The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 3

[In this chapter I give under the head of each playwright (a) a brief sketch of his life in relation to the stage, (b) a list of contemporary and later collections of his dramatic works, (c) a list of dissertations (books, pamphlets, articles in journals) bearing generally upon his life and works. Then I take each play, mask, &c., up to 1616 and give (a) the MSS. if any; (b) the essential parts of the entry, if any, on the Stationers’ Register, including in brackets the name of any licenser other than an official of the Company, and occasionally adding a note of any transfer of copyright which seems of exceptional interest; (c) the essential parts of the title-page of the first known print; (d) a note of its prologues, epilogues, epistles, and other introductory matter; (e) the dates and imprints of later prints before the end of the seventeenth century with any new matter from their t.ps. bearing on stage history; (f) lists of all important 18th-20th century editions and dissertations, not of the collective or general type already dealt with; (g) such notes as may seem desirable on authorship, date, stage history and the like. Some of these notes are little more than compilations; others contain the results of such work as I have myself been able to do on the plays concerned. Similarly, I have in some cases recorded, on the authority of others, editions and dissertations which I have not personally examined. The section devoted to each playwright concludes with lists of work not extant and of work of which his authorship has, often foolishly, been conjectured. I ought to make it clear that many of my title-pages are borrowed from Dr. Greg, and that, while I have tried to give what is useful for the history of the stage, I have no competence in matters of minute bibliographical accuracy.]

WILLIAM ALABASTER (1567–1640)

Alabaster, or Alablaster, was born at Hadleigh, Suffolk, in 1567 and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, from Westminster in 1583. His Latin poem Eliseis is mentioned by Spenser in Colin Clout’s Come Home Again (1591). He was incorporated M.A. of Oxford in 1592, and went as chaplain to Essex in the Cadiz expedition of 1596. On 22 Sept. 1597 Richard Percival wrote to Sir Robert Cecil (Hatfield MSS. vii. 394), ‘Alabaster has made a tragedy against the Church of England’. Perhaps this is not to be taken literally, but only refers to his conversion to Catholicism. Chamberlain, 7, 64, records that he was ‘clapt up for poperie’, had escaped from the Clink by 4 May 1598, but was recaptured at Rochelle. This was about the beginning of Aug. 1599 (Hatfield MSS. ix. 282). Later he was reconverted and at his death in 1640 held the living of Therfield, Herts. He wrote on mystical theology, and a manuscript collection of 43 sonnets, mostly unprinted, is described by B. Dobell in Athenaeum (1903), ii. 856.

Roxana. c. 1592

[MSS.] T. C. C. MS. (‘Authore Domino Alabaster’); Camb. Univ. MS. Ff. ii. 9; Lambeth MS. 838 (‘finis Roxanae Alabastricae’).

S. R. 1632, May 9 (Herbert). ‘A Tragedy in Latyn called Roxana &c.’ Andrew Crooke (Arber, iv. 277).

1632. Roxana Tragædia olim Cantabrigiae, Acta in Col. Trin. Nunc primum in lucem edita, summaque cum diligentia ad castigatissimum exemplar comparata. R. Badger for Andrew Crook. [At end is Herbert’s imprimatur, dated ‘1 March, 1632’.]

1632. Roxana Tragædia a plagiarii unguibus vindicata, aucta, & agnita ab Authore Gulielmo Alabastro. William Jones. [Epistle by Gulielmus Alabaster to Sir Ralph Freeman; commendatory verses by Hugo Hollandius and Tho. Farnabius; engraved title-page, with representation of a stage (cf. ch. xviii, Bibl. Note).]

The Epistle has ‘Ante quadraginta plus minus annos, morticinum hoc edidi duarum hebdomadarum abortum, et unius noctis spectaculo destinatum, non aevi integri’. The play is a Latin version of Luigi Groto’s La Dalida (1567).

SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER, EARL OF STIRLING (c. 1568–1640).

William Alexander of Menstrie, after an education at Glasgow and Leyden and travel in France, Spain, and Italy, was tutor to Prince Henry before the accession of James, and afterwards Gentleman extraordinary of the Privy Chamber both to Henry and to Charles. He was knighted about 1609, appointed a Master of Requests in 1614 and Secretary for Scotland in 1626. He was created Earl of Stirling in 1633. He formed literary friendships with Michael Drayton and William Drummond of Hawthornden, but Jonson complained (Laing, 11) that ‘Sir W. Alexander was not half kinde unto him, and neglected him, because a friend to Drayton’. His four tragedies read like closet plays, and his only connexion with the stage appears to be in some verses to Alleyn after the foundation of Dulwich in 1619 (Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn, 178).

Collections

S. R. 1604, April 30 (by order of Court). ‘A booke Called The Woorkes of William Alexander of Menstrie Conteyninge The Monarchicke Tragedies, Paranethis to the Prince and Aurora.’ Edward Blunt (Arber, iii. 260).

1604. The Monarchicke Tragedies. By William Alexander of Menstrie. V. S. for Edward Blount. [Croesus and Darius (with a separate t.p.).]

1607. The Monarchick Tragedies; Croesus, Darius, The Alexandraean, Iulius Caesar, Newly enlarged. By William Alexander, Gentleman of the Princes priuie Chamber. Valentine Simmes for Ed. Blount. [New issue, with additions. Julius Caesar has separate t.p. Commendatory verses, signed ‘Robert Ayton’.]

1616. The Monarchicke Tragedies. The third Edition. By S^r. W. Alexander Knight. William Stansby. [Croesus, Darius, The Alexandraean Tragedy, Julius Caesar, in revised texts, the last three with separate t.ps.]

1637. Recreations with the Muses. By William Earle of Sterline. Tho. Harper. [Croesus, Darius, The Alexandraean Tragedy, Julius Caesar.]

