Volume 3 / Book 5 — BOOK V PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS (continued 11)

1857. W. C. Hazlitt. 4 vols. (Library of Old Authors). [Includes Appius and Virginia, Thracian Wonder, and The Weakest Goeth to the Wall.]

1888. J. A. Symonds, W. and Tourneur (Mermaid Series). [The White Devil and Duchess of Malfi.]

1912. A. H. Thorndike, Webster and Tourneur. (N. E. D.) [White Devil, Duchess of Malfi, Appius and Virginia.]

Dissertations: E. Gosse, J. W. (1883, Seventeenth-Century Studies); A. C. Swinburne, J. W. (1886, Studies in Prose and Poetry, 1894); C. Vopel, J. W. (1888, Bremen diss.); M. Meiners, Metrische Untersuchungen über den Dramatiker J. W. (1893, Halle diss.); W. Archer, Webster, Lamb, and Swinburne (1893, New Review, viii. 96); W. von Wurzbach, J. W. (1898, Jahrbuch, xxxi. 9); J. Morris, J. W. (Fortnightly Review, June 1902); E. E. Stoll, J. W. (1905); L. J. Sturge, W. and the Law; a Parallel (1906, Jahrbuch, xlii, 148); C. Crawford, J. W. and Sir Philip Sidney (1906, Collectanea, i. 20), Montaigne, W., and Marston: Donne and W. (1907, Collectanea, ii. 1); F. E. Pierce, The Collaboration of W. and Dekker (1909, Yale Studies, xxxvii); H. D. Sykes, W. and Sir Thomas Overbury (1613, 11 N. Q. viii. 221, 244, 263, 282, 304); A. F. Bourgeois, W. and the N. E. D. (1914, 11 N. Q. ix. 302, 324, 343); R. Brooke, J. W. and the Elizabethan Drama (1916).

Sir Thomas Wyatt. 1602

With Chettle, Dekker (q.v.), Heywood, and Smith, for Worcester’s.

The Malcontent. 1604

Additions to the play of Marston (q.v.) for the King’s.

Westward Ho! 1604

With Dekker (q.v.) for Paul’s.

Northward Ho! 1605

With Dekker (q.v.) for Paul’s.

Appius and Virginia. c. 1608.

S. R. 1654, May 13. ‘A play called Appeus and Virginia Tragedy written by John Webster.’ Richard Marriott (Eyre, i. 448).

1654. Appius and Virginia. A Tragedy. By Iohn Webster. [No imprint.]

1659. For Humphrey Moseley. [A reissue.]

1679.

Edition by C. W. Dilke (1814–15, O. E. P. v).—Dissertations: J. Lauschke, John Webster’s Tragödie A. und V. Eine Quellenstudie (1899, Leipzig diss.); H. D. Sykes, An Attempt to determine the Date of Webster’s A. and V. (1913, 11 N. Q. vii. 401, 422, 466; viii. 63); R. Brooke, The Authorship of the Later A. and V. (1913, M. L. R. viii. 433), more fully in John Webster (1916); A. M. Clark, A. and V. (1921, M. L. R. xvi. 1).

The play is in Beeston’s list of Cockpit plays in 1639 (Var. iii. 159), Webster’s authorship has generally been accepted, but Stoll, 197, who put the play 1623–39, because of resemblances to Julius Caesar and Coriolanus which he thought implied a knowledge of F₁, traced a dependence upon the comic manner of Heywood. Similarly, Sykes is puzzled by words which he thinks borrowed from Heywood and first used by Heywood in works written after Webster’s death. He comes to the conclusion that Heywood may have revised a late work by Webster. There is much to be said for the view taken by Brooke and Clark, after a thorough-going analysis of the problem, that the play is Heywood’s own, possibly with a few touches from Webster’s hand, and may have been written, at any date not long after the production of Coriolanus on the stage (c. 1608), for Queen Anne’s men, from whom it would naturally pass into the Cockpit repertory.

