[469] It looks as if the book-inventory were not exhaustive; perhaps it only includes books more or less in current use.

[470] There is a self-contradictory entry, ‘to paye vnto M^r Willson Monday & Deckers ... iiij^ll v^s in this maner Willson xxx^s Cheattell xxx^s Mondy xxv^s’.

[471] Regarded by Dr. Greg as 2 Hannibal and Hermes.

[472] I agree with Dr. Greg that this, for which Chapman had £4 in 1598–9, is probably identical with The Isle of a Woman, for which he had had earnests of £4 or £4 10s. in 1597–8.

[473] I think the play licensed as Brute Grenshallde in March 1599 was a second part written by Chettle to an old 1 Brute by Day, which would not need re-licensing.

[474] I do not see with what to identify the play licensed under this name in March 1599 except the unnamed ‘playe boocke’ and ‘tragedie’, for which Chapman had something under £9 in the previous Oct. and Jan.

[475] The title War without Blows and Love without Strife in one entry is probably an error.

[476] I agree with Dr. Greg that the entries point to two plays by Chettle and Dekker rather than one. They are probably incomplete owing to the hiatus in the manuscript.

[477] Dr. Greg makes two plays of this, but the entry ‘his boocke called the world rones a whelles & now all foolles but the foolle’ seems unambiguous, and the total payments of £8 10s. are not too high for a play by Chapman.

[478] No importance can be attached to Mr. Fleay’s childish identifications of War without Blows and Love without Suit, Joan as Good as my Lady, and The Four Kings with The Thracian Wonder, Heywood’s A Maidenhead well Lost, and Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes respectively.

[479] So called in Drayton’s autograph receipt, but Henslowe calls it William Longbeard.

[480] Henslowe, i. 72, 78.

[481] Cf. ch. xv, s.v. Alleyn.

[482] The only entry is of 15 July ‘to bye a boocke’, but the hiatus in the manuscript probably conceals earlier payments.

[483] Here also the hiatus has only left an entry of £2 ‘in full payment’ on 1 Aug. Dr. Greg, however, would identify Bear a Brain and The Gentle Craft.

[484] The entries are as follows: 2 Sept., ‘Thomas Deckers Bengemen Johnson Hary Chettell & other Jentellman in earneste of a playe calle Robart the second kinge of Scottes tragedie’; 15 Sept., ‘in earneste of a boocke called the Scottes tragedi vnto Thomas Dickers & Harey Chettell’; 16 Sept., ‘Hary Chettell ... in earneste of a boocke called the Scottes tragedie’; 27 Sept., ‘Bengemen Johnsone in earneste of a boocke called the Scottes tragedie’; 28 Sept., ‘vnto M^r Maxton the new poete in earneste of a boocke called [blank]’. Dr. Greg resists the fairly reasonable identification of ‘M^r Maxton the new poete’ with the ‘other Jentellman’. All the payments are called earnests, but the total is £6 10s. and therefore the play probably existed.

[485] ‘Lent vnto me W Birde the 9 of Februarye to paye for a new booke to Will Boyle cald Jugurth xxx^s which if you dislike Ile repaye it back.’ The price is the lowest ever entered for a ‘new’ book. Mr. Fleay’s suggestion that Will Bird, who already had one alias in Will Borne, was also himself Will Boyle, is one of those irresponsible guesses by which he has done so much to make hay of theatrical history.

[486] Both parts were entered on the Stationers’ Register, but no copy of 2 Sir John Oldcastle is known.

[487] Bodl. Ashm. MS. 236, f. 77^v (c. 1600), has Forman’s note of the ‘plai of Cox of Cullinton and his 3 sons, Henry Peter and Jhon’.

[488] Henslowe Papers, 49.

[489] This was taken up again in 1601, but still not finished. Dr. Greg, however, thinks that it is identical with Day’s Italian tragedy, and forms half of Two Lamentable Tragedies (1601), and that Chettle’s work in 1601 may have been the effecting of the combination with Thomas Merry.

[490] Dr. Greg, following Mr. Fleay, identifies this with Dekker’s Whore of Babylon, and as Time is a character in this play, cites the purchase of ‘a Robe for tyme’ in April 1600 as a proof that it was then performed. Time, however, might also have been a character in The Seven Wise Masters.

