XXIV ANONYMOUS WORK — A. PLAYS — An Alarum for London > 1600 — Albion Knight > 1566 — Alice and Alexis — Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany > 1636 — Apius and Virginia > 1567–8 — Arden of Feversham > 1592 — The Birth of Hercules. 1597 < — Caesar’s Revenge > 1606 — Charlemagne or The Distracted Emperor c. 1600 — Claudius Tiberius Nero > 1607 — Club Law. 1599–1600 — Sir Clyomon and Clamydes c. 1570 — Common Conditions > 1576 — The Contention of York and Lancaster > 1592 — Thomas Lord Cromwell > 1602 — King Darius > 1565 — The Dead Mans Fortune > 1591 — The Reign of King Edward the Third > 1595 — Edward the Fourth > 1599 — Every Woman in Her Humour. 1607–8? — Fair Em c. 1590 — The Fair Maid of Bristow > 1604 — The Fair Maid of the Exchange c. 1602 — Fedele and Fortunio or Two Italian Gentlemen c. 1584 — 2 Fortune’s Tennis c. 1602 — Frederick and Basilea. 1597 — George a Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield > 1593 — Sir Giles Goosecap. 1601 < > 3 — Grim the Collier of Croydon. 1600 — The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth > 1588 — Histriomastix. 1589 (?), 1599 — The Honest Lawyer > 1615 — How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad c. 1602 — Impatient Poverty (?) — Jack Drum’s Entertainment. 1600 — The Life and Death of Jack Straw > 1593 — Jacob and Esau > 1558 — 1 Jeronimo c. 1604 — The Troublesome Reign of King John 1587< >91 — Judith c. 1595 (?) — A Knack to Know an Honest Man. 1594 — A Knack to Know a Knave. 1592 — Leire > 1594 — Liberality and Prodigality. 1601 — Locrine c. 1591 — The London Prodigal. 1603 < > 05 — Look About You. 1599 (?) — The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune. 1582 (?) — Love Feigned and Unfeigned (?) — The Maid’s Metamorphosis. 1600 — The Marriage of Wit and Science > 1570 — Meleager (?) — The Merry Devil of Edmonton c. 1603 — Minds. 1575 < — Misogonus. 1560 < > 77 — Sir Thomas More c. 1596 — Mucedorus > 1598; 1611 — Narcissus. 6 Jan. 1603 — New Custom. 1558 < > 73 — Nobody and Somebody > 1606 — Parnassus. 1598–1602 (?) — Il Pastor Fido > 1601 — The Pedlar’s Prophecy > 1594 — Pericles c. 1607–8 — Philotus > 1603 — The Puritan. 1606 — The Revenger’s Tragedy. 1606 < > 7 — The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York > 1592 — 1 Richard the Second c. 1592 < > 5 — The True Tragedy of Richard the Third > 1594 — Robin Hood > 1560 — Ruff, Cuff and Band c. 1615 — The Second Maiden’s Tragedy. 1611 — Selimus. 1591 < > 94 — Soliman and Perseda c. 1589 < > 92 — Captain Thomas Stukeley. 1596 — 1 Tamar Cham > 1592 — The Taming of A Shrew c. 1589 — The Thracian Wonder c. 1600 — Timon c. 1581 < > 90 (?) — Tom Tyler and his Wife > 1563 — The Trial of Chivalry c. 1600 — The Trial of Treasure > 1567 — 1 Troilus and Cressida. 1599 (?) — The Valiant Welshman. 1610 < > 15 — A Warning for Fair Women > 1599 — The Wars of Cyrus King of Persia > 1594 — The Weakest Goeth to the Wall > 1600 — Wily Beguiled. 1596 < > 1606 — The Wisdom of Doctor Dodipoll. 1599 < > 1600 — The Wit of a Woman > 1604 — Work for Cutlers c. 1615 — A Yorkshire Tragedy c. 1606 — B. MASKS — Gesta Grayorum. 1594 — The Twelve Months. 1608–12 — Mask of Flowers. 6 Jan. 1614 — C. RECEPTIONS AND ENTERTAINMENTS — Coronation Triumph. 1559 — Bristol Entertainment. August 1574 — Kenilworth Entertainment. 1575 — Woodstock Entertainment. 1575 — Suffolk and Norfolk Entertainments. August 1578 — Fortress of Perfect Beauty. 15–16 May 1581 — Tilbury Visit. 1588 — Tilt-yard Entertainment. 17 Nov. 1590 — Cowdray Entertainment. 1591 — Elvetham Entertainment. 1591 — Bisham, Sudeley, and Rycote Entertainments. 1592 — Bisham — Sudeley — Rycote — Tilt-yard Entertainment. 17 Nov. 1595 — Harefield Entertainment. 1602 — Progress from Scotland. 1603 — Coronation Triumph. 1604 — Entertainment of King of Denmark. 1606 — The Christmas Prince. 1607–8 — Chesters Triumph. 23 April 1610 — Camp-Bell. 29 Oct. 1609 — London’s Love to Prince Henry. 31 May 1610 — Creation of Henry Prince of Wales. 4 June 1610 — Marriage of Frederick and Elizabeth. 1613 — Bristol Entertainment. 1613
[Here I bring together, giving them the same treatment as the
individual works in ch. xxiii, pieces of which the authorship, as
regards the whole or a large part, is unknown or conjectural. They are
grouped as (A) Plays, (B) Masks, (C) Receptions and Entertainments. It
has been convenient, for the sake of classification, to include in the
third group a few which might alternatively have been brought into ch.
xxiii under the name of a part-author or describer.]
S. R. 1600, May 27. ‘Allarum to London’ is included in a
memorandum of ‘my lord chamberlens menns plaies Entred’ and noted as
entered on this day to J. Roberts (Arber, iii. 37).
1600, May 29. ‘The Allarum to London, provided that yt be not printed
without further Aucthoritie.’ John Roberts (Arber, iii. 161).
1602. A Larum for London, or The Siedge of Antwerpe. With the ventrous
actes and valorous deeds of the lame Soldier. As it hath been playde by
the right Honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. For William
Ferbrand. [Prologue and Epilogue.]
Editions by R. Simpson (1872), J. S. Farmer (1912,
T.F.T.), and W. W. Greg (1913, M.S.R.).
The play has been ascribed to Shakespeare by Collier, to Shakespeare
and Marston by Simpson, and to Lodge by Fleay, Shakespeare, 291,
but no serious case has been made out for any of these claims. Bullen,
Marlowe, 1, lxxiv, says that Collier had a copy with doggerel
rhymes on the t.p. including the line,
Our famous Marloe had in this a hand,
which Bullen calls ‘a very ridiculous piece of forgery’.
S. R. 1565–6. ‘A play intituled a merye playe bothe pytthy and
pleasaunt of Albyon knyghte.’ Thomas Colwell (Arber, i. 295).
Fragment in Devonshire collection.
[The t.p. is lost, but the seventeenth-century play lists (Greg,
Masques, xlvii) include an interlude called Albion. A
fragment on Temperance and Humility, conjecturally assigned by Collier,
i. 284, to the same play, is of earlier printing by thirty years or so
(M.S.C. i. 243).]
Editions by J. P. Collier (1844, Sh. Soc. Papers, i. 55)
and W. W. Greg (1910, M. S. C. i. 229).—Dissertations:
M. H. Dodds, The Date of A. K. (1913, 3 Library, iv.
157); G. A. Jones, The Political Significance of A. K. (1918,
J. G. P. xvii. 267).
Collier suggests that this was the play disliked at court on 31 Dec.
1559, but, as Fleay, 66, points out, that would hardly have been
licensed for printing. Dodds thinks it motived by the Pilgrimage of
Grace (1536–7) and written shortly after.
A fragment (to iii. 1) of a play on the loves of Alice and Alexis,
thwarted by Tanto, with an argument of the whole, is in Douce
MS. 171 (Bodl. 21745), f. 48v. The date ‘1604’ is scribbled
amongst the pages. The manuscript also contains sixteenth-century
accounts. There seems nothing to connect this with Massinger’s
Alexius, or the Chaste Lover, licensed by Herbert on 25 Sept.
1639 and apparently included in Warburton’s list of burnt plays (3
Library, ii. 232, 249).
S. R. 1653, Sept. 9. ‘A play called Alphonso, Emperor of
Germany, by John Poole.’ H. Moseley (Eyre, i. 428).
1654. The Tragedy of Alphonsus Emperour of Germany. As it hath
been very often Acted (with great applause) at the Privat house in
Black-Friers by his late Maiesties Servants. By George Chapman Gent.
For Humphrey Moseley. [Epistle to the Reader. The B.M. copy of
the play is dated ‘Novemb. 29, 1653’.]
Editions by K. Elze (1867) and H. F. Schwarz (1913), and in
collections of Chapman (q.v.).
Alphonsus may reasonably be identified with the Alfonso
given before the Queen and the Elector Palatine at the Blackfriars on
5 May 1636 (Cunningham, xxiv). The ascription on the title-page to
Chapman is repeated therefrom by Langbaine who rejects that of Kirkman
in 1661 and 1671 (Greg, Masques, xlviii) to Peele, but the
intimate knowledge of German shown in the dialogue has led Elze and
Ward, ii. 428, to give Chapman a German collaborator, conceivably one
Rudolf Weckerlin of Würtemberg, who after a preliminary visit before
1614 settled permanently in England about 1624 and obtained political
employment, which he varied with literary exercises. Later critics
are inclined to reject Chapman’s authorship altogether, and the case
against it has been effectively put by E. Koeppel, Quellen-Studien
zu den Dramen Chapman’s, 78, and Parrott. The ascription to
Peele has been revived by Robertson, T. A. 123, and though
Parrott does not accept the full argument, he agrees in regarding
the play as originally of Peele’s date, possibly by him, with or
without a collaborator, and drastically revised at a later period,
perhaps by Weckerlin in 1636. Fleay, ii. 156, 311, also accepts Peele
and identifies the play with Harry of Cornwall, revived by
Strange’s for Henslowe on 25 Feb. 1592, but, as Greg (Henslowe,
ii. 151) points out, the character in Alphonsus is not Henry,
but Richard of Cornwall. It must be observed that no critic has noticed
the S. R. ascription to John Poole, which may quite well be the
origin of Kirkman’s ‘Peele’. Who John Poole was, I do not know.
S. R. 1567–8. ‘A Tragedy of Apius and Virgine.’ Richard
Jones (Arber, i. 357).
1575. A new Tragicall Comedie of Apius and Virginia, Wherein is liuely
expressed a rare example of the vertue of Chastitie, by Virginias
constancy, in wishing rather to be slaine at her owne Fathers handes,
then to be deflowred of the wicked Iudge Apius. By R. B. William How
for Richard Jones. [Prologue and Epilogue.]
Editions in Dodsley3, 4 (1825–76), and by J. S. Farmer (1908,
T. F. T.) and R. B. McKerrow (1911, M. S. R.).
‘Haphazard, the Vice’ is a character. The stage-directions name ‘the
stage’, ‘the scaffold’. A prologue addresses ‘lordings’; an epilogue
has a prayer for the queen, nobles, and commons. The play is not
controversial, but the tone is Protestant. Fleay, 61, thinks it a
Westminster play of 1563–4; but no Westminster play of 1563–4 is on
record. If Fleay means 1564–5, the Westminster play of that Christmas
was Miles Gloriosus. There is nothing but the initials to
identify the author with Richard Bower of the Chapel (q.v.), but
the suggestion is more plausible than that of Wallace, i. 108, who
gives the play to Richard Edwardes (q.v.), finding that the ‘R. E.’
subscribed to some of his manuscript poems is capable of being misread
‘R. B.’.
S. R. 1592, April 3 (Bishop of London). ‘The tragedie of Arden
of Feuersham and Blackwall.’ Edward White (Arber, ii. 607). [See
s.v. Kyd, Spanish Tragedy, for the record of a piracy of the
play in 1592 by Abel Jeffes.]
1592. The Lamentable and True Tragedie of M. Arden of Feuersham in
Kent. Who was most wickedlye murdered, by the meanes of his disloyall
and wanton wyfe, who for the love she bare to one Mosbie, hyred two
desperat ruffins Blackwill and Shakbag, to kill him. Wherin is shewed
the great mallice and discimulation of a wicked woman, the vnsatiable
desire of filthie lust and the shamefull end of all murderers. For
Edward White. [Epilogue.]
1599. J. Roberts for Edward White.
1633. Eliz. Allde.
Editions by E. Jacob (1770), A. H. Bullen (1887), R. Bayne
(1897, T. D.), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), and in
Sh. Apocrypha.—Dissertations: C. E. Donne, Essay on
the Tragedy of A. of F. (1873); C. Crawford, The Authorship of
A. of F. (1903, Jahrbuch, xxxix. 74; Collectanea,
i. 101); W. Miksch, Die Verfasserschaft des A. of F. (1907,
Breslau diss.); K. Wiehl, Thomas Kyd und die Autorschaft von ... A.
of F. (1912, E. S. xliv. 356); H. D. Sykes, Sidelights
upon Shakespeare, 48 (1919); L. Cust, A. of F. (1920,
Arch. Cant. xxxiv. 101).
Jacob first claimed the authorship for Shakespeare. In spite of the
advocacy of Swinburne (Study of Sh., 129) modern criticism
remains wholly unconvinced. The play has tragic merit, but it is not
of a Shakespearian character, and it is impossible to fit its manner,
before 1592, into any coherent theory of Shakespeare’s development.
More plausible is the case for Kyd, suggested by Fleay, ii. 28, who
puts the date as far back as 1585 on quite unreliable grounds of
improbable guess-work, and supported by Robertson, T. A. 151,
and elaborately argued by Crawford and Sykes. But Boas, Kyd,
lxxxix, thinks that the author was more likely an imitator of Kyd, and
opinion remains divided. Oliphant (M. P. viii. 420) suggests Kyd
and Marlowe, possibly with a third. The theme may also have been that
of the Murderous Michael played at court by Sussex’s in 1579.
[MS.] B.M. Add. MS. 28722. ‘The birthe of hercules.’
[Prologus Laureatus; Mercurius Prologus; after text, ‘Testamentum
poetae, ad peleum. Comoedarum pariter et histrionum princeps Peleu, tuo
pro iudicio, volo hanc meam Comoediam, vel recitari, vel reticeri: hoc
est: aut vivere aut mori. Scripsi, nec poeta, nec moriens: et tamen
poeta moriens’. Written in one hand, with stage-directions by a second
and corrections by a third and possibly a fourth, on paper datable by
the watermark in 1597.]
Editions by M. W. Wallace (1903) and R. W. Bond (1911, M. S.
R.).
This is pretty clearly a University play, and any connexion with the
Hercules of the Admiral’s men in 1595 is highly improbable. As
George Peele died in 1596, it seems difficult to identify him with
the Peleus of the MS. Bond thinks that ‘the styles of composition and
writing agree in placing a date before 1600 out of the question’.
S. R. 1606, June 5. ‘A booke called Julius Caesars reuenge.’
J. Wright and N. Fosbrook, licensed by Dr. Covell and the
wardens (Arber, iii. 323).
N.D. The Tragedie of Caesar and Pompey Or Caesars Reuenge.
G. E. for Iohn Wright.
1607.... Priuately acted by the Studentes of Trinity Colledge in
Oxford. For Nathaniel Fosbrook and Iohn Wright. [Re-issue with
cancel t.p.]
Editions by F. S. Boas (1911, M. S. R.) and W. Mühlfeld
(1911, 1912, Jahrbuch, xlvii. 132; xlviii. 37), and J. S.
Farmer (S. F. T.).—Dissertations: T. M. Parrott, The
Academic Tragedy of C. and P. (1910, M. L. R. v. 435); H.
M. Ayres, C. R. (1915, M. L. A. xxx. 771); G. C. Moore
Smith, The Tragedy of C. R. (1916, 12 N. Q. ii. 305).
There is no traceable connexion between this and any other of the
several plays on Caesar, extant and lost, which are upon record. C.
Crawford (M. S. C. i. 290) indicates some parallels which
suggest a date of authorship between 1592 and 1596.
[MS.] Egerton MS. 1994. At the end is the note, ‘Nella Φ
δ Φ ν ρ la B’ = ‘Nella fedeltà finirò la vita’.
Editions by A. H. Bullen (1884, O. E. P. iii) and F.
L. Schoell (1920).—Dissertation: F. L. Schoell, Un Drame
Élisabéthain Anonyme C (1912, Revue Germanique, viii. 155).
Bullen suggests that the author was Chapman, and also thinks Tourneur
or Marston conceivable. He quotes Fleay’s opinion in favour of Field.
Fleay, ii. 319, withdraws Field and substitutes Dekker. He identifies
the play with the ‘King Charlemagne’ of Peele’s Farewell of 1589
(cf. s.v. Peele, Battle of Alcazar). Schoell makes an elaborate
case for Chapman, and thinks that the play might be The Fatall Love,
a French Tragedy, entered as his in S. R. on 29 June 1660,
and included, without author’s name, in Warburton’s list of burnt plays
(3 Library, ii. 231). A date later than 1584 is indicated by the
use of Du Bartas’s Seconde Semaine of that year. It may be added
that the style points to c. 1600 rather than c. 1590.
S. R. 1607, April 10 (Buck). ‘A booke called the tragicall Life
and Death of Claudius Tiberius Nero.’ Francis Burton (Arber,
iii. 346).
1607. The Tragedie of Claudius Tiberius Nero, Rome’s greatest Tyrant.
Truly represented out of the purest Records of those Times. For
Francis Burton. [Epistle to Sir Arthur Mannering, son of Sir George
of Eithfield, Shropshire; Verses Ad Lectores.]
1607. The Statelie Tragedie of Claudius Tiberius Nero.... For
Francis Burton. [Another issue.]
Edition by J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.).
The play, which is on Tiberius, not Nero, is to be distinguished from
Nero (1624). The epistle, not apparently by the author, says
that the play’s ‘Father was an Academician’.
[MS.] St. John’s College, Cambridge, MS. S. 62. [Without t.p.
and imperfect; probably identical with a MS. of the play owned by
Richard Farmer.]
Edition by G. C. Moore Smith (1907).
[Epilogue.]—Dissertation: G. C. Moore Smith, The Date of C.
L. (1909, M. L. R. iv. 268).
The play is described by Fuller, Hist. of Cambridge (1655), 156,
as given at Clare Hall in 1597–8. But J. S. Hawkins, in his edition of
Ruggle’s Ignoramus (1787), xvi, gives the alternative date 1599,
and this has now been confirmed by the discovery of manuscript annals
of Cambridge, probably by Fuller himself, with the entry, under the
academic year 1599–1600, ‘Aula Clarensis. Club Law fabula festivissima
data multum ridentibus Academicis, frustra Oppidanis dolentibus’. The
play is a satire on the townsmen, and especially the anti-gown mayor of
1599–1600, John Yaxley. Fuller says that the townsmen were invited to
the performance and made to sit it through, and that they complained
to the Privy Council, who first ‘sent some slight and private check to
the principall Actors therein’, and then, when pressed, said that they
would come to Cambridge, and see the comedy acted over again in the
presence of the townsmen. The fact that there is no record of these
letters in the extant register of the Council hardly disproves the
substance of Fuller’s story. Hawkins ascribed the play to Ruggle (q.v.)
on the authority of an eighteenth-century memorandum.
1599. The Historie of the two valiant Knights, Syr Clyomon knight of
the Golden Sheeld, sonne to the King of Denmarke: And Clamydes the
White Knight, sonne to the King of Suauia. As it hath been sundry times
Acted by her Maiesties Players. Thomas Creede. [Prologue.]
Editions by W. W. Greg (1913, M. S. R.) and J. S. Farmer
(S. F. T.), and in collections of Peele.
Subtle Shift ‘the vice’, Providence, and Rumour are among the
characters.
Dyce ascribed the play to George Peele on the strength of a manuscript
note ‘in a very old hand’ on a copy of the 1599 edition. Bullen
thinks it of earlier date than Peele. Greg agrees, regarding it as
about contemporary with Common Conditions. L. Kellner, in
Englische Studien, xiii. 187, compares the language and style
at great length with Peele’s and concludes against his authorship,
unless indeed he wrote it in a spirit of parody. His arguments are
challenged by R. Fischer in Englische Studien, xiv. 344. Fleay,
70, assigned it, with Common Conditions, to R. Wilson. Later
(ii. 295), he substituted R[ichard] B[ower]. He noted a parallel to
Thomas Preston’s Cambyses, and suggested as a date 1570 or
1578, the years, according to him, of the original production and of a
revival of Cambyses. G. L. Kittredge, in Journal of Germanic
Philology, ii. 8, suggests that Preston himself was the author
of Sir Clyomon and Clamydes. If the ‘her Maiesties Players’
of the title-page means the later company of that name, the play, if
not written, must have been revived 1583–94. Fleay, ii. 296, further
identifies it with The Four Kings licensed for Henslowe (i. 103)
in March 1599; but an old Queen’s play would not have needed a licence.
An Anglo-German repertory of 1626 includes a ‘Tragikomödie vom König in
Dänemark und König in Schweden’ (Herz, 66, 72).
S. R. 1576, July 26. ‘A newe and pleasant comedie or plaie after
the maner of common condycons.’ John Hunter (Arber, ii. 301).
[Clearly ‘maner’ is a misreading of the ‘name’ of the t.p.]
Q1, N.D. An excellent and pleasant Comedie, termed after
the name of the Vice, Common Condicions, drawne out of the most famous
historie of Galiarbus Duke of Arabia, and of the good and eeuill
successe of him and his two children, Sedmond his sun, and Clarisia
his daughter: Set foorth with delectable mirth, and pleasant shewes.
William How for John Hunter. [T.p. adds ‘The Players names’ and
‘Six may play this Comedie’; Prologue.]
Q2. Fragment, without t.p. or date, under r.t. ‘A pleasant Comedie
called Common Conditions’.
Editions in Brandl, 597 (1898), and by J. S. Farmer (1908,
Five Anonymous Plays) from Q2, and by Tucker Brooke (1915,
Yale Elizabethan Club Reprints, i) from Q1.
The prologue refers to the audience ‘that sit in place’ and the
‘actours’ that ‘redy stand’. Fleay, ii. 296, suggests the authorship of
Richard Bower, on grounds of style.
S. R. 1594, March 12. ‘A booke intituled, the firste parte of
the Contention of the twoo famous houses of York and Lancaster with
the deathe of the good Duke Humfrey and the banishement and Deathe of
the Duke of Suffolk and the tragicall ende of the prowd Cardinall of
Winchester, with the notable rebellion of Jack Cade and the Duke of
Yorkes ffirste clayme vnto the Crowne. Thomas Millington (Arber,
ii. 646). [Part i.]
1602, April 19. Transfer from T. Millington to T. Pavier, ‘The first
and Second parte of Henry the Vjt, ij bookes’ (Arber, iii. 204).
[Parts i and ii.]
1594. The First Part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of
Yorke and Lancaster, with the death of the good Duke Humphrey: And the
banishment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the Tragicall end of
the proud Cardinall of Winchester, with the notable Rebellion of Iacke
Cade: And the Duke of Yorkes first claime vnto the Crowne. Thomas
Creede for Thomas Millington. [Part i.]
1595. The true Tragedie of Richard Duke of Yorke, and the death of
good King Henrie the Sixt, with the whole contention betweene the two
Houses Lancaster and Yorke, as it was sundrie times acted by the Right
Honourable the Earle of Pembrooke his seruants. P. S. for Thomas
Millington. [Part ii.]
1600. Valentine Simmes for Thomas Millington. [Part i.]
1600. W. W. for Thomas Millington. [Part ii.]
[1619] N.D. The Whole Contention betweene the two Famous
Houses, Lancaster and Yorke. With the Tragicall ends of the good
Duke Humfrey, Richard Duke of Yorke, and King Henrie the sixt.
Diuided into two Parts: And newly corrected and enlarged. Written by
William Shakespeare, Gent. For T. P. [Parts i and ii, printed
continuously with Pericles, 1619 (q.v.).]
Editions by J. O. Halliwell (1843, Sh. Soc.), Wright
and Clark (1863–6, 1893, Cambridge Shakespeare), W. C.
Hazlitt (1875, Sh. Libr. v, vi), F. J. Furnivall and T.
Tyler (1886, 1889, 1891, Sh. Q), and J. S. Farmer (S. F.
T.).—Dissertations: E. Malone, On the Three Parts
of Hen. 6 (1821, Variorum, xviii. 553); R. Grant White,
On the Authorship of Hen. 6 (Works of Sh. 1859–65,
vii); J. Lee, On the Authorship of 2, 3 Hen. vi and their
Originals (N. S. S. Trans. 1875–6, 219); C. F. T. Brooke,
The Authorship of 2, 3 Hen. 6 (1912, Trans. of Connecticut
Academy, xvii. 141).
The various claims of Marlowe, Kyd, Greene, Peele, Lodge, and
Shakespeare himself to the Contention can only be discussed in
relation to Shakespeare’s revision of them as 2, 3 Henry VI,
which probably belongs approximately to the date of 1 Henry vi,
produced by Strange’s on 3 March 1592.
S. R. 1602, Aug. 11 (Jackson). ‘A booke called the lyfe and
Deathe of the Lord Cromwell, as yt was lately Acted by the Lord
Chamberleyn his servantes.’ William Cotton (Arber, iii. 214).
1602. The True Chronicle Historie of the whole life and death of Thomas
Lord Cromwell. As it hath beene sundrie times publikely Acted by the
Right Honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. Written by W. S.
For William Jones.
S. R. 1611, Dec. 16. Transfer from William Jones to John Browne
of a ‘booke called the lyfe and death of the Lord Cromwell, by W: S.’
