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

1680. The Perjured Nun.

Editions by W. R. Chetwood (1750, S. C.) and A. E. H. Swaen (1907, Materialien, xviii).—Dissertation: A. E. H. Swaen, The Date of B.’s L. K. (1908, M. L. R. iv. 87).

There are small bits of evidence, in the use of Danish names from Hamlet and other Elizabethan plays, and in a jest on ‘Mondays vein to poetize’ (l. 548), to suggest a date of composition long before that of publication, but a borrowing from The Knight of the Burning Pestle makes it improbable that this can be earlier than 1607. The amount of Newcastle local colour and a special mention of ‘those Players of Interludes that dwels at Newcastle’ (l. 534) led Fleay, i. 34, to conjecture that it was acted in that town.

Doubtful Plays

Anthony Brewer has been confused with Thomas Brewer, or perhaps with more than one writer of that name, who wrote various works of popular literature, and to whom yet others bearing only the initials T. B. are credited, between 1608 and 1656. Thus The Country Girl, printed as by T. B. in 1647, is ascribed in Kirkman’s play-lists of 1661 and 1671 to Antony Brewer, but in Archer’s list of 1656 to Thomas. Oliphant (M. P. viii. 422) points out that the scene is in part at Edmonton, and thinks it a revision by Massinger of an early work by Thomas, who published a pamphlet entitled The Life and Death of the Merry Devil of Edmonton in 1608.

ARTHUR BROOKE (ob. 1563).

In 1562 he was admitted to the Inner Temple without fee ‘in consideration of certain plays and shows at Christmas last set forth by him’ (Inderwick, Inner Temple Records, i. 219). Possibly he refers to one of these plays when he says in the epistle to his Romeus and Juliet (1562), ‘I saw the same argument lately set foorth on stage with more commendation then I can looke for: (being there much better set forth then I have or can dooe)’; but if so, he clearly was not himself the author.

SAMUEL BROOKE (c. 1574–1631).

Brooke was of a York family, and, like his brother Christopher, the poet, a friend of John Donne, whose marriage he earned a prison by celebrating in 1601. He entered Trinity, Cambridge, c. 1592, took his B.A. in 1595 and his M.A. in 1598. He became chaplain to Prince Henry, and subsequently Gresham Professor of Divinity and chaplain successively to James and Charles. In 1629 he became Master of Trinity, and in 1631, just before his death, Archdeacon of Coventry.

Adelphe. 27 Feb. 1613

[MSS.] T. C. C. MS. R. 3. 9. ‘Comoedia in Collegii Trin. aula bis publice acta. Authore D^no D^re Brooke, Coll. Trin.’; T. C. C. MS. R. 10. 4, with prologue dated 1662.

The play was produced on 27 Feb. 1613 and repeated on 2 March 1613 during the visit of Charles and the Elector Frederick to Cambridge.

Scyros. 3 March 1613

[MSS.] T. C. C. MS. R. 3. 9. ‘Fabula Pastoralis acta coram Principe Charolo et comite Palatino mensis Martii 30 A. D. 1612. Authore D^re Brooke Coll. Trin.’; T. C. C. MSS. R. 3. 37; R. 10. 4; R. 17. 10; O. 3. 4; Emanuel, Cambridge, MS. iii. i. 17; Cambridge Univ. Libr. MS. Ee. v. 16.

This also was produced during the visit of Charles and Frederick to Cambridge. As pointed out by Greg, Pastoral, 251, the ‘Martii 30’ of the MSS. is an error for ‘Martii 3^o’. The play is a version of the Filli di Sciro (1607) of G. Bonarelli della Rovere.

Melanthe. 10 March 1615

1615, March 27. Melanthe Fabula pastoralis acta cum Jacobus, Magnae Brit. Franc. & Hiberniae Rex, Cantabrigiam suam nuper inviseret, ibidemque Musarum atque eius animi gratia dies quinque commoraretur. Egerunt Alumni Coll. San. et Individuae Trinitatis. Cantabrigiae. Cantrellus Legge.

The ascription to Brooke is due to the Dering MS. (Gent. Mag. 1756, p. 223). Chamberlain (Birch, i. 304) says that the play was ‘excellently well written, and as well acted’.

WILLIAM BROWNE (1591–1643?).

Browne was born at Tavistock, educated at the Grammar School there and at Exeter College, Oxford, and entered the Inner Temple from Clifford’s Inn in Nov. 1611. He is known as a poet, especially by Britannia’s Pastorals (1613, 1616), but beyond his mask has no connexion with the stage. In later life he was of the household of the Herberts at Wilton.

Ulysses and Circe. 13 Jan. 1615

[MSS.] (a) Emmanuel College, Cambridge, with title, ‘The Inner Temple Masque. Presented by the gentlemen there. Jan. 13, 1614.’ [Epistle to Inner Temple, signed ‘W. Browne’.]

(b) Collection of H. Chandos Pole-Gell, Hopton Hall, Wirksworth (in 1894).

Editions with Browne’s Works by T. Davies (1772), W. C. Hazlitt (1868), and G. Goodwin (1894).

The maskers, in green and white, were Knights; the first antimaskers, with an ‘antic measure’, two Actaeons, two Midases, two Lycaons, two Baboons, and Grillus; the second antimaskers, ‘to a softer tune’, four Maids of Circe and three Nereids; the musicians Sirens, Echoes, a Woodman, and others; the presenters Triton, Circe, and Ulysses.

The locality was the hall of the Inner Temple. Towards the lower end was discovered a sea-cliff. The drawing of a traverse discovered a wood, in which later two gates flew open, disclosing the maskers asleep in an arbour at the end of a glade. Awaked by a charm, they danced their first and second measures, took out ladies for ‘the old measures, galliards, corantoes, the brawls, etc.’, and danced their last measure.

The Inner Temple records (Inderwick, ii. 99) mention an order of 21 April 1616 for recompense to the chief cook on account of damage to his room in the cloister when it and its chimney were broken down at Christmas twelvemonth ‘by such as climbed up at the windows of the hall to see the mask’.

SIR GEORGE BUCK (ob. 1623).

He was Master of the Revels (cf. ch. iii). For a very doubtful ascription to him, on manuscript authority alleged by Collier, of the dumb-shows to Locrine, cf. ch. xxiv.

JAMES CALFHILL (1530?-1570).

Calfhill was an Eton and King’s College, Cambridge, man, who migrated to Oxford and became Student of Christ Church in 1548 and Canon in 1560. He was in Orders and was Rector of West Horsley when Elizabeth was there in 1559. After various preferments, he was nominated Bishop of Worcester in 1570, but died before consecration.

