[538] ii. 334, ‘vnder the hande of Master Recorder’; 341, ‘vnder thandes of Doctour Redman and the wardens’; 342, ‘master Recorder and the wardens’; 346, ‘the lord maiour and the wardens’; 357, ‘sub manibus comitum Leicester et Hunsdon’; 372, ‘master Crowley’; 375, ‘master Vaughan’; 386, ‘master Secretary Wilson’; 403, ‘master Thomas Norton [Remembrancer]’; 404, ‘the Lord Chancellor’; 409, ‘master Cotton’; 417, ‘by aucthoritie from the Counsell’; 434, 435, ‘pervsed by master Crowley’; 447, ‘master Recorder’. For Talbot, cf. supra.

[539] ii. 304; cf. ii. 447 (1586), ‘Entred by commaundement from master Barker in wrytinge vnder his hand. Aucthorised vnder the Archbishop of Canterbury his hand’. ‘Licenced’, as well as ‘authorised’ or ‘alowed’, now sometimes (ii. 307, 447) describes the action of a prelate or corrector.

[540] ii. 366.

[541] ii. 428.

[542] ii. 424, ‘alwaies provided that before he print he shall get the bishop of London his alowance to yt’; 424, ‘upon condicon he obtaine the ordinaries hand thereto’; 429, ‘provyded alwaies and he is enioyned to gett this booke laufully alowed before he print yt’; 431, ‘yt is granted vnto him that if he gett the card of phantasie lawfullie alowed vnto him, that then he shall enioye yt as his owne copie’; 431, ‘so it be or shalbe by laufull aucthoritie lycenced vnto him’; 444, ‘to be aucthorised accordinge to her maiesties Iniunctions’. The wardens’ hands are not cited to any of these conditional entries.

[543] ii. 307, 308, 336, 353, 430, 438, 439.

[544] App. D, No. lxxvii; cf. Strype, Life of Whitgift, i. 268; Pierce, Introduction to Mar Prelate Tracts, 74. Confirmations and special condemnations of offending books are in Procl. 802, 812, 1092, 1362, 1383 (texts of two last in G. W. Prothero, Select Statutes, 169, 395).

[545] ii. 459, ‘Master Hartwell certifying it to be tollerated’; 460, ‘authorised or alowed as good vnder thand of Doctour Redman &c.’; 461, ‘certified by Master Hartwell to be alowed leavinge out the ij staues yat are crossed’; 464, ‘master Crowleys hand is to yt, as laufull to be printed’; 475, ‘aucthorised by tharchbishop of Canterbury as is reported by Master Cosin’; 479, ‘which as master Hartwell certifyithe by his hande to the written copie, my Lordes grace of Canterbury is content shall passe without anie thinge added to yt before it be pervsed’; 487, ‘sett downe as worthie to be printed vnder thand of Master Gravet’; 489, ‘Master Crowleys hand is to yt testyfying it to be alowable to ye print’; 491, ‘vnder the Bishop of London, Master Abraham Fraunce, and the wardens hands’; 493, ‘Master Hartwells hand beinge at the wrytten copie testifyinge his pervsinge of the same’; 493, ‘alowed vnder D^r Stallers hand as profitable to be printed’, &c.

[546] Lambe notes (iii. 690) in 1636 that on 30 June 1588, ‘the archbishop gave power to Doctor Cosin, Doctor Stallard, Doctor Wood, master Hartwell, master Gravett, master Crowley, master Cotton, and master Hutchinson, or any one of them, to license books to be printed: Or any 2 of those following master Judson, master Trippe, master Cole and master Dickens’. It will be observed that most of the first group of these had already acted as ‘correctors’, together with William Redman and Richard Vaughan, chaplains respectively to Archbishop Grindal and Bishop Aylmer. William Hutchinson and George Dickens were also chaplains to Aylmer. Hutchinson was in the High Commission of 1601. Richard Cosin was Dean of the Arches and a High Commissioner. Abraham Hartwell was secretary and Cole chaplain (Arber, ii. 494) to Archbishop Whitgift. Hutchinson, William Gravett, William Cotton, and George Dickins were or became prebendaries of St. Paul’s. Thomas Stallard was rector of All Hallows’ and St. Mary’s at Hill; Henry Tripp of St. Faith’s and St. Stephen’s, Walbrook. Most of this information is from Hennessy. Crowley was presumably Robert Crowley, vicar of St. Giles, Cripplegate, and himself a stationer, although his activity as a Puritan preacher and pamphleteer makes his appointment an odd one for Whitgift. Moreover, he died on 18 June 1588. There may have been two Robert Crowleys, or the archbishop’s list may have been drawn up earlier than Lambe dates it.

[547] Amongst the correctors who appear later in the Register are Richard Bancroft, John Buckeridge, and Michael Murgatroyd, secretaries or chaplains to Whitgift, Samuel Harsnett, William Barlow, Thomas Mountford, John Flower, and Zacharias Pasfield, prebendaries of St. Paul’s, William Dix, Peter Lyly, chaplain of the Savoy and brother of the dramatist, Lewis Wager, rector of St. James’s, Garlickhithe, and dramatist, John Wilson, and Gervas Nidd. Mountford and Dix were in the High Commission of 1601. I have not troubled to trace the full careers of these men in Hennessy and elsewhere. Thomas Morley (Arber, iii. 93) and William Clowes (ii. 80) seem to have been applied to as specialists on musical and medical books respectively.

[548] ii. 463, 464, 508, 509, ‘Alowed by the Bishop of London vnder his hand and entred by warrant of Master [warden] Denhams hand to the copie’.

[549] A typical entry is now

[550] iii. 677. A number of satirical books were condemned by name to be burnt, and direction given to the master and wardens, ‘That no Satyres or Epigrams be printed hereafter; That noe Englishe historyes be printed excepte they bee allowed by some of her maiesties privie Counsell; That noe playes be printed excepte they bee allowed by suche as haue aucthoritie; That all Nasshes bookes and Doctor Harvyes bookes be taken wheresoeuer they maye be found and that none of theire bookes be euer printed hereafter; That thoughe any booke of the nature of theise heretofore expressed shalbe broughte vnto yow vnder the hands of the Lord Archebisshop of Canterburye or the Lord Bishop of London yet the said booke shall not be printed vntill the master or wardens haue acquainted the said Lord Archbishop or the Lord Bishop with the same to knowe whether it be theire hand or no’.

[551] Hunting of Cupid (R. Jones, 26 July 1591), ‘provyded alwayes that yf yt be hurtfull to any other copye before lycenced, then this to be voyde’; Merchant of Venice (J. Robertes, 22 July 1598), ‘prouided, that yt bee not prynted by the said James Robertes or anye other whatsoeuer without lycence first had from the Right honorable the lord chamberlen’; Blind Beggar of Alexandria (W. Jones, 15 Aug. 1598), ‘vppon condition that yt belonge to noe other man’; Spanish Tragedy (transfer from A. Jeffes to W. White, 13 Aug. 1599), ‘saluo iure cuiuscunque’; Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose (J. Robertes, 27 May 1600), ‘prouided that he is not to putt it in prynte without further and better aucthority’; A Larum for London (J. Robertes, 29 May 1600), ‘prouided that yt be not printed without further aucthoritie’; Antonio and Mellida (M. Lownes and T. Fisher, 24 Oct. 1601), ‘prouided that he gett laufull licence for yt’; Satiromastix (J. Barnes, 11 Nov. 1601), ‘vppon condicon that yt be lycensed to be printed’; Troilus and Cressida (J. Robertes, 7 Feb. 1603), ‘to print when he hath gotten sufficient aucthoritie for yt’; When You See Me, You Know Me (N. Butter, 12 Feb. 1605), ‘yf he gett good alowance for the enterlude of King Henry the 8^th before he begyn to print it. And then procure the wardens handes to yt for the entrance of yt: He is to haue the same for his copy’; Westward Hoe (H. Rocket, 2 March 1605), ‘prouided yat he get further authoritie before yt be printed’ (entry crossed out, and marked ‘vacat’); Dutch Courtesan (J. Hodgets, 26 June 1605), ‘provyded that he gett sufficient aucthoritie before yt be prynted’ (with later note, ‘This is alowed to be printed by aucthoritie from Master Hartwell’); Sir Giles Goosecap (E. Blount, 10 Jan. 1606), ‘prouided that yt be printed accordinge to the copie wherevnto Master Wilsons hand ys at’; Fawn (W. Cotton, 12 March 1606), ‘provided that he shall not put the same in prynte before he gett alowed lawfull aucthoritie’; Fleire (J. Trundle and J. Busby, 13 May 1606), ‘provided that they are not to printe yt tell they bringe good aucthoritie and licence for the doinge thereof’ (with note to transfer of Trundle’s share to Busby and A. Johnson on 21 Nov. 1606, ‘This booke is aucthorised by Sir George Bucke Master Hartwell and the wardens’).

[552] Buck’s hand first appears to Claudius Tiberius Nero (10 Mar. 1607), and thereafter to all London (but not University) plays up to his madness in 1622, except Cupid’s Whirligig (29 June 1607), which has Tilney’s, Yorkshire Tragedy (2 May 1608), which has Wilson’s, some of those between 4 Oct. 1608 and 10 March 1609, which have Segar’s, who is described as Buck’s deputy, and Honest Lawyer (14 Aug. 1615), which has Taverner’s.

[553] i. 45, 69, 93, 100, &c.; ii. 821, 843. In 1558–9, only, the heading is ‘Fynes for defautes for Pryntynge withoute lycense’.

[554] See the case of Jeffes and White in 1593 given in ch. xxiii, s.v. Kyd, Spanish Tragedy.

[555] i. 93, 100; ii. 853 (21 Jan. 1583), ‘This daye, Ric. Jones is awarded to paie x^s for a fine for printinge a thinge of the fall of the gallories at Paris Garden without licence and against commandement of the Wardens. And the said Jones and Bartlet to be committed to prison viz Bartlet for printing it and Jones for sufferinge it to be printed in his house’.

[556] ii. 824, 826, 832, 837, 849, 851.

[557] ii. 850.

[558] The testimony only relates strictly to the period 1576–86, which is nearly coincident with the slack ecclesiastical rule of Archbishop Grindal (1576–83). Parker (1559–75) may have been stricter, as Whitgift (1583–1604) certainly was.

[559] i. 95, ‘Master Waye had lycense to take the lawe of James Gonnell for a sarten dett due vnto hym’; 101, ‘Owyn Rogers for ... kepynge of a forren with out lycense ys fyned’.

[560] ii. 62.

[561] i. 322.

[562] v. lxxvi, ‘we do will and commande yowe that from hence forthe yowe suffer neither booke ballett nor any other matter to be published ... until the same be first seene and allowed either by us of her M^tes pryvie Counsell or by thee [sic] Commissioners for cawses ecclesyastical there at London’.

[563] The fee seems at first to have been 4d. for ‘entraunce’ (i. 94), with a further sum for books above a certain size at the rate of ‘euery iij leves a pannye’ (i. 97); plays ran from 4d. to 12d. But from about 1582 plays and most other books are charged a uniform fee of 6d., and only ballads and other trifles escape with 4d. Payments were sometimes in arrear; often there is no note of fee to a title; and in some of these cases the words ‘neuer printed’ have been added. On the other hand, the receipt of fees is sometimes recorded, and the title remains unentered; at the end of the entries for 1585–6 (ii. 448) is a memorandum that one of the wardens ‘brought in about iiij^s moore which he had receved for copies yat were not brought to be entred into the book this yere’. A similar item is in the wardens’ accounts for 1592–3 (i. 559). Fees were charged for entries of transferred as well as of new copies.

[564] Various formulae are used, such as ‘assigned vnto him’ (ii. 310, 351), ‘turned ouer to him’ (ii. 369), ‘putt ouer vnto him’ (ii. 431), ‘sold and sett ouer vnto him’ (ii. 350), ‘which he affyrmeth yat he bought of’ (ii. 351), ‘by assent of’ (ii. 415), ‘by thappointment of’ (ii. 667), ‘by the consent of’ (ii. 608), ‘which he bought of’ (ii. 325), &c. A transfer of ‘plaiebookes’ from Sampson Awdeley to John Charlewood on 15 Jan. 1582 (ii. 405) included, besides two plays, Youth and Impatient Poverty, which had been formerly registered, four others, Weather, Four Ps, Love, and Hickscorner, which had been printed before the Register came into existence. I suppose that Charlwood secured copyright in these, but was there any copyright before the entry of 1582?