[491] Possibly finished later and identical with the pseudo-Marlowesque Lust’s Dominion.

[492] The payment-entry is cancelled. The play may have been finished for another company, and be identical with the extant Grim, the Collier of Croydon, or, The Devil and his Dame.

[493] Possibly the basis of Bird and Rowley’s Judas of 1601.

[494] It seems to me a little arbitrary of Dr. Greg to assume that the 10s. entered as an earnest for this was really a bonus on 1 The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green.

[495] Henslowe Papers, 51. I do not think that Dr. Greg recognizes the full significance of this when he suggests (Henslowe, ii. 94) that Alleyn was back on the stage by 1598; cf. my criticism in M. L. R. iv. 410. Dr. Greg relies mainly on the appearance of his name in the plot of The Battle of Alcazar, which, he says, ‘almost certainly belongs to 1598’. But I can find no reason why it should not belong to 1600–2; cf. p. 175.

[496] Henslowe, i. 56.

[497] Ibid. 162.

[498] Ibid. 141.

[499] Ibid. 144, 165, 174.

[500] Ibid. 134, 136, 140, 147.

[501] Dr. Greg puts it in 1598, on the assumption that Alleyn returned to the stage in that year. It might conceivably belong to 1597, between 18 Dec., when Bristow was bought, and 29 Dec., by which day Alleyn had left. It cannot be later than Feb. 1602, by which month Jones and Shaw had left. The prefix ‘M^r’ allotted to Charles and Sam is in favour of a date after their agreements on 16 Nov. 1598. Dr. Greg’s argument (Henslowe Papers, 138) that Kendall’s agreement expired 7 Dec. 1599 is not convincing, as there was nothing in it to prevent him from staying on, and the satire of the play in Jonson’s Poetaster of 1601, to which he refers, obviously tells in favour of a date nearer to 1601 than 1598.

[502] Henslowe, i. 38.

[503] Ibid. 131, 134.

[504] Ibid. 164.

[505] Ibid. 205.

[506] Cf. ch. x.

[507] The entry is ‘Thomas Deckers for his boocke called the fortewn tenes’. Collier read ‘forteion tenes’ and interpreted Fortunatus. Mr. Fleay furnished the alternatives of Fortune’s Tennis and Hortenzo’s Tennis. I should add that Dr. Greg assigns the ‘plot’ to this play.

[508] Dr. Greg thinks that this may be the same as Haughton’s The English Fugitives of the previous April. If so, it was probably finished, as the payments amount to £6.

[509] As the account of advances is continuous, I have drawn the line between 1600–1 and 1601–2 at the beginning of Aug. 1601.

[510] The Life became 2 Cardinal Wolsey, as The Rising, although written later, was historically 1 Cardinal Wolsey. The entries are complicated. It is just possible that the playwrights were working on an old play, for the property-inventories of 1598 include an unexplained ‘Will Sommers sewtte’ (cf. p. 168). A ‘W^m Someres cotte’ was, however, bought for The Rising on 27 May 1602.

[511] Possibly based on Haughton’s unfinished play of 1600.

[512] A note preserved at Dulwich (Henslowe Papers, 58) indicates that licensing fees were in arrear on 4 Aug. 1602 for ‘baxsters tragedy, Tobias Comedy, Jepha Judg of Israel & the Cardinall, Loue parts frendshipp’. But of course Warner’s identification of ‘baxsters tragedy’ with The Bristol Tragedy is conjectural.

[513] There is no 1 Tom Dough, unless this was an intended sequel to The Six Yeomen of the West.

[514] Already begun by Chettle in 1599.

[515] This may be identical with 1 The Six Clothiers, which is not called by Henslowe a ‘first part’, if, as is possible, that was a sequel to The Six Yeomen of the West.

[516] Possibly finished later as Dekker and Rowley’s The Noble Spanish Soldier. But it may have been an old play re-written, for C. R. Baskervill (M. P. xiv. 16) quotes from the preface to H. O.’s translation of Vasco Figueiro’s Spaniard’s Monarchie (1592), ‘albeit it hath no title fetched from the Bull within Bishopsgate, as a figge for a Spaniard’.