On 6 July 1564 Walter Haddon wrote to Abp. Parker (Parker Correspondence, 218) deprecating the tone of a sermon by Calfhill before the Queen, and said ‘Nunquam in illo loco quisquam minus satisfecit, quod maiorem ex eo dolorem omnibus attulit, quoniam admodum est illis artibus instructus quas illius theatri celebritas postulat’. No play by Calfhill is extant, but his Latin tragedy of Progne was given before Elizabeth at Christ Church on 5 Sept. 1566 (cf. ch. iv), and appears from Bereblock’s synopsis to have been based on an earlier Latin Progne (1558) by Gregorio Corraro.

THOMAS CAMPION (1567–1620).

Thomas, son of John Campion, a Chancery clerk of Herts. extraction, was born on 12 Feb. 1567, educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, where he took no degree, and admitted on 27 April 1586 to Gray’s Inn, where he took part as Hidaspis and Melancholy in the comedy of 16 Jan. 1588 (cf. ch. vii). He left the law, and probably served in Essex’s expedition of 1591 to France. He first appeared as a poet, anonymously, in the appendix to Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella (1591), and has left several books of songs written as airs for music, often of his own composition, as well as a collection of Latin epigrams and Observations in the Art of English Poesie (1602). I do not know whether he can be the ‘Campnies’ who performed at the Gray’s Inn mask of Shrovetide 1595 at Court (cf. s.v. Gesta Grayorum), but one of the two hymns in that mask, A Hymn in Praise of Neptune is assigned to him by Francis Davison, Poetical Rhapsody (1602), sig. K 8, and it is possible that the second hymn, beginning ‘Shadows before the shining sun do vanish’, which Davison does not himself appear to claim, may also be his. By 1607 he had taken the degree of M.D., probably abroad, and he practised as a physician. Through Sir Thomas Monson he was entangled, although in no very blameworthy capacity, in the Somerset scandals of 1613–15. On 1 March 1620 he died, probably of the plague, naming as his legatee Philip Rosseter, with whom he had written A Booke of Airs in 1601.

Campion is not traceable as a writer for the stage, although his connexion with Monson and Rosseter would have made it not surprising to find him concerned with the Queen’s Revels syndicate of 1610. But his contribution to the Gesta Grayorum foreshadowed his place, second only to Jonson’s, who wrote a Discourse of Poesie (Laing, 1), now lost, against him, in the mask-poetry of the Jacobean period. In addition to his acknowledged masks he may also be responsible for part or all of the Gray’s Inn Mountebanks Mask of 1618, printed by Nichols, Eliz. iii. 320, as a second part of the Gesta Grayorum, and by Bullen, Marston, iii. 417, although the ascription to Marston is extremely improbable.

Collections

1828. J. Nichols. Progresses [&c.] of James the First, ii. 105, 554, 630, 707. [The four masks.]

1889. A. H. Bullen, Works of T. C. [English and Latin.]

1903. A. H. Bullen, Works of T. C. [English only.]

1907. P. Vivian, Poetical Works (in English) of T. C. (Muses’ Library).

1909. P. Vivian, C.’s Works.

Dissertation.—T. MacDonagh, T. C. and the Art of English Poetry (1913).

Lord Hay’s Mask. 6 Jan. 1607

S. R. 1607, Jan. 26 (Gwyn). ‘A booke called the discription of A maske presented before the Kings maiestie at Whitehall on Twelf-night last in honour of the Lord Haies and his bryde Daughter and heire to the right honorable the Lord Denny, their mariage havinge ben at Court the same day solemnised.’ John Browne (Arber, iii. 337).

1607. The discription of a Maske, Presented before the Kinges Maiestie at White-Hall, on Twelfth Night last, in honour of the Lord Hayes, and his Bride, Daughter and Heire to the Honourable the Lord Dennye, their Marriage hauing been the same Day at Court solemnized. To this by occasion other small Poems are adioyned. Inuented and set forth by Thomas Campion Doctor of Phisicke. John Windet for John Browne. [Engraving of the maskers’ habit; Verses to James, Lord De Walden and Lord and Lady Hay.]

The maskers, in carnation and silver, concealed at first in a ‘false habit’ of green leaves and silver, were nine Knights of Apollo; the torchbearers the nine Hours of Night; the presenters Flora, Zephyrus, Night, and Hesperus; the musicians Sylvans, who, as the mask was predominantly musical, were aided by consorts of instruments and voices above the scene and on either side of the hall.

The locality was the ‘great hall’ at Whitehall. At the upper end were the cloth and chair of state, with ‘scaffolds and seats on either side continued to the screen’. Eighteen feet from the screen was a stage, which stood three feet higher than the ‘dancing-place’ in front of it, and was enclosed by a ‘double veil’ or vertically divided curtain representing clouds. The Bower of Flora stood on the right and the House of Night on the left at the ends of the screen, and between them a grove, behind which, under the window, rose hills with a Tree of Diana. In the grove were nine golden trees which performed the first dance, and then, at the touch of Night’s wand, were drawn down by an engine under the stage, and cleft to reveal the maskers. After two more ‘new’ dances, they took out the ladies for ‘measures’. Then they danced ‘their lighter dances as corantoes, levaltas and galliards’; then a fourth ‘new’ dance; and then ‘putting off their vizards and helmets, made a low honour to the King, and attended his Majesty to the banqueting place’.

The mask was given, presumably by friends of the bridegroom, in honour of the wedding of James Lord Hay and Honora, daughter of Lord Denny. The maskers were Lord Walden, Sir Thomas Howard, Sir Henry Carey, Sir Richard Preston, Sir John Ashley, Sir Thomas Jarret, Sir John Digby, Sir Thomas Badger, and Mr. Goringe. One air for a song and one for a song and dance were made by Campion, two for dances by Mr. Lupo, and one for a dance by Mr. Thomas Giles.

Few contemporary references to the mask exist. It is probably that described in a letter, which I have not seen, from Lady Pembroke to Lord Shrewsbury, calendared among other Talbot MSS. of 1607 in Lodge, App. 121. No ambassadors were invited—‘Dieu merci’—says the French ambassador, and Anne, declaring herself ill, stayed away (La Boderie, ii. 12, 30). Expenditure on preparing the hall appears in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber and the Office of Works (Reyher, 520).