1870–2. Poetical Works. 3 vols.

1921. L. E. Kastner and H. B. Charlton, The Poetical Works of Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling. Vol. i. The Dramatic Works.—Dissertations: C. Rogers, Memorials of the Earl of S. and the House of A. (1877); H. Beumelburg, Sir W. A. Graf von S., als dramatischer Dichter (1880, Halle diss.).

Darius > 1603

1603. The Tragedie of Darius. By William Alexander of Menstrie. Robert Waldegrave. Edinburgh. [Verses to James VI; Epistle to Reader; Commendatory verses by ‘Io Murray’ and ‘W. Quin’.]

1604. G. Elde for Edward Blount. [Part of Coll. 1604, with separate t.p.; also in later Colls. Two sets of verses to King at end.]

Croesus > 1604

1604. [Part of Coll. 1604; also in later Colls. Argument; Verses to King at end.]

The Alexandraean Tragedy > 1607

1605? [Hazlitt, Manual, 7, and others cite a print of this date, which is not confirmed by Greg, Plays, 1.]

1607. (Running Title). The Alexandraean Tragedie. [Part of Coll. 1607; also in later Colls. Argument.]

Julius Caesar > 1607

1607. The Tragedie of Iulius Caesar. By William Alexander, Gentleman of the Princes priuie Chamber. Valentine Simmes for Ed. Blount. [Part of Coll. 1607, with separate t.p.; also in later Colls. Argument.]

Edition in H. H. Furness, Julius Caesar (1913, New Variorum Shakespeare, xvii).

WILLIAM ALLEY (c. 1510–70).

Alley’s Πτωχὸμυσεῖον. The Poore Mans Librarie (1565) contains three and a half pages of dialogue between Larymos and Phronimos, described as from ‘a certaine interlude or plaie intituled Aegio. In the which playe ij persons interlocutorie do dispute, the one alledging for the defence of destenie and fatall necessitie, and the other confuting the same’. P. Simpson (9 N. Q. iii. 205) suggests that Alley was probably himself the author. The book consists of praelectiones delivered in 1561 at St. Paul’s, of which Alley had been a Prebendary. He became Bishop of Exeter in 1560. On his attitude to the public stage, cf. App. C. No. viii. It is therefore odd to find the Lord Bishop’s players at Barnstaple and Plymouth in 1560–1 (Murray, ii. 78).

ROBERT AMERIE (c. 1610).

The deviser of the show of Chester’s Triumph (1610). See ch. xxiv (C).

ROBERT ARMIN (> 1588–1610 <). For biography see Actors (ch. xv).

The Two Maids of Moreclacke. 1607–8 (?)

1609. The History of the two Maids of Moreclacke, With the life and simple maner of Iohn in the Hospitall. Played by the Children of the Kings Maiesties Reuels. Written by Robert Armin, seruant to the Kings most excellent Maiestie. N. O. for Thomas Archer. [Epistle to Reader, signed ‘Robert Armin’.]

Editions in A. B. Grosart, Works of R. A. Actor (1880, Choice Rarities of Ancient English Poetry, ii), 63, and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.). The epistle says that the play was ‘acted by the boyes of the Reuels, which perchaunce in part was sometime acted more naturally in the Citty, if not in the hole’, that the writer ‘would haue againe inacted Iohn my selfe but ... I cannot do as I would’, and that he had been ‘requested both of Court and Citty, to show him in priuate’. John is figured in a woodcut on the title-page, which is perhaps meant for a portrait of Armin. As a King’s man, and no boy, he can hardly have played with the King’s Revels; perhaps we should infer that the play was not originally written for them. All their productions seem to date from 1607–8.

Doubtful Play

Armin has been guessed at as the R. A. of The Valiant Welshman.

THOMAS ASHTON (ob. 1578).

Ashton took his B.A. in 1559–60, and became Fellow of Trinity, Cambridge. He was appointed Head Master of Shrewsbury School from 24 June 1561 (G. W. Fisher, Annals of Shrewsbury School, 4). To the same year a local record, Robert Owen’s Arms of the Bailiffs (17th c.), assigns ‘M^r Astons first playe upon the Passion of Christ’, and this is confirmed by an entry in the town accounts (Owen and Blakeway, Hist. of Shrewsbury, i. 353) of 20s. ‘spent upon M^r Aston and a other gentellmane of Cambridge over pareadijs’ on 25 May 1561. Whitsuntide plays had long been traditional at Shrewsbury (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 250, 394, where the dates require correction). A local chronicle (Shropshire Arch. Soc. Trans. xxxvii. 54) has ‘Elizabeth 1565 [i. e. 1566; cf. App. A], The Queen came to Coventry intending for Salop to see M^r Astons Play, but it was ended. The Play was performed in the Quarry, and lasted the Whitson [June 2] hollydays’. This play is given in Mediaeval Stage, from local historians, as Julian the Apostate, but the same chronicle assigns that to 1556. Another chronicle (Taylor MS. of 16th-17th c.) records for 1568–9 (Shropshire Arch. Soc. Trans. iii. 268), ‘This yeare at Whytsoontyde [29 May] was a notable stage playe playeed in Shrosberie in a place there callyd the quarrell which lastid all the hollydayes unto the which cam greate number of people of noblemen and others the which was praysed greatlye and the chyff aucter therof was one Master Astoon beinge the head scoolemaster of the freescole there a godly and lernyd man who tooke marvelous greate paynes therin’. Robert Owen, who calls this Aston’s ‘great playe’ of the Passion of Christ, assigns it to 1568, but it is clear from the town accounts that 1569 is right (Fisher, 18). This is presumably the play referred to by Thomas Churchyard (q.v.) in The Worthiness of Wales (1587, ed. Spenser Soc. 85), where after describing ‘behind the walles ... a ground, newe made Theator wise’, able to seat 10,000, and used for plays, baiting, cockfights, and wrestling, he adds:

