(c) The second edition (1608) of Francis Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody contains the speech from (vi) and (vii), with the incorrect indication ‘at the Lord Chancellor’s house, 1601’, which misled Nichols into supposing it to belong to some entertainment at York Place, the year before that of Harefield. The item comes between two pieces by Sir John Davies and has the initials J. D.
(d) The diary of John Manningham (Harl. MS. 5353, f. 95) contains amongst entries of Feb. 1603 some extracts from (i) and (vii), dating the latter in ‘the last Sumer at hir Mties being with the L. Keeper’.
(e) A contemporary MS., printed as Poetical Miscellanies (Percy Soc. lv), 5, has (vii) dated 1602.
(f) Talbot MS. K, f. 43, in the College of Arms, contains (iv) as given at ‘Harville’ with the date ‘Aug. 1602’ and is printed by Lodge, ii. 560.
(g) B.M. Birch MS. 4173 contains a similar copy of (iv).
On the strength of the Poetical Rhapsody, (vii) is generally assigned to Sir John Davies, which hardly justified Dr. Grosart in assigning all the pieces to him (Works, ii, clxxii). Bond transferred the whole to Lyly, primarily as a conjecture, but was confirmed in his view by finding in Egerton Papers, 343, a payment to ‘Mr Lillyes man, which brought the lotterye boxe to Harefield’. But the document in which this is found, and which also contains the item ‘xli to Burbidges players for Othello’, is one of Collier’s forgeries (Ingleby, 261).
John Chamberlain (Letters, 164, 169) sent Dudley Carleton ‘the Quenes entertainment at the Lord Kepers’ on 19 Nov. 1602, and on 23 Dec. wrote that, as Carleton liked the Lord Keeper’s devices so ill, he had not cared to get Sir Robert Cecil’s (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Cecil).
Progress from Scotland. 1603
There were several contemporary prints: