it was bound up with Mucedorus and The Merry Devil of Edmonton and lettered ‘Shakespeare, vol. i’. On the other hand, Edward Phillips, in his Theatrum Poetarum (1675), assigned it to Greene. Clearly Greene is not the author, although there are certain resemblances of situation between the play and Friar Bacon; for he satirizes it in the preface to Farewell to Folly (Works, ix. 232), quoting one or two of its expressions and blaming them as borrowed out of Scripture. Of the author he says, ‘He that cannot write true English without the help of clerks of parish churches will needs make himself the father of interludes’, and, ‘The sexton of St. Giles without Cripplegate would have been ashamed of such blasphemous rhetoric’. Farewell to Folly seems to have appeared in 1591 (cf. s.v. Greene), and Fair Em may perhaps therefore be dated between this pamphlet and Friar Bacon (c. 1589). Simpson adopts the theory, which hardly deserves serious discussion, of Shakespeare’s authorship. He finds numerous (but impossible) attacks by Greene upon Shakespeare from the Planetomachia (1585) onwards, and thinks that Shakespeare retorted in Fair Em, satirizing Greene as Manvile and Marlowe as Mountney, and depicting himself as Valingford. ‘Fair Em’ herself is the Manchester stage. In the story of William the Conqueror he finds an allusion to the travels of William Kempe and other actors in Denmark and Saxony. Fleay, Shakespeare Manual (1878), 281, adopts much of this fantasy, but turns ‘Fair Em’ into the Queen’s company and Valingford into Peele. In 1891 (ii. 282) he makes ‘Fair Em’ Strange’s company. His minor identifications, whether of 1878 or of 1891, may be disregarded. More plausible is his suggestion that the author of the play may be Robert Wilson (q.v.), which would explain the attack upon Greene (q.v.) for his Farewell to Folly in R. W.’s Martin Mar-sixtus (1591). The suggestion that the play was the Sir John Mandeville revived by Strange’s for Henslowe in 1592 rests on a confusion between Mandeville and Manvile, but it may have been the William the Conqueror similarly revived by Sussex’s on 4 Jan. 1594 (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 151, 158).

The Fair Maid of Bristow > 1604

S. R. 1605, Feb. 8. ‘A commedy called “the fayre Mayd of Bristoe” played at Hampton Court by his Maiesties players.’ Thomas Pavier (Arber, iii. 283).

1605. The Faire Maide of Bristow. As it was plaide at Hampton, before the King and Queenes most excellent Maiesties. For Thomas Pavier.

Editions by A. H. Quinn (1902, Pennsylvania Univ. Publ.) and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).

The court performance must have been during the Christmas of 1603–4, which was at Hampton Court. Bullen, Works of Day, 10, rejects the theory of Collier that this was Day’s Bristol Tragedy, written for the Admiral’s in May 1602, on the grounds that it is not a tragedy and does not resemble the known work of Day. Moreover, the King’s men are not likely to have acquired an Admiral’s play.

The Fair Maid of the Exchange c. 1602

S. R. 1607, April 24 (Buck). ‘A booke called the faire Mayde of the Exchaunge.’ Henry Rocket (Arber, iii. 347).

1607. The Fayre Mayde of the Exchange. With the pleasaunt Humours of the Cripple of Fanchurch. Very delectable, and full of mirth. For Henry Rockit. [Dramatis Personae headed ‘Eleauen may easily acte this Comedie’, and Prologue.]

1525. I. L.

1637. A. G.

Edition by B. Field (1845, Sh. Soc.).—Dissertations: L. A. Hibberd, The Authorship and Date of the Fair Maid of the Exchange (M. P. vii. 383); P. Aronstein, Die Verfasserschaft des Dramas The Fair Maid of the Exchange (1912, E. S. xlv. 45).

Heywood’s authorship was asserted by Kirkman in 1671 (Greg, Masques, lxvii), denied by Langbaine in 1687, accepted by Charles Lamb and out of respect to him by Ward, ii. 572, and is still matter of dispute. Fleay, ii. 329, assigned it to Machin on quite inadequate grounds. Hibberd argues the case for Heywood, and Aronstein attempts a compromise by giving ii. I, iv. I, and V to Heywood and the rest to some young academic student of Shakespeare and Jonson. The imitations of these point to a date c. 1602. I do not offer an opinion.

Fedele and Fortunio or Two Italian Gentlemen c. 1584

S. R. 1584, Nov. 12. ‘A booke entituled Fedele et Fortuna. The deceiptes in love Discoursed in a Commedie of ij Italyan gent and translated into Englishe.’ Thomas Hackett (Arber, ii. 437).

1585. Fedele and Fortunio. The deceites in Loue: excellently discoursed in a very pleasaunt and fine conceited Comoedie, of two Italian Gentlemen. Translated out of Italian, and set downe according as it hath beene presented before the Queenes moste excellent Maiestie. For Thomas Hacket.

[In the Mostyn sale (1919). Epistle ‘To the Woorshipfull, and very courteous Gentleman, Maister M. R. M.A. commendeth this pleasaunt and fine conceited comœdie’, signed M.A.; Prologue before the Queene; Epilogue at the Court, signed M.A. The compiler of the Mostyn sale catalogue says that this differs from the imperfect print in the Chatsworth collection, containing sheets B to G only, without t.p., epistle, prologue, or epilogue, which is the basis of the modern editions. Both have the running title, ‘A pleasant Comœdie of two Italian Gentlemen’. Collier, iii. 60, had seen a copy with the epistle as found in the Mostyn print, but addressed to John Heardson and signed A.M. This has been recently found in the Huntington collection.

Editions by P. Simpson (1909, M. S. R.) and F. Flügge (1909, Archiv, cxxiii, 45), and extracts by Halliwell (1852, Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 15).—Dissertations: W. W. Greg, Notes on Publications (1909, M. S. C. i. 218); F. Flügge, Fidele und Fortunio (1912, Breslau diss.).

The epistle says ‘I commende to your freendly viewe this prettie Conceit, as well for the inuention, as the delicate conueiance thereof: not doubting but you will so esteeme thereof, as it dooth very well deserue, and I hartely desire’. This praise of the ‘conueiance’ (which I take to mean either ‘style’ or possibly ‘translation’) does not suggest that M. A. (or A. M.) was the translator. It is true that ll. 224–41 appear in England’s Helicon (1600) signed ‘Shep. Tonie’, and that this signature is often taken to indicate Munday. On the other hand, two lines of this passage also appear in England’s Parnassus (1600, ed. Crawford, 306) over the initials S. G., which suggest Gosson. Another passage in E. P. (231) combines ll. 661–2 and 655–6 of the play over the signature G. Chapman. This has led Crawford (E. S. xliii. 203), with some support from Greg, to suggest Chapman’s authorship. I do not think the suggestion very convincing, in view of the inconsistency and general unreliability of E. P. and the fact that Chapman’s first clear appearance as a writer is ten years later, in 1594. The evidence is quite indecisive, but of Munday, Chapman, Gosson, I incline to think Gosson the most likely candidate. On the other hand, if M. R. is Matthew Roydon, he was the dedicatee of poems by Chapman in 1594 and 1595. For M. A. I hardly dare guess Matthew Arundel. In any case, the play is only a translation from L. Pasqualigo’s Il Fedele (1576).

2 Fortune’s Tennis c. 1602

[MS.] Add. MS. 10449. ‘The [plott of the sec]ond part of fortun[s Tenn]is.’ [A fragment, probably from Dulwich.]

The text is given by Greg, Henslowe Papers, 143. The actors named show that it belonged to the Admiral’s, and Greg suggests that it may be Dekker’s ‘fortewn tenes’ of Sept. 1600. Is it not more likely to have been a sequel to that, possibly Munday’s Set at Tennis of Dec. 1602?

Frederick and Basilea. 1597

[MS.] Add. MS. 10449. ‘The plott of Frederick & Basilea.’ [Probably from Dulwich.]

The text is given by Steevens, Variorum (1803), iii. 414; Boswell, Variorum (1821), iii. 356; Greg, Henslowe Papers, 135; and a facsimile by Halliwell, The Theatre Plats of Three Old English Dramas (1860).

The play was produced by the Admiral’s on 3 June 1597, and the actors named represent that company at that date (cf. ch. xiii).

George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield > 1593

S. R. 1595, April 1. ‘An Enterlude called the Pynder of Wakefeilde.’ Cuthbert Burby (Arber, ii. 295).

1599. A Pleasant Conceyted Comedie of George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield. As it was sundry times acted by the seruants of the right Honourable the Earle of Sussex. Simon Stafford for Cuthbert Burby.

Editions in Dodsley^1–3 (1744–1825), by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. i), F. W. Clarke (1911, M. S. R.), and J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.), and in collections of Greene.—Dissertation: O. Mertins, Robert Greene and the Play of G. a G. (1885, Breslau diss.).

Sussex’s men revived the play for Henslowe on 29 Dec. 1593 (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 158). The Chatsworth copy has on the title-page the following notes in two early seventeenth-century hands: ‘Written by ... a minister, who ac[ted] the piñers p̄t in it himself. Teste W. Shakespea[re]’, and ‘Ed Iuby saith that the play was made by Ro. Gree[ne]’. These, though first produced by Collier, appear (M. S. C. i. 288) to be genuine. Greene’s authorship has been very commonly accepted. Fleay, i. 264, ii. 51, supposed first Greene and Peele, then added Lodge, but, although the text has been abridged, there is no evidence of double authorship. Oliphant’s suggestion (M. P. viii. 433) of revision by Heywood only rests on the inclusion of the play next his in the Cockpit list of 1639 (Variorum, iii. 159). R. B. McKerrow thinks (M. S. C. i. 289) that the ‘by Ro. Greene’ of the note may mean ‘about Ro. Greene’ as a leading incident is apparently based on an episode of Greene’s life. An allusion in I. i. 42 to Tamburlaine gives an anterior limit of date.

Sir Giles Goosecap. 1601 < > 3

S. R. 1606, Jan. 10. (Wilson). ‘An Comedie called Sir Gyles Goosecap Provided that yt be printed accordinge to the Copie wherevnto master Wilson’s hand ys at.’ Edward Blount (Arber, iii. 309).

1606. Sir Gyles Goosecappe. Knight. A Comedie presented by the Chil: of the Chappell. John Windet for Edward Blount.

1636....A Comedy lately Acted with great applause at the private House in Salisbury Court. For Hugh Perry, sold by Roger Bell. [Epistle to Richard Young of Woolley Farm, Berks. Signed ‘Hugh Perry’.]

Editions by A. H. Bullen (1884, O. E. P. iii), W. Bang and R. Brotanek (1909, Materialien, xxvi), J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.), and T. M. Parrott (1914, Chapman, ii).—Dissertations: G. L. Kittredge, Notes on Elizabethan Plays (1898, J. G. P. ii. 10); T. M. Parrott, The Authorship of S. G. G. (1906, M. P. iv. 25).

Bullen thought the author, who is stated in Perry’s epistle to be dead in 1636, might be some imitator of Chapman. Fleay, ii. 322, suggests Chapman himself. This view receives elaborate support from Parrott, and appears very plausible. As ‘your greatest gallants, for men, in France were here lately’ (III. i. 47) the date is after the visit of Biron in Sept. 1601 and possibly after that of Nevers in April 1602. It cannot be later than the beginning of 1603, as ‘She is the best scholar of any woman, but one, in Europe’ (I. i. 140) points to Elizabeth’s lifetime. Moreover, Dekker, in his Wonderful Year of 1603 (Grosart, i. 116), has ‘Galen could do no more good, than Sir Giles Goosecap’, and though ‘goosecap’ is a known term for a booby, e.g. in Nashe’s Four Letters Confuted of 1592 (Works, i. 281), the play seems to be responsible for the ‘Sir Giles’. The phrase ‘comparisons odorous’ in IV. ii. 64 echoes Much Ado, III. v. 18. The later part of the period 1601–3 would perhaps best fit the allusions to the Family of Love (II. i. 263), as to which cf. s.v. Middleton’s play of that name, and to the baboons (I. i. 11), the memory of which is still alive in Volpone (1606) and Ram Alley (1607–8). Probably these had already amused London before 1605, as on Oct. 5 of that year the Norwich records (Murray, ii. 338) note that ‘This day John Watson ironmonger brought the Kyngs maiesties warrant graunted to Roger Lawrence & the deputacion to the seid Watson to shewe two beasts called Babonnes’. So, too, Kelly, 247, has a Leicester payment of 1606 ‘to the M^r of the Babons, lycensed to travell by the Kings warrant’. There is a story of a country fellow who wanted to go to a market town ‘to haue seene the Baboones’ as late as J. Taylor’s Wit and Mirth in 1629 (Hazlitt, Jest Books, iii. 43). Fleay’s identifications of Chapman himself with Clarence and Drayton with Goosecap hardly deserve consideration.

Grim the Collier of Croydon. 1600

[Alleged prints of 1599 (Chetwood), 1600 (Ward, i. 263), and 1606 (Jacob) probably rest on no authority.]

1662. Grim the Collier of Croyden; Or, The Devil and his Dame: With The Devil and Saint Dunston. [Part of Gratiae Theatrales, or, A choice Ternary of English plays. Composed upon especial occasions by several ingenious persons; viz.... Grim the Collier ... a Comedy, by I. T. Never before published: but now printed at the request of sundry ingenious friends. R. D. 1662, 12^mo.]

Editions by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. iii), in Dodsley⁴, viii (1876), and by J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.).—Dissertation: H. D. Sykes, The Authorship of G. the C. of C. (1919, M. L. R. xiv. 245).

Of I. T. nothing is known. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 213) regards the play as clearly of the sixteenth century on internal evidence, and points out that Henslowe, on behalf of the Admiral’s, paid Haughton 5s. on 6 May 1600, ‘in earneste of a boocke which he wold calle the devell & his dame’. The entry was subsequently cancelled, and presumably Haughton transferred the play to another company. Sykes calls attention to analogies with Englishmen for my Money, which confirm the probability of Haughton’s authorship. It is only the ascription of 1662 to I. T. which causes hesitation. Farmer (Hand List, 19) suggests that this was John Tatham. Grim and the Devil both appear in the Like Will to Like of Ulpian Fulwell (q.v.), but I do not understand what kind of indirect connexion Greg thinks may have existed between Haughton’s play and a possible revival of Fulwell’s by Pembroke’s men in Oct. 1600.

The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth > 1588

S. R. 1594, May 14. ‘A booke intituled, The famous victories of Henrye the Fyft, conteyninge the honorable battell of Agincourt.’ Thomas Creede (Arber, ii. 648).

1598. The Famous Victories of Henry the fifth: Containing the Honourable Battell of Agincourt: As it was plaide by the Queenes Maiesties Players. Thomas Creede.

1617.... as it was Acted by the Kinges Maiesties Seruants. Bernard Alsop. [Another issue of the same sheets.]

Editions by J. Nichols (1779, Six Old Plays, ii. 317), W. C. Hazlitt (1875, Shakespeare’s Library, v. 321), P. A. Daniel (1887, Sh. Q.), and J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.).