The Lords’ Mask. 14 Feb. 1613

1613. For John Budge. [Annexed to Caversham Entertainment (q.v.).]

This was for the wedding of Elizabeth. The men maskers, in cloth of silver, were eight transformed Stars, the women, also in silver, eight transformed Statues; the torchbearers sixteen Fiery Spirits; the antimaskers six men and six women Frantics; the presenters Orpheus, Mania, Entheus, Prometheus, and Sibylla.

The locality was the Banqueting House at Whitehall. The lower part of the scene, when discovered, represented a wood, with the thicket of Orpheus on the right and the cave of Mania on the left. After the ‘mad measure’ of the antimask, the upper part of the scene was discovered ‘by the fall of a curtain’. Here, amidst clouds, were eight Stars which danced, vanishing to give place to the eight men maskers in the House of Prometheus. The torchbearers emerged below, and danced. The maskers descended on a cloud, behind which the lower part of the scene was turned to a façade with four Statues in niches. These and then a second four were transformed to women. Then the maskers gave their ‘first new entering dance’ and their second dance, and took out the bridal pair and others, ‘men women, and women men’. The scene again changed to a prospective of porticoes leading to Sibylla’s trophy, an obelisk of Fame. A ‘song and dance triumphant’ followed, and finally the maskers’ ‘last new dance’ concluded all ‘at their going out’.

This was a mask of lords and ladies, at the cost of the Exchequer. The only names on record are those of the Earls of Montgomery and Salisbury, Lord Hay, and Ann Dudley (vide infra). Campion notes the ‘extraordinary industry and skill’ of Inigo Jones in ‘the whole invention’, and particularly his ‘neat artifice’ in contriving the ‘motion’ of the Stars.

The wedding masks were naturally of special interest to the Court gossips. Chamberlain wrote to Winwood (iii. 421) on 9 Jan.: ‘It is said the Lords and Ladyes about the court have appointed a maske upon their own charge; but I hear there is order given for £1500 to provide one upon the King’s cost, and a £1000 for fireworks. The Inns of Court are likewise dealt with for two masks against that time, and mean to furnish themselves for the service.’ On 29 Jan. he added (iii. 429), ‘Great preparations here are of braverie, masks and fireworks against the marriage.’ On 14 Jan. one G. F. Biondi informed Carleton (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxii. 12) that the Earls of Montgomery and Salisbury and Lord Hay were practising for the wedding mask. On 20 Jan. Sir Charles Montagu wrote to Sir Edward Montagu (H. M. C. Buccleugh MSS. i. 239): ‘Here is not any news stirring, only much preparations at this wedding for masks, whereof shall be three, one of eight lords and eight ladies, whereof my cousin Ann Dudley one, and two from the Inner Courts, who they say will lay it on.’

The Lords’ mask is certainly less prominent than those of the Inns of Court (vide sub Beaumont and Chapman) in the actual descriptions of the wedding. All three are recorded in Stowe, Annales, 916, in Wilbraham’s Journal (Camden Misc. x), 110, in reports of the Venetian ambassador (V. P. xii. 499, 532), and in the contemporary printed accounts of the whole ceremonies (cf. ch. xxiv). These do not add much to the printed descriptions of the mask-writers, on which, indeed, they are largely based. The fullest unofficial account was given by Chamberlain to Alice and Dudley Carleton in three letters (Birch, i. 224, 229; S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxii. 30, 31, 48). On 18 Feb. he wrote: ‘That night [of the wedding] was the Lords’ mask, whereof I hear no great commendation, save only for riches, their devices being long and tedious, and more like a play than a mask.’ This criticism he repeated in a letter to Winwood (iii. 435). To Alice Carleton he added, after describing the bravery of the Inns of Court: ‘All this time there was a course taken, and so notified, that no lady or gentlewoman should be admitted to any of these sights with a vardingale, which was to gain the more room, and I hope may serve to make them quite left off in time. And yet there were more scaffolds, and more provision made for room than ever I saw, both in the hall and banqueting room, besides a new room built to dine and dance in.’ On 25 February, when all was over, he reported: ‘Our revels and triumphs within doors gave great contentment, being both dainty and curious in devices and sumptuous in show, specially the inns of court, whose two masks stood them in better than £4000, besides the gallantry and expense of private gentlemen that were but ante ambul[at]ores and went only to accompany them.... The next night [21 Feb.] the King invited the maskers, with their assistants, to the number of forty, to a solemn supper in the new marriage room, where they were well treated and much graced with kissing her majesty’s hand, and every one having a particular accoglienza from him. The King husbanded this matter so well that this feast was not at his own cost, but he and his company won it upon a wager of running at the ring, of the prince and his nine followers, who paid £30 a man. The King, queen, prince, Palatine and Lady Elizabeth sat at table by themselves, and the great lords and ladies, with the maskers, above four score in all, sat at another long table, so that there was no room for them that made the feast, but they were fain to be lookers on, which the young Lady Rich took no great pleasure in, to see her husband, who was one that paid, not so much as drink for his money. The ambassadors that were at this wedding and shows were the French, Venetian, Count Henry [of Nassau] and Caron for the States. The Spaniard was or would be sick, and the archduke’s ambassador being invited for the second day, made a sullen excuse; and those that were present were not altogether so well pleased but that I hear every one had some punctilio of disgust.’ John Finett, in a letter of 22 Feb. to Carleton (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxii. 32), says the mask of the Lords was ‘rich and ingenious’ and those of the Inns ‘much commended’. His letter is largely taken up with the ambassadorial troubles to which Chamberlain refers. Later he dealt with these in Philoxenis (1656), 1 (cf. Sullivan, 79). The chief marfeast was the archiducal ambassador Boiscot, who resented an invitation to the second or third day, while in the diplomatic absence through sickness of the Spaniard the Venetian ambassador was asked with the French for the first day. Finett was charged with various plausible explanations. James did not think it his business to decide questions of precedence. It was customary to group Venice and France. The Venetian had brought an extraordinary message of congratulation from his State, and had put his retinue into royal liveries at great expense. The wedding was a continuing feast, and all its days equally glorious. In fact, whether at Christmas or Shrovetide, the last day was in some ways the most honourable, and it had originally been planned to have the Lords’ mask on Shrove-Tuesday. But Boiscot could not be persuaded to accept his invitation. The ambassadors who did attend were troublesome, at supper, rather than at the mask. The French ambassador ‘made an offer to precede the prince’. His wife nearly left because she was placed below, instead of above, the Viscountesses. The Venetian claimed a chair instead of a stool, and a place above the carver, but in vain. His rebuff did not prevent him from speaking well of the Lords’ mask, which he called ‘very beautiful’, specially noting the three changes of scene.