In the margin he comments, ‘Maister Aston was a good and godly Preacher’. A ‘ludus in quarell’ is noted in 1495, and this was ‘where the plases [? playes] have bine accustomyd to be usyd’ in 1570 (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 251, 255). Ashton resigned his Mastership about 1571 and was in the service of the Earl of Essex at Chartley in 1573. But he continued to work on the Statutes of the school, which as settled in 1578, the year of his death, provide that ‘Everie Thursdaie the Schollers of the first forme before they goo to plaie shall for exercise declame and plaie one acte of a comedie’ (Fisher, 17, 23; E. Calvert, Shrewsbury School Register). It is interesting to note that among Ashton’s pupils were Sir Philip Sidney and Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, who entered the school together on 16 Nov. 1564.

JAMES ASKE (c. 1588).

Author of Elizabetha Triumphans (1588), an account of Elizabeth’s visit to Tilbury. See ch. xxiv (C).

THOMAS ATCHELOW (c. 1589).

The reference to him in Nashe’s Menaphon epistle (App. C, No. xlii) rather suggests that he may have written plays.

FRANCIS BACON (1561–1626).

Bacon was son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper, by Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Cooke. He was at Trinity, Cambridge, from April 1573 to March 1575, and entered Gray’s Inn in June 1576. He sat in the Parliaments of 1584 and 1586, and about 1591 attached himself to the rising fortunes of the Earl of Essex, who in 1595 gave him an estate at Twickenham. His public employment began as a Queen’s Counsel about 1596. He was knighted on 23 July 1603, became Solicitor-General on 25 June 1607, Attorney-General on 27 Oct. 1613, Lord Keeper on 7 March 1617, and Lord Chancellor on 7 Jan. 1618. He was created Lord Verulam on 12 July 1618, and Viscount St. Albans on 27 Jan. 1621. Later in the same year he was disgraced for bribery. The edition of his Works (with his Letters and Life) by J. Spedding, R. L. Ellis, and D. D. Heath (1857–74) is exhaustive. Many papers of his brother Anthony are at Lambeth, and are drawn on by T. Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Elizabeth (1754). F. J. Burgoyne, Facsimile of a Manuscript at Alnwick (1904), reproduces the Northumberland MS. which contains some of his writings, with others that may be his, and seems once to have contained more. Apart from philosophy, his chief literary work was The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall, of which 10 appeared in 1597, and were increased to 38 in 1612 and 58 in 1625. Essay xxxvii, added in 1625, is Of Masks and Triumphs, and, although Bacon was not a writer for the public stage, he had a hand, as deviser or patron, in several courtly shows.

(i) He helped to devise dumb-shows for Thomas Hughes’s Misfortunes of Arthur (q.v.) given by Gray’s Inn at Greenwich on 28 Feb. 1588.

(ii) The list of contents of the Northumberland MS. (Burgoyne, xii) includes an item, now missing from the MS., ‘Orations at Graies Inne Revells’, and Spedding, viii. 342, conjectures that Bacon wrote the speeches of the six councillors delivered on 3 Jan. 1595 as part of the Gesta Grayorum (q.v.).

(iii) Rowland Whyte (Sydney Papers, i. 362) describes a device on the Queen’s day (17 Nov.), 1595, in which the speeches turned on the Earl of Essex’s love for Elizabeth, who said that, ‘if she had thought there had been so much said of her, she would not have been there that night’. A draft list of tilters, of whom the challengers were led by the Earl of Cumberland and the defendants by the Earl of Essex, is in Various MSS. iv. 163, and a final one, with descriptions of their appearance, in the Anglorum Feriae of Peele (q.v.). They were Cumberland, Knight of the Crown, Essex, Sussex, Southampton, as Sir Bevis, Bedford, Compton, Carew, the three brothers Knollys, Dudley, William Howard, Drury, Nowell, John Needham, Skydmore, Ratcliffe, Reynolds, Charles Blount, Carey. The device took place partly in the tiltyard, partly after supper. Before the entry of the tilters a page made a speech and secured the Queen’s glove. A dialogue followed between a Squire on one hand, and a Hermit, a Secretary, and a Soldier, who on the entry of Essex tried to beguile him from love. A postboy brought letters, which the Secretary gave to Essex. After supper, the argument between the Squire and the three tempters was resumed. Whyte adds, ‘The old man [the Hermit] was he that in Cambridg played Giraldy; Morley played the Secretary; and he that plaid Pedantiq was the soldior; and Toby Matthew acted the Squires part. The world makes many untrue constructions of these speaches, comparing the Hermitt and the Secretary to two of the Lords [Burghley and Robert Cecil?]; and the soldier to Sir Roger Williams.’ The Cambridge reference is apparently to Laelia (q.v.) and the performers of the Hermit and Soldier were therefore George Meriton and George Mountaine, of Queen’s. Morley might perhaps be Thomas Morley, the musician, a Gentleman of the Chapel.

Several speeches, apparently belonging to this device, are preserved. Peele speaks of the balancing of Essex between war and statecraft as indicated in the tiltyard by ‘His mute approach and action of his mutes’, but they may have presented a written speech.

(a) Lambeth MS. v. 118 (copied by Birch in Sloane MS. 4457, f. 32) has, in Bacon’s hand, a speech by the Squire in the tiltyard, and four speeches by the Hermit, Soldier, Secretary, and Squire ‘in the Presence’. These are printed by Birch (1763), Nichols, Eliz. iii. 372, and Spedding, viii. 378.