[565] ii. 377. ‘Tollerated vnto him but not vnder the wardens handes’, 472, ‘beinge broughte to enter by John Woulf without the wardens handes to the copy’. Even in the seventeenth century ballads are sometimes entered without any citation of hands, and in 1643 it was the clerk and not the wardens whom Parliament authorized to license ‘small pamphletts, portratures, pictures, and the like’ (v. liv).

[566] ii. 365, ‘Translated by a French copie whereat was the bishop of Londons hand and master Harrisons’; 440, ‘by commaundement from master warden Newbery vnder his own handwrytinge on the backside of ye wrytten copie’; 443, ‘vnder his hand to the printed copie’; 449, ‘by warrant of master warden Bisshops hand to the former copie printed anno 1584’; 449, ‘by warrant of master warden Bishops hand to the wrytten copie’; 457, ‘by warrant of the wardens handes to thold copie’; 521, ‘with master Hartwelles hand to the Italyan Booke’; 534, ‘alowed vnder master Hartwelles hand, entred by warrant of the subscription of the wardens’, &c.

[567] ii. 434, ‘entred vpon a special knowen token sent from master warden Newbery’; 437, ‘allowed by tharchbishop of Canterbury, by testymonie of the Lord Chenie’; 460, ‘by the wardens appointment at the hall’; 504, ‘by warrant of a letter from Sir Ffrauncis Walsingham to the master and wardens of the Cumpanye’; 523, ‘alowed by a letter or note vnder master Hartwelles hand’; 524, ‘reported by master Fortescue to be alowed by the archbishop of Canterbury’; 633, ‘The note vnder master Justice Ffenners hand is layd vp in the wardens cupbord’; iii. 160, ‘John Hardie reporteth that the wardens are consentinge to thentrance thereof’, &c.

[568] An inventory of 1560 (i. 143) records ‘The nombre of all suche Copyes as was lefte in the Cubberde in our Counsell Chambre at the Compte ... as apereth in the whyte boke for that yere ... xliiij. Item in ballettes ... vij^e iiij^x and xvj’. From 1576 to 1579 ‘and a copie’ is often added to the notes of fees. The wardens accounts from 1574 to 1596 (i. 470, 581) regularly recite that they had ‘deliuered into the hall certen copies which haue been printed this yeare, as by a particular booke thereof made appearithe’.

[569] ii. 452, ‘Receaved of him for printinge 123 ballades which are filed vp in the hall with his name to euerie ballad’. The order of 1592 about Dr. Faustus (cf. ch. xxiii) suggests preliminary entry of claims in a Hall book distinct from the Clerk’s book.

[570] ii. 414, ‘Graunted by the Assistants’; 449, ‘entred in full court’; 462, ‘entred in plena curia’; 465, ‘intratur in curia’; 477, ‘by the whole consent of thassistantes’; 535, ‘aucthorysed to him at the hall soe that yt doe not belonge to any other of the Cumpanye’; 535, ‘This is allowed by the consent of the whole table’; 663, ‘in open court’; 344, ‘memorandum that this lycence is revoked and cancelled’; 457, ‘This copie is forbydden by the Archbishop of Canterbury’, with marginal note ‘Expunctum in plena curia’; 514, ‘so yat he first gett yt to be laufully and orderly alowed as tollerable to be printed and doo shewe thaucthoritie thereof at a Court to be holden’; 576, ‘Cancelled out of the book, for the vndecentnes of it in diuerse verses’; iii. 82, ‘Entred ... in full court ... vppon condicon that yt be no other mans copie, and that ... he procure it to be aucthorised and then doo shew it at the hall to the master and wardens so aucthorised’.

[571] The register indicates that even at the time of entry the fee sometimes remained unpaid. But probably it had to be paid before the stationer could actually publish with full security of copyright.

[572] Cf. p. 173.

