Note 548 — BOOK III THE COMPANIES (continued 5)
Reading edition
There may be an allusion to this play in H. Parrot, Laquei Ridiculosi, Springes for Woodcocks (1613), ii. 162:
’Tis said that Whittington was rais’d of nought, And by a cat hath divers wonders wrought: But Fortune (not his cat) makes it appear, He may dispend a thousand marks a year.
Dr. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 65) has dispersed Collier’s myth of one Whittington ‘perhaps a sleeping partner in the speculation of the Fortune’.