Ga. If every [one] should pay as well as you
The world were good, wee should have bankrupts few.

Jac. I'm of your mind for that. [Exeunt.

We now come to a play (leaves 161-185), without title, and wanting some leaves at the end, on the subject of Richard the Second. I think with Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, who printed eleven copies of this piece, that it is anterior to Shakespeare's play. There is less extravagance of language than in most of the plays belonging to that early date (circ. 1593?); and the blank verse, though it is monotonous enough, has perhaps rather more variety than we should expect to find. Much of the play is taken up with Greene and Baggott; but the playwright has chiefly exerted himself in representing the murder of Woodstock at Calais. Before the murder, Woodstock falls asleep, and there appears to him the ghost of the Black Prince:

… Oh I am nought but ayre:
Had I the vigour of my former strength
When thou beheldst me fight at Cressy feild,
Wher hand to hand I tooke King John of France
And his bould sonns my captive prisoners,
Ide shake these stiff supporters of thy bed
And dragg thee from this dull securyty.
Oh yett for pittye wake; prevent thy doome;
Thy blood upon my sonne will surely come:
For which, deere brother Woodstocke, haste and fly,
Prevent his ruein and thy tragedy. [Exit Ghoste.

Undisturbed by this appeal, Woodstock slumbers on. Then enters the ghost of Edward the Third. His speech is worthy of Robert Greene:—

Sleepst thou so soundly and pale death so nye?
Thomas of Woodstocke, wake my sone and fly.
Thy wrongs have roused thy royall fathers ghost,
And from his quiat grave king Edwards come
To guard thy innocent life, my princely sonne.
Behould me heere, sometymes faire Englands lord:
(7) warlicke sonnes I left, yett being gone
No one succeeded in my kingly throne, &c.

I will not inflict more of this stuff on the reader. Suffice it to say that Woodstock wakes in terror and calls aloud. Lapoole, the governor of the city, who is close at hand with two murderers, enters and comforts him. Here the playwright shows a touch of pathos:—

Good nyght, Lapoole, and pardon me, I prethee,
That my sadd feare made question of thy faith.
My state is fearefull and my mynd was troubled
Even at thy entrance with most fearefull vissions
Which made my passiones more extreame and hastye.
Out of my better judgment I repent itt
And will reward thy love: once more, good nyght.

Now follows the Lady Mother (leaves 186-211), which I have proved to be a play of Glapthorne's. No doubt it is the same piece as the Noble Trial, entered on the Stationers' Registers, June 29, 1660, but not printed.

Then we have a masque (leaves 212-223). On the first page are given the nomina actorum, and underneath is written "August 5th, 1643." I was surprised to find in this masque a long passage that occurs also in Chapman's Byron's Tragedie (ed. Pearson, ii. 262). Ben Jonson said (to Drummond of Hawthornden) that only he and Chapman knew how to write a masque. The remark has always puzzled me, and certainly I should never have thought of Chapman's name in connexion with this masque. Here is an extract, containing the passage from Byron's Tragedie:—