In Tarlton’s Jests (ed. Halliwell for Sh. Soc. 24) is a story of Knell acting Henry V and Tarlton doubling the parts of the judge and the clown, which clearly refers to this play. The performance took place ‘at the Bull in Bishopsgate’. Tarlton died in 1588. Fleay, 67; ii. 259, suggests that Tarlton was the author. Nashe in Pierce Penilesse (1592, Works, i. 213) speaks of ‘Henrie the fifth represented on the stage’. This is obviously too early to be the new play of ‘harey the V’, given thirteen times for Henslowe between 28 Nov. 1595 and 15 July 1596 by the Admiral’s, in whose inventories of March 1598 Harry the Fifth’s doublet and gown appear. An earlier Henslowe entry on 14 May 1592, sometimes quoted as ‘harey the v^th’ by Collier, is really ‘harey the 6’ (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 152, 177; Henslowe Papers, 121). Sykes thinks the author S. Rowley (q.v.).

Histriomastix. 1589 (?), 1599

S. R. 1610, Oct. 31 (Buck). ‘A booke called, Histriomastix or the player whipte.’ Thomas Thorpe (Arber, iii. 447).

1610. Histrio-Mastix. Or, the Player whipt. For Thomas Thorp.

Editions by R. Simpson (1878, S. of S. ii. 1) and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).—Dissertation: F. Hoppe, Histriomastix-Studien (1906, Breslau diss.).

Fleay, ii. 69, gives the whole play to Marston, but the sounder view of Simpson that Marston, whose style in places is unmistakable, was only the reviser of an earlier play, is revived in the elaborate and mainly satisfactory study of Small, 67. The passages assigned by Small to Marston are ii. 63–9, 128–9, 247–79; iii. 179–v. 191; v. 234; vi. 259–95. I should be inclined to add v. 244–67, but to omit ii. 128–9; iii. 218–64; iv. 159–201; v. 61–102; v. 147–180; vi. 259–95, which may just as well belong to the original play. No doubt vi. 259–95 is an addition, constituting an alternative ending for a court performance before Elizabeth; but this may just as well have been a contemporary as a Marstonian addition, and in fact there is no court performance at the end of the century available for it, while the attempt to find one led Fleay to the impossible theory that it was given by Derby’s men. As its whole substance is a satire on professional players, it must have been both produced and revived by amateurs or boys; and the same conclusion is pointed to by the enormous number of characters. The original matter is so full of the technical learning of the schools as to suggest an academic audience; I think it was a University or possibly an Inns of Court, not a choirboy, play. The theme is the cyclical progression of a state through the stages Peace, Plenty, Pride, Envy, War, Poverty, and Peace again. It is illustrated by the fortunes of a company of players, who wax insolent in prosperity, and when war comes, are pressed for soldiers. Their poet Posthaste is clearly Munday and not, as Simpson and others have vainly imagined, Shakespeare. With him is contrasted the scholar-poet, Chrisoganus, a philosopher with whom the players will have nothing to do. He seems to belong to the order of ideas connected with the scientific school of Thomas Harriott. Small thinks that the date was 1596, when there was scarcity of food, a persecution of players, and a pressing of men for service against Spain; and that the author might be Chapman. Certainly Chapman was an early admirer of Harriott. But I disagree as to the date. The style seems to me to be that of Peele or some imitator, the attitude to the players an academic reflection of the attacks of Greene, and the political atmosphere that of the years following the Armada, when the relief of peace was certainly not unbroken by fears of renewed Spanish attempts. Impressment was not a device of 1596 alone. The only notice of it known to me in which players are known to have especially suffered is in an undated letter of Philip Gawdy, assigned by his editor to 1602 (Gawdy, 121), ‘All the playe howses wer besett in one daye and very many pressed from thence, so that in all ther ar pressed ffowre thowsand besydes fyve hundred voluntaryes, and all for flaunders’. This is too late for the proto-Histriomastix, and probably also for the revival, but men were being pressed for foreign service as early as 1585, and again in 1588 and possibly in 1589 and 1591 (Cheyney, i. 158, 197, 219, 255; Procl. 805, 809). As to the revival, Small puts it definitely in August 1599, when a scare of a Spanish invasion, which had lasted for a month, came to a crisis in London on Aug. 7 (Stowe, Annales, 788; Chamberlain, 59; Sydney Papers, ii. 113; Hist. MSS. xv, app. v, 66), and he thinks that the words ‘The Spaniards are come!’ (v. 234) are an insertion of this date. They are not ‘extra-metrical’, as Fleay says, for the passage is not in metre. There had, however, been earlier scares, e.g. in Oct. 1595 (Sydney Papers, i. 355; cf. Arber, iii. 55, 56) and in Oct. 1597 (Edmondes Papers, 303). The date of 1599 would agree well enough with the career of Marston, and with that of the Paul’s boys, to whom the revival was probably due, although I do not agree with Small that it was their court play of 1 Jan. 1601, because I see no evidence that the court ending belongs to the revision. I take it that Histriomastix was one of the ‘musty fopperies of antiquity’ with which we learn from Jack Drum’s Entertainment, v. 112, that the Paul’s boys began. The revision leaves Posthaste untouched, save for the characteristic Marstonian sneer of ‘goosequillian’ (iii. 187). Munday of course was still good sport in 1599. But Chrisoganus is turned from a scientific into a ‘translating’ scholar (ii. 63). I agree with Small that Marston has given him Jonsonian traits, and that he intended to be complimentary rather than the reverse. I do not know that it is necessary to suppose that Jonson misunderstood this and took offence, for the real offence was given by Jack Drum’s Entertainment in the next year. But certainly some of the ‘fustian’ words put in the mouth of Clove in Every Man Out of His Humour, III. i. 177 sqq., later in 1599 come from Histriomastix, and their origin is pointed by the phrase ‘as you may read in Plato’s Histriomastix’. One of the fragments of plays recited by the players contains the lines (ii. 269):

Come Cressida, my Cresset light,

Thy face doth shine both day and night;

Behold behold thy garter blue

Thy knight his valiant elbow wears,

That when he shakes his furious Speare

The foe in shivering fearful sort

May lay him down in death to snort.

I am not convinced with Small that this belongs to the revision, even though it seems discontinuous with the following fragment of a Prodigal Child play. But in any case the hit at Shakespeare, if there really is one, remains unexplained. There is nothing else which points to so early a date as 1599 for his Troilus and Cressida. I note the following parallel from S. Rowlands, The Letting of Humors Blood in the Head-Veine (1600), Sat. iv:

Be thou the Lady Cressit-light to mee,

Sir Trollelolle I will proue to thee.

The Honest Lawyer > 1615

S. R. 1615, Aug. 14. (Taverner). ‘A play called The Honest Lawyer.’ Richard Redmer (Arber, iii. 571). [Assigned by Redmer, apparently at once, to Richard Woodriffe.]

1616. The Honest Lawyer. Acted by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by S. S. George Purslowe for Richard Woodroffe. [Epilogue.]

Edition by J. S. Farmer (1914, S. F.).

A conceivable author is Samuel Sheppard (q.v.), but the absence of extant early work by him makes a definite attribution hazardous.

How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad c. 1602

1602. A pleasant conceited Comedie, Wherein is shewed how a man may chuse a good Wife from a bad. As it hath bene sundry times Acted by the Earle of Worcesters Seruants. For Mathew Law.

1605; 1608; 1614; 1621; 1630; 1634.

Editions: 1824 (for Charles Baldwin), in O. E. D. (1825, i) and Dodsley⁴ (1876–9, ix), and by A. E. H. Swaen (1912, Materialien, xxxv) and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).—Dissertations: C. R. Baskervill, Sources and Analogues of H. (1909, M. L. A. xxiv. 711); J. Q. Adams, Thomas Heywood and H. (1912, E. S. xlv. 30).

The B.M. copy of 1602 (C. 34, b. 53) has the note ‘Written by Ioshua Cooke’ in ink on the title-page. Presumably the author of Greene’s Tu Quoque (q.v.) is meant, with which Swaen, xiii, declares that the play shows ‘absolutely no similarity or point of agreement’. Fleay, i. 289, suggested an ascription to Heywood on the ground of parallelisms with The Wise Woman of Hogsdon, and this case is elaborately and plausibly argued by Swaen and Adams. The date must be before Worcester’s begin to appear in Henslowe’s diary, 17 Aug. 1602. Fleay’s attempt to twist its mentions of a certain ‘Thomas’ in the text (l. 790) into references to Heywood himself and Thomas Blackwood, the actor, is mere childishness.

Impatient Poverty (?)

S. R. 1560, June 10. ‘ ... nyce wanton; impaciens poverte ...’ John King (Arber, i. 128).

1560. A Newe Interlude of Impacyente pouerte newlye Imprynted. John King. [B.M. C. 34, i. 26, from Irish sale of 1906 (cf. Jahrbuch, xliii. 310). Engraved t.p.; on tablet at foot ‘T. R.’ Thomas Petit’s mark after colophon. The t.p. has also ‘Foure men may well and easelye playe thys Interlude’, with an arrangement of the parts.]

N.D. An new enterlude of Impacient pouerte newly Imprynted. [In Mostyn sale (1919). The t.p. has three woodcut figures. There is no imprint, but as the woodcuts are also found in W. Copland’s print of Youth and as King’s copy of Lusty Juventus also passed to Copland (1548–69), he was probably the printer.]

S. R. 1582, Jan. 15. Transfer from Sampson Awdeley to John Charlwood (Arber, ii. 405).

Editions by J. S. Farmer (1907, T. F. T.) and R. B. McKerrow (1911, Materialien, xxxiii).

The play has come to light since the issue of The Mediaeval Stage, and I therefore include it here, although it is pre-Elizabethan. The characters are Peace, Envy, Impatient Poverty (afterwards Prosperity), Conscience, Abundance, Misrule, ‘Collhasarde’, and a Summoner. The drama is a moral, non-controversial, and not even necessarily Protestant in tone. It sets out the mutability of the world and the defects of poverty and prosperity. The scene is a ‘place’, and there are allusions to Newgate and Tyburn. If the T. R. of the title-page is the same whose name is at the end of Nice Wanton, the play is probably not later than the reign of Edward VI; but the Summoner and allusions to penance and courts spiritual suggest an even earlier date. The final address to the ‘Soueraynes’ contains the following stanza:

Let vs pray al to that lorde of great magnificence

To send amonge vs peace rest and vnyte

And Jesu preserue our soueraigne Quene of preclare preeminence

With al her noble consanguynyte

And to sende them grace so the yssue to obtayne

After them to rule this most chrysten realme.

The form of the companion stanzas suggests that the two last lines originally rhymed, and that a line has dropped out before them. Possibly an ending originally meant for Henry VIII and Jane Seymour has been altered with a view to making it appropriate to Elizabeth. The play is offered with other pre-Elizabethan plays by the company in Sir Thomas More, IV. i. 42, and was also in the obsolete library of Captain Cox (Robert Laneham’s Letter, ed. Furnivall, 30).

Jack Drum’s Entertainment. 1600

S. R. 1600, Sept. 8. ‘A booke Called Jack Drum’s enterteynmente. A commedy as yt bathe ben diuerse tymes Acted by the Children of Paules.’ Felix Norton (Arber, iii. 172).

1600, Oct. 23. Transfer from Norton to Richard Oliff (Arber, iii. 175).

1601. Iacke Drums Entertainment: Or the Comedie of Pasquill and Katherine. As it hath bene sundry times plaide by the Children of Powles. For Richard Olive. [Introduction, i.e. Induction.]

1616.... Newly Corrected. W. Stansby for Philip Knight.

1618.... The Actors 12 men, and 4 women. For Nathaniel Fosbrooke.

Editions by R. Simpson (1878, S. of S. ii. 125) and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).

All critics have recognized the style as Marston’s and some of the vocabulary is vomited in Poetaster; cf. Small, 93. The date is fixed to 1600 by allusions to hopes of ‘peace with Spaine’, ‘Kemps morice’, and ‘womens yeare’ (i. 37, 45, 166). There is little doubt that the critical Brabant Senior is Jonson, and that the play is that in which he told Drummond that Marston staged him. The cuckolding of Brabant Senior is based upon a story narrated by Jonson to Drummond (Laing, 21) as one in which he had played the active, not the passive, part. If he had imparted the same story to Marston, he not unnaturally resented the use made of it. The minor identifications suggested by Fleay, ii. 74, have nothing to commend them, except possibly that of Sir Edward Fortune with Edward Alleyn, who was building the Fortune in 1600. Were not this a Paul’s play, one might infer from the closing line,

Our Fortune laughes, and all content abounds,

that it was given at the Fortune. Can the Admiral’s have shared it with Paul’s, as the Chamberlain’s shared Satiromastix? In iv. 37–48 Brabant Senior criticizes three ‘moderne wits’ whom he calls ‘all apes and guls’ and ‘vile imitating spirits’. They are Mellidus, Musus, and Decius. I take them to be Marston, Middleton, and Dekker, all writers for Paul’s; others take Decius for Drayton, to whom Sir John Davies applied the name, and Musus, by a confusion with Musaeus, for Chapman or Daniel. For v. 102–14, which bears on the history of the company, cf. ch. xii (Paul’s).

The Life and Death of Jack Straw > 1593

S. R. 1593, Oct. 23. ‘An enterlude of the lyfe and deathe of Jack Strawe.’ John Danter (Arber, ii. 639).

1593. [Colophon, 1594]. The Life and Death of Iacke Straw, A notable Rebell in England: Who was kild in Smithfield by the Lord Maior of London. John Danter, sold by William Barley.

1604. For Thomas Pavier.

Editions in Dodsley⁴ (1874, v), and by H. Schütt (1901) and J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.).

Fleay, ii. 153, Schütt, and Robertson, 121, all incline to suggest the authorship, whole or in part, of Peele. Schütt would date c. 1588, but the theme is that of T. Nelson’s pageant of 1590–1, for which year a member of Walworth’s company, the Fishmongers, was Lord Mayor. The text of the play is very short, with only four acts.

Jacob and Esau > 1558

S. R. 1557–8. ‘An enterlude vpon the history of Jacobe and Esawe out of the xxvii chapeter of the fyrste boke of Moyses Called genyses.’ Henry Sutton (Arber, i. 77).

1568. A newe mery and wittie Comedie or Enterlude, newely imprinted, treating vpon the Historie of Iacob and Esau, taken out of the xxvij. Chap. of the first booke of Moses, entituled Genesis. Henrie Bynneman.

Editions in Dodsley⁴ (1874, ii), and by J. S. Farmer (1908, T. F. T.).

The play must necessarily, from the date of the S. R. entry, be pre-Elizabethan, and should have been included in Appendix X of The Mediaeval Stage. C. C. Stopes, Hunnis, 265, and in Athenaeum (28 April 1900), claims the authorship for Hunnis; W. Bang has suggested Udall, which seems plausible. The parts of Mido and Abra point to boy-actors.

1 Jeronimo c. 1604

1605. The First Part of Ieronimo. With the Warres of Portugall, and the life and death of Don Andræa. For Thomas Pavier. [Dumbshows.]

Editions by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. i), in Dodsley⁴ (1874, iv), and by F. S. Boas (1901, Works of Kyd).—Dissertations: J. E. Routh, T. Kyd’s Rime Schemes and the Authorship of Soliman and Perseda and 1 J. (1905, M. L. N. xx. 49); A. L. Elmquist, Zur Frage nach dem Verfasser von 1 J. (1909, E. S. xl. 309); A. Seeberger (1909, Archiv für Stenographie, iv. 306); K. Wiehl, Thomas Kyd und die Autorschaft von ... 1 J. (1912, E. S. xliv. 343); B. Neuendorff, Zur Datierung des 1 J. (1914, Jahrbuch, l. 88).