[573] I note twenty-two cases (1586–1616) in which the earliest print known falls in a calendar year later than the next after that of entry: Spanish Tragedy, 1592–4 (N.D. probably earlier); Soliman and Perseda, 1592–9 (N.D. probably earlier); James IV, 1594–8; Famous Victories, 1594–8; David and Bethsabe, 1594–9; King Leire, 1594–1605 (re-entry 1605); Four Prentices, 1594–1615 (one or more earlier editions probable); Jew of Malta, 1594–1633 (re-entry 1632); Woman in the Moon, 1595–7; George a Greene, 1595–9; Merchant of Venice, 1598–1600 (conditional entry); Alarum for London, 1600–2 (conditional entry); Patient Grissell, 1600–3 (stayed by Admiral’s); Stukeley, 1600–5; Dr. Faustus, 1601–4; Englishmen for my Money, 1601–16; Troilus and Cressida, 1603–9 (re-entry 1609); Westward Ho!, 1605–7 (conditional entry cancelled); Antony and Cleopatra, 1608–23, (re-entry 1623); 2 Honest Whore, 1608–30 (re-entry 1630); Epicoene, 1610–20 (earlier edition probable); Ignoramus, 1615–30 (re-entry 1630). The glutting of the book-market in 1594 accounts for some of the delays.

[574] ii. 829 (1599), 833 (1601), 835 (1602), 837 (1603).

[575] I find no entries of Enough is as Good as a Feast (N.D.), Thyestes (1560), Hercules Furens (1561), Trial of Treasure (1567), God’s Promises (1577), perhaps reprints; of Orestes (1567); or of Abraham’s Sacrifice (1577) or Conflict of Conscience (1581), perhaps entered in 1571–5. The method of exhaustions suggests that Copland’s Robin Hood (N.D.) is the ‘newe playe called —— ’ which he entered on 30 Oct. 1560, and that Colwell’s Disobedient Child (N.D.) is the unnamed ‘interlude for boyes to handle and to passe tyme at christenmas’, which he entered in 1569–70.

[576] His plays were Sir Thomas Wyat (1607), Every Woman in her Humour (1609), Two Maids of Moreclack (1609), Roaring Girl (1611), White Devil (1612), and Insatiate Countess (1613).

[577] In Nice Wanton a prayer for a king has been altered by sacrificing a rhyme into one for a queen. The prayer of Impatient Poverty seems also to have been for Mary and clumsily adapted for Elizabeth. Wager’s Enough is as Good as a Feast may be Elizabethan or pre-Elizabethan. Jacob and Esau (1568), entered in 1557–8, is pre-Elizabethan.

[578] Reprints of 1559–85 include Heywood’s Weather and Four Ps, printed in England before the establishment of the Stationers’ Register, and Bale’s Three Laws and God’s Promises, printed, probably abroad, in 1538. John Walley, who seems to have printed 1545–86, failed to date his books. I cannot therefore say whether his reprints of the pre-Register Love and Hickscorner, or the prints of Youth and Wealth and Health (if it is his), which he entered in 1557–8, are Elizabethan or not.

[579] Cf. App. L.

[580] Cf. App. B. I classify as follows: (a) Companies of Men: (i) Morals (3), Delight, Beauty and Housewifery, Love and Fortune; (ii) Classical (7), Tully, A Greek Maid, Four Sons of Fabius, Sarpedon, Telomo, Phillida and Corin, Rape of the Second Helen; (iii) Romantic (17), Lady Barbara, Cloridon and Radiamanta, Predor and Lucia, Mamillia, Herpetulus the Blue Knight and Perobia, Philemon and Philecia, Painter’s Daughter, Solitary Knight, Irish Knight, Cynocephali, Three Sisters of Mantua, Knight in the Burning Rock, Duke of Milan and Marquess of Mantua, Portio and Demorantes, Soldan and Duke, Ferrar, Felix and Philiomena; (iv) Farce (1), The Collier; (v) Realistic (2), Cruelty of a Stepmother, Murderous Michael; (vi) Antic Play (1); (vii) Episodes (2), Five Plays in One, Three Plays in One; (b) Companies of Boys: (i) Morals (6), Truth, Faithfulness and Mercy, ‘Vanity’, Error, Marriage of Mind and Measure, Loyalty and Beauty, Game of Cards; (ii) Classical (12), Iphigenia, Ajax and Ulysses, Narcissus, Alcmaeon, Quintus Fabius, Siege of Thebes, Perseus and Andromeda, ‘Xerxes’, Mutius Scaevola, Scipio Africanus, Pompey, Agamemnon and Ulysses; (iii) Romantic (4), Paris and Vienna, Titus and Gisippus, Alucius, Ariodante and Genevora; (c) Unknown Companies: (i) Morals (5), As Plain as Can Be, Painful Pilgrimage, Wit and Will, Prodigality, ‘Fortune’; (ii) Classical (2), Orestes, Theagenes and Chariclea; (iii) Romantic (1), King of Scots; (iv) Farces (2), Jack and Jill, Six Fools. The moral and romantic elements meet also in the list of pieces played by companies of men at Bristol from 1575 to 1579: The Red Knight, Myngo, What Mischief Worketh in the Mind of Man, The Queen of Ethiopia, The Court of Comfort, Quid pro Quo (Murray, ii. 213).

