[555] Ibid. 64.
[556] Fennor’s Defence, or I am Your First Man (Taylor’s Works, 1630, ed. Spenser Soc. 314). The 1659 print of the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green has at l. 2177, ‘Enter ... Captain Westford, Sill Clark’. The title-page professes to give the play as acted by the Prince’s men, but whether Clark was an actor of 1603–12 or not must remain doubtful.
[557] Henslowe, i. 17; cf. p. 140.
[558] Cf. App. D, No. ci. It is not ‘my newe companie’, as it is sometimes misprinted. But I do not think that either term can be interpreted as showing that the company had or had not a corporate existence before it came under Hunsdon’s patronage. The use which the company ‘have byn accustomed’ to make of the inn is only related to ‘this winter time’.
[559] The dates here assigned to Shakespeare’s plays are mainly based on the conclusions of my article on Shakespeare in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
[560] Cf. ch. xxiv, s.v. Gesta Grayorum and M. L. R. ii. 11.
[561] Cf. my paper on The Occasion of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream in Shakespeare Homage, 154, and App. A.
[562] I have recently found confirmation of the date for Rich. II in a letter from Sir Edward Hoby inviting Sir R. Cecil to his house in Canon Row on 9 Dec. 1595, ‘where, as late as shall please you, a gate for your supper shall be open, and K. Richard present himself to your view’ (Hatfield MSS. v. 487).
[563] T. Lodge, Wits Miserie (S. R. 5 May 1596), 56, ‘the Visard of ye ghost which cried so miserably at ye Theator, like an oister wife, Hamlet, revenge’.
[564] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars). There is a slight doubt as to the authenticity of the text of the petition, which the inclusion of Lord Hunsdon’s name can only emphasize. But the fact of the petition and its result are vouched for by a City document of later date. The counter-petition of the players published by Collier, i. 288, in which they are misdescribed as the Lord Chamberlain’s men, is a forgery. The names given are those of Pope, Burbadge, Heminges, Phillips, Shakespeare, Kempe, Sly, and Tooley. There is nothing to connect Tooley with the company before 1605.