Wit at Several Weapons (?)
1647. Wit at several weapons. A Comedy. [Part of F1. The epilogue at the reviving of this Play.]
1679. [Part of F2.]
The history of the play is very obscure. It is neither in the Cockpit repertory of 1639 nor in that of the King’s in 1641, and the guesses of Fleay, i. 218, that it may be The Devil of Dowgate or Usury Put to Use, licensed by Herbert for the King’s on 17 Oct. 1623, and The Buck is a Thief, played at Court by the same men on 28 Dec. 1623, are unsupported and mutually destructive. The epilogue, clearly written after the death of Fletcher, tells us that ‘’twas well receiv’d before’ and that Fletcher ‘had to do in’ it, and goes on to qualify this by adding—
that if he but writ
An Act, or two, the whole Play rose up wit.
The critics find varying amounts of Fletcher, with work of other hands, which some of them venture to identify as those of Middleton and Rowley. Oliphant, followed by Thorndike, 87, finds Beaumont, and the latter points to allusions which are not inconsistent with, but certainly do not prove, 1609–10, or even an earlier date. Macaulay, 196, also found Beaumont in 1883, but seems to have retired upon Middleton and Rowley in 1910 (C. H. vi. 138).
The Faithful Friends (?)
[MS.] Dyce MS. 10, formerly in the Heber collection.
S. R. 1660, June 29. ‘The Faithfull Friend a Comedy, by Francis Beamont & John Fletcher’. H. Moseley (Eyre, ii. 271).