Then comes a ‘Finis’ and on the next page, ‘It had another Catastrophe or Conclusion at the first Playing: which (διὰ τὸ τὴν βασίλισσαν προσωποποιεῖσθαι) many seem’d not to relish it: and therefore ’twas since alter’d: yet that a right-ei’d and solide Reader may perceiue it was not so great a part of the Heauen awry, as they would make it; we request him but to looke downe vpon these following Reasons.’ There follows an apology, from which it is clear that originally Macilente was cured of his envious humour by the appearance on the stage of the Queen; and this introduces a different epilogue of the nature of an address to her. At the end of all comes a short dialogue between Macilente, as Asper, and the Grex. There is no mention of the Globe, but as the whole point of the objection to this epilogue, which it is not suggested that Elizabeth herself shared, lay in the miming of the Queen, one would take it, did the Q1 stand alone, to have been, like its substitute, a theatre and not a Court epilogue. In F1, however, we get successively (a) a shortened version of the later epilogue, (b) the dialogue with the Grex, followed by ‘The End’, and (c) a version of the original epilogue, altered so as to make it less of a direct address and headed ‘Which, in the presentation before Queen E. was thus varyed’. It seems to me a little difficult to believe that the play was given at Court before it had been ‘practised’ in public performances, and I conclude that, having suppressed the address to a mimic Elizabeth at the Globe, Jonson revived it in a slightly altered form when he took the play to Court at Christmas. As to the date of production, Fleay, i. 361, excels himself in the suggestion that ‘the mention of “spring” and the allusion to the company’s new “patent” for the Globe in the epilogue’ fix it to c. April 1599. Even if this were the original epilogue, it alludes to a coming and not a present spring, and might have been written at any time in the winter, either before or after the New Year. Obviously, too, there can be no allusion to an Elizabethan patent for the Globe, which never existed. I do not agree with Small, 21, that the Globe was not opened until early in 1600, nor do I think that any inference can be drawn from the not very clear notes of dramatic time in I. iii and III. ii. At first sight it seems natural to suppose that the phrase ‘would I had one of Kempes shooes to throw after you’ (IV. v) was written later than at any rate the planning of the famous morris to Norwich, which lasted from 11 Feb. to 11 March 1600 and at the end of which Kempe hung his shoes in Norwich Guildhall. Certainly it cannot refer, as Fleay thinks, merely to Kempe’s leaving the Chamberlain’s men. Conceivably it might be an interpolation of later date than the original production. Creizenach, 303, however, points out that in 1599 Thomas Platter saw a comedy in which a servant took off his shoe and threw it at his master, and suggests that this was a bit of common-form stage clownery, in which case the Norwich dance would not be concerned. The performance described by Platter was in September or October, and apparently at the Curtain (cf. ch. xvi, introd.). Kempe may quite well have been playing then at the Curtain with a fresh company after the Chamberlain’s moved to the Globe. Perhaps the episode had already found a place in Phillips’s Jig of the Slippers, printed in 1595 and now lost (cf. ch. xviii). If 1600 is the date of E. M. O., the Court performance may have been that of 3 February, or perhaps more probably may have fallen in the following winter, which would explain the divergence between Q1 and F1 as to the epilogues. But it must be remembered that the F1 date is 1599, and that most, if not quite all, of the F1 dates follow Circumcision style, although Jonson may not have adopted this style as early as 1600. On the whole, I think that the balance of probability is distinctly in favour of 1599. If so, the production must have been fairly late in that year, as there is a hit (III. i) at the Histriomastix of the same autumn. The play has been hunted through and through for personalities, most of which are effectively refuted by Small. Most of the characters are types rather than individuals, and social types rather than literary or stage types. I do not think there are portraits of Daniel, Lyly, Drayton, Donne, Chapman, Munday, Shakespeare, Burbadge, in the play or its induction at all. Nor do I think there are portraits in the strict sense of Marston and Dekker, although no doubt some parody of Marston’s ‘fustian’ vocabulary is put into the mouth of Clove (iii. 1), and, on the other hand, the characters of Carlo Buffone and Fastidious Brisk have analogies with the Anaides and Hedon of Cynthia’s Revels, and these again with the Demetrius and Crispinus of Poetaster, who are undoubtedly Dekker and Marston. But we know from Aubrey, ii. 184, that Carlo was Charles Chester, a loose-tongued man about town, to whom there are many contemporary references. To those collected by Small and Hart (10 N. Q. i. 381) I may add Chamberlain, 7, Harington, Ulysses upon Ajax (1596), 58, and Hatfield Papers, iv. 210, 221; x. 287. The practical joke of sealing up Carlo’s mouth with wax (V. iii) was, according to Aubrey, played upon Chester by Raleigh, and there may be traits of Raleigh in Puntarvolo, perhaps combined with others of Sir John Harington, while Hart finds in the mouths both of Puntarvolo and of Fastidious Brisk the vocabulary of Gabriel Harvey. The play was revived at Court on 8 Jan. 1605.
Cynthia’s Revels. 1600–1
S. R. 1601, May 23 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called Narcissus the fountaine of self-love.’ Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 185).
1601. The Fountaine of Selfe-Loue. Or Cynthias Reuels. As it hath beene sundry times priuately acted in the Black-Friers by the Children of her Maiesties Chappell. Written by Ben: Iohnson. For Walter Burre. [Induction, Prologue, and Epilogue.]
1616. Cynthias Revels, Or The Fountayne of selfe-loue. A Comicall Satyre. Acted in the yeere 1600. By the then Children of Queene Elizabeth’s Chappel. The Author B. I. William Stansby. [Part of F1. Epistle to the Court, signed ‘Ben Ionson’, Induction, Prologue, and Epilogue. After text: ‘This Comicall Satyre was first acted, in the yeere 1600. By the then Children of Queene Elizabeths Chappell. The principall Comœdians were, Nat. Field, Ioh. Underwood, Sal. Pavy, Rob. Baxter, Tho. Day, Ioh. Frost. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]
Edition by A. C. Judson (1912, Yale Studies, xlv), and facsimile reprint of Q by W. Bang and L. Krebs (1908, Materialien, xxii).
The difference between the Q and F1 texts amounts to more than mere revision of wording and of oaths. Criticus is renamed Crites, and the latter half of the play is given in a longer form, parts of IV. i and IV. iii, and the whole of V. i-iv appearing in F1 alone. I think the explanation is to be found in a shortening of the original text for representation, rather than in subsequent additions. Jonson’s date for the play is 1600. This Small, 23, would translate as Feb. or March 1601, neglecting the difficulty due to the possibility that Jonson’s date represents Circumcision style. He relies on V. xi, where Cynthia says:
For so Actaeon, by presuming farre,
Did (to our griefe) incurre a fatall doome;
... But are we therefore judged too extreme?