PLAYS
The Old Law. 1599
1656. The Excellent Comedy, called The Old Law; Or A new way to please you. By Phil. Massenger. Tho. Middleton. William Rowley. Acted before the King and Queene at Salisbury House, and at severall other places, with great Applause. Together with an exact and perfect Catalogue of all the Playes, with the Authors Names, and what are Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Pastoralls, Masks, Interludes, more exactly Printed than ever before. For Edward Archer.
Editions with Massinger’s Works (q.v.).—Dissertation: E. E. Morris, On the Date and Composition of T. O. L. (M. L. A. xvii. 1).
It is generally supposed that in some form the play dates from 1599, as in III. i. 34 a woman was ‘born in an. 1540, and now ’tis 99’. Of the three authors only Middleton can then have been writing. Morris, after elaborate study of the early work and the versification of all three, concludes that Rowley (c. 1615) and Massinger (c. 1625) successively revised an original by Middleton. The Paul’s plays began in 1599, but it cannot be assumed that this was one of them. Stork, 48, doubts the 1599 date and is inclined to assume collaboration between the three writers c. 1615.
Blurt Master Constable. 1601–2
S. R. 1602, June 7. ‘A Booke called Blurt Master Constable. Edward Aldee (Arber, iii. 207).
1602. Blurt Master Constable. Or The Spaniards Night-walke. As it hath bin sundry times priuately acted by the Children of Paules. For Henry Rocket.
Edition [by W. R. Chetwood] in A Select Collection of Old Plays (1750).
Bullen suggests that V. iii. 179, ‘There be many of your countrymen in Ireland, signior’, said to a Spaniard, reflects the raid of Spaniards in Sept. 1601. They were taken at Kinsale in June 1602. A parallel in III. i. 104 with Macbeth, II. ii. 3, cannot be taken with Fleay, ii. 90, as proof of posteriority.