GERVASE MARKHAM (c. 1568–1637).
There were two Gervase Markhams, as to both of whom full details are given in C. R. Markham, Markham Memorials (1913). The dramatist was probably the third son of Robert Markham of Cotham, Notts., a soldier and noted horseman, whose later life was devoted to an industrious output of books, verses, romance, translations, and treatises on horsemanship, farming, and sport. He was, said Jonson to Drummond in 1619, ‘not of the number of the faithfull, i.e. Poets, and but a base fellow’ (Laing, 11). Fleay, ii. 58, suggested, on the basis of certain phrases in his Tragedy of Sir Richard Grenville (1595), which has a dedication, amongst others, to the Earl of Southampton, that he might be the ‘rival poet’ of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. The other Gervase Markham was of Sedgebrook and later of Dunham, Notts., and is not known to have been a writer. C. W. Wallace thinks he has found a third in an ‘adventurer’ whose wagers with actors and others on the success of an intended walk to Berwick in 1618 led to a suit in the Court of Requests (Jahrbuch, xlvi. 345). But as he, like Markham of Cotham, had served in Ireland, the two may conceivably be identical, although the adventurer had a large family, and it is not known that Markham of Cotham had any. Markham of Dunham, who had also served in Ireland, had but two bastards. Conceivably Markham wrote for the Admiral’s in 1596–7 (cf. vol. ii, p. 145). Beyond the period dealt with, he collaborated with William Sampson in Herod and Antipater (1622) acted by the Revels company at the Red Bull.
The Dumb Knight. 1607–8
S. R. 1608, Oct. 6 (Buck). ‘A playe of the Dumbe Knight.’ John Bache (Arber, iii. 392).
1610. Nov. 19. Transfer from Bache to Robert Wilson (Arber, iii. 449).
1608. The dumbe Knight. A pleasant Comedy, acted sundry times by the children of his Maiesties Reuels. Written by Iaruis Markham. N. Okes for J. Bache. [Epistle to Reader, signed ‘Lewes Machin’. There were two reissues of 1608 with altered t.ps. Both omit the ascription to Markham. One has ‘A historicall comedy’; the other omits the description.]
1633. A. M. for William Sheares.
Editions in Dodsley1–4 (1744–1875) and by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. ii).—Dissertation: J. Q. Adams, Every Woman in Her Humour and The Dumb Knight (1913, M. P. x. 413).
The Epistle says that ‘Rumour ... hath made strange constructions on this Dumb Knight’, and that ‘having a partner in the wrong whose worth hath been often approved ... I now in his absence make this apology, both for him and me’. Presumably these ‘constructions’ led to the withdrawal of Markham’s name from the title-page. Fleay, ii. 58, assigned him the satirical comedy of the underplot, but Adams points out that Markham’s books reveal no humour, and that the badly linked underplot was probably inserted by Machin. It borrows passages from the anonymous unprinted Every Woman in Her Humour (q.v.). The production of a King’s Revels play is not likely to be before 1607, but Herz, 102, thinks that an earlier version underlies the Vom König in Cypern of Jacob Ayrer, who died 1605. A later German version also exists, and was perhaps the Philole und Mariana played at Nuremberg in 1613.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564–93).