[581] Love and Fortune was printed in the next period.

[582] Mary Magdalen; Conflict of Conscience. ‘Compiled’ goes back to Bale, Heywood, and Skelton. Earlier still, Everyman is not so much a play as ‘a treatyse ... in maner of a morall playe’.

[583] The prologue of Mary Magdalen has ‘we haue vsed this feate at the uniuersitie’.

[584] Wynkyn de Worde calls Mundus et Infans a ‘propre newe interlude’, and the advertising title-page is well established from the time of Rastell’s press.

[585] Conflict of Conscience; cf. Damon and Pythias, the prologue of which, though it had been a Court play, ‘is somewhat altered for the proper use of them that hereafter shall haue occasion to plaie it, either in Priuate, or open Audience’. The castings, for four, five, or six players, occur in King Darius, Like Will to Like, Longer Thou Livest, Mary Magdalen, New Custom, Tide Tarrieth for No Man, Trial of Treasure, Conflict of Conscience. I find a later example from the public stage in Fair Maid of the Exchange, which has ‘Eleauen may easily acte this comedie’, and a division of parts accordingly. There are pre-Elizabethan precedents, while Jack Juggler is ‘for Chyldren to playe’, the songs in Ralph Roister Doister are for ‘those which shall vse this Comedie or Enterlude’, and The Four Elements has directions for reducing the time of playing at need from an hour and a half to three-quarters of an hour, and the note ‘Also yf ye lyst ye may brynge in a dysgysynge’. Similarly Robin Hood is ‘for to be played in Maye games’. That books were in fact bought to act from is shown by entries in the accounts of Holy Trinity, Bungay, for 1558 of 4d. for ‘the interlude and game booke’ and 2s. for ‘writing the partes’ (M. S. ii. 343). A book costing only 4d. must clearly have been a print.

[586] There are prayers in All for Money, Apius and Virginia, Common Conditions, Damon and Pythias, Disobedient Child (headed ‘The Players ... kneele downe’), King Darius, Like Will to Like, Longer Thou Livest, New Custom, Trial of Treasure (epilogue headed ‘Praie for all estates’). Mary Magdalen and Tide Tarrieth for No Man substitute a mere expression of piety. I do not agree with Fleay, 57, that such prayers are evidence of Court performance. The reverence and epilogue to the Queen in the belated moral of Liberality and Prodigality (1602), 1314, is different in tone. The Pedlar’s Prophecy, also belated as regards date of print, adds to the usual prayer for Queen and council ‘And that honorable T. N. &c. of N. chiefly: Whom as our good Lord and maister, found we haue’. No doubt any strolling company purchasing the play would fill up the blanks to meet their own case. Probably both the Queen and estates and the ‘lord’ of a company were prayed for, whether present or absent, so long as the custom lasted; cf. ch. x, p. 311; ch. xviii, p. 550.

[587] Cf. e. g. Mary Magdalen (which refers on the title-page to those who ‘heare or read the same’), 56, 1479, 1743; Like Will to Like, sig. C, ‘He ... speaketh the rest as stammering as may be’, C ij, ‘Haunce sitteth in the chaire, and snorteth as though he were fast a sleep’, E ij^v, ‘Nichol Newfangle lieth on the ground groning’, &c., &c.

