FOOTNOTES:

[644] The alternative possibility is that Gammer Gurton was a sequel to Dyccon. In that case the two plays would most probably be by the same author, so that the value of the argument in the next paragraph would hardly be affected.

[645] Partly because the title-page of 1575 contains no indication that the play had been printed before, and partly because (as will be shown) there is some evidence that the publication was delayed after the title had been changed. It would be interesting to know whether a second licence was obtained for printing the play under its later name; but there happens to be a gap in the detailed accounts of the Stationers Company extending from 1571 to 1576.

[646] If the Stevenson of 1559-61 was not identical with his namesake, some record of his graduations and matriculation ought to exist. But Dr. Peile, who has taken the trouble to search through the university registers for several years prior to 1559, informs me that no such record can be found.

[647] The reference to the king, moreover, in Act V. ii, 236 would strengthen the probability that the play of 1575 (and 1559-60) was originally composed during Stevenson's first fellowship; at any rate before the death of Edward VI. It might therefore be identical with the play acted in 1553-4.—Gen. Ed.

[648] Too much importance must not, however, be attached to this, as the same thing is found in the title-page of The Disobedient Child, above referred to. The date of 1575 for our comedy is given in the colophon at the end of the book. See also p. [206] n.

[649] This title was given by Reed; Baker's original work of 1762 was called A Dictionary of the Stage.

[650] The arguments against Still's authorship of Gammer Gurton, and in favour of that of Bridges, are stated at length in an article by Mr. C. H. Ross in the nineteenth volume of Anglia (1896), to which we are indebted for several useful references.

[651] Of course it is not meant that these persons corresponded exactly to the type represented by Diccon—the ex-patient of Bethlehem Hospital, discharged as being supposed to be cured or rendered harmless, and wearing a badge indicating the possession of a licence to beg.

[652] In Pikeryng's Horestes (1567), which is some years earlier than the first known publication of Gammer Gurton, the country characters (one of whom is named Hodge) speak a strongly marked southwestern dialect.

A Ryght
Pithy, Pleasaunt and merie
Comedie: Intytuled
Gammer gurtons
Nedle: Played on
Stage, not longe
ago in Christes
Colledge in Cambridge

Made by Mr. S. Mr. of Art.

Imprynted at London in
Fleete street beneth the Conduit
at the ligne of S. John
Evangelist by Thomas
Colwell.

The Names of the Speakers in this Comedie

God Save the Queene.

P. [205] represents the title-page, but without the border to which I refer on p. [199]. Mr. W. J. Lewis points out to me that this woodcut title page had been used previously by William Copland, in 1553, for his editions of Douglas Æneis and Palice of Honour.