Act 5 — THE ADVENTURES OF FIVE HOURS.
Reading edition
EDITIONS.
The Adventures of Five Hours. A Tragi-Comedy.—Non ego Ventosæ Plebis suffragia venor. Horat. Fr. 21o, 1662. Imprimatur, John Birkenhead. London. Printed for Henry Herringman, at the Anchor in the Lower Walk of the New Exchange, 1663. fol.[29]
The Adventures of Five Houres: a Tragi-Comedy. As it is acted at His Royal Highness the Duke of York's Theatre. The third impression. Revised and corrected by the author, Sir Samuel Tuke, Kt. and Bart. Nonumque prematur in Annum. Horat. de Art Poet. London: Printed by T. N. for Henry Herringman, at the sign of the Blew Anchor, on the Lower Walk of the New Exchange. 1671. 4o.[30]
FOOTNOTES:
PREFACE.
Sir Samuel Tuke, of Temple Cressy, in the county of Essex, was a colonel of horse in the king's army, and served against the Parliament, as long as the affairs of his master had any prospect of success. He was very active in that rising in the county of Essex which ended fatally to some of the chief actors in it. From the prologue to the present play, spoken at court, it appears that he intended to retire from business soon after the Restoration, but was diverted from that design for some time by his Majesty's recommending him to adapt a Spanish play[31] to the English stage, which he executed with some degree of success. On the 31st March,[32] 1664, he was created a baronet. He married Mary, the daughter of Edward Sheldon, a lady who was one of the dressers to Queen Mary, and probably a Roman Catholic, of which persuasion our author seems also to have been.[33] He died at Somerset House, on the 26th of January 1673, and was buried in the vault under the chapel there. Langbaine, by mistake, says he was alive at the time he (Langbaine) published his "Lives of the Dramatic Poets."
Sir Samuel did not escape the censure of his brother poets.[34] One of them, speaking of Cowley, says he
Writ verses unjustly in praise of Sam Tuke.[35]
And in the same poem—
Sam Tuke sat, and formally smiled at the rest; But Apollo, who well did his vanity know, Call'd him to the bar to put him to the test, But his muse was so stiff, she scarcely could go. She pleaded her age, desir'd a reward; It seems in her age she doated on praise: But Apollo resolv'd that such a bold bard Should never be grac'd with a per'wig of bays.
There is some reason for assigning to Sir Samuel Take part authorship of "Pompey the Great," which is generally supposed to have been translated by Waller, Lord Dorset, Sir C. Sedley, and Godolphin, and printed in 1664. At the end of an edition of Sir John Denham's poems, "printed by J. M. for H. Herringman," 1684, is a catalogue of other works published by the same bookseller, and among them this entry:—"By Samuel Tuke, and several persons of honour. Pompey."
Sir Samuel was one of the first members of the Royal Society, and wrote a history of the ordering and generation of green Colchester oysters, printed in Spratt's "History," p. 307.
FOOTNOTES:
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY HOWARD OF NORFOLK.[36]
Since it is your pleasure, Noble Sir, that I should hold my fortune from you, like those tenants, who pay some inconsiderable trifle in lieu of a valuable rent, I humbly offer you this poem, in acknowledgment of my tenure: and I am well pleas'd with this occasion to publish my sense of your favours, since it seems to me a kind of ingratitude to be thankful in private.
It was bred upon the terrace-walks in your garden at Albury; and if I mistake not, it resembles the place where it was brought up: the plot is delightful, the elevations natural, the ascents easy, without any great embellishments of art.
I designed the character of Antonio, as a copy of your steady virtue; if it appear to those, who have the honour to know you, short of the original, I take leave to inform them, that you have not sat to me long; 'tis possible hereafter I may gratify my country, for their civility to this essay, with something more worthy of your patronage and their indulgence.
In the interim, I make it my glory to avow that, had Fortune been just to me, she could not have recompensed the loyal industry of my life with a more illustrious title than that which you have been pleased to confer upon me, of Your Friend. To which (as in gratitude I am bound) I subjoin that of
Your most humble servant,
S. TUKE.