The Elizabethan Stage, Vol. 4

[Bibliographical Note.—As unknown prints have turned up in the sale of an Irish collection (1907) and the Mostyn sale (1919), and others may yet turn up from time to time, I give a list of plays as to the existence or preparation for publication of which there is some evidence. These are mainly taken either from the Stationers’ Register or from the publishers’ advertisement lists (Rogers and Ley’s in 1656, Archer’s in 1656, Kirkman’s in 1661 and 1671), analysed by W. W. Greg in an appendix to his Masques (1902). One is included in Sir John Harington’s catalogue of his library of plays apparently compiled in 1610 (cf. ch. xxii). Probably some of the registered titles, in which the description ‘play’ or ‘interlude’ is not used, do not relate to plays at all. I might have added a few more of this type from A. Esdaile, List of English Tales and Romances (1912, Bibl. Soc.), xxxiii. And it must be borne in mind that registration is not proof of publication. In particular, it is pretty clear that the two long series of entries by Humphrey Moseley on 9 Sept. 1653 and 29 June 1660, from which I have taken those conceivably relating to pre-1616 work, represent unaccomplished enterprises. They are fully discussed in W. W. Greg, The Bakings of Betsy (1911, 3 Library, ii. 225), together with John Warburton’s (ob. 1759) list in Lansd. MS. 807, f. 1, of plays which he claims to have possessed in MS., until ‘through my own carelesness and the ignorance of my ser[vant] in whose hands I had lodgd them they was unluckely burnd or put under Pye bottoms’. As this list is evidently in some way related to Moseley’s entries, I have, for the sake of completeness, cited a few titles which it adds.]

By Ford (q.v.).

S. R. 1608, March 26 (Pasfield). ‘A book called Adams tragedie.’ W. White (Arber, iii. 372).

This is not likely to have been a play.

By Massinger (q.v.).

See ch. xxiii (Seneca).

Comedy in Archer’s list as well as Jonson’s B. Fair.

Tragedy in Archer’s list.

Sir John Harington’s catalogue of his plays in 1610 (7 N. Q. ix. 382) includes ‘Belynus, Brennus’. This might represent either two plays or one.

S. R. 1609, Jan. 27 (Segar). ‘An enterlude called Bonos Nochios.’ Charlton (Arber, iii. 400).

Ascribed to Shakespeare (q.v.) and Fletcher.

S. R. 1598, Oct. 5. ‘A booke intituled The tragicke Comedye of Celestina, wherein are discoursed in most pleasant stile manye Philosophicall sentences and advertisementes verye necessarye for younge gentlemen Discoveringe the sleightes of treacherous servantes and the subtile cariages of filthye bawdes.’ William Aspley (Arber, iii. 127).

This was doubtless, like the earlier Calisto and Meliboea (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 455) and James Mabbe’s The Spanish Bawd (1631), a version of the Spanish Celestina (1499) of Fernando de Rojas, but it can hardly have been Mabbe’s, which was entered in S. R. on 27 Feb. 1630, while Mabbe, although born in 1572, is first heard of as a writer in 1611, and appears to have turned his attention to things Spanish as a result of a visit to Spain in that year.

S. R. 1596, Jan. 20. ‘The ffirste parte of the famous historye of Chinan of England.’ T. Gosson and Danter (Arber, iii. 57).

The Admiral’s produced ‘Chinone of Ingland’ as a new play on 3 Jan. 1596. Greg, ii. 178, is probably right in relating the S. R. entry to Christopher Middleton’s romance, The Famous Historie of Chinon of England, printed by Danter for Cuthbert Burby in 1597. But ‘Chinon of England’ is in Rogers and Ley’s list.

An unascribed ‘Cleopatra’, in addition to the plays of Daniel (q.v.) and May, is in Rogers and Ley’s list.

S. R. 1600, May 27. ‘A morall of Clothe breches and veluet hose, As yt is acted by my lord Chamberlens servantes.’ Roberts (Arber, iii. 161).

This is one of the plays stayed by a note in the Register on the same day (cf. ch. xxii).