The ascription by Fleay, ii. 27, and Sarrazin to Kyd is rejected on stylistic grounds by R. Fischer, Zur Kunstentwicklung der Englischen Tragödie, 100, with whom Boas and other writers concur. A reference to the jubilee of 1600 (I. i. 25) points to a date at the beginning of the seventeenth century. If so, the play cannot be that revived by Strange’s for Henslowe in Feb. 1592 and given, sometimes under the title of Don Horatio, and sometimes under that of the Comedy of Jeronimo, during a run of, and several times on the night before, the Spanish Tragedy (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 150, 154). It is, moreover, not a comedy. It may, however, be a later version of the same theme, motived by another revival of the Spanish Tragedy by the Admiral’s in 1601–2. If so, it was probably itself due, not to the Admiral’s, but to the Chamberlain’s, and a piracy of their property by the Revels boys explains the jest at ‘Ieronimo in decimo sexto’ in the induction to the 1604 version of Marston’s Malcontent. It must be uncertain whether 1 Jeronimo was the ‘Komödie vom König in Spanien und dem Vice-Roy in Portugall’ given at Dresden in 1626 (Herz, 66, 76).

The Troublesome Reign of King John 1587< >91

1591. The Troublesome Raigne of Iohn King of England, with the discouerie of King Richard Cordelions Base sonne (vulgarly named, The Bastard Fawconbridge): also the death of King Iohn at Swinstead Abbey. As it was (sundry times) publikely acted by the Queenes Maiesties Players, in the honourable Citie of London. For Sampson Clarke. There is a Second part with separate signatures and title-page. The Second part of the troublesome Raigne of King Iohn, conteining the death of Arthur Plantaginet, the landing of Lewes, and the poysning of King Iohn at Swinstead Abbey. As ... London ... 1591. [The text of each part is preceded by lines ‘To the Gentlemen Readers’, and a head-piece, which has the initials W. D.]

1611. The First and Second Part ... As they were (sundry times) lately acted by the Queenes Maiesties Players. Written by W. Sh. Valentine Simmes for John Helme. [The signatures are continuous through both parts.]

1622.... as they were (sundry times) lately acted. Written by W. Shakespeare. Augustine Mathewes for Thomas Dewes.

Editions by G. Steevens (1760, T. P. ii), J. Nichols (1779, Six Old Plays, ii), W. C. Hazlitt (1875, Sh. Libr. v), F. G. Fleay, King John (1878), F. J. Furnivall (1888, Sh. Q), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), F. J. Furnivall and J. Munro (1913, Sh. Classics).—Dissertations: E. Rose, Shakespeare as an Adapter (Macmillan’s Magazine, Nov. 1878); G. C. Moore Smith, Sh.’s K. J. and the T. R. (1901, Furnivall Miscellany, 335); H. D. Sykes, Sidelights on Shakespeare, 99 (1919).

The authorship was assigned by Malone to Marlowe, by Pope to Shakespeare and W. Rowley, by Fleay, ii. 53, and King John, 34, to Greene, Peele, and Lodge, working on a Marlowian plot. Furnivall and Munro accept none of these theories, and the latter suggests a common authorship with the early Leir. Sykes argues strongly for Peele. The lines prefixed to Part I begin

You that with friendly grace of smoothed brow

Have entertained the Scythian Tamburlaine.

They do not claim to be a prologue, and may have been added on publication. The play is not therefore necessarily later than Tamburlaine (c. 1587). But the tone is that of the Armada period. Shakespeare used the play, with which, from the booksellers’ point of view, his King John seems to have been treated as identical.

Judith c. 1595 (?)

[MS.] National Library of Wales, Peniarth (formerly Hengwrt), MS. 508.

G. A. Jones, A Play of Judith (1917, M. L. N. xxxii. 1) describes the MS. which contains the Latin text of the Judithae Constantia of Cornelius Schonaeus, of which a reprint was issued in London in 1595, together with an incomplete English translation in unrhymed verse written as prose, perhaps as a school exercise, in a late sixteenth-century or early seventeenth-century hand.

A Knack to Know an Honest Man. 1594

S. R. 1595, Nov. 26. ‘A booke intituled The most Rare and plesaunt historie of A knack to knowe an honest man.’ Cuthbert Burby (Arber, iii. 54).

1596. A Pleasant Conceited Comedie, called, A knacke to know an honest Man. As it hath beene sundrie times plaied about the Citie of London. For Cuthbert Burby.

Editions by H. De Vocht (1910, M. S. R.) and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).

The play was produced by the Admiral’s on 22 Oct. 1594, and twenty-one performances were given between that date and 3 Nov. 1596 (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 171). The text is confused and probably surreptitious.

A Knack to Know a Knave. 1592

S. R. 1594, Jan. 7. ‘A commedie entitled “a Knack to knowe a knave” newlye sett fourth as it hath sundrye tymes been plaid by Ned. Allen and his Companie with Kemps applauded Merymentes of the menn of Goteham.’ Richard Jones (Arber, ii. 643).

1594. A most pleasant and merie new Comedie, Intituled, A Knacke to knowe a knave. Newlie set foorth, as it hath sundrie tymes bene played by Ed. Allen and his Companie. With Kemps applauded Merrimentes of the men of Goteham, in receiuing the King into Goteham. Richard Jones.

Editions by J. P. Collier (1851, Five Old Plays), in Dodsley⁴ (1874, vi), and by J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.).

Strange’s men produced ‘the Knacke to Knowe a Knave’ on 10 June 1592, and played it seven times to 24 Jan. 1593. Henslowe usually enters it as ‘the cnacke’. Fleay, 100, suggests that the Osric, revived by the Admiral’s men on 3 and 7 Feb. 1597, may also be this play. Both Fleay, ii. 310, and Greg, Henslowe, ii. 156, suggest that Kempe’s ‘merriments’ are to be found in sc. 12, and that of the rest the romantic part may be Peele’s and the moral part Wilson’s. Gayley (R. E. C. i. 422) would like to find in the play the comedy written by Greene and the ‘young Juvenall’, Nashe. The character Cuthbert Cutpurse the Conicatcher is from the pamphlet (cf. s.v. Greene) entered in S. R. on 21 April 1592, and the story of Titus Andronicus is alluded to in F_{2}^v:

As Titus was vnto the Roman Senators,

When he had made a conquest on the Goths.

Leire > 1594

S. R. 1594, May 14. ‘A booke entituled, The moste famous Chronicle historye of Leire kinge of England and his Three Daughters.’ Adam Islip (Arber, ii. 649). [Islip’s name is crossed out, and Edward White’s substituted.]

1605, May 8. ‘A booke called “the Tragecall historie of kinge Leir and his Three Daughters &c”, As it was latelie Acted.’ Simon Stafford (Arber, iii. 289). [Assigned the same day by Stafford with the consent of William Leake to John Wright, ‘provided that Simon Stafford shall haue the printinge of this booke’.]

1605. The True Chronicle History of King Leir, and his three daughters, Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordelia. As it hath bene diuers and sundry times lately acted. Simon Stafford for John Wright.

S. R. 1624, June 29. Transfer of ‘Leire and his daughters’ from Mrs. White to E. Alde (Arber, iv. 120).

Editions by J. Nichols (1779, S. O. P. ii), W. C. Hazlitt (1875, Sh. Libr. ii. 2), W. W. Greg (1907, M. S. R.), S. Lee (1909, Sh. Classics), J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.), R. Fischer (1914, Quellen zu König Lear).—Dissertations: W. Perrett, The Story of King Lear (1904, Palaestra, xxxv); R. A. Law, The Date of King Lear (1906, M. L. A. xxi. 462); H. D. Sykes, Sidelights on Shakespeare, 126 (1919).

The Queen’s and Sussex’s revived ‘kinge leare’ for Henslowe on 6 and 8 April 1594, shortly before the first S. R. entry (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 162). As the play is not named in the Sussex’s repertory of 1593–4, there is a presumption that it belonged to the Queen’s. The authorship is quite obscure. Fleay, 90, assigns it to Lodge and Peele; Fleay, 97, to Lodge and Greene; Fleay, ii. 51, to Lodge and Kyd. Robertson, 176, thinks the claim for Lodge indecisive, and surmises the presence of Greene. Sykes argues for Peele. Lee hints at Rankins. The publishing history is also difficult. The entries of 1605 appear to ignore White’s copyright, although this was still alive in his son’s widow in 1624. Lee suggests that the Stafford-Wright enterprise was due to negotiation between Wright and White, whose apprentice he had been. The play was clearly regarded as distinct from that of Shakespeare, which was entered to N. Butter and J. Busby on 22 Nov. 1607, and it, though based on its predecessor, is far more than a revision of it. It seems a little improbable that Leire should have been revived as late as 1605, and the ‘Tragecall’ and ‘lately acted’ of the title-page, taken by themselves, would point to an attempt by Stafford to palm off the old play as Shakespeare’s. But although 1605 is not an impossible date for Shakespeare’s production, 1606 is on other grounds more probable.

Liberality and Prodigality. 1601

1602. A Pleasant Comedie, Shewing the contention betweene Liberalitie and Prodigalitie. As it was playd before her Maiestie. Simon Stafford for George Vincent. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

Editions by J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.) and W. W. Greg (1913, M. S. R.).

A reference to ‘childish yeeres’ in the prologue points to boy actors. The trial (l. 1261) is for an alleged crime on 4 Feb., 43 Eliz. (1601), and the next court performance after this date was on 22 Feb. 1601 by the Chapel, to which occasion the production may be assigned. Elizabeth could be described as a ‘prince’, so that the use of this term does not bear out Fleay, ii. 323, in assuming a revival of an Edwardian play, but the characters are mainly abstract and the style archaic for the seventeenth century, and it is conceivable that the Prodigality of 1567–8 had been revived.

Locrine c. 1591

S. R. 1594, July 20. ‘The lamentable Tragedie of Locrine, the eldest sonne of Kinge Brutus, discoursinge the warres of the Brittans, &c.’ Thomas Creede (Arber, ii. 656).

1595. The Lamentable Tragedie of Locrine, the eldest sonne of King Brutus, discoursing the warres of the Britaines, and Hunnes, with their discomfiture: The Britaines victorie with their Accidents, and the death of Albanact. No lesse pleasant then profitable. Newly set foorth, ouerseene and corrected, By W. S. Thomas Creede. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

1664; 1685. [F₃; F₄ of Shakespeare.]

Editions of 1734 (J. Tonson), 1734 (R. Walker), and by R. B. McKerrow (1908, M. S. R.), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), and in Sh. Apocrypha.—Dissertations: R. Brotanek (1900, Anglia-Beiblatt, xi. 202); C. Crawford, Edmund Spenser, L. and Selimus (1901, 9 N. Q. vii. 61; Collectanea, i. 47); W. S. Gaud, The Authorship of L. (1904, M. P. i. 409); T. Erbe, Die L.-Sage (1904); J. M. Robertson, Did Sh. Write T. A.? (1905); E. Köppel, L. und Selimus (1905, Jahrbuch, xli. 193); A. Neubner, König Lokrin. Deutsche Übersetzung mit literar-historischer Einleitung (1908); F. G. Hubbard (MS. cited by J. W. Cunliffe in C. H. v. 84); C. A. Harper, L. and the Faerie Queene (1913, M.L.R. viii. 369).

The interpretation of the W. S. of the title-page in F₃ of 1664 as indicating Shakespeare may be accurate, but does not suggest anything more than revision for a revival, or perhaps only for the press. Some revision is proved by the allusion in the epilogue to Elizabeth,

That eight and thirtie yeares the scepter swayd,

an allusion which was not chronologically accurate until the close of the thirty-eighth regnal year on 16 Nov. 1596, after the play was in print, and could hardly have been made before the beginning of that year on 17 Nov. 1595, after it had been entered in S. R. As to the original author, one is bound to be sceptical of the unconfirmed notice by J. P. Collier (Bibliographical Account, i. 95) of an ‘inscription on an existing copy of the play ... assigning the authorship of it to Charles Tylney’. This, says Collier, ‘is the handwriting of Sir George Buck. He adds the information that he himself had written the dumb shows by which it was illustrated, and that it was originally called Elstrild’. Charles Tilney was a cousin of the Master of the Revels, and was executed for complicity in the Babington plot in 1586 (Camden, transl. 303). The statement, if true, would give an early date to the play, which the dumb shows and other ‘Senecan’ characteristics have been supposed to confirm. Fleay, ii. 321, boldly conjectures that the epilogue originally referred to ‘eight and twentie yeares’, and that the play was ‘by’ in the sense of ‘about’, Tilney, supposing the moral drawn against ‘ciuill discord’ instigated by ‘priuate amours’ to point at Mary of Scots. Recent investigations, however, concerning the relations of the play to Spenser on the one hand, and to Selimus (q.v.) on the other, suggest a date not earlier and not much later than 1591, either for the original composition of the play, or for a very substantial revision of it. Most of the points are well summed up by Cunliffe in C. H. v. 84. Locrine may borrow historical facts from the Faerie Queene (1590); it does not borrow phrases from it. It does, however, borrow phrases and whole lines, with more than Elizabethan plagiarism, from Spenser’s Complaints (1591). There is also an apparent loan from Wilmot’s Tancred and Gismund (1591). Some of the Complaints passages are also borrowed by Selimus, which makes similar booty both of Locrine itself and of the Faerie Queene. I agree with Cunliffe that the evidence is clearly in favour of Selimus being the later of the two plays, but am not so certain that the second borrowing of the Complaints passages tells against a common authorship of the two. It would be so, ordinarily, but here we have to do with an abnormal plagiarist. Whoever the author, he belongs to the school of the university wits. Marlowe is preferred by Malone, Peele by Fleay, Ward, Gaud, and for all but the comic scenes by Hopkinson, Greene by Brooke, Peele and Greene by Robertson.

The London Prodigal. 1603 < > 05

1605. The London Prodigall. As it was plaide by the Kings Maiesties seruants. By William Shakespeare. T. C. for Nathaniel Butter.

1664; 1685. [F₃; F₄ of Shakespeare.]

Editions in 1709, 1734 (J. Tonson), 1734 (R. Walker), by J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.), and in Sh. Apocrypha.

Shakespeare’s authorship is accepted by few modern critics. An exception is Hopkinson. Fleay, Shakespeare, 299; B. C. i. 152, thinks that he may have ‘plotted’ the play, but that the writer is the same as that of Thomas Lord Cromwell, whom he believes to be Drayton. Perhaps he is right in regarding an allusion to service ‘under the king’ (II. i. 16) as pointing to a Jacobean date. Brooke suggests Marston or Dekker. A play ‘von einem ungehorsamen Khauffmanns Sohn’ appears in Anglo-German repertories of 1604 and 1606 (Herz, 65, 94).

Look About You. 1599 (?)

1600. A Pleasant Commodie, Called Looke about you. As it was lately played by the right honourable the Lord High Admirall his seruaunts. For William Ferbrand.

Editions in Dodsley⁴ (1874, vii), and by J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.) and W. W. Greg (1913, M. S. R.).

