The characters are allegorical, typical and personal and arranged for six actors ‘most convenient for such as be disposed either to shew this Comedie in private houses or otherwise’. Philologus is Francis Spiera, a pervert to Rome about the middle of the sixteenth century. The play is strongly Protestant, and is probably much earlier than 1581. It is divided into a prologue and acts and scenes. Act VI is practically an epilogue.
HENRY WOTTON (1568–1639).
Izaak Walton (Reliquiae Wottonianae, 1651) tells us that, while a student at Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1586, Wotton ‘was by the chief of that College, persuasively enjoined to write a play for their private use;—it was the Tragedy of Tancredo—which was so interwoven with sentences, and for the method and exact personating those humours, passions, and dispositions, which he proposed to represent, so performed, that the gravest of that society declared, he had, in a slight employment, given an early and a solid testimony of his future abilities’.
CHRISTOPHER WREN (1591–1658).
Author of the academic Physiponomachia (cf. App. K).
ROBERT YARINGTON (c. 1601?).
Nothing is known of Yarington, but this is hardly sufficient reason for denying him the ascription of the title-page.
Two Lamentable Tragedies. 1594 < > 1601
1601. Two Lamentable Tragedies. The one, of the murder of Maister Beech a Chaundler in Thames-streete, and his boye, done by Thomas Merry. The other of a young childe murthered in a Wood by two Ruffins, with the consent of his Vnckle. By Rob. Yarington. For Mathew Lawe. [Running title, ‘Two Tragedies in One.’ Induction.]
Editions by A. H. Bullen (1885, O. E. P. iv) and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.).—Dissertation: R. A. Law, Y.’s T. L. T. (1910, M. L. R. v. 167).