Editions by R. Simpson (1872), J. S. Farmer (1912, T.F.T.), and W. W. Greg (1913, M.S.R.).
The play has been ascribed to Shakespeare by Collier, to Shakespeare and Marston by Simpson, and to Lodge by Fleay, Shakespeare, 291, but no serious case has been made out for any of these claims. Bullen, Marlowe, 1, lxxiv, says that Collier had a copy with doggerel rhymes on the t.p. including the line,
Our famous Marloe had in this a hand,
which Bullen calls ‘a very ridiculous piece of forgery’.
Albion Knight > 1566
S. R. 1565–6. ‘A play intituled a merye playe bothe pytthy and pleasaunt of Albyon knyghte.’ Thomas Colwell (Arber, i. 295).
Fragment in Devonshire collection.
[The t.p. is lost, but the seventeenth-century play lists (Greg, Masques, xlvii) include an interlude called Albion. A fragment on Temperance and Humility, conjecturally assigned by Collier, i. 284, to the same play, is of earlier printing by thirty years or so (M.S.C. i. 243).]
Editions by J. P. Collier (1844, Sh. Soc. Papers, i. 55) and W. W. Greg (1910, M. S. C. i. 229).—Dissertations: M. H. Dodds, The Date of A. K. (1913, 3 Library, iv. 157); G. A. Jones, The Political Significance of A. K. (1918, J. G. P. xvii. 267).
Collier suggests that this was the play disliked at court on 31 Dec. 1559, but, as Fleay, 66, points out, that would hardly have been licensed for printing. Dodds thinks it motived by the Pilgrimage of Grace (1536–7) and written shortly after.