The White Devil. 1609 < > 12

1612. The White Divel; Or, The Tragedy of Paulo Giordano Ursini, Duke of Brachiano, With The Life and Death of Vittoria Corombona the famous Venetian Curtizan. Acted by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by Iohn Webster. N. O. for Thomas Archer. (Epistle to the Reader; after text, a note.)

1631.... Acted, by the Queenes Maiesties seruants, at the Phœnix, in Drury Lane. I. N. for Hugh Perry.

1665; 1672.

Editions in Dodsley^1–3 (1744–1825) and by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. iii) and M. W. Sampson (1904, B. L.).—Dissertations: B. Nicholson, Thomas Adams’ Sermon on The W. D. (1881, 6 N. Q. iii. 166); W. W. Greg, W.’s W. D. (1900, M. L. Q. iii. 112); M. Landau, Vittoria Accorambona in der Dichtung im Verhältniss zu ihrer wahren Geschichte (1902, Euphorion, ix. 310); E. M. Cesaresco, Vittoria Accoramboni (1902, Lombard Studies, 131); P. Simpson, An Allusion in W. (1907, M. L. R. ii. 162); L. MacCracken, A Page of Forgotten History (1911); H. D. Sykes, The Date of W.’s Play, the W. D. (1913, 11 N. Q. vii. 342).

The epistle apologizes for the ill success of the play, on the ground that ‘it was acted in so dull a time of winter, presented in so open and blacke a theater, that it wanted ... a full and understanding auditory’, and complains that the spectators at ‘that play-house’ care more for new plays than for good plays. Fleay, ii. 271, dates the production in the winter of 1607–8, taking the French ambassador described in III. i. 73 as a performer ‘at last tilting’ to be M. Goterant who tilted on 24 March 1607, since ‘no other Frenchman’s name occurs in the tilt-lists. It is nothing to Fleay that Goterant was not an ambassador, or that the lists of Jacobean tilters are fragmentary, or that the scene of the play is not England but Italy. Simpson found an inferior limit in a borrowing from Jonson’s Mask of Queens on 2 Feb. 1609. I do not find much conviction in the other indications of a date in 1610 cited by Sampson, xl, or in the parallel with Jonson’s epistle to Catiline (1611), with which Stoll, 21, supports a date in 1612. The Irish notes which Stoll regards as taken from B. Rich, A New Description of Ireland (1610), in fact go back to Stanyhurst’s account of 1577, and though there is a pretty clear borrowing from Tourneur’s Atheist’s Tragedy, that may have been produced some time before its publication in 1611. Nor was Dekker necessarily referring to Webster, when he wrote to the Queen’s men in his epistle before If this be not a Good Play (1612): ‘I wish a Faire and Fortunate Day to your Next New-Play for the Makers-sake and your Owne, because such Brave Triumphes of Poesie and Elaborate Industry, which my Worthy Friends Muse hath there set forth, deserue a Theater full of very Muses themselves to be Spectators. To that Faire Day I wish a Full, Free and Knowing Auditor.’

Webster’s own epistle contains his appreciation ‘of other mens worthy labours; especially of that full and haightned stile of Maister Chapman, the labor’d and understanding workes of Maister Johnson, the no lesse worthy composures of the both worthily excellent Maister Beamont, & Maister Fletcher, and lastly (without wrong last to be named) the right happy and copious industry of M. Shakespeare, M. Decker, & M. Heywood’. In the final note he commends the actors, and in particular ‘the well approved industry of my friend Maister Perkins’.