(Arber, iii. 474).
1613.... As it hath been sundry times publikely Acted by the Kings
Maiesties Seruants. Written by W. S. Thomas Snodham.
1664; 1685. [Parts of F3 and F4 of Shakespeare.]
Editions printed by R. Walker (1734) and by T. E. Jacob (1889,
Old English Dramas), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), and
in Sh. Apocrypha.—Dissertation: W. Streit, The L. and
D. of T. L. C. (1904, Jena diss.).
The W. S. of the title-page was interpreted as William Shakespeare in
Archer’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, lx). No modern critic
accepts the attribution, except Hopkinson, who thinks that the original
author was Greene, and that Shakespeare revised his work. Heywood was
suggested by R. Farmer, and Drayton by Fleay, Shakespeare, 298;
B.C. i. 152, 160. The guesses at Wentworth Smith and William Sly
rest merely on their initials.
S. R. 1565–6. ‘A playe intituled of the story of kyng Daryous
beyinge taken oute of the iijde and iiijth chapeter of the
iijde boke of Esdras &c.’. Thomas Colwell (Arber, i. 298).
1565, October. A Pretie new Enterlude both pithie & pleasaunt of the
Story of Kyng Daryus, Beinge taken out of the third and fourth Chapter
of the thyrd booke of Esdras. Colwell. [On t.p. ‘Syxe persons
may easely play it’.]
1577. Hugh Jackson. [B.M. C. 34, i. 21, from Irish sale of
1906.]
Editions by J. O. Halliwell (1860), A. Brandl (1898), 359, J. S.
Farmer (1907, 1909, T. F. T.).
The characters, other than Darius and Zorobabell, are mainly abstract,
and include Iniquitie, ‘the Vyce’. There is a Prolocutor.
[MS.] Add. MS. 10449. ‘The plotte of the deade mans
fortune.’ [Probably from Dulwich.]
The text is given by Steevens, Variorum (1803), iii. 414;
Boswell, Variorum (1821), iii. 356; Greg, Henslowe
Papers, 133; and a facsimile by Halliwell, The Theatre Plats of
Three Old English Dramas (1860).
The names of actors who took part in the play point to a performance by
the Admiral’s, about 1590–1 (cf. ch. xiii).
S. R. 1595, Dec. 1. ‘A book Intitled Edward the Third and the
Blacke Prince their warres with kinge John of Fraunce.’ Burby
(Arber, iii. 55).
1596. The Raigne of King Edward the third: As it hath bin sundrie times
plaied about the Citie of London. For Cuthbert Burby.
1599. Simon Stafford for Cuthbert Burby.
Editions with Shakespeare Apocrypha, and by E.
Capel (1759–60, Prolusiones), F. J. Furnivall (1877,
Leopold Sh.), J. P. Collier (1878, Shakespeare), G.
C. Moore Smith (1897, T. D.), J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F.
T.).—Dissertations: H. von Friesen, Ed. iii, angeblich
ein Stück von Sh. (1867, Jahrbuch, ii. 64); J. P. Collier,
K. Edw. III, a Historical Play by W. Sh. (1874); A. Teetgen,
Sh’s. K. Edw. iii, absurdly called, and scandalously treated, as a
‘Doubtful Play’: an Indignation Pamphlet (1875); A. C. Swinburne,
On the Historical Play of K. Edw. iii (1879, Gent. Mag.,
1880, &c., Study of Sh.); G. von Vincke, K. Edw. iii, ein
Bühnenstück? (1879, Jahrbuch, xiv. 304); E. Phipson, Ed.
iii (1889, N. S. S. Trans. 58*); G. Liebau, K. Ed. iii
von England und die Gräfin von Salisbury (1900, 1901), K. Ed.
iii von England im Lichte europäischer Poesie (1901); R. M. Smith,
Edw. III (1911, J. G. P. x. 90).
The authorship was first ascribed to Shakespeare (with that of Edw.
IV and Edw. II!) in Rogers and Ley’s play-list of 1656
(Greg, Masques, lxiv). The theory was advocated by Capell, and
has received much support, largely owing to the assent of Tennyson,
against whose authority, however, may be set that of Swinburne. In its
latest and not altogether unplausible form, Shakespeare is regarded
as the author, not of the whole play, but of i. 2 and ii, which deal
with the episode of the wooing of Lady Salisbury by the king, and are
possibly, although by no means certainly, due to another hand than that
of the chronicle narrative, to which they are only slightly linked.
The style of these scenes is not demonstrably un-Shakespearian, and
they, and in less degree the play as a whole, contain many parallels
with Hen. V and other works of the ‘nineties, of which the
repetition in II. i. 451 and in Sonnet XCIV of the
line
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds
is the most striking. The controversy cannot be dealt with in detail
here. Shakespeare’s contribution, if any, may with most probability
be assigned to the winter of 1594–5; but it does not follow that the
original play may not have been of earlier date. No importance is to
be attached to the argument of Fleay (ii. 62; Shakespeare, 282)
that the use of the phrase ‘Ave, Caesar’ in I. i. 164 caused
its use in Greene’s Francesco’s Fortunes of 1590 (cf. App.
C, no. xliii), but it is noteworthy that a play on the subject was
produced, apparently under Anglo-German influence, at Danzig in 1591
(Herz, 5). Of non-Shakespearian authors, for the whole or a part of the
play as extant, Marlowe is preferred by Fleay, Greene by Liebau and
Robertson, and Kyd by Sarrazin.
S. R. 1599, Aug. 28. ‘Twoo playes beinge the ffirst and Second
parte of Edward the iiijth and the Tanner of Tamworth With the
history of the life and deathe of master Shore and Jane Shore his Wyfe
as yt was lately acted by the Right honorable the Erle of Derbye his
seruantes.’ John Oxonbridge and John Burby (Arber, iii. 147).
1600, Feb. 23. Transfer of Busby’s interest to Humphrey Lownes (Arber,
iii. 156).
1600. The First and Second Parts of King Edward the Fourth. Containing
His mery pastime with the Tanner of Tamworth, as also his loue to faire
mistrisse Shoare, her great promotion, fall and miserie and lastly the
lamentable death of both her and her husband. Likewise the besieging
of London, by the Bastard Falconbridge, and the valiant defence of
the same by the Lord Maior and the Citizens. As it hath diuers times
beene publikely played by the Right Honorable the Earle of Derbie his
seruants. F. K. for Humfrey Lownes and John Oxenbridge.
1605; 1613; 1619; 1626.
Edition by B. Field (1842, Sh.
Soc.).—Dissertation: A. Sander, T. Heywood’s Historien
von König Edward iv und ihre Quellen (1907, Jena diss.).
Sander and others date the play 1594, by an identification with the
anonymous Siege of London revived by the Admiral’s on 26 Dec.
1594. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 173) more cautiously says that the play
of 1594 ‘may underlie’ certain scenes of 1 Edward iv. He
regards Edward iv, ‘on internal evidence, as unquestionably
Heywood’s’. This is the usual view, but Fleay, ii. 288, had doubted
it. There is no external evidence for Heywood’s authorship, or for
any connexion between him and Derby’s men. Moreover, in May 1603, he
authorized Henslowe, on behalf of Worcester’s, to pay Chettle and Day
for ‘the Booke of Shoare, now newly to be written’, also described
as ‘a playe wherein Shores wiffe is writen’. If this was a revision
of his own play, he would hardly have left it to others. It is fair
to add that in the previous January he had himself received payment
with Chettle for an unnamed play, which might be the same (Henslowe,
ii. 234). The ‘three-mans song’ on Agincourt in iii. 2 of Part I
closely resembles Drayton’s Ballad of Agincourt (ed. Brett,
81), and must, I think, be his. Jane Shore is mentioned as a
play visited by citizens in The Knight of the Burning Pestle
(1607), ind. 57, and ‘the well-frequented play of Shore’ in Pimlyco
or Runne Redcap (1609). A play, apparently on the same subject, was
performed by English actors at Graz on 19 Nov. 1607 (Herz, 98).
1609. Everie Woman in her Humor. E. A. for Thomas Archer.
[Prologue.]
Editions by A. H. Bullen (1885, O. E. P. iv) and J. S.
Farmer (1913, S. F. T.).—Dissertation: J. Q. Adams,
E. W. I. and The Dumb Knight (1913, M. P. x. 413).
Fleay, ii. 321, suggests a date c. 1602 on the ground of
apparent reference to the Poetomachia. But this is not
conclusive, and Adams points to the use of a song (p. 335) from
Bateson’s Madrigals (1604). He thinks that Lewis Machin was
the author, as the style resembles that of the comic part of The
Dumb Knight (vide s. Markham), and two passages are substantially
reproduced in the latter. If so, this also may be a King’s Revels
play. Allusions on p. 270 to the ‘babones’ (cf. s.v. Sir Giles
Goosecap) and on p. 316 to the Family of Love (cf. s.v. Middleton)
are consistent with a date of 1603–8.
N.D. For T. N. and I. W.
[In Bodleian. Greg says that this is ‘considerably earlier’ than
1631. The t.p. is as in 1631. Chetwood mentions three early editions,
including one undated and one of 1619. This is not now known.]
1631. A Pleasant Comedie of Faire Em, the Millers Daughter of
Manchester. With the loue of William the Conqueror. As it was sundry
times publiquely acted in the Honourable Citie of London, by the right
Honourable the Lord Strange his Seruants. For John Wright.
Editions by R. Simpson (1878, S. of S. ii), J. S.
Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), and in collections of Sh.
Apocrypha.—Dissertations: R. Simpson, Some Plays
Attributed to Sh. (1875–6, N. S. S. Trans. 155); K. Elze,
Nachträgliche Bemerkungen zu Mucedorus und F. E. (1880,
Jahrbuch, xv. 339); P. Lohr, Le Printemps d’Yver und die
Quelle zu F. E. (1912).
The play has a double plot. One theme is the contest of William the
Conqueror and the Marquess Lubeck for the loves of Princess Blanch of
Denmark and of Mariana, a Swedish captive; the other is the contest
of Manvile, Mountney and Valingford for Em, daughter of the Miller of
Manchester. A ‘ballad intituled The Miller’s daughter of Manchester’
was entered on the Stationers’ Register by Henry Carr on 2 March 1581
(Arber, ii. 390). Fair Em has been included in the Shakespeare
Apocrypha on the strength of a volume formerly in the collection
of Charles II, and then in that of Garrick, in which it was bound
up with Mucedorus and The Merry Devil of Edmonton and
lettered ‘Shakespeare, vol. i’. On the other hand, Edward Phillips, in
his Theatrum Poetarum (1675), assigned it to Greene. Clearly
Greene is not the author, although there are certain resemblances of
situation between the play and Friar Bacon; for he satirizes it
in the preface to Farewell to Folly (Works, ix. 232),
quoting one or two of its expressions and blaming them as borrowed out
of Scripture. Of the author he says, ‘He that cannot write true English
without the help of clerks of parish churches will needs make himself
the father of interludes’, and, ‘The sexton of St. Giles without
Cripplegate would have been ashamed of such blasphemous rhetoric’.
Farewell to Folly seems to have appeared in 1591 (cf. s.v.
Greene), and Fair Em may perhaps therefore be dated between
this pamphlet and Friar Bacon (c. 1589). Simpson adopts
the theory, which hardly deserves serious discussion, of Shakespeare’s
authorship. He finds numerous (but impossible) attacks by Greene upon
Shakespeare from the Planetomachia (1585) onwards, and thinks
that Shakespeare retorted in Fair Em, satirizing Greene as
Manvile and Marlowe as Mountney, and depicting himself as Valingford.
‘Fair Em’ herself is the Manchester stage. In the story of William the
Conqueror he finds an allusion to the travels of William Kempe and
other actors in Denmark and Saxony. Fleay, Shakespeare Manual
(1878), 281, adopts much of this fantasy, but turns ‘Fair Em’ into the
Queen’s company and Valingford into Peele. In 1891 (ii. 282) he makes
‘Fair Em’ Strange’s company. His minor identifications, whether of 1878
or of 1891, may be disregarded. More plausible is his suggestion that
the author of the play may be Robert Wilson (q.v.), which would explain
the attack upon Greene (q.v.) for his Farewell to Folly in R.
W.’s Martin Mar-sixtus (1591). The suggestion that the play
was the Sir John Mandeville revived by Strange’s for Henslowe
in 1592 rests on a confusion between Mandeville and Manvile, but it
may have been the William the Conqueror similarly revived by
Sussex’s on 4 Jan. 1594 (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 151, 158).
S. R. 1605, Feb. 8. ‘A commedy called “the fayre Mayd of
Bristoe” played at Hampton Court by his Maiesties players.’ Thomas
Pavier (Arber, iii. 283).
1605. The Faire Maide of Bristow. As it was plaide at Hampton, before
the King and Queenes most excellent Maiesties. For Thomas Pavier.
Editions by A. H. Quinn (1902, Pennsylvania Univ. Publ.)
and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).
The court performance must have been during the Christmas of 1603–4,
which was at Hampton Court. Bullen, Works of Day, 10, rejects
the theory of Collier that this was Day’s Bristol Tragedy,
written for the Admiral’s in May 1602, on the grounds that it is not
a tragedy and does not resemble the known work of Day. Moreover, the
King’s men are not likely to have acquired an Admiral’s play.
S. R. 1607, April 24 (Buck). ‘A booke called the faire Mayde of
the Exchaunge.’ Henry Rocket (Arber, iii. 347).
1607. The Fayre Mayde of the Exchange. With the pleasaunt Humours of
the Cripple of Fanchurch. Very delectable, and full of mirth. For
Henry Rockit. [Dramatis Personae headed ‘Eleauen may easily acte
this Comedie’, and Prologue.]
1525. I. L.
1637. A. G.
Edition by B. Field (1845, Sh.
Soc.).—Dissertations: L. A. Hibberd, The Authorship and
Date of the Fair Maid of the Exchange (M. P. vii. 383);
P. Aronstein, Die Verfasserschaft des Dramas The Fair Maid of the
Exchange (1912, E. S. xlv. 45).
Heywood’s authorship was asserted by Kirkman in 1671 (Greg,
Masques, lxvii), denied by Langbaine in 1687, accepted by
Charles Lamb and out of respect to him by Ward, ii. 572, and is still
matter of dispute. Fleay, ii. 329, assigned it to Machin on quite
inadequate grounds. Hibberd argues the case for Heywood, and Aronstein
attempts a compromise by giving ii. I, iv. I, and
V to Heywood and the rest to some young academic student
of Shakespeare and Jonson. The imitations of these point to a date
c. 1602. I do not offer an opinion.
S. R. 1584, Nov. 12. ‘A booke entituled Fedele et Fortuna. The
deceiptes in love Discoursed in a Commedie of ij Italyan gent and
translated into Englishe.’ Thomas Hackett (Arber, ii. 437).
1585. Fedele and Fortunio. The deceites in Loue: excellently discoursed
in a very pleasaunt and fine conceited Comoedie, of two Italian
Gentlemen. Translated out of Italian, and set downe according as it
hath beene presented before the Queenes moste excellent Maiestie.
For Thomas Hacket.
[In the Mostyn sale (1919). Epistle ‘To the Woorshipfull, and very
courteous Gentleman, Maister M. R. M.A. commendeth this pleasaunt and
fine conceited comœdie’, signed M.A.; Prologue before the Queene;
Epilogue at the Court, signed M.A. The compiler of the Mostyn sale
catalogue says that this differs from the imperfect print in the
Chatsworth collection, containing sheets B to G only, without t.p.,
epistle, prologue, or epilogue, which is the basis of the modern
editions. Both have the running title, ‘A pleasant Comœdie of two
Italian Gentlemen’. Collier, iii. 60, had seen a copy with the epistle
as found in the Mostyn print, but addressed to John Heardson and signed
A.M. This has been recently found in the Huntington collection.
Editions by P. Simpson (1909, M. S. R.) and F. Flügge
(1909, Archiv, cxxiii, 45), and extracts by Halliwell
(1852, Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,
15).—Dissertations: W. W. Greg, Notes on Publications
(1909, M. S. C. i. 218); F. Flügge, Fidele und Fortunio
(1912, Breslau diss.).
The epistle says ‘I commende to your freendly viewe this prettie
Conceit, as well for the inuention, as the delicate conueiance thereof:
not doubting but you will so esteeme thereof, as it dooth very well
deserue, and I hartely desire’. This praise of the ‘conueiance’ (which
I take to mean either ‘style’ or possibly ‘translation’) does not
suggest that M. A. (or A. M.) was the translator. It is true that
ll. 224–41 appear in England’s Helicon (1600) signed ‘Shep.
Tonie’, and that this signature is often taken to indicate Munday. On
the other hand, two lines of this passage also appear in England’s
Parnassus (1600, ed. Crawford, 306) over the initials S. G., which
suggest Gosson. Another passage in E. P. (231) combines ll.
661–2 and 655–6 of the play over the signature G. Chapman. This has
led Crawford (E. S. xliii. 203), with some support from Greg,
to suggest Chapman’s authorship. I do not think the suggestion very
convincing, in view of the inconsistency and general unreliability of
E. P. and the fact that Chapman’s first clear appearance as a
writer is ten years later, in 1594. The evidence is quite indecisive,
but of Munday, Chapman, Gosson, I incline to think Gosson the most
likely candidate. On the other hand, if M. R. is Matthew Roydon, he was
the dedicatee of poems by Chapman in 1594 and 1595. For M. A. I hardly
dare guess Matthew Arundel. In any case, the play is only a translation
from L. Pasqualigo’s Il Fedele (1576).
[MS.] Add. MS. 10449. ‘The [plott of the sec]ond part of
fortun[s Tenn]is.’ [A fragment, probably from Dulwich.]
The text is given by Greg, Henslowe Papers, 143. The actors
named show that it belonged to the Admiral’s, and Greg suggests that it
may be Dekker’s ‘fortewn tenes’ of Sept. 1600. Is it not more likely to
have been a sequel to that, possibly Munday’s Set at Tennis of
Dec. 1602?
[MS.] Add. MS. 10449. ‘The plott of Frederick & Basilea.’
[Probably from Dulwich.]
The text is given by Steevens, Variorum (1803), iii. 414;
Boswell, Variorum (1821), iii. 356; Greg, Henslowe
Papers, 135; and a facsimile by Halliwell, The Theatre Plats of
Three Old English Dramas (1860).
The play was produced by the Admiral’s on 3 June 1597, and the actors
named represent that company at that date (cf. ch. xiii).
S. R. 1595, April 1. ‘An Enterlude called the Pynder of
Wakefeilde.’ Cuthbert Burby (Arber, ii. 295).
1599. A Pleasant Conceyted Comedie of George a Greene, the Pinner
of Wakefield. As it was sundry times acted by the seruants of the
right Honourable the Earle of Sussex. Simon Stafford for Cuthbert
Burby.
Editions in Dodsley1–3 (1744–1825), by W. Scott (1810, A.
B. D. i), F. W. Clarke (1911, M. S. R.), and J. S. Farmer
(S. F. T.), and in collections of Greene.—Dissertation:
O. Mertins, Robert Greene and the Play of G. a G. (1885, Breslau
diss.).
Sussex’s men revived the play for Henslowe on 29 Dec. 1593 (Greg,
Henslowe, ii. 158). The Chatsworth copy has on the title-page
the following notes in two early seventeenth-century hands: ‘Written
by ... a minister, who ac[ted] the piñers p̄t in it himself. Teste
W. Shakespea[re]’, and ‘Ed Iuby saith that the play was made by Ro.
Gree[ne]’. These, though first produced by Collier, appear (M.
S. C. i. 288) to be genuine. Greene’s authorship has been very
commonly accepted. Fleay, i. 264, ii. 51, supposed first Greene and
Peele, then added Lodge, but, although the text has been abridged,
there is no evidence of double authorship. Oliphant’s suggestion (M.
P. viii. 433) of revision by Heywood only rests on the inclusion of
the play next his in the Cockpit list of 1639 (Variorum, iii.
159). R. B. McKerrow thinks (M. S. C. i. 289) that the ‘by Ro.
Greene’ of the note may mean ‘about Ro. Greene’ as a leading incident
is apparently based on an episode of Greene’s life. An allusion in
I. i. 42 to Tamburlaine gives an anterior limit of date.
S. R. 1606, Jan. 10. (Wilson). ‘An Comedie called Sir Gyles
Goosecap Provided that yt be printed accordinge to the Copie wherevnto
master Wilson’s hand ys at.’ Edward Blount (Arber, iii. 309).
1606. Sir Gyles Goosecappe. Knight. A Comedie presented by the Chil: of
the Chappell. John Windet for Edward Blount.
1636....A Comedy lately Acted with great applause at the private House
in Salisbury Court. For Hugh Perry, sold by Roger Bell. [Epistle
to Richard Young of Woolley Farm, Berks. Signed ‘Hugh Perry’.]
Editions by A. H. Bullen (1884, O. E. P. iii), W.
Bang and R. Brotanek (1909, Materialien, xxvi), J. S. Farmer
(1912, T. F. T.), and T. M. Parrott (1914, Chapman,
ii).—Dissertations: G. L. Kittredge, Notes on Elizabethan
Plays (1898, J. G. P. ii. 10); T. M. Parrott, The
Authorship of S. G. G. (1906, M. P. iv. 25).
Bullen thought the author, who is stated in Perry’s epistle to be dead
in 1636, might be some imitator of Chapman. Fleay, ii. 322, suggests
Chapman himself. This view receives elaborate support from Parrott, and
appears very plausible. As ‘your greatest gallants, for men, in France
were here lately’ (III. i. 47) the date is after the visit of
Biron in Sept. 1601 and possibly after that of Nevers in April 1602.
It cannot be later than the beginning of 1603, as ‘She is the best
scholar of any woman, but one, in Europe’ (I. i. 140) points
to Elizabeth’s lifetime. Moreover, Dekker, in his Wonderful Year
of 1603 (Grosart, i. 116), has ‘Galen could do no more good, than Sir
Giles Goosecap’, and though ‘goosecap’ is a known term for a booby,
e.g. in Nashe’s Four Letters Confuted of 1592 (Works,
i. 281), the play seems to be responsible for the ‘Sir Giles’. The
phrase ‘comparisons odorous’ in IV. ii. 64 echoes Much
Ado, III. v. 18. The later part of the period 1601–3 would
perhaps best fit the allusions to the Family of Love (II. i.
263), as to which cf. s.v. Middleton’s play of that name, and to the
baboons (I. i. 11), the memory of which is still alive in
Volpone (1606) and Ram Alley (1607–8). Probably these
had already amused London before 1605, as on Oct. 5 of that year the
Norwich records (Murray, ii. 338) note that ‘This day John Watson
ironmonger brought the Kyngs maiesties warrant graunted to Roger
Lawrence & the deputacion to the seid Watson to shewe two beasts called
Babonnes’. So, too, Kelly, 247, has a Leicester payment of 1606 ‘to the
Mr of the Babons, lycensed to travell by the Kings warrant’. There
is a story of a country fellow who wanted to go to a market town ‘to
haue seene the Baboones’ as late as J. Taylor’s Wit and Mirth in
1629 (Hazlitt, Jest Books, iii. 43). Fleay’s identifications of
Chapman himself with Clarence and Drayton with Goosecap hardly deserve
consideration.
[Alleged prints of 1599 (Chetwood), 1600 (Ward, i. 263), and 1606
(Jacob) probably rest on no authority.]
1662. Grim the Collier of Croyden; Or, The Devil and his Dame: With
The Devil and Saint Dunston. [Part of Gratiae Theatrales, or, A choice
Ternary of English plays. Composed upon especial occasions by several
ingenious persons; viz.... Grim the Collier ... a Comedy, by I. T.
Never before published: but now printed at the request of sundry
ingenious friends. R. D. 1662, 12mo.]
Editions by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. iii),
in Dodsley4, viii (1876), and by J. S. Farmer (S. F.
T.).—Dissertation: H. D. Sykes, The Authorship of G. the
C. of C. (1919, M. L. R. xiv. 245).
Of I. T. nothing is known. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 213) regards the
play as clearly of the sixteenth century on internal evidence, and
points out that Henslowe, on behalf of the Admiral’s, paid Haughton 5s.
on 6 May 1600, ‘in earneste of a boocke which he wold calle the devell
& his dame’. The entry was subsequently cancelled, and presumably
Haughton transferred the play to another company. Sykes calls attention
to analogies with Englishmen for my Money, which confirm the
probability of Haughton’s authorship. It is only the ascription of
1662 to I. T. which causes hesitation. Farmer (Hand List, 19)
suggests that this was John Tatham. Grim and the Devil both appear
in the Like Will to Like of Ulpian Fulwell (q.v.), but I do
not understand what kind of indirect connexion Greg thinks may have
existed between Haughton’s play and a possible revival of Fulwell’s by
Pembroke’s men in Oct. 1600.
S. R. 1594, May 14. ‘A booke intituled, The famous victories
of Henrye the Fyft, conteyninge the honorable battell of Agincourt.’
Thomas Creede (Arber, ii. 648).
1598. The Famous Victories of Henry the fifth: Containing the
Honourable Battell of Agincourt: As it was plaide by the Queenes
Maiesties Players. Thomas Creede.
1617.... as it was Acted by the Kinges Maiesties Seruants. Bernard
Alsop. [Another issue of the same sheets.]
Editions by J. Nichols (1779, Six Old Plays, ii. 317), W.
C. Hazlitt (1875, Shakespeare’s Library, v. 321), P. A. Daniel
(1887, Sh. Q.), and J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.).
