Cupid’s Sacrifice, or a Country’s Tragedy in Vacuniam (1602).
Necromantes, or The Two Supposed Heads (1602).]
[Edition] 1824. The Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants or The Bearing down the Inne. A Comædye. The Faery Pastorall, or Forrest of Elves. By W. P. Esq. (Roxburghe Club). [Preface by [Joseph] H[aslewood].]—Dissertations: C. Grabau, Zur englischen Bühne um 1600 (1902, Jahrbuch, xxxviii. 230); V. Albright, P.’s Plays as Proof of the Elizabethan Stage (1913, M. P. xi. 237); G. F. Reynolds, W. P. and his Plays (1914, M. P. xii. 241).
Percy’s authorship appears to be fixed by a correspondence between an epigram in the MS. to Charles Fitzgeffrey with one Ad Gulielmum Percium in Fitzgeoffridi Affaniae (1601), sig. D 2. 6.
The Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants is dated 1601 and The Faery Pastorall 1603. The other plays are unprinted and practically unknown, although Reynolds gives some account of The Aphrodysial. There are elaborate stage-directions, which contain several references to Paul’s, for which the plays, whether in fact acted or not, were evidently intended, as is shown by an author’s note appended to the manuscript (cf. ch. xii, s.v. Paul’s).
I feel some doubt as to the original date of these plays. It seems to me just conceivable that they were originally produced by the Paul’s boys before 1590, and revised by Percy after 1599 in hopes of a revival. Some of the s.ds. are descriptive in the past tense (cf. ch. xxii), which suggests actual production. The action of C. and C. Errant is during the time of the Armada, but the composition must be later than the death of Tarlton, as his ghost prologizes. Here the author notes, ‘Rather to be omitted if for Powles, and another Prologue for him to be brought in Place’. Faery Pastoral uses (p. 97) the date ‘1647’; it is in fairy time, but points to some revision when the MS. was written. There are alternative final scenes, with the note, ‘Be this the foresayd for Powles, For Actors see the Direction at later end of this Pastorall, which is separate by itself, Extra Olens, as they say’. Similarly in Aphrodysial a direction for beards is noted ‘Thus for Actors; for Powles without’, and another s.d. is ‘Chambers (noise supposd for Powles) For Actors’. A reference to ‘a showre of Rose-water and confits, as was acted in Christ Church in Oxford, in Dido and Aeneas’ is a reminiscence of Gager’s play of 12 June 1583, and again makes a seventeenth-century date seem odd.
PETER (?) PETT (c. 1600).
Henslowe’s diary records a payment of £6 on 17 May 1600 for the Admiral’s ‘to pay Will: Haulton [Haughton] and Mr. Pett in full payment of a play called straunge newes out of Poland’. Fleay, i. 273, says: ‘Pett is not heard of elsewhere. Should it not be Chett., i.e. Chettle? The only Pett I know of as a writer is Peter Pett, who published Time’s journey to seek his daughter Truth, in verse, 1599.’ To which Greg, Henslowe, ii. 213, replies: ‘Henslowe often has Cett for Chettle, which is even nearer, but only where he is crowded for room and he never applies to him the title of Mr.’
JOHN PHILLIP (> 1570–> 1626).
John Phillip or Phillips was a member of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and author of various ballads, tracts, and elegies, published between 1566 and 1591. I do not know whether he may be the ‘Phelypes’, who was apparently concerned with John Heywood and a play by Paul’s (q.v.) in 1559. A John Phillipps, this or another, is mentioned (1619) as a brother-in-law in the will of Samuel Daniel (Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 157).