(b) Lambeth MS. viii. 274 (copied by Birch in Addl. MS. 4164, f. 167) has, in Bacon’s hand, the beginning of a speech by the Secretary to the Squire, which mentions Philautia and Erophilus, and a letter from Philautia to the Queen. These are printed in Spedding, viii. 376.

(c) The Northumberland MS. ff. 47–53 (Burgoyne, 55) has ‘Speeches for my Lord of Essex at the tylt’. These deal with the attempts of Philautia to beguile Erophilus. Four of them are identical with the four speeches ‘in the Presence’ of (a); the fifth is a speech by the Hermit in the tiltyard. They were printed by Spedding, separately, in 1870, as A Conference of Pleasure composed for some festive occasion about the year 1592 by Francis Bacon; but 1592 is merely a guess which Whyte’s letter corrects.

(d) S. P. D. Eliz. ccliv. 67, 68, docketed ‘A Device made by the Earl of Essex for the Entertainment of her Majesty’, has a speech by the Squire, distinct from any in the other MSS., a speech by the Attendant on an Indian Prince, which mentions Philautia, and a draft by Edward Reynolds, servant to Essex, of a French speech by Philautia. The two first of these are printed by Spedding, viii. 388, and Devereux, Lives of the Earls of Essex, ii. 501. The references to Philautia are rather against Spedding’s view that these belong to some occasion other than that of 1595.

Sir Henry Wotton says of Essex (Reliquiae Wottonianae, 21), ‘For his Writings, they are beyond example, especially in his ... things of delight at Court ... as may be yet seen in his Impresses and Inventions of entertainment; and above all in his darling piece of love, and self love’. This, for what it is worth—and Wotton was secretary to Essex in 1595, suggests that the Earl himself, rather than Bacon, was the author of the speeches, which in fact none of the MSS. directly ascribe to Bacon. But it is hard to distinguish the literary productions of a public man from those of his staff.

(iv) The Northumberland MS. (Burgoyne, 65) has a speech of apology for absence, headed ‘ffor the Earle of Sussex at y^e tilt an: 96’, which might be Bacon’s, especially as he wrote from Gray’s Inn to the Earl of Shrewsbury on 15 Oct. 1596, ‘to borrow a horse and armour for some public show’ (Lodge, App. 79).

(v) Beaumont (q.v.) acknowledges his encouragement of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn mask on 20 Feb. 1613, for the Princess Elizabeth’s wedding.

(vi) He bore the expenses of the Gray’s Inn Mask of Flowers (q.v.) on 6 Jan. 1614 for the Earl of Somerset’s wedding. To this occasion probably belongs an undated letter signed ‘Fr. Bacon’, and addressed to an unknown lord (M. S. C. i. 214 from Lansdowne MS. 107, f. 13; Spedding, ii. 370; iv. 394), in which he expresses regret that ‘the joynt maske from the fowr Innes of Cowrt faileth’, and offers a mask for ‘this occasion’ by a dozen gentlemen of Gray’s Inn, ‘owt of the honor which they bear to your lordship, and my lord Chamberlayne, to whome at theyr last maske they were so much bownde’. The last mask would be (v) above, and the then Lord Chamberlain was Suffolk, prospective father-in-law of Somerset, to whom the letter may be supposed to be addressed. But it is odd that the letter is endorsed ‘M^r’ Fr. Bacon, and bound up with papers of Burghley, and it is just possible, although not, I think, likely, that the reference may be to some forgotten Elizabethan mask.

(vii) A recent attempt has been made to assign to Bacon the academic Pedantius (cf. App. K).

JOHN BADGER (c. 1575).

A contributor to the Kenilworth entertainment (cf. ch. xxiv, C). Gascoigne calls him ‘Master Badger of Oxenforde, Maister of Arte, and Bedle in the same Universitie’. A John Badger of Ch. Ch. took his M.A. in 1555, and a superior bedel of divinity of the same name made his will on 15 July 1577 (Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, i. 54).

WILLIAM BARKSTED.

For biography, cf. ch. xv (Actors), and for his share in The Insatiate Countess, s.v. Marston.

There is no reason to regard him as the ‘William Buckstead, Comedian’, whose name is at the end of a Prologue to a playe to the cuntry people in Bodl. Ashm. MS. 38 (198).

BARNABE BARNES (c. 1569–1609).

Barnes was born in Yorkshire, the son of Richard Barnes, bishop of Durham. He entered Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1586, but took no degree, accompanied Essex to France in 1591, and dedicated his poems Parthenophil and Parthenophe (1593) to William Percy (q.v.). He was a friend of Gabriel Harvey and abused by Nashe and Campion. In 1598 he was charged with an attempt at poison, but escaped from prison (Athenaeum, 1904, ii. 240). His Poems were edited by A. B. Grosart in Occasional Issues (1875). Hazlitt, Manual, 23, states that a manuscript of a play by him with the title The Battle of Hexham was sold with Isaac Reed’s books in 1807, but this, which some writers call The Battle of Evesham, has not been traced. As Barnes was buried at Durham in Dec. 1609, it is probable that The Madcap ‘written by Barnes’, which Herbert licensed for Prince Charles’s men on 3 May 1624, was by another of the name.

The Devil’s Charter. 2 Feb. 1607

S. R. 1607, Oct. 16 (Buck). ‘The Tragedie of Pope Alexander the Sixt as it was played before his Maiestie.’ John Wright (Arber, iii. 361).

1607. The Divils Charter: A Tragedie Conteining the Life and Death of Pope Alexander the sixt. As it was plaide before the Kings Maiestie, vpon Candlemasse night last: by his Maiesties Seruants. But more exactly reuewed, corrected and augmented since by the Author, for the more pleasure and profit of the Reader. G. E. for John Wright. [Dedication by Barnabe Barnes to Sir William Herbert and Sir William Pope; Prologue with dumb-show and Epilogue.]