In Tarlton’s Jests (ed. Halliwell for Sh. Soc. 24) is a
story of Knell acting Henry V and Tarlton doubling the parts of the
judge and the clown, which clearly refers to this play. The performance
took place ‘at the Bull in Bishopsgate’. Tarlton died in 1588. Fleay,
67; ii. 259, suggests that Tarlton was the author. Nashe in Pierce
Penilesse (1592, Works, i. 213) speaks of ‘Henrie the
fifth represented on the stage’. This is obviously too early to be the
new play of ‘harey the V’, given thirteen times for Henslowe between
28 Nov. 1595 and 15 July 1596 by the Admiral’s, in whose inventories
of March 1598 Harry the Fifth’s doublet and gown appear. An earlier
Henslowe entry on 14 May 1592, sometimes quoted as ‘harey the vth’
by Collier, is really ‘harey the 6’ (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 152,
177; Henslowe Papers, 121). Sykes thinks the author S. Rowley
(q.v.).
S. R. 1610, Oct. 31 (Buck). ‘A booke called, Histriomastix or
the player whipte.’ Thomas Thorpe (Arber, iii. 447).
1610. Histrio-Mastix. Or, the Player whipt. For Thomas Thorp.
Editions by R. Simpson (1878, S. of S. ii. 1) and J.
S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).—Dissertation: F. Hoppe,
Histriomastix-Studien (1906, Breslau diss.).
Fleay, ii. 69, gives the whole play to Marston, but the sounder view
of Simpson that Marston, whose style in places is unmistakable, was
only the reviser of an earlier play, is revived in the elaborate and
mainly satisfactory study of Small, 67. The passages assigned by Small
to Marston are ii. 63–9, 128–9, 247–79; iii. 179–v. 191; v. 234; vi.
259–95. I should be inclined to add v. 244–67, but to omit ii. 128–9;
iii. 218–64; iv. 159–201; v. 61–102; v. 147–180; vi. 259–95, which may
just as well belong to the original play. No doubt vi. 259–95 is an
addition, constituting an alternative ending for a court performance
before Elizabeth; but this may just as well have been a contemporary
as a Marstonian addition, and in fact there is no court performance at
the end of the century available for it, while the attempt to find one
led Fleay to the impossible theory that it was given by Derby’s men.
As its whole substance is a satire on professional players, it must
have been both produced and revived by amateurs or boys; and the same
conclusion is pointed to by the enormous number of characters. The
original matter is so full of the technical learning of the schools
as to suggest an academic audience; I think it was a University or
possibly an Inns of Court, not a choirboy, play. The theme is the
cyclical progression of a state through the stages Peace, Plenty,
Pride, Envy, War, Poverty, and Peace again. It is illustrated by the
fortunes of a company of players, who wax insolent in prosperity, and
when war comes, are pressed for soldiers. Their poet Posthaste is
clearly Munday and not, as Simpson and others have vainly imagined,
Shakespeare. With him is contrasted the scholar-poet, Chrisoganus, a
philosopher with whom the players will have nothing to do. He seems to
belong to the order of ideas connected with the scientific school of
Thomas Harriott. Small thinks that the date was 1596, when there was
scarcity of food, a persecution of players, and a pressing of men for
service against Spain; and that the author might be Chapman. Certainly
Chapman was an early admirer of Harriott. But I disagree as to the
date. The style seems to me to be that of Peele or some imitator,
the attitude to the players an academic reflection of the attacks of
Greene, and the political atmosphere that of the years following the
Armada, when the relief of peace was certainly not unbroken by fears of
renewed Spanish attempts. Impressment was not a device of 1596 alone.
The only notice of it known to me in which players are known to have
especially suffered is in an undated letter of Philip Gawdy, assigned
by his editor to 1602 (Gawdy, 121), ‘All the playe howses wer besett
in one daye and very many pressed from thence, so that in all ther ar
pressed ffowre thowsand besydes fyve hundred voluntaryes, and all for
flaunders’. This is too late for the proto-Histriomastix, and
probably also for the revival, but men were being pressed for foreign
service as early as 1585, and again in 1588 and possibly in 1589 and
1591 (Cheyney, i. 158, 197, 219, 255; Procl. 805, 809). As to
the revival, Small puts it definitely in August 1599, when a scare of
a Spanish invasion, which had lasted for a month, came to a crisis
in London on Aug. 7 (Stowe, Annales, 788; Chamberlain, 59;
Sydney Papers, ii. 113; Hist. MSS. xv, app. v, 66), and
he thinks that the words ‘The Spaniards are come!’ (v. 234) are an
insertion of this date. They are not ‘extra-metrical’, as Fleay says,
for the passage is not in metre. There had, however, been earlier
scares, e.g. in Oct. 1595 (Sydney Papers, i. 355; cf. Arber,
iii. 55, 56) and in Oct. 1597 (Edmondes Papers, 303). The
date of 1599 would agree well enough with the career of Marston, and
with that of the Paul’s boys, to whom the revival was probably due,
although I do not agree with Small that it was their court play of 1
Jan. 1601, because I see no evidence that the court ending belongs
to the revision. I take it that Histriomastix was one of the
‘musty fopperies of antiquity’ with which we learn from Jack Drum’s
Entertainment, v. 112, that the Paul’s boys began. The revision
leaves Posthaste untouched, save for the characteristic Marstonian
sneer of ‘goosequillian’ (iii. 187). Munday of course was still good
sport in 1599. But Chrisoganus is turned from a scientific into a
‘translating’ scholar (ii. 63). I agree with Small that Marston has
given him Jonsonian traits, and that he intended to be complimentary
rather than the reverse. I do not know that it is necessary to suppose
that Jonson misunderstood this and took offence, for the real offence
was given by Jack Drum’s Entertainment in the next year. But
certainly some of the ‘fustian’ words put in the mouth of Clove in
Every Man Out of His Humour, III. i. 177 sqq., later in
1599 come from Histriomastix, and their origin is pointed by the
phrase ‘as you may read in Plato’s Histriomastix’. One of the fragments
of plays recited by the players contains the lines (ii. 269):
Come Cressida, my Cresset light,
Thy face doth shine both day and night;
Behold behold thy garter blue
Thy knight his valiant elbow wears,
That when he shakes his furious Speare
The foe in shivering fearful sort
May lay him down in death to snort.
I am not convinced with Small that this belongs to the revision, even
though it seems discontinuous with the following fragment of a Prodigal
Child play. But in any case the hit at Shakespeare, if there really
is one, remains unexplained. There is nothing else which points to so
early a date as 1599 for his Troilus and Cressida. I note the
following parallel from S. Rowlands, The Letting of Humors Blood in
the Head-Veine (1600), Sat. iv:
Be thou the Lady Cressit-light to mee,
Sir Trollelolle I will proue to thee.
S. R. 1615, Aug. 14. (Taverner). ‘A play called The Honest
Lawyer.’ Richard Redmer (Arber, iii. 571). [Assigned by Redmer,
apparently at once, to Richard Woodriffe.]
1616. The Honest Lawyer. Acted by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants.
Written by S. S. George Purslowe for Richard Woodroffe.
[Epilogue.]
Edition by J. S. Farmer (1914, S. F.).
A conceivable author is Samuel Sheppard (q.v.), but the absence of
extant early work by him makes a definite attribution hazardous.
1602. A pleasant conceited Comedie, Wherein is shewed how a man may
chuse a good Wife from a bad. As it hath bene sundry times Acted by the
Earle of Worcesters Seruants. For Mathew Law.
1605; 1608; 1614; 1621; 1630; 1634.
Editions: 1824 (for Charles Baldwin), in O. E. D.
(1825, i) and Dodsley4 (1876–9, ix), and by A. E. H. Swaen
(1912, Materialien, xxxv) and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F.
T.).—Dissertations: C. R. Baskervill, Sources and
Analogues of H. (1909, M. L. A. xxiv. 711); J. Q. Adams,
Thomas Heywood and H. (1912, E. S. xlv. 30).
The B.M. copy of 1602 (C. 34, b. 53) has the note ‘Written by Ioshua
Cooke’ in ink on the title-page. Presumably the author of Greene’s
Tu Quoque (q.v.) is meant, with which Swaen, xiii, declares that
the play shows ‘absolutely no similarity or point of agreement’.
Fleay, i. 289, suggested an ascription to Heywood on the ground of
parallelisms with The Wise Woman of Hogsdon, and this case is
elaborately and plausibly argued by Swaen and Adams. The date must be
before Worcester’s begin to appear in Henslowe’s diary, 17 Aug. 1602.
Fleay’s attempt to twist its mentions of a certain ‘Thomas’ in the text
(l. 790) into references to Heywood himself and Thomas Blackwood, the
actor, is mere childishness.
S. R. 1560, June 10. ‘ ... nyce wanton; impaciens poverte ...’
John King (Arber, i. 128).
1560. A Newe Interlude of Impacyente pouerte newlye Imprynted.
John King. [B.M. C. 34, i. 26, from Irish sale of 1906 (cf.
Jahrbuch, xliii. 310). Engraved t.p.; on tablet at foot ‘T. R.’
Thomas Petit’s mark after colophon. The t.p. has also ‘Foure men may
well and easelye playe thys Interlude’, with an arrangement of the
parts.]
N.D. An new enterlude of Impacient pouerte newly Imprynted.
[In Mostyn sale (1919). The t.p. has three woodcut figures. There is no
imprint, but as the woodcuts are also found in W. Copland’s print of
Youth and as King’s copy of Lusty Juventus also passed to
Copland (1548–69), he was probably the printer.]
S. R. 1582, Jan. 15. Transfer from Sampson Awdeley to John
Charlwood (Arber, ii. 405).
Editions by J. S. Farmer (1907, T. F. T.) and R. B.
McKerrow (1911, Materialien, xxxiii).
The play has come to light since the issue of The Mediaeval
Stage, and I therefore include it here, although it is
pre-Elizabethan. The characters are Peace, Envy, Impatient Poverty
(afterwards Prosperity), Conscience, Abundance, Misrule, ‘Collhasarde’,
and a Summoner. The drama is a moral, non-controversial, and not even
necessarily Protestant in tone. It sets out the mutability of the world
and the defects of poverty and prosperity. The scene is a ‘place’,
and there are allusions to Newgate and Tyburn. If the T. R. of the
title-page is the same whose name is at the end of Nice Wanton,
the play is probably not later than the reign of Edward VI; but the
Summoner and allusions to penance and courts spiritual suggest an
even earlier date. The final address to the ‘Soueraynes’ contains the
following stanza:
Let vs pray al to that lorde of great magnificence
To send amonge vs peace rest and vnyte
And Jesu preserue our soueraigne Quene of preclare preeminence
With al her noble consanguynyte
And to sende them grace so the yssue to obtayne
After them to rule this most chrysten realme.
The form of the companion stanzas suggests that the two last lines
originally rhymed, and that a line has dropped out before them.
Possibly an ending originally meant for Henry VIII and Jane Seymour
has been altered with a view to making it appropriate to Elizabeth.
The play is offered with other pre-Elizabethan plays by the company
in Sir Thomas More, IV. i. 42, and was also in the
obsolete library of Captain Cox (Robert Laneham’s Letter, ed.
Furnivall, 30).
S. R. 1600, Sept. 8. ‘A booke Called Jack Drum’s enterteynmente.
A commedy as yt bathe ben diuerse tymes Acted by the Children of
Paules.’ Felix Norton (Arber, iii. 172).
1600, Oct. 23. Transfer from Norton to Richard Oliff (Arber, iii. 175).
1601. Iacke Drums Entertainment: Or the Comedie of Pasquill and
Katherine. As it hath bene sundry times plaide by the Children of
Powles. For Richard Olive. [Introduction, i.e. Induction.]
1616.... Newly Corrected. W. Stansby for Philip Knight.
1618.... The Actors 12 men, and 4 women. For Nathaniel Fosbrooke.
Editions by R. Simpson (1878, S. of S. ii. 125) and J. S.
Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).
All critics have recognized the style as Marston’s and some of the
vocabulary is vomited in Poetaster; cf. Small, 93. The date is
fixed to 1600 by allusions to hopes of ‘peace with Spaine’, ‘Kemps
morice’, and ‘womens yeare’ (i. 37, 45, 166). There is little doubt
that the critical Brabant Senior is Jonson, and that the play is that
in which he told Drummond that Marston staged him. The cuckolding of
Brabant Senior is based upon a story narrated by Jonson to Drummond
(Laing, 21) as one in which he had played the active, not the passive,
part. If he had imparted the same story to Marston, he not unnaturally
resented the use made of it. The minor identifications suggested by
Fleay, ii. 74, have nothing to commend them, except possibly that of
Sir Edward Fortune with Edward Alleyn, who was building the Fortune in
1600. Were not this a Paul’s play, one might infer from the closing
line,
Our Fortune laughes, and all content abounds,
that it was given at the Fortune. Can the Admiral’s have shared it with
Paul’s, as the Chamberlain’s shared Satiromastix? In iv. 37–48
Brabant Senior criticizes three ‘moderne wits’ whom he calls ‘all apes
and guls’ and ‘vile imitating spirits’. They are Mellidus, Musus, and
Decius. I take them to be Marston, Middleton, and Dekker, all writers
for Paul’s; others take Decius for Drayton, to whom Sir John Davies
applied the name, and Musus, by a confusion with Musaeus, for Chapman
or Daniel. For v. 102–14, which bears on the history of the company,
cf. ch. xii (Paul’s).
S. R. 1593, Oct. 23. ‘An enterlude of the lyfe and deathe of
Jack Strawe.’ John Danter (Arber, ii. 639).
1593. [Colophon, 1594]. The Life and Death of Iacke Straw, A notable
Rebell in England: Who was kild in Smithfield by the Lord Maior of
London. John Danter, sold by William Barley.
1604. For Thomas Pavier.
Editions in Dodsley4 (1874, v), and by H. Schütt (1901) and J.
S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.).
Fleay, ii. 153, Schütt, and Robertson, 121, all incline to suggest the
authorship, whole or in part, of Peele. Schütt would date c.
1588, but the theme is that of T. Nelson’s pageant of 1590–1, for which
year a member of Walworth’s company, the Fishmongers, was Lord Mayor.
The text of the play is very short, with only four acts.
S. R. 1557–8. ‘An enterlude vpon the history of Jacobe and Esawe
out of the xxvii chapeter of the fyrste boke of Moyses Called genyses.’
Henry Sutton (Arber, i. 77).
1568. A newe mery and wittie Comedie or Enterlude, newely imprinted,
treating vpon the Historie of Iacob and Esau, taken out of the xxvij.
Chap. of the first booke of Moses, entituled Genesis. Henrie
Bynneman.
Editions in Dodsley4 (1874, ii), and by J. S. Farmer (1908,
T. F. T.).
The play must necessarily, from the date of the S. R. entry, be
pre-Elizabethan, and should have been included in Appendix X of
The Mediaeval Stage. C. C. Stopes, Hunnis, 265, and in
Athenaeum (28 April 1900), claims the authorship for Hunnis; W.
Bang has suggested Udall, which seems plausible. The parts of Mido and
Abra point to boy-actors.
1605. The First Part of Ieronimo. With the Warres of Portugall, and the
life and death of Don Andræa. For Thomas Pavier. [Dumbshows.]
Editions by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. i), in
Dodsley4 (1874, iv), and by F. S. Boas (1901, Works of
Kyd).—Dissertations: J. E. Routh, T. Kyd’s Rime Schemes
and the Authorship of Soliman and Perseda and 1 J. (1905, M. L.
N. xx. 49); A. L. Elmquist, Zur Frage nach dem Verfasser von 1
J. (1909, E. S. xl. 309); A. Seeberger (1909, Archiv für
Stenographie, iv. 306); K. Wiehl, Thomas Kyd und die Autorschaft
von ... 1 J. (1912, E. S. xliv. 343); B. Neuendorff, Zur
Datierung des 1 J. (1914, Jahrbuch, l. 88).
The ascription by Fleay, ii. 27, and Sarrazin to Kyd is rejected on
stylistic grounds by R. Fischer, Zur Kunstentwicklung der Englischen
Tragödie, 100, with whom Boas and other writers concur. A reference
to the jubilee of 1600 (I. i. 25) points to a date at the
beginning of the seventeenth century. If so, the play cannot be that
revived by Strange’s for Henslowe in Feb. 1592 and given, sometimes
under the title of Don Horatio, and sometimes under that of the
Comedy of Jeronimo, during a run of, and several times on the
night before, the Spanish Tragedy (Greg, Henslowe, ii.
150, 154). It is, moreover, not a comedy. It may, however, be a later
version of the same theme, motived by another revival of the Spanish
Tragedy by the Admiral’s in 1601–2. If so, it was probably itself
due, not to the Admiral’s, but to the Chamberlain’s, and a piracy of
their property by the Revels boys explains the jest at ‘Ieronimo in
decimo sexto’ in the induction to the 1604 version of Marston’s
Malcontent. It must be uncertain whether 1 Jeronimo was
the ‘Komödie vom König in Spanien und dem Vice-Roy in Portugall’ given
at Dresden in 1626 (Herz, 66, 76).
1591. The Troublesome Raigne of Iohn King of England, with the
discouerie of King Richard Cordelions Base sonne (vulgarly named, The
Bastard Fawconbridge): also the death of King Iohn at Swinstead Abbey.
As it was (sundry times) publikely acted by the Queenes Maiesties
Players, in the honourable Citie of London. For Sampson Clarke.
There is a Second part with separate signatures and title-page. The
Second part of the troublesome Raigne of King Iohn, conteining the
death of Arthur Plantaginet, the landing of Lewes, and the poysning of
King Iohn at Swinstead Abbey. As ... London ... 1591. [The text of each
part is preceded by lines ‘To the Gentlemen Readers’, and a head-piece,
which has the initials W. D.]
1611. The First and Second Part ... As they were (sundry times) lately
acted by the Queenes Maiesties Players. Written by W. Sh. Valentine
Simmes for John Helme. [The signatures are continuous through both
parts.]
1622.... as they were (sundry times) lately acted. Written by W.
Shakespeare. Augustine Mathewes for Thomas Dewes.
Editions by G. Steevens (1760, T. P. ii), J. Nichols
(1779, Six Old Plays, ii), W. C. Hazlitt (1875, Sh. Libr.
v), F. G. Fleay, King John (1878), F. J. Furnivall (1888,
Sh. Q), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), F. J. Furnivall
and J. Munro (1913, Sh. Classics).—Dissertations: E.
Rose, Shakespeare as an Adapter (Macmillan’s Magazine,
Nov. 1878); G. C. Moore Smith, Sh.’s K. J. and the T. R. (1901,
Furnivall Miscellany, 335); H. D. Sykes, Sidelights on
Shakespeare, 99 (1919).
The authorship was assigned by Malone to Marlowe, by Pope to
Shakespeare and W. Rowley, by Fleay, ii. 53, and King John, 34,
to Greene, Peele, and Lodge, working on a Marlowian plot. Furnivall and
Munro accept none of these theories, and the latter suggests a common
authorship with the early Leir. Sykes argues strongly for Peele.
The lines prefixed to Part I begin
You that with friendly grace of smoothed brow
Have entertained the Scythian Tamburlaine.
They do not claim to be a prologue, and may have been added on
publication. The play is not therefore necessarily later than
Tamburlaine (c. 1587). But the tone is that of the Armada
period. Shakespeare used the play, with which, from the booksellers’
point of view, his King John seems to have been treated as
identical.
[MS.] National Library of Wales, Peniarth (formerly
Hengwrt), MS. 508.
G. A. Jones, A Play of Judith (1917, M. L. N. xxxii. 1)
describes the MS. which contains the Latin text of the Judithae
Constantia of Cornelius Schonaeus, of which a reprint was issued
in London in 1595, together with an incomplete English translation in
unrhymed verse written as prose, perhaps as a school exercise, in a
late sixteenth-century or early seventeenth-century hand.
S. R. 1595, Nov. 26. ‘A booke intituled The most Rare and
plesaunt historie of A knack to knowe an honest man.’ Cuthbert
Burby (Arber, iii. 54).
1596. A Pleasant Conceited Comedie, called, A knacke to know an honest
Man. As it hath beene sundrie times plaied about the Citie of London.
For Cuthbert Burby.
Editions by H. De Vocht (1910, M. S. R.) and J. S. Farmer
(1912, T. F. T.).
The play was produced by the Admiral’s on 22 Oct. 1594, and
twenty-one performances were given between that date and 3 Nov. 1596
(Greg, Henslowe, ii. 171). The text is confused and probably
surreptitious.
S. R. 1594, Jan. 7. ‘A commedie entitled “a Knack to knowe a
knave” newlye sett fourth as it hath sundrye tymes been plaid by Ned.
Allen and his Companie with Kemps applauded Merymentes of the menn of
Goteham.’ Richard Jones (Arber, ii. 643).
1594. A most pleasant and merie new Comedie, Intituled, A Knacke to
knowe a knave. Newlie set foorth, as it hath sundrie tymes bene played
by Ed. Allen and his Companie. With Kemps applauded Merrimentes of
the men of Goteham, in receiuing the King into Goteham. Richard
Jones.
Editions by J. P. Collier (1851, Five Old Plays), in
Dodsley4 (1874, vi), and by J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.).
Strange’s men produced ‘the Knacke to Knowe a Knave’ on 10 June 1592,
and played it seven times to 24 Jan. 1593. Henslowe usually enters it
as ‘the cnacke’. Fleay, 100, suggests that the Osric, revived
by the Admiral’s men on 3 and 7 Feb. 1597, may also be this play.
Both Fleay, ii. 310, and Greg, Henslowe, ii. 156, suggest that
Kempe’s ‘merriments’ are to be found in sc. 12, and that of the rest
the romantic part may be Peele’s and the moral part Wilson’s. Gayley
(R. E. C. i. 422) would like to find in the play the comedy
written by Greene and the ‘young Juvenall’, Nashe. The character
Cuthbert Cutpurse the Conicatcher is from the pamphlet (cf. s.v.
Greene) entered in S. R. on 21 April 1592, and the story of Titus
Andronicus is alluded to in F_{2}v:
As Titus was vnto the Roman Senators,
When he had made a conquest on the Goths.
S. R. 1594, May 14. ‘A booke entituled, The moste famous
Chronicle historye of Leire kinge of England and his Three Daughters.’
Adam Islip (Arber, ii. 649). [Islip’s name is crossed out, and
Edward White’s substituted.]
1605, May 8. ‘A booke called “the Tragecall historie of kinge Leir
and his Three Daughters &c”, As it was latelie Acted.’ Simon
Stafford (Arber, iii. 289). [Assigned the same day by Stafford
with the consent of William Leake to John Wright, ‘provided that Simon
Stafford shall haue the printinge of this booke’.]
1605. The True Chronicle History of King Leir, and his three daughters,
Gonorill, Ragan, and Cordelia. As it hath bene diuers and sundry times
lately acted. Simon Stafford for John Wright.
S. R. 1624, June 29. Transfer of ‘Leire and his daughters’ from
Mrs. White to E. Alde (Arber, iv. 120).
Editions by J. Nichols (1779, S. O. P. ii), W. C. Hazlitt
(1875, Sh. Libr. ii. 2), W. W. Greg (1907, M. S. R.), S.
Lee (1909, Sh. Classics), J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.),
R. Fischer (1914, Quellen zu König Lear).—Dissertations:
W. Perrett, The Story of King Lear (1904, Palaestra,
xxxv); R. A. Law, The Date of King Lear (1906, M. L. A.
xxi. 462); H. D. Sykes, Sidelights on Shakespeare, 126 (1919).
The Queen’s and Sussex’s revived ‘kinge leare’ for Henslowe on
6 and 8 April 1594, shortly before the first S. R. entry (Greg,
Henslowe, ii. 162). As the play is not named in the Sussex’s
repertory of 1593–4, there is a presumption that it belonged to the
Queen’s. The authorship is quite obscure. Fleay, 90, assigns it to
Lodge and Peele; Fleay, 97, to Lodge and Greene; Fleay, ii. 51, to
Lodge and Kyd. Robertson, 176, thinks the claim for Lodge indecisive,
and surmises the presence of Greene. Sykes argues for Peele. Lee hints
at Rankins. The publishing history is also difficult. The entries of
1605 appear to ignore White’s copyright, although this was still alive
in his son’s widow in 1624. Lee suggests that the Stafford-Wright
enterprise was due to negotiation between Wright and White, whose
apprentice he had been. The play was clearly regarded as distinct from
that of Shakespeare, which was entered to N. Butter and J. Busby on
22 Nov. 1607, and it, though based on its predecessor, is far more
than a revision of it. It seems a little improbable that Leire
should have been revived as late as 1605, and the ‘Tragecall’ and
‘lately acted’ of the title-page, taken by themselves, would point to
an attempt by Stafford to palm off the old play as Shakespeare’s. But
although 1605 is not an impossible date for Shakespeare’s production,
1606 is on other grounds more probable.
1602. A Pleasant Comedie, Shewing the contention betweene Liberalitie
and Prodigalitie. As it was playd before her Maiestie. Simon
Stafford for George Vincent. [Prologue and Epilogue.]
Editions by J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.) and W. W. Greg
(1913, M. S. R.).
A reference to ‘childish yeeres’ in the prologue points to boy actors.
The trial (l. 1261) is for an alleged crime on 4 Feb., 43 Eliz. (1601),
and the next court performance after this date was on 22 Feb. 1601 by
the Chapel, to which occasion the production may be assigned. Elizabeth
could be described as a ‘prince’, so that the use of this term does not
bear out Fleay, ii. 323, in assuming a revival of an Edwardian play,
but the characters are mainly abstract and the style archaic for the
seventeenth century, and it is conceivable that the Prodigality
of 1567–8 had been revived.
