FOOTNOTES:
[1] Mr Gifford, with that zeal for the author under his hands which always distinguished him (and without a single reference to Field's unassisted comedies which, in fact, have remained unnoticed by everybody), attributes to Field, in "The Fatal Dowry," all that he thinks unworthy his notion of Massinger. We are to recollect, however, that Field continued one of the Children of the Revels as late as 1609, and that when "A Woman is a Weathercock" was printed in 1612, he must have been scarcely of age.
[2] Two other letters from Field to Henslowe are printed for the first time in Malone's Shakespeare, by Boswell, xxi. 395 and 404. One is subscribed "Your loving and obedient son," and the other "Your loving son," and both request advances of money; the first on a play, in the writing of which Field was engaged with Robert Daborne, and the second, in consequence of Field having been "taken on an execution of £30." They have no dates, but others with which they are found are in 1613.
[3] It is tolerably clear that the drama was written in 1609. See the allusion to the war in [Cleveland], as then going on, at p. 28.
[4] Mr Gifford also states (Massinger, i. 67), that he joined Heminge and Condell in the publication of the folio Shakespeare of 1623.
[5] Ben Jonson, in his "Bartholomew Fair," act v. sc. 3, couples him with Burbage, and speaks of him as the "best actor" of the day. This play was produced in 1614.
[6] Taylor the Water-poet, in his "Wit and Mirth," introduces a supposed anecdote of "Master Field the player," which is only a pun upon the word post, and that not made by Field. Taylor had it, probably, from some earlier collection of jokes, and the compiler of Hugh Peters' Jests, 1660, had it from Taylor, and told it of his hero.
[7] Malone, in his "History of the Stage," quotes this passage to show that such was, in Field's day, the ordinary price of the dedication of a play. Malone's Shakespeare, by Boswell, iii. 164.