The Duchess of Malfi. 1613–14

1623. The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy. As it was Presented priuately, at the Black-Friers; and publiquely at the Globe, By the Kings Maiesties Seruants. The perfect and exact Coppy, with diuerse things Printed, that the length of the Play would not beare in the Presentment. Written by John Webster. Nicholas Okes for Iohn Waterson. [Epistle to George Lord Berkeley, signed ‘John Webster’; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘Thomas Middletonus Poëta et Chron: Londinensis’, ‘Wil: Rowley’, ‘John Ford’; ‘The Actors Names. Bosola, J. Lowin. Ferdinand, 1 R. Burbidge, 2 J. Taylor. Cardinall, 1 H. Cundaile, 2 R. Robinson. Antonio, 1 W. Ostler, 2 R. Benfeild. Delio, J. Underwood. Forobosco, N. Towley. Pescara, J. Rice. Silvio, T. Pollard. Mad-men, N. Towley, J. Underwood, etc. Cardinals M^is, J. Tomson. The Doctor, etc., R. Pallant. Duchess, R. Sharpe.’]

1640; 1678; N.D.

Editions by C. E. Vaughan (1896, T. D.), M. W. Sampson (1904, B. L.), and W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.).—Dissertations: K. Kiesow, Die verschiedenen Bearbeitungen der Novelle von der Herzogin von Amalfi des Bandello in den Literaturen des xvi. und xvii. Jahrhunderts (1895, Anglia, xvii. 199); J. T. Murray, The D. of M. List of the King’s Company (1910, E. D. C. ii. 146); W. J. Lawrence, The Date of the D. of M. (Athenaeum for 21 Nov. 1919); W. Archer, The D. of M. (Nineteenth Century for Jan. 1920).

The actor-list records two distinct casts, one before Ostler’s death on 16 Dec. 1614, the other after Burbadge’s death on 13 March 1619, and before that of Tooley in June 1623. Stoll, 29, quotes the Anglopotrida of Orazio Busino (cf. the abstract in V. P. xv. 134), which appears to show that the play was on the stage at some date not very long before Busino wrote on 7 Feb. 1618:

Prendono giuoco gli Inglesi della nostra religione come di cosa detestabile, et superstitiosa, ne mai rappresentano qualsivoglia attione pubblica, sia pura Tragisatiricomica, che non inserischino dentro uitij, et scelleragini di qualche religioso catolico, facendone risate, et molti scherni, con lor gusto, et ramarico de’ buoni, fu appunto veduto dai nostri, in una Commedia introdur’un frate franciscano, astuto, et ripieno di varie impietà, cosi d’avaritia come di libidine: et il tutto poi ruiscì in una Tragedia, facendoli mozzar la vista in scena. Un altra volta rappresentarono la grandezza d’un cardinale, con li habiti formali, et proprij molti belli, et ricchi, con la sua Corte, facendo in scena erger un Altare, dove finse di far oratione, ordinando una processione: et poi lo ridussero in pubblico con una Meretrice in seno. Dimostrò di dar il Velleno ad una sua sorella, per interesse d’honore: et d’ andar in oltre alla guerra, con depponer prima l’habito cardinalitio sopra l’altare col mezzo de’ suoi Cappellani, con gravità, et finalmente si fece cingere la spada, metter la serpa, con tanto garbo, che niente più: et tutto ciò fanno in sprezzo, delle grandezze ecclesiastice vilipese, et odiate a morte in questo Regno.

Di Londra a’ 7 febaio 1618.

The date of first production may reasonably be put in 1613–14. Crawford has pointed out the resemblances between the play and A Monumental Column (1613) and definite borrowings from Donne’s Anatomy of the World (1612), Chapman’s Petrarch’s Seven Penitentiall Psalms (1612), and Chapman’s Middle Temple mask of 15 Feb. 1613. Lawrence thinks that Campion’s mask of 14 Feb. 1613 is also drawn upon. But it is not impossible that the extant text has undergone revision, in view of borrowings from the 6th edition (1615) of Sir Thomas Overbury’s Characters, to which Sykes calls attention, and of the apparent allusion pointed out by Vaughan in I. i. 5 to the purging of the French Court by Louis XIII after the assassination of Marshall d’Ancre on 14 April 1617. It need not be inferred that this is the ‘enterlude concerninge the late Marquesse d’Ancre’, which the Privy Council ordered the Master of Revels to stay on 22 June 1617 (M. S. C. i. 376).