Several financial documents relating to the mask are preserved (Reyher, 508, 522; Devon, 158, 164; Collier, i. 364; Hazlitt, E. D. S. 43; Archaeologia, xxvi. 380). In Abstract 14 the charges are given as £400, but the total charges must have been much higher. Chamberlain (vide supra) spoke of £1,500 as assigned to them. A list of personal fees, paid through Meredith Morgan, alone (Reyher, 509) amounts to £411 6s. 8d. Campion had £66 13s. 4d., Jones £50, the dancers Jerome Herne, Bochan, Thomas Giles and Confess £30 or £40 each, the musicians John Cooper, Robert Johnson, and Thomas Lupo £10 or £20 each. One Steven Thomas had £15, ‘he that played to y^e boyes’ £6 13s. 4d., and ‘2 that played to y^e Antick Maske’ £11; while fees of £1 each went to 42 musicians, 12 mad folks, 5 speakers, 10 of the King’s violins and 3 grooms of the chamber. The supervision of ‘emptions and provisions’ was entrusted to the Lord Chamberlain and the Master of the Horse.

The Caversham Entertainment. 27–8 April 1613

1613. A Relation of the late royall Entertainment giuen by the Right Honorable the Lord Knowles, at Cawsome-House neere Redding: to our most Gracious Queene, Queene Anne, in her Progresse toward the Bathe, vpon the seuen and eight and twentie dayes of Aprill. 1613. Whereunto is annexed the Description, Speeches and Songs of the Lords Maske, presented in the Banquetting-house on the Marriage night of the High and Mightie, Count Palatine, and the Royally descended the Ladie Elizabeth. Written by Thomas Campion. For John Budge.

On arrival were speeches, a song, and a dance by a Cynic, a Traveller, two Keepers, and two Robin Hood men at the park gate; then speeches in the lower garden by a Gardener, and a song by his man and boy; then a concealed song in the upper garden.

After supper was a mask in the hall by eight ‘noble and princely personages’ in green with vizards, accompanied by eight pages as torchbearers, and presented by the Cynic, Traveller, Gardener, and their ‘crew’, and Sylvanus. The maskers gave a ‘new dance’; then took out the ladies, among whom Anne ‘vouchsafed to make herself the head of their revels, and graciously to adorn the place with her personal dancing’; ‘much of the night being thus spent with variety of dances, the masquers made a conclusion with a second new dance’.

On departure were a speech and song by the Gardeners, and presents of a bag of linen, apron, and mantle by three country maids.

Chamberlain wrote of this entertainment to Winwood (iii. 454) on 6 May, ‘The King brought her on her way to Hampton Court; her next move was to Windsor, then to Causham, a house of the Lord Knolles not far from Reading, where she was entertained with Revells, and a gallant mask performed by the Lord Chamberlain’s four sons, the Earl of Dorset, the Lord North, Sir Henry Rich, and Sir Henry Carie, and at her parting presented with a dainty coverled or quilt, a rich carrquenet, and a curious cabinet, to the value in all of 1500^l.’ He seems to have sent a similar account in an unprinted letter of 29 April to Carleton (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxii. 120). The four sons of Lord Chamberlain Suffolk who appear in other masks are Theophilus Lord Walden, Sir Thomas, Sir Henry, and Sir Charles Howard.

Lord Somerset’s Mask [Squires]. 26 Dec. 1613

1614. The Description of a Maske: Presented in the Banqueting roome at Whitehall, on Saint Stephens night last, At the Mariage of the Right Honourable the Earle of Somerset: And the right noble the Lady Frances Howard. Written by Thomas Campion. Whereunto are annexed diuers choyse Ayres composed for this Maske that may be sung with a single voyce to the Lute or Base-Viall. E. A. for Laurence Lisle.

The maskers were twelve Disenchanted Knights; the first antimaskers four Enchanters and Enchantresses, four Winds, four Elements, and four Parts of the Earth; the second antimaskers twelve Skippers in red and white; the presenters four Squires and three Destinies; the musicians Eternity, Harmony, and a chorus of nine.

The locality was the banqueting room at Whitehall, of which the upper part, ‘where the state is placed’, and the sides were ‘theatred’ with pillars and scaffolds. At the lower end was a triumphal arch, ‘which enclosed the whole works’ and behind it the scene, from which a curtain was drawn. Above was a clouded sky; beneath a sea bounded by two promontories bearing pillars of gold, and in front ‘a pair of stairs made exceeding curiously in form of a scallop shell’, between two gardens with seats for the maskers. After the first antimask, danced ‘in a strange kind of confusion’, the Destinies brought the Queen a golden tree, whence she plucked a bough to disenchant the Knights, who then appeared, six from a cloud, six from the golden pillars. The scene changed, and ‘London with the Thames is very artificially presented’. The maskers gave the first and second dance, and then danced with the ladies, ‘wherein spending as much time as they held fitting, they returned to the seats provided for them’. Barges then brought the second antimask. After the maskers’ last dance, the Squires complimented the royalties and bridal pair.

This was a wedding mask, by lords and gentlemen. The maskers were the Duke of Lennox, the Earls of Pembroke, Dorset, Salisbury, and Montgomery, the Lords Walden, Scroope, North, and Hay, Sir Thomas, Sir Henry, and Sir Charles Howard. The ‘workmanship’ was undertaken by ‘M. Constantine’ [Servi], ‘but he being too much of himself, and no way to be drawn to impart his intentions, failed so far in the assurance he gave that the main invention, even at the last cast, was of force drawn into a far narrower compass than was from the beginning intended’. One song was by Nicholas Lanier; three were by [Giovanni] Coprario and were sung by John Allen and Lanier. G. F. Biondi informed Carleton on 24 Nov. (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxv. 25) of the ‘costly ballets’ preparing for Somerset’s wedding. On 25 Nov. Chamberlain wrote to Carleton (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxv. 28; Birch, i. 278): ‘All the talk is now of masking and feasting at these towardly marriages, whereof the one is appointed on St. Stephen’s day, in Christmas, the other for Twelfthtide. The King bears the charge of the first, all saving the apparel, and no doubt the queen will do as much on her side, which must be a mask of maids, if they may be found.... The maskers, besides the lord chamberlain’s four sons, are named to be the Earls of Rutland, Pembroke, Montgomery, Dorset, Salisbury, the Lords Chandos, North, Compton, and Hay; Edward Sackville, that killed the Lord Bruce, was in the list, but was put out again; and I marvel he would offer himself, knowing how little gracious he is, and that he hath been assaulted once or twice since his return.’ The Queen’s entertainment, which did not prove to be a mask, was Daniel’s Hymen’s Triumph. The actual list of performers in the mask of 26 Dec. was somewhat differently made up. On 18 Nov. Lord Suffolk had sent invitations through Sir Thomas Lake to the Earl of Rutland and Lord Willoughby d’Eresby (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxv. 15; Reyher, 505), but apparently neither accepted. He also wrote to Lake on 8 Dec. (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxv. 37) hoping that Sackville might be allowed to take part, not in the mask, but in the tilt (as in fact he did), at his cousin’s wedding. On 30 Dec. Chamberlain sent Alice Carleton an accurate list of the actual maskers (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxv. 53; Birch, i. 285), with the comment, ‘I hear little or no commendation of the mask made by the lords that night, either for device or dancing, only it was rich and costly’. The ‘great bravery’ and masks at the wedding are briefly recorded by Gawdy, 175, and a list of the festivities is given by Howes in Stowe, Annales (1615), 928. He records five in all: ‘A gallant maske of Lords’ [Campion’s] on 26 Dec., the wedding night, ‘a maske of the princes gentlemen’ on 29 Dec. and 3 Jan. [Jonson’s Irish Mask], ‘2 seuerall pleasant maskes’ at Merchant Taylors on 4 Jan. [including Middleton’s lost Mask of Cupid], and a Gray’s Inn mask on 6 Jan. [Flowers].