At the end of the play Gloucester proposes to fight the Saracens in Portugal, and as Anthony Wadeson (q.v.) was writing The Honourable Life of the Humorous Earl of Gloster with his Conquest of Portugal in June or July 1601, it has been suggested by Fleay, ii. 267, and Greg, Henslowe, ii. 204, that Wadeson was also the author of Look About You. The play ought itself to appear somewhere in Henslowe’s diary, and Fleay may be right in identifying it with the Bear a Brain of 1599, although the only recorded payment for that play was not to Wadeson, but to Dekker. There are reminiscences of R.J. II. iv. 42; III. v. 221 in l. 2329, and of 1 Hen. IV, II. iv. 295 in l. 2426.

The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune. 1582 (?)

1589. The Rare Triumphs of Loue and Fortune. Plaide before the Queenes most excellent Maiestie: wherein are many fine Conceites with great delight. E. A. for Edward White.

Editions by J. P. Collier (1851, Roxb. Club) and in Dodsley⁴ (1874, vi).

Fleay, ii. 26, assigns the play to Kyd on account of the similarity of the plot to that of Soliman and Perseda, but this is hardly convincing. On 30 Dec. 1582 Derby’s players performed A History of Love and Fortune at court, for which a city and battlement were provided by the Revels office. If the two plays were identical, as dates and style make not improbable, the city presumably served as a background for the scenes at court, while the battlement was used for the presenters Venus and Fortune, who are said in Act I to be ‘set sunning like a crow in a gutter’.

Love Feigned and Unfeigned (?)

[MS.] On first and last leaves (sig. a 1 and ii. 8 of a copy (Brit. Mus. IB. 2172) of Johannes Herolt, Sermones Discipuli (1492).

Edition by A. Esdaile (1908, M. S. C. i. 17).—Dissertation: E. B. Daw, L. F. and U. and the English Anabaptists (1917, M. L. A. xxxii. 267).

The text is a fragment, but there may have been more, as the original fly-leaves and end papers of the volume are gone. Sir G. F. Warner thinks the hand ‘quite early seventeenth century’. The corrections in the same hand are such as rather to suggest an original composition, but may also be those of an expert copyist. Miss Daw thinks that the date of composition was in the seventeenth century, and that the play represents ideas belonging to (a) the Anabaptists and (b) the Family of Love, both of which were then active. She even suggests the possible authorship of the controversialist Edmond Jessop. Personally, I find it difficult to assign to the seventeenth century a moral written precisely in the vein of the middle of the sixteenth century, even to the notes (2, 69, 103) of action ‘in place’ (cf. ch. xix), and a phrase (76),

Why stare ye at me thus I wene ye be come to se a play,

closely parallel to Wit and Wisdom, 12, which is probably pre-Elizabethan. The Jacobean activity of Anabaptism and Familism only revived movements which had been familiar in England from Edwardian times, were particularly vigorous in 1575, and had apparently died down during the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign; cf. for Anabaptists C. Burrage, The Early English Dissenters (1912), and for Familists s.v. Middleton, Family of Love.

The Maid’s Metamorphosis. 1600

S. R. 1600, July 24 (Hartwell). ‘Two plaies or thinges thone called the maides metamorphosis thother gyve a man luck and throw him into the Sea.’ Richard Oliffe (Arber, iii. 168).

1600. The Maydes Metamorphosis. As it hath beene sundrie times Acted by the Children of Powles. Thomas Creede for Richard Olive. [Prologue.]

Editions by A. H. Bullen (1882, O. E. P. i), R. W. Bond (1902, Lyly, iii. 341), and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).

Archer’s play list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, lxxxvi) started an ascription to Lyly, which was probably suggested by the similarity of name to Love’s Metamorphosis. Daniel, with Lyly as reviser, is substituted by Fleay, ii. 324; Day by Gosse and Bullen; Day, with Lyly as reviser, by Bond. A limit of date is given by the reopening of Paul’s in 1599, and IV. i. 157 points to the ‘leape yeare’ 1600. Fleay thinks that the play was performed at Anne Russell’s wedding on 16 June 1600 (cf. ch. V), but, though ‘three or foure Muses’ dance at the end of the play, there is no indication of a mask, while the accounts of the wedding say nothing of a play.

The Marriage of Wit and Science > 1570

S. R. 1569–70. ‘A play intituled the maryage of Wytt and Scyence.’ Thomas Marsh (Arber, i. 399).

N.D. A new and Pleasant enterlude intituled the mariage of Witte and Science. Thomas Marsh.

Editions in Dodsley⁴ (1874, ii) and by J. S. Farmer (1909, T. F. T.).

An allegorical moral, indebted to John Redford’s Wit and Science (Med. Stage, ii. 454). Fleay, 64; ii. 288, 294, proposes to identify this with the Wit and Will played at court in 1567–8 (cf. App. B), as Will is a character.

Meleager (?)

B. Dobell, in Athenaeum for 14 Sept. 1901, described a MS. in his possession with the title A Register of all the Noble Men of England sithence the Conquest Created. The date of compilation is probably 1570–90. On f. 3 is the argument in English of a play headed:

Children of Paules Play.

Publij Ovidij Nasonis Meleager.

Presumably the play was in English also. It was classical in manner with five acts, a chorus, and dumb-shows. Act I opened with a dumb-show before Melpomene of the Fates, Althea and the burning brand. It seems distinct from the Meleager of W. Gager (q.v.).

The Merry Devil of Edmonton c. 1603

S. R. 1607, Oct. 22 (Buck). ‘A Plaie called the Merry Devill of Edmonton.’ Arthur Johnson (Arber, iii. 362). [The Life and Death of the Merry Devil of Edmonton, entered 5 April 1608, is a pamphlet by T. B.]

1608. The Merry Devill of Edmonton. As it hath beene sundry times Acted, by his Maiesties Seruants, at the Globe, on the banke-side. Henry Ballard for Arthur Johnson. [Prologue; Induction.]

1612; 1617; 1626; 1631.

S. R. 1653, Sept. 9. ‘The merry devil of Edmonton, by W^m: Shakespeare.’ H. Moseley (Eyre, i. 429).

1655. For William Gilbertson.

Editions in Dodsley (1875, x), and by H. Walker (1897, T. D.), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), J. M. Manly (1913, R. E. C. ii), and in collections of Sh. Apocrypha.

Moseley’s attribution was repeated in the play lists of Archer in 1656 and Kirkman in 1661 (Greg, Masques, lxxxix), and the play was bound with Mucedorus and Fair Em as ‘Shakespeare, vol. i’ in Charles II’s library. The attempt of Fleay, ii. 313 (cf. his Shakespeare, 294), to show that Sir John the priest was originally called Oldcastle and gave a name to the play is too far-fetched, but it leads him to support a tradition originally based on a note by Coxeter (Dodsley², v. 247) that the author was Drayton. He puts it in 1597, apparently because Jessica calls Lancelot a ‘merry devil’ in M. V. II. iii. 2. But the Host is pretty clearly copied from him of the Merry Wives (c. 1599), and allusions to the king’s hunting (IV. i. 158, 186), although perhaps merely part of the historic action, might also have been topical under James I. The play existed by 1604, when it is mentioned in T. M.’s Black Book (Bullen, Middleton, viii. 36). Jonson calls it ‘your dear delight’ in the prologue to The Devil is an Ass (1616), and it was revived at court on 3 May 1618 (Cunningham, xlv).

Minds. 1575 <

N.D. Comoedia. A worke in ryme, contayning an Enterlude of Myndes, witnessing the Mans Fall from God and Christ. Set forth by H. N. and by him newly perused and amended. Translated out of Base-Almayns into English. [No imprint or colophon.] [Preface to the Reader; Prologue in dialogue.]

This is a translation of the Low German Comoedia: Ein Gedicht des Spels van Sinnen, anno 1575 of Henrick Niklaes, the founder of the mystical sect known as the Family of Love (cf. s.v. Middleton).

Misogonus. 1560 < > 77

[MS.] In collection of the Duke of Devonshire. [By two hands, of which one is only responsible for the t.p. and some corrections in the text. The t.p. has the heading ‘A mery and ρ ... Misogonus’, followed by the names of the speakers and ‘Laurentius Bariωna Ketthering die 20 Novembris Anno 1577’. The text, which is apparently imperfect, stopping in iv. 4, is probably all in one other hand, together with a prologue, at the end of which is ‘Thomas Rychardes’. The inscriptions ‘Anthony Rice’ on the title-page, ‘Thomas Warde Barfold 1577’ on the prologue-page, and ‘W. Wyll[~m]’ and ‘John York Jesu’ in margins of the text, are all in later hands, some of them not of the sixteenth century.]

Editions by A. Brandl (1898, Q. W. D.), J. S. Farmer (1906), and R. W. Bond (1911, E. P. I.).—Dissertation: G. L. Kittredge, The M. and Laurence Johnson (1901, J. G. P. iii. 335).

Brandl, following Collier, ii. 368, 378, dates the play in 1560, on the ground of an allusion in IV. i. 131 to ‘the rising rection ith north’, i.e. the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536, as twenty-four years before the time of action, but it is not quite clear that the rambling dialogue of rustics, in which the passage occurs, justifies the interpretation put upon it; nor is the allusion in III. ii. 3 to the weathercock of Paul’s, set up in 1553 and destroyed in 1561, any more conclusive, as the phrase may have become proverbial. The style might be either of c. 1560 or, in a provincial play, of c. 1577, or, as Bond suggests, a reviser of c. 1577 might have revised a text of ten or twelve years earlier. For author, Fleay, 16, 58, 60, taking the piece to be that disliked at court on 31 Dec. 1559, offered Richard Edwardes, and is followed by Wallace, i. III. There is nothing to suggest that the play was ever performed at court at all. It seems more natural to look for him, either in the Thomas Richards or in the Laurence Barjona of the MS. Conceivably Richards might be the T. R. whose initials appear on the prints of Impatient Poverty and Nice Wanton (cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 460) in 1560. Barjona might be the name of a converted Jew. But Kittredge regards it as an anagram of Johnson, and points out that a Laurence Johnson matriculated at Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1570, and took his B.A. in 1574 and his M.A. in 1577, while a Thomas Richards of Trinity took his B.A. in 1571, and a Thomas Ward of Jesus in 1580. A reference to Cambridge learning (III. iii. 74) does not, of course, go far to prove Cambridge authorship. Anyway, the Barjona of the title-page is probably the ‘Laur. Bariona’ who signed, also from Kettering, the epistle to a book called Cometographia on 20 Jan. 1579. It is the work of an Anglican; not therefore of the Laurence Johnson, who was an Oxford Jesuit. I can add a few facts. A Laurence Jonson, with one Chr. Balam and George Haysyll of Cambridge, made a complaint through Lord North to the queen against the Bishop of Ely in Dec. 1575 (S. P. D. Eliz. cv. 88). This is interesting, because George Haysell of Wisbech was apparently one of Worcester’s players (cf. ch. xiii) in 1583. There is also a Laurence Johnson who on 12 June 1572 wrote to Lord Burghley about his service in the Mint (S. P. D. Eliz. lxxxviii. 17); possibly the same of whom Burghley wrote to his ‘brother’ William Herlle on 3 April 1575, that he could do nothing for him (S. P. D. Eliz. ciii. 24). Finally a Laurence Johnson engraved plates in 1603 (D. N. B.).

Sir Thomas More c. 1596

[MS.] B.M. Harleian MS. 7368. [The wrapper is endorsed, ‘The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore’, and is in part composed of a vellum leaf also used for that of Munday’s John a Kent and John a Cumber. The character of the damp stains on the two MSS. shows that they must for some time have lain together. Two passages of the original text have disappeared, and six passages have been inserted, on fresh leaves or slips, to replace these and other cancelled matter. One of these leaves appears to have been misplaced. Greg finds seven distinct hands: (a) the writer of the original text, whom he has now identified (M. L. R. viii. 89) with Munday; (b) five contributors to the insertions, of whom one appears also to have acted as a playhouse corrector, another (writing 30 lines) seems clearly to be Dekker, and a third (writing 148 lines) has been taken (v. infra) for Shakespeare; (c) the Master of the Revels, Edmund Tilney, who has given some directions as censor, of which the most important, at the beginning, runs: ‘Leaue out the insurrection wholy & the Cause ther off & begin with S^r Tho: Moore att the mayors sessions with a reportt afterwardes off his good service don being Shriue off London vppon a mutiny Agaynst the Lumbardes only by A shortt reporte & nott otherwise att your own perrilles E. Tyllney’. Whether Greg is right in calling this a ‘conditional licence’ I am not sure, but he corrects earlier writers by pointing out that the extant insertions do not carry out Tilney’s instructions, and were probably made before the play reached him. Although therefore the appearance of an actor’s name in a s.d. suggests that the play was cast for performance, it is not likely that it was actually performed, at any rate in its present state.]

Editions by A. Dyce (1844, Sh. Soc.), A. F. Hopkinson (1902), C. F. Tucker Brooke (1908, Sh. Apocrypha), J. S. Farmer (1910, photo-facsimile in T. F. S.), and W. W. Greg (1911, M. S. R.).—Dissertations: R. Simpson, Are there any extant MSS. in Sh.’s Handwriting? (1871, 4 N. Q. viii. 1); J. Spedding, Sh.’s Handwriting (1872, 4 N. Q. x. 227), On a Question concerning a Supposed Specimen of Sh.’s Handwriting (1879, Reviews and Discussions); B. Nicholson, The Plays of S. T. M. and Hamlet (1884, 6 N. Q. x. 423); C. R. Baskervill, Some Parallels to Bartholomew Fair (1908, M. P. vi. 109); W. W. Greg, Autograph Plays by A. Munday (1913, M. L. R. viii. 89); L. L. Schücking, Das Datum der pseudo-Sh. S. T. M. (1913, E. S. xlvi. 228); E. M. Thompson, Shakespeare’s Handwriting (1916) and The Autograph MSS. of Anthony Munday (1919, Bibl. Soc. Trans. xiv. 325); P. Simpson, The Play of S. T. M. and Sh.’s Hand in It (1917, 3 Library, viii. 79); J. D. Wilson and others, Sh.’s Hand in the Play of S. T. M. (1919, T. L. S. 24 April onwards); W. J. Lawrence and others, Was S.T.M. ever Acted? (1920, T.L.S. 1 July onwards); M. A. Bayfield and E. M. Thompson, Shakespeare’s Handwriting (1921, T. L. S. 30 June, 4 Aug.).

