Author of the academic Euribates Pseudomagus (cf. App. K).
ROBERT DABORNE (?-1628).
Daborne claimed to be of ‘generous’ descent, and it has been conjectured that he belonged to a family at Guildford, Surrey. Nothing is known of him until he appears with Rosseter and others as a patentee for the Queen’s Revels in 1610. Presumably he wrote for this company, and when they amalgamated with the Lady Elizabeth’s in 1613 came into relations with Henslowe, who acted as paymaster for the combination. The Dulwich collection contains between thirty and forty letters, bonds, and receipts bearing upon these relations. A few are undated; the rest extend from 17 April 1613 to 4 July 1615. Most of them were printed by Malone (Variorum, iii. 336), Collier (Alleyn Papers, 56), and Swaen (Anglia, xx. 155), and all, with a stray fragment from Egerton MS. 2623, f. 24, are in Greg, Henslowe Papers, 65, 126. There and in Henslowe, ii. 141, Dr. Greg attempts an arrangement of them and of the plays to which they relate, which seems to me substantially sound. They show Daborne, during the twelve months from April 1613, to which they mainly belong, writing regularly for the Lady Elizabeth’s, but prepared at any moment to sell a play to the King’s if he can get a better bargain. Lawsuits and general poverty made him constantly desirous of obtaining small advances from Henslowe, and on one occasion he was in the Clink. In the course of the year he was at work on at least five plays (vide infra), alone or in co-operation now with Tourneur, now with Field, Massinger, and Fletcher. Modern conjectures have assigned him some share in plays of the Beaumont and Fletcher series which there is no external evidence to connect with his name. However this may be, it is clear that, unless his activity in 1613–14 was abnormal, he must have written much of which we know nothing. He is still traceable in connexion with the stage up to 1616, giving a joint bond with Massinger in Aug. 1615, receiving an acquittance of debts through his wife Francisce from Henslowe on his death-bed in Jan. 1616 (Henslowe, ii. 20), and witnessing the agreement between Alleyn and Meade and Prince Charles’s men on the following 20 March. But he must have taken orders by 1618, when he published a sermon, and he became Chancellor of Waterford in 1619, Prebendary of Lismore in 1620, and Dean of Lismore in 1621. On 23 March 1628 he ‘died amphibious by the ministry’ according to The Time Poets (Choice Drollery, 1656, sig. B).
Collection
1898–9. A. E. H. Swaen in Anglia, xx. 153; xxi. 373.
Dissertation: R. Boyle, D.’s Share in the Beaumont and Fletcher Plays (1899, E. S. xxvi. 352).
A Christian Turned Turk. 1609 < > 12
S. R. 1612, Feb. 1 (Buck). ‘A booke called A Christian turned Turke, or the tragicall lyffes and deathes of the 2 famous pyrates Ward and Danseker, as it hath bene publiquely acted written by Robert Daborn gent.’ William Barrenger (Arber, iii. 476).
1612. A Christian turn’d Turke: or, The Tragicall Liues and Deaths of the two Famous Pyrates, Ward and Dansiker. As it hath beene publickly Acted. Written by Robert Daborn, Gentleman. For William Barrenger. [Epistle by Daborne to the Reader, Prologue and Epilogue.]
This may, as Fleay, i. 83, says, be a Queen’s Revels play, but he gives no definite proof, and if it is the ‘unwilling error’ apologized for in the epilogue to Mucedorus (1610), it is more likely to proceed from the King’s men. It appears to be indebted to pamphlets on the career of its heroes, printed in 1609. The Epistle explains the publishing of ‘this oppressed and much martird Tragedy, not that I promise to my selfe any reputation hereby, or affect to see my name in Print, vsherd with new praises, for feare the Reader should call in question their iudgements that giue applause in the action; for had this wind moued me, I had preuented others shame in subscribing some of my former labors, or let them gone out in the diuels name alone; which since impudence will not suffer, I am content they passe together; it is then to publish my innocence concerning the wrong of worthy personages, together with doing some right to the much-suffering Actors that hath caused my name to cast it selfe in the common rack of censure’. I do not know why the play should have been ‘martir’d’, but incidentally Daborne seems to be claiming a share in Dekker’s If It be not Good, the Devil is in It (1612).