Later Plays

The Devil’s Law Case (1623).

A Cure for a Cuckold (1661), with W. Rowley.

On the authorship and dates of these, cf. Brooke, 250, 255, and H. D. Sykes in 11 N. Q. vii. 106; ix. 382, 404, 443, 463.

Lost Plays

The following are recorded in Henslowe’s diary:

For the Admiral’s:

Caesar’s Fall or The Two Shapes.

With Dekker, Drayton, Middleton, and Munday, May 1602.

For Worcester’s:

Christmas Comes but Once a Year.

With Chettle, Dekker, and Heywood, Nov. 1602.

In the epistle to The Devil’s Law Case, Webster says to Sir T. Finch, ‘Some of my other works, as The White Devil, The Duchess of Malfi, Guise and others, you have formerly seen’, and a Guise is ascribed to him as a comedy in Archer’s play-list of 1656 and included without ascription as a tragedy in Kirkman’s of 1661 and 1671 (Greg, Masques, lxxii). Rogers and Ley’s list of 1656 had given it to Marston (q.v.). Collier forged an entry in Henslowe’s diary meant to suggest that this was the Massacre at Paris (cf. s.v. Marlowe).

In Sept. 1624 Herbert licensed ‘a new Tragedy called A Late Murther of the Sonn upon the Mother: Written by Forde, and Webster’ (Herbert, 29).

Doubtful Plays

The ascription to Webster on the t.p. of The Thracian Wonder is not generally accepted. His hand has been suggested in Revenger’s Tragedy and The Weakest Goeth to the Wall.

GEORGE WHETSTONE (1544?-87?).

Whetstone was a Londoner by origin. After a riotous youth, he turned to literature interspersed with adventure, possibly acting at Canterbury c. 1571 (cf. ch. xv), serving in the Low Countries in 1572–4, the Newfoundland voyage in 1578–9, and the Low Countries again in 1585–6. His chief literary associates were Thomas Churchyard and George Gascoigne.

After writing his one play, Promos and Cassandra, he translated its source, the 5th Novel of the 8th Decade of Giraldi Cinthio’s Hecatomithi (1565) in his Heptameron of Civil Discourses (1582). Both Italian and English are in Hazlitt, Shakespeare’s Library (1875, iii). Like some other dramatists, Whetstone turned upon the stage, and attacked it in his Touchstone for the Time (1584; cf. App. C, No. xxxvi).

Promos and Cassandra. 1578

S. R. 1578, July 31. ‘The famous historie of Promos and Casandra Devided into twoe Comicall Discourses Compiled by George Whetstone gent.’ Richard Jones (Arber, ii. 334).

1578. The Right Excellent and famous Historye, of Promos and Cassandra; Deuided into two Commicall Discourses.... The worke of George Whetstones Gent. Richard Jones. [Epistles to his ‘kinsman’ William Fleetwood, dated 29 July 1578, and signed ‘George Whetstone’, and from the Printer to the Reader, signed ‘R.I.’; Argument; Text signed ‘G. Whetstone’; Colophon with imprint and date ‘August 20, 1578’.]

Editions in Six Old Plays, i. 1 (1779), and by W. C. Hazlitt, Shakespeare’s Library, vi. 201 (1875), and J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.). There are two parts, arranged in acts and scenes. Whetstone’s epistle is of some critical interest (cf. App. C, No. xix). In the Heptameron he says the play was ‘yet never presented upon stage’. The character of the s.ds. suggests, however, that it was written for presentation.

NATHANIEL WIBURNE (c. 1597).

Possible author of the academic Machiavellus (cf. App. K).

GEORGE WILKINS (fl. 1604–8).