The play has been dated c. 1586 and c. 1596, in both of which years there were disturbances with some analogy to the ‘Ill May Day’ of the plot, and an early date has been regarded as favoured by mentions (ll. 1006, 1148) of Oagle a wigmaker, since men of the name were serving the Revels Office in this and similar capacities from 1571 to 1585 (Feuillerat, Eliz., passim), and by the appearance as a messenger in a stage-direction (Greg, p. 89) of T. Goodal, an actor traceable with Berkeley’s men in 1581 and with the Admiral’s or Strange’s in the plot of The Seven Deadly Sins, c. 1590–1. But Goodal may have acted much longer, and the Admiral’s men had business relations with a ‘Father Ogell’ in Feb. 1600 (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 300). Greg, after comparing Munday’s script in the play with other and better datable examples of that script, inclines to put it ‘between 1596 and 1602, say 1598–1600’, and Sir E. M. Thompson, on a further review of the same evidence, suggests 1592 or 1593. This, however, involves putting the MS. of John a Kent and John a Cumber (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Munday) back to 1590, which, although palaeographically possible, is inconsistent with evidence pointing to its production by the Admiral’s in 1594. Certain parallels with Julius Caesar and Hamlet might suggest the latter part of the possible period, although the parallel suggested by Schücking with Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed is too slight to bear out his date of 1605–8, and the attempt of Fleay (ii. 312; Shakespeare, 292) to identify the play with the Abuses of Paul’s in 1606 is guess-work. Jonson’s apparent debt to S. T. M. in Bartholomew Fair, pointed out by Baskervill, is also in favour of a latish date. Obviously the mention of ‘Mason among the Kings players’ (l. 1151) does not prove a Jacobean date, as Henry VIII had players. No actor of the name in either reign is known, although an Alexander Mason was marshal of the royal minstrels in 1494 (Collier, i. 45). Account must be taken of the support given by Sir E. M. Thompson to the theory of R. Simpson and Spedding that three of the added pages are in the hand of Shakespeare. This is based on a minute comparison with the few undoubted fragments, almost entirely signatures, of Shakespeare’s writing. Both hands use ‘the native English script’ and are ‘of an ordinary type’, without marked individual character ‘to any great extent’, although slight peculiarities, such as ‘the use of the fine upstroke as an ornamental adjunct to certain letters’, are common to them. The demonstration would have been more convincing had the hands been less ‘ordinary’, but Sir E. M. Thompson’s authority is great, and some support is furnished by P. Simpson from the character of the punctuation in the addition, and by J. D. Wilson from some orthographic resemblances to the more reliable Shakespearian quartos. Sir E. M. Thompson’s views are criticized in G. Greenwood, Shakespeare’s Handwriting (1920). If Shakespeare was the author, the analogies between the matter of the addition and the Jack Cade scenes of Henry VI would be in favour of an earlier date, if that were possible, than 1596 or even 1594, although I should not like to be committed to the view that Shakespeare might not have scribbled the fragment at any time in the sixteenth century. On a balance of the mixed literary and palaeographical evidence before us, the safest guess seems to be 1596. As to the rest of the authorship, Dr. Greg’s discoveries point to Munday, with some help from Dekker. Fleay’s argument (Sh. 292) for Lodge and Drayton is flimsy. If Shakespeare had a share, the company was probably the Chamberlain’s. Goodal’s name proves nothing as to this.

Mucedorus > 1598; 1611

1598. A most pleasant Comedie of Mucedorus, the Kings sonne of Valentia and Amadine the Kings daughter of Arragon, with the merie conceites of Mouse. Newly set foorth, as it hath bin sundrie times plaide in the honorable Cittie of London. Very delectable and full of mirth. For William Jones. [Arrangement of parts for eight actors; Induction.]

1606. For William Jones.

1610.... Amplified with new additions, as it was acted before the Kings Maiestie at Whitehall on Shroue-sunday night. By his Highness Seruants vsually playing at the Globe. Very delectable, and full of conceited Mirth. For William Jones. [Arrangement of parts for ten actors; Prologue. Collier professes to follow a print of 1609 with this altered title, otherwise unknown; cf. Greg in Jahrbuch, xl. 104.]

1611; 1613; 1615.

S. R. 1618, Sept. 17. Transfer by Sarah, widow of William Jones, to John Wright (Arber, iii. 632).

1618; 1619; 1621; 1626; N.D. [1629] fragm.; 1631; 1634; 1639; N.D. [1639 < > 63]; 1663; 1668.

Editions by J. P. Collier (1824) and with Shakespeare (1878), N. Delius (1874), in Dodsley⁴, vii (1874), Warnke-Proescholdt (1878), J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.), and with Sh. Apocrypha.—Dissertations: R. Simpson, On Some Plays Attributed to Sh. (1875, N. S. S. Trans. 155); W. Wagner, Ueber und zu M. (1876, Jahrbuch, xi. 59), Neue Conjecturen zum M. (1879, Jahrbuch, xiv. 274); K. Elze, Noten und Conjecturen (1878, Jahrbuch, xiii. 45), Nachträgliche Bemerkungen zu M. (1880, Jahrbuch, xv. 339), Last Notes on M. (1883, E. S. vi. 217); E. Soffé, Ist M. ein Schauspiel Sh.’s? (1887, Brünn Progr.); W. W. Greg, On the Editions of M. (1904, Jahrbuch, xl. 95).

It is difficult to date with precision the revival for which the additions printed in the Q. of 1610 (1610/1?) were written, especially as the genuineness of the Q. of 1609, in which Collier stated that he found these additions, cannot be verified, since the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber do not specify the exact days on which the numerous appearances of the King’s men at court during the winters of 1608–9, 1609–10, and 1610–11 took place. The conjecture of Fleay (ii. 50; Shakespeare, 303) that the additions date from 1606 was largely based on a guess that they appeared in the Q. of 1606, which he had not seen. The added or altered passages are the prologue; i. 1, 2; iv. 1; parts of v. 2; and the final lines of the induction. The prologue wishes James security

From blemisht Traytors, stayn’d with Periurie.

A bear is introduced in i. 2, as in W. T. iii. 3, and I venture to conjecture that both episodes were inspired by the successful bear in Jonson’s Mask of Oberon on 1 Jan. 1611, to which there is also an allusion in his Love Restored of 6 Jan. 1612. If so, the revival must have been on Shrove Sunday, 3 Feb. 1611. In I. i. 50 Anselmo says that he was a shepherd in ‘Lord Iulios Maske’. Oberon, however, had no shepherds proper, only satyrs and sylvans. The induction is altered to compliment James instead of Elizabeth, and the following dialogue between Comedie and Envie is introduced:

Envie.Comedie, thou art a shallow Goose;

Ile ouerthrow thee in thine owne intent,

And make thy fall my Comick merriment.

Comedie. Thy pollicie wants grauitie; thou art

Too weake. Speake, Fiend, as how?

Env.Why, thus:

From my foule Studie will I hoyst a Wretch,

A leane and hungry Meager Canniball,

Whose iawes swell to his eyes with chawing Malice:

And him Ile make a Poet.

Com.What’s that to th’ purpose?

Env. This scrambling Rauen, with his needie Beard,

Will I whet on to write a Comedie,

Wherein shall be compos’d darke sentences,

Pleasing to factious braines:

And euery other where place me a Iest,

Whose high abuse shall more torment then blowes:

Then I my selfe (quicker then Lightning)

Will flie me to a puisant Magistrate,

And waighting with a Trencher at his backe,

In midst of iollitie, rehearse those gaules,

(With some additions)

So lately vented in your Theator.

He, vpon this, cannot but make complaint,

To your great danger, or at least restraint.

Com. Ha, ha, ha! I laugh to hear thy folly;

This is a trap for Boyes, not Men, nor such,

Especially desertfull in their doinges,

Whose stay’d discretion rules their purposes.

I and my faction do eschew those vices.

Fleay, with 1606 in his mind, finds here an apology for The Fox, thinking Jonson the raven and Eastward Hoe the ‘trap for Boyes’. In 1610 there had been no trouble about any London play, although one in Lincolnshire had given offence. But a careful reading of the passage will show that it is no apology at all, but a boast, and an attack upon informers against the stage.

As the play had been in print since 1598, it must not be assumed that, because the King’s revived it in 1610–11, it was originally a Chamberlain’s play. It may have belonged to the Queen’s or some other extinct company. Evidently it was a popular play, as the number of editions shows. K. B. P. ind. 91 tells us that Ralph has ‘play’d ... Musidorus before the Wardens of our Company’.

The ascription to Shakespeare is due to Archer’s list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, xci) and to the inclusion of the play with Fair Em and The Merry Devil of Edmonton in a volume in Charles II’s library, lettered ‘Shakespeare, vol. i’ (Variorum, ii. 682). It now receives little support, even as regards the added passages. Greene is preferred as the original author by Malone and Hopkinson, Peele by von Friesen, and Lodge by Fleay.

After the suppression of the theatres in 1642, Mucedorus was acted by strolling players in various parts of Oxfordshire. An accident during a performance at Witney on 3 Feb. 1654 is recorded in John Rowe, Tragi-Comoedia. Being a brieff relation of the strange and wonderful hand of God, discovered at Witney in the Comedy acted February the third, where there were some slaine, many hurt and several other remarkable passages (1653/4).

Either Mucedorus or Greene’s Alphonsus (q.v.) may have been the play on a king of Arragon given at Dresden in 1626. It has also been suggested (Herz, 95) that Mucedorus influenced Pieter Hooft’s Dutch pastoral Granida (1605).

Narcissus. 6 Jan. 1603

[MS.] Bodl. MS. 147303 (Rawl. Poet. MS. 212), f. 82^v. ‘A Twelfe Night Merriment. Anno 1602.’ [Porter’s speech ‘at the end of supper’, Wassail Song, Prologue, and Epilogue.]

Edition by M. L. Lee (1893).

The porter’s name is Francis, and from some speeches and a letter composed for him, which appear in the same manuscript, it is clear that he was Francis Clark, who became porter of St. John’s, Oxford, on 8 May 1601, at which house therefore the play was doubtless given. It has borrowings from M. N. D. and 1 Hen. IV.

New Custom. 1558 < > 73

1573. A new Enterlude No less wittie: then pleasant, entituled new Custome, deuised of late, and for diuerse causes nowe set forthe, neuer before this tyme Imprinted. William How for Abraham Veale.

Editions in Dodsley⁴ (1874, iii) and by J. S. Farmer (1908, T. F. T.).

A moral of Protestant controversy, with typical personages, bearing allegorical names, arranged for four actors.

The final prayer is for Elizabeth, and Avarice played in the days of Queen Mary. Fleay, 64; ii. 294, thinks it a revised Edward VI play, on the ground of an allusion to a ‘square caps’ controversy of 1550. But this was still vigorous in 1565 (cf. Parker’s Letters, 240). Fleay also says that the Nugize of Captain Cox’s collection (Laneham, 30) is Mankind (Med. Stage, ii. 438) in which New Gyse is a character. But Mankind was first printed in 1897, and probably this play is the one Laneham had in mind.

Nobody and Somebody > 1606

S. R. 1606, Jan. 8. ‘The picture of No bodye.’ John Trundell (Arber, iii. 308).

1606, March 12 (Wilson). ‘A Booke called no bodie and somme bodie &c.’ John Trundell (Arber, iii. 316).

N.D. No-Body, and Some-Body. With the true Chronicle Historie of Elydure, who was fortunately three seuerall times crowned King of England. The true Coppy thereof, as it hath beene acted by the Queens Maiesties Seruants. For John Trundle. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

Editions by A. Smith (1877), R. Simpson (1878, S. of S. i), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), of the early German translation by F. Bischoff, Niemand und Jemand in Graz im Jahre 1608 (1899, Mitteilungen des historischen Vereins für Steiermark, xlvii. 127), and of Tieck’s translation by J. Bolte (1894, Jahrbuch, xxix. 4).—Dissertation: J. Bolte, Eine Hamburger Aufführung von N. a. S. (1905, Jahrbuch, xli. 188).

The play is probably Jacobean. There is a reference to the unwilling recipients of knighthood (l. 325), and the use of Essex’s nickname for Cobham, Sycophant, as the name of a courtier, must be later than Cobham’s disgrace in 1603. Simpson thought that an allusion to the misuse of the collections for rebuilding Paul’s steeple (l. 754) pointed to an original date c. 1592, when the matter caused a scandal, but the steeple was still unbuilt in James’s reign. Greg, Henslowe, ii. 230, revising a conjecture of Fleay, i. 293, suggests that Albere Galles, written by Heywood and Smith for Worcester’s in Sept. 1602, may be this play, and Henslowe’s title a mistake for Archigallo, one of the characters. The play seems to have reached Germany by 1608. A performance at Graz in that year was probably the occasion of the dedication by ‘Joannes Grün Nob. Anglus’ to the archduke Maximilian of a manuscript German translation, now in the Rein library. To it is attached a coloured drawing of a bearded man in a doublet which hides his breeches, and with a book and chain in his hands. Above is written ‘Nemo’ and ‘Neminis Virtus ubique Laudabilis.’ A version is also in the Anglo-German collection of 1620 (Herz, 66, 112).

Parnassus. 1598–1602 (?)

[MSS.] Bodl. Rawlinson MS. D. 398. ‘The Pilgrimage to Parnassus’, ‘The Returne from Parnassus’. [1 Parnassus with Prologue; 2 Parnassus with Stagekeeper’s speech for Prologue. The cover bears the name of ‘Edmunde Rishton, Lancastrensis’, who took his M.A. from St. John’s, Cambridge, in 1602.]

Halliwell-Phillipps MS. ‘The Returne from Pernassus: or The Scourge of Simony.’ [3 Parnassus, with induction for Prologue, which says, ‘The Pilgrimage to Pernassus, and the returne from Pernassus have stood the honest Stagekeepers in many a Crownes expence for linckes and vizards: ... this last is the last part of the returne from Pernassus’.]

S. R. 1605, Oct. 16 (Gwyn). ‘An Enterlude called The retourne from Pernassus or the scourge of Simony publiquely Acted by the studentes in Sainct Johns College in Cambridg.’ John Wright (Arber, iii. 304).

1606. The Returne from Pernassus: Or The Scourge of Simony. Publiquely acted by the Students in Saint Iohns Colledge in Cambridge. G. Eld, for Iohn Wright. [Two issues. 3 Parnassus only.]

Editions of 3 Parnassus by T. Hawkins (1773, O. E. D. iii), W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. i), in Dodsley⁴ (1874, ix), by E. Arber (1878) and O. Smeaton (1905, T. D.), and of 1, 2, 3 Parnassus by W. D. Macray (1886) and J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.).—Dissertations: B. Corney (1866, 3 N. Q. ix. 387); J. W. Hales, The Pilgrimage to P. (1887, Academy and Macmillan’s Magazine; 1893, Folia Litteraria, 165); W. Lühr, Die drei Cambridger Spiele vom P. in ihren litterarischen Beziehungen (1900, Kiel diss.); E. B. Reed, The College Element in Hamlet (1909, M. P. vi. 453); G. C. Moore Smith, The P. Plays (1915, M. L. R. x. 162).

There are several notes of time and authorship. At the end of 1, which was ‘three daies studie’ (l. 3), the pilgrimage has lasted ‘4 yeares’ (712). Kinsader’s, i.e. Marston’s, Satires and Bastard’s Epigrams, both of 1598, are mentioned (212). The prologue to 2, which is a ‘Christmas toy’ (18), deprecates the former courtesy of ‘our stage’:

Surelie it made our poet a staide man,

Kept his proude necke from baser lambskins weare,

Had like to have made him senior sophister.

He was faine to take his course by Germanie

Ere he could gett a silie poore degree.

Hee never since durst name a peece of cheese,

Thoughe Chessire seems to priviledge his name.

His looke was never sanguine since that daye;

Nere since he laughte to see a mimick playe.

It is now seven years since the scholars started for Parnassus (62). Gullio has been ‘verie latelie in Irelande’ and ‘scapt knightinge’ (878), obviously with Essex in 1599. The Epigrams (1599) of ‘one Weaver fellow’, i.e. John Weever, are alluded to (982). The prologue to 3, also a ‘Christenmas toy’ (30), calls it ‘an old musty show, that hath laine this twelue moneth in the bottome of a coalehouse’ (25). ‘The Authors wit’ (48) has stood ‘hammering upon ... 2 schollers some foure (1606, whole) yeare’ (37). This is the third play of a series (76):

In Scholers fortunes twise forlorne and dead

Twise hath our weary play earst laboured.