S. R. 1594, July 20. ‘The lamentable Tragedie of Locrine, the
eldest sonne of Kinge Brutus, discoursinge the warres of the Brittans,
&c.’ Thomas Creede (Arber, ii. 656).
1595. The Lamentable Tragedie of Locrine, the eldest sonne of King
Brutus, discoursing the warres of the Britaines, and Hunnes, with their
discomfiture: The Britaines victorie with their Accidents, and the
death of Albanact. No lesse pleasant then profitable. Newly set foorth,
ouerseene and corrected, By W. S. Thomas Creede. [Prologue and
Epilogue.]
1664; 1685. [F3; F4 of Shakespeare.]
Editions of 1734 (J. Tonson), 1734 (R. Walker), and by R. B.
McKerrow (1908, M. S. R.), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.),
and in Sh. Apocrypha.—Dissertations: R. Brotanek (1900,
Anglia-Beiblatt, xi. 202); C. Crawford, Edmund Spenser, L.
and Selimus (1901, 9 N. Q. vii. 61; Collectanea,
i. 47); W. S. Gaud, The Authorship of L. (1904, M. P.
i. 409); T. Erbe, Die L.-Sage (1904); J. M. Robertson, Did
Sh. Write T. A.? (1905); E. Köppel, L. und Selimus (1905,
Jahrbuch, xli. 193); A. Neubner, König Lokrin. Deutsche
Übersetzung mit literar-historischer Einleitung (1908); F. G.
Hubbard (MS. cited by J. W. Cunliffe in C. H. v. 84); C.
A. Harper, L. and the Faerie Queene (1913, M.L.R. viii.
369).
The interpretation of the W. S. of the title-page in F3 of 1664 as
indicating Shakespeare may be accurate, but does not suggest anything
more than revision for a revival, or perhaps only for the press. Some
revision is proved by the allusion in the epilogue to Elizabeth,
That eight and thirtie yeares the scepter swayd,
an allusion which was not chronologically accurate until
the close of the thirty-eighth regnal year on 16 Nov. 1596, after
the play was in print, and could hardly have been made before the
beginning of that year on 17 Nov. 1595, after it had been entered in
S. R. As to the original author, one is bound to be sceptical of the
unconfirmed notice by J. P. Collier (Bibliographical Account, i.
95) of an ‘inscription on an existing copy of the play ... assigning
the authorship of it to Charles Tylney’. This, says Collier, ‘is the
handwriting of Sir George Buck. He adds the information that he himself
had written the dumb shows by which it was illustrated, and that it
was originally called Elstrild’. Charles Tilney was a cousin
of the Master of the Revels, and was executed for complicity in the
Babington plot in 1586 (Camden, transl. 303). The statement,
if true, would give an early date to the play, which the dumb shows
and other ‘Senecan’ characteristics have been supposed to confirm.
Fleay, ii. 321, boldly conjectures that the epilogue originally
referred to ‘eight and twentie yeares’, and that the play was ‘by’
in the sense of ‘about’, Tilney, supposing the moral drawn against
‘ciuill discord’ instigated by ‘priuate amours’ to point at Mary of
Scots. Recent investigations, however, concerning the relations of the
play to Spenser on the one hand, and to Selimus (q.v.) on the
other, suggest a date not earlier and not much later than 1591, either
for the original composition of the play, or for a very substantial
revision of it. Most of the points are well summed up by Cunliffe in
C. H. v. 84. Locrine may borrow historical facts from
the Faerie Queene (1590); it does not borrow phrases from it.
It does, however, borrow phrases and whole lines, with more than
Elizabethan plagiarism, from Spenser’s Complaints (1591). There
is also an apparent loan from Wilmot’s Tancred and Gismund
(1591). Some of the Complaints passages are also borrowed by
Selimus, which makes similar booty both of Locrine
itself and of the Faerie Queene. I agree with Cunliffe that
the evidence is clearly in favour of Selimus being the later
of the two plays, but am not so certain that the second borrowing of
the Complaints passages tells against a common authorship of
the two. It would be so, ordinarily, but here we have to do with an
abnormal plagiarist. Whoever the author, he belongs to the school of
the university wits. Marlowe is preferred by Malone, Peele by Fleay,
Ward, Gaud, and for all but the comic scenes by Hopkinson, Greene by
Brooke, Peele and Greene by Robertson.
1605. The London Prodigall. As it was plaide by the Kings Maiesties
seruants. By William Shakespeare. T. C. for Nathaniel Butter.
1664; 1685. [F3; F4 of Shakespeare.]
Editions in 1709, 1734 (J. Tonson), 1734 (R. Walker), by J. S.
Farmer (1910, T. F. T.), and in Sh. Apocrypha.
Shakespeare’s authorship is accepted by few modern critics. An
exception is Hopkinson. Fleay, Shakespeare, 299; B. C. i.
152, thinks that he may have ‘plotted’ the play, but that the writer
is the same as that of Thomas Lord Cromwell, whom he believes
to be Drayton. Perhaps he is right in regarding an allusion to service
‘under the king’ (II. i. 16) as pointing to a Jacobean date.
Brooke suggests Marston or Dekker. A play ‘von einem ungehorsamen
Khauffmanns Sohn’ appears in Anglo-German repertories of 1604 and 1606
(Herz, 65, 94).
1600. A Pleasant Commodie, Called Looke about you. As it was lately
played by the right honourable the Lord High Admirall his seruaunts.
For William Ferbrand.
Editions in Dodsley4 (1874, vii), and by J. S. Farmer (1912,
T. F. T.) and W. W. Greg (1913, M. S. R.).
At the end of the play Gloucester proposes to fight the Saracens in
Portugal, and as Anthony Wadeson (q.v.) was writing The Honourable
Life of the Humorous Earl of Gloster with his Conquest of Portugal
in June or July 1601, it has been suggested by Fleay, ii. 267, and
Greg, Henslowe, ii. 204, that Wadeson was also the author of
Look About You. The play ought itself to appear somewhere in
Henslowe’s diary, and Fleay may be right in identifying it with the
Bear a Brain of 1599, although the only recorded payment for
that play was not to Wadeson, but to Dekker. There are reminiscences of
R.J. II. iv. 42; III. v. 221 in l. 2329, and
of 1 Hen. IV, II. iv. 295 in l. 2426.
1589. The Rare Triumphs of Loue and Fortune. Plaide before the Queenes
most excellent Maiestie: wherein are many fine Conceites with great
delight. E. A. for Edward White.
Editions by J. P. Collier (1851, Roxb. Club) and in Dodsley4
(1874, vi).
Fleay, ii. 26, assigns the play to Kyd on account of the similarity
of the plot to that of Soliman and Perseda, but this is hardly
convincing. On 30 Dec. 1582 Derby’s players performed A History of
Love and Fortune at court, for which a city and battlement were
provided by the Revels office. If the two plays were identical, as
dates and style make not improbable, the city presumably served as a
background for the scenes at court, while the battlement was used for
the presenters Venus and Fortune, who are said in Act I to be ‘set
sunning like a crow in a gutter’.
[MS.] On first and last leaves (sig. a 1 and ii. 8 of a copy
(Brit. Mus. IB. 2172) of Johannes Herolt, Sermones Discipuli
(1492).
Edition by A. Esdaile (1908, M. S. C. i.
17).—Dissertation: E. B. Daw, L. F. and U. and the English
Anabaptists (1917, M. L. A. xxxii. 267).
The text is a fragment, but there may have been more, as the original
fly-leaves and end papers of the volume are gone. Sir G. F. Warner
thinks the hand ‘quite early seventeenth century’. The corrections in
the same hand are such as rather to suggest an original composition,
but may also be those of an expert copyist. Miss Daw thinks that the
date of composition was in the seventeenth century, and that the
play represents ideas belonging to (a) the Anabaptists and
(b) the Family of Love, both of which were then active. She even
suggests the possible authorship of the controversialist Edmond Jessop.
Personally, I find it difficult to assign to the seventeenth century
a moral written precisely in the vein of the middle of the sixteenth
century, even to the notes (2, 69, 103) of action ‘in place’ (cf. ch.
xix), and a phrase (76),
Why stare ye at me thus I wene ye be come to se a play,
closely parallel to Wit and Wisdom, 12, which is probably
pre-Elizabethan. The Jacobean activity of Anabaptism and Familism only
revived movements which had been familiar in England from Edwardian
times, were particularly vigorous in 1575, and had apparently died down
during the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign; cf. for Anabaptists C.
Burrage, The Early English Dissenters (1912), and for Familists
s.v. Middleton, Family of Love.
S. R. 1600, July 24 (Hartwell). ‘Two plaies or thinges thone
called the maides metamorphosis thother gyve a man luck and throw him
into the Sea.’ Richard Oliffe (Arber, iii. 168).
1600. The Maydes Metamorphosis. As it hath beene sundrie times Acted
by the Children of Powles. Thomas Creede for Richard Olive.
[Prologue.]
Editions by A. H. Bullen (1882, O. E. P. i), R. W. Bond
(1902, Lyly, iii. 341), and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).
Archer’s play list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, lxxxvi) started an
ascription to Lyly, which was probably suggested by the similarity of
name to Love’s Metamorphosis. Daniel, with Lyly as reviser,
is substituted by Fleay, ii. 324; Day by Gosse and Bullen; Day, with
Lyly as reviser, by Bond. A limit of date is given by the reopening of
Paul’s in 1599, and IV. i. 157 points to the ‘leape yeare’
1600. Fleay thinks that the play was performed at Anne Russell’s
wedding on 16 June 1600 (cf. ch. V), but, though ‘three or
foure Muses’ dance at the end of the play, there is no indication of a
mask, while the accounts of the wedding say nothing of a play.
S. R. 1569–70. ‘A play intituled the maryage of Wytt and
Scyence.’ Thomas Marsh (Arber, i. 399).
N.D. A new and Pleasant enterlude intituled the mariage of
Witte and Science. Thomas Marsh.
Editions in Dodsley4 (1874, ii) and by J. S. Farmer (1909,
T. F. T.).
An allegorical moral, indebted to John Redford’s Wit and
Science (Med. Stage, ii. 454). Fleay, 64; ii. 288, 294,
proposes to identify this with the Wit and Will played at court
in 1567–8 (cf. App. B), as Will is a character.
B. Dobell, in Athenaeum for 14 Sept. 1901, described a MS.
in his possession with the title A Register of all the Noble Men of
England sithence the Conquest Created. The date of compilation is
probably 1570–90. On f. 3 is the argument in English of a play headed:
Children of Paules Play.
Publij Ovidij Nasonis Meleager.
Presumably the play was in English also. It was classical in manner
with five acts, a chorus, and dumb-shows. Act I opened with a dumb-show
before Melpomene of the Fates, Althea and the burning brand. It seems
distinct from the Meleager of W. Gager (q.v.).
S. R. 1607, Oct. 22 (Buck). ‘A Plaie called the Merry Devill of
Edmonton.’ Arthur Johnson (Arber, iii. 362). [The Life and
Death of the Merry Devil of Edmonton, entered 5 April 1608, is a
pamphlet by T. B.]
1608. The Merry Devill of Edmonton. As it hath beene sundry times
Acted, by his Maiesties Seruants, at the Globe, on the banke-side.
Henry Ballard for Arthur Johnson. [Prologue; Induction.]
1612; 1617; 1626; 1631.
S. R. 1653, Sept. 9. ‘The merry devil of Edmonton, by Wm:
Shakespeare.’ H. Moseley (Eyre, i. 429).
1655. For William Gilbertson.
Editions in Dodsley (1875, x), and by H. Walker (1897, T.
D.), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), J. M. Manly (1913, R.
E. C. ii), and in collections of Sh. Apocrypha.
Moseley’s attribution was repeated in the play lists of Archer in
1656 and Kirkman in 1661 (Greg, Masques, lxxxix), and the play
was bound with Mucedorus and Fair Em as ‘Shakespeare,
vol. i’ in Charles II’s library. The attempt of Fleay, ii. 313 (cf.
his Shakespeare, 294), to show that Sir John the priest was
originally called Oldcastle and gave a name to the play is too
far-fetched, but it leads him to support a tradition originally based
on a note by Coxeter (Dodsley2, v. 247) that the author was
Drayton. He puts it in 1597, apparently because Jessica calls Lancelot
a ‘merry devil’ in M. V. II. iii. 2. But the Host is
pretty clearly copied from him of the Merry Wives (c.
1599), and allusions to the king’s hunting (IV. i. 158,
186), although perhaps merely part of the historic action, might also
have been topical under James I. The play existed by 1604, when it is
mentioned in T. M.’s Black Book (Bullen, Middleton, viii.
36). Jonson calls it ‘your dear delight’ in the prologue to The
Devil is an Ass (1616), and it was revived at court on 3 May 1618
(Cunningham, xlv).
N.D. Comoedia. A worke in ryme, contayning an Enterlude of
Myndes, witnessing the Mans Fall from God and Christ. Set forth by H.
N. and by him newly perused and amended. Translated out of Base-Almayns
into English. [No imprint or colophon.] [Preface to the Reader;
Prologue in dialogue.]
This is a translation of the Low German Comoedia: Ein Gedicht des
Spels van Sinnen, anno 1575 of Henrick Niklaes, the founder of the
mystical sect known as the Family of Love (cf. s.v. Middleton).
[MS.] In collection of the Duke of Devonshire. [By two hands, of
which one is only responsible for the t.p. and some corrections in the
text. The t.p. has the heading ‘A mery and ρ ... Misogonus’, followed
by the names of the speakers and ‘Laurentius Bariωna Ketthering die
20 Novembris Anno 1577’. The text, which is apparently imperfect,
stopping in iv. 4, is probably all in one other hand, together with a
prologue, at the end of which is ‘Thomas Rychardes’. The inscriptions
‘Anthony Rice’ on the title-page, ‘Thomas Warde Barfold 1577’ on the
prologue-page, and ‘W. Wyll[~m]’ and ‘John York Jesu’ in margins of
the text, are all in later hands, some of them not of the sixteenth
century.]
Editions by A. Brandl (1898, Q. W. D.), J. S. Farmer
(1906), and R. W. Bond (1911, E. P. I.).—Dissertation:
G. L. Kittredge, The M. and Laurence Johnson (1901, J. G.
P. iii. 335).
Brandl, following Collier, ii. 368, 378, dates the play in 1560, on the
ground of an allusion in IV. i. 131 to ‘the rising rection
ith north’, i.e. the Pilgrimage of Grace of 1536, as twenty-four
years before the time of action, but it is not quite clear that the
rambling dialogue of rustics, in which the passage occurs, justifies
the interpretation put upon it; nor is the allusion in III.
ii. 3 to the weathercock of Paul’s, set up in 1553 and destroyed in
1561, any more conclusive, as the phrase may have become proverbial.
The style might be either of c. 1560 or, in a provincial play,
of c. 1577, or, as Bond suggests, a reviser of c. 1577
might have revised a text of ten or twelve years earlier. For author,
Fleay, 16, 58, 60, taking the piece to be that disliked at court on
31 Dec. 1559, offered Richard Edwardes, and is followed by Wallace,
i. III. There is nothing to suggest that the play was ever
performed at court at all. It seems more natural to look for him,
either in the Thomas Richards or in the Laurence Barjona of the MS.
Conceivably Richards might be the T. R. whose initials appear on
the prints of Impatient Poverty and Nice Wanton (cf.
Mediaeval Stage, ii. 460) in 1560. Barjona might be the name of
a converted Jew. But Kittredge regards it as an anagram of Johnson,
and points out that a Laurence Johnson matriculated at Christ’s
College, Cambridge, in 1570, and took his B.A. in 1574 and his M.A. in
1577, while a Thomas Richards of Trinity took his B.A. in 1571, and
a Thomas Ward of Jesus in 1580. A reference to Cambridge learning
(III. iii. 74) does not, of course, go far to prove Cambridge
authorship. Anyway, the Barjona of the title-page is probably the
‘Laur. Bariona’ who signed, also from Kettering, the epistle to a
book called Cometographia on 20 Jan. 1579. It is the work of
an Anglican; not therefore of the Laurence Johnson, who was an Oxford
Jesuit. I can add a few facts. A Laurence Jonson, with one Chr. Balam
and George Haysyll of Cambridge, made a complaint through Lord North to
the queen against the Bishop of Ely in Dec. 1575 (S. P. D. Eliz.
cv. 88). This is interesting, because George Haysell of Wisbech was
apparently one of Worcester’s players (cf. ch. xiii) in 1583. There
is also a Laurence Johnson who on 12 June 1572 wrote to Lord Burghley
about his service in the Mint (S. P. D. Eliz. lxxxviii. 17);
possibly the same of whom Burghley wrote to his ‘brother’ William
Herlle on 3 April 1575, that he could do nothing for him (S. P. D.
Eliz. ciii. 24). Finally a Laurence Johnson engraved plates in 1603
(D. N. B.).
[MS.] B.M. Harleian MS. 7368. [The wrapper is endorsed,
‘The Booke of Sir Thomas Moore’, and is in part composed of a vellum
leaf also used for that of Munday’s John a Kent and John a
Cumber. The character of the damp stains on the two MSS. shows
that they must for some time have lain together. Two passages of the
original text have disappeared, and six passages have been inserted,
on fresh leaves or slips, to replace these and other cancelled matter.
One of these leaves appears to have been misplaced. Greg finds seven
distinct hands: (a) the writer of the original text, whom he
has now identified (M. L. R. viii. 89) with Munday; (b)
five contributors to the insertions, of whom one appears also to have
acted as a playhouse corrector, another (writing 30 lines) seems
clearly to be Dekker, and a third (writing 148 lines) has been taken
(v. infra) for Shakespeare; (c) the Master of the Revels,
Edmund Tilney, who has given some directions as censor, of which the
most important, at the beginning, runs: ‘Leaue out the insurrection
wholy & the Cause ther off & begin with Sr Tho: Moore att the mayors
sessions with a reportt afterwardes off his good service don being
Shriue off London vppon a mutiny Agaynst the Lumbardes only by A
shortt reporte & nott otherwise att your own perrilles E. Tyllney’.
Whether Greg is right in calling this a ‘conditional licence’ I am not
sure, but he corrects earlier writers by pointing out that the extant
insertions do not carry out Tilney’s instructions, and were probably
made before the play reached him. Although therefore the appearance
of an actor’s name in a s.d. suggests that the play was cast for
performance, it is not likely that it was actually performed, at any
rate in its present state.]
Editions by A. Dyce (1844, Sh. Soc.), A. F. Hopkinson
(1902), C. F. Tucker Brooke (1908, Sh. Apocrypha), J. S.
Farmer (1910, photo-facsimile in T. F. S.), and W. W. Greg
(1911, M. S. R.).—Dissertations: R. Simpson, Are
there any extant MSS. in Sh.’s Handwriting? (1871, 4 N. Q.
viii. 1); J. Spedding, Sh.’s Handwriting (1872, 4 N. Q.
x. 227), On a Question concerning a Supposed Specimen of Sh.’s
Handwriting (1879, Reviews and Discussions); B. Nicholson,
The Plays of S. T. M. and Hamlet (1884, 6 N. Q. x. 423);
C. R. Baskervill, Some Parallels to Bartholomew Fair (1908,
M. P. vi. 109); W. W. Greg, Autograph Plays by A. Munday
(1913, M. L. R. viii. 89); L. L. Schücking, Das Datum der
pseudo-Sh. S. T. M. (1913, E. S. xlvi. 228); E. M. Thompson,
Shakespeare’s Handwriting (1916) and The Autograph MSS.
of Anthony Munday (1919, Bibl. Soc. Trans. xiv. 325); P.
Simpson, The Play of S. T. M. and Sh.’s Hand in It (1917, 3
Library, viii. 79); J. D. Wilson and others, Sh.’s Hand in
the Play of S. T. M. (1919, T. L. S. 24 April onwards);
W. J. Lawrence and others, Was S.T.M. ever Acted? (1920,
T.L.S. 1 July onwards); M. A. Bayfield and E. M. Thompson,
Shakespeare’s Handwriting (1921, T. L. S. 30 June, 4
Aug.).
The play has been dated c. 1586 and c. 1596, in both of
which years there were disturbances with some analogy to the ‘Ill May
Day’ of the plot, and an early date has been regarded as favoured by
mentions (ll. 1006, 1148) of Oagle a wigmaker, since men of the name
were serving the Revels Office in this and similar capacities from
1571 to 1585 (Feuillerat, Eliz., passim), and by the appearance
as a messenger in a stage-direction (Greg, p. 89) of T. Goodal, an
actor traceable with Berkeley’s men in 1581 and with the Admiral’s
or Strange’s in the plot of The Seven Deadly Sins, c.
1590–1. But Goodal may have acted much longer, and the Admiral’s men
had business relations with a ‘Father Ogell’ in Feb. 1600 (Greg,
Henslowe, ii. 300). Greg, after comparing Munday’s script in the
play with other and better datable examples of that script, inclines to
put it ‘between 1596 and 1602, say 1598–1600’, and Sir E. M. Thompson,
on a further review of the same evidence, suggests 1592 or 1593.
This, however, involves putting the MS. of John a Kent and John a
Cumber (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Munday) back to 1590, which, although
palaeographically possible, is inconsistent with evidence pointing
to its production by the Admiral’s in 1594. Certain parallels with
Julius Caesar and Hamlet might suggest the latter part
of the possible period, although the parallel suggested by Schücking
with Fletcher’s The Tamer Tamed is too slight to bear out his
date of 1605–8, and the attempt of Fleay (ii. 312; Shakespeare,
292) to identify the play with the Abuses of Paul’s in 1606 is
guess-work. Jonson’s apparent debt to S. T. M. in Bartholomew
Fair, pointed out by Baskervill, is also in favour of a latish
date. Obviously the mention of ‘Mason among the Kings players’ (l.
1151) does not prove a Jacobean date, as Henry VIII had players. No
actor of the name in either reign is known, although an Alexander Mason
was marshal of the royal minstrels in 1494 (Collier, i. 45). Account
must be taken of the support given by Sir E. M. Thompson to the theory
of R. Simpson and Spedding that three of the added pages are in the
hand of Shakespeare. This is based on a minute comparison with the
few undoubted fragments, almost entirely signatures, of Shakespeare’s
writing. Both hands use ‘the native English script’ and are ‘of an
ordinary type’, without marked individual character ‘to any great
extent’, although slight peculiarities, such as ‘the use of the fine
upstroke as an ornamental adjunct to certain letters’, are common to
them. The demonstration would have been more convincing had the hands
been less ‘ordinary’, but Sir E. M. Thompson’s authority is great,
and some support is furnished by P. Simpson from the character of the
punctuation in the addition, and by J. D. Wilson from some orthographic
resemblances to the more reliable Shakespearian quartos. Sir E. M.
Thompson’s views are criticized in G. Greenwood, Shakespeare’s
Handwriting (1920). If Shakespeare was the author, the analogies
between the matter of the addition and the Jack Cade scenes of Henry
VI would be in favour of an earlier date, if that were possible,
than 1596 or even 1594, although I should not like to be committed to
the view that Shakespeare might not have scribbled the fragment at
any time in the sixteenth century. On a balance of the mixed literary
and palaeographical evidence before us, the safest guess seems to be
1596. As to the rest of the authorship, Dr. Greg’s discoveries point
to Munday, with some help from Dekker. Fleay’s argument (Sh.
292) for Lodge and Drayton is flimsy. If Shakespeare had a share, the
company was probably the Chamberlain’s. Goodal’s name proves nothing as
to this.
1598. A most pleasant Comedie of Mucedorus, the Kings sonne of Valentia
and Amadine the Kings daughter of Arragon, with the merie conceites of
Mouse. Newly set foorth, as it hath bin sundrie times plaide in the
honorable Cittie of London. Very delectable and full of mirth. For
William Jones. [Arrangement of parts for eight actors; Induction.]
1606. For William Jones.
1610.... Amplified with new additions, as it was acted before the Kings
Maiestie at Whitehall on Shroue-sunday night. By his Highness Seruants
vsually playing at the Globe. Very delectable, and full of conceited
Mirth. For William Jones. [Arrangement of parts for ten actors;
Prologue. Collier professes to follow a print of 1609 with this altered
title, otherwise unknown; cf. Greg in Jahrbuch, xl. 104.]
1611; 1613; 1615.
S. R. 1618, Sept. 17. Transfer by Sarah, widow of William Jones,
to John Wright (Arber, iii. 632).
1618; 1619; 1621; 1626; N.D. [1629] fragm.; 1631; 1634; 1639;
N.D. [1639 < > 63]; 1663; 1668.
Editions by J. P. Collier (1824) and with Shakespeare
(1878), N. Delius (1874), in Dodsley4, vii (1874), Warnke-Proescholdt
(1878), J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.), and with Sh.
Apocrypha.—Dissertations: R. Simpson, On Some Plays
Attributed to Sh. (1875, N. S. S. Trans. 155); W. Wagner,
Ueber und zu M. (1876, Jahrbuch, xi. 59), Neue
Conjecturen zum M. (1879, Jahrbuch, xiv. 274); K. Elze,
Noten und Conjecturen (1878, Jahrbuch, xiii. 45),
Nachträgliche Bemerkungen zu M. (1880, Jahrbuch, xv.
339), Last Notes on M. (1883, E. S. vi. 217); E. Soffé,
Ist M. ein Schauspiel Sh.’s? (1887, Brünn Progr.); W.
W. Greg, On the Editions of M. (1904, Jahrbuch, xl. 95).
It is difficult to date with precision the revival for which the
additions printed in the Q. of 1610 (1610/1?) were written, especially
as the genuineness of the Q. of 1609, in which Collier stated that he
found these additions, cannot be verified, since the accounts of the
Treasurer of the Chamber do not specify the exact days on which the
numerous appearances of the King’s men at court during the winters of
1608–9, 1609–10, and 1610–11 took place. The conjecture of Fleay (ii.