S. R. 1566–7. ‘An interlude named the Colledge of canonycall clerkes.’ John Charlewod (Arber, i. 335).

S. R. 1609, Jan. 27 (Segar). ‘An enterlude called, Crafte vppon Subtiltyes backe.’ Charlton (Arber, iii. 400).

A tragi-comedy in Kirkman’s list of 1661. Greg, Masques, lx, thinks it may be a duplicate entry of Cromwell’s Conspiracy (1660).

By Legge (q.v.).

Ascribed to Shakespeare (q.v.).

A comedy in Archer’s list, but probably, as suggested by Greg, Masques, lxv, an error for Gervase Markham’s romance (1607, 1613) of that name.

By Kyffyn (q.v.)?

Ascribed to Beaumont (q.v.) and Fletcher.

S. R. 1566–7. ‘A playe intituled farre fetched and deare bowght ys good for lades.’ Thomas Hackett (Arber, i. 331).

Ascribed to Chapman (q.v.).

S. R. 1566–7. ‘A playe of Fortune to know eche one hyr conditions and gentle manours aswell of Women as of men &c.’ Thomas Purfoote (Arber, i. 332).

Collier, Stationers’ Registers, i. 155, suggested that this was a ‘lottery, or game’, not an interlude, and this receives support from a transfer of his father’s copies to Purfoot’s son on 6 Nov. 1615 (Arber, iii. 576), which includes ‘The little booke of Fortune with pictures’.

S. R. 1601, July 3. ‘The true historye of George Scanderbarge as yt was lately playd by the right honorable the Earle of Oxenforde his servantes.’ E. Allde (Arber, iii. 187).

There seems no adequate reason for ascribing this to Marlowe (q.v.) or Nashe.

S. R. 1600, July 24. ‘Two plaies or thinges ... the other gyve a man luck and throw him into the sea.’ Oliffe (Arber, iii. 168).

See Heywood, Four Prentices of London.

S. R. 1601, March 1. ‘A booke called God spede the ploughe.’ Harrison (Arber, iii. 180).

This is not necessarily the play acted by Sussex’s men for Henslowe in Dec. 1593 (ch. xiii), or indeed a play at all.

Entered in Rogers and Ley’s list as by Marston (q.v.), in Archer’s as a comedy by Webster (q.v.), and in Kirkman’s of 1661 and 1671 without ascription; that of 1671 calls it a tragedy.

Ascribed to Dekker (q.v.).

S. R. 1594, June 19. ‘An ... enterlude of the lyfe and deathe of Heliogabilus.’ Danter (Arber, ii. 654).

Can this be the play on ‘the mad priest of the Sun’ apparently referred to by Greene (q.v.) in Perimides (1588)?

S. R. 1569–70. ‘A boke intituled the Rufful tragedy of Hemidos and Thelay by Rychard Robynson.’ Henry Bynneman (Arber, i. 411).

Probably not a play.

Both ascribed to Shakespeare (q.v.).

By Peele (q.v.).

A comedy in Archer’s list.

Ascribed to Shakespeare (q.v.).

S. R. 1607, Oct. 14 (Jackson). ‘A book called the Jesuytes Commedie. Acted at Lyons in Fraunce the 7 and 8 of August 1607.’ Allde and Johnson (Arber, iii. 361).

Probably only a narrative of this famous performance; cf. ch. x.

Ascribed to Dekker (q.v.).

Ascribed to Greene (q.v.).

Ascribed to Dekker (q.v.).

S. R. 1594, May 14. ‘A booke entituled the famous historye of John of Gaunte sonne to Kinge Edward the Third with his Conquest of Spaine and marriage of his Twoo daughters to the Kinges of Castile and Portugale &c.’ E. White (Arber, ii. 649).

Probably not a play but the chap-book source of that begun by Hathway (q.v.) and Rankins for the Admiral’s in 1601 (cf. Greg, Henslowe, ii. 216). Arber, v. 176, however, describes it as a play printed for White by Islip.

An interlude in the lists of Archer and Kirkman.

By W. Rowley (q.v.).

By Ford (q.v.).

Ascribed to Beaumont (q.v.).

Ascribed to Marlowe (q.v.) and Day.

In Rogers and Ley’s list; presumably identical with the comedy of Manhood and Wisdom in those of Archer and Kirkman.

Extant in MS. (cf. ch. xxiv).

By Merbury (q.v.); extant in MS.