Extracts by A. B. Grosart in Barnes’s Poems (1875), and editions by R. B. McKerrow (1904, Materialien, vi) and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.)—Dissertation: A. E. H. Swaen, G. C. Moore Smith, and R. B. McKerrow, Notes on the D. C. by B. B. (1906, M. L. R. i. 122).

DAVID, LORD BARRY (1585–1610).

David Barry was the eldest son of the ninth Viscount Buttevant, and the ‘Lo:’ on his title-page represents a courtesy title of ‘Lord’, or ‘Lording’ as it is given in the lawsuit of Androwes v. Slater, which arose out of the interest acquired by him in 1608 in the Whitefriars theatre (q.v.). Kirkman’s play-lists (Greg, Masques, ci) and Wood, Athenae Oxon. ii. 655, have him as ‘Lord’ Barrey, which did not prevent Langbaine (1691) and others from turning him into ‘Lodowick’.—Dissertations: J. Q. Adams, Lordinge (alias Lodowick) Barry (1912, M. P. ix. 567); W. J. Lawrence, The Mystery of Lodowick Barry (1917, University of North Carolina Studies in Philology, xiv. 52).

Ram Alley. 1607–8

S. R. 1610, Nov. 9 (Buck). ‘A booke called, Ramme Alley, or merry trickes. Robert Wilson (Arber, iii. 448).

1611. Ram-Alley: Or Merrie-Trickes. A Comedy Diuers times heretofore acted. By the Children of the Kings Reuels. Written by Lo: Barrey. G. Eld for Robert Wilson. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

1636; 1639.

Editions in Dodsley⁴ (1875, x) and by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. ii) and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.).

Fleay, i. 31, attempts to place the play at the Christmas of 1609, but it is improbable that the King’s Revels ever played outside 1607–8. Archer’s play-list of 1656 gives it to Massinger. There are references (ed. Dodsley, pp. 280, 348, 369) to the baboons, which apparently amused London about 1603–5 (cf. s.v. Sir Giles Goosecap), and to the Jacobean knightings (p. 272).

FRANCIS BEAUMONT (c. 1584–1616).

Beaumont was third son of Francis Beaumont, Justice of Common Pleas, sprung from a gentle Leicestershire family, settled at Grace Dieu priory in Charnwood Forest. He was born in 1584 or 1585 and had a brother, Sir John, also known as a poet. He entered Broadgates Hall, Oxford, in 1597, but took no degree, and the Inner Temple in 1600. In 1614 or 1615 he had a daughter by his marriage, probably recent, to Ursula Isley of Sundridge Hall, Kent, and another daughter was born after his death on 6 March 1616. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Beaumont contributed a humorous grammar lecture (preserved in Sloane MS. 1709, f. 13; cf. E. J. L. Scott in Athenaeum for 27 Jan. 1894) to some Inner Temple Christmas revels of uncertain date. This has allusions to ‘the most plodderly plotted shew of Lady Amity’ given ‘in this ill-instructed hall the last Christmas’, and to seeing a play at the Bankside for sixpence. His poetical career probably begins with the anonymous Salmacis and Hermaphroditus of 1602. His non-dramatic poems, of which the most important is an epistle to Elizabeth Countess of Rutland in 1612, appeared after his death in volumes of 1618, 1640, and 1653, which certainly ascribe to him much that is not his. His connexion with the stage seems to have begun about 1606, possibly through Michael Drayton, a family friend, in whose Eglogs of that year he appears as ‘sweet Palmeo’. But his first play, The Woman Hater, written independently for Paul’s, shows him under the influence of Ben Jonson, who wrote him an affectionate epigram (lv), told Drummond in 1619 that ‘Francis Beaumont loved too much himself and his own verses’ (Laing, 10), and according to Dryden (Essay on Dramatick Poesie) ‘submitted all his writings to his censure, and, ’tis thought, used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots’. To Jonson’s Volpone (1607) commendatory verses were contributed both by Beaumont, whose own Knight of the Burning Pestle was produced in the same year, and by John Fletcher, whose names are thus first combined. Jonson and Beaumont, in their turn, wrote verses for Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess, probably written in 1608 or 1609 and published in 1609 or 1610. About 1608 or 1609 it may also be supposed that the famous literary collaboration began. This, although it can only be proved to have covered some half-dozen plays, left the two names so closely associated that when, in 1647 and 1679, the actors and publishers issued collections of fifty-three pieces, in all or most of which Fletcher had had, or was supposed to have had, a hand, they described them all as ‘by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’, and thus left to modern scholarship a task with which it is still grappling. A contemporary protest by Sir Aston Cockaine pointed out the small share of Beaumont and the large share of Massinger in the 1647 volume; and the process of metrical analysis initiated by Fleay and Boyle may be regarded as fairly successful in fixing the characteristics of the very marked style of Fletcher, although it certainly raises more questions than it solves as to the possible shares not only of Massinger, but of Jonson, Field, Tourneur, Daborne, Middleton, Rowley, and Shirley, as collaborators or revisers, in the plays as they have come down to us. Since Fletcher wrote up to his death in 1625, much of this investigation lies outside my limits, and it is fortunate that the task of selecting the plays which may, certainly or possibly, fall before Beaumont’s death in 1616 is one in which a fair number of definite data are available to eke out the slippery metrical evidence. It would seem that the collaboration began about 1608 and lasted in full swing for about four or five years, that in it Beaumont was the ruling spirit, and that it covered plays, not only for the Queen’s Revels, for whom both poets had already written independently, and for their successors the Lady Elizabeth’s, but also, and concurrently, for the King’s. According to Dryden, two or three plays were written ‘very unsuccessfully’ before the triumph of Philaster, but these may include the independent plays, of which we know that the Knight of the Burning Pestle and the Faithful Shepherdess failed. The Folios contain a copy of verses written by Beaumont to Jonson (ed. Waller, x. 199) ‘before he and M^r. Fletcher came to London, with two of the precedent Comedies then not finish’d, which deferr’d their merry meetings at the Mermaid’, but this probably relates to a temporary villeggiatura and cannot be precisely dated. It is no doubt to this period of 1608–13 that we may refer the gossip of Aubrey, i. 96, who learnt from Sir James Hales and others that Beaumont and Fletcher ‘lived together on the Banke-Side, not far from the Play-house, both batchelors; lay together; had one wench in the house between them, which they did so admire; the same cloathes and cloake, &c., betweene them’. Obviously these conditions ended when Beaumont married an heiress about 1613, and it seems probable that from this date onwards he ceased to be an active playwright, although he contributed a mask to the Princess Elizabeth’s wedding at Shrovetide of that year, and his hand can be traced, perhaps later still, in The Scornful Lady. At any rate, about 1613 Fletcher was not merely writing independent plays—a practice which, unlike Beaumont, he may never have wholly dropped—but also looking about for other contributors. There is some converging evidence of his collaboration about this date with Shakespeare; and Henslowe’s correspondence (Henslowe Papers, 66) shows him quite clearly as engaged on a play, possibly The Honest Man’s Fortune, with no less than three others, Daborne, Field, and Massinger. It is not probable that, from 1616 onwards, Fletcher wrote for any company but the King’s men. Of the fifty-two plays included in the Ff., forty-four can be shown from title-pages, actor-lists, licences by the Master of the Revels, and a Lord Chamberlain’s order of 1641 (M. S. C. i. 364) to have belonged to the King’s, six by title-pages and another Lord Chamberlain’s order (Variorum, iii. 159) to have belonged to the Cockpit theatre, and two, Wit at Several Weapons and Four Plays in One, together with The Faithful Friends, which does not appear in the Ff., cannot be assigned to any company. But some of the King’s men’s plays and some or all of the Cockpit plays had originally belonged to Paul’s, the Queen’s Revels, or the Lady Elizabeth’s, and it is probable that all these formed part of the Lady Elizabeth’s repertory in 1616, and that upon the reorganization of the company which then took place they were divided into two groups, of which one passed with Field to the King’s, while the other remained with his late fellows and was ultimately left with Christopher Beeston when their occupation of the Cockpit ended in 1625.

