Shine, O thou sacred Shepherds Star,
On silly shepherd swaines.
Aubrey has a shorter notice in another manuscript and adds, ‘He gave another entertaynment in Cote-field to King James, with carters singing, with whipps in their hands; and afterwards, a footeball play’.
GEORGE FERRERS (c. 1500–79).
A Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, son of Thomas Ferrers of St. Albans, who was Page of the Chamber to Henry VIII, and acted as Lord of Misrule to Edward VI at the Christmases of 1551–2 and 1552–3 (Mediaeval Stage, i. 405; Feuillerat, Edw. and M. 56, 77, 90). He sat in Parliaments of both Mary and Elizabeth, and wrote some of the poems in The Mirror for Magistrates (1559–78). He contributed verses to the Kenilworth entertainment of 1575, must then have been a very old man, and died in 1579. Puttenham says of Edward VI’s time, ‘Maister Edward Ferrys ... wrate for the most part to the stage, in Tragedie and sometimes in Comedie or Enterlude’, and again, ‘For Tragedie, the Lord of Buckhurst & Maister Edward Ferrys, for such doings as I haue sene of theirs, do deserue the hyest price’; and is followed by Meres, who places ‘Master Edward Ferris, the author of the Mirror for Magistrates’ amongst ‘our best for Tragedie’ (cf. App. C, Nos. xli, lii). Obviously George Ferrers is meant, but Anthony Wood hunted out an Edward Ferrers, belonging to another family, of Baddesley Clinton, in Warwickshire, and took him for the dramatist. He died in 1564 and had a son Henry, amongst whose papers were found verses belonging to certain entertainments, mostly of the early ‘nineties, which an indiscreet editor thereupon ascribed to George Ferrers (cf. s.v. Sir H. Lee).
NATHAN FIELD (1587–?).
For life vide supra Actors (ch. xv).
A Woman is a Weathercock. 1609 (?)
S. R. 1611, Nov. 23 (Buck). ‘A booke called, A woman is a weather-cocke, beinge a Comedye.’ John Budge (Arber, iii. 471).
1612. A Woman is a Weather-cocke. A New Comedy, As it was acted before the King in White-Hall. And diuers times Priuately at the White-Friers, By the Children of her Maiesties Reuels. Written by Nat: Field. For John Budge. [Epistles to Any Woman that hath been no Weathercock and to the Reader, both signed ‘N. F.’, and Commendatory verses ‘To his loved son, Nat. Field, and his Weathercock Woman’, signed ‘George Chapman’.]