Making them Pilgrims to Pernassus hill,

Then penning their return with ruder quill.

Belvedere (1600) is published (179) and Nashe is dead (314). The Dominical letters are C, or for the Annunciation year D and C (1105), and the moon is in ‘the last quarter the 5 day, at 2 of the cloke and 38 minuts in the morning’ (1133). These indications fit Jan. 1602 (Lühr, 15, 105). The siege of Ostend, which extended from 1601 to 1604, has begun (1333). Jonson has ‘brought vp Horace giving the Poets a pill’ (1811), and Kempe is back ‘from dancing the morrice over the Alpes’ (1823). Both events took place in 1601. It is still Elizabeth’s reign (1141).

A quite clear conclusion as to date is not possible. The calendar references, the four years of hammering (in 3), and the probability that the writer would try to have his allusions to literary events up to date, suggest performances at the Christmases of 1598–9, 1599–1600, and 1601–2. This allows for a twelve-months’ delay, followed by a good deal of revision, in the performance of 3. On the other hand, the difference between four (in 1) and seven (in 2) years of pilgrimage points to 1598–9, 1601–2, and 1602–3. On the whole, I lean to the first alternative.

So far as we know, the association of Kempe with the Chamberlain’s men was out of date either in 1601 or 1602; conceivably he returned to the company for a while in 1601, but he was certainly of Worcester’s in 1602.

Moore Smith thinks that the ‘ruder quill’ of the prologue to 3 implies that the author of 2 and 3 was distinct from the author of 1. But the same prologue speaks clearly of a single author. Hales took the account of his troubles in getting his degree literally, and pointed out that foreign students at German universities were called ‘Käsebettler’ and ‘Käsejäger’. Moore Smith doubts, and thinks the degree may have been given at Cambridge by the influence of William Holland, senior fellow of St. John’s, and his name glanced at in ‘Germanie’. The absence alike of matriculation books and college admission registers for the period makes identification difficult. Corney found a copy of the print of 3 with the inscription ‘To my Lovinge Smallocke J. D.’, which he thought in the same hand as the Lansdowne MS. of John Day’s Peregrinatio Scholastica. Bullen was inclined to support Day’s authorship on internal grounds, but Day was a Caius man, whose university career closed in disgrace, and is not very likely to have written plays for St. John’s some years later. And it is but a slight connexion with Cheshire that ‘dey’ means ‘dairy’ in the dialect of that county. Cheshire ought to be our clue. Charles Chester was not, so far as I know, a writer. Hales seems to have thought that the theatrical Beestons of London may have been connected with the Cheshire family of that name. There was a Cheshire foundation at St. John’s, and Moore Smith cites a suggestion that the author may have been William Dodd, a Cheshire man, who became Scholar of St. John’s in 1597, B.A. in 1599, and Fellow in 1602. The ‘priviledge’ reminds me of the traditional jurisdiction of the Dutton family over minstrelsy in Cheshire (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 259), but I do not know whether any Dutton can be traced at St. John’s.

In i. 2 of 3 Judicio is exercising the occupation of a ‘corrector of the presse’, apparently in the employment of a particular printing-house, not of the licensing authorities. The house would be Danter’s, who is himself introduced in i. 3 bargaining with Ingenioso to give him 40s. for a pamphlet. In iv. 3 Burbage and Kempe appear, and here is the famous passage in which Kempe says:

‘Few of the vniuersity men pen plaies well, they smell too much of that writer Ouid, and that writer Metamorphosis, and talke too much of Proserpina & Iuppiter. Why heres our fellow Shakespeare puts them all downe, I and Ben Ionson too. O that Ben Ionson is a pestilent fellow, he brought vp Horace giuing the Poets a pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath giuen him a purge that made him beray his credit.’

Fleay, Shakespeare, 221, suggests that the ‘purge’ was the description of Ajax in Troilus and Cressida, I. ii. 15, and is supported by Small, 167. If so, it was very irrelevant to its setting. The purge ought to be Satiromastix, and though there is nothing to indicate that Shakespeare had any responsibility for Satiromastix, it is just conceivable that a Cambridge man, writing before the play was assigned to Dekker in print, may have thought that he had. The allusion is clearly to Shakespeare as a writer, or one might have thought that he acted Horace-Jonson in Satiromastix.

Especially in 3, the writer is much occupied with contemporary literature, but this does not justify the slap-dash attempt of Fleay, ii. 347, to identify nearly all his characters with individual literary men. They are, of course, not individuals, but types, and types of university men. The most that can be said is that there may be something of Marston in Furor Poeticus, and a good deal of Nashe, with probably also a little of Greene, in Ingenioso, who ultimately takes flight, with Furor and Phantasma, to the Isle of Dogs (v. 3, 4):

There where the blattant beast doth rule and raigne

Renting the credit of whom ere he please.

Il Pastor Fido > 1601

S. R. 1601, Sept. 16 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called the faythfull Shepheard’. Waterson (Arber, iii. 192).

1602. Il Pastor Fido: Or The faithfull Shepheard. Translated out of Italian into English. For Simon Waterson. [Sonnets by S. Daniel and the Translator to Sir Edward Dymocke; Epistle to the same, dated 31 Dec. 1601, and signed ‘Simon Waterson’.]

1633. For John Waterson. [Epistle by John Waterson to Charles Dymock.]

1633. Augustine Matthewes for William Sheares. [Another issue.]

The preliminary matter of 1602 and 1633 is shown by Greg, Pastoral, 242, to point to a kinsman, but not the son, of Sir Edward Dymocke as the translator. He may be a John Dymmocke, to whom Archer’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, xcvi) assigns in error The Faithful Shepherdess. The translation is from G. Battista Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido (1590). For a Latin translation see App. L.

The Pedlar’s Prophecy > 1594

S. R. 1594, May 13. ‘A plea booke intituled the Pedlers Prophesie.’ Thomas Creede (Arber, ii. 649).

1595. The Pedlers Prophecie. Thomas Creede, sold by William Barley. [Prologue.]

Editions by J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.) and W. W. Greg (1914, M. S. R.).

The analogies of title and date of publication to The Cobler’s Prophecy have led Fleay, ii. 283, and others to ascribe the authorship to Wilson. To me the play reads more like a belated piece of c. 1560–70.

Pericles c. 1607–8

See Shakespeare (ch. xxiii), except in relation to whose work the play can hardly be discussed.

Philotus > 1603

1603. Ane verie excellent and delectabill Treatise intitulit Philotus. Quhairin we may persaue the greit inconveniences that fallis out in the Mariage betwene age and zouth. Robert Charteris, Edinburgh. [At end are verses beginning ‘What if a day or a month or a zeere’, possibly Campion’s; cf. Bullen, Campion (1903), 270.]

1612. A verie excellent and delectable Comedie.... Andro Hart, Edinburgh.

Editions by J. Pinkerton (1792, Scottish Poems, iii) and for Bannatyne Club (1835).

This has been ascribed to Robert Sempill (1530?-95), but merely because his play before the Regent of Scotland on 17 June 1568 (Diary of Robert Birrel in Dalyell, Fragments of Scottish History, 14) is not otherwise known. R. Brotanek (1898, Festschrift zum viii allgemeinen deutschen Neuphilologentage in Wien; cf. Jahrbuch, xxxv. 302) suggests Alexander Montgomery.

The Puritan. 1606

S. R. 1607, Aug. 6 (Buck). ‘A book called the comedie of “the Puritan Widowe”.’ George Elde (Arber, iii. 358).

1607. The Puritaine Or The Widdow of Watling-streete. Acted by the Children of Paules. Written by W. S. G. Eld. [Running-title ‘The Puritaine Widdow’.]

1664; 1685. [Parts of F₃ and F₄ of Shakespeare.]

Editions in 1734 (J. Tonson), 1734 (R. Walker), by J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), and in Sh. Apocrypha.

The W. S. of the title-page was interpreted as William Shakespeare in Archer’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, c). The attribution is accepted by no modern critic, and guesses at Wentworth Smith and William Smith rest similarly on nothing but the initials. Internal evidence points to an author who was an Oxford man, and familiar with the plays of Shakespeare. Middleton is preferred by Fleay, ii. 92, Bullen (Middleton, i. lxxix), and others; Marston by Brooke, who dwells on a general resemblance to Eastward Hoe, and seems inclined to think that Jonson, whose Bartholomew Fair the play foreshadows, might also have contributed. The character George Pyeboard is clearly meant for Peele, and the play uses episodes which appear in The Merrie Conceited Jests of George Peele Gent. This, though the extant print is of 1607, was entered in S. R. on 14 Dec. 1605. The Paul’s plays seem to have terminated in 1606, and Fleay points out that an almanac allusion in III. vi. 289 is to Tuesday, 15 July, which fits 1606. The attack on the Puritan ministers was resented in W. Crashaw’s Paul’s Cross sermon of 13 Feb. 1608 (cf. App. C, no. lvi).

The Revenger’s Tragedy. 1606 < > 7

S. R. 1607, Oct. 7 (Buck). ‘Twoo plaies, thone called the revengers tragedie.’ George Eld (Arber, iii. 360).

1607. The Revengers Tragœdie. As it hath beene sundry times Acted, by the Kings Maiesties Seruants. G. Eld.

1608. G. Eld.

Editions in Dodsley^1–4 (1744–1876), and by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. ii) and A. H. Thorndike (1912, M. E. D.).

The authorship is ascribed to ‘Tournour’ in Archer’s list of 1656 and to ‘Cyril Tourneur’ in Kirkman’s lists of 1661 and 1671 (Greg, Masques, cii). Fleay, ii. 264, is sceptical, thinking the work too good for the author of The Atheist’s Tragedy, and inclined to suggest Webster. Oliphant (M. P. viii. 427) thinks Tourneur impossible, in view of the difference of manner, and suggests, only to reject, Middleton. E. E. Stoll, John Webster, 107, 212, points out that both plays are much under the influence of Marston, and that the date may be fixed by the borrowing of the name and character of Dandolo from The Fawn (1606).

The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York > 1592

See The Contention of York and Lancaster.

1 Richard the Second c. 1592 < > 5

[MS.] Egerton MS. 1994. The play forms a separate section of this composite MS. It has no title-page and a few lines at the end are missing. The handwriting is of the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century.

Editions by J. O. Halliwell (1870) and W. Keller (1899, Jahrbuch, xxxv. 3.—Dissertations: F. I. Carpenter, Notes on the Anonymous Richard II (1899, Journ. Germ. Phil. iii. 138); F. S. Boas, A Seventeenth Century Theatrical Repertoire (Library for July 1917).

The play deals with an earlier part of the reign than that of Shakespeare’s Richard II. Keller concludes from a study of parallel passages that it was known to Shakespeare, and that the author knew Marlowe’s Edward II and 2 Henry VI. This gives a date of about 1592–5. Fleay, ii. 320, dates the play about 1591 and assigns it, for no apparent reason, to the Queen’s men. Boas accepts the date 1590–5 on internal evidence, but finds the names ‘George’ and ‘Toby’ in the stage-directions as players of servants’ parts, and supposes the MS. to belong to a seventeenth-century revival and to have been collected with others in Egerton MS. 1994 by the younger William Cartwright, who was one of a late King’s Revels company traceable during 1629–37 (Murray, i. 279). He identifies ‘George’, rather hazardously, with George Stutfield, who belonged to this company, and ‘Toby’ with an Edward Tobye, who is not known to have belonged to it, but is found in 1623 among the Children of the Revels to the late Queen Anne (Murray, i. 361; ii. 273). My difficulty about this is that the relation of 1 Rich. II to Shakespeare’s play is so close as to make it natural to regard it as having become a Chamberlain’s play, and therefore unlikely to get into the hands of either of these Revels companies. Any company might have a George. George Bryan, for example, is a possibility. Toby, no doubt, is a rarer name. Toby Mills died in 1585, but might have left a son or godson of his name.

The True Tragedy of Richard the Third > 1594

S. R. 1594, June 19. ‘An enterlude entituled, The Tragedie of Richard the Third wherein is showen the Death of Edward the FFourthe with the smotheringe of the twoo princes in the Tower, with a lamentable end of Shores wife, and the Coniunction of the twoo houses of Lancaster and Yorke.’ Thomas Creede (Arber, ii. 654).

1594. The True Tragedie of Richard the Third: Wherein is showne the death of Edward the fourth, with the smothering of the two yoong Princes in the Tower: With a lamentable ende of Shore’s wife, an example for all wicked women. And lastly the conjunction and ioyning of the two noble Houses, Lancaster and Yorke. As it was playd by the Queenes Maiesties Players. Thomas Creede, sold by William Barley. [Induction; Epilogue.]

Editions in Variorum (1821), xix. 251, and by B. Field (1844, Sh. Soc.) and W. C. Hazlitt (1875, Sh. Libr.).—Dissertation: G. B. Churchill, Richard the Third up to Shakespeare (1900, Palaestra, x).

Collier, Shakespeare, v. 342, put the play earlier than 1588 on the ground that the epilogue in praise of Elizabeth makes no mention of the Armada. But ‘She hath put proud Antichrist to flight’ may pass for such a mention. Fleay, 64, dates it about 1587: in ii. 28 he says ‘1586 or late in 1585’ as a ballad on the subject was entered on the Stationers’ Register on 15 Aug. 1586; in ii. 315 he prefers 1591, regarding the play as a continuation of The Contention between York and Lancaster. He considers a later date as excluded by the close of the court career of the Queen’s men in 1591. This, however, did not close until 1594, and the epilogue was not necessarily given at court. Churchill also thinks the play a continuation of the Contention, and finds influences, not very striking, of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Edward II. He concludes for 1590–1. There is very little trace of any use by Shakespeare of this play for his Richard III.

Boswell groundlessly took the author to be that of Locrine (q.v.). Fleay, ii. 315, tries to divide the scenes between Lodge and Peele, and suggests that they were re-writing Kyd.

Robin Hood > 1560

S. R. 1560, Oct. 30. ‘A newe playe called——.’ William Copland (Arber, i. 152).

N.D. A mery geste of Robyn Hoode and of hys lyfe, wyth a newe playe for to be played in Maye games very plesaunte and full of pastyme. [Colophon] Imprinted at London vpon the thre Crane wharfe by Wyllyam Copland.

N.D. For Edward White.

Editions in J. Ritson, Robin Hood (1795), ii. 199, F. J. Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, iii (1888) 114, 127, and Manly (1897), ii. 281.

The play, which deals with the episodes of Robin Hood and the Friar and Robin Hood and the Potter, is appended to a reprint of the narrative Geste, originally printed by Wynken de Worde. Manly assigns Copland’s edition to c. 1550, but Arber, v. 32, to ‘c. 1560, by the Printer’s address’, and Furnivall, Captain Cox, to c. 1561. Apparently Copland is not traceable at the Three Cranes before that year and had earlier addresses. If so, I think that his anonymous entry of 1560 in the Stationers’ Register may fairly be supposed to relate to Robin Hood.

Ruff, Cuff and Band c. 1615

[MS.] Add. MS. 23723.

S. R. 1615, Feb. 10 (Taverner). ‘A booke called a Diologue betwene Ruffe Cuffe and Band &c.’ Miles Patriche (Arber, iii. 563).