Lee (D. N. B.) after personally consulting the register of St. Leonard’s Shoreditch, confirms the extract in Collier, iii. 348, of the burial on 19 Aug. 1603 of ‘George Wilkins, the poet’. It must therefore be assumed that the date of 9 Aug. 1613 given for the entry by T. E. Tomlins in Sh. Soc. Papers, i. 34, from Ellis’s History of Shoreditch (1798) is an error, and that the ‘poet’ was distinct from the dramatist. Nothing is known of Wilkins except that he wrote pamphlets from c. 1604 to 1608, and towards the end of that period was also engaged in play-writing both for the King’s and the Queen’s men. A George Wilkins of St. Sepulchre’s, described as a victualler and aged 36, was a fellow witness with Shakespeare in Belott v. Mountjoy on 19 June 1612 (C. W. Wallace, N. U. S. x. 289).

The Miseries of Enforced Marriage. 1607

S. R. 1607, July 31 (Buck). ‘A tragedie called the Miserye of inforced Marriage.’ George Vyncent (Arber, iii. 357).

1607. The Miseries of Inforst Manage. As it is now playd by his Maiesties Seruants. By George Wilkins. For George Vincent.

1611; 1629; 1637.

Editions in Dodsley^2–4 (1780–1874) and by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. ii) and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.).

The play, which was based on the life of Walter Calverley, as given in pamphlets of 1605, appears to have been still on the stage when it was printed. An allusion in III. ii to fighting with a windmill implies some knowledge of Don Quixote, but of this there are other traces by 1607. The Clown is called Robin in II. ii, and Fleay, ii. 276, suggests that Armin took the part. He comes in singing:

in reference to Kempe’s morris.

Doubtful Plays

Wilkins probably wrote Acts I, II of Pericles, and it has been suggested that he also wrote certain scenes of Timon of Athens; but the relation of his work to Shakespeare’s cannot be gone into here.

The anonymous Yorkshire Tragedy has also been ascribed to him.

ROBERT WILMOT (> 1566–91 <).

A student of the Inner Temple, and afterwards Rector of North Ockendon, Essex, from 28 Nov. 1582 and of Horndon-on-the-Hill, Essex, from 2 Dec. 1585. William Webbe, A Discourse of English Poetry (ed. Arber, 35), commends his writing.

Tancred and Gismund. 1566 (?)

Written with Rod. Staff[ord], Hen[ry] No[el], G. Al. and Chr[istopher] Hat[ton].

[MSS.] (a) Lansdowne MS. 786, f. 1, ‘Gismond of Salern in Loue’.

(b) Brit. Mus. Hargrave MS. 205, f. 9, ‘The Tragedie of Gismond of Salerne’.

[Both MSS. have three sonnets ‘of the Quenes maydes’, and Prologue and Epilogue.]

(c) A fragment, now unknown, formerly belonging to Milton’s father-in-law, Richard Powell.

1591. The Tragedie of Tancred and Gismund. Compiled by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple, and by them presented before her Maiestie. Newly reuiued and polished according to the decorum of these daies. By R. W. Thomas Scarlet, sold by R. Robinson. [Epistles to Lady Mary Peter and Lady Anne Gray, signed ‘Robert Wilmot’; to R. W. signed ‘Guil. Webbe’ and dated ‘Pyrgo in Essex August the eighth 1591’; to the Inner and Middle Temple and other Readers, signed ‘R. Wilmot’; two Sonnets (2 and 3 of MSS.); Arguments; Prologue; Epilogue signed ‘R. W.’; Introductiones (dumb-shows). Some copies are dated 1592.]

Editions in Dodsley^1–4 (1744–1874) and by J. S. Farmer (1912, S. F. T.) from 1591, and by A. Brandl (1898, Q. W. D.) and J. W. Cunliffe (1912, E. E. C. T.) and J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.) from MS.—Dissertations: J. W. Cunliffe, Gismond of Salerne (1906, M. L. A. xxi. 435); A. Klein, The Decorum of These Days (1918, M. L. A. xxxiii. 244).

