This deals in alternate scenes with (a) the murder of Beech by Merry on 23 Aug. 1594, and (b) a version, with an Italian setting, of the Babes in the Wood, on which a ballad, with a Norfolk setting, was licensed in 1595. Greg, Henslowe, ii. 208, following a hint of Fleay, ii. 285, connects the play with Henslowe’s entries of payments, on behalf of the Admiral’s, (i) of £5 in Nov. and Dec. 1599 to Day and Haughton for Thomas Merry or Beech’s Tragedy, (ii) of 10s. in Nov. 1599 and 10s. in Sept. 1601 to Chettle for The Orphan’s Tragedy, and (iii) of £2 to Day in Jan. 1600 for an Italian tragedy. He supposes that (ii) and (iii) were the same play, that it was finished, and that in 1601 Chettle combined it with (i), possibly dropping out Day’s contributions to both pieces. Yarington he dismisses as a scribe. In the alternate scenes of the extant version he discerns distinct hands, presumably those of Haughton and Chettle respectively. Law does not think that there are necessarily two hands at all, finds imitation of Leire (1594) in scenes belonging to both plots, and reinstates Yarington. Oliphant (M. P. viii. 435) boldly conjectures that ‘Rob. Yarington’ might be a misreading of ‘Wm Haughton’. Bullen thought that this play, Arden of Feversham, and A Warning for Fair Women might all be by the same hand.
CHRISTOPHER YELVERTON (c. 1535–1612).
Yelverton entered Gray’s Inn in 1552. He is mentioned as a poet in Jasper Heywood’s verses before Thomas Newton’s translation (1560) of Seneca’s Thyestes, and wrote an epilogue to the Gray’s Inn Jocasta of Gascoigne (q.v.) and Kinwelmershe in 1566. He also helped to devise the dumb-shows for the Gray’s Inn Misfortunes of Arthur of Thomas Hughes (q.v.) on 28 Feb. 1588. He became a Justice of the Queen’s Bench on 2 Feb. 1602 and was knighted on 23 July 1603.
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FOOTNOTES:
[1] Cf. ch. xxii.
[2] Quarterly Review (April 1908), 446.
[3] A copy at Berlin of the Strassburg Terence of 1496 has the manuscript note to the engraving of the Theatrum, ‘ein offen stat der weltlichkeit da man zu sicht, ubi fiunt chorei, ludi et de alijs leutitatibus, sicut nos facimus oster spill’ (Herrmann, 300). Leo Battista Alberti’s De Re Edificatoria was written about 1451 and printed in 1485. Vitruvius, De Architectura, v. 3–9, deals with the theatre. The essential passage on the scene is v. 6, 8–9 ‘Ipsae autem scenae suas habent rationes explicitas ita, uti mediae valvae ornatus habeant aulae regiae, dextra ac sinistra hospitalia, secundum autem spatia ad ornatus comparata, quae loca Graeci περιάκτους dicunt ab eo, quod machinae sunt in his locis versatiles trigonoe habentes singulares species ornationis, quae, cum aut fabularum mutationes sunt futurae seu deorum adventus, cum tonitribus repentinis [ea] versentur mutentque speciem ornationis in frontes. secundum ea loca versurae sunt procurrentes, quae efficiunt una a foro, altera a peregre aditus in scaenam. genera autem sunt scaenarum tria: unum quod dicitur tragicum, alterum comicum, tertium satyricum. horum autem ornatus sunt inter se dissimili disparique ratione, quod tragicae deformantur columnis et fastigiis et signis reliquisque regalibus rebus; comicae autem aedificiorum privatorum et maenianorum habent speciem prospectusque fenestris dispositos imitatione, communium aedificiorum rationibus; satyricae vero ornantur arboribus, speluncis, montibus reliquisque agrestibus rebus in topeodis speciem deformati’; cf. G. Lanson, in Revue de la Renaissance (1904), 72.
[4] ‘Tu enim primus Tragoediae ... in medio foro pulpitum ad quinque pedum altitudinem erectum pulcherrime exornasti: eamdemque, postquam in Hadriani mole ... est acta, rursus intra tuos penates, tamquam in media Circi cavea, toto consessu umbraculis tecto, admisso populo et pluribus tui ordinis spectatoribus honorifice excepisti. Tu etiam primus picturatae scenae faciem, quum Pomponiani comoediam agerent, nostro saeculo ostendisti’; cf. Marcantonius Sabellicus, Vita Pomponii (Op. 1502, f. 55), ‘Pari studio veterum spectandi consuetudinem desuetae civitati restituit, primorum Antistitum atriis suo theatro usus, in quibus Plauti, Terentii, recentiorum etiam quaedam agerentur fabulae, quas ipse honestos adolescentes et docuit, et agentibus praefuit’; cf. also D’Ancona, ii. 65; Creizenach, ii. 1.
[5] D’Ancona, ii. 74.