It is clear therefore that the original actors were the Blackfriars boys, and there is nothing else to suggest a connexion between Marston and these boys during Elizabeth’s reign. Small, 115, points out a reference to the Scots in V. iii. 24 which should be Jacobean. I think that this is Marston’s first play for the Queen’s Revels after the formation of the syndicate early in 1604, and that the revision followed later in the same year. It is not necessary to assume that the play was literally ‘lost’ or that Marston was not privy to the adoption of it by the King’s. Importance is attached to the date by parallels to certain plays of Shakespeare, where Stoll thinks that Shakespeare was the borrower. I do not see how it can be so. The epilogue speaks of the author’s ‘reformed Muse’ and pays a compliment to ‘another’s happier Muse’ and forthcoming ‘Thalia’, perhaps Jonson’s Volpone.
The Fawn. 1604 < > 6
S. R. 1606, March 12. ‘A playe called the ffaune provided that he shall not put the same in prynte before he gett alowed lawfull aucthoritie.’ William Cotton (Arber, iii. 316).
1606. Parasitaster, Or The Fawne, As it hath bene diuers times presented at the blacke Friars, by the Children of the Queenes Maiesties Reuels. Written by Iohn Marston. T. P. for W. C. [Epistle to the Equal Reader, signed ‘Jo. Marston’, Prologue, and Epilogue.]
1606.... and since at Paules.... And now corrected of many faults, which by reason of the Author’s absence were let slip in the first edition. T. P. for W. C. [A further Epistle to the Reader states that the writer has ‘perused this copy’ and is about to ‘present ... to you’ the tragedy of Sophonisba.]
Modern edition by C. W. Dilke (1814, O. E. P. ii).
As a Queen’s Revels play, this must date from 1604 or 1605; presumably it was transferred to Paul’s by Edward Kirkham, when he took charge of them for the Christmas of 1605–6. Small, 116, refutes Aronstein’s suggested allusion to Jonson’s Volpone of 1605 or 1606. Bolte, Danziger Theater, 177, prints from a seventeenth-century Dantzig MS. a German play, Tiberius von Ferrara und Annabella von Mömpelgart, which is in part derived from The Fawn (Herz, 99). If, as the titles suggest, the performances of Annabella, eines Hertzogen Tochter von Ferrara at Nördlingen in 1604, of Annabella, eines Markgraffen Tochter von Montferrat at Rothenburg in 1604, and of Herzog von Ferrara at Dresden in 1626 (Herz, 65, 66), indicate intermediate links, The Fawn cannot be later than 1604. Yet I find it impossible not to attach some value to the argument of Stoll, Webster, 17, for a date later than the execution of Sir Everard Digby on 30 Jan. 1606 (Stowe, Annales, 881), which appears to be alluded to in IV. i. 310, ‘Nay, heed me, a woman that will thrust in crowds,—a lady, that, being with child, ventures the hope of her womb,—nay, gives two crowns for a room to behold a goodly man three parts alive, quartered, his privities hackled off, his belly lanched up’. It is true that there were also quarterings for treason on 29 Nov. 1603 (Stowe, Annales, ed. Howes, 831), but these were in Winchester; also that contemporary notices, such as that in Stowe and the narratives in J. Morris, Catholics under James I, 216, and in Somers Tracts (1809), ii. 111, which describes the victims as ‘proper men, in shape’, afford no confirmation of indecent crowds in 1606, but the cumulative effect of the quadruple allusions here, in Day’s Isle of Gulls (q.v.), in Sharpham’s Fleir (q.v.), and in Middleton’s Michaelmas Term (q.v.) is pretty strong. The passage quoted by Crawford, ii. 40, from Montaigne is hardly particular enough to explain that in the Fawn. I do not like explaining discrepancies by the hypothesis of a revision, but if Kirkham revived the Fawn at Paul’s in 1606, he is not unlikely to have had it written up a bit. The epistle refers to ‘the factious malice and studied detractions’ of fellow-dramatists, perhaps an echo of Marston’s relations with Jonson and Chapman over Eastward Ho!
The Wonder of Women, or Sophonisba. 1606
S. R. 1606, March 17 (Wilson). ‘A booke called the wonder of woemen, or the Tragedie of Sophonisba, &c.’ Eleazar Edgar (Arber, iii. 316).
1606. The Wonder of Women Or the Tragedie of Sophonisba, as it hath beene sundry times Acted at the Blacke-Friers. Written by Iohn Marston. John Windet. [Epistle to the General Reader by the author, but unsigned, Argumentum, Prologue, and Epilogue.]