1603. Ane verie excellent and delectabill Treatise intitulit Philotus. Quhairin we may persaue the greit inconveniences that fallis out in the Mariage betwene age and zouth. Robert Charteris, Edinburgh. [At end are verses beginning ‘What if a day or a month or a zeere’, possibly Campion’s; cf. Bullen, Campion (1903), 270.]
1612. A verie excellent and delectable Comedie.... Andro Hart, Edinburgh.
Editions by J. Pinkerton (1792, Scottish Poems, iii) and for Bannatyne Club (1835).
This has been ascribed to Robert Sempill (1530?-95), but merely because his play before the Regent of Scotland on 17 June 1568 (Diary of Robert Birrel in Dalyell, Fragments of Scottish History, 14) is not otherwise known. R. Brotanek (1898, Festschrift zum viii allgemeinen deutschen Neuphilologentage in Wien; cf. Jahrbuch, xxxv. 302) suggests Alexander Montgomery.
The Puritan. 1606
S. R. 1607, Aug. 6 (Buck). ‘A book called the comedie of “the Puritan Widowe”.’ George Elde (Arber, iii. 358).
1607. The Puritaine Or The Widdow of Watling-streete. Acted by the Children of Paules. Written by W. S. G. Eld. [Running-title ‘The Puritaine Widdow’.]
1664; 1685. [Parts of F3 and F4 of Shakespeare.]
Editions in 1734 (J. Tonson), 1734 (R. Walker), by J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), and in Sh. Apocrypha.
The W. S. of the title-page was interpreted as William Shakespeare in Archer’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, c). The attribution is accepted by no modern critic, and guesses at Wentworth Smith and William Smith rest similarly on nothing but the initials. Internal evidence points to an author who was an Oxford man, and familiar with the plays of Shakespeare. Middleton is preferred by Fleay, ii. 92, Bullen (Middleton, i. lxxix), and others; Marston by Brooke, who dwells on a general resemblance to Eastward Hoe, and seems inclined to think that Jonson, whose Bartholomew Fair the play foreshadows, might also have contributed. The character George Pyeboard is clearly meant for Peele, and the play uses episodes which appear in The Merrie Conceited Jests of George Peele Gent. This, though the extant print is of 1607, was entered in S. R. on 14 Dec. 1605. The Paul’s plays seem to have terminated in 1606, and Fleay points out that an almanac allusion in III. vi. 289 is to Tuesday, 15 July, which fits 1606. The attack on the Puritan ministers was resented in W. Crashaw’s Paul’s Cross sermon of 13 Feb. 1608 (cf. App. C, no. lvi).