The MSS. represent the play as originally produced, probably, from an allusion in one of the sonnets, at Greenwich. The print represents a later revision by Wilmot, involving much re-writing and the insertion of new scenes and the dumb-shows. Webbe’s epistle is an encouragement to Wilmot to publish his ‘waste papers’, and refers to Tancred as ‘framed’ by the Inner Temple, and to Wilmot as ‘disrobing him of his antique curiosity and adorning him with the approved guise of our stateliest English terms’. Wilmot’s own Epistle to the Readers apologizes for the indecorum of publishing a play, excuses it by the example of Beza’s Abraham and Buchanan’s Jephthes, and refers to ‘the love that hath been these twenty-four years betwixt’ himself and Gismund. This seems to date the original production in 1567. But I find no evidence that Elizabeth was at Greenwich in 1567. Shrovetide 1566 seems the nearest date at which a play is likely to have been given there. Wilmot was clearly not the sole author of the original play; to Act I he affixes ‘Exegit Rod. Staff.’; to Act II, ‘Per Hen. No.’; to Act III, ‘G. Al.’; to Act IV, ‘Composuit Chr. Hat.’; to the Epilogue, ‘R. W.’ Probably Act V, which has no indication of authorship, was also his own.

W. H. Cooke, Students Admitted to the Inner Temple, 1547–1660 (1878), gives the admission of Christopher Hatton in 1559–60, but Wilmot is not traceable in the list; nor are Hen. No., G. Al., or Rod. Staff. But the first may be Elizabeth’s Gentleman Pensioner, Henry Noel (q.v.), and Cunliffe, lxxxvi, notes that a ‘Master Stafford’ was fined £5 for refusing to act as Marshal at the Inner Temple in 1556–7.

Doubtful Play

Hazlitt assigns to Wilmot The Three Ladies of London, but the R. W. of the title-page is almost certainly Robert Wilson (q.v.).

ROBERT WILSON (> 1572–1600).

For Wilson’s career as an actor and a discussion as to whether there was more than one dramatist of the name, cf. ch. xv.

The Three Ladies of London. c. 1581

1584. A right excellent and famous Comœdy called the three Ladies of London. Wherein is notably declared and set foorth, how by the meanes of Lucar, Love and Conscience is so corrupted, that the one is married to Dissimulation, the other fraught with all abhomination. A perfect patterne for all Estates to looke into, and a worke right worthie to be marked. Written by R. W. as it hath been publiquely played. Roger Warde. [Prologue. At end of play ‘Paule Bucke’ (an actor; cf. ch. xv).]

1592. John Danter.

Editions by J. P. Collier, Five Old Plays (1851, Roxb. Club), in Dodsley⁴ (1874), vi, and by J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.).

The stylistic resemblance of this to the next two plays justifies the attribution to Wilson, although Hazlitt suggests Wilmot. Gosson describes the play in 1582 (P. C. 185) together with a play in answer called London Against the Three Ladies, but does not indicate whether either play was then in print. In B ii Peter’s pence are dated as ‘not muche more than 26 yeares, it was in Queen Maries time’. As the Act reviving Peter’s pence was passed in the winter of 1554–5, the play was probably written in 1581.

The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London. c. 1589

S. R. 1590, July 31 (Wood). ‘A comodie of the plesant and statelie morrall of the Three lordes of London.’ Richard Jones (Arber, ii. 556).

1590. The Pleasant and Stately Morall, of the three Lordes and three Ladies of London. With the great Joy and Pompe, Solempnized at their Mariages: Commically interlaced with much honest Mirth, for pleasure and recreation, among many Morall obseruations and other important matters of due regard. By R. W. R. Jones. [Woodcut, on which cf. Bibl. Note to ch. xviii; ‘Preface’, i.e. prologue.]

