[584] Wynkyn de Worde calls Mundus et Infans a ‘propre newe interlude’, and the advertising title-page is well established from the time of Rastell’s press.
[585] Conflict of Conscience; cf. Damon and Pythias, the prologue of which, though it had been a Court play, ‘is somewhat altered for the proper use of them that hereafter shall haue occasion to plaie it, either in Priuate, or open Audience’. The castings, for four, five, or six players, occur in King Darius, Like Will to Like, Longer Thou Livest, Mary Magdalen, New Custom, Tide Tarrieth for No Man, Trial of Treasure, Conflict of Conscience. I find a later example from the public stage in Fair Maid of the Exchange, which has ‘Eleauen may easily acte this comedie’, and a division of parts accordingly. There are pre-Elizabethan precedents, while Jack Juggler is ‘for Chyldren to playe’, the songs in Ralph Roister Doister are for ‘those which shall vse this Comedie or Enterlude’, and The Four Elements has directions for reducing the time of playing at need from an hour and a half to three-quarters of an hour, and the note ‘Also yf ye lyst ye may brynge in a dysgysynge’. Similarly Robin Hood is ‘for to be played in Maye games’. That books were in fact bought to act from is shown by entries in the accounts of Holy Trinity, Bungay, for 1558 of 4d. for ‘the interlude and game booke’ and 2s. for ‘writing the partes’ (M. S. ii. 343). A book costing only 4d. must clearly have been a print.
[586] There are prayers in All for Money, Apius and Virginia, Common Conditions, Damon and Pythias, Disobedient Child (headed ‘The Players ... kneele downe’), King Darius, Like Will to Like, Longer Thou Livest, New Custom, Trial of Treasure (epilogue headed ‘Praie for all estates’). Mary Magdalen and Tide Tarrieth for No Man substitute a mere expression of piety. I do not agree with Fleay, 57, that such prayers are evidence of Court performance. The reverence and epilogue to the Queen in the belated moral of Liberality and Prodigality (1602), 1314, is different in tone. The Pedlar’s Prophecy, also belated as regards date of print, adds to the usual prayer for Queen and council ‘And that honorable T. N. &c. of N. chiefly: Whom as our good Lord and maister, found we haue’. No doubt any strolling company purchasing the play would fill up the blanks to meet their own case. Probably both the Queen and estates and the ‘lord’ of a company were prayed for, whether present or absent, so long as the custom lasted; cf. ch. x, p. 311; ch. xviii, p. 550.
[587] Cf. e. g. Mary Magdalen (which refers on the title-page to those who ‘heare or read the same’), 56, 1479, 1743; Like Will to Like, sig. C, ‘He ... speaketh the rest as stammering as may be’, C ij, ‘Haunce sitteth in the chaire, and snorteth as though he were fast a sleep’, E ijv, ‘Nichol Newfangle lieth on the ground groning’, &c., &c.
[588] Three Ladies of London (1584), Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (1590), Pedlar’s Prophecy (1595), Contention of Liberality and Prodigality (1602). Lingua (1607) is a piece of academic archaism. I cannot believe that the manuscript fragment of Love Feigned and Unfeigned belongs to the seventeenth century. Of course there are moral elements in other plays, such as Histriomastix, especially in dumb-shows and inductions.
[589] There is little evidence as to the price at which prints were sold; what there is points to 6d. for a quarto. A ‘testerne’ is given in the epistle as the price of Troilus and Cressida, and in Middleton, Mayor of Quinborough, v. i, come thieves who ‘only take the name of country comedians to abuse simple people with a printed play or two, which they bought at Canterbury for sixpence’. The statement that the First Folio cost £1 only rests on Steevens’s report of a manuscript note in a copy not now known; cf. McKerrow in Sh. England, ii. 229.
[590] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Shakespeare.
[591] Cf. App. L. In the above allocation Leir and Satiromastix, to each of which two companies have equal claims, are counted twice.
[592] Greg, Henslowe, ii. 148, gives a full list; cf. ch. xiii, s.vv. Queen’s, Sussex’s, Strange’s, Admiral’s, Pembroke’s, Worcester’s.
[593] Cf. App. M. Can Moseley have been trying in some way to secure plays of which he possessed manuscripts from being acted without his consent? On 30 Aug. 1660 (Variorum, iii. 249; Herbert, 90) he wrote to Sir Henry Herbert, denying that he had ever agreed with the managers of the Cockpit and Whitefriars that they ‘should act any playes that doe belong to mee, without my knowledge and consent had and procured’.