[517] I suppose this was unfinished. The only entry is on 22 June 1602, ‘vnto Bengemy Johnsone ... in earneste of a boocke called Richard Crockbacke & for new adicyons for Jeronymo the some of x^ll’. Jonson had already had £2 on 25 Sept. 1601 ‘vpon his writtinge of his adicians in Geronymo’. Unless Richard Crookback was nearly complete, his prices must have risen a good deal.

[518] Possibly finished later as Hoffman (1631).

[519] The £4 paid was cancelled and then reinstated, but the book was evidently transferred to Worcester’s men (cf. p. 227).

[520] Cf. p. 168.

[521] Cf. vol. i, p. 323. The Massacre was printed (N.D.) as an Admiral’s play.

[522] The conjectural rendering of Henslowe’s ‘ponesciones pillet’ finds support from the presence of garments for ‘Caffes’ or Caiaphas in the inventory of 1598; cf. p. 168.

[523] A payment to ‘John Daye & his felowe poetes’ implies at least three collaborators.

[524] For Samson cf. p. 367.

[525] All four entries merely show the payments as made to ‘Antony the poyete’.

[526] Finished later and extant; probably identical with the Danish Tragedy of 1601–2.

[527] I suppose that it was the play which Chettle ‘layd vnto pane’ to Mr. Bromfield, and which had to be redeemed for £1 (Henslowe, i. 174).

[528] The more so as I do not think that Dr. Greg’s survey in Henslowe. ii. 135, is accurate.

[529] Henslowe made the total £167 7s. 7d., but evidently the error was detected, as only £166 17s. 7d. was carried forward.

[530] Henslowe, ii. 133. Apparently Henslowe reverted to the plan of deducting three-quarters only, at the beginning of 1599–1600, but only for a fortnight, as the receipts from 20 Oct. are headed, ‘Heare I begane to receue the gallereys agayne which they receued begynynge at Myhellmas wecke being the 6 of October 1599’.

[531] I have disregarded an error of 15s. made by Henslowe.

[532] Henslowe, i. 85, 145.

[533] Ibid. ii. 33.

[534] Henslowe, i. 29, 47, 81, 96, 97, 118, 124, 136, 138, 144, 146, 148, 152, 153, 166, 172, &c.

[535] The exact date is uncertain, as they do not appear to have had a patent until 1606; but it must lie between their visit to Leicester as the Admiral’s on 18 Aug. 1603 and the making out of a warrant to them as the Prince’s men on 19 Feb. 1604 for their Christmas plays.

[536] N. Sh. Soc. Trans. (1877–9), 17*, from Lord Chamberlain’s Books, 58^a.

[537] Cf. ch. xvi (Hope).

[538] On the legend that he had developed moral scruples about the stage, cf. s.v. Marlowe, Dr. Faustus.

[539] Henslowe Papers, 18.

[540] Dulwich MS. iii. 15.

[541] Henslowe Papers, 13; cf. ch. xvi, s.v. Fortune.

[542] Henslowe Papers, 63.

[543] Ibid. 85.

[544] M. S. C. i. 268, from P. R. 4 Jac. I, pt. 19; also printed by T. E. Tomlins, and dated in error 1607, in Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 42.

[545] Birch, Life of Henry, 455; Greg, Gentleman’s Magazine, ccc. 67, from Harl. MS. 252, f. 5, dated 1610.

[546] Henslowe, i. 175.

[547] Ibid. 214.

[548] There may be an allusion to this play in H. Parrot, Laquei Ridiculosi, Springes for Woodcocks (1613), ii. 162:

Dr. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 65) has dispersed Collier’s myth of one Whittington ‘perhaps a sleeping partner in the speculation of the Fortune’.

[549] Most of the play-dates of 1605–12 are in Apps. A and B.

[550] A. for L. II. i. In III. iv a drawer says, ‘all the gentlewomen [from Bess Turnup’s] went to see a play at the Fortune, and are not come in yet, and she believes they sup with the players’.

[551] Cf. ch. xv, s.v. Garlick.

[552] Nichols, James, ii. 495.

[553] M. S. C. i. 275, from P. R. 10 Jac. I, pt. 25; also from signet bill in Collier, i. 366, and Hazlitt, E. D. S. 44. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 263) notes copies in Addl. MS. 24502, f. 60^v, and Lincoln’s Inn MS. clviii.