50; Shakespeare, 303) that the additions date from 1606 was
largely based on a guess that they appeared in the Q. of 1606, which
he had not seen. The added or altered passages are the prologue; i.
1, 2; iv. 1; parts of v. 2; and the final lines of the induction. The
prologue wishes James security
From blemisht Traytors, stayn’d with Periurie.
A bear is introduced in i. 2, as in W. T. iii. 3, and I venture
to conjecture that both episodes were inspired by the successful bear
in Jonson’s Mask of Oberon on 1 Jan. 1611, to which there
is also an allusion in his Love Restored of 6 Jan. 1612. If
so, the revival must have been on Shrove Sunday, 3 Feb. 1611. In
I. i. 50 Anselmo says that he was a shepherd in ‘Lord Iulios
Maske’. Oberon, however, had no shepherds proper, only satyrs
and sylvans. The induction is altered to compliment James instead of
Elizabeth, and the following dialogue between Comedie and Envie is
introduced:
Envie.Comedie, thou art a shallow Goose;
Ile ouerthrow thee in thine owne intent,
And make thy fall my Comick merriment.
Comedie. Thy pollicie wants grauitie; thou art
Too weake. Speake, Fiend, as how?
Env.Why, thus:
From my foule Studie will I hoyst a Wretch,
A leane and hungry Meager Canniball,
Whose iawes swell to his eyes with chawing Malice:
And him Ile make a Poet.
Com.What’s that to th’ purpose?
Env. This scrambling Rauen, with his needie Beard,
Will I whet on to write a Comedie,
Wherein shall be compos’d darke sentences,
Pleasing to factious braines:
And euery other where place me a Iest,
Whose high abuse shall more torment then blowes:
Then I my selfe (quicker then Lightning)
Will flie me to a puisant Magistrate,
And waighting with a Trencher at his backe,
In midst of iollitie, rehearse those gaules,
(With some additions)
So lately vented in your Theator.
He, vpon this, cannot but make complaint,
To your great danger, or at least restraint.
Com. Ha, ha, ha! I laugh to hear thy folly;
This is a trap for Boyes, not Men, nor such,
Especially desertfull in their doinges,
Whose stay’d discretion rules their purposes.
I and my faction do eschew those vices.
Fleay, with 1606 in his mind, finds here an apology for The Fox,
thinking Jonson the raven and Eastward Hoe the ‘trap for Boyes’.
In 1610 there had been no trouble about any London play, although one
in Lincolnshire had given offence. But a careful reading of the passage
will show that it is no apology at all, but a boast, and an attack upon
informers against the stage.
As the play had been in print since 1598, it must not be assumed
that, because the King’s revived it in 1610–11, it was originally a
Chamberlain’s play. It may have belonged to the Queen’s or some other
extinct company. Evidently it was a popular play, as the number of
editions shows. K. B. P. ind. 91 tells us that Ralph has ‘play’d
... Musidorus before the Wardens of our Company’.
The ascription to Shakespeare is due to Archer’s list of 1656 (Greg,
Masques, xci) and to the inclusion of the play with Fair
Em and The Merry Devil of Edmonton in a volume in Charles
II’s library, lettered ‘Shakespeare, vol. i’ (Variorum, ii.
682). It now receives little support, even as regards the added
passages. Greene is preferred as the original author by Malone and
Hopkinson, Peele by von Friesen, and Lodge by Fleay.
After the suppression of the theatres in 1642, Mucedorus was
acted by strolling players in various parts of Oxfordshire. An accident
during a performance at Witney on 3 Feb. 1654 is recorded in John Rowe,
Tragi-Comoedia. Being a brieff relation of the strange and wonderful
hand of God, discovered at Witney in the Comedy acted February the
third, where there were some slaine, many hurt and several other
remarkable passages (1653/4).
Either Mucedorus or Greene’s Alphonsus (q.v.) may have
been the play on a king of Arragon given at Dresden in 1626. It has
also been suggested (Herz, 95) that Mucedorus influenced Pieter
Hooft’s Dutch pastoral Granida (1605).
[MS.] Bodl. MS. 147303 (Rawl. Poet. MS. 212), f.
82v. ‘A Twelfe Night Merriment. Anno 1602.’ [Porter’s speech ‘at the
end of supper’, Wassail Song, Prologue, and Epilogue.]
Edition by M. L. Lee (1893).
The porter’s name is Francis, and from some speeches and a letter
composed for him, which appear in the same manuscript, it is clear that
he was Francis Clark, who became porter of St. John’s, Oxford, on 8 May
1601, at which house therefore the play was doubtless given. It has
borrowings from M. N. D. and 1 Hen. IV.
1573. A new Enterlude No less wittie: then pleasant, entituled new
Custome, deuised of late, and for diuerse causes nowe set forthe, neuer
before this tyme Imprinted. William How for Abraham Veale.
Editions in Dodsley4 (1874, iii) and by J. S. Farmer (1908,
T. F. T.).
A moral of Protestant controversy, with typical personages, bearing
allegorical names, arranged for four actors.
The final prayer is for Elizabeth, and Avarice played in the days of
Queen Mary. Fleay, 64; ii. 294, thinks it a revised Edward VI play, on
the ground of an allusion to a ‘square caps’ controversy of 1550. But
this was still vigorous in 1565 (cf. Parker’s Letters, 240).
Fleay also says that the Nugize of Captain Cox’s collection
(Laneham, 30) is Mankind (Med. Stage, ii. 438) in which
New Gyse is a character. But Mankind was first printed in 1897,
and probably this play is the one Laneham had in mind.
S. R. 1606, Jan. 8. ‘The picture of No bodye.’ John
Trundell (Arber, iii. 308).
1606, March 12 (Wilson). ‘A Booke called no bodie and somme bodie &c.’
John Trundell (Arber, iii. 316).
N.D. No-Body, and Some-Body. With the true Chronicle Historie
of Elydure, who was fortunately three seuerall times crowned King of
England. The true Coppy thereof, as it hath beene acted by the Queens
Maiesties Seruants. For John Trundle. [Prologue and Epilogue.]
Editions by A. Smith (1877), R. Simpson (1878, S. of
S. i), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), of the early
German translation by F. Bischoff, Niemand und Jemand in Graz im
Jahre 1608 (1899, Mitteilungen des historischen Vereins für
Steiermark, xlvii. 127), and of Tieck’s translation by J. Bolte
(1894, Jahrbuch, xxix. 4).—Dissertation: J. Bolte,
Eine Hamburger Aufführung von N. a. S. (1905, Jahrbuch,
xli. 188).
The play is probably Jacobean. There is a reference to the unwilling
recipients of knighthood (l. 325), and the use of Essex’s nickname
for Cobham, Sycophant, as the name of a courtier, must be later than
Cobham’s disgrace in 1603. Simpson thought that an allusion to the
misuse of the collections for rebuilding Paul’s steeple (l. 754)
pointed to an original date c. 1592, when the matter caused a
scandal, but the steeple was still unbuilt in James’s reign. Greg,
Henslowe, ii. 230, revising a conjecture of Fleay, i. 293,
suggests that Albere Galles, written by Heywood and Smith for
Worcester’s in Sept. 1602, may be this play, and Henslowe’s title a
mistake for Archigallo, one of the characters. The play seems to
have reached Germany by 1608. A performance at Graz in that year was
probably the occasion of the dedication by ‘Joannes Grün Nob. Anglus’
to the archduke Maximilian of a manuscript German translation, now in
the Rein library. To it is attached a coloured drawing of a bearded man
in a doublet which hides his breeches, and with a book and chain in his
hands. Above is written ‘Nemo’ and ‘Neminis Virtus ubique Laudabilis.’
A version is also in the Anglo-German collection of 1620 (Herz, 66,
112).
[MSS.] Bodl. Rawlinson MS. D. 398. ‘The Pilgrimage to
Parnassus’, ‘The Returne from Parnassus’. [1 Parnassus with
Prologue; 2 Parnassus with Stagekeeper’s speech for Prologue.
The cover bears the name of ‘Edmunde Rishton, Lancastrensis’, who took
his M.A. from St. John’s, Cambridge, in 1602.]
Halliwell-Phillipps MS. ‘The Returne from Pernassus: or The
Scourge of Simony.’ [3 Parnassus, with induction for Prologue,
which says, ‘The Pilgrimage to Pernassus, and the returne from
Pernassus have stood the honest Stagekeepers in many a Crownes expence
for linckes and vizards: ... this last is the last part of the returne
from Pernassus’.]
S. R. 1605, Oct. 16 (Gwyn). ‘An Enterlude called The retourne
from Pernassus or the scourge of Simony publiquely Acted by the
studentes in Sainct Johns College in Cambridg.’ John Wright
(Arber, iii. 304).
1606. The Returne from Pernassus: Or The Scourge of Simony. Publiquely
acted by the Students in Saint Iohns Colledge in Cambridge. G. Eld,
for Iohn Wright. [Two issues. 3 Parnassus only.]
Editions of 3 Parnassus by T. Hawkins (1773, O. E.
D. iii), W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. i), in Dodsley4 (1874,
ix), by E. Arber (1878) and O. Smeaton (1905, T. D.), and of 1,
2, 3 Parnassus by W. D. Macray (1886) and J. S. Farmer (S.
F. T.).—Dissertations: B. Corney (1866, 3 N. Q. ix.
387); J. W. Hales, The Pilgrimage to P. (1887, Academy
and Macmillan’s Magazine; 1893, Folia Litteraria, 165);
W. Lühr, Die drei Cambridger Spiele vom P. in ihren litterarischen
Beziehungen (1900, Kiel diss.); E. B. Reed, The College Element
in Hamlet (1909, M. P. vi. 453); G. C. Moore Smith, The
P. Plays (1915, M. L. R. x. 162).
There are several notes of time and authorship. At the end of 1,
which was ‘three daies studie’ (l. 3), the pilgrimage has lasted ‘4
yeares’ (712). Kinsader’s, i.e. Marston’s, Satires and Bastard’s
Epigrams, both of 1598, are mentioned (212). The prologue to 2,
which is a ‘Christmas toy’ (18), deprecates the former courtesy of ‘our
stage’:
Surelie it made our poet a staide man,
Kept his proude necke from baser lambskins weare,
Had like to have made him senior sophister.
He was faine to take his course by Germanie
Ere he could gett a silie poore degree.
Hee never since durst name a peece of cheese,
Thoughe Chessire seems to priviledge his name.
His looke was never sanguine since that daye;
Nere since he laughte to see a mimick playe.
It is now seven years since the scholars started for Parnassus (62).
Gullio has been ‘verie latelie in Irelande’ and ‘scapt knightinge’
(878), obviously with Essex in 1599. The Epigrams (1599) of ‘one
Weaver fellow’, i.e. John Weever, are alluded to (982). The prologue to
3, also a ‘Christenmas toy’ (30), calls it ‘an old musty show, that
hath laine this twelue moneth in the bottome of a coalehouse’ (25).
‘The Authors wit’ (48) has stood ‘hammering upon ... 2 schollers some
foure (1606, whole) yeare’ (37). This is the third play of a series
(76):
In Scholers fortunes twise forlorne and dead
Twise hath our weary play earst laboured.
Making them Pilgrims to Pernassus hill,
Then penning their return with ruder quill.
Belvedere (1600) is published (179) and Nashe is dead (314).
The Dominical letters are C, or for the Annunciation year D and C
(1105), and the moon is in ‘the last quarter the 5 day, at 2 of the
cloke and 38 minuts in the morning’ (1133). These indications fit Jan.
1602 (Lühr, 15, 105). The siege of Ostend, which extended from 1601 to
1604, has begun (1333). Jonson has ‘brought vp Horace giving the Poets
a pill’ (1811), and Kempe is back ‘from dancing the morrice over the
Alpes’ (1823). Both events took place in 1601. It is still Elizabeth’s
reign (1141).
A quite clear conclusion as to date is not possible. The calendar
references, the four years of hammering (in 3), and the probability
that the writer would try to have his allusions to literary events up
to date, suggest performances at the Christmases of 1598–9, 1599–1600,
and 1601–2. This allows for a twelve-months’ delay, followed by a good
deal of revision, in the performance of 3. On the other hand, the
difference between four (in 1) and seven (in 2) years of pilgrimage
points to 1598–9, 1601–2, and 1602–3. On the whole, I lean to the first
alternative.
So far as we know, the association of Kempe with the Chamberlain’s men
was out of date either in 1601 or 1602; conceivably he returned to the
company for a while in 1601, but he was certainly of Worcester’s in
1602.
Moore Smith thinks that the ‘ruder quill’ of the prologue to 3 implies
that the author of 2 and 3 was distinct from the author of 1. But the
same prologue speaks clearly of a single author. Hales took the account
of his troubles in getting his degree literally, and pointed out that
foreign students at German universities were called ‘Käsebettler’
and ‘Käsejäger’. Moore Smith doubts, and thinks the degree may have
been given at Cambridge by the influence of William Holland, senior
fellow of St. John’s, and his name glanced at in ‘Germanie’. The
absence alike of matriculation books and college admission registers
for the period makes identification difficult. Corney found a copy of
the print of 3 with the inscription ‘To my Lovinge Smallocke J. D.’,
which he thought in the same hand as the Lansdowne MS. of John
Day’s Peregrinatio Scholastica. Bullen was inclined to support
Day’s authorship on internal grounds, but Day was a Caius man, whose
university career closed in disgrace, and is not very likely to have
written plays for St. John’s some years later. And it is but a slight
connexion with Cheshire that ‘dey’ means ‘dairy’ in the dialect of that
county. Cheshire ought to be our clue. Charles Chester was not, so far
as I know, a writer. Hales seems to have thought that the theatrical
Beestons of London may have been connected with the Cheshire family of
that name. There was a Cheshire foundation at St. John’s, and Moore
Smith cites a suggestion that the author may have been William Dodd, a
Cheshire man, who became Scholar of St. John’s in 1597, B.A. in 1599,
and Fellow in 1602. The ‘priviledge’ reminds me of the traditional
jurisdiction of the Dutton family over minstrelsy in Cheshire
(Mediaeval Stage, ii. 259), but I do not know whether any Dutton
can be traced at St. John’s.
In i. 2 of 3 Judicio is exercising the occupation of a ‘corrector
of the presse’, apparently in the employment of a particular
printing-house, not of the licensing authorities. The house would be
Danter’s, who is himself introduced in i. 3 bargaining with Ingenioso
to give him 40s. for a pamphlet. In iv. 3 Burbage and Kempe appear, and
here is the famous passage in which Kempe says:
‘Few of the vniuersity men pen plaies well, they smell
too much of that writer Ouid, and that writer
Metamorphosis, and talke too much of Proserpina &
Iuppiter. Why heres our fellow Shakespeare puts them
all downe, I and Ben Ionson too. O that Ben Ionson
is a pestilent fellow, he brought vp Horace giuing the Poets a
pill, but our fellow Shakespeare hath giuen him a purge
that made him beray his credit.’
Fleay, Shakespeare, 221, suggests that the ‘purge’ was the
description of Ajax in Troilus and Cressida, I. ii.
15, and is supported by Small, 167. If so, it was very irrelevant to
its setting. The purge ought to be Satiromastix, and though
there is nothing to indicate that Shakespeare had any responsibility
for Satiromastix, it is just conceivable that a Cambridge
man, writing before the play was assigned to Dekker in print, may
have thought that he had. The allusion is clearly to Shakespeare as
a writer, or one might have thought that he acted Horace-Jonson in
Satiromastix.
Especially in 3, the writer is much occupied with contemporary
literature, but this does not justify the slap-dash attempt of Fleay,
ii. 347, to identify nearly all his characters with individual literary
men. They are, of course, not individuals, but types, and types
of university men. The most that can be said is that there may be
something of Marston in Furor Poeticus, and a good deal of Nashe, with
probably also a little of Greene, in Ingenioso, who ultimately takes
flight, with Furor and Phantasma, to the Isle of Dogs (v. 3, 4):
There where the blattant beast doth rule and raigne
Renting the credit of whom ere he please.
S. R. 1601, Sept. 16 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called the faythfull
Shepheard’. Waterson (Arber, iii. 192).
1602. Il Pastor Fido: Or The faithfull Shepheard. Translated out of
Italian into English. For Simon Waterson. [Sonnets by S. Daniel
and the Translator to Sir Edward Dymocke; Epistle to the same, dated 31
Dec. 1601, and signed ‘Simon Waterson’.]
1633. For John Waterson. [Epistle by John Waterson to Charles
Dymock.]
1633. Augustine Matthewes for William Sheares. [Another issue.]
The preliminary matter of 1602 and 1633 is shown by Greg,
Pastoral, 242, to point to a kinsman, but not the son, of
Sir Edward Dymocke as the translator. He may be a John Dymmocke, to
whom Archer’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, xcvi) assigns
in error The Faithful Shepherdess. The translation is from
G. Battista Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido (1590). For a Latin
translation see App. L.
S. R. 1594, May 13. ‘A plea booke intituled the Pedlers
Prophesie.’ Thomas Creede (Arber, ii. 649).
1595. The Pedlers Prophecie. Thomas Creede, sold by William
Barley. [Prologue.]
Editions by J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.) and W. W. Greg
(1914, M. S. R.).
The analogies of title and date of publication to The Cobler’s
Prophecy have led Fleay, ii. 283, and others to ascribe the
authorship to Wilson. To me the play reads more like a belated piece of
c. 1560–70.
See Shakespeare (ch. xxiii), except in relation to whose work the play
can hardly be discussed.
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.
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).
S. R. 1607, Oct. 7 (Buck). ‘Twoo plaies, thone called the
revengers tragedie.’ George Eld (Arber, iii. 360).
1607. The Revengers Tragœdie. As it hath beene sundry times Acted, by
the Kings Maiesties Seruants. G. Eld.
1608. G. Eld.
Editions in Dodsley1–4 (1744–1876), and by W. Scott (1810,
A. B. D. ii) and A. H. Thorndike (1912, M. E. D.).
The authorship is ascribed to ‘Tournour’ in Archer’s list of 1656
and to ‘Cyril Tourneur’ in Kirkman’s lists of 1661 and 1671 (Greg,
Masques, cii). Fleay, ii. 264, is sceptical, thinking the work
too good for the author of The Atheist’s Tragedy, and inclined
to suggest Webster. Oliphant (M. P. viii. 427) thinks Tourneur
impossible, in view of the difference of manner, and suggests, only to
reject, Middleton. E. E. Stoll, John Webster, 107, 212, points
out that both plays are much under the influence of Marston, and that
the date may be fixed by the borrowing of the name and character of
Dandolo from The Fawn (1606).
See The Contention of York and Lancaster.
[MS.] Egerton MS. 1994. The play forms a separate section
of this composite MS. It has no title-page and a few lines at the
end are missing. The handwriting is of the late sixteenth or early
seventeenth century.
Editions by J. O. Halliwell (1870) and W. Keller (1899,
Jahrbuch, xxxv. 3.—Dissertations: F. I. Carpenter,
Notes on the Anonymous Richard II (1899, Journ. Germ.
Phil. iii. 138); F. S. Boas, A Seventeenth Century Theatrical
Repertoire (Library for July 1917).
The play deals with an earlier part of the reign than that of
Shakespeare’s Richard II. Keller concludes from a study of
parallel passages that it was known to Shakespeare, and that the
author knew Marlowe’s Edward II and 2 Henry VI. This
gives a date of about 1592–5. Fleay, ii. 320, dates the play about
1591 and assigns it, for no apparent reason, to the Queen’s men. Boas
accepts the date 1590–5 on internal evidence, but finds the names
‘George’ and ‘Toby’ in the stage-directions as players of servants’
parts, and supposes the MS. to belong to a seventeenth-century revival
and to have been collected with others in Egerton MS. 1994 by
the younger William Cartwright, who was one of a late King’s Revels
company traceable during 1629–37 (Murray, i. 279). He identifies
‘George’, rather hazardously, with George Stutfield, who belonged to
this company, and ‘Toby’ with an Edward Tobye, who is not known to
have belonged to it, but is found in 1623 among the Children of the
Revels to the late Queen Anne (Murray, i. 361; ii. 273). My difficulty
about this is that the relation of 1 Rich. II to Shakespeare’s
play is so close as to make it natural to regard it as having become
a Chamberlain’s play, and therefore unlikely to get into the hands of
either of these Revels companies. Any company might have a George.
George Bryan, for example, is a possibility. Toby, no doubt, is a rarer
name. Toby Mills died in 1585, but might have left a son or godson of
his name.
S. R. 1594, June 19. ‘An enterlude entituled, The Tragedie of
Richard the Third wherein is showen the Death of Edward the FFourthe
with the smotheringe of the twoo princes in the Tower, with a
lamentable end of Shores wife, and the Coniunction of the twoo houses
of Lancaster and Yorke.’ Thomas Creede (Arber, ii. 654).
1594. The True Tragedie of Richard the Third: Wherein is showne the
death of Edward the fourth, with the smothering of the two yoong
Princes in the Tower: With a lamentable ende of Shore’s wife, an
example for all wicked women. And lastly the conjunction and ioyning
of the two noble Houses, Lancaster and Yorke. As it was playd by
the Queenes Maiesties Players. Thomas Creede, sold by William
Barley. [Induction; Epilogue.]
Editions in Variorum (1821), xix. 251, and by B.
Field (1844, Sh. Soc.) and W. C. Hazlitt (1875, Sh.
Libr.).—Dissertation: G. B. Churchill, Richard the Third
up to Shakespeare (1900, Palaestra, x).
Collier, Shakespeare, v. 342, put the play earlier than 1588 on
the ground that the epilogue in praise of Elizabeth makes no mention
of the Armada. But ‘She hath put proud Antichrist to flight’ may
pass for such a mention. Fleay, 64, dates it about 1587: in ii. 28 he
says ‘1586 or late in 1585’ as a ballad on the subject was entered on
the Stationers’ Register on 15 Aug. 1586; in ii. 315 he prefers 1591,
regarding the play as a continuation of The Contention between
York and Lancaster. He considers a later date as excluded by the
close of the court career of the Queen’s men in 1591. This, however,
did not close until 1594, and the epilogue was not necessarily
given at court. Churchill also thinks the play a continuation of
the Contention, and finds influences, not very striking, of
Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, Faustus, and Edward II.
He concludes for 1590–1. There is very little trace of any use by
Shakespeare of this play for his Richard III.
Boswell groundlessly took the author to be that of Locrine
(q.v.). Fleay, ii. 315, tries to divide the scenes between Lodge and
Peele, and suggests that they were re-writing Kyd.
S. R. 1560, Oct. 30. ‘A newe playe called——.’ William
Copland (Arber, i. 152).
N.D. A mery geste of Robyn Hoode and of hys lyfe, wyth a
newe playe for to be played in Maye games very plesaunte and full of
pastyme. [Colophon] Imprinted at London vpon the thre Crane
wharfe by Wyllyam Copland.
N.D. For Edward White.
Editions in J. Ritson, Robin Hood (1795), ii. 199, F. J.
Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, iii (1888) 114,
127, and Manly (1897), ii. 281.
The play, which deals with the episodes of Robin Hood and the Friar and
Robin Hood and the Potter, is appended to a reprint of the narrative
Geste, originally printed by Wynken de Worde. Manly assigns
Copland’s edition to c. 1550, but Arber, v. 32, to ‘c.
1560, by the Printer’s address’, and Furnivall, Captain Cox,
to c. 1561. Apparently Copland is not traceable at the Three
Cranes before that year and had earlier addresses. If so, I think that
his anonymous entry of 1560 in the Stationers’ Register may fairly be
supposed to relate to Robin Hood.
[MS.] Add. MS. 23723.
S. R. 1615, Feb. 10 (Taverner). ‘A booke called a Diologue
betwene Ruffe Cuffe and Band &c.’ Miles Patriche (Arber, iii.
563).
1615. A merrie Dialogue, Betwene Band, Cuffe, and Ruffe: Done by an
excellent Wit, And Lately acted in a Shew in the famous Vniversitie of
Cambridge. William Stansby for Miles Partrich.
1615. Exchange Ware at the second hand, Viz. Band, Ruffe and Cuffe,
lately out, and now newly dearned vp. Or Dialogue, acted in a Shew in
the famous Vniversitie of Cambridge. The second Edition. W. Stansby
for Myles Partrich.
1661. [Title as in ed. 1.] For F. K.
Editions in Harleian Miscellany2, x (1813), and by J. O.
Halliwell (1849, Contributions to Early English Literature) and
C. Hindley, Old Book Collector’s Miscellany, ii (1872).
[MS.] B.M., Lansdowne MS. 807, f. 29, formerly
penes John Warburton. [Greg distinguishes four contemporary
hands: (a) a scribe or copyist of the original text and certain
additions on inserted slips; (b) a corrector, probably the
author; (c) the Master of the Revels, Buck; (d) a
theatre official, who added stage-directions. The contributions of
(b) and (c) are not wholly distinguishable, especially
where mere deletions are in question, as the author may, besides
literary corrections, have made others due to the hints, or known
views, of Buck as censor. The presence of a second literary corrector
is just possible. On the verso of the last leaf Buck has written: ‘This
second Maydens tragedy (for it hath no name inscribed) may wth the
reformations bee acted publikely. 31 octobr. 1611. G. Buc.’ In later
hands are the title ‘The Second Maydens Tragedy’ at the beginning, and
a note following Buck’s endorsed licence, which originally ran, ‘The
Second Maydens Tragedy October 31th 1611 By Thomas Goffe A Tragedy
indeed’. Here Goffe’s name has been cancelled, and two successive
correctors have substituted, firstly, ‘George Chapman’, and then ‘By
Will Shakspear’. Warburton’s hand is not discernible, and the last
correction was probably made after his time, as his list of manuscript
plays (3 Library, ii. 232) includes ‘2d. pt. Maidens Trag̃.
