1615. Nicholas Okes for Walter Burre. [Another edition with the same t.p.]
1634.... Newly revised and corrected by a speciall Hand. Nicholas Okes.
1634. Nicholas Okes.
1668.... As it is now Acted at His Highness the Duke of York’s Theatre. For Thomas Dring. [Prologue by Dryden.]
Editions in Dodsley1–4 (1744–1875) and by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. ii).
The play is assigned to ‘Mr Tomkis, Trinit.’ in an account of the royal visit given by S. Pegge from Sir Edward Dering’s MS. in Gent. Mag. xxvi. 224, and a bursar’s account-book for 1615 has the entry, ‘Given Mr. Tomkis for his paines in penning and ordering the Englishe Commedie at our Masters appoyntment, xxll’ (3 N. Q. xii. 155). Chamberlain wrote to Carleton (Birch, i. 304) that ‘there was no great matter in it more than one good clown’s part’. It is an adaptation of Giambattista Porta’s L’Astrologo (1606). No importance is to be attached to the suggestion of H. I. in 3 N. Q. ix. 178, 259, 302, that Shakespeare was the author and wrote manuscript notes in a copy possessed by H. I. Dryden regards the play as the model of Jonson’s Alchemist (1610):
Subtle was got by our Albumazar,
That Alchymist by our Astrologer.
Unless Dryden was mistaken, the performance in 1615 was only a revival, but the payment for ‘penning’ makes this improbable.
Doubtful Later Play