Some have thought that Peele is the
Palin, worthy of great praise,
Albe he envy at my rustic quill,
of Spenser’s Colin Clout’s Come Home Again (1591). It seems difficult to accept the suggestions of Sarrazin that he was the original both of Falstaff and of Yorick. An allusion in a letter to Edward Alleyn (cf. ch. xv) has unjustifiably been interpreted as implying that Peele was actor as well as playwright, and Collier accordingly included his name in a forged list of housekeepers at an imaginary Blackfriars theatre of 1589 (cf. vol. ii, p. 108). He was, however, clearly one of the three of his ‘quondam acquaintance’ to whom Greene (q.v.) addressed the attack upon players in his Groats-worth of Wit (1592). In 1596 Peele after ‘long sickness’ sent a begging letter by his daughter to Lord Burghley, with a copy of his Tale of Troy. He was buried as a ‘householder’ at St. James’s, Clerkenwell, on 9 Nov. 1596 (Harl. Soc. Registers, xvii. 58), having died, according to Meres’s Palladis Tamia, ‘by the pox’. He can, therefore, hardly be the Peleus of Birth of Hercules (1597 <).
Collections
1828–39. A. Dyce. 3 vols.
1861, 1879. A. Dyce. 1 vol. [With Greene.]
1888. A. H. Bullen. 2 vols.
Dissertations: R. Lämmerhirt, G. P. Untersuchungen über sein Leben und seine Werke (1882); L. Kellner, Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamides (1889, E. S. xiii. 187); E. Penner, Metrische Untersuchungen zu P. (1890, Archiv, lxxxv. 269); A. R. Bayley, P. as a Dramatic Artist (Oxford Point of View, 15 Feb. 1903); G. C. Odell, P. as a Dramatist (1903, Bibliographer, ii); E. Landsberg, Der Stil in P.’s sicheren und zweifelhaften dramatischen Werken (1910, Breslau diss.); G. Sarrazin, Zur Biographie und Charakteristik von G. P. (1910, Archiv, cxxiv. 65); P. H. Cheffaud, G. P. (1913).
PLAYS