Geo. Chapman’.]
S. R. 1653, Sept. 9. ‘The Maid’s Tragedie, 2d. part.’ H.
Moseley (Eyre, i. 428).
Editions in 1824–5 (O. E. D. i), Chapman’s Works
(1875, iii), and Dodsley4 (1875, x), and by W. W. Greg (1909,
M. S. R.).—Dissertations: J. Phelan, Philip
Massinger (1879, Anglia, ii. 47); A. S. W. Rosenbach,
The Curious-Impertinent (1902, M. L. N. xvii. 179); W.
Nicholson, The S. M. T. (1912, M. L. N. xxvii. 33).
The play may be assigned to the King’s men, in view of stage-directions
to ll. 1724, 1928, which show that ‘Mr Goughe’ played Memphonius and
‘Rich Robinson’ the Lady. Perhaps this also explains the ascription
of authorship to Thomas Goffe, which, like those to Chapman and
Shakespeare, now finds no favour. Tieck, who translated the play in his
Shakespeare’s Vorschule (1829, ii), argued for Massinger, whose
lost Tyrant he took the play to be. No doubt the chief character
is only entitled ‘Tyrant’ in the manuscript. But the Tyrant has
a separate existence both in S. R. and in Warburton’s list. Fleay,
ii. 331, thought that the title was originally meant to be The
Usurping Tyrant, and that the play was by the author of The
Revenger’s Tragedy, generally assigned to Tourneur. Rosenbach
doubts Massinger, and thinks Tourneur’s hand traceable. Swinburne seems
to have suggested Middleton.
1594. The First part of the Tragicall raigne of Selimus, sometime
Emperour of the Turkes, and grandfather to him that now raigneth.
Wherein is showne how hee most vnnaturally raised warres against his
owne father Baiazet, and preuailing therein, in the end caused him to
be poysoned: Also with the murthering of his two brethren, Corcut, and
Acomat. As it was playd by the Queenes Maiesties Players. Thomas
Creede. [Prologue and Conclusion.]
1638. The Tragedy of Selimus Emperour of the Turkes. Written T. G.
For John Crooke and Richard Serger. [Re-issue of 1594 sheets
with new t.p.]
Editions by A. B. Grosart (1898, T. D.) and W.
Bang (1908, M. S. R.), and in collections of Greene
(q.v.).—Dissertation: H. Gilbert, Robert Greene’s S.
(1899, Kiel diss.); cf. s. Locrine.
The T. G. of the 1638 title-page is probably meant for Thomas Goffe,
the author of contemporary plays on Turkish history. He, however, was
only born in 1591. Six passages from the play are assigned to Greene in
R[obert] A[llot’s] England’s Parnassus (1600). This is fairly
strong evidence, and Greene’s authorship is supported by Grosart,
Brooke (Sh. Apocrypha, xix), and Gilbert. Ward and Gayley (R.
E. C. i. 420) take the opposite view. Crawford, who points out
(E. P. xxxv, 407) that Allot is not impeccable, prefers Marlowe.
Fleay, ii. 315, would divide the play between Greene and Lodge. The
problem is bound up with that of the authorship of Locrine
(q.v.), from which Selimus clearly borrows. It can therefore
hardly be of earlier date than 1591. The Conclusion, or epilogue,
promises a second part, of which nothing is known.
S. R. 1592, Nov. 20 (Bp. of London). ‘The tragedye of Salamon
and Perceda.’ Edward White (Arber, ii. 622).
N.D. The Tragedye of Solyman and Perseda. Wherein is laide
open, Loues constancy, Fortunes inconstancy, and Deaths Triumphs.
Edward Allde for Edward White. [Induction.]
1599. E. Allde for E. White. [In some copies ‘newly corrected
and amended’ is stamped on the t.p.]
[1815]. [A facs. reprint, with date 1599 and imprint Edward Allde
for Edward White, of which two copies, C. 57. c. 15 and G. 18612,
are in B.M.; cf. W. W. Greg in M. L. Q. iv. 188, and R. B.
McKerrow, Bibl. Evid. 302. Some copies have ‘J. Smeeton,
Printer, St. Martin’s Lane’ on the vo. of the t.p.]
Editions by T. Hawkins (1773, O. E. D. ii), in Dodsley4,
v (1874), and by F. S. Boas (1901, Works of Kyd) and J. S.
Farmer (S. F. T.).—Dissertations: E. Sieper (1897, Z.
f. vergleichende Litteraturgeschichte, N. F. x); G. Sarrazin,
Die Verfasser von S. u. P. (1891, E. S. xv. 250); E.
Koeppel, Beiträge zur Geschichte des elisabethanischen Dramas
(1892, E. S. xvi. 357); J. E. Routh, T. Kyd’s Rime Schemes
and the Authorship of S. P. and 1 Jeronimo (1905, M. L. N.
xx. 49); K. Wiehl, Thomas Kyd und die Autorschaft von S. u. P.
(1912, E. S. xliv. 343).
Fleay, ii. 26, Sarrazin, and Boas claim the play for Kyd, partly
on grounds of style, partly because the plot is an elaboration of
the ‘play within the play’ of The Spanish Tragedy (c.
1589), iv. 4; Wiehl doubts on metrical grounds. Schick (Archiv,
xc) suggests Peele, who is said in the Merry Conceited Jests
(Bullen, Peele, ii. 389) to have written, or pretended to have
written, a play of The Knight of Rhodes, a title which would
apply to Soliman and Perseda. Robertson, 109, 150, 166, thinks
that Greene collaborated with Kyd.
S. R. 1600, Aug. 11 (Vicars). ‘Ye history of the life and Deathe
of Captaine Thomas Stucley, with his Mariage to Alexander Curtis
his daughter, and his valiant endinge of his life at the battell of
Alcazar.’ Thomas Pavier (Arber, iii. 169).
1605. The Famous Historye of the life and death of Captaine Thomas
Stukeley. With his marriage to Alderman Curteis Daughter, and valiant
ending of his life at the Battaile of Alcazar. As it hath beene Acted.
For Thomas Pavier.
Editions by R. Simpson (1878, S. of S. i) and J. S.
Farmer (1911, T. F. T.).—Dissertations: E. H. C.
Oliphant (1905, 10 N. Q. iii. 301, 342, 382); J. Q. Adams, C.
T. S. (1916, J. G. P. xv. 107).
‘Tom Stucley’ is named as a stage hero by Peele in his Farewell
(1589); but the present play is probably the Stewtley produced
by the Admiral’s on 11 Dec. 1596 (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 181).
There are allusions to ‘the Theatre fields’ (611) and ‘her Majesty’
(752), which may only represent historic time. Although Sebastian of
Portugal is a character, there is no reference to the legend of his
survival, which was well known in England in 1598. Simpson regards
the play as belonging to the Chamberlain’s, on the ground of certain
political proclivities which he chose to ascribe to that company.
The text is incoherent, and several theories representing it as a
contamination of two distinct plays have been promulgated. Simpson
supposed that part of a play on Don Antonio has been inserted into one
dealing in five acts with Stukeley’s adventures in England, Ireland,
Spain, Rome, and Africa respectively, and this view is elaborated by
Oliphant, who attempts to disentangle several original and revising
hands, including that of John Fletcher, to whom he assigns 245–335.
Fleay, i. 127, thinks that Dekker made up the play for Paul’s,
c. 1600, out of Stewtley and a Mahomet by Peele.
Apparently he starts from Satiromastix, 980, where Horace says
that Demetrius Fannius ‘cut an innocent Moore i’ the middle, to serue
him in twice; & when he had done, made Poules-worke of it’. But surely
there is a difference between making two plays out of one and making
one play out of two.
[MS.] ‘The plott of The First parte of Tamar Cham.’ In the
possession of Steevens, but now unknown.
The text is given by Steevens, Variorum (1803), iii. 414;
Boswell, Variorum (1821), iii. 356; Greg, Henslowe
Papers, 144.
The actors’ names point to a performance by the Admiral’s, near 2 Oct.
1602, when they bought the book from Alleyn (cf. ch. xiii). The play
was produced as ‘n. e.’ by the same company on 6 May 1596, but probably
Henslowe’s ‘n. e.’ in this case only indicates a substantial revision,
as the letters are also attached to the notice of a performance of Part
ii on 11 June 1596, and Part ii had already been played as ‘n. e.’
by Strange’s on 28 April 1592. Obviously a Part i must already have
existed (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 155).
S. R. 1594, May 2. ‘A booke intituled A plesant Conceyted
historie called “the Tayminge of a Shrowe”.’ Peter Short (Arber,
ii. 648).
1594. A Pleasant Conceited Historie, called The taming of a Shrew. As
it was sundry times acted by the Right honorable the Earle of Pembrook
his seruants. Peter Short, sold by Cuthbert Burby. [Induction.]
1596. Peter Short, sold by Cuthbert Burby.
1607. V. S. for Nicholas Ling.
Editions by J. Nicholls (1779, Six Old Plays, i), T.
Amyot (1844, Sh. Soc.), W. C. Hazlitt (1875, Sh. Libr.
vi), E. W. Ashbee (1876, facs.), F. J. Furnivall (1886, Sh. Q),
F. S. Boas (1908, Sh. Classics), and J. S. Farmer (S. F.
T.).
The Admiral’s and Chamberlain’s revived ‘the tamynge of A shrowe’ for
Henslowe on 11 June 1594, shortly after the entry in S. R. (Greg,
Henslowe, ii. 164). Presumably it belonged to the Chamberlain’s,
who had acquired it from Pembroke’s, and the 1594 performance may have
been either of the original, or of Shakespeare’s revision, The
Taming of The Shrew, for which 1594 is a plausible date. An early
reference to the printed book is in Harington’s Metamorphosis of
Ajax (1596), 95, ‘For the shrewd wife, read the book of Taming
a Shrew, which hath made a number of us so perfect, that now every
one can rule a shrew in our country, save he that hath her’. It is
to be noted that, unlike Leire (q.v.) and King Lear,
the two versions counted, from the copyright point of view, as one,
so that the transfer of A Shrew to Smethwick made an entry of
The Shrew in S. R. for the purposes of F1 of Shakespeare
unnecessary. Probably Pembroke’s in their turn got the play from
the earlier Admiral’s or Strange’s. Its date has been placed in or
before 1589, because certain lines of it appear to be parodied both in
Greene’s Menaphon of that year, and in the prefatory epistle to
Menaphon by Nashe. Some such date is confirmed by its direct
imitations from Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (c. 1587) and to
a less extent from Dr. Faustus (c. 1588), which are
collected by Boas, 93. For author, Marlowe, Kyd, Greene, and Peele have
all been suggested, but, so far as we know, Marlowe did not repeat
himself, and the others did not plagiarize him, in this flagrant
manner. Shakespeare also is still often credited with a hand in the
old play, as well as in the revision, and the problem can best be
discussed in connexion with Shakespeare. Sykes gives part to S. Rowley
(q.v.).
1661. Two New Playes: Viz. A Cure for a Cuckold: A Comedy. The Thracian
Wonder: A Comical History. As it hath been several times Acted with
great Applause. Written by John Webster and William Rowley. Tho.
Johnson, sold by Francis Kirkman. [Separate t.p. The Thracian
Wonder ... as above. Epistle to the Reader, signed ‘Francis
Kirkman’.]
Editions by C. W. Dilke (1815, O. E. P. vi), and in
collections of Webster (q.v.).—Dissertations: J. le G.
Brereton, The Relation of T. W. to Greene’s Menaphon (1906,
M. L. R. ii. 34); J. Q. Adams, Greene’s Menaphon and T.
W. (1906, M. P. iii. 317); O. L. Hatcher, The Sources and
Authorship of T. W. (1908, M. L. N. xxiii. 16).
The ascription of the title-page is rejected by Stoll, Webster,
34, and modern writers generally, although Stork, Rowley, 61,
thinks that Rowley may have added comic touches. The use of Webster’s
name may be due to the identity of the plot with that of William
Webster’s Curan and Argentile (1617). But William Webster took
it from Warner’s Albion’s England (1586), iv. xx. From the same
source Greene took it, with a change of names, for Menaphon
(1589), and it is Menaphon, with another change of names, that
the play follows. Brereton ascribes it to Greene himself; Hatcher
thinks that the direct plagiarisms from the source and the archaistic
phrase ‘old Menaphon’ (iv. 2), whereas Greene’s hero is a youth, point
to an early sixteenth-century admirer of Greene. Adams supports the
suggestion of Fleay, i. 287, that this is the War Without Blows and
Love Without Suit written by Heywood for the Admiral’s in 1598, but
this is a mere guess based on Heywood’s title (Greg, Henslowe,
ii. 199). Fleay then supposed that it was revised for Queen Anne’s
about 1607; elsewhere (ii. 332) he supposes it a dramatization of
Webster’s story for Prince Charles’s about 1617.
[MS.] Dyce MS. 52. [Epilogue. The MS. is a transcript in
two hands.]
Editions by A. Dyce (1842, Sh. Soc.) and W. C. Hazlitt
(1875, Sh. Libr. ii. 2).—Dissertation: J. Q. Adams,
The Timon Plays (1910, J. G. P. ix. 506).
Greek quotations and other pedantries suggest an academic audience,
but there is little indication of place or date, beyond parallels with
Pedantius, which lead Moore Smith (M. L. R. iii. 143) to
suggest Cambridge and c. 1581–90. Adams thinks that the piece
may have been performed by London schoolboys, and known to Shakespeare.
S. R. 1562–3. ‘These ballettes folowynge ... an other of Tom
Tyler.’ Thomas Colwell (Arber, i. 210).
1661. Tom Tyler and His Wife. An Excellent Old Play, As It was Printed
and Acted about a hundred Years ago. The second Impression. [Prologue
and ‘concluding Song’. There is no imprint, but as most of the extant
copies have a variant t.p. with the additional words ‘Together, with
an exact Catalogue of all the playes that were ever yet printed’,
and as Kirkman’s catalogue of 1661 is appended, he was doubtless the
publisher.]
Editions by F. E. Schelling (1900, M. L. A. xv. 253), G.
C. Moore Smith and W. W. Greg (1910, M. S. R.), and J. S. Farmer
(1912, T. F. T.).
The S. R. entry may refer to a ballad based on the play, or may
possibly be a loose description of the play itself. In any case there
is no reason to doubt the existence of a print of about that date.
The evidence of the 1661 title-page is confirmed by the entry of ‘Tom
tyler’ in Archer’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, cxii).
Chetwood, who cannot be relied on, gave the date as 1598, and an
inaccurate reproduction of this seems to be responsible for the 1578 of
other writers. The text of 1661 has been shown by C. P. G. Scott (in
Schelling’s introduction) to be a rendering into seventeenth-century
orthography of a play whose vocabulary may be put, with decreasing
certainty, within the limits 1530–80, 1540–70, and 1550–60. The
prologue says that the play is ‘set out by prettie boyes’, and the
‘concluding Song’ has a prayer for the preservation of the queen,
‘from perilous chance that hath been seen’. Fleay, ii. 295, somewhat
arbitrarily thinks the Chapel ‘more likely’ to have presented it than
Paul’s. A misinterpretation of Kirkman’s list of 1661 led E. Phillips,
Theatrum Poetarum (1675), to assign the authorship to W. Wager
(M. S. C. i. 325).
S. R. 1604, Dec. 4 (Pasfield). ‘A book called The life and
Deathe of Cavaliero Dick Boyer.’ Nathaniel Butter (Arber, iii.
277).
1605. The History of the tryall of Cheualry, With the life and death
of Caualiero Dicke Bowyer. As it hath bin lately acted by the right
Honourable the Earle of Darby his seruants. Simon Stafford for
Nathaniel Butter.
1605. This Gallant Caualiero Dicke Bowyer, Newly acted. [Another issue.]
Editions by A. H. Bullen (1884, O. E. P. iii) and J. S.
Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).—Dissertation: C. R. Baskervill,
Sidney’s Arcadia and the T. of C. (1912, M. P. x. 197).
Bullen thinks this may be Love Parts Friendship, written by
Chettle and Smith for the Admiral’s in 1602; Fleay, ii. 318, that
it may be the Burbon brought to the Admiral’s by Pembroke’s
in 1597, as the Duke of Bourbon is a chief personage, and also the
Cutting Dick to which Heywood wrote additions for Worcester’s
in 1602 (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 187, 221, 231). There is, of
course, no particular reason why a play by Derby’s should appear
in Henslowe’s diary at all. They were in London in the winters of
1599–1600 and 1600–1. The only link between them and Henslowe is
Heywood, if he was the author of their Edward IV (q.v.). Fleay,
i. 289, thinks that the present play may be by the same hands. Probably
the Earl of Derby himself wrote for the company.
1567. A new and mery Enterlude, called the Triall of Treasure,
newly set foorth, and neuer before this tyme imprinted. Thomas
Purfoot. [Arrangement for 5 actors; Prologue and Epilogue, headed
‘Praie for all estates’.]
Editions by J. O. Halliwell (1850, Percy Soc. xxviii),
in Dodsley4, iii (1874), and by J. S. Farmer (1908, T. F.
T.—Dissertation: W. W. Greg, The T. of T.,
1567—A Study in Ghosts (1910, 3 Library, i. 28).
Greg shows that there was only one edition, not two, of 1567. The play
is a non-controversial morality, and may very well date from about 1567.
[MS.] Add. MS. 10449. [A fragmentary ‘plot’ without
title, probably from Dulwich.]
The text is given by Greg, Henslowe Papers, 142, who infers from
the names of the characters that it may have been the Troilus and
Cressida written by Chettle and Dekker for the Admiral’s in April
1599. The few names of actors are not inconsistent with this (cf. ch.
xiii).
S. R. 1615, Feb. 21 (Buck). ‘A play called the valiant
welshman.’ Robert Lownes (Arber, iii. 564).
1615. The Valiant Welshman, Or The True Chronicle History of the life
and valiant deedes of Caradoc the Great, King of Cambria, now called
Wales. As it hath beene sundry times Acted by the Prince of Wales
his seruants. Written by R. A. Gent. George Purslowe for Robert
Lownes. [Epistle to the Reader; Induction; Epilogue.]
1663. For William Gilbertson.
Editions by V. Kreb (1902) and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F.
T.).
Borrowings from Ben Jonson’s Alchemist (1610) require a
late date, and the assertion of Fleay, i. 26, that this is The
Welshman revived by the Admiral’s on 29 Nov. 1595 may be
disregarded (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 178). There is nothing, beyond
the initials, to connect the play with Robert Armin, and Kreb would
assign it to some young University man.
S. R. 1599; Nov. 17. ‘A warnynge for fayre women.’ William
Aspley (Arber, iii. 151).
1599. A warning for Faire Women. Containing, The most tragicall and
lamentable murther of Master George Sanders of London Marchant, nigh
Shooters hill. Consented vnto By his owne wife, acted by M. Browne,
Mistris Drewry and Trusty Roger agents therin: with their seuerall
ends. As it hath beene lately diuerse times acted by the right
Honorable, the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruantes. Valentine Sims for
William Aspley. [Induction.]
Editions by R. Simpson (1878, S. of S. ii) and J. S.
Farmer (S. F. T.).
References to ‘this fair circuit’ and ‘this Round’ are inconclusive
as to whether the play was produced before the Chamberlain’s went to
the Globe in 1599, as their earlier houses were probably also round.
E. Phillips, Theatrum Poetarum (1675), 113, and A. Wood,
Athenae (1691), i. 676, assign the authorship, incredibly, to
Lyly. Fleay, ii. 54, conjectures Lodge; Bullen, O. E. P. iv. 1,
Yarington.
1594. The Warres of Cyrus King of Persia, against Antiochus King of
Assyria, with the Tragicall ende of Panthæa. Played by the children of
her Maiesties Chappell. E. A. for William Blackwal.
Editions by W. Keller (1901, Jahrbuch, xxxvii. 1) and J.
S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.).
The play, clearly influenced by Tamburlaine, may rest on
one by Farrant (q.v.) c. 1578. There is no record of any
court performance by the Chapel between 1584 and 1601. Fleay, ii.
322, guesses that an allusion in Nashe’s Summer’s Last Will and
Testament (q.v.) points to a performance of this play at Croydon
twelve months earlier. The text is disordered. A prologue ‘To the
audience’ is inserted in Act II at 621 and refers to a chorus,
but there is none. At 367 is ‘Finis Actus primi’, but ‘Actus Secundus’
is at 502.
S. R. 1600, Oct. 23 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called, the Weakest
goethe to the Walles.’ Richard Oliff (Arber, iii. 175).
1600. The Weakest goeth to the Wall. As it hath bene sundry times
plaide by the right honourable Earle of Oxenford, Lord great
Chamberlaine of England his seruants. Thomas Creede for Richard
Oliue. [Dumb Show and Prologue.]
1618. G. P. for Richard Hawkins.
Editions by J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), W. W. Greg
(1912, M. S. R.), and with Works of Webster (q.v.).
The ascription of the play to Dekker and Webster by E. Phillips,
Theatrum Poetarum (1675), 116, was rejected by Langbaine (1691)
and, so far as Webster is concerned, has nothing to recommend it (E.
Stoll, Webster, 34). Ward, iii. 56, finds Dekker’s humour,
and Hunt, Dekker, 42, thinks it Chettle’s, revised by Dekker.
Fleay, ii. 114, gives it to Munday, as the only known writer for
Oxford’s, except Oxford himself. But he is thinking of Oxford’s boy
company of 1580–4, not of the later company of 1601 or earlier, to
whose repertory the play probably belonged, and with whom Munday is not
known to have had anything to do.
S. R. 1606, Nov. 12 (Hartwell). ‘A booke called Wylie beguilde
&c.’ Clement Knight (Arber, iii. 333).
1606. A Pleasant Comedie, Called Wily Beguilde. The Chiefe Actors be
these: A poore Scholler, a rich Foole, and a Knaue at a shifte. H.
L. for Clement Knight. [Induction, Prologue, and Epilogue.]
N.D.; 1623; 1630; 1635; 1638.
Editions by T. Hawkins (1773, O. E. D. iii), in
Dodsley4, ix (1874), and by J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.) and
W. W. Greg (1912, M. S. R.).—Dissertations: J. W. Hales,
Shakespearian Imitations (1875, Ath. 1875, 17 July, 4
Sept.); F. J. Furnivall, Parallels (1875, 5 N. Q. iv.
144); P. A. Daniel, On W. B. (1875, Brooke’s Romeus and
Juliet, xxxv, N. S. S.); E. Landsberg, Zur Verfasserfrage
des anonymen Lustspiels W. B. (1911, E. S. xliii. 189).
The register of Merton College, Oxford, has for 3 Jan. 1567 the entry,
‘Acta est Wylie Beguylie Comoedia Anglica nocte in aedibus Custodis
per scolares, praesentibus Vicecustode, magistris, baccalaureis, cum
omnibus domesticis et nonnullis extraneis; merito laudandi recte agendo
prae se tulerunt summam spem’ (Boas, 157). No connexion is traceable
between this and the extant play, which Greg and Boas regard as of
Cambridge origin. But it does not seem to me markedly academic. The
character Lelia does not particularly suggest the Cambridge Latin
Laelia of 1595, and the epilogue was spoken in a ‘circled
rounde’. The description of himself by Churms (l. 68), as ‘at Cambridge
a scholler, at Cales a souldier, and now in the country a lawyer, and
the next degree shal be a connicatcher’, does not go far in the way of
proof. This same passage fixes the date as not earlier than the Cadiz
expedition of 1596; obviously the use of the phrase ‘tricke of Wily
Beguily’ in Nashe’s Have With You to Saffron Walden of 1596
(Works, iii. 107) proves nothing one way or other as to date,
although Dekker naturally knew the play when he described rogues and
their ‘knavish comedy of Wily-Beguily’ in his Belman of London
of 1608 (Works, iii. 125). If the date is 1596, the authorship
of Peele, suggested by the description of the prologue-speaker as
‘humorous George’, although he is clearly distinct from the ‘fiery
Poet’, and urged by Fleay, ii. 158, and Landsberg, becomes just
possible, chronologically, before his death in November of that year.
But the Shakespearian imitations, although most marked of M. V.
and earlier plays, seem also to extend to Hamlet, M. W.,
and T. N., and the right date may be c. 1602–6. If the
production was in the ‘circled rounde’ of Paul’s, the quasi-academic
note is explicable. Sykes suggests S. Rowley (q.v.) as part author.
Fleay, Shakespeare Manual, 272, makes an amazing attempt to
interpret the play as a satire on Lyly, Lodge, Marston, Chettle,
Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, Chapman, Jonson, Henslowe, the Admiral’s,
the Chamberlain’s, the Chapel, and Paul’s. In the Induction, a juggler
finds the title Spectrum exhibited, and later, ‘Spectrum
is conueied away: and Wily beguiled, stands in the place of it’
(l. 46).
S. R. 1600, Oct. 7. ‘A booke called The Wisdom of Doctor
Dodepole Plaied by the Children of Paules.’ Richard Oliff
(Arber, iii. 174).
1600. The Wisdome of Doctor Dodypoll. As it hath bene sundrie times
Acted by the Children of Powles. Thomas Creede for Richard Oliue.
Editions by A. H. Bullen (1884, O. E. P. iii) and J.
S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).—Dissertation: E. Koeppel,
Sh.’s J. C. und die Entstehungszeit des anonymen Dramas The W. of D.