The ambassadorial complications of the year are described by Finett, 12 (cf. Sullivan, 84). Spain had been in the background at the royal wedding of the previous year, and as there was a new Spanish ambassador (Sarmiento) this was made an excuse for asking him with the archiducal ambassador on 26 Dec. and the French and Venetian ambassadors on 6 Jan. By way of compensation these were also asked to the Roxburghe-Drummond wedding on 2 Feb. They received purely formal invitations to the Somerset wedding, and returned excuses for staying away. The agents of Florence and Savoy were asked, and when they raised the question of precedence were told that they were not ambassadors and might scramble for places.

I am not quite clear whether the costs of this mask, as well as of Jonson’s Irish Mask, fell on the Exchequer. Chamberlain’s notice of 25 Nov. (vide supra) is not conclusive. Reyher, 523, assigns most of the financial documents to the Irish Mask, but an account of the Works for an arch and pilasters to the Lords’ mask; and the payment to Meredith Morgan in Sept. 1614 (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxvii. 92), which he does not cite, appears from the Calendar to be for more than one mask. The Irish Mask needed no costly scenery.

J[ohn] B[ruce], (Camden Misc. v), describes a late eighteenth or early nineteenth century forgery, of unknown origin, purporting to describe one of the masks at the Somerset wedding and other events. The details used belong partly to 1613–14 and partly to 1614–15.

ELIZABETH, LADY CARY (1586–1639).

Mariam. 1602 < > 5.

I have omitted a notice of this closet play, printed in 1613, by a slip, and can only add to the edition (M. S. C.) of 1914 that Lady Cary was married in 1602 (Chamberlain, 199), not 1600. She wrote an earlier play on a Syracusan theme.

SIR ROBERT CECIL, EARL OF SALISBURY (1563–1612).

But few details of the numerous royal entertainments given by Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and his sons Sir Thomas Cecil, Lord Burghley and afterwards Earl of Exeter, and Sir Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, are upon record. It is, on the whole, convenient to note here, rather than in ch. xxiv, those which have a literary element. Robert Cecil contributed to that of 1594, and possibly to others.

i. Theobalds Entertainment of 1571 (William Lord Burghley).

Elizabeth was presented with verses and a picture of the newly-finished house on 21 Sept. 1571 (Haynes-Murdin, ii. 772).

ii. Theobalds Entertainment of 1591 (William Lord Burghley).

Elizabeth came for 10–20 May 1591, and knighted Robert Cecil.

(a) Strype, Annals, iv. 108, and Nichols, Eliz. iii. 75, print a mock charter, dated 10 May 1591, and addressed by Lord Chancellor Hatton, in the Queen’s name, ‘To the disconsolate and retired spryte, the Heremite of Tybole’, in which he is called upon to return to the world.

(b) Collier, i. 276, followed by Bullen, Peele, ii. 305, prints from a MS. in the collection of Frederic Ouvry a Hermit’s speech, subscribed with the initials G. P. and said by Collier to be in Peele’s hand. This is a petition to the Queen for a writ to cause the founder of the hermit’s cell to restore it. This founder has himself occupied it for two years and a few months since the death of his wife, and has obliged the hermit to govern his house. Numerous personal allusions make it clear that the ‘founder’ is Burghley, and as Lady Burghley died 4 April 1589, the date should be in 1591.

(c) Bullen, Peele, ii. 309, following Dyce, prints two speeches by a Gardener and a Mole Catcher, communicated by Collier to Dyce from another MS. The ascription to Peele is conjectural, and R. W. Bond, Lyly, i. 417, claims them, also by conjecture, for Lyly. However this may be, they are addressed to the Queen, who has reigned thirty-three years, and introduce the gift of a jewel in a box. Elizabeth had not reigned full thirty-three years in May 1591, but perhaps near enough. That Theobalds was the locality is indicated by a reference to Pymms at Edmonton, a Cecil property 6 miles from Theobalds, as occupied by ‘the youngest son of this honourable old man’. One is bound to mistrust manuscripts communicated by Collier, but there is evidence that Burghley retired to ‘Colling’s Lodge’ near Theobalds in grief at his wife’s death in 1589, and also that in 1591, when he failed to establish Robert Cecil as Secretary, he made a diplomatic pretence of giving up public life (Hume, The Great Lord Burghley, 439, 446).

iii. Theobalds Entertainment of 1594 (William Lord Burghley).

The Hermit was brought into play again when Elizabeth next visited Theobalds, in 1594 (13–23 June). He delivered an Oration, in which he recalled the recovery of his cell at her last coming, and expressed a fear that ‘my young master’ might wish to use it. No doubt the alternative was that Robert Cecil should become Secretary. The oration, ‘penned by Sir Robert Cecill’, is printed by Nichols, Eliz. iii. 241, from Bodl. Rawlinson MS. D 692 (Bodl. 13464), f. 106.

iv. Wimbledon Entertainment of 1599 (Thomas Lord Burghley).

A visit of 27–30 July 1599 is the probable occasion for an address of welcome, not mimetic in character, by a porter, John Joye, preserved in Bodl. Tanner MS. 306, f. 266, and endorsed ‘The queenes entertainment att Wimbledon 99’.

v. Cecil House Entertainment of 1602 (Sir Robert Cecil).