Editions by J. P. Collier (1851, Five Old Plays), in Dodsley⁴, vi. 371 (1874), and by J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).—Dissertation: H. Fernow, The 3 L. and 3 L. By R. W. (1885, Hamburg programme).

Fleay, ii. 280, fixes the date by the allusions (C, C^v) to the recent death of Tarlton (q.v.) in Sept. 1588.

The Cobbler’s Prophecy > 1594

S. R. 1594, June 8. ‘A booke intituled the Coblers prophesie.’ Cuthbert Burby (Arber, ii. 653).

1594. The Coblers Prophesie. Written by Robert Wilson, Gent. John Danter for Cuthbert Burby.

Editions by W. Dibelius (1897, Jahrbuch, xxxiii. 3), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), and A. C. Wood (1914, M. S. R.).

The general character of this play, with its reference (i. 36) to an audience who ‘sit and see’ and its comfits cast, suggests the Court rather than the popular stage.

Doubtful Plays

Wilson’s hand has been sought in Clyomon and Clamydes, Fair Em, Knack to Know a Knave, Pedlar’s Prophecy (cf. ch. xxiv).

Lost Plays

Short and Sweet (c. 1579). Vide Catiline’s Conspiracy (infra).

The following is a complete list of plays for the Admiral’s men in which a share is assigned to Wilson by Henslowe:

(i, ii) 1, 2, Earl Godwin and his Three Sons.

With Chettle, Dekker, and Drayton, March-June 1598.

(iii) Pierce of Exton.

With Chettle, Dekker, and Drayton, April, 1598; but apparently unfinished.

(iv) 1 Black Bateman of the North.

With Chettle, Dekker, and Drayton, May 1598.

(v) 2 Black Bateman of the North.

With Chettle, June 1598.

(vi) Funeral of Richard Cœur-de-Lion.

With Chettle, Drayton, and Munday, June 1598.

(vii) The Madman’s Morris.

With Dekker and Drayton, July 1598.

(viii) Hannibal and Hermes.

With Dekker and Drayton, July 1598.

(ix) Pierce of Winchester.

With Dekker and Drayton, July–Aug. 1598.

(x) Chance Medley.

With Chettle or Dekker, Drayton, and Munday, Aug. 1598.

(xi) Catiline’s Conspiracy.

With Chettle, Aug. 1598; but apparently not finished; unless the fact that the authors only received one ‘earnest’ of £1 5s. was due to the play being no more than a revision of Wilson’s old Short and Sweet, which Lodge (cf. App. C, No. xxiii) contrasts about 1579 with Gosson’s play on Catiline.

(xii, xiii) 1, 2 Sir John Oldcastle.

With Drayton (q.v.), Hathaway, and Munday, Oct.–Dec. 1599.

(xiv) 2 Henry Richmond.

Nov. 1599, apparently with others, as shown by Robert Shaw’s order for payment (Greg, Henslowe Papers, 49), on which a scenario of one act is endorsed.

(xv) Owen Tudor.

With Drayton, Hathaway, and Munday, Jan. 1600; but apparently not finished.

(xvi) 1 Fair Constance of Rome.

June 1600. The Diary gives the payments as made to Dekker, Drayton, Hathaway, and Munday, but a letter of 14 June from Robert Shaw (Greg, Henslowe Papers, 55) indicates that Wilson had a fifth share.

ANTHONY WINGFIELD (c. 1550–1615).

Possible author of the academic Pedantius (cf. App. K).

NATHANIEL WOODES (?).

A minister of Norwich, only known as author of the following play.

The Conflict of Conscience. > 1581

1581. An excellent new Commedie Intituled: The Conflict of Conscience. Contayninge, A most lamentable example, of the dolefull desperation of a miserable worldlinge, termed, by the name of Philologus, who forsooke the trueth of God’s Gospel, for feare of the losse of lyfe, & worldly goods. Compiled, by Nathaniell Woodes, Minister, in Norwich. Richard Bradocke. [Prologue.]

