LATIN PLAYS
Adelphe.
By S. Brooke (q.v.).
Atalanta.
Harl. MS. 6924, with dedication to Laud, President of St. John’s, Oxford, 1611–21, signed by Philip Parsons, of St. John’s, B.A. 1614, M.A. 1618.
Bellum Grammaticale.
S. R. 1634, April 17. ‘A booke called Bellum grammaticale &c. by Master Spense’, authorized by Herbert. John Spenser (Arber, iv. 317).
1635. Bellum Grammaticale sive Nominum Verborumque discordia civilis Tragico-Comoedia. Summo cum applausu olim apud Oxonienses in Scaenam producta et nunc in omnium illorum qui ad Grammaticam animos appellant oblectamentum edita. B. A. and T. Fawcet, impensis Joh. Spenceri.
Editions of 1658, 1698, 1718, 1726, 1729, and in J. Bolte (1908, Andrea Guarnas B. G. und seine Nachahmungen, 106).
A performance was given before Elizabeth at Ch. Ch., Oxford, on 24 Sept. 1592, with a prologue and epilogue by Gager, which are printed with his Meleager. But the play was not new, for Sir John Harington, who records the 1592 performance in his Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), 127, had already named ‘the Oxford Bellum Grammaticale’ as ‘full of harmeles myrth’ in his Apologie of Poetrie (1591). The ‘Master Spense’ of the S. R. entry may be a confusion with the publisher’s name. Wood, Ath. Oxon. ii. 533, was told by Richard Gardiner of Ch. Ch. that the author was Leonard Hutten, who took his B.A. from Ch. Ch. in 1578, and his M.A. in 1582. He was known as a dramatist by 26 Sept. 1583, when Gager wrote of him (Boas, 256),