D. (1907, Jahrbuch, xliii. 210).
Fleay, ii. 155, assigned the play to Peele, chiefly on the ground that
a snatch of song is from his Hunting of Cupid (q.v.). But Peele
died in 1596, and Koeppel points out that the phrase (Bullen, p. 129),
‘Then reason’s fled to animals, I see’, presupposes the existence of
Julius Caesar (1599), III. ii. 109:
O judgement! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.
1604. A Pleasant Comoedie, Wherein is merily shewen: The wit of a
Woman. For Edward White. [Prologue and Epilogue.]
Editions by J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.) and W. W. Greg
(1913, M. S. R.).
Nothing is known of the history of this prose comedy with Italian
names. ‘Sweet and twenty’ (l. 753) recalls Tw. N. II.
iii. 52.
S. R. 1615, July 4 (Taverner). ‘A little thing called Worke for
Cutlers.’ Richard Meighen (Arber, iii. 569).
1615. Worke for Cutlers. Or, a merry Dialogue betweene Sword, Rapier,
and Dagger. Acted in a Show in the famous universitie of Cambridge.
Thomas Creede for Richard Meighen and Thomas Jones. [Epilogue.]
Editions by T. Park (1813, Harleian Miscellany2, x),
C. Hindley (1872, Old Book Collector’s Miscellany, ii), A. F.
Sieveking (1904).
This short dialogue is described in the epilogue as ‘a Schollers
Prize’. Sieveking suggests the possibility of Heywood’s authorship, but
an academic author is more likely.
S. R. 1608, May 2 (Wilson). ‘A booke Called A Yorkshire Tragedy
written by Wylliam Shakespere.’ Thomas Pavier (Arber, iii. 377).
1608. A Yorkshire Tragedy. Not so New as Lamentable and true. Acted by
his Maiesties Players at the Globe. Written by W. Shakspeare. R. B.
for Thomas Pauier. [Head-title: ‘All’s One, or, One of the foure
plaies in one, called A Yorkshire Tragedy.’]
1619. Omits ‘Acted ... Globe’. For T. P. [See ch. xxiii.]
Editions of 1735 (J. Tonson), by W. Knight (1843,
Pictorial Sh. vii), J. P. Collier (1878, Works of
Sh.), J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.), and in Sh.
Apocrypha.—Dissertations: J. P. Collier (Ath. 1863,
i. 332); P. A. Daniel, Notes on Sh.’s Y. T. 1608 (Ath.
4 Oct. 1879); S. Lee, Walter Calverley (D. N. B.); B.
Dobell, The Author of A Y. T. (1906, 10 N. Q. vi. 41); H.
D. Sykes, The Authorship of A Y. T. (1917, J. G. P. xvi.
437, reprinted in Sidelights on Shakespeare, 77).
This ten-scene play from a four-play bill has merit, but most
modern critics are unable to regard that merit as of Shakespearian
type, although Ward, ii. 231, finds Shakespeare’s hand in some
passages, and Fleay, after wantonly guessing at Edmund Shakespeare
(Shakespeare, 303), remained impressed (ii. 206) by the
external evidence, and thought that the play must be Shakespeare’s
original ending to an earlier version of The Miseries of Enforced
Marriage, subsequently altered by his collaborator, George Wilkins
(q.v.), to end happily. This is ingenious, but too conjectural. The
play, like that of Wilkins, takes its material from the history of
Walter Calverley, executed for murder on 5 Aug. 1605, which is told in
Stowe’s Annales and was the subject of contemporary pamphlets.
Dobell and Sykes argue a case on internal evidence for the authorship
of Wilkins himself.
[MS.] Harl. MS. 541, f. 138, contains the speeches in the
Shrovetide mask, probably in the hand of Francis Davison. The opening
hymn is not included, and the final hymn seems to have been added by
another hand.
1688. Gesta Grayorum: or, the History Of the High and mighty Prince
Henry Prince of Purpoole, Arch-Duke of Stapulia and Bernardia, Duke
of High and Nether Holborn, Marquis of St. Giles and Tottenham, Count
Palatine of Bloomsbury and Clerkenwell, Great Lord of the Cantons of
Islington, Kentish-Town, Paddington and Knights-bridge, Knight of the
most Heroical Order of the Helmet, and Sovereign of the Same. Who
Reigned and Died, A.D. 1594. Together with A Masque, as it
was presented (by His Highness’s Command) for the Entertainment of Q.
Elizabeth; who, with the Nobles of both Courts, was present thereat.
For W. Canning. [Epistle to Matthew Smyth, of the Inner Temple,
signed ‘W. C.’ The publication is recorded in Trinity Term 1688 (Arber,
London Term Catalogues, ii. 230).]
Editions in Nichols, Elizabeth1, 2, iii. 262
(1807–23), and by W. W. Greg (1914, M. S. R.) and B. Brown
(1921).
This is a narrative of the reign of a Christmas Prince, or Lord of
Misrule (cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 417), appointed at Gray’s Inn
for the Christmas of 1594. The Prince was a Norfolk man, Henry Helmes,
and a list of the members of the Inn who held positions at his court
is given in the tract. The revels began on St. Thomas’s Eve, 20 Dec.,
continued until Twelfth Night, were resumed at Candlemas, and again at
Shrovetide, when the Prince’s reign terminated.
On Innocents’ Day, 28 Dec., at night, the Inner Temple were
entertained, and a stage set up, but the crowd was too great for the
‘inventions’ contemplated, and ‘it was thought good not to offer any
thing of account, saving dancing and revelling with gentlewomen;
and after such sports, a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus
his Menechmus) was played by the players. So that night was
begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but confusion and errors;
whereupon, it was ever afterwards called, The Night of Errors’.
On 30 Dec. an indictment was preferred against a supposed sorcerer,
containing a charge ‘that he had foisted a company of base and common
fellows, to make up our disorders with a play of errors and confusions;
and that that night had gained to us discredit, and itself a nickname
of Errors’. Presumably the players of Shakespeare’s Comedy of
Errors were the Chamberlain’s men, and the Treasurer of the
Chamber’s record (App. B) of a play at court by these men, as well as
the Admiral’s, on 28 Dec. is a slip for 27 Dec. (M. L. R. ii.
10).
On 3 Jan. many nobles were entertained with a show illustrating the
amity of Graius and Templarius. It was followed by speeches from
six ‘Councellors’, advising respectively ‘the Exercise of War’,
‘the Study of Philosophy’, ‘Eternizement and Fame, by Buildings and
Foundations’, ‘Absoluteness of State and Treasure’, ‘Vertue, and a
Gracious Government’, and ‘Pass-times and Sports’. These are ascribed
by Spedding, i. 342, to Francis Bacon (q.v.), a view which finds some
confirmation in the fact that the Alnwick MS., many of the contents of
which are by Bacon, once contained a copy of some ‘Orations at Graies
Inne Revells’ (Burgoyne, xii). It is amusing to note that on 5 Dec.
1594 Lady Bacon, his mother, wrote to his brother Anthony, ‘I trust
they will not mum nor mask nor sinfully revel at Gray’s Inn’ (Spedding,
i. 326). The speeches of three of the ‘Councellors’, with one by the
Prince, are also preserved, without ascription, in Inner Temple
Petyt MS. 583, 43, f. 294.
On 6 Jan. appeared six Knights of the Helmet ‘in a very stately mask,
and danced a new devised measure; and after that they took to them
ladies and gentlewomen, and danced with them their galliards, and so
departed with musick’.
On 1 Feb. the Prince visited Greenwich, and promised to return at
Shrovetide. On his way back, he was met with a Latin oration by a boy
at St. Paul’s School.
At Shrovetide, the Prince took his mask to the court at Whitehall.
The maskers were the Prince of Purpoole and his Seven Knights;
the torchbearers eight Pigmies; the presenters Proteus, Thamesis,
Amphitrite, and one of the Prince’s Esquires; the musicians two
Tritons, two Nymphs, and a Tartarian Page.
The performance was upon a stage. After a hymn, the presenters made
speeches setting out how the Prince and Knights were in an Adamantine
Rock, to be released by Proteus, on the discovery of a Power (the
Queen) of more attractive virtue. The maskers issued from the Rock,
and danced ‘a new devised measure, &c.’; then took ladies, and danced
‘their galliards, courants, &c.’; then danced ‘another new measure’.
The Pigmies brought in eight escutcheons, with the maskers’ impresses,
which the Esquire presented to the Queen. The maskers then entered the
rock, while another hymn was sung.
The maskers were Henry Helmes (Prince), William Cooke, Jarvis Tevery,
John Lambert, Molineux, Grimes, Paylor, and Campnies.
After the mask, the courtiers danced a measure, and Elizabeth said,
‘What! shall we have bread and cheese after a banquet?’
The maskers were presented to the Queen ‘on the next day’ and praised
by her. The narrative goes on to record that ‘the same night’ was
fighting at barriers, in which the Prince took part as a defendant with
the Earl of Cumberland against the Earl of Essex and other challengers,
and won the prize; and concludes, ‘Thus on Shrove-Tuesday, at
the Court, were our sports and revels ended’. The dating is not quite
clear, but it seems probable that the mask and barriers were both on
the Tuesday, and the presentation on Ash Wednesday, presumably as the
Queen went to chapel. Conceivably, however, the mask was on Monday,
and the presentation and barriers on Tuesday. The Gray’s Inn records
(Fletcher, 107) note a disbursement on 11 Feb. 1595 to William Johnson
and Edward Morrys, who served as the Prince’s Lord Chancellor and Lord
Treasurer, of 100 marks for ‘the gentlemen for their sports & shewes
this Shrovetyde at the court before the Queens Majestie’. There was
also a levy on 8 May for the ‘shewes & desports’ of sums varying from
4s. to 10s. according to status, while the public stock
of the house was to contribute £30.
The speeches in the mask were apparently by Francis Davison, one of
the Prince’s Gentlemen Pensioners, who included in his Poetical
Rapsody (1602), sign. D 3 vo, amongst Sonnets, &c., ‘To his first
Loue’, one ‘Vpon presenting her with the speech of Grayes-Inne Maske
at the Court 1594, consisting of three partes, The Story of Proteus
Transformations, the wonders of the Adamantine Rocke, and a speech to
her Maiestie’. The Poetical Rapsody, sign. K 8, also contains
the opening hymn of the mask, which begins ‘Of Neptune’s Empyre let us
sing’, and ascribes it to Thomas Campion (q.v.). Whether ‘The Song at
the ending’, which according to Dr. Greg has been inserted in Harl.
MS. 541 by a later hand, is also Campion’s must remain doubtful.
The MS. as originally written is just such a present as Davison may
have sent to his mistress. A list of ‘Papers lent’ by Davison in
Harl. MS. 298 includes ‘Grayes In Sportes under Sr Henry
Helmes. Eleaz. Hogdson’.
[MS.] Formerly penes Collier, but not now among his
papers in Egerton MS. 2623.
Editions by J. P. Collier, Five Court Masques (1848),
131, with title ‘The Masque of the Twelve Months’.
The maskers are the twelve Months; the antimaskers Pages; the
presenters Madge Howlet, Pigwiggen a Fairy, Beauty, Aglaia, the Pulses,
Prognostication, and Somnus; the musicians the twelve Spheres.
The locality is not given, but the presence of a king is contemplated.
The text is disordered, but can easily be reconstructed, as follows:
Madge Howlet, ‘going up towards the King’, and Pigwiggen speak
the opening dialogue (Collier, 137). The Spheres sing the first
song calling Beauty from her fort, the Heart (140). This is the
scene; on it are plumes, ‘the ensignes of the darling of the yeare,
delicious Aprill’. Beauty, Aglaia, and the Pulses, ‘beating before
them up towardes the King’, speak a dialogue (131). The Pages dance
an ‘antemasque’ (133). Beauty and Aglaia speak a dialogue (134).
The maskers appear, and are presented by Beauty (134). The second
‘antemasque’ is danced (134). Beauty and Aglaia speak a dialogue (134).
Prognostication enters, and prognosticates (135). The maskers descend,
and Beauty describes April, a prince ‘lov’d of all, yett will not
love’, with a ‘triple plume’ (135). After a second song, ‘they dance
their entrie’ (141). Beauty and Aglaia speak a dialogue (136). There is
a third song (141). ‘They dance their mayne dance: which done, Bewty
invites them to dance with the Ladies’ (137). There is a fourth song
(142). ‘They dance with the Ladies, and the whole Revells follows’
(137). Beauty calls on Somnus (140). There is a last song (142). ‘They
dance their going off’ (140).
Brotanek, 346, suggests 1 Jan. 1612 as a probable date. I agree with
him that ‘charming all warre from his mild monarchie’ (136) suggests
James I, although I do not think that ‘our fairy King’ (137) is
necessarily a reminiscence of the Mask of Oberon, especially as
this fairy king is James and not Henry. In any case ‘the heart of the
yeare’ (132), ‘prime of this newe yeare’ (135), ‘this winter nighte’
(141) do not require a performance on 1 Jan. In fact, April and not
January leads the months in the mask. I would add to Brotanek’s notes
that April is clearly danced by a Prince of Wales, and that ‘lov’d of
all, yett will not love’ fits in with the uncertainty as to Henry’s
matrimonial intentions which prevailed in 1612. But he is not very
likely to have given two masks in the winter of 1611–12, nor is there
any evidence of any mask that winter except the Love Restored of
6 Jan. Of course The Twelve Months may never have been actually
performed. I have thought that it might have been the mask abandoned by
Anne on account of the death of the Queen of Spain in Dec. 1611 (cf.
Jonson, Love Restored). Beauty, ‘our fairy Queene’, is said to
be ‘Great president of all those princely revells’ in honour of the
‘fairy King’. But the mask is danced by men, not women, which seems to
put a Queen’s mask out of the question. No mask has yet been traced in
the winter of 1609–10. I am afraid I must leave the date open. If Henry
led the dance, his death in Nov. 1612 gives one limit. The ‘antemasque’
is more likely to have been introduced after than before 1608. The use
of Pigwiggen as a fairy name recurs in Drayton’s Nymphidia,
published in 1627.
S. R. 1614, Jan. 21 (Nidd). ‘The maske of flowers by the gent.
of Graies Inne vppon Twelfe Night 1613.’ Robert Wilson (Arber,
iii. 540).
1614. The Maske of Flowers. Presented By the Gentlemen of Graies-Inne,
at the Court of Whitehall, in the Banquetting House, vpon Twelfe
night, 1613. Being the last of the Solemnities and Magnificences which
were performed at the marriage of the right honourable the Earle of
Somerset, and the Lady Francis daughter of the Earle of Suffolke, Lord
Chamberlaine. N. O. for Robert Wilson. [With Epistle to Sir
Francis Bacon by I. G., W. D., T. B. These initials, presumably of
Gray’s Inn men, have not been identified.]
Editions in Nichols, James (1828), ii. 735, and H. A.
Evans, English Masques (1897).
The maskers, in white embroidered with carnation and silver and
vizards, were thirteen transformed Flowers; the antimaskers in ‘the
anticke-maske of daunce’ Pantaloon, Courtesan, Swiss and his Wife,
Usurer, Midwife, Smug and his Wench, Fretelyne, Bawd, Roaring Boy,
Citizen, Mountebank, Jewess of Portugal, Chimney-Sweeper and his Wench;
the musicians twelve Garden Gods, also described as Priests, and in the
‘anticke-maske of the song’ Miller, Wine Cooper, Vintner’s Boy, Brewer,
Skipper, Fencer, Pedlar, Barber; the presenters Invierno, Primavera,
Gallus the Sun’s Post, Silenus, Kawasha, and attendants.
The locality was the Banqueting House, at the lower end of which was a
‘travers painted in perspective’, as a city wall and gate, with temples
of Silenus and Kawasha on either side. The antimasks represented a
challenge, directed by the Sun, between wine and tobacco. ‘The travers
being drawne’ disclosed an elaborate garden sloping up to a mount and
arbour (33 ft. long × 21 ft. high) with a bank of flowers before it.
Upon a charm the flowers vanished to give place to the maskers, who
danced their first and second measure, then took ladies, for ‘measures,
corantoes, durettoes, morascoes, galliards’, and then ‘daunced their
parting measure’, which was followed by compliments to the king and the
bride and groom.
For general notices of the Somerset wedding masks, cf. s.v. Campion,
Mask of Squires. On 23 Dec. Chamberlain wrote to Carleton
(Birch, i. 282), ‘Sir Francis Bacon prepares a masque to honour this
marriage, which will stand him in above £2000; and though he have
been offered some help by the House, and specially by Mr. Solicitor,
Sir Henry Yelverton, who would have sent him £500, yet he would not
accept it, but offers them the whole charge with the honour. Marry,
his obligations are such, as well to his majesty as to the great lord
and to the whole house of Howards, as he can admit no partner’. On 5
Jan. (Birch, i. 288) he briefly notes, ‘Mr. Attorney’s masque is for
to-morrow, and for a conclusion of Christmas and these shows together’.
The records of Gray’s Inn confirm Chamberlain’s account, by giving no
signs that any expense fell on the Inn. On a letter by Bacon which may
refer to this occasion, cf. s.v. Bacon.
Osborne, James, 82, a not very accurate writer, speaks of a
Gray’s Inn mask at court, following an Anglo-Scottish quarrel between
Mr. Hawley of Gray’s Inn and Mr. Maxwell. Probably he has this mask,
which was to honour a Scot, in mind. The quarrel was in fact over in
June 1612 (Birch, i. 173). I doubt whether either this mask or the
joint Gray’s Inn and Inner Temple mask of 1612–13 had anything to do
with it.
S. R. 1558–9. ‘The passage of the quenes maiesties Throwoute the
Cytie of London.’ Richard Tottle (Arber, i. 96).
1558[9], Jan. 23. The Passage of our most drad Soueraigne Lady Quene
Elyzabeth through the citie of London to westminster the daye before
her coronacion. Richard Tottill. Cum privilegio.
N.D. [1604.] The Royal Passage of her Majesty from the
Tower of London to her Palace of Whitehall, with all the Speaches
and Devices, both of the Pageants and otherwise, together with her
Majesties severall Answers, and most pleasing Speaches to them all.
S. S. for Jone Millington.
N.D. [1604.] S. S. for John Busby. [Another issue.]
Editions in Nichols, Eliz. i. 38 (1823), and A. F.
Pollard, Tudor Tracts (England’s Garner2), 365.
There are also accounts in Machyn, 186, and in Holinshed (1808), iv.
158. For a list of the pageants cf. ch. iv.
1575. The whole Order howe our Soveraigne Ladye Queene Elizabeth was
receyved into the Citie of Bristowe, in August, and the Speeches spoken
before her presens at her Entry; with the residue of Versis and Matter
that might not be spoken (for distance of the place), but sent in a
Book over the Waetter. Thomas Marshe. [In ‘The Firste Parte
of Churchyardes Chippes, contayning Twelve seueral Labours. Devised
and published, only by Thomas Churchyard, Gentilman’. Epistle to
Christopher Hatton.]
1578. Thomas Marsh.
Editions in Nichols, Eliz. i. 393 (1788, 1823), and by J.
P. Collier (1867).
Probably Churchyard was the deviser of the entertainment, as he calls
the Chippes ‘a book of all my English verses in meter’. He
says, ‘Some of these Speeches could not be spoken, by means of a
Scholemaister, who envied that any stranger should set forth these
Shows’. A worthie Dittie, song before the Queens Majestie at
Bristow, by D. S[and], not in the Entertainment, is in The
Paradise of Daynty Devises (1576). Elizabeth was at Bristol 13–21
Aug. 1574 and lay at John Young’s. Fame, a boy with a speech in English
verse, met her at the High Cross. At the next gate were Salutation,
Gratulation, and Obedient Good Will, with their verses. On 14 Aug.
the Queen attended divine service at the College. On 15 and 16 Aug.
the Forts of Peace and Feeble Policy were arrayed, and there were
sham fights by land and sea, with speeches by Dissuasion, Persuasion,
and John Roberts, who apparently wrote his own. Was he the envious
schoolmaster?
There are two descriptions:
A. By Gascoigne
1576. The Princelye pleasures, at the Courte at Kenelwoorth. That is to
saye, The Copies of all such verses Proses, or Poeticall inuentions,
and other Deuices of pleasure, as were there deuised, and presented
by sundry Gentle men, before the Quenes Maiestie: In the yeare 1575.
Richard Jones. [The unique copy is believed to have been burnt
in the Shakespeare Library at Birmingham. The printer’s Epistle is
dated March 26, 1576.]
1587. [Part of Collection.]
Editions in Nichols, Eliz.2 i. 486 (1823), and elsewhere
(cf. Schelling, 121).
B. By Robert Laneham
1575. A letter: Whearin part of the entertainment untoo the Queez
Majesty at Killingwoorth Castl, in Warwick Sheer in this Soomerz
Progress, 1575, is signified: from a freend officer attendant in the
Coourt untoo hiz freend a Citizen, and Merchaunt of London. [No
imprint or colophon.]
Editions in Nichols, Eliz.2 i. 420 (1823), by F. J.
Furnivall, Captain Cox, his Ballads and Books (1871, Ballad
Soc.; 1890, N. S. S.), in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxvii, 251
(1892), and elsewhere (cf. Furnivall, ix, clxxvi).
Elizabeth was at Kenilworth 9–27 July 1575. The diary of entertainments
is given in ch. iv. The contributions of specific authors were as
follows:
9 July. Speeches of Sibylla, by William Hunnis; the Porter Hercules, by
John Badger; the Lady of the Lake, by George Ferrers; a Poet, in Latin,
by Richard Mulcaster, or Mercury (?) Paten. It is uncertain which was
used; Gascoigne prints Mulcaster’s, Laneham Paten’s.
11 July. Dialogue of a Savage Man and Echo, ‘devised, penned, and
pronounced’ by Gascoigne.
18 July. Device of the Delivery of the Lady of the Lake, by William
Hunnis, with verses by Hunnis, Ferrers, and Henry Goldingham, who
played Arion.
20 July. Device of Zabeta prepared by Gascoigne, but not shown.
27 July. Device of the Farewell of Silvanus, by Gascoigne.
See ch. xxiii, s.v. Sir Henry Lee.
There are two contemporary descriptions:
A
S. R. 1578, Aug. 30. ‘The ioyfull Receavinge of the Quenes
maiestie into Norwyche.’ Henry Bynneman (Arber, ii. 336).
N.D. The Ioyfull Receyuing of the Queenes most excellent
Maiestie into her Highnesse Citie of Norwich: The things done in the
time of hir abode there: and the dolor of the Citie at hir departure.
Wherein are set down diuers Orations in Latine, pronounced to hir
Highnesse by Sir Robert Wood Knight, now Maior of the same Citie, and
others: and certain also deliuered to hir Maiestie in writing: euery of
the turned into English. Henrie Bynneman. [Epistle by Ber[nard]
Gar[ter] to Sir Owen Hopton.]
Edition in Nichols, Eliz. (1823), ii. 136.
B
S. R. 1578, Sept. 20. ‘The enterteignement of the Quenes
Maiestie in Suffolk and Norffolk; gathered by Thomas Churchyard.’
Henry Bynneman (Arber, ii. 338).
N.D. A Discourse of the Queenes Maiesties entertainement in
Suffolk and Norffolk: With a description of many things then presently
seene. Deuised by Thomas Churchyarde, Gent. with diuers shewes of
his own inuention sette out at Norwich: ... Henrie Bynneman.
[Epistle by Churchyard to Gilbert Garrard. Adnitt (cf. s.v. Churchyard)
says there were two issues with varying prefatory matter.]
Extracts in Nichols, Eliz. (1823), ii. 115, 128, 130,
133, 179.
A ballad and a sonnet, presumably from their titles based on A, were
registered by J. Charlwood and R. Jones respectively on 24 and 31 March
1579 (Arber, ii. 349, 350).
Elizabeth was at Norwich 16–22 Aug. 1578. The diary is as follows:
16 Aug. 1578. Oration by Mayor at Hartford Bridge; Speech, prepared but
prevented by rain, of King Gurgunt in Town Close near Blanch Flower
Castle; Pageant of the Commonwealth, with representations of local
loom industries, and speech by Garter in St. Stephen’s Street; Pageant
of the City of Norwich, Deborah, Judith, Esther, and Queen Martia,
with the City Waits and songs by Garter and Churchyard, at entry to
Market-place; Speech of a Turkish Boy by Churchyard, at Mr. Peck’s door.
18 Aug. Speech of Mercury in an elaborate coach, by Churchyard.
19 Aug. Show of Chastity, with dialogue and song of Chastity, Cupid, a
Philosopher, Wantonness, Riot, Modesty, Temperance, Good Exercise, and
Shamefastness, by Churchyard; Oration by Minister of Dutch Church.
20 Aug. Oration by Stephen Limbert, Master of the Grammar School.
21 Aug. Shows of Water Nymphs, with speeches, and of Manhood and
Desert, a contention of Manhood, Good Favour, Desert, and Good
Fortune, for Lady Beauty, prepared but prevented by rain, both by
Churchyard; Mask by Henry Goldingham in Privy Chamber after supper of
Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Venus, Apollo, Pallas, Neptune, Diana, Mercury as
presenter, Cupid, torchbearers and musicians, who marched about the
chamber and made speeches and characteristic gifts, but apparently did
not dance.
22 Aug. Speech and Song at St. Benet’s Gate by Garter; Show of Fairies
with their Queen and seven speeches, outside the gate, by Churchyard;
written Oration by Mayor at departure over City boundary.
