The Elizabethan Stage Vol. 3, by E. K. Chambers

A song at the end wishes Elizabeth joy and describes her as ‘void of all sickness, in most perfect health’. Durand uses this reference to date the play in the early months of 1565, since a letter of De Silva (Sp. P. i. 400) records that Elizabeth had a feverish cold since 8 Dec. 1564, but was better by 2 Jan. 1565. He identifies the play with the ‘Edwardes tragedy’ of the Revels Accounts for 1564–5 (cf. App. B), and points out that there is an entry in those accounts for ‘rugge bumbayst and cottone for hosse’, and that in Damon and Pythias (Dodsley, iv. 71) the boys have stuffed breeches with ‘seven ells of rug’ to one hose. A proclamation of 6 May 1562 (Procl. 562) had forbidden the use of more than a yard and three-quarters of stuff in the ‘stockes’ of hose, and an enforcing proclamation (Procl. 619) was required on 12 Feb. 1566. Boas, 157, notes a revival at Merton in 1568.

Fleay, 60, thinks that the play contains attacks on the Paul’s boys in return for satire of Edwardes as Ralph Roister in Ulpian Fulwell’s Like Will to Like (q.v.).

This play was acted in two parts on 2 and 4 Sept. 1566, before Elizabeth in the Hall of Christ Church, Oxford (cf. ch. iv). The first night was made memorable by the fall of part of the staircase wall, by which three persons were killed. The Queen was sorry, but the play went on. She gave Edwardes great thanks for his pains. The play was in English. Several contemporary writers assign it to Edwardes, and Nicholas Robinson adds that he and other Christ Church men translated it out of Latin, and that he remained two months in Oxford working at it. Bereblock gives a long analysis of the action, which shows that, even if there is no error as to the intervening Latin version, the original source was clearly Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale. W. Y. Durand, Journ. Germ. Phil. iv. 356, argues that Edwardes’s play was not a source of Two Noble Kinsmen, on the ground of the divergence between that and Bereblock’s summary.

There is no evidence of any edition of the play, although Plummer, xxi, says that it ‘has been several times printed’.

Fleay, ii. 295, assigns to Edwardes Godly Queen Hester, a play of which he had only seen a few lines, and which W. W. Greg, in his edition in Materialien, v, has shown with great probability to date from about 1525–9. His hand has also been sought in R. B.’s Apius and Virginia and in Misogonus (cf. ch. xxiv).

H. H. E. Craster (E. H. R. xxix. 722) includes in a list of Elizabeth’s English translations a chorus from Act II of the pseudo-Senecan Hercules Oetaeus, extant in Bodl. MS. e Museo, 55, f. 48, and printed in H. Walpole, Royal and Noble Authors (ed. Park, 1806), i. 102. It probably dates later than 1561. But he can find no evidence for a Latin version of a play of Euripides referred to by Walpole, i. 85.

Farrant’s career as Master of the Children of Windsor and Deputy Master of the Children of the Chapel and founder of the first Blackfriars theatre has been described in chh. xii and xvii. It is not improbable that he wrote plays for the boys, and W. J. Lawrence, The Earliest Private Theatre Play (T. L. S., 11 Aug. 1921), thinks that one of these was Wars of Cyrus (cf. ch. xxiv), probably based on W. Barker’s translation (1567) of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia, and that the song of Panthea ascribed to Farrant in a Christ Church manuscript (cf. vol. ii, p. 63) has dropped out from the extant text of this. Farrant’s song, ‘O Jove from stately throne’, mentioning Altages, may be from another play. I think that Wars of Cyrus, as it stands, is clearly post-Tamburlaine, and although there are indications of lost songs at ll. 985, 1628, there is none pointing to a lament of Panthea. But conceivably the play was based on one by Farrant.

S. R. 1613, June 16. ‘A thinge called The Shepeherdes songe before Queene Anne in 4. partes complete Musical vpon the playnes of Salisbury &c.’ Walter Dight (Arber, iii. 526).

Aubrey, i. 251, says ‘when queen Anne came to Bathe, her way lay to traverse the famous Wensdyke, which runnes through his parish. He made severall of his neighbours good musitians, to play with him in consort, and to sing. Against her majesties comeing, he made a pleasant pastorall, and gave her an entertaynment with his fellow songsters in shepherds’ weeds and bagpipes, he himself like an old bard. After that wind musique was over, they sang their pastorall eglogues (which I have, to insert into Liber B).’ Wood’s similar account in Fasti (1815), i. 270, is probably based on Aubrey’s. He dates the entertainment June 11 (cf. ch. iv. and App. A, s. ann. 1613), and gives the opening of the song as

Aubrey has a shorter notice in another manuscript and adds, ‘He gave another entertaynment in Cote-field to King James, with carters singing, with whipps in their hands; and afterwards, a footeball play’.

A Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, son of Thomas Ferrers of St. Albans, who was Page of the Chamber to Henry VIII, and acted as Lord of Misrule to Edward VI at the Christmases of 1551–2 and 1552–3 (Mediaeval Stage, i. 405; Feuillerat, Edw. and M. 56, 77, 90). He sat in Parliaments of both Mary and Elizabeth, and wrote some of the poems in The Mirror for Magistrates (1559–78). He contributed verses to the Kenilworth entertainment of 1575, must then have been a very old man, and died in 1579. Puttenham says of Edward VI’s time, ‘Maister Edward Ferrys ... wrate for the most part to the stage, in Tragedie and sometimes in Comedie or Enterlude’, and again, ‘For Tragedie, the Lord of Buckhurst & Maister Edward Ferrys, for such doings as I haue sene of theirs, do deserue the hyest price’; and is followed by Meres, who places ‘Master Edward Ferris, the author of the Mirror for Magistrates’ amongst ‘our best for Tragedie’ (cf. App. C, Nos. xli, lii). Obviously George Ferrers is meant, but Anthony Wood hunted out an Edward Ferrers, belonging to another family, of Baddesley Clinton, in Warwickshire, and took him for the dramatist. He died in 1564 and had a son Henry, amongst whose papers were found verses belonging to certain entertainments, mostly of the early ‘nineties, which an indiscreet editor thereupon ascribed to George Ferrers (cf. s.v. Sir H. Lee).

S. R. 1611, Nov. 23 (Buck). ‘A booke called, A woman is a weather-cocke, beinge a Comedye.’ John Budge (Arber, iii. 471).

1612. A Woman is a Weather-cocke. A New Comedy, As it was acted before the King in White-Hall. And diuers times Priuately at the White-Friers, By the Children of her Maiesties Reuels. Written by Nat: Field. For John Budge. [Epistles to Any Woman that hath been no Weathercock and to the Reader, both signed ‘N. F.’, and Commendatory verses ‘To his loved son, Nat. Field, and his Weathercock Woman’, signed ‘George Chapman’.]

Editions in O. E. D. (1830, ii), by J. P. Collier (1833, Five Old Plays), in Dodsley⁴ (1875, xi), and by A. W. Verity in Nero and Other Plays (1888, Mermaid Series).

This must, I suppose, have been one of the five plays given at Court by the Children of the Whitefriars in the winter of 1609–10. Fleay, i. 185, notes that I. ii refers to the Cleve wars, which began in 1609. The Revels children were not at Court in 1610–11. In his verses to The Faithful Shepherdess (1609–10) Field hopes for his ‘muse in swathing clouts’, to ‘perfect such a work as’ Fletcher’s. The first Epistle promises that when his next play is printed, any woman ‘shall see what amends I have made to her and all the sex’; the second ends, ‘If thou hast anything to say to me, thou know’st where to hear of me for a year or two, and no more, I assure thee’, as if Field did not mean to spend his life as a player.

1618. Amends for Ladies. A Comedie. As it was acted at the Blacke-Fryers, both by the Princes Seruants, and the Lady Elizabeths. By Nat. Field. G. Eld for Math. Walbancke.

1639.... With the merry prankes of Moll Cut-Purse: Or, the humour of roaring A Comedy full of honest mirth and wit.... Io. Okes for Math. Walbancke.

The title-page points to performances in Porter’s Hall (c. 1615–16) by the combined companies of the Prince and Princess; but the Epistle to A W. is a W. (q.v.) makes it clear that the play was at least planned, and probably written, by the end of 1611. Collier, iii. 434, and Fleay, i. 201, confirm this from an allusion to the play in A. Stafford’s Admonition to a Discontented Romanist, appended to his Niobe Dissolved into a Nilus (S. R. 10 Oct. 1611). Fleay is less happy in fixing an inferior limit of date by the publication of the version of the Curious Impertinent story in Shelton’s Don Quixote (1612), since that story was certainly available in Baudouin’s French translation as early as 1608. The introduction of Moll Cutpurse suggests rivalry with Dekker and Middleton’s Roaring Girl (also c. 1610–11) at the Fortune, which theatre is chaffed in ii. 1 and iii. 4.

The Fatal Dowry (1632), a King’s men’s play, assigned on the title-page to P. M. and N. F., probably dates from 1616–19. C. Beck, Philip Massinger, The Fatall Dowry, Einleitung zu einer neuen Ausgabe (1906, Erlangen diss.), assigns the prose of II. ii and IV. i to Field. There is an edition by C. L. Lockert (1918).

Attempts have been made to trace Field’s hand in Bonduca, Cupid’s Revenge, Faithful Friends, Honest Man’s Fortune, Thierry and Theodoret, and Four Plays in One, all belonging to the Beaumont (q.v.) and Fletcher series, and in Charlemagne (cf. ch. xxiv).

Fletcher was born in Dec. 1579 at Rye, Sussex, the living of his father Richard Fletcher, who became Bishop of Bristol, Worcester, and in 1594 London. His cousins, Giles and Phineas, are known as poets. He seems too young for the John Fletcher of London who entered Corpus Christi, Cambridge, in 1591. After his father’s death in 1596, nothing is heard of him until his emergence as a dramatist, and of this the date cannot be precisely fixed. Davenant says that ‘full twenty yeares, he wore the bayes’, which would give 1605, but this is in a prologue to The Woman Hater, which Davenant apparently thought Fletcher’s, although it is Beaumont’s; and Oliphant’s attempt to find his hand, on metrical grounds, in Captain Thomas Stukeley (1605) rests only on one not very conclusive scene. But he had almost certainly written for the Queen’s Revels before the beginning, about 1608, of his collaboration with Beaumont, under whom his later career is outlined. It is possible that he is the John Fletcher who married Joan Herring on 3 Nov. 1612 at St. Saviour’s, Southwark, and had a son John about Feb. 1620 in St. Bartholomew’s the Great (Dyce, i. lxxiii), and if so one may put the fact with Aubrey’s gossip (cf. s.v. Beaumont), and with Oldwit’s speech in Shadwell’s Bury-Fair (1689): ‘I knew Fletcher, my friend Fletcher, and his maid Joan; well, I shall never forget him: I have supped with him at his house on the Bankside; he loved a fat loin of pork of all things in the world; and Joan his maid had her beer-glass of sack; and we all kissed her, i’ faith, and were as merry as passed.’ I have sometimes wondered whether Jonson is chaffing Beaumont and Fletcher in Bartholomew Fair (1614), V. iii, iv, as Damon and Pythias, ‘two faithfull friends o’ the Bankside’, that ‘have both but one drabbe’, and enter with a gammon of bacon under their cloaks. I do not think this can refer to Francis Bacon. Fletcher died in Aug. 1625 and was buried in St. Saviour’s (Athenaeum, 1886, ii. 252).

For Plays vide s.v. Beaumont, and for the ascribed lost play of Cardenio, s.v. Shakespeare.

Phineas Fletcher, son of Giles, a diplomatist and poet, brother of Giles, a poet, and first cousin of John (q.v.), was baptized at Cranbrook, Kent, on 8 April 1582. From Eton he passed to King’s College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. in 1604, his M.A. in 1608, and became a Fellow in 1611. He was Chaplain to Sir Henry Willoughby of Risley from 1616 to 1621, and thereafter Rector of Hilgay, Norfolk, to his death in 1650. He wrote much Spenserian poetry, but his dramatic work was purely academic. In addition to Sicelides, he may have written an English comedy, for which a payment was made to him by King’s about Easter 1607 (Boas, i. xx).

1908–9. F. S. Boas, The Poetical Works of Giles Fletcher and P. F. 2 vols. (Cambridge English Classics).

Addl. MS. 4453. ‘Sicelides: a Piscatorie made by Phinees Fletcher and acted in Kings Colledge in Cambridge.’ [A shorter version than that of Q. and the Rawl. MS.]

S. R. 1631, April 25 (Herbert). ‘A play called Scicelides, acted at Cambridge.’ William Sheeres (Arber, iv. 251).

1631. Sicelides A Piscatory, As it hath been Acted in Kings Colledge, in Cambridge. I. N. for William Sheares. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

A reference (III. iv) to the shoes hung up by Thomas Coryat in Odcombe church indicates a date of composition not earlier than 1612. The play was intended for performance before James at Cambridge, but was actually given before the University after his visit, on 13 March 1615 (cf. ch. iv).

A Gray’s Inn lawyer, one of the devisers of dumb-shows and directors for the Misfortunes of Arthur of Thomas Hughes (q.v.) in 1588, for which he also wrote two choruses.

Ford’s dramatic career, including whatever share he may have had with Dekker (q.v.) in Sun’s Darling and Witch of Edmonton, falls substantially outside my period. But amongst plays entered as his by Humphrey Moseley on 29 June 1660 (Eyre, ii. 271) are:

‘An ill begining has A good end, and a bad begining may have a good end, a Comedy.’

‘The London Merchant, a Comedy.’

These ascriptions recur in Warburton’s list of lost plays (3 Library, ii. 231), where the first play has the title ‘A good beginning may have A good end’. It is possible, therefore, that Ford either wrote or revised the play of ‘A badd beginininge makes a good endinge’, which was performed by the King’s men at Court during 1612–13 (cf. App. B). One may suspect the London Merchant to be a mistake for the Bristow Merchant of Ford and Dekker (q.v.) in 1624. The offer of the title in K. B. P. ind. 11 hardly proves that there was really a play of The London Merchant. Ford’s Honor Triumphant: or The Peeres Challenge, by Armes defensible at Tilt, Turney, and Barriers (1606; ed. Sh. Soc. 1843) is a thesis motived by the jousts in honour of Christian of Denmark (cf. ch. iv). It has an Epistle to the Countesses of Pembroke and Montgomery, and contains four arguments in defence of amorous propositions addressed respectively to the Duke of Lennox and the Earls of Arundel, Pembroke, and Montgomery.

A political writer (D. N. B.) and probable author of the academic Pedantius (cf. App. K).

Fraunce was a native of Shrewsbury, and passed from the school of that place, where he obtained the friendship of Philip Sidney, to St. John’s, Cambridge, in 1576. He took his B.A. in 1580, played in Legge’s academic Richardus Tertius and in Hymenaeus (Boas, 394), which he may conceivably have written (cf. App. K), became Fellow of the college in 1581, and took his M.A. in 1583. He became a Gray’s Inn man, dedicated various treatises on logic and experiments in English hexameters to members of the Sidney and Herbert families during 1583–92, and appears to have obtained through their influence some office under the Presidency of Wales. He dropped almost entirely out of letters, but seems to have been still alive in 1633.

