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:
The Honest Lawyer > 1615
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.
How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad c. 1602
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.
Impatient Poverty (?)
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:
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).
Jack Drum’s Entertainment. 1600
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,
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).
The Life and Death of Jack Straw > 1593
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.
Jacob and Esau > 1558
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.
1 Jeronimo c. 1604
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).
The Troublesome Reign of King John 1587< >91
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
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.
Judith c. 1595 (?)
[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.
A Knack to Know an Honest Man. 1594
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.
A Knack to Know a Knave. 1592
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:
Leire > 1594
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.
Liberality and Prodigality. 1601
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.
Locrine c. 1591
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,
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.
The London Prodigal. 1603 < > 05
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).
Look About You. 1599 (?)
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.
The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune. 1582 (?)
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’.
Love Feigned and Unfeigned (?)
[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),
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.
The Maid’s Metamorphosis. 1600
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.
The Marriage of Wit and Science > 1570
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.
Meleager (?)
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:
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.).
The Merry Devil of Edmonton c. 1603
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).
Minds. 1575 <
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).
Misogonus. 1560 < > 77
[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.).
Sir Thomas More c. 1596
[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.
Mucedorus > 1598; 1611
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