JOHN STEPHENS (> 1611–1617 <).
A Gloucester man, who entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1611, but is only known by his slight literary performances, of which the most important are his Essayes of 1615 (cf. App. C, No. lx).
Cynthia’s Revenge > 1613
1613. Cinthias Revenge: or Maenanders Extasie. Written by John Stephens, Gent. For Roger Barnes. [There are two variant t.ps. of which one omits the author’s name. Epistle to Io. Dickinson, signed ‘I. S.’; Epistle to the Reader; Argument; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘F. C.’, ‘B. I.’, ‘G. Rogers’, ‘Tho. Danet’.]
Dissertation: P. Simpson, The Authorship and Original Issue of C. R. (1907, M. L. R. ii. 348).
The epistle to the reader says that the author’s name is ‘purposly concealed ... from the impression’, which accounts for the change of title-page. Stephens claims the authorship in the second edition of his Essayes (1615). Kirkman (Greg, Masques, lxii) was misled into assigning it to ‘John Swallow’, by a too literal interpretation of F. C.’s lines:
One Swallow makes no Summer, most men say,
But who disproues that Prouerbe, made this Play.
JOHN STUDLEY (c. 1545–c. 1590).
Translator of Seneca (q.v.).