1634. The Noble Souldier, Or, A Contract Broken, justly reveng’d. A Tragedy. Written by S. R. For Nicholas Vavasour.
Editions by A. H. Bullen (1882, O. E. P. i) and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.).
The printer tells us that the author was dead in 1634.
The initials may indicate Samuel Rowley of the Admiral’s and Prince Henry’s. Bullen and Hunt, 187, think that Dekker revised work by Rowley. But probably Day also contributed, for II. i, ii; III. ii; IV. i; V. i, ii, and parts of I. ii and V. iv are drawn like scenes in The Wonder of a Kingdom from his Parliament of Bees (1608–16). Fleay, i. 128, identifies the play with The Spanish Fig for which Henslowe made a payment on behalf of the Admiral’s in Jan. 1602. This Greg (Henslowe, ii. 220) thinks ‘plausible’, regarding the play as ‘certainly an old play of about 1600, presumably by Dekker and Rowley with later additions by Day’. He notes that the King is not, as Fleay alleged, poisoned with a Spanish fig, but a Spanish fig is mentioned, ‘and it is quite possible that such may have been the mode of poisoning in the original piece’. Henslowe does not name the payee for The Spanish Fig, and it was apparently not finished at the time.
Lost and Doubtful Plays
It will be convenient to set out all the certain or conjectured work by Dekker mentioned in Henslowe’s Diary.
(a) Conjectural anonymous Work before 1598
(i) Philipo and Hippolito.
Produced as a new play by the Admiral’s on 9 July 1594. The ascription to Dekker, confident in Fleay, i. 213, and regarded as possible by Greg (Henslowe, ii. 165), appears to be due to the entry of a Philenzo and Hypollita by Massinger, who revised other early work of Dekker, in the S. R. on 29 June 1660, to the entry of a Philenzo and Hipolito by Massinger in Warburton’s list of burnt plays (3 Library, ii. 231), and to the appearance of a Julio and Hyppolita in the German collection of 1620. A copy of Massinger’s play is said (Collier, Henslowe, xxxi) to be amongst the Conway MSS.
(ii) The Jew of Venice.