Churchyard also mentions ‘speeches well sette out and a speciall device
much commended’ in the park of the Earl of Surrey at Kenninghall on
12 Aug.; also divers ‘triumphes and devises’ in Suffolk, of which he
only specifies ‘a shew representing the Phayries (as well as might
be) ... in the whiche shew a rich jewell was presented to the Queenes
Highnesse’ at Sir Thomas Kidson’s house, Hengrave Hall, during 28–30
Aug. In Churchyards Challenge (1593) he claims ‘The whole
deuises pastimes and plaies at Norwich, before her Maistie’, and also
‘The Commedy before her Maestie at Norwich in the fielde when she went
to dinner to my Lady Gerninghams’ at Costessy (19 Aug.).
S. R. 1581, July 1. ‘The Tryumphe Shewed before the Quene and
the Ffrenche Embassadors.’ Robert Walgrave (Arber, ii. 396).
N.D. A brief declaratiō of the shews, deuices, speeches, and
inuentions, done & performed before the Queenes Maiestie, & the French
Ambassadours, at the most valiaunt and worthye Triumph, attempted
and executed on the Munday and Tuesday in Whitson weeke last, Anno
1581. Collected, gathered, penned & published, by Henry Goldwel, Gen.
Robert Waldegrave. [Epistle by Goldwell to Rowland Brasebridge
of Great Wycombe.]
Edition in Nichols, Eliz.2 (1823), ii. 310.
This was a tilt, before François of Bourbon, dauphin of Auvergne, Artus
de Cossé, marshal of France, and other commissioners from France, for
the treaty of marriage between Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou. The
challenge was delivered by a boy in red and white, as the Queen came
from Chapel on 16 April 1581. The tilt, first fixed for 24 April, was
put off to 1 May, 8 May, and finally 15 May. The gallery at the end
of the tilt-yard was named the Castle or Fortress of Perfect Beauty,
and the challengers, the Earl of Arundel, Lord Windsor, Philip Sidney,
and Fulke Greville, called themselves the Four Foster Children of
Desire. They entered from the stable, with trains of followers and a
Rowling Trench of printed canvas, to besiege the fortress. From this
boys spoke and sang, and cannonades of perfumes were shot off, while
flowers and other fancies were flung from scaling ladders. Then came
twenty-one defendants, each with his ‘invention’ and speech. They were
Henry Grey, Sir Thomas Perot, Anthony Cooke, Thomas Ratcliffe, Henry
Knolles, William Knolles, Robert Knolles, Francis Knolles, Rafe Bowes,
Thomas Kelwaie, George Goring, William Tresham, Robert Alexander,
Edward Dennie, Hercules Meautus, Edward Moore, Richard Skipwith,
Richard Ward, Edward Digbie, Henry Nowell, Henry Brunkerd. Perot and
Cooke were ‘both in like armour, beset with apples and fruit, the one
signifying Adam and the other Eve, who had haire hung all down his
helmet’. Their page was an Angel. Ratcliffe was a Desolate Knight, with
a page who presented his shield. The four Knolles brothers were Sons of
Despair, with Mercury for a page. The speeches of the pages are given.
Each defendant ran six courses with the challengers. ‘In the middest
of the running came in Sir Henrie Leigh, as unknowne, and when he had
broken his six staves, went out in like manner againe.’ At the end of
the first day the boy who gave the challenge announced a second on the
morrow.
On the second day the challengers entered in a chariot ‘forewearied
and half overcome’ with a lady representing Desire, and a consort of
music. A herald made a speech for them. The defendants entered, and the
tournay and barriers followed. At the end a boy clad in ash colour and
bearing an olive-branch made submission of the challengers to the Queen.
Foulkes, lxiii. 49, says that a set of blank cheques for this tilt are
in Ashm. MS. 845, f. 166.
There are or were three accounts:
A
S. R. 1588, Aug. 10. ‘The quenes visitinge the campe at Tilberye
and her enterteynement there the 8 and 9 of August 1588, with condicon
yat yt may be aucthorised hereafter.’ John Wolf (Arber, ii. 495).
N.D. The Queenes visiting of the Campe at Tilsburie with her
Entertainment there. Iohn Wolfe for Edward White. [At end, ‘T.
D.’, doubtless the initials of Thomas Deloney.]
Editions in A. F. Pollard, Tudor Tracts (England’s
Garner2), 492, and F. O. Mann, Deloney’s Works (1912).
B
S. R. 1588, Aug. 10 (Stallard). ‘A ioyfull songe of the Roiall
Receaving of the quenes maiestie into her Campe at Tilbery: the 8 and 9
of August 1588.’ John Wolf for Richard Jones (Arber, ii. 496).
[It does not seem likely that this entry relates to Aske’s book.]
C
1588. Elizabetha Triumphans. By James Aske. Thomas Orwin for Thomas
Gubbin and Thomas Newman.
Edition in Nichols, Eliz. ii. 545 (1823).
The two extant narratives are discussed by M. Christy in E. H.
R. xxxiv. 43.
See ch. xxiii, s.v. Lee.
1591. The Speeches and Honorable Entertainment giuen to the Queenes
Maiestie in Progresse, at Cowdrey in Sussex, by the right Honorable the
Lord Montacute. Thomas Scarlet, sold by William Wright.
1591. The Honorable Entertainment.... Thomas Scarlet, sold by
William Wright. [A different text, with a fuller description, but
without the words of the songs, and inaccurately dated.]
Editions by J. Nichols, Eliz.2 iii. 90 (1823), and R. W.
Bond, Lyly, i. 421 (1902).
The host was Anthony Browne, first Viscount Montague. Gascoigne’s
mask of 1572 was also written for him. Bond assigns the present
entertainment, conjecturally, to Lyly. McKerrow, 20, records that
William Barley, the stationer, was brought before the High Commission
for selling at Cowdray, on some date before 1598, a twopenny book
relating to Her Majesty’s progress.
The diary is as follows:
14 Aug. 1591. Speech by a Porter at the bridge on arrival at night.
15 Aug. Sunday: a day of rest.
16 Aug. Hunting in Park, and delivery of bow with a ditty by a Nymph.
17 Aug. Dinner at the Priory, where Lord Montague lodged, and speeches
in the walks by a Pilgrim and a Wild Man, at an oak hung with Sussex
escutcheons, and a ditty before hunting.
18 Aug. Speeches and ditty by an Angler and offering of fish by a
Netter at a pond in the walks before hunting.
19 Aug. Dance of country people with tabor and pipe.
20 Aug. Knighting, and departure to Chichester for dinner.
S. R. 1591, Oct. 1. ‘The honorable entertaynement gyven to the
quenes maiestie in progresse at Elvetham in Hampshire by the righte
honorable the Erle of Hertford.’ John Wolf (Arber, ii. 596).
1591. The Honorable Entertainement gieuen to the Queenes Maiestie in
Progresse, at Eluetham in Hampshire, by the right Honorable the Earle
of Hertford. John Wolfe. [There appear to be two editions or
issues, (a) without and (b) with a woodcut of the pond.]
1591.... Newly corrected and amended. [This has a woodcut of the pond,
different from that in (1) (b).]
Editions by J. Nichols, Eliz. ii. (1788), iii. 101
(1823), and R. W. Bond, Lyly, i. 431.
Elizabeth was at Elvetham 20–23 Sept. 1591. The host was Edward
Seymour, Earl of Hertford. A Three Men’s Song of Phillida and Coridon,
which formed part of the Entertainment, is ascribed in England’s
Helicon (1600) and MSS. to Nicholas Breton. Bond ascribes
the Entertainment to Lyly. An account of the amusements is in ch. iv.
1592. Speeches deliuered to her Maiestie this last progresse, at the
Right Honorable the Lady Russels, at Bissam, the Right Honorable the
Lorde Chandos at Sudley, at the Right Honorable the Lord Norris, at
Ricorte. Joseph Barnes, Oxford. [There appear to be two issues,
with slight variants.]
Editions by J. Nichols, Eliz.2 iii. 130 (1823), Sir S.
E. Brydges (1815), and R. W. Bond, Lyly, i. 471 (1902).
The hosts were Sir Edward Hoby and his mother, Elizabeth, Dowager Lady
Russell.
21 Aug. 1592. On arrival, at the top of the hill, speech by a Wild Man;
at the middle of the hill, dialogue of Pan and two Virgins, Sybilla
and Isabella; at the foot of the hill, ditty by Ceres and Nymphs in a
harvest-cart, followed by speech and gift of crown of wheat-ears and
jewel.
The host was Giles Brydges, third Lord Chandos.
10 Sept. 1592. Speech of old Shepherd at entry to castle.
11 Sept. Show of Apollo and Daphne, with gift of tables of verses.
12 Sept. Contemplated Presentation of High Constable of Cotswold, and
Choosing of King and Queen by Shepherds, with song and dialogue of
Melibœus, Nisa, and Cutter of Cotswold—prevented by weather.
The host was Henry, Lord Norris.
28 Sept. 1592. On arrival from Oxford, speech by an Old Gentleman [Lord
Norris].
2 Oct. Music in garden, with speech by Old Gentleman, and letters
containing jewels by messengers as from his sons in Ireland, Flanders,
and France.
3 Oct. At departure, letter with jewel as from daughter in Jersey.
Between Sudeley and Rycote, the Queen was entertained at Oxford (cf.
ch. iv) and Woodstock (cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Sir Henry Lee).
See ch. xxiii, s.v. Peele, Anglorum Feriae.
Elizabeth was at Harefield Place, Middlesex, the house of Sir Thomas
Egerton, Lord Keeper, and his wife Alice, Countess Dowager of Derby,
from 31 July to 2 Aug. 1602. At the same house Milton’s Arcades
was performed before Lady Derby in 1634. Seven fragments of the
entertainment have been preserved, and are printed by Nichols,
Eliz. iii. 570, 586, and Bond, Lyly, i. 491. Accounts of
expenditure involved, and a list of the gifts in kind contributed by
Egerton’s friends on this occasion are in Egerton Papers, 340,
but the account in 342–4 is a forgery (vide infra).
(i) Dialogue between a Bailiff and Dairymaid, and presentation of a
rake and fork to the Queen, as she entered the demesne near the dairy
house.
(ii) Dialogue at the steps of the house, and presentation of a heart,
by Place ‘in a partie-colored roobe, like the brick house’ and Time
‘with yeollow haire, and in a green roabe, with an hower glasse,
stopped, not runninge’.
(iii) Verse petition accompanying gift of a robe of rainbows on behalf
of St. Swithin by Lady Walsingham on Monday morning [2 Aug.].
(iv) Farewell of Place, ‘attyred in black mourning aparell’ on the
Queen’s departure, with presentation of an anchor.
(v) Verse ‘Complaint of the Satyres against the Nymphes’.
(vi) Song and speech by a Mariner, who entered the ‘presence’ with a
lottery box, ‘supposed to come from the Carricke’.
(vii) ‘The Severall Lottes’, a list of gifts and blanks, with a
poesy accompanying each, and the names of the ladies who drew them.
These were the Queen, the Dowager Countess of Derby, the Countesses
of Derby, Worcester, and Warwick, Lady Scroope, Mistresses Nevill,
Thynne, Hastinges, and Bridges, Ladies Scudamore, Francis, Knevette,
and Susan Vere, Mrs. Vavissour, Ladies Southwell and Anne Clifford,
Mrs. Hyde, Ladies Kildare, Howard of Effingham and Paget, Mistresses
Kiddermister and Strangwidge, the Mother of the Maids, Ladies
Cumberland, Walsingham, and Newton, Mrs. Wharton, Ladies Digbye and
Dorothy [Hastinges] and Mrs. Anselowe. One name, ending in ‘liffe’
is illegible. It may be Ratcliffe. One MS. adds three lots assigned
to ‘country wenches’. Most of these ladies were maids of honour and
others who came with the court; one or two, e.g. Mrs. Kiddermister,
were country neighbours of the Egerton’s.
These pieces are derived from various sources:
(a) A transcript made by R. Churton in 1803 of a contemporary
MS. found at Arbury, the house of Sir Roger Newdigate, to whose family
Harefield passed in 1675, contains (i)-(v) and was printed by Nichols.
(b) A Conway MS., printed by P. Cunningham in Sh. Soc.
Papers, ii. 65, contains (iii), the song from (vi), and (vii), with
the heading ‘The Devise to entertayne hir Mty at Harfielde ...’ and
the date 1602.
(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).
There were several contemporary prints:
A
S. R. 1603, May 9. ‘Kinge James his entrance into England.’
Burby and Millington (Arber, iii. 234).
1603. The True Narration of the Entertainment of his Royal Majestie.
Thomas Creede for Thomas Millington. [Epistle by T. M. to
Reader.]
Editions in Nichols, James (1828), i. 53, and C. H.
Firth, Stuart Tracts (English Garner2), 11.
B
S. R. 1603, May 14. ‘King James his entertainement at
Theobaldes, with his welcomme to London.’ Thomas Snodham (Arber,
iii. 234).
1603. King James his entertainment at Theobalds: With his Welcome to
London. By John Sauile. Thomas Snodham, sold by T. Este.
Editions in Nichols, James (1828), i. 135, and C. H.
Firth, Stuart Tracts, 53.
C
S. R. 1604, Mar. 27. ‘The tyme Triumphant.’ Ralph Blore
(Arber, iii. 256).
1604. The Time Triumphant, Declaring in brief the arrival of our
Sovereign liege Lord, King James, into England, His Coronation at
Westminster, ... [&c.]. By Gilbert Dugdale. By R. B.
Editions in Nichols, James (1828), i. 408, and C. H.
Firth, Stuart Tracts, 69.
D
Jonson’s Althorp Entertainment (cf. ch. xxiii).
E
S. R. 1603, June 16. A ballad of ‘Englandes sweet Comfort with
the kinges entertaynmente by the Maior of Yorke’. William White
(Arber, iii. 238).
There is also an account in Stowe, Annales (1631), 819. For
the stages of the progress cf. App. A. Besides the device at Althorp,
speeches were prepared by Dekker for the entry to London, but not used
(cf. s.a. 1604).
There are four contemporary prints:
A
S. R. 1604, Apr. 2 (Pasfield). ‘The magnificent Entertainement
... the 15 of marche 1603.’ Thomas Man junior (Arber, iii. 258).
1604. The Magnificent Entertainment: Giuen to King Iames, Queene Anne
his wife, and Henry Frederick the Prince, vpon the day of his Maiesties
Tryumphant Passage (from the Tower) through the Honourable Citie (and
Chamber) of London, being the 15. of March, 1603. As well by the
English as by the Strangers: With the speeches and Songes, deliuered
in the seuerall Pageants. Tho. Dekker. T. C. for Tho. Man the
younger.
1604. The Whole Magnificent Entertainment.... And those speeches that
before were publish’t in Latin, now newly set forthe in English. E.
Allde for Tho. Man the younger.
1604. Thomas Finlason, Edinburgh.
Editions in Nichols, James, i. 337, and Somers
Tracts (1810), iii. 1.
The speeches for three of the pageants were Jonson’s, and some of those
for a fourth Middleton’s. Two others were in Latin. But Dekker himself
probably contributed the rest. Prefixed is a dialogue intended, but not
used, for James’s original entry into London in 1603, which may also be
assigned to Dekker.
B
Jonson’s Coronation Entertainment (cf. ch. xxiii).
C
1604. The Arches of Triumph Erected in honor of the High and mighty
prince, James, the first of that name, King of England, and the sixt of
Scotland, at his Maiesties Entrance and passage through his Honorable
Citty and chamber of London, vpon the 15th day of March 1603.
Invented and published by Stephen Harrison Joyner and Architect: and
graven by William Kip. John Windet. [Verses by Thomas Dekker and
John Webster.]
1604.... John Windet, sold by John Sudbury and George Humble.
D
G. Dugdale’s Time Triumphant. See s.a. 1603.
There is also an account in Stowe, Annales, 835, based on A.
Some ballads are registered in Arber, iii. 255–7, and various verses
and other illustrative materials are printed by Nichols. A list of the
pageants is in ch. iv.
There are four contemporary prints:
A
S. R. 1606, July 30 (Wilson). ‘The Kinge of Denmarkes
entertainement at Tilberie Hope by the kinge &c.’ Henry Robertes
(Arber, iii. 327).
1606. The Most royall and Honourable entertainement, of the famous and
renowmed King, Christiern the fourth, King of Denmarke, &c.... With
the royall passage on Thursday the 31. of July, thorough the Citty of
London, and honorable shewes there presented them, and maner of their
passing. By H. R. W. Barley for H. R. [Epistle to Sir Thomas
Smith, signed ‘Hen. Robarts’.]
Editions in Nichols, James (1828), ii. 54, and
Harleian Miscellany, ix. 431.
B
S. R. 1606, Aug. 19 (Wilson). ‘A Booke called Englandes farewell
to Christian the Ffourthe kinge of Denmarke With a Relacon of suche
shewes and seuerall pastymes presented to his Maiestie, as well at
Courte the ffirste of Auguste as in other places since his honorable
passage through the Cytie of London &c.’ William Welbye (Arber,
iii. 328).
1606. Englands Farewell to Christian the fourth, famous King of
Denmarke. By H. Roberts. For William Welby. [Epistle to Sir John
Jolles, signed ‘H. Roberts’.]
Editions in Nichols, James (1828), ii. 75, and
Harleian Miscellany, ix. 440.
C
Jonson’s Entertainment of the King of Denmark at Theobalds (cf.
ch. xxiii).
D
S. R. 1606, Aug. 8 (Hartwell). ‘A booke called the Kinge of
Denmarkes welcomme into England &c.’ Edward Allde (Arber, iii.
327).
1606. The King of Denmarkes welcome: Containing his arriual, abode, and
entertainement, both in the Citie and other places. Edward Allde.
Extracts in Nichols, James (1828), iv. 1072.
There are also an account in Stowe, Annales, 885, and a
Relatio oder Erzehlung wie ... Christianus IV, &c. im Königreich
Engellandt angelanget (1607, Hamburg). For the itinerary cf. App.
A. Bond, Lyly, i. 505, prints a song at Theobalds on 24 July and
a pastoral dialogue in Fleet Street on 31 July as possibly Lyly’s.
[MS.] St. John’s College, Oxford, MS. ‘A True and
Faithfull Relation of the Risinge and Fall of Thomas Tucker, Prince of
Alba Fortunata, Lord of St. John’s,’ &c. The writer is said (D. N.
B.) to be Griffin Higgs, but the evidence is inadequate.
Edition [by P. Bliss], An Account of the Christmas Prince (1816,
Miscellanea Antiqua Anglicana). Another is planned in M. S.
R.
This is the narrative of a lordship of misrule at St. John’s during
the Christmas of 1607–8. The MS. includes the text of a number of
plays and shows. Unfortunately Bliss omits the text of these, with
the exception of one called The Seven Days of the Week. The
others were Ara Fortunae, Saturnalia, Philomela,
Time’s Complaint, Somnium Fundatoris, Philomathes,
Yuletide, Ira seu Tumulus Fortunae, Periander (an
English play). Others were planned, but not given; cf. Mediaeval
Stage, i. 409.
S. R. 1610, June 12 (Wilson). ‘A booke called Chesters Triumph
in honour of ye Prince, as it was performed vpon Saincte Georges Day
1610 in thaforesayd Citty.’ John Browne (Arber, iii. 436).
1610. Chesters Triumph in Honor of her Prince. As it was performed vpon
S. Georges Day 1610, in the foresaid Citie. For I. B. [The name
of Robert Amerie appears at the end. A preface and one poem are by R.
Davies.]
Editions in Nichols, James, ii. 291 (1828), and in
Chetham Soc. publications (1844).
G. Ormerod, Hist. of Cheshire (1882), i. 381, gives a
description of the show from a shorter account or programme in Harl.
MS. 2150, f. 186, indexed (f. 3v) as ‘Mr. Amory’s new shew
invented by him’. This is confirmed by the lines:
Amor is loue and Amory is his name,
That did begin this pompe and princelye game.
N.D. [1609?] Running title: Campbell, or The Ironmongers
Faire Field. [The only known copy (B.M. C. 33, E. 7) lacks the t.p.
and sig. A. Thomas Campbell was mayor in 1609. For his grandson, James
Campbell, mayor in 1629, Dekker wrote London’s Tempe, or The Field
of Happines.]
Greg, Masques, 21, assigns this to Munday, without stating his
grounds.
1610. Londons Loue, to the royal Prince Henrie, meeting him on the
Riuer of Thames, at his returne from Richmonde, with a worthie fleete
of her Cittizens, on Thursday the last of May, 1610. With a breife
reporte of the water Fight, and Fire workes. Edward Allde, for
Nathaniel Fosbrooke. [Epistle to Sir Thomas Campbell, Lord Mayor.]
Edition by J. Nichols, James, ii. 315 (1828).
It appears from the city records that the device was by Munday, and
that Richard Burbadge and John Rice of the King’s men delivered the
speeches as Amphion and Corinea; cf. Repertory, xxix, f. 232v,
and Letter Book D.D., f. 148v, quoted by Halliwell-Phillipps in
Athenaeum (19 May 1888), Stopes, Burbage, 108, and C. W.
Wallace in Times (28 March 1913). Doubtless Munday also wrote
the description.
S. R. 1610, June 14 (Mokett). ‘A booke called, The creation of
the Prince, by master Danyell Price.’ Roger Jackson (Arber, iii.
436).
1610. The Order and Solemnitie of the Creation of the High and mightie
Prince Henrie, Eldest Sonne to our sacred Soueraigne, Prince of Wales,
Duke of Cornewall, Earle of Chester, &c. As it was celebrated in the
Parliament House, on Munday the fourth of Iunne last past. Together
with the Ceremonies of the Knights of the Bath, and other matters of
speciall regard, incident to the same. Whereunto is annexed the Royall
Maske, presented by the Queene and her Ladies, on Wednesday at night
following. For John Budge. [The Mask is Daniel’s Tethys’
Festival, with a separate t.p.]
Editions in W. Scott, Somers Tracts (1809–15), ii. 183,
and Nichols, James (1828), ii. 324.
The ceremonies are also described in Stowe, Annales (1615), 899,
and in MSS. of W. Camden quoted by Nichols.
- The diary is:
- 31 May 1610. City reception with water pageant.
- 4 June. Creation.
- 5 June. Daniel’s mask.
- 6 June. Tilt; fireworks; sea-fight.
The most important descriptions, besides the masks of Campion,
Beaumont, and Chapman (q.v.), are.
A
S. R. 1613, Feb. 18 (Mokett). ‘A booke called The Mariage of the
twoo great prynces Ffriderick Counte Palatine and the Lady Elizabeth &c
with the shewes and fierwoorkes on the Water, the maskes and Revels at
the Courte.’ William Barley (Arber, iii. 516).
1613. The Magnificent Marriage of the two great princes Frederick
Count Palatine, &c. and the Lady Elizabeth, Daughter to the Imperial
Majesties of King James and Queen Anne, to the Comfort of All Great
Britain. Now the second time imprinted, with many new additions of the
same Tryumphes, performed by the Gentlemen of the Innes of Court in
the Kings Pallace at Whitehall. T. C. for W. Barley. [Nichols
says that a manuscript copy of the first edition is in Addl. MS.
5767.]
Editions in W. Scott, Somers Tracts (1809–15), iii. 35,
and Nichols, James (1828), ii. 536.
B
1613. Heavens Blessing and Earths Joy: or, a True Relation of the
Supposed Sea-Fights and Fire-Workes as were Accomplished before the
Royall Celebration of the All-beloved Marriage of the two Peerlesse
Paragons of Christendome, Fredericke and Elizabeth. By John Taylor, the
Water Poet. For Joseph Hunt, sold by John Wright.
1630. [Part of Taylor’s Works.]
Edition in Nichols, James (1828), ii. 527.
C
1613. Beschreibung der Reiss: Empfahung des Ritterlichen Ordens:
Volbringung des Heyraths: vnd glückliche Heimführung: Wie auch der
ansehnlichen Einführung, gehaltene Ritterspiel vnd Freudenfests des
Durchleuchtigsten Hochgeboren Fürsten und Herrn Friedrichen des Fünften
... mit der ... Princessin Elisabethen. G. Vögelin, Heidelberg.
[Of this there is also a French translation, Les Triomphes ... pour
le Mariage et Reception de Monseigneur le Prince Frederic V ... et de
Madame Elisabeth. 1613.]
D
A distinct French account in Mercure François, iii. 72.
For other accounts, extant and lost, and verses, cf. Arber, iii. 499,
514–18; Nichols, ii. *463, 536, 601, 624; Rimbault, 161–3; M. A. Green,
Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia, 36.
- The diary is:
- 16 Oct. 1612. Arrival of Frederick at Gravesend.
- 18 Oct. Reception at Court.
- 29 Oct. Visit to Guildhall.
- 21 Dec. Investiture with Garter.
- 27 Dec. Betrothal.
- 7 Feb. 1613. Garter installation.
- 11 and 13 Feb. Fireworks and sea-triumph at Whitehall.
- 14 Feb. Wedding. Campion’s mask.
- 15 Feb. Running at the ring. Chapman’s mask.
- 21 Feb. Beaumont’s mask.
[MS.] Calendar by William Adams, penes C. J.
Harford (in 1828).
S. R. 1613, Oct. 8 (Mason). ‘A booke called the Queenes
Maiesties entertaynement at Bristoll.’ John Budge (Arber, iii.
533).
1613. A Relation of the Royall, Magnificent, and Sumptuous
Entertainment given to the High and Mighty Princesse Queen Anne, at
the Renowned Citie of Bristoll, by the Mayor, Sheriffes, and Aldermen
thereof; in the moneth of June last past, 1613. Together with the
Oration, Gifts, Triumphes, Water-combats and other Showes there made.
For John Budge. [Epistle by Robert Naile.]
Editions in Bristol Memorialist, No. 3 (1816), and
Nichols, James, ii. 648 (1828).