[554] Henslowe Papers, 106.

[555] Ibid. 64.

[556] Fennor’s Defence, or I am Your First Man (Taylor’s Works, 1630, ed. Spenser Soc. 314). The 1659 print of the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green has at l. 2177, ‘Enter ... Captain Westford, Sill Clark’. The title-page professes to give the play as acted by the Prince’s men, but whether Clark was an actor of 1603–12 or not must remain doubtful.

[557] Henslowe, i. 17; cf. p. 140.

[558] Cf. App. D, No. ci. It is not ‘my newe companie’, as it is sometimes misprinted. But I do not think that either term can be interpreted as showing that the company had or had not a corporate existence before it came under Hunsdon’s patronage. The use which the company ‘have byn accustomed’ to make of the inn is only related to ‘this winter time’.

[559] The dates here assigned to Shakespeare’s plays are mainly based on the conclusions of my article on Shakespeare in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

[560] Cf. ch. xxiv, s.v. Gesta Grayorum and M. L. R. ii. 11.

[561] Cf. my paper on The Occasion of A Midsummer-Night’s Dream in Shakespeare Homage, 154, and App. A.

[562] I have recently found confirmation of the date for Rich. II in a letter from Sir Edward Hoby inviting Sir R. Cecil to his house in Canon Row on 9 Dec. 1595, ‘where, as late as shall please you, a gate for your supper shall be open, and K. Richard present himself to your view’ (Hatfield MSS. v. 487).

[563] T. Lodge, Wits Miserie (S. R. 5 May 1596), 56, ‘the Visard of y^e ghost which cried so miserably at y^e Theator, like an oister wife, Hamlet, revenge’.

[564] Cf. ch. xvii (Blackfriars). There is a slight doubt as to the authenticity of the text of the petition, which the inclusion of Lord Hunsdon’s name can only emphasize. But the fact of the petition and its result are vouched for by a City document of later date. The counter-petition of the players published by Collier, i. 288, in which they are misdescribed as the Lord Chamberlain’s men, is a forgery. The names given are those of Pope, Burbadge, Heminges, Phillips, Shakespeare, Kempe, Sly, and Tooley. There is nothing to connect Tooley with the company before 1605.

[565] Cf. App. D, No. cvi.

[566] For the distinction between ‘bad’ and ‘good’ quartos, cf. ch. xxii.

[567] R. James (c. 1625), in the dedication to his manuscript Legend of Sir John Oldcastle (quoted by Ingleby, Shakespeare’s Centurie of Praise, 165), says, ‘offence beinge worthily taken by Personages descended from his title’.

[568] Raleigh wrote to R. Cecil on 6 July 1597 that Essex was ‘wonderful merry at your conceit of Richard II’ (Edwardes, ii. 169); for the later history of the play, vide infra.

[569] Cf. ch. xvi (Curtain).

[570] App. C, No. lii.

[571] Aubrey, ii. 12. The same writer is obviously confused when he says, on the authority of Sir Edward Shirburn, that Jonson ‘killed M^r Marlow the poet, on Bunhill, comeing from the Green-Curtain play-house’.

[572] Cf. ch. x. There is no reason to suppose that the Richard Hoope, W^m Blackwage, Rafe Raye, and W^m Ferney, to whom Henslowe lent money as ‘my lord chamberlenes men’ in 1595 (Henslowe, i. 5, 6), were actors. In fact Raye was a ‘man’ of Hunsdon’s before the company was in existence at all (Henslowe, ii. 305).

[573] The order of the Shakespearian actors named in the 1623 Folio, and the omission of the names of Duke and Beeston, rather suggests that these two were hired men, and that there were ten original sharers, Shakespeare, Burbadge, Heminges, Phillips, Kempe, Pope, Bryan, Condell, Sly, and Cowley.

[574] App. C. No. xlviii.

[575] Cf. ch. xxii.

[576] Henslowe, i. 72.

[577] Cf. ch. xxii.

[578] Malone, Variorum, ii. 166; Fleay, L. and W. 8.

[579] Hen. V, epil. 12.