[588] Three Ladies of London (1584), Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (1590), Pedlar’s Prophecy (1595), Contention of Liberality and Prodigality (1602). Lingua (1607) is a piece of academic archaism. I cannot believe that the manuscript fragment of Love Feigned and Unfeigned belongs to the seventeenth century. Of course there are moral elements in other plays, such as Histriomastix, especially in dumb-shows and inductions.

[589] There is little evidence as to the price at which prints were sold; what there is points to 6d. for a quarto. A ‘testerne’ is given in the epistle as the price of Troilus and Cressida, and in Middleton, Mayor of Quinborough, v. i, come thieves who ‘only take the name of country comedians to abuse simple people with a printed play or two, which they bought at Canterbury for sixpence’. The statement that the First Folio cost £1 only rests on Steevens’s report of a manuscript note in a copy not now known; cf. McKerrow in Sh. England, ii. 229.

[590] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Shakespeare.

[591] Cf. App. L. In the above allocation Leir and Satiromastix, to each of which two companies have equal claims, are counted twice.

[592] Greg, Henslowe, ii. 148, gives a full list; cf. ch. xiii, s.vv. Queen’s, Sussex’s, Strange’s, Admiral’s, Pembroke’s, Worcester’s.

[593] Cf. App. M. Can Moseley have been trying in some way to secure plays of which he possessed manuscripts from being acted without his consent? On 30 Aug. 1660 (Variorum, iii. 249; Herbert, 90) he wrote to Sir Henry Herbert, denying that he had ever agreed with the managers of the Cockpit and Whitefriars that they ‘should act any playes that doe belong to mee, without my knowledge and consent had and procured’.

[594] Printed from Addl. MS. 27632, f. 43, by F. J. Furnivall in 7 N. Q. (1890), ix. 382. Harington died in 1612. An earlier leaf (30) has the date ‘29^th of Jan. 1609’. The latest datable play in the collection is The Turk (1610, S. R. 10 Mar. 1609). There are four out of six plays printed in 1609, as well as The Faithful Shepherdess (N.D.), of which on this evidence we can reasonably put the date of publication in 1609 or 1610.

[595] Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Heywood.

[596] M. S. C. i. 364; Variorum, iii. 159. The King’s men played The Malcontent, probably after its first issue in 1604, as a retort for the appropriation of Jeronimo by its owners, the Queen’s Revels. The earliest extant print of 1 Jeronimo is 1605, but the play, which is not in S. R., may have been printed earlier. The Chapel boys seem to have revived one at least of Lyly’s old Paul’s plays in 1601. The Chamberlain’s adopted Titus Andronicus, which had been Sussex’s, and Shakespeare revised for them Taming of A Shrew and The Contention, which had been Pembroke’s, and based plays which were new from the literary, and in the case of the last also from the publisher’s, standpoint on the Troublesome Reign of John and the Famous Victories of Henry V, which had been the Queen’s, and upon King Leir. But of course Sussex’s, Pembroke’s, and the Queen’s had broken.

[597] Henslowe, i. 119.

[598] A single printer, Thomas Creede, entered or printed ten plays between 1594 and 1599, all of which he probably acquired in 1594, although he could not get them all in circulation at once. These include four (T. T. of Rich. III, Selimus, Famous Victories, Clyomon and Clamydes) from the Queen’s; it is therefore probable that some of those on whose t.ps. no company is named (Looking Glass, Locrine, Pedlar’s Prophecy, James IV, Alphonsus) were from the same source. The tenth, Menaechmi, was not an acting play.

[599] Pollard, Sh. F. 44; cf. ch. ix.

[600] The Folio editors of Shakespeare condemn the Quartos, or some of them, as ‘stolne, and surreptitious copies’; ‘piratical’, although freely used by Mr. Pollard and others, is not a very happy term, since no piracy of copyright is involved. The authorized Q₂ of Roxana (1632) claims to be ‘a plagiarii unguibus vindicata’.

[601] Introduction, xxxvi of his edition.

[602] R. B. McKerrow in Bibl. Soc. Trans. xii. 294; J. D. Wilson, The Copy for Hamlet 1603 and the Hamlet Transcript 1593 (1918).