Elizabeth dined with Cecil on 6 Dec. 1602.

(a) Manningham, 99, records, ‘Sundry devises; at hir entraunce, three women, a maid, a widdowe, and a wife, each commending their owne states, but the Virgin preferred; an other, on attired in habit of a Turke desyrous to see hir Majestie, but as a straunger without hope of such grace, in regard of the retired manner of hir Lord, complained; answere made, howe gracious hir Majestie in admitting to presence, and howe able to discourse in anie language; whiche the Turke admired, and, admitted, presents hir with a riche mantle.’ Chamberlain, 169, adds, ‘You like the Lord Kepers devises so ill, that I cared not to get Mr. Secretaries that were not much better, saving a pretty dialogue of John Davies ’twixt a Maide, a widow, and a wife.’ A Contention Betwixt a Wife, a Widdow, and a Maide was registered on 2 Apr. 1604 (Arber iii. 258), appeared with the initials I. D. in Francis Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody (ed. 2, 1608) and is reprinted by Grosart in the Poems of Sir John Davies (q.v.) from the ed. of 1621, where it is ascribed to ‘Sir I. D.’.

(b) Nichols, Eliz. iii. 76, prints from Harl. MS. 286, f. 248, ‘A Conference betweene a Gent. Huisher and a Poet, before the Queene, at M^r. Secretaryes House. By John Davies.’ He assigns it to 1591, but Cecil was not then Secretary, and it probably belongs to 1602.

(c) Hatfield MSS. xii. 568 has verses endorsed ‘1602’ and beginning ‘Now we have present made, To Cynthya, Phebe, Flora’.

vi. Theobalds Entertainment of 1606 (Earl of Salisbury).

See s.v. Jonson; also the mask described by Harington (ch. v).

vii. Theobalds Entertainment of 1607 (Earl of Salisbury).

See s.v. Jonson.

GEORGE CHAPMAN (c. 1560–1634).

Chapman was born in 1559 or 1560 near Hitchin in Hertfordshire. Anthony Wood believed him to have been at Oxford, and possibly also at Cambridge, but neither residence can be verified. It is conjectured that residence at Hitchin and soldiering in the Low Countries may have helped to fill the long period before his first appearance as a writer, unless indeed the isolated translation Fedele and Fortunio (1584) is his, with The Shadow of Night (1594). This shows him a member of the philosophical circle of which the centre was Thomas Harriot. The suggestion of W. Minto that he was the ‘rival poet’ of Shakespeare’s Sonnets is elaborated by Acheson, who believes that Shakespeare drew him as Holophernes and as Thersites, and accepted by Robertson; it would be more plausible if any relation between the Earl of Southampton and Chapman, earlier than a stray dedication shared with many others in 1609, could be established. By 1596, and possibly earlier, Chapman was in Henslowe’s pay as a writer for the Admiral’s. His plays, which proved popular, included, besides the extant Blind Beggar of Alexandria and Humorous Day’s Mirth, five others, of which some and perhaps all have vanished. These were The Isle of a Woman, afterwards called The Fount of New Fashions (May–Oct. 1598), The World Runs on Wheels, afterwards called All Fools but the Fool (Jan.–July 1599), Four Kings (Oct. 1598–Jan. 1599), a ‘tragedy of Bengemens plotte’ (Oct.–Jan. 1598; cf. s.v. Jonson) and a pastoral tragedy (July 1599). His reputation both for tragedy and for comedy was established when Meres wrote his Palladis Tamia in 1598. During 1599 Chapman disappears from Henslowe’s diary, and in 1600 or soon after began his series of plays for the Chapel, afterwards Queen’s Revels, children. This lasted until 1608, when his first indiscretion of Eastward Ho! (1605), in reply to which he was caricatured as Bellamont in Dekker and Webster’s Northward Ho!, was followed by a second in Byron. He now probably dropped his connexion with the stage, at any rate for many years. After completing Marlowe’s Hero and Leander in 1598, he had begun his series of Homeric translations, and these Prince Henry, to whom he had been appointed sewer in ordinary at the beginning of James’s reign, now bade him pursue, with the promise of £300, to which on his death-bed in 1612 he added another of a life-pension. These James failed to redeem, and Chapman also lost his place as sewer. His correspondence contains complaints of poverty, probably of this or a later date, and indications of an attempt, with funds supplied by a brother, to mend his fortunes by marriage with a widow. He found a new patron in the Earl of Somerset, wrote one of the masks for the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth in 1613, and went on with Homer, completing his task in 1624. He lived until 12 May 1634, and his tomb by Inigo Jones still stands at St. Giles-in-the-Fields. In his later years he seems to have touched up some of his dramatic work and possibly to have lent a hand to the younger dramatist Shirley. Jonson told Drummond in 1619 that ‘next himself, only Fletcher and Chapman could make a mask’, and that ‘Chapman and Fletcher were loved of him’ (Laing, 4, 12), and some of Jonson’s extant letters appear to confirm the kindly relations which these phrases suggest. But a fragment of invective against Jonson left by Chapman on his death-bed suggests that they did not endure for ever.

Collections

1873. [R. H. Shepherd.] The Comedies and Tragedies of George Chapman. 3 vols. (Pearson reprints). [Omits Eastward Ho!]

1874–5. R. H. Shepherd. The Works of George Chapman. 3 vols. [With Swinburne’s essay. Includes The Second Maiden’s Tragedy and Two Wise Men and All the Rest Fools.]

1895. W. L. Phelps. The Best Plays of George Chapman (Mermaid Series). [All Fools, the two Bussy and the two Byron plays.]

1910–14. T. M. Parrott. The Plays and Poems of George Chapman. 3 vols. [Includes Sir Giles Goosecap, The Ball, Alphonsus Emperor of Germany, and Revenge for Honour. The Poems not yet issued.]

Dissertations: F. Bodenstedt, C. in seinem Verhältniss zu Shakespeare (1865, Jahrbuch, i. 300); A. C. Swinburne, G. C.: A Critical Essay (1875); E. Koeppel, Quellen-Studien zu den Dramen G. C.’s, &c. (1897, Quellen und Forschungen, lxxxii); B. Dobell, Newly discovered Documents of the Elizabethan and Jacobean Periods (1901, Ath. i. 369, 403, 433, 465); A. Acheson, Shakespeare and the Rival Poet (1903); E. E. Stoll, On the Dates of some of C.’s Plays (1905, M. L. N. xx. 206); T. M. Parrott, Notes on the Text of C.’s Plays (1907, Anglia, xxx. 349, 501); F. L. Schoell, Chapman as a Comic Writer (1911, Paris diss., unprinted, but used by Parrott); J. M. Robertson, Shakespeare and C. (1917).