[580] That the Famous Victories was reprinted in 1617 as a King’s men’s play proves nothing. It was to pass as Henry V; obviously the King’s men never acted it, Henry V being in existence.

[581] Henslowe, i. 72, 101.

[582] For further details, cf. ch. xvi (Globe).

[583] Cf. ch. xvi, introd.

[584] Fleay, 138; cf. Murray, ii. 125; Greg, Henslowe, ii. 108. A loan of 21 Sept. 1600 by Henslowe (i. 132) to Duke is only slight evidence, and the fact that Anne’s men chose to revive the already printed Edward II, once a Pembroke’s play, even slighter.

[585] Cf. ch. xv.

[586] Cf. ch. vii.

[587] Cf. ch. xxii.

[588] S. P. D. Eliz. cclxxviii. 72, 78, 85. Accounts consistent with this are given in depositions of Sir W. Constable and Sir Gilly Meyrick (ibid.), Camden, Annales, 867, Cobbett, State Trials, i. 1445, and Bacon, A Declaration of the Practices and Treasons attempted and committed by Robert late Earl of Essex and his Complices (1601; Works, ix. 289).

[589] Fleay, 123, 136; cf. M. L. R. ii. 12.

[590] Cf. ch. xiv (Scotland).

[591] For the texts cf. ch. xi.

[592] W. H. Griffin in Academy for 25 April 1896, suggests that the ‘innovation’ of 1604 was the same as the ‘noveltie’ of 1603, i.e. the setting up of child actors. But I am afraid that this leaves ‘inhibition’ without a meaning.

[593] Nichols, Eliz. iii. 552, prints, perhaps from a manuscript of Lord De La Warr’s (Hist. MSS. iv. 300), a note by W. Lambarde of a conversation with the Queen on 4 Aug. 1601, ‘Her Majestie fell upon the reign of King Richard II, saying, I am Richard II, know ye not that? W. L. Such a wicked imagination was determined and attempted by a most unkind Gent. the most adorned creature that ever your Majestie made. Her Majestie. He that will forget God, will also forget his benefactors; this tragedy was played 40^tie times in open streets and houses’. The performances here referred to must have been in 1596–7, not 1601.

[594] Cf. ch. xi.

[595] J. Manningham, Diary, 18.

[596] Cf. App. A.

[597] Collier, New Particulars, 57, and Egerton Papers, 343, ‘6 August 1602 Rewardes ... x^li to Burbidges players for Othello’; cf. Ingleby, 262.

[598] Wallace, ii, 108; cf. p. 367.

[599] Cf. ch. xv (Kempe).

[600] Cf. ch. ii.

[601] G. Dugdale, Time Triumphant (1604), sig. B.

[602] Printed in M. S. C. i. 264, from P. R. 1 Jac. I, pars 2, membr. 4; also in Rymer, xvi. 505, and Halliwell, Illustr. 83. Halliwell also prints the practically identical texts of the Privy Signet Bill, dated 17 May, and the Privy Seal, dated 18 May. The former is also in Collier, i. 334, Hazlitt, 38, and Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 82.

[603] Cf. ch. xiv (Scotland).

[604] Except in one of Collier’s Blackfriars forgeries; cf. ch. xvi.

[605] W. Cory (Letters and Journals, 168) was told on a visit to Wilton in 1865 that a letter existed there, naming Shakespeare as present and the play as As You Like It; but the letter cannot now be found.

[606] Marston, Malcontent, Ind. 82.

[607] Bullen, Middleton, viii. 36, ‘Give him leaue to see the Merry Deuil of Edmonton or A Woman Killed with Kindness’.

[608] N. S. S. Trans. (1877–9), 15*, from Lord Chamberlain’s Records, vol. 58^a, now ix. 4 (5); cf. Law (ut infra), 10. Collier, Memoirs of Alleyn, 68, printed a list headed ‘Ks Company’ from the margin of the copy of the Privy Council order of 9 April 1604 at Dulwich. This is a forgery. To the nine genuine names Collier added those of Hostler and Day. The former joined the company some years later, the latter never; cf. Ingleby, 269.

[609] App. B; cf. E. Law, Shakespeare as a Groom of the Chamber (1910), and the Spanish narrative in Colección de Documentos inéditos para la historia de España, lxxi. 467.

[610] Cf. ch. x.