I classify the plays dealt with in these notes as follows: (a) Plays wholly or substantially by Beaumont—The Woman Hater, The Knight of the Burning Pestle; (b) Plays of the Beaumont-Fletcher collaboration—Philaster, A Maid’s Tragedy, A King and No King, Four Plays in One, Cupid’s Revenge, The Coxcomb, The Scornful Lady; (c) Plays wholly or substantially by Fletcher—The Woman’s Prize, The Faithful Shepherdess, Monsieur Thomas, Valentinian, Bonduca, Wit Without Money; (d) Plays of doubtful authorship and, in some cases, period—The Captain, The Honest Man’s Fortune, The Two Noble Kinsmen, The Faithful Friends, Thierry and Theodoret, Wit at Several Weapons, Love’s Cure, The Night Walker. Full treatment of The Two Noble Kinsmen, as of Henry VIII, in which Fletcher certainly had a hand, is only possible in relation to Shakespeare. I have not thought it necessary to include every play which, or a hypothetical version of which, an unsupported conjecture, generally from Mr. Oliphant, puts earlier than 1616. The Queen of Corinth, The Noble Gentleman, The Little French Lawyer, The Laws of Candy, The Knight of Malta, The Fair Maid of the Inn, The Chances, Beggar’s Bush, The Bloody Brother, Love’s Pilgrimage, Nice Valour, and Rule a Wife and Have a Wife are omitted on this principle, and I believe I might safely have extended the same treatment to some of those in my class (d).

Collections

S. R. 1646, Sept. 4 (Langley). ‘These severall Tragedies & Comedies hereunder mencioned (viz^t.) ... [thirty plays named] ... by M^r. Beamont and M^r. Flesher.’ H. Robinson and H. Moseley (Eyre, i. 244).

1660, June 29. ‘The severall Plays following, vizt.... [names] ... all six copies written by Fra: Beamont & John Fletcher.’ H. Robinson and H. Moseley (Eyre, ii. 268).

F₁, 1647. Comedies and Tragedies Written by Francis Beaumont and Iohn Fletcher Gentlemen. Never printed before, And now published by the Authours Originall Copies. For H. Robinson and H. Moseley. [Twenty-nine plays of the 1646 entry, excluding The Wildgoose Chase, and the five plays and one mask of the 1660 entry, none but the mask previously printed; Portrait of Fletcher by W. Marshall; Epistle to Philip Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, signed ‘John Lowin, Richard Robinson, Eylaerd Swanston, Hugh Clearke, Stephen Hammerton, Joseph Taylor, Robert Benfield, Thomas Pollard, William Allen, Theophilus Bird’; Epistle to the Reader, signed ‘Ja. Shirley’; The Stationer to the Readers, signed ‘Humphrey Moseley’ and dated ‘Feb. 14^th 1646’; Thirty-seven sets of Commendatory verses, variously signed; Postscript; cf. W. W. Greg in 4 Library, ii. 109.]

F₂, 1679. Fifty Comedies and Tragedies. Written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen. All in one Volume. Published by the Authors Original Copies, the Songs to each Play being added. J. Macock, for John Martyn, Henry Herringman, Richard Marriot. [The thirty-four plays and one mask of F₁, with eighteen other plays, all previously printed; Epistle by the Stationers to the Reader; Actor Lists prefixed to many of the plays.]

1711. The Works of B. and F. 7 vols. Jacob Tonson.

Editions by Theobald, Seward and Sympson (1750, 10 vols.), G. Colman (1778, 10 vols.; 1811, 3 vols.), H. Weber (1812, 14 vols., adding The Faithful Friends), G. Darley (1839, 2 vols.; 1862–6, 2 vols.), A. Dyce (1843–6, 11 vols.; 1852, 2 vols.).

1905–12. A. Glover and A. R. Waller. The Works of F. B. and J. F. 10 vols. (C. E. C.). [Text of F₂, with collations of F₁ and Q_q.]

1904–12 (in progress). A. H. Bullen, The Works of F. B. and J. F. Variorum Edition. 4 vols. issued. [Text based on Dyce; editions of separate plays by P. A. Daniel, R. W. Bond, W. W. Greg, R. B. McKerrow, J. Masefield, M. Luce, C. Brett, R. G. Martin, E. K. Chambers.]

Selections

1887. J. S. L. Strachey, The Best Plays of B. and F. 2 vols. (Mermaid Series). [Maid’s Tragedy, Philaster, Thierry and Theodoret, K. B. P., King and No King, Bonduca, Faithful Shepherdess, Valentinian, and later plays.]

1912. F. E. Schelling, Beaumont and Fletcher (M. E. D.). [Philaster, Maid’s Tragedy, Faithful Shepherdess, Bonduca.]

Dissertations: A. C. Swinburne, B. and F. (1875–94, Studies in Prose and Poetry), The Earlier Plays of B. and F. (1910, English Review); F. G. Fleay, On Metrical Tests as applied to Dramatic Poetry: Part ii, B., F., Massinger (1874, N. S. S. Trans. 51, 23*, 61*, reprinted, 1876–8, with alterations in Shakespeare Manual, 151), On the Chronology of the Plays of F. and Massinger (1886, E. S. ix. 12), and in B. C. (1891), i. 164; R. Boyle, B., F., and Massinger (1882–7, E. S. v. 74, vii. 66, viii. 39, ix. 209, x. 383), B., F., and Massinger (1886, N. S. S. Trans. 579), Mr. Oliphant on B. and F. (1892–3, E. S. xvii. 171, xviii. 292), Daborne’s Share in the B. and F. Plays (1899, E. S. xxvi. 352); G. C. Macaulay, F. B.: a Critical Study (1883), B. and F. (1910, C. H. vi. 107); E. H. C. Oliphant, The Works of B. and F. (1890–2, E. S. xiv. 53, xv. 321, xvi. 180); E. Koeppel, Quellen-Studien zu den Dramen Ben Jonson’s, John Marston’s und B. und F.’s (1895, Münchener Beiträge, xi); C. E. Norton, F. B.’s Letter to Ben Jonson (1896, Harvard Studies and Notes, v. 19); A. H. Thorndike, The Influence of B. and F. on Shakspere (1901); O. L. Hatcher, J. F.: a Study in Dramatic Method (1905); R. M. Alden, Introduction to B.’s Plays (1910, B. L.); C. M. Gayley, F. B.: Dramatist (1914); W. E. Farnham, Colloquial Contractions in B., F., Massinger and Shakespeare as a Test of Authorship (1916, M. L. A. xxxi. 326).

Bibliographies: A. C. Potter, A Bibl. of B. and F. (1890, Harvard Bibl. Contributions, 39); B. Leonhardt, Litteratur über B. und F. (1896, Anglia, xix. 36, 542).

The Woman Hater, c. 1606

S. R. 1607, May 20 (Buck). ‘A booke called “The Woman Hater” as it hath ben lately acted by the Children of Powles.’ Eleazar Edgar and Robert Jackson (Arber, iii. 349). [A note ‘Sir George Buckes hand alsoe to it’.]

1607. The Woman Hater. As it hath beene lately Acted by the Children of Paules. Sold by John Hodgets. [Prologue in prose.]

1607. R. R. sold by John Hodgets. [A reissue.]

S. R. 1613, April 19. Transfer of Edgar’s share to John Hodgettes (Arber, iii. 521).

1648.... As it hath beene Acted by his Majesties Servants with great Applause. Written by John Fletcher Gent. For Humphrey Moseley.

1649. The Woman Hater, or the Hungry Courtier. A Comedy ... Written by Francis Beamont and John Fletcher, Gent. For Humphrey Moseley. [A reissue. Prologue in verse, said by Fleay, i. 177, to be Davenant’s, and Epilogue, used also for The Noble Gentleman.]

Fleay, i. 177, and Gayley, 73, put the date in the spring of 1607, finding a reference in ‘a favourite on the sudden’ (I. iii) to the success of Robert Carr in taking the fancy of James at the tilt of 24 March 1607, to which Fleay adds that ‘another inundation’ (III. i) recalls a flood of 20 Jan. 1607. Neither argument is convincing, and it is not known that the Paul’s boys went on into 1607; they are last heard of in July 1606. The prologue expresses the author’s intention not to lose his ears, perhaps an allusion to Jonson’s and Chapman’s peril after Eastward Ho! in 1605. Gayley notes in II. iii what certainly looks like a reminiscence of Antony and Cleopatra, IV. xiv. 51 and xv. 87, but it is no easier to be precise about the date of Antony and Cleopatra than about that of The Woman Hater. The play is universally regarded as substantially Beaumont’s and the original prologue only speaks of a single author, but Davenant in 1649 evidently supposed it to be Fletcher’s, saying ‘full twenty yeares, he wore the bayes’. Boyle, Oliphant, Alden, and Gayley suggest among them III. i, ii; IV. ii; V. i, ii, v as scenes to which Fletcher or some other collaborator may have given touches.

The Knight of the Burning Pestle. 1607

1613. The Knight of the Burning Pestle. For Walter Burre. [Epistle to Robert Keysar, signed ‘W. B.’, Induction with Prologue, Epilogue.]

