Dr. Bradley, one of the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, has recently, in Professor Gayley's Representative English Comedies (Macmillan Co., New York, 1903), sifted the available evidence respecting the date and authorship of the play. I am enabled, through the courtesy of Dr. Bradley and the permission, readily granted, of Messrs. Macmillan and Co., to summarise the facts and inferences which Dr. Bradley adduces against the claims of both Dr. Still and Dr. Bridges, and those which seem to favour the identity of Mr. S. with a William Stevenson, who, born at Hunwick in Durham, matriculated as a sizar in November, 1546, became B.A. in 1549-50, M.A. in 1553, B.D. in 1560, being subsequently ordained deacon in London in 1552, appointed prebendary of Durham in January, 1560-1, and who died in 1575, the year in which Gammer Gurton was printed.
The facts are as follows:—
1. The colophon of the earliest known edition of Gammer Gurton's Needle bears date 1575. It also states that it was "played on stage, not longe ago, in Christes Colledge in Cambridge," and was "made by Mr. S., Mr. of Art."
2. The register of the Company of Stationers shows that in 1562-3 Colwell (whose dates as a printer-publisher range from 1561 to 1575) paid 4d. for licence to print a play entitled Dyccon of Bedlam, &c.
3. "Diccon the Bedlam" is a character in Gammer Gurton's Needle, and there is a presumption that the piece licensed to Colwell in 1562-63 was identical with that printed in 1575 under another title; or, as an alternative, that Gammer Gurton was a sequel to Dyccon: but that does not affect the value of the argument, as both would probably be by the same author.
4. If Gammer Gurton's Needle is the play licensed in 1563, the performance at Christ's College must have taken place before that date, for it was not the custom to send a play to the press before it had been acted.
5. In the academic year ending Michaelmas, 1563, there is no record of dramatic representation given in the college; in 1561-62, the accounts mention certain sums "spent at Mr. Chatherton's playe"; in 1560-61 there is no mention of any play; but in 1559-60 we find two items:—"To the viales at Mr. Chatherton's plaie, 2s. 6d."—"Spent at Mr. Stevenson's plaie, 5s."
6. Therefore, as no evidence to the contrary has been found, it appears highly probable that the "Mr. S." of Gammer Gurton's Needle was Mr. William Stevenson, Fellow of Christ's College from 1559 to 1561, and identical with the person of the same name who was Fellow of the college from 1551 to 1554, and who appears in the bursar's accounts as the author of a play acted in the year 1553-54.
7. It is presumed that he was deprived of his fellowship under Queen Mary, and was reinstated under Elizabeth. Whether Stevenson's play of 1559-60 was that given six years before, or a new one, there is no evidence to show, but the former supposition derives plausibility from the fact that allusions to church matters in Gammer Gurton's Needle seem to indicate a pre-Elizabethan date for its composition. [On this Prof. Gayley (of the University of California, and the general editor of Representative English Comedies) remarks that the reference to the King, Act v. ii. (151c), would strengthen the probability that the play of 1575 (and 1559-60) was originally composed during Stevenson's first fellowship, at any rate before the death of Edward VI.; it might therefore be identical with the play acted in 1553-54.]
8. An objection to Stevenson's authorship of the play is the title-page of 1575 speaking of the representation at Cambridge "not longe ago," but Colwell had had the MS. in his possession ever since 1563, and it is not unlikely that the original title-page was retained without other alteration than the change in the name of the piece. The appearance of the title-page (see facsimile, p. 1) suggests the possibility that it may have been altered after being set up; "Gammer gur-/tons Nedle" in small italic may have been substituted for Diccon of| Bedlam in type as large as that of the other words in the same lines. In Colwell's edition of Ingelend's Disobedient Child (printed 1560, see facsimile title-page opposite) the title-page has the same woodcut border, but the name of the piece is in type of the same size as that of the preceding and following words. As this woodcut does not occur in any other of Colwell's publications now extant, it seems reasonable to infer that Gammer Gurton was printed long before 1575.