1615. A merrie Dialogue, Betwene Band, Cuffe, and Ruffe: Done by an excellent Wit, And Lately acted in a Shew in the famous Vniversitie of Cambridge. William Stansby for Miles Partrich.

1615. Exchange Ware at the second hand, Viz. Band, Ruffe and Cuffe, lately out, and now newly dearned vp. Or Dialogue, acted in a Shew in the famous Vniversitie of Cambridge. The second Edition. W. Stansby for Myles Partrich.

1661. [Title as in ed. 1.] For F. K.

Editions in Harleian Miscellany², x (1813), and by J. O. Halliwell (1849, Contributions to Early English Literature) and C. Hindley, Old Book Collector’s Miscellany, ii (1872).

The Second Maiden’s Tragedy. 1611

[MS.] B.M., Lansdowne MS. 807, f. 29, formerly penes John Warburton. [Greg distinguishes four contemporary hands: (a) a scribe or copyist of the original text and certain additions on inserted slips; (b) a corrector, probably the author; (c) the Master of the Revels, Buck; (d) a theatre official, who added stage-directions. The contributions of (b) and (c) are not wholly distinguishable, especially where mere deletions are in question, as the author may, besides literary corrections, have made others due to the hints, or known views, of Buck as censor. The presence of a second literary corrector is just possible. On the verso of the last leaf Buck has written: ‘This second Maydens tragedy (for it hath no name inscribed) may w^th the reformations bee acted publikely. 31 octob^r. 1611. G. Buc.’ In later hands are the title ‘The Second Maydens Tragedy’ at the beginning, and a note following Buck’s endorsed licence, which originally ran, ‘The Second Maydens Tragedy October 31^th 1611 By Thomas Goffe A Tragedy indeed’. Here Goffe’s name has been cancelled, and two successive correctors have substituted, firstly, ‘George Chapman’, and then ‘By Will Shakspear’. Warburton’s hand is not discernible, and the last correction was probably made after his time, as his list of manuscript plays (3 Library, ii. 232) includes ‘2^d. p^t. Maidens Trag̃. Geo. Chapman’.]

S. R. 1653, Sept. 9. ‘The Maid’s Tragedie, 2^d. part.’ H. Moseley (Eyre, i. 428).

Editions in 1824–5 (O. E. D. i), Chapman’s Works (1875, iii), and Dodsley⁴ (1875, x), and by W. W. Greg (1909, M. S. R.).—Dissertations: J. Phelan, Philip Massinger (1879, Anglia, ii. 47); A. S. W. Rosenbach, The Curious-Impertinent (1902, M. L. N. xvii. 179); W. Nicholson, The S. M. T. (1912, M. L. N. xxvii. 33).

The play may be assigned to the King’s men, in view of stage-directions to ll. 1724, 1928, which show that ‘M^r Goughe’ played Memphonius and ‘Rich Robinson’ the Lady. Perhaps this also explains the ascription of authorship to Thomas Goffe, which, like those to Chapman and Shakespeare, now finds no favour. Tieck, who translated the play in his Shakespeare’s Vorschule (1829, ii), argued for Massinger, whose lost Tyrant he took the play to be. No doubt the chief character is only entitled ‘Tyrant’ in the manuscript. But the Tyrant has a separate existence both in S. R. and in Warburton’s list. Fleay, ii. 331, thought that the title was originally meant to be The Usurping Tyrant, and that the play was by the author of The Revenger’s Tragedy, generally assigned to Tourneur. Rosenbach doubts Massinger, and thinks Tourneur’s hand traceable. Swinburne seems to have suggested Middleton.

Selimus. 1591 < > 94

1594. The First part of the Tragicall raigne of Selimus, sometime Emperour of the Turkes, and grandfather to him that now raigneth. Wherein is showne how hee most vnnaturally raised warres against his owne father Baiazet, and preuailing therein, in the end caused him to be poysoned: Also with the murthering of his two brethren, Corcut, and Acomat. As it was playd by the Queenes Maiesties Players. Thomas Creede. [Prologue and Conclusion.]

1638. The Tragedy of Selimus Emperour of the Turkes. Written T. G. For John Crooke and Richard Serger. [Re-issue of 1594 sheets with new t.p.]

Editions by A. B. Grosart (1898, T. D.) and W. Bang (1908, M. S. R.), and in collections of Greene (q.v.).—Dissertation: H. Gilbert, Robert Greene’s S. (1899, Kiel diss.); cf. s. Locrine.

The T. G. of the 1638 title-page is probably meant for Thomas Goffe, the author of contemporary plays on Turkish history. He, however, was only born in 1591. Six passages from the play are assigned to Greene in R[obert] A[llot’s] England’s Parnassus (1600). This is fairly strong evidence, and Greene’s authorship is supported by Grosart, Brooke (Sh. Apocrypha, xix), and Gilbert. Ward and Gayley (R. E. C. i. 420) take the opposite view. Crawford, who points out (E. P. xxxv, 407) that Allot is not impeccable, prefers Marlowe. Fleay, ii. 315, would divide the play between Greene and Lodge. The problem is bound up with that of the authorship of Locrine (q.v.), from which Selimus clearly borrows. It can therefore hardly be of earlier date than 1591. The Conclusion, or epilogue, promises a second part, of which nothing is known.

Soliman and Perseda c. 1589 < > 92

S. R. 1592, Nov. 20 (Bp. of London). ‘The tragedye of Salamon and Perceda.’ Edward White (Arber, ii. 622).

N.D. The Tragedye of Solyman and Perseda. Wherein is laide open, Loues constancy, Fortunes inconstancy, and Deaths Triumphs. Edward Allde for Edward White. [Induction.]

1599. E. Allde for E. White. [In some copies ‘newly corrected and amended’ is stamped on the t.p.]

[1815]. [A facs. reprint, with date 1599 and imprint Edward Allde for Edward White, of which two copies, C. 57. c. 15 and G. 18612, are in B.M.; cf. W. W. Greg in M. L. Q. iv. 188, and R. B. McKerrow, Bibl. Evid. 302. Some copies have ‘J. Smeeton, Printer, St. Martin’s Lane’ on the v^o. of the t.p.]

Editions by T. Hawkins (1773, O. E. D. ii), in Dodsley⁴, v (1874), and by F. S. Boas (1901, Works of Kyd) and J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.).—Dissertations: E. Sieper (1897, Z. f. vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte, N. F. x); G. Sarrazin, Die Verfasser von S. u. P. (1891, E. S. xv. 250); E. Koeppel, Beiträge zur Geschichte des elisabethanischen Dramas (1892, E. S. xvi. 357); J. E. Routh, T. Kyd’s Rime Schemes and the Authorship of S. P. and 1 Jeronimo (1905, M. L. N. xx. 49); K. Wiehl, Thomas Kyd und die Autorschaft von S. u. P. (1912, E. S. xliv. 343).

Fleay, ii. 26, Sarrazin, and Boas claim the play for Kyd, partly on grounds of style, partly because the plot is an elaboration of the ‘play within the play’ of The Spanish Tragedy (c. 1589), iv. 4; Wiehl doubts on metrical grounds. Schick (Archiv, xc) suggests Peele, who is said in the Merry Conceited Jests (Bullen, Peele, ii. 389) to have written, or pretended to have written, a play of The Knight of Rhodes, a title which would apply to Soliman and Perseda. Robertson, 109, 150, 166, thinks that Greene collaborated with Kyd.

Captain Thomas Stukeley. 1596

S. R. 1600, Aug. 11 (Vicars). ‘Ye history of the life and Deathe of Captaine Thomas Stucley, with his Mariage to Alexander Curtis his daughter, and his valiant endinge of his life at the battell of Alcazar.’ Thomas Pavier (Arber, iii. 169).

1605. The Famous Historye of the life and death of Captaine Thomas Stukeley. With his marriage to Alderman Curteis Daughter, and valiant ending of his life at the Battaile of Alcazar. As it hath beene Acted. For Thomas Pavier.

Editions by R. Simpson (1878, S. of S. i) and J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.).—Dissertations: E. H. C. Oliphant (1905, 10 N. Q. iii. 301, 342, 382); J. Q. Adams, C. T. S. (1916, J. G. P. xv. 107).

‘Tom Stucley’ is named as a stage hero by Peele in his Farewell (1589); but the present play is probably the Stewtley produced by the Admiral’s on 11 Dec. 1596 (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 181). There are allusions to ‘the Theatre fields’ (611) and ‘her Majesty’ (752), which may only represent historic time. Although Sebastian of Portugal is a character, there is no reference to the legend of his survival, which was well known in England in 1598. Simpson regards the play as belonging to the Chamberlain’s, on the ground of certain political proclivities which he chose to ascribe to that company. The text is incoherent, and several theories representing it as a contamination of two distinct plays have been promulgated. Simpson supposed that part of a play on Don Antonio has been inserted into one dealing in five acts with Stukeley’s adventures in England, Ireland, Spain, Rome, and Africa respectively, and this view is elaborated by Oliphant, who attempts to disentangle several original and revising hands, including that of John Fletcher, to whom he assigns 245–335. Fleay, i. 127, thinks that Dekker made up the play for Paul’s, c. 1600, out of Stewtley and a Mahomet by Peele. Apparently he starts from Satiromastix, 980, where Horace says that Demetrius Fannius ‘cut an innocent Moore i’ the middle, to serue him in twice; & when he had done, made Poules-worke of it’. But surely there is a difference between making two plays out of one and making one play out of two.

1 Tamar Cham > 1592

[MS.] ‘The plott of The First parte of Tamar Cham.’ In the possession of Steevens, but now unknown.

The text is given by Steevens, Variorum (1803), iii. 414; Boswell, Variorum (1821), iii. 356; Greg, Henslowe Papers, 144.

The actors’ names point to a performance by the Admiral’s, near 2 Oct. 1602, when they bought the book from Alleyn (cf. ch. xiii). The play was produced as ‘n. e.’ by the same company on 6 May 1596, but probably Henslowe’s ‘n. e.’ in this case only indicates a substantial revision, as the letters are also attached to the notice of a performance of Part ii on 11 June 1596, and Part ii had already been played as ‘n. e.’ by Strange’s on 28 April 1592. Obviously a Part i must already have existed (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 155).

The Taming of A Shrew c. 1589

S. R. 1594, May 2. ‘A booke intituled A plesant Conceyted historie called “the Tayminge of a Shrowe”.’ Peter Short (Arber, ii. 648).

1594. A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called The taming of a Shrew. As it was sundry times acted by the Right honorable the Earle of Pembrook his seruants. Peter Short, sold by Cuthbert Burby. [Induction.]

1596. Peter Short, sold by Cuthbert Burby.

1607. V. S. for Nicholas Ling.

Editions by J. Nicholls (1779, Six Old Plays, i), T. Amyot (1844, Sh. Soc.), W. C. Hazlitt (1875, Sh. Libr. vi), E. W. Ashbee (1876, facs.), F. J. Furnivall (1886, Sh. Q), F. S. Boas (1908, Sh. Classics), and J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.).

The Admiral’s and Chamberlain’s revived ‘the tamynge of A shrowe’ for Henslowe on 11 June 1594, shortly after the entry in S. R. (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 164). Presumably it belonged to the Chamberlain’s, who had acquired it from Pembroke’s, and the 1594 performance may have been either of the original, or of Shakespeare’s revision, The Taming of The Shrew, for which 1594 is a plausible date. An early reference to the printed book is in Harington’s Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), 95, ‘For the shrewd wife, read the book of Taming a Shrew, which hath made a number of us so perfect, that now every one can rule a shrew in our country, save he that hath her’. It is to be noted that, unlike Leire (q.v.) and King Lear, the two versions counted, from the copyright point of view, as one, so that the transfer of A Shrew to Smethwick made an entry of The Shrew in S. R. for the purposes of F₁ of Shakespeare unnecessary. Probably Pembroke’s in their turn got the play from the earlier Admiral’s or Strange’s. Its date has been placed in or before 1589, because certain lines of it appear to be parodied both in Greene’s Menaphon of that year, and in the prefatory epistle to Menaphon by Nashe. Some such date is confirmed by its direct imitations from Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (c. 1587) and to a less extent from Dr. Faustus (c. 1588), which are collected by Boas, 93. For author, Marlowe, Kyd, Greene, and Peele have all been suggested, but, so far as we know, Marlowe did not repeat himself, and the others did not plagiarize him, in this flagrant manner. Shakespeare also is still often credited with a hand in the old play, as well as in the revision, and the problem can best be discussed in connexion with Shakespeare. Sykes gives part to S. Rowley (q.v.).

The Thracian Wonder c. 1600

1661. Two New Playes: Viz. A Cure for a Cuckold: A Comedy. The Thracian Wonder: A Comical History. As it hath been several times Acted with great Applause. Written by John Webster and William Rowley. Tho. Johnson, sold by Francis Kirkman. [Separate t.p. The Thracian Wonder ... as above. Epistle to the Reader, signed ‘Francis Kirkman’.]

Editions by C. W. Dilke (1815, O. E. P. vi), and in collections of Webster (q.v.).—Dissertations: J. le G. Brereton, The Relation of T. W. to Greene’s Menaphon (1906, M. L. R. ii. 34); J. Q. Adams, Greene’s Menaphon and T. W. (1906, M. P. iii. 317); O. L. Hatcher, The Sources and Authorship of T. W. (1908, M. L. N. xxiii. 16).

The ascription of the title-page is rejected by Stoll, Webster, 34, and modern writers generally, although Stork, Rowley, 61, thinks that Rowley may have added comic touches. The use of Webster’s name may be due to the identity of the plot with that of William Webster’s Curan and Argentile (1617). But William Webster took it from Warner’s Albion’s England (1586), iv. xx. From the same source Greene took it, with a change of names, for Menaphon (1589), and it is Menaphon, with another change of names, that the play follows. Brereton ascribes it to Greene himself; Hatcher thinks that the direct plagiarisms from the source and the archaistic phrase ‘old Menaphon’ (iv. 2), whereas Greene’s hero is a youth, point to an early sixteenth-century admirer of Greene. Adams supports the suggestion of Fleay, i. 287, that this is the War Without Blows and Love Without Suit written by Heywood for the Admiral’s in 1598, but this is a mere guess based on Heywood’s title (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 199). Fleay then supposed that it was revised for Queen Anne’s about 1607; elsewhere (ii. 332) he supposes it a dramatization of Webster’s story for Prince Charles’s about 1617.

Timon c. 1581 < > 90 (?)

[MS.] Dyce MS. 52. [Epilogue. The MS. is a transcript in two hands.]

Editions by A. Dyce (1842, Sh. Soc.) and W. C. Hazlitt (1875, Sh. Libr. ii. 2).—Dissertation: J. Q. Adams, The Timon Plays (1910, J. G. P. ix. 506).

Greek quotations and other pedantries suggest an academic audience, but there is little indication of place or date, beyond parallels with Pedantius, which lead Moore Smith (M. L. R. iii. 143) to suggest Cambridge and c. 1581–90. Adams thinks that the piece may have been performed by London schoolboys, and known to Shakespeare.