1635.... Full of Mirth and Delight. Written by Francis Beaumont and Iohn Fletcher, Gent. As it is now Acted by Her Maiesties Servants at the Private house in Drury Lane. N. O. for I. S. [Epistle to Readers, Prologue (from Lyly’s Sapho and Phaon).]

1635.... Francis Beamont....

Editions by F. W. Moorman (1898, T. D.), H. S. Murch (1908, Yale Studies, xxxiii), R. M. Alden (1910, B. L.), W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.).—Dissertations: R. Boyle, B. and F.’s K. B. P. (1889, E. S. xiii. 156); B. Leonhardt, Ueber B. und F.’s K. B. P. (1885, Annaberg programme), Die Text-Varianten von B. und F.’s K. B. P. (1896, Anglia, xix. 509).

The Epistle tells us that the play was ‘in eight daies ... begot and borne’, ‘exposed to the wide world, who ... utterly reiected it’, preserved by Keysar and sent to Burre, who had ‘fostred it priuately in my bosome these two yeares’. The play ‘hopes his father will beget him a yonger brother’. Burre adds, ‘Perhaps it will be thought to bee of the race of Don Quixote: we both may confidently sweare, it is his elder aboue a yeare’. The references to the actors in the induction as boys and the known connexion of Keysar with the Queen’s Revels fix the company. The date is more difficult. It cannot be earlier than 1607, since the reference to a play at the Red Bull in which the Sophy of Persia christens a child (IV. i. 46) is to Day’s Travels of Three English Brothers of that year. With other allusions, not in themselves conclusive, 1607 would agree well enough, notably with Ind. 8, ‘This seuen yeares there hath beene playes at this house’, for it was just seven years in the autumn of 1607 since Evans set up plays at the Blackfriars. The trouble is IV. i. 73, ‘Read the play of the Foure Prentices of London, where they tosse their pikes so’, for this implies that the Four Prentices was not merely produced but in print, and the earliest extant edition is of 1615. It is, however, quite possible that the play may have been in print, even as far back as 1594 (cf. s.v. Heywood). Others put it, and with it the K. B. P., in 1610, in which case the production would have been at the Whitefriars, the history of which can only be traced back two or three years and not seven years before 1610. On the whole, I think the reference to Don Quixote in the Epistle is in favour of 1607 rather than 1610. It is, of course, conceivable that Burre only meant to claim that the K. B. P. was a year older than Thomas Shelton’s translation of Don Quixote, which was entered in S. R. on 19 Jan. 1611 and published in 1612. Even this brings us back to the very beginning of 1610, and the boast would have been a fairly idle one, as Shelton states in his preface that the translation was actually made ‘some five or six yeares agoe’. Shelton’s editor, Mr. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, has shown that it was based on the Brussels edition of 1607. If we put it in 1608 and the K. B. P. in 1607 the year’s priority of the latter is preserved. Most certainly the K. B. P. was not prior to the Spanish Don Quixote of 1605. Its dependence on Cervantes is not such as necessarily to imply that Beaumont had read the romance, but he had certainly heard of its general drift and of the particular episodes of the inn taken for a castle and the barber’s basin. Fleay, Boyle, Moorman, Murch, and Alden are inclined to assign to Fletcher some or all of the scenes in which Jasper and Luce and Humphrey take part; but Macaulay, Oliphant and Gayley regard the play, except perhaps for a touch or two, as wholly Beaumont’s. Certainly the Epistle suggests that the play had but one ‘father’.

The Faithful Shepherdess. 1608–9

N.D. The Faithfull Shepherdesse. By John Fletcher. For R. Bonian and H. Walley. [Commendatory verses by N. F. (‘Nath. Field’, Q₂), Fr. Beaumont, Ben Jonson, G. Chapman; Dedicatory verses to Sir Walter Aston, Sir William Skipwith, Sir Robert Townsend, all signed ‘John Fletcher’; Epistle to Reader, signed ‘John Fletcher’.]

S. R. 1628, Dec. 8. Transfer from Walley to R. Meighen (Arber, iv. 206).

1629.... newly corrected ... T. C. for R. Meighen.

1634.... Acted at Somerset House before the King and Queene on Twelfe night last, 1633. And divers times since with great applause at the Private House in Blacke-Friers, by his Majesties Servants.... A. M. for Meighen. [Verses to Joseph Taylor, signed ‘Shakerley Marmion’, and Prologue, both for the performance of 6 Jan. 1634.]

1656; 1665.

Editions by F. W. Moorman (1897, T. D.), W. W. Greg (1908, Bullen, iii), W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.).

Jonson told Drummond in the winter of 1618–19 (Laing, 17) that ‘Flesher and Beaumont, ten yeers since, hath written the Faithfull Shipheardesse, a Tragicomedie, well done’. This gives us the date 1608–9, which there is nothing to contradict. The undated Q₁ may be put in 1609 or 1610, as Skipwith died on 3 May 1610 and the short partnership of the publishers is traceable from 22 Dec. 1608 to 14 Jan. 1610. It is, moreover, in Sir John Harington’s catalogue of his plays, which was made up in 1609 or 1610 (cf. ch. xxii). The presence of Field, Chapman, and Jonson amongst the verse-writers and the mentions in Beaumont’s verses of ‘the waxlights’ and of a boy dancing between the acts point to the Queen’s Revels as the producers. It is clear also from the verses that the play was damned, and that Fletcher alone, in spite of Drummond’s report, was the author. This is not doubted on internal grounds.

The Woman’s Prize, or, The Tamer Tamed. 1604 <

1647. The Womans Prize, or The Tamer Tam’d. A Comedy. [Part of F₁. Prologue and Epilogue.]

1679. [Part of F₂.]