[603] C. Dewischeit, Shakespeare und die Stenographie (Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxxiv. 170); cf. Lee, 113, quoting Sir G. Buck’s Third Universitie of England (1612; cf. ch. iii), ‘They which know it [brachygraphy] can readily take a Sermon, Oration, Play, or any long speech, as they are spoke, dictated, acted, and uttered in the instant’.

[604] Pollard, Sh. F. 48; F. and Q. 64. More recently A. W. Pollard and J. D. Wilson have developed a theory (T. L. S. Jan.–Aug. 1919) that the ‘bad quartos’ rest upon pre-Shakespearian texts partly revised by Shakespeare, of which shortened transcripts had been made for a travelling company in 1593, and which had been roughly adapted by an actor-reporter so as to bring them into line with the later Shakespearian texts current at the time of publication. Full discussion of this theory belongs to a study of Shakespeare. The detailed application of it in J. D. Wilson, The Copy for Hamlet 1603 and the Hamlet Transcript 1593 (1918), does not convince me that Shakespeare had touched the play in 1593, although I think that the reporter was in a position to make some slight use of a pre-Shakespearian Hamlet. And although travelling companies were doubtless smaller than the largest London companies (cf. chh. xi and xiii, s.v. Pembroke’s), there is no external evidence that special ‘books’ were prepared for travelling. For another criticism of the theory, cf. W. J. Lawrence in T. L. S. for 21 Aug. 1919. Causes other than travelling might explain the shortening of play texts: prolixity, even in an experienced dramatist (cf. t.p. of Duchess of Malfi), the approach of winter afternoons, an increased popular demand for jigs.

[605] Cf. G. Wither, Schollers Purgatory (c. 1625), 28, ‘Yea, by the lawes and Orders of their Corporation, they can and do setle upon the particuler members thereof a perpetuall interest in such Bookes as are Registred by them at their Hall, in their several Names: and are secured in taking the ful benefit of those books, better then any Author can be by vertue of the Kings Grant, notwithstanding their first Coppies were purloyned from the true owner, or imprinted without his leave’.

[606] Pollard, F. and Q. 10. Mr. Pollard seems to suggest (F. and Q. 3) that copyright in a printed book did not hold as against the author. He cites the case of Nashe’s Pierce Pennilesse, but there seems no special reason to assume that in this case, or in those of Gorboduc and Hamlet, the authorized second editions were not made possible by an arrangement, very likely involving blackmail, with the pirate.

[607] Letter in Grosart, Poems of Sidney (1877), i. xxiii. Pollard, F. and Q. 8, says that on other occasions Sidney’s friends approached the Lord Treasurer and the Star Chamber.

[608] Pollard, F. and Q. 7, 11. I am not sure that the appearance of Bacon’s name can be regarded as a recognition of the principle of author’s copyright. He may have been already in the High Commission; he was certainly in that of 1601.

[609] Pollard, Sh. F. 49, 51, speaks of Burby as ‘regaining the copyright’ by his publications, and as, moreover, saving his sixpences ‘as a license was only required for new books’. But surely there was no copyright, as neither Danter nor Burby paid for an entry. I take it that when, on 22 Jan. 1607, R. J. and L. L. L. were entered to Nicholas Ling, ‘by direccõn of a Court and with consent of Master Burby in wrytinge’, the entry of the transfer secured the copyright for the first time.

[610] Arber, iii. 37. The ink shows that there are two distinct entries.

[611] Fleay, L. and W. 40; Furness, Much Ado, ix.

[612] Pollard, F. and Q. 66; Sh. F. 44.

[613] Roberts did not print the 1603 Hamlet, although he did that of 1604; but it must have been covered by his entry of 1602, and this makes it a little difficult to regard him (or Blount in 1609) as the ‘agent’ of the Chamberlain’s.

[614] Pollard, F. and Q. 66; Sh. F. 45.

[615] There are analogies in Taming of the Shrew, 2, 3 Henry VI, and King John, which were not entered in S. R. with the other unprinted plays in 1623, and were probably regarded as covered by copyright in the plays on which they were based, although, as a matter of fact, the Troublesome Reign was itself not entered.