The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 3

by E. K. Chambers

With Ford.

1656. The Sun’s-Darling: A Moral Masque: As it hath been often presented at Whitehall, by their Majesties Servants; and after at the Cockpit in Drury Lane, with great Applause. Written by John Foard and Tho. Decker Gent. J. Bell for Andrew Penneycuicke.

1657. Reissue with same imprint.

1657. Reissue with same imprint.... ‘As it hath been often presented by their Majesties Servants; at the Cockpit in Drury Lane’....

Editions with Works of John Ford, by H. Weber (1811), W. Gifford (1827), H. Coleridge (1840, 1848, 1851), A. Dyce (1869), A. H. Bullen (1895).

The play was licensed by Herbert for the Lady Elizabeth’s at the Cockpit on 3 March 1624 (Chalmers, S. A. 217; Herbert, 27) and included in a list of Cockpit plays in 1639 (Variorum, iii. 159). Fleay, i. 232, Ward, ii. 470, and Pierce (Anglia, xxxvi. 141) regard it as a revision by Ford of earlier work by Dekker, and the latter regards the last page of Act I, Acts II and III, and the prose of Acts IV and V as substantially Dekker’s. It is perhaps a step from this to the theory of Fleay and Greg (Henslowe, ii. 190) that the play represents the Phaethon, which Dekker wrote for the Admiral’s in Jan. 1598 and afterwards altered for a Court performance at Christmas 1600. There are allusions to ‘humours’ and to ‘pampered jades of Asia’ (ed. Pearson, pp. 316, 318) which look early, but Phaethon is not a character, nor is the story his. A priest of the Sun appears in Act I: I am surprised that Fleay did not identify him, though he is not mad, with the ‘mad priest of the sun’ referred to in Greene’s (q.v.) Epistle to Perimedes. The play is not a ‘masque’ in the ordinary sense.

The Noble Soldier > 1631

With Day and S. Rowley?

S. R. 1631, May 16 (Herbert). ‘A Tragedy called The noble Spanish Souldier by Thomas Deckar.’ John Jackman (Arber, iv. 253).

1633, Dec. 9. ‘Entred for his Copy vnder the handes of Sir Henry Herbert and Master Kingston warden Anno Domini 1631. a Tragedy called The Noble Spanish soldior written by master Decker.’ Nicholas Vavasour (Arber, iv. 310).