A comedy in Archer’s list. Greg, Masques, xc, suggests an error for T. Thompson’s late Mother Shipton, which Archer omits. Elinor Rumming, however, might well have made a play-theme.

In Rogers and Ley’s list.

An interlude in Rogers and Ley’s and Archer’s lists.

S. R. 1595, May 10. ‘The tragedie of Ninus and Semiramis, the first Monarchs of the world.’ Hardy (Arber, ii. 297).

By Tourneur (q.v.).

By Drayton (q.v.).

Archer’s list has both Ortenas, a tragedy, and Ortenus, a comedy.

By Daborne (q.v.).

By Massinger (q.v.).

A tragedy in Archer’s list. Fletcher’s name is given, but Greg, Masques, c, says this has ‘crept in from another entry’.

S. R. 1605, Feb. 8. ‘The history of Richard Whittington of his lowe byrthe, his great fortune, as yt was plaid by the prynces servantes.’ Pavier (Arber, iii. 282).

The play is referred to in K. B. P. ind. 22.

S. R. 1594, May 14. ‘A booke entituled a pastorall plesant Commedie of Robin Hood and Little John.’ Islip (Arber, ii. 649).

Arber, v. 176, describes the play as printed by Islip for E. White, to whom the copy was passed by a cancel. It appears in Rogers and Ley’s and Archer’s lists of 1656. Greg, Henslowe, ii. 190, finds an allusion to its ‘merry jests’ in Munday’s Downfall of Robin Hood, iv. 2.

S. R. 1595, Nov. 24. ‘A booke intituled The true tragicall historie of kinge Rufus the First with the life and deathe of Belyn Dun the first thief that ever was hanged in England.’ W. Blackwell (Arber, iii. 54).

Greg, Henslowe, ii. 164, thinks this the Bellendon played as a new piece by the Admiral’s and Chamberlain’s for Henslowe on 10 June 1594 (cf. ch. xiii). The title curiously resembles that of another book, probably, as Greg suggests, a chap-book, entered in S. R. by T. Gosson on 17 May 1594 as ‘a book intituled The famous Cronicle of Henrye the First, with the life and death of Bellin Dunn the firste thief that ever was hanged in England’ (Arber, ii. 650). Perhaps this was the source of the play.

S. R. 1557–8. ‘These bokes folowynge called ... a sacke full of newes.’ J. King (Arber, i. 75).

1582, Jan. 15. Transfer from S. Awdeley to John Charlwood (Arber, ii. 405).

1586, Sept. 5. ‘A sackfull of newes, beinge an old copie: whiche the said Edward is ordered to haue printed by Abell Jeffes.’ Edward White (Arber, ii. 456).

This is less likely to have been the ‘lewd’ play suppressed at the Boar’s Head, Aldgate, in Aug. 1557 (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 223) than the jest-book known to Captain Cox in 1575 (F. J. Furnivall, Laneham’s Letter, lxvi. 30) and printed from the earliest extant edition of 1673 by W. C. Hazlitt, Old English Jest Books, ii. 163.

Ascribed to Shakespeare (q.v.).

By T. Garter (q.v.).

S. R. 1600, Aug. 14. ‘The famous Tragicall history, of ye Tartarian Crippell Emperour of Constantinople.’ Burby (Arber, iii. 169).

Not necessarily a play.

By W. Wager (q.v.).

Possibly identical with Lyly’s Galathea (q.v.).

By Niccolls (q.v.).

S. R. 1561–2. ‘An new interlude of the ij synmes of kynge Davyd.’ Hacket (Arber, i. 181).

S. R. 1595, May 23. ‘An enterlude of Valentyne and Orsson, plaid by her maiesties Players.’ T. Gosson and Hancock (Arber; ii. 298).

1600, March 31 (in full court). ‘A famous history called Valentine and Orsson played by her maiesties Players.’ W. White (Arber, iii. 159).

The relation of this Queen’s play to that written by Hathaway and Munday (q.v.) for the Admiral’s in 1598 is uncertain.

S. R. 1560–1. ‘Playe of wytles.’ Hacket (Arber, i. 154).

Probably John Heywood’s dialogue of Witty and Witless, extant in MS. (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 446).

Ascribed to Chapman (q.v.).