Besides the covers, and the silken strings.
Robin Goodfellow, in Jonson’s Love Restored (1612), calls the absence of a mask ‘a fine trick, a piece of England’s Joy’, and three characters in the Masque of Augurs (1622) are said to be ‘three of those gentlewomen that should have acted in that famous matter of England’s Joy in six hundred and three’—apparently a slip of Jonson’s as to the exact date. Other allusions to the ‘gullery’ are in Saville, Entertainment of King James at Theobalds (1603); R. Brathwaite, The Poet’s Palfrey (Strappado for the Devil, ed. J. W. Ebsworth, 160); J. Suckling, The Goblins (ed. Hazlitt, ii. 52); W. Davenant, Siege of Rhodes, Pt. ii, prol. It may be added that Vennar’s cozenage was perhaps suggested by traditional stories of similar tricks. One is ascribed to one Qualitees in Merry Tales, Wittie Questions and Quick Answeres, cxxxiii (1567, Hazlitt, Jest Books, i. 145). In this bills were set up ‘vpon postes aboute London’ for ‘an antycke plaie’ at Northumberland Place and ‘all they that shoulde playe therin were gentilmen’. Another is the subject of one of the Jests of George Peele (Bullen, ii. 389). W. Fennor, The Compters Commonwealth (1617), 64, tells of an adventure of ‘one Mr. Venard (that went by the name of Englands Joy)’ in jail, where he afterwards died.
EDWARD DE VERE, EARL OF OXFORD (1550–1604).
Meres (1598) includes the earl in his list of ‘the best for Comedy amongst vs’ but although Oxford had theatrical servants at intervals from 1580 to 1602 (cf. ch. xiii), little is known of their plays, and none can be assigned to him, although the anonymous The Weakest Goeth to the Wall (1600) calls for an author. J. T. Looney, Shakespeare Identified (1920), gives him Shakespeare’s plays, many of which were written after his death.
FRANCIS VERNEY (1584–1615).
Francis, the eldest son of Sir Edmund Verney of Penley, Herts., and Claydon, Bucks., entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1600, and was knighted on 14 March 1604. As a result of family disputes, he left England about 1608, and became a pirate in the Mediterranean, dying at Messina on 6 Sept. 1615 (Verney Memoirs2, i. 47). G. C. Moore Smith (M. L. R. iii. 151) gives him the following play.
Antipoe. 1603 < > 8
[MS.] Bodl. MS. 31041, ‘The tragedye of Antipoe with other poetical verses written by mee Nico. Leatt Jun. in Allicant In June 1622’, with Epistles to James and the Reader by ‘Francis Verney’. Presumably Verney was the author, and Nicolas only a scribe.
ANTONY WADESON (c. 1601).
Henslowe made payments to him on behalf of the Admiral’s in June and July 1601 for a play called The Honourable Life of the Humorous Earl of Gloucester, with his Conquest of Portugal, but these only amounted to 30s., so that possibly the play was not finished.