[MS.] In possession of Lord De L’Isle and Dudley at Penshurst, headed ‘Victoria’. [Lines ‘Philippo Sidneio’, signed ‘Abrahamus Fransus’. Prologue.]

The play is an adaptation of Il Fedele (1575) by Luigi Pasqualigo, which is also the foundation of the anonymous Two Italian Gentlemen (q.v.). As Sidney was knighted on 13 Jan. 1583, the play was probably written, perhaps for performance at St. John’s, Cambridge, before that date and after Fraunce took his B.A. in 1580.

S. R. 1591, Feb. 9 (Bp. of London). ‘A book intituled The Countesse of Pembrookes Ivye churche, and Emanuel.’ William Ponsonby (Arber, ii. 575).

1591. The Countesse of Pembrokes Yuychurch. Containing the affectionate life, and vnfortunate death of Phillis and Amyntas: That in a Pastorall; This in a Funerall; both in English Hexameters. By Abraham Fraunce. Thomas Orwin for William Ponsonby.

Dissertation: E. Köppel, Die englischen Tasso-Übersetzungen des 16. Jahrhunderts (1889, Anglia, xi).

This consists of a slightly altered translation of the Aminta (1573) of Torquato Tasso, followed by a reprint of Fraunce’s English version (1587) of Thomas Watson’s Amyntas (1585), which is not a play, but a collection of Latin eclogues. There is nothing to show that Fraunce’s version of Aminta was ever acted.

He entered Gray’s Inn in 1584, contributed two speeches to the Misfortunes of Arthur of Thomas Hughes (q.v.) in 1588, and wrote various legal and historical books.

Fulwell was born in Somersetshire and educated at St. Mary’s Hall, Oxford. On 14 April 1577 he was of the parish of Naunton, Gloucestershire, and married Mary Whorewood of Lapworth, Warwickshire.[657]

S. R. 1568–9. ‘A play lyke Wyll to lyke quod the Devell to the Collyer.’ John Alde (Arber, i. 379).

1568. An Enterlude Intituled Like wil to like quod the Deuel to the Colier, very godly and ful of pleasant mirth.... Made by Vlpian Fulwell. John Allde.

A non-controversial moral. The characters, allegorical and typical, are arranged for five actors, and include Ralph Roister, and ‘Nicholas Newfangle the Vice’, who ‘rideth away upon the Devil’s back’ (Dodsley, iii. 357). There is a prayer for the Queen at the end.

This might be The Collier played at Court in 1576. Fleay, 60; i. 235, puts it in 1561–3, assigns it to the Paul’s boys, and suggests that Richard Edwardes (q.v.) is satirized as Ralph Roister. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 228) suggests that Fulwell’s may be the play revived by Pembroke’s at the Rose on 28 Oct. 1600 as ‘the [devell] licke vnto licke’.

Gager entered Christ Church, Oxford, from Westminster in 1574, and took his B.A. in 1577, his M.A. in 1580, and his D.C.L. in 1589. In 1606 he became Chancellor of the diocese of Ely. He had a high reputation for his Latin verses, many of which are contained in Exequiae D. Philippi Sidnaei (1587) and other University volumes. A large collection in Addl. MS. 22583 includes lines to George Peele (q.v.). Meres in 1598 counts him as one of ‘the best for comedy amongst vs’. His correspondence with John Rainolds affords a summary of the controversy on the ethics of the stage in its academic aspect.

1592. Meleager. Tragoedia noua. Bis publice acta in aede Christi Oxoniae. Oxoniae. Joseph Barnes. [Epistle to Earl of Essex, ‘ex aede Christi Oxoniae, Calendis Ianuarij MDXCII. Gulielmus Gagerus’; Commendatory verses by Richard Edes, Alberico Gentili, and I. C[ase?]; Epistle Ad lectorem Academicum; Prologus ad academicos; Argumentum; Prologus ad illustrissimos Penbrochiae ac Lecestriae Comites. At end, Epilogus ad Academicos; Epilogus ad clarissimos Comites Penbrochiensem ac Lecestrensem; Panniculus Hippolyto ... assutus (vide infra); Apollo προλογίζει ad serenissimam Reginam Elizabetham 1592; Prologus in Bellum Grammaticale ad eandem sacram Maiestatem; Epilogus in eandem Comoediam ad Eandem.]

The dedication says ‘Annus iam pene vndecimus agitur ... ex quo Meleager primum, octauus ex quo iterum in Scenam venit’, and adds that Pembroke, Leicester, and Sidney were present on the second occasion. Meleager is ‘primogenitus meus’. The first production was doubtless one of those recorded in the Christ Church accounts in Feb. 1582 (Boas, 162), and the second during Leicester’s visit as Chancellor in Jan. 1585 (Boas, 192).

Edition of B.M. fragment by A. Dyce (1850, Marlowe’s Works). Abstract from Ch. Ch. MS. in Boas, 183.

The play was produced before Alasco at Christ Church on 12 June 1583. It is unlikely that it influenced Marlowe’s play.

