THE MALONE SOCIETY
REPRINTS
1907
This reprint of Wealth and Health has been prepared by the General Editor and checked by Percy Simpson.
March 1907. W.W. Greg.
Early in the craft year which began on 19 July 1557, and was the first of the chartered existence of the Stationers' Company, John Waley, or Wally, entered what was no doubt the present play on the Register along with several other works. The entry runs as follows:
To master John wally these bokes Called Welth and helthe/the treatise of the ffrere and the boye / stans puer ad mensam another of youghte charyte and humylyte an a b c for cheldren in englesshe with syllabes also a boke called an hundreth mery tayles ijs [Arber's Transcript, I. 75.]
That Waley printed an edition is therefore to be presumed, but it does not necessarily follow that the extant copy, which though perfect bears neither date nor printer's name, ever belonged to it. Indeed, a comparison with a number of works to which he did affix his name suggests grave doubts on the subject. Though not a high-class printer, there seems no reason to ascribe to him a piece of work which for badness alike of composition and press-work appears to be unique among the dramatic productions of the sixteenth century.
'Wealth and health' appears among the titles in the list of plays appended to the edition of Goffe's Careless Shepherdess, printed for Rogers and Ley in 1656. The entry was repeated with the designation 'C[omedy].' in Archer's list of the same year, and, without the addition, in those of Kirkman in 1661 and 1671. In 1691 Langbaine wrote 'Wealth and Health, a Play of which I can give no Account.' Gildon has no further information to offer, nor have any of his immediate followers. Chetwood, in 1752, classes it among 'Plays Wrote by Anonymous Authors in the 16th [by which he means the seventeenth] Century,' calls it 'an Interlude' and dates it 1602. This invention was only copied in those lists which depended directly on Chetwood's, such as the Playhouse Pocket-Companion of 1779. Meanwhile, in his Companion to the Play-House of 1764, D.E. Baker, relying upon Coxeter's notes, gave an essentially accurate description of the piece, except that he asserted it to be 'full of Sport and mery Pastyme,' and described it as an octavo. This entry has been copied by subsequent bibliographers, none of whom have seen the original.