Editions printed by R. Walker (1734) and by T. E. Jacob (1889, Old English Dramas), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), and in Sh. Apocrypha.—Dissertation: W. Streit, The L. and D. of T. L. C. (1904, Jena diss.).
The W. S. of the title-page was interpreted as William Shakespeare in Archer’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, lx). No modern critic accepts the attribution, except Hopkinson, who thinks that the original author was Greene, and that Shakespeare revised his work. Heywood was suggested by R. Farmer, and Drayton by Fleay, Shakespeare, 298; B.C. i. 152, 160. The guesses at Wentworth Smith and William Sly rest merely on their initials.
King Darius > 1565
S. R. 1565–6. ‘A playe intituled of the story of kyng Daryous beyinge taken oute of the iijde and iiijth chapeter of the iijde boke of Esdras &c.’. Thomas Colwell (Arber, i. 298).
1565, October. A Pretie new Enterlude both pithie & pleasaunt of the Story of Kyng Daryus, Beinge taken out of the third and fourth Chapter of the thyrd booke of Esdras. Colwell. [On t.p. ‘Syxe persons may easely play it’.]
1577. Hugh Jackson. [B.M. C. 34, i. 21, from Irish sale of 1906.]
Editions by J. O. Halliwell (1860), A. Brandl (1898), 359, J. S. Farmer (1907, 1909, T. F. T.).
The characters, other than Darius and Zorobabell, are mainly abstract, and include Iniquitie, ‘the Vyce’. There is a Prolocutor.
The Dead Mans Fortune > 1591
[MS.] Add. MS. 10449. ‘The plotte of the deade mans fortune.’ [Probably from Dulwich.]