1592. Vlysses Redux Tragoedia Nova. In Aede Christi Oxoniae Publice Academicis Recitata, Octavo Idus Februarii. 1591. Oxoniae. Joseph Barnes. [Prologus ad Academicos; Epistle to Lord Buckhurst, ‘ex aede Christi Oxoniae sexto Idus Maij, 1592 ... Gulielmus Gagerus’; Commendatory verses by Thomas Holland, Alberico Gentili, Richard Edes, Henry Bust, Matthew Gwinne, Richard Late-warr, Francis Sidney, John Hoschines (Hoskins), William Ballowe, James Weston; Verses Ad Zoilum; Epistle Ad Criticum. At end, Prologus in Rivales Comoediam; Prologus in Hippolytum Senecae Tragoediam; Epilogus in eundem; Momus; Epilogus Responsiuus.]

The play was produced on Sunday, 6 Feb. 1592, and an indiscreet invitation to John Rainolds opened the flood-gates of controversy upon Gager’s head (cf. vol. i, p. 251 and App. C, No. 1). Gager’s Rivales was revived on 7 Feb. and the pseudo-Senecan Hippolytus, with Gager’s Panniculus, on 8 Feb. followed by a speech in the character of Momus as a carper at plays, and a reply to Momus by way of Epilogue. The latter was printed in an enlarged form given to it during the course of the controversy (Boas, 197, 234, with dates which disregard leap-year).

1592. Panniculus Hippolyto Senecae assutus, 1591. [Appended to Meleager; for Gager’s prologue, &c., cf. s.v. Ulysses Redux.]

These consist of two scenes, one of the nature of an opening, the other an insertion between Act I and Act II, written for a performance of the play at Christ Church on 8 Feb. 1592.

Addl. MS. 22583, f. 31, includes with other poems by Gager five scenes from a tragedy on Oedipus, of which nothing more is known.

This comedy was produced before Alasco at Christ Church, on 11 June 1583. It is assigned to Gager by A. Wood, Annals, ii. 216, and referred to as his in the controversy with Rainolds (Boas, 181), who speaks of it as ‘the vnprinted Comedie’, and criticizes its ‘filth’. It contained scenes of country wooing, drunken sailors, a miles gloriosus, a blanda lena. The prologue to Dido says of it:

It was revived at Christ Church on 7 Feb. 1592 (Boas, 197) and again at the same place before Elizabeth on 26 Sept. 1592, when, according to a Cambridge critic, it was ‘but meanely performed’. Presumably it is the prologue for this revival which is printed with Ulysses Redux (q.v.).

A London citizen, whose few and mainly non-dramatic writings were produced from 1565 to 1579. For his description of the Norwich entertainment (1578), cf. ch. xxiv.

He may conceivably be identical with Bernard Garter, since Thomas and Bernard are respectively given from different sources (cf. D. N. B.) as the name of the father of Bernard Garter of Brigstocke, Northants, whose son was alive in 1634.

No copy is known, but S. Jones, Biographica Dramatica (1812), iii. 310, says: ‘Susanna. By Thomas Garter 4^to 1578. The running title of this play is, The Commody of the moste vertuous and godlye Susanna.’ According to Greg, Masques, cxxiii, the original authority for the statement is a manuscript note by Thomas Coxeter (ob. 1747) in a copy of G. Jacob’s Lives of the Dramatic Poets (1719–20). ‘Susanna’ is in Rogers and Ley’s list, and an interlude ‘Susanna’s Tears’ in Archer’s and Kirkman’s.

George Gascoigne was son of Sir John Gascoigne of Cardington, Bedfordshire. He was probably born between 1530 and 1535, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Gray’s Inn. He misspent his youth as a dissipated hanger-on at Court, under the patronage of Arthur, Lord Grey of Wilton and others, and won some reputation as a versifier. About 1566 he married Elizabeth Breton of Walthamstow, widow of a London merchant, and mother of Nicholas Breton, the poet. From March 1573 to Oct. 1574 he served as a volunteer under William of Orange in the Netherlands. In 1575 he was assisting in preparing shows before Elizabeth at Kenilworth and Woodstock. It is possible that he was again in the Netherlands and present at the sack of Antwerp in 1576. On 7 Oct. 1577 he died at Stamford.

N.D. [1573] A Hundreth sundrie Flowres bounde up in one small Poesie.... For Richard Smith. [Datable by a prefatory epistle of 20 Jan. 1573, signed ‘H. W.’ and a reference in Gascoigne’s own epistle of 31 Jan. 1575 to Q₂. Includes Jocasta, Supposes, and the Mask.]

1575. The Posies of George Gascoigne Esquire. Corrected, perfected, and augmented by the Authour. H. Bynneman for Richard Smith. [A second issue, For Richard Smith.]

1587. The whole workes of George Gascoigne Esquyre: Newlye compyled into one Volume.... Abel Jeffes. [Adds the Princely Pleasures. A second issue, ‘The pleasauntest workes....’]

1869–70. W. C. Hazlitt, The Complete Poems of George Gascoigne. 2 vols. (Roxburghe Library). [Adds Glass of Government and Hemetes.]

1907–10. J. W. Cunliffe, The Complete Works of George Gascoigne. 2 vols. (C. E. C.).

Dissertation: F. E. Schelling, The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne (1893, Pennsylvania Univ. Publ.).