Editions by J. P. Collier (1851, Five Old Plays), in Dodsley⁴, vi. 29 (1874), and by J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.).

The characters are allegorical, typical and personal and arranged for six actors ‘most convenient for such as be disposed either to shew this Comedie in private houses or otherwise’. Philologus is Francis Spiera, a pervert to Rome about the middle of the sixteenth century. The play is strongly Protestant, and is probably much earlier than 1581. It is divided into a prologue and acts and scenes. Act VI is practically an epilogue.

HENRY WOTTON (1568–1639).

Izaak Walton (Reliquiae Wottonianae, 1651) tells us that, while a student at Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1586, Wotton ‘was by the chief of that College, persuasively enjoined to write a play for their private use;—it was the Tragedy of Tancredo—which was so interwoven with sentences, and for the method and exact personating those humours, passions, and dispositions, which he proposed to represent, so performed, that the gravest of that society declared, he had, in a slight employment, given an early and a solid testimony of his future abilities’.

CHRISTOPHER WREN (1591–1658).

Author of the academic Physiponomachia (cf. App. K).

ROBERT YARINGTON (c. 1601?).

Nothing is known of Yarington, but this is hardly sufficient reason for denying him the ascription of the title-page.

Two Lamentable Tragedies. 1594 < > 1601

1601. Two Lamentable Tragedies. The one, of the murder of Maister Beech a Chaundler in Thames-streete, and his boye, done by Thomas Merry. The other of a young childe murthered in a Wood by two Ruffins, with the consent of his Vnckle. By Rob. Yarington. For Mathew Lawe. [Running title, ‘Two Tragedies in One.’ Induction.]

Editions by A. H. Bullen (1885, O. E. P. iv) and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.).—Dissertation: R. A. Law, Y.’s T. L. T. (1910, M. L. R. v. 167).

This deals in alternate scenes with (a) the murder of Beech by Merry on 23 Aug. 1594, and (b) a version, with an Italian setting, of the Babes in the Wood, on which a ballad, with a Norfolk setting, was licensed in 1595. Greg, Henslowe, ii. 208, following a hint of Fleay, ii. 285, connects the play with Henslowe’s entries of payments, on behalf of the Admiral’s, (i) of £5 in Nov. and Dec. 1599 to Day and Haughton for Thomas Merry or Beech’s Tragedy, (ii) of 10s. in Nov. 1599 and 10s. in Sept. 1601 to Chettle for The Orphan’s Tragedy, and (iii) of £2 to Day in Jan. 1600 for an Italian tragedy. He supposes that (ii) and (iii) were the same play, that it was finished, and that in 1601 Chettle combined it with (i), possibly dropping out Day’s contributions to both pieces. Yarington he dismisses as a scribe. In the alternate scenes of the extant version he discerns distinct hands, presumably those of Haughton and Chettle respectively. Law does not think that there are necessarily two hands at all, finds imitation of Leire (1594) in scenes belonging to both plots, and reinstates Yarington. Oliphant (M. P. viii. 435) boldly conjectures that ‘Rob. Yarington’ might be a misreading of ‘W^m Haughton’. Bullen thought that this play, Arden of Feversham, and A Warning for Fair Women might all be by the same hand.

CHRISTOPHER YELVERTON (c. 1535–1612).

Yelverton entered Gray’s Inn in 1552. He is mentioned as a poet in Jasper Heywood’s verses before Thomas Newton’s translation (1560) of Seneca’s Thyestes, and wrote an epilogue to the Gray’s Inn Jocasta of Gascoigne (q.v.) and Kinwelmershe in 1566. He also helped to devise the dumb-shows for the Gray’s Inn Misfortunes of Arthur of Thomas Hughes (q.v.) on 28 Feb. 1588. He became a Justice of the Queen’s Bench on 2 Feb. 1602 and was knighted on 23 July 1603.

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