Tom Tyler and his Wife > 1563

S. R. 1562–3. ‘These ballettes folowynge ... an other of Tom Tyler.’ Thomas Colwell (Arber, i. 210).

1661. Tom Tyler and His Wife. An Excellent Old Play, As It was Printed and Acted about a hundred Years ago. The second Impression. [Prologue and ‘concluding Song’. There is no imprint, but as most of the extant copies have a variant t.p. with the additional words ‘Together, with an exact Catalogue of all the playes that were ever yet printed’, and as Kirkman’s catalogue of 1661 is appended, he was doubtless the publisher.]

Editions by F. E. Schelling (1900, M. L. A. xv. 253), G. C. Moore Smith and W. W. Greg (1910, M. S. R.), and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).

The S. R. entry may refer to a ballad based on the play, or may possibly be a loose description of the play itself. In any case there is no reason to doubt the existence of a print of about that date. The evidence of the 1661 title-page is confirmed by the entry of ‘Tom tyler’ in Archer’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, cxii). Chetwood, who cannot be relied on, gave the date as 1598, and an inaccurate reproduction of this seems to be responsible for the 1578 of other writers. The text of 1661 has been shown by C. P. G. Scott (in Schelling’s introduction) to be a rendering into seventeenth-century orthography of a play whose vocabulary may be put, with decreasing certainty, within the limits 1530–80, 1540–70, and 1550–60. The prologue says that the play is ‘set out by prettie boyes’, and the ‘concluding Song’ has a prayer for the preservation of the queen, ‘from perilous chance that hath been seen’. Fleay, ii. 295, somewhat arbitrarily thinks the Chapel ‘more likely’ to have presented it than Paul’s. A misinterpretation of Kirkman’s list of 1661 led E. Phillips, Theatrum Poetarum (1675), to assign the authorship to W. Wager (M. S. C. i. 325).

The Trial of Chivalry c. 1600

S. R. 1604, Dec. 4 (Pasfield). ‘A book called The life and Deathe of Cavaliero Dick Boyer.’ Nathaniel Butter (Arber, iii. 277).

1605. The History of the tryall of Cheualry, With the life and death of Caualiero Dicke Bowyer. As it hath bin lately acted by the right Honourable the Earle of Darby his seruants. Simon Stafford for Nathaniel Butter.

1605. This Gallant Caualiero Dicke Bowyer, Newly acted. [Another issue.]

Editions by A. H. Bullen (1884, O. E. P. iii) and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).—Dissertation: C. R. Baskervill, Sidney’s Arcadia and the T. of C. (1912, M. P. x. 197).

Bullen thinks this may be Love Parts Friendship, written by Chettle and Smith for the Admiral’s in 1602; Fleay, ii. 318, that it may be the Burbon brought to the Admiral’s by Pembroke’s in 1597, as the Duke of Bourbon is a chief personage, and also the Cutting Dick to which Heywood wrote additions for Worcester’s in 1602 (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 187, 221, 231). There is, of course, no particular reason why a play by Derby’s should appear in Henslowe’s diary at all. They were in London in the winters of 1599–1600 and 1600–1. The only link between them and Henslowe is Heywood, if he was the author of their Edward IV (q.v.). Fleay, i. 289, thinks that the present play may be by the same hands. Probably the Earl of Derby himself wrote for the company.

The Trial of Treasure > 1567

1567. A new and mery Enterlude, called the Triall of Treasure, newly set foorth, and neuer before this tyme imprinted. Thomas Purfoot. [Arrangement for 5 actors; Prologue and Epilogue, headed ‘Praie for all estates’.]

Editions by J. O. Halliwell (1850, Percy Soc. xxviii), in Dodsley⁴, iii (1874), and by J. S. Farmer (1908, T. F. T.—Dissertation: W. W. Greg, The T. of T., 1567—A Study in Ghosts (1910, 3 Library, i. 28).

Greg shows that there was only one edition, not two, of 1567. The play is a non-controversial morality, and may very well date from about 1567.

1 Troilus and Cressida. 1599 (?)

[MS.] Add. MS. 10449. [A fragmentary ‘plot’ without title, probably from Dulwich.]

The text is given by Greg, Henslowe Papers, 142, who infers from the names of the characters that it may have been the Troilus and Cressida written by Chettle and Dekker for the Admiral’s in April 1599. The few names of actors are not inconsistent with this (cf. ch. xiii).

The Valiant Welshman. 1610 < > 15

S. R. 1615, Feb. 21 (Buck). ‘A play called the valiant welshman.’ Robert Lownes (Arber, iii. 564).

1615. The Valiant Welshman, Or The True Chronicle History of the life and valiant deedes of Caradoc the Great, King of Cambria, now called Wales. As it hath beene sundry times Acted by the Prince of Wales his seruants. Written by R. A. Gent. George Purslowe for Robert Lownes. [Epistle to the Reader; Induction; Epilogue.]

1663. For William Gilbertson.

Editions by V. Kreb (1902) and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.).

Borrowings from Ben Jonson’s Alchemist (1610) require a late date, and the assertion of Fleay, i. 26, that this is The Welshman revived by the Admiral’s on 29 Nov. 1595 may be disregarded (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 178). There is nothing, beyond the initials, to connect the play with Robert Armin, and Kreb would assign it to some young University man.

A Warning for Fair Women > 1599

S. R. 1599; Nov. 17. ‘A warnynge for fayre women.’ William Aspley (Arber, iii. 151).

1599. A warning for Faire Women. Containing, The most tragicall and lamentable murther of Master George Sanders of London Marchant, nigh Shooters hill. Consented vnto By his owne wife, acted by M. Browne, Mistris Drewry and Trusty Roger agents therin: with their seuerall ends. As it hath beene lately diuerse times acted by the right Honorable, the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruantes. Valentine Sims for William Aspley. [Induction.]

Editions by R. Simpson (1878, S. of S. ii) and J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.).

References to ‘this fair circuit’ and ‘this Round’ are inconclusive as to whether the play was produced before the Chamberlain’s went to the Globe in 1599, as their earlier houses were probably also round. E. Phillips, Theatrum Poetarum (1675), 113, and A. Wood, Athenae (1691), i. 676, assign the authorship, incredibly, to Lyly. Fleay, ii. 54, conjectures Lodge; Bullen, O. E. P. iv. 1, Yarington.

The Wars of Cyrus King of Persia > 1594

1594. The Warres of Cyrus King of Persia, against Antiochus King of Assyria, with the Tragicall ende of Panthæa. Played by the children of her Maiesties Chappell. E. A. for William Blackwal.

Editions by W. Keller (1901, Jahrbuch, xxxvii. 1) and J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.).

The play, clearly influenced by Tamburlaine, may rest on one by Farrant (q.v.) c. 1578. There is no record of any court performance by the Chapel between 1584 and 1601. Fleay, ii. 322, guesses that an allusion in Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and Testament (q.v.) points to a performance of this play at Croydon twelve months earlier. The text is disordered. A prologue ‘To the audience’ is inserted in Act II at 621 and refers to a chorus, but there is none. At 367 is ‘Finis Actus primi’, but ‘Actus Secundus’ is at 502.

The Weakest Goeth to the Wall > 1600

S. R. 1600, Oct. 23 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called, the Weakest goethe to the Walles.’ Richard Oliff (Arber, iii. 175).

1600. The Weakest goeth to the Wall. As it hath bene sundry times plaide by the right honourable Earle of Oxenford, Lord great Chamberlaine of England his seruants. Thomas Creede for Richard Oliue. [Dumb Show and Prologue.]

1618. G. P. for Richard Hawkins.

Editions by J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), W. W. Greg (1912, M. S. R.), and with Works of Webster (q.v.).

The ascription of the play to Dekker and Webster by E. Phillips, Theatrum Poetarum (1675), 116, was rejected by Langbaine (1691) and, so far as Webster is concerned, has nothing to recommend it (E. Stoll, Webster, 34). Ward, iii. 56, finds Dekker’s humour, and Hunt, Dekker, 42, thinks it Chettle’s, revised by Dekker. Fleay, ii. 114, gives it to Munday, as the only known writer for Oxford’s, except Oxford himself. But he is thinking of Oxford’s boy company of 1580–4, not of the later company of 1601 or earlier, to whose repertory the play probably belonged, and with whom Munday is not known to have had anything to do.

Wily Beguiled. 1596 < > 1606

S. R. 1606, Nov. 12 (Hartwell). ‘A booke called Wylie beguilde &c.’ Clement Knight (Arber, iii. 333).

1606. A Pleasant Comedie, Called Wily Beguilde. The Chiefe Actors be these: A poore Scholler, a rich Foole, and a Knaue at a shifte. H. L. for Clement Knight. [Induction, Prologue, and Epilogue.]

N.D.; 1623; 1630; 1635; 1638.

Editions by T. Hawkins (1773, O. E. D. iii), in Dodsley⁴, ix (1874), and by J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.) and W. W. Greg (1912, M. S. R.).—Dissertations: J. W. Hales, Shakespearian Imitations (1875, Ath. 1875, 17 July, 4 Sept.); F. J. Furnivall, Parallels (1875, 5 N. Q. iv. 144); P. A. Daniel, On W. B. (1875, Brooke’s Romeus and Juliet, xxxv, N. S. S.); E. Landsberg, Zur Verfasserfrage des anonymen Lustspiels W. B. (1911, E. S. xliii. 189).

The register of Merton College, Oxford, has for 3 Jan. 1567 the entry, ‘Acta est Wylie Beguylie Comoedia Anglica nocte in aedibus Custodis per scolares, praesentibus Vicecustode, magistris, baccalaureis, cum omnibus domesticis et nonnullis extraneis; merito laudandi recte agendo prae se tulerunt summam spem’ (Boas, 157). No connexion is traceable between this and the extant play, which Greg and Boas regard as of Cambridge origin. But it does not seem to me markedly academic. The character Lelia does not particularly suggest the Cambridge Latin Laelia of 1595, and the epilogue was spoken in a ‘circled rounde’. The description of himself by Churms (l. 68), as ‘at Cambridge a scholler, at Cales a souldier, and now in the country a lawyer, and the next degree shal be a connicatcher’, does not go far in the way of proof. This same passage fixes the date as not earlier than the Cadiz expedition of 1596; obviously the use of the phrase ‘tricke of Wily Beguily’ in Nashe’s Have With You to Saffron Walden of 1596 (Works, iii. 107) proves nothing one way or other as to date, although Dekker naturally knew the play when he described rogues and their ‘knavish comedy of Wily-Beguily’ in his Belman of London of 1608 (Works, iii. 125). If the date is 1596, the authorship of Peele, suggested by the description of the prologue-speaker as ‘humorous George’, although he is clearly distinct from the ‘fiery Poet’, and urged by Fleay, ii. 158, and Landsberg, becomes just possible, chronologically, before his death in November of that year. But the Shakespearian imitations, although most marked of M. V. and earlier plays, seem also to extend to Hamlet, M. W., and T. N., and the right date may be c. 1602–6. If the production was in the ‘circled rounde’ of Paul’s, the quasi-academic note is explicable. Sykes suggests S. Rowley (q.v.) as part author. Fleay, Shakespeare Manual, 272, makes an amazing attempt to interpret the play as a satire on Lyly, Lodge, Marston, Chettle, Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, Chapman, Jonson, Henslowe, the Admiral’s, the Chamberlain’s, the Chapel, and Paul’s. In the Induction, a juggler finds the title Spectrum exhibited, and later, ‘Spectrum is conueied away: and Wily beguiled, stands in the place of it’ (l. 46).

The Wisdom of Doctor Dodipoll. 1599 < > 1600

S. R. 1600, Oct. 7. ‘A booke called The Wisdom of Doctor Dodepole Plaied by the Children of Paules.’ Richard Oliff (Arber, iii. 174).

1600. The Wisdome of Doctor Dodypoll. As it hath bene sundrie times Acted by the Children of Powles. Thomas Creede for Richard Oliue.

Editions by A. H. Bullen (1884, O. E. P. iii) and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).—Dissertation: E. Koeppel, Sh.’s J. C. und die Entstehungszeit des anonymen Dramas The W. of D. D. (1907, Jahrbuch, xliii. 210).

Fleay, ii. 155, assigned the play to Peele, chiefly on the ground that a snatch of song is from his Hunting of Cupid (q.v.). But Peele died in 1596, and Koeppel points out that the phrase (Bullen, p. 129), ‘Then reason’s fled to animals, I see’, presupposes the existence of Julius Caesar (1599), III. ii. 109:

O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And men have lost their reason.

The Wit of a Woman > 1604

1604. A Pleasant Comoedie, Wherein is merily shewen: The wit of a Woman. For Edward White. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

Editions by J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.) and W. W. Greg (1913, M. S. R.).

Nothing is known of the history of this prose comedy with Italian names. ‘Sweet and twenty’ (l. 753) recalls Tw. N. II. iii. 52.

Work for Cutlers c. 1615

S. R. 1615, July 4 (Taverner). ‘A little thing called Worke for Cutlers.’ Richard Meighen (Arber, iii. 569).

1615. Worke for Cutlers. Or, a merry Dialogue betweene Sword, Rapier, and Dagger. Acted in a Show in the famous universitie of Cambridge. Thomas Creede for Richard Meighen and Thomas Jones. [Epilogue.]

Editions by T. Park (1813, Harleian Miscellany², x), C. Hindley (1872, Old Book Collector’s Miscellany, ii), A. F. Sieveking (1904).

This short dialogue is described in the epilogue as ‘a Schollers Prize’. Sieveking suggests the possibility of Heywood’s authorship, but an academic author is more likely.

A Yorkshire Tragedy c. 1606

S. R. 1608, May 2 (Wilson). ‘A booke Called A Yorkshire Tragedy written by Wylliam Shakespere.’ Thomas Pavier (Arber, iii. 377).

1608. A Yorkshire Tragedy. Not so New as Lamentable and true. Acted by his Maiesties Players at the Globe. Written by W. Shakspeare. R. B. for Thomas Pauier. [Head-title: ‘All’s One, or, One of the foure plaies in one, called A Yorkshire Tragedy.’]

1619. Omits ‘Acted ... Globe’. For T. P. [See ch. xxiii.]

Editions of 1735 (J. Tonson), by W. Knight (1843, Pictorial Sh. vii), J. P. Collier (1878, Works of Sh.), J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.), and in Sh. Apocrypha.—Dissertations: J. P. Collier (Ath. 1863, i. 332); P. A. Daniel, Notes on Sh.’s Y. T. 1608 (Ath. 4 Oct. 1879); S. Lee, Walter Calverley (D. N. B.); B. Dobell, The Author of A Y. T. (1906, 10 N. Q. vi. 41); H. D. Sykes, The Authorship of A Y. T. (1917, J. G. P. xvi. 437, reprinted in Sidelights on Shakespeare, 77).

This ten-scene play from a four-play bill has merit, but most modern critics are unable to regard that merit as of Shakespearian type, although Ward, ii. 231, finds Shakespeare’s hand in some passages, and Fleay, after wantonly guessing at Edmund Shakespeare (Shakespeare, 303), remained impressed (ii. 206) by the external evidence, and thought that the play must be Shakespeare’s original ending to an earlier version of The Miseries of Enforced Marriage, subsequently altered by his collaborator, George Wilkins (q.v.), to end happily. This is ingenious, but too conjectural. The play, like that of Wilkins, takes its material from the history of Walter Calverley, executed for murder on 5 Aug. 1605, which is told in Stowe’s Annales and was the subject of contemporary pamphlets. Dobell and Sykes argue a case on internal evidence for the authorship of Wilkins himself.