[MS.] B.M. Addl. MS. 34063, formerly the property of Roger, second Lord North, whose name and the motto ‘Durum Pati [15]68’ are on the title.

1573. Iocasta: A Tragedie written in Greke by Euripides, translated and digested into Acte by George Gascoyne, and Francis Kinwelmershe of Grayes Inne, and there by them presented. 1566. Henry Bynneman for Richard Smith. [Part of Collection, 1573; also in 1575, 1587. Argument; Epilogue ‘Done by Chr. Yeluerton’.]

Editions by F. J. Child (1848, Four Old Plays) and J. W. Cunliffe (1906, B. L., and 1912, E. E. C. T.).—Dissertation: M. T. W. Foerster, Gascoigne’s J. a Translation from the Italian (1904, M. P. ii. 147).

A blank-verse translation of Lodovico Dolce’s Giocasta (1549), itself a paraphrase or adaptation of the Phoenissae of Euripides (Creizenach, ii. 408). After Acts I and IV appears ‘Done by F. Kinwelmarshe’ and after II, III, V ‘Done by G. Gascoigne’. Before each act is a description of a dumb-show and of its accompanying music.

1573. Supposes: A Comedie written in the Italian tongue by Ariosto, and Englished by George Gascoyne of Grayes Inne Esquire, and there presented. [Part of Collection, 1573; also in 1575 (with addition of ‘1566’ to title) and 1587. Prologue.]

Editions by T. Hawkins (1773, O. E. D. iii), J. W. Cunliffe (1906, B. L.), and R. W. Bond (1911, E. P. I.).

A prose translation of Ludovico Ariosto’s I Suppositi (1509). There was probably a revival at Trinity, Oxford, on 8 Jan. 1582, when Richard Madox records, ‘We supt at y^e presidents lodging and after had y^e supposes handeled in y^e haul indifferently’ (Boas, 161).

1575. The Glasse of Governement. A tragicall Comedie so entituled, bycause therein are handled aswell the rewardes for Vertues, as also the punishment for Vices. Done by George Gascoigne Esquier. 1575. Seen and allowed, according to the order appointed in the Queenes Maiesties Injunctions. For C. Barker. [Colophon] H. M. for Christopher Barker. [Epistle to Sir Owen Hopton, by ‘G. Gascoigne’, dated 26 Apr. 1575; Commendatory verses by B. C.; Argument; Prologue; Epilogue. A reissue has a variant colophon (Henry Middleton) and Errata.]

Edition by J. S. Farmer (1914, S. F.).—Dissertation: C. H. Herford, G.’s G. of G. (E. S. ix. 201).

This, perhaps only a closet drama, is an adaptation of the ‘Christian Terence’ (cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 216), with which Gascoigne may have become familiar in Holland during 1573–4. The prologue (cf. App. C, No. xiv) warns that the play is not a mere ‘worthie jest’, and that

1573. A Devise of a Maske for the right honourable Viscount Mountacute. [Part of Collection, 1573; also in 1575, 1587.]

Anthony and Elizabeth Browne, children of Anthony, first Viscount Montague, married Mary and Robert, children of Sir William Dormer of Eythorpe, Bucks., in 1572 (cf. ch. v).

See s.v. Lee, Woodstock Entertainment (1575) and ch. xxiv, s.v. Kenilworth Entertainment (1575).

Selimus and the Second Maiden’s Tragedy have been ascribed to him, but as regards the first absurdly, and as regards the second not plausibly, since he only took his B.A. degree in 1613. His known plays are later in date than 1616.

Arthur was son of John Golding of Belchamp St. Paul, Essex, and brother-in-law of John, 16th Earl of Oxford. He was a friend of Sidney and known to Elizabethan statesmen of puritanical leanings. Almost his only original work was a Discourse upon the Earthquake (1580), but he was a voluminous translator of theological and classical works, including Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1565, 1567). Beza’s tragedy was written when he was Professor at Lausanne in 1550 (Creizenach, ii. 456).

1577. A Tragedie of Abrahams Sacrifice, Written in french, by Theodore Beza, and translated into Inglish by A. G. Finished at Powles Belchamp in Essex, the xj of August, 1575. Thomas Vautrollier. [Woodcuts, which do not suggest a scenic representation.]

A contributor to the Kenilworth and Norwich entertainments (cf. ch. xxiv, C) and writer of The Garden Plot (1825, Roxburghe Club). Gawdy, 13, mentions ‘a yonge gentleman touard my L. of Leycester called Mr. Goldingam’, as concerned c. 1587 in a street brawl.

Gosson was born in Kent during 1554, was at Corpus Christi, Oxford, 1572 to 1576, then came to London, where he obtained some reputation as playwright and poet. Meres in Palladis Tamia (1598) commends his pastorals, which are lost. Lodge speaks of him also as a ‘player’.[658] In 1579 he forsook the stage, became a tutor in the country and published The School of Abuse (App. C, No. xxii). This he dedicated to Sidney, but ‘was for his labour scorned’. He was answered the same year in a lost pamphlet called Strange News out of Afric and also by Lodge (q.v.), and rejoined with A Short Apology of the School of Abuse (App. C, No. xxiv). The players revived his plays to spite him and on 23 Feb. 1582 produced The Play of Plays and Pastimes to confute him. In the same year he produced his final contribution to the controversy in Plays Confuted in Five Actions (App. C, No. xxx). In 1591 Gosson became Rector of Great Wigborough, Essex, and in 1595 published the anonymous pamphlet Pleasant Quips for Upstart Newfangled Gentlewomen. In 1600 he became Rector of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate. In 1616 and 1617 he wrote to Alleyn (q.v.) as his ‘very loving and ancient friend’.[659] He died 13 Feb. 1624.