PLAYS

The Blind Beggar of Alexandria. 1596

S. R. 1598, Aug. 15. ‘A booke intituled The blynde begger of Alexandrya, vppon Condicon thatt yt belonge to noe other man.’ William Jones (Arber, iii. 124).

1598. The Blinde begger of Alexandria, most pleasantly discoursing his variable humours in disguised shapes full of conceite and pleasure. As it hath beene sundry times publickly acted in London, by the right honorable the Earle of Nottingham, Lord high Admirall his seruantes. By George Chapman: Gentleman. For William Jones.

The play was produced by the Admiral’s on 12 Feb. 1596; properties were bought for a revival in May and June 1601. P. A. Daniel shows in Academy (1888), ii. 224, that five of the six passages under the head of Irus in Edward Pudsey’s Notebook, taken in error by R. Savage, Stratford upon Avon Notebooks, i. 7 (1888) to be from an unknown play of Shakespeare, appear with slight variants in the 1598 text. This, which is very short, probably represents a ‘cut’ stage copy. Pudsey is traceable as an actor (cf. ch. xv) in 1626.

An Humorous Day’s Mirth. 1597

1599. A pleasant Comedy entituled: An Numerous dayes Myrth. As it hath beene sundrie times publikely acted by the right honourable the Earle of Nottingham Lord high Admirall his seruants. By G. C. Valentine Syms.

The 1598 inventories of the Admiral’s (Greg, Henslowe Papers, 115, 119) include Verone’s son’s hose and Labesha’s cloak, which justifies Fleay, i. 55, in identifying the play with the comedy of Humours produced by that company on 1 May 1597. It is doubtless also the play of which John Chamberlain wrote to Dudley Carleton (Chamberlain, 4) on 11 June 1597, ‘We have here a new play of humors in very great request, and I was drawne along to it by the common applause, but my opinion of it is (as the fellow saide of the shearing of hogges), that there was a great crie for so litle wolle.’

The Gentleman Usher. 1602 (?)

[MS.] For an unverified MS. cf. s.v. Monsieur D’Olive.

S. R. 1605, Nov. 26 (Harsnett). ‘A book called Vincentio and Margaret.’ Valentine Syms (iii. 305).

1606. The Gentleman Usher. By George Chapman. V. S. for Thomas Thorpe.

Edition by T. M. Parrott (1907, B. L.).—Dissertation: O. Cohn, Zu den Quellen von C.’s G. U. (1912, Frankfort Festschrift, 229).

There is no indication of a company, but the use of a mask and songs confirm the general probability that the play was written for the Chapel or Revels. It was later than Sir Giles Goosecap (q.v.), to the title-rôle of which II. i. 81 alludes, but of this also the date is uncertain. Parrott’s ‘1602’ is plausible enough, but 1604 is also possible.

All Fools. 1604 (?)

1605. Al Fooles A Comedy, Presented at the Black Fryers, And lately before his Maiestie. Written by George Chapman. For Thomas Thorpe. [Prologue and Epilogue. The copies show many textual variations.]

Editions in Dodsley^{2, 3} (1780–1827) and by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. ii) and T. M. Parrott (1907, B. L.).—Dissertation: M. Stier, C.’s All Fools mit Berücksichtigung seiner Quellen (1904, Halle diss.).

The Court performance was on 1 Jan. 1605 (cf. App. B), and the play was therefore probably on the Blackfriars stage in 1604. There is a reminiscence of Ophelia’s flowers in II. i. 232, and the prologue seems to criticize the Poetomachia.

But in Jan.–July 1599 Henslowe paid Chapman £8 10s. on behalf of the Admiral’s for The World Runs on Wheels. The last entry is for ‘his boocke called the world Rones a whelles & now all foolles but the foolle’. This seems to me, more clearly than to Greg (Henslowe, ii. 203), to indicate a single play and a changed title. I am less certain, however, that he is right in adopting the view of Fleay, i. 59, that it was an earlier version of the Blackfriars play. It may be so, and the date of ‘the seventeenth of November, fifteen hundred and so forth’ used for a deed in IV. i. 331 lends some confirmation. But the change of company raises a doubt, and there is no ‘fool’ in All Fools. An alternative conjecture is that the Admiral’s reverted to the original title for their play, leaving a modification of the amended one available for Chapman in 1604. Collier (Dodsley³) printed a dedicatory sonnet to Sir Thomas Walsingham. This exists only in a single copy, in which it has been printed on an inserted leaf. T. J. Wise (Ath. 1908, i. 788) and Parrott, ii. 726, show clearly that it is a forgery.

Monsieur D’Olive. 1604

[MS.] See infra.

1606. Monsieur D’Olive. A Comedie, as it was sundrie times acted by her Majesties children at the Blacke-Friers. By George Chapman. T. C. for William Holmes.

Edition by C. W. Dilke (1814, O. E. P. iii).

The title-page suggests a Revels rather than a Chapel play, and Fleay, i. 59, Stoll, and Parrott all arrive at 1604 for the date, which is rendered probable by allusions to the Jacobean knights (I. i. 263; IV. ii. 77), to the calling in of monopolies (I. i. 284), to the preparation of costly embassies (IV. ii. 114), and perhaps to the royal dislike of tobacco (II. ii. 164). There is a reminiscence of Hamlet, III. ii. 393, in II. ii. 91:

On the inadequate ground that woman’s ‘will’ is mentioned in II. i. 89, Fleay regarded the play as a revision of one written by Chapman for the Admiral’s in 1598 under the title of The Will of a Woman. But Greg (Henslowe, ii. 194) interprets Henslowe’s entry ‘the iylle of a woman’ as The Isle of Women. The 1598 play seems to have been renamed The Fount of New Fashions. Hazlitt, Manual, 89, 94, says part Heber’s sale included MSS. both of The Fount of New Fashions, and of The Gentleman Usher under the title of The Will of a Woman, but Greg could not find these in the sale catalogue.

Bussy D’Ambois. 1604

S. R. 1607, June 3 (Buck). ‘The tragedie of Busye D’Amboise. Made by George Chapman.’ William Aspley (Arber, iii. 350).

1607. Bussy D’Ambois. A Tragedie: As it hath been often presented at Paules. For William Aspley.

1608. For William Aspley. [Another issue.]

1641. As it hath been often Acted with great Applause. Being much corrected and amended by the Author before his death. A. N. for Robert Lunne. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

1646. T. W. for Robert Lunne. [Another issue.]

1657.... the Author, George Chapman, Gent. Before his death. For Joshua Kirton. [Another issue.]