Gosson claims to have written both tragedies and comedies,[660] but no play of his is extant. He names three of them. Of Catiline’s Conspiracies he says that it was ‘usually brought into the Theater and that ‘because it is known to be a pig of mine own sow, I will speak the less of it; only giving you to understand, that the whole mark which I shot at in that work was to show the reward of traitors in Catiline, and the necessary government of learned men in the person of Cicero, which foresees every danger that is likely to happen and forestalls it continually ere it take effect’.[661] Lodge disparages the originality of this play and compares it unfavourably with Wilson’s Short and Sweet[662] (q.v.). Of two other plays Gosson says: ‘Since my publishing the School of Abuse two plays of my making were brought to the stage; the one was a cast of Italian devices, called, The Comedy of Captain Mario; the other a Moral, Praise at Parting. These they very impudently affirm to be written by me since I had set out my invective against them. I can not deny they were both mine, but they were both penned two years at the least before I forsook them, as by their own friends I am able to prove.’[663] It is conceivable that Gosson may be the translator of Fedele and Fortunio (cf. ch. xxiv).

Robert Greene was baptized at Norwich on 11 July 1558. He entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, as a sizar in 1575 and took his B.A. in 1578 and his M.A. by 1583, when he was residing in Clare Hall. The addition of an Oxford degree in July 1588 enabled him to describe himself as Academiae Utriusque Magister in Artibus. He has been identified with a Robert Greene who was Vicar of Tollesbury, Essex, in 1584–5, but there is no real evidence that he took orders. The earlier part of his career may be gathered from his autobiographic pamphlet, The Repentance of Robert Greene (1592), eked out by the portraits, also evidently in a measure autobiographic, of Francesco in Never Too Late (1590) and of Roberto in Green’s Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance (1592). It seems that he travelled in youth and learnt much wickedness; then married and lived for a while with his wife and had a child by her. During this period he began his series of euphuistic love-romances. About 1586, however, he deserted his wife, and lived a dissolute life in London with the sister of Cutting Ball, a thief who ended his days at Tyburn, as his mistress. By her he had a base-born son, Fortunatus. He does not seem to have been long in London before he ‘had wholly betaken me to the penning of plays which was my continual exercise’.[664] His adoption of his profession seems to be described in The Groats-worth of Wit. Roberto meets a player, goes with him, and soon becomes ‘famozed for an arch-plaimaking poet’.[665] Similarly, in Never Too Late, Francesco ‘fell in amongst a company of players, who persuaded him to try his wit in writing of comedies, tragedies, or pastorals, and if he could perform anything worthy of the stage, then they would largely reward him for his pains’. Hereupon Francesco ‘writ a comedy, which so generally pleased the audience that happy were those actors in short time, that could get any of his works, he grew so exquisite in that faculty’.[666] Greene’s early dramatic efforts seem to have brought him into rivalry with Marlowe (q.v.). In the preface to Perimedes the Blacksmith (S. R. 29 March 1588) he writes: ‘I keep my old course to palter up something in prose, using mine old poesie still, Omne tulit punctum, although lately two Gentlemen Poets made two mad men of Rome beat it out of their paper bucklers: and had it in derision for that I could not make my verses jet upon the stage in tragical buskins, every word filling the mouth like the faburden of Bo-Bell, daring God out of heaven with that Atheist Tamburlan, or blaspheming with the mad priest of the Sun.... Such mad and scoffing poets that have poetical spirits, as bred of Merlin’s race, if there be any in England that set the end of scholarism in an English blank-verse, I think either it is the humour of a novice that tickles them with self-love, or too much frequenting the hot-house (to use the German proverb) hath sweat out all the greatest part of their wits.... I but answer in print what they have offered on the stage.’[667] The references here to Marlowe are unmistakable. His fellow ‘gentleman poet’ is unknown; but the ‘mad priest of the Sun’ suggests the play of ‘the lyfe and deathe of Heliogabilus’, entered on S. R. to John Danter on 19 June 1594, but now lost.[668] In 1589 Greene published his Menaphon (S. R. 23 Aug.), in which he further alluded to Marlowe as the teller of ‘a Canterbury tale; some prophetical full-mouth that as he were a Cobler’s eldest son, would by the last tell where anothers shoe wrings’.[669] Doron, in the same story, appears to parody a passage in the anonymous play of The Taming of A Shrew, which is further alluded to in a prefatory epistle To the Gentlemen Students of Both Universities contributed to Greene’s book by Thomas Nashe. Herein Nashe, while praising Peele and his Arraignment of Paris, satirizes Marlowe, Kyd, and particularly the players (cf. App. C, No. xlii). To Menaphon are also prefixed lines by Thomas Brabine which tells the ‘wits’ that ‘strive to thunder from a stage-man’s throat’ how the novel is beyond them. ‘Players, avaunt!’[670] In the following year, 1590, Greene continued the attack on the players in the autobiographic romance, already referred to, of Never Too Late (cf. App. C, No. xliii). In 1590 Greene, whose publications had hitherto been mainly toys of love and romance, began a series of moral pamphlets, full of professions of repentance and denunciations of villainy. To these belong, as well as Never Too Late, Greene’s Mourning Garment (1590) and Greene’s Farewell to Folly (1591). A preface to the latter contains some satirical references to the anonymous play of Fair Em (cf. ch. xxiv.) One R. W. retorted upon Greene in a pamphlet called Martine Mar-Sextus (S. R. 8 Nov. 1591), in which he abuses lascivious authors who finally ‘put on a mourning garment and cry Farewell’.[671] Similarly, Greene’s exposures of ‘cony-catching’ or ‘sharping’ provoked the following passage in the Defence of Cony-catching (S. R. 21 April 1592) by one Cuthbert Conycatcher: ‘What if I should prove you a cony-catcher, Master R. G., would it not make you blush at the matter?... Ask the Queen’s players if you sold them not Orlando Furioso for twenty nobles, and when they were in the country sold the same play to the Lord Admiral’s men for as many more.... I hear, when this was objected, that you made this excuse; that there was no more faith to be held with players than with them that valued faith at the price of a feather; for as they were comedians to act, so the actions of their lives were camelion-like; that they were uncertain, variable, time-pleasers, men that measured honesty by profit, and that regarded their authors not by desert but by necessity of time.’[672] It is probable that the change in the tone of Greene’s writings did not correspond to any very thorough-going reformation of life. There is nothing to show that Greene had any share in the Martinist controversy. But he became involved in one of the personal animosities to which it led. Richard Harvey, the brother of Gabriel, in his Lamb of God (S. R. 23 Oct. 1589), while attacking Lyly as Paphatchet, had ‘mistermed all our other poets and writers about London, piperly make-plaies and make-bates. Hence Greene, beeing chiefe agent for the companie [i.e. the London poets] (for hee writ more than foure other, how well I will not say: but sat citò, si sat benè) tooke occasion to canuaze him a little.’[673] Apparently he called the Harveys, in his A Quip for an Upstart Courtier (S. R. 21 July 1592, cf. App. C, No. xlvii), the sons of a ropemaker, which is what they were.[674] In August Greene partook freely of Rhenish wine and pickled herrings at a supper with Nashe and one Will Monox, and fell into a surfeit. On 3 September he died in a squalid lodging, after writing a touching letter to his deserted wife, and begging his landlady, Mrs. Isam, to lay a wreath of bays upon him. These details are recorded by Gabriel Harvey, who visited the place and wrote an account of his enemy’s end in a letter to a friend, which he published in his Four Letters and Certain Sonnets: especially Touching Robert Greene, and Other Parties by him Abused (S. R. 4 Dec. 1592).[675] This brought Nashe upon him in the Strange News of the Intercepting of Certain Letters[676] (S. R. 12 Jan. 1593) and began a controversy between the two which lasted for several years. In Pierce’s Supererogation (27 Apr. 1593) Harvey spoke of ‘Nash, the ape of Greene, Greene the ape of Euphues, Euphues the ape of Envy’, and declared that Nashe ‘shamefully and odiously misuseth every friend or acquaintance as he hath served ... Greene, Marlowe, Chettle, and whom not?’[677] In Have With You to Saffron Walden (1596), Nashe defends himself against these accusations. ‘I never abusd Marloe, Greene, Chettle in my life.... He girds me with imitating of Greene.... I scorne it ... hee subscribing to me in anything but plotting Plaies, wherein he was his crafts master.’[678] The alleged abuse of Marlowe, Greene, and Chettle belongs to the history of another pamphlet. This is Green’s Groats-worth of Wit, Bought with a Million of Repentance (S. R. 20 Sept. 1592, ‘upon the peril of Henry Chettle’[679]). According to the title-page, it was ‘written before his death and published at his dying request’. To this is appended the famous address To those Gentlemen, his Quondam Acquaintance, that spend their wits in making Plays.[680] The reference here to Shakespeare is undeniable. Of the three playwrights warned, the first and third are almost certainly Marlowe and Peele; the third may be Lodge, but on the whole is far more likely to be Nashe (q.v.). It appears, however, that Nashe himself was supposed to have had a hand in the authorship. Chettle did his best to take the responsibility off Nashe’s shoulders in the preface to his Kind-Hart’s Dream (S. R. 8 Dec. 1592; cf. App. C, No. xlix). In the epistle prefixed to the second edition of Pierce Penniless his Supplication to the Devil (Works, i. 154), written early in 1593, Nashe denies the charge for himself and calls The Groats-worth ‘a scald trivial lying pamphlet’; and it is perhaps to this that Harvey refers as abuse of Greene, Marlowe, and Chettle, although it is not clear how Marlowe comes in. There is an echo of Greene’s hit at the ‘upstart crow, beautified with our feathers’ in the lines of R. B., Greene’s Funerals (1594, ed. McKerrow, 1911, p. 81):