Editions by C. W. Dilke (1814, O. E. P. iii), F. S. Boas (1905, B. L.), W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.).—Dissertation: T. M. Parrott, The Date of C.’s B. d’A. (1908, M. L. R. iii. 126).

The play was acted by Paul’s, who disappear in 1606. It has been suggested that it dates in some form from 1598 or earlier, because Pero is a female character, and an Admiral’s inventory of 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 120) has ‘Perowes sewt, which W^m Sley were’. As Sly had been a Chamberlain’s man since 1594, this must have been a relic of some obsolete play. But the impossible theory seems to have left a trace on the suggestion of Greg (Henslowe, ii. 198) that Chapman may have worked on the basis of the series of plays on The Civil Wars of France written by Dekker (q.v.) and others for the Admiral’s at a later date in 1598 than that of the inventories. From one of these plays, however, might come the reminiscence of a ‘trusty Damboys’ in Satiromastix (1601), IV. i. 174. For Bussy itself a jest on ‘leap-year’ (I. ii. 82) points to either 1600 or 1604, and allusions to Elizabeth as an ‘old queen’ (I. ii. 12), to a ‘knight of the new edition’ (I. ii. 124), with which may be compared Day, Isle of Gulls (1606), i. 3, ‘gentlemen ... of the best and last edition, of the Dukes own making’, and to a ‘new denizened lord’ (I. ii. 173) point to 1604 rather than 1600. The play was revived by the King’s men and played at Court on 7 April 1634 (Variorum, iii. 237), and to this date probably belongs the prologue in the edition of 1641. Here the actors declare that the piece, which evidently others had ventured to play, was

They add that

and that his successor (perhaps Taylor) is prevented by his grey beard from taking the young hero, which therefore falls to a ‘third man’ who has been liked as Richard. Gayton, Festivous Notes on Don Quixote (1654), 25, tells us that Eliard Swanston played Bussy; doubtless he is the third man. The revision of the text, incorporated in the 1641 edition, may obviously date either from this or for some earlier revival. It is not necessary to assume that the performances by Field referred to in the prologue were earlier than 1616, when he joined the King’s. Parrott, however, makes it plausible that they might have been for the Queen’s Revels at Whitefriars in 1609–12, about the time when the Revenge was played by the same company. If so, the Revels must have acquired Bussy after the Paul’s performances ended in 1606. It is, of course, quite possible that they were only recovering a play originally written for them, and carried by Kirkham to Paul’s in 1605.

Eastward Ho! 1605

With Jonson and Marston.

S. R. 1605, Sept. 4 (Wilson). ‘A Comedie called Eastward Ho:’ William Aspley and Thomas Thorp (Arber, iii. 300).

1605. Eastward Hoe. As It was playd in the Black-friers. By The Children of her Maiesties Reuels. Made by Geo: Chapman. Ben Ionson. Ioh: Marston. For William Aspley. [Prologue and Epilogue. Two issues (a) and (b). Of (a) only signatures E₃ and E₄ exist, inserted between signatures E₂ and E₃ of a complete copy of (b) in the Dyce collection; neither Greg, Masques, cxxii, nor Parrott, Comedies, 862, is quite accurate here.]

1605. For William Aspley. [Another edition, reset.]

Editions in Dodsley^{1, 2, 3} (1744–1825), by W. R. Chetwood in Memoirs of Ben Jonson (1756), W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. ii), F. E. Schelling (1903, B. L.), J. W. Cunliffe (1913, R. E. C. ii), J. S. Farmer (1914, S. F. T.); and with Marston’s Works (q.v.).—Dissertations: C. Edmonds, The Original of the Hero in the Comedy of E. H. (Athenaeum, 13 Oct. 1883); H. D. Curtis, Source of the Petronel-Winifred Plot in E. H. (1907, M. P. v. 105).

Jonson told Drummond in 1619 (Laing, 20): ‘He was dilated by Sir James Murray to the King, for writing something against the Scots, in a play Eastward Hoe, and voluntarly imprissoned himself with Chapman and Marston, who had written it amongst them. The report was, that they should then [have] had their ears cut and noses. After their delivery, he banqueted all his friends; there was Camden, Selden, and others; at the midst of the feast his old Mother dranke to him, and shew him a paper which she had (if the sentence had taken execution) to have mixed in the prisson among his drinke, which was full of lustie strong poison, and that she was no churle, she told, she minded first to have drunk of it herself.’ The Hatfield MSS. contain a letter (i) from Jonson (Cunningham, Jonson, i. xlix), endorsed ‘1605’, to the Earl of Salisbury, created 4 May 1605. Another copy is in the MS. described by B. Dobell, with ten other letters, of which Dobell, followed by Schelling, prints three by Jonson, (ii) to an unnamed lord, probably Suffolk, (iii) to an unnamed earl, (iv) to an unnamed ‘excellentest of Ladies’, and three by Chapman, (v) to the King, (vi) to Lord Chamberlain Suffolk, (vii) to an unnamed lord, probably also Suffolk. These, with four others by Chapman not printed, have no dates, but all, with (i), seem to refer to the same joint imprisonment of the two poets. In (i) Jonson says that he and Chapman are in prison ‘unexamined and unheard’. The cause is a play of which ‘no man can justly complain’, for since his ‘first error’ and its ‘bondage’ [1597] Jonson has ‘attempered my style’ and his books have never ‘given offence to a nation, to a public order or state, or to any person of honour or authority’. The other letters add a few facts. In (v) Chapman says that the ‘chief offences are but two clawses, and both of them not our owne’; in (vi) that ‘our unhappie booke was presented without your Lordshippes allowance’; and in (vii) that they are grateful for an expected pardon of which they have heard from Lord Aubigny. Castelain, Jonson, 901, doubts whether this correspondence refers to Eastward Ho!, chiefly because there is no mention of Marston, and after hesitating over Sejanus, suggests Sir Giles Goosecap (q.v.), which is not worth consideration. Jonson was in trouble for Sejanus (q.v.), but on grounds not touched on in these letters, and Chapman was not concerned. I feel no doubt that the imprisonment was that for Eastward Ho! Probably Drummond was wrong about Marston, who escaped. His ‘absence’ is noted in the t.p. of Q₂ of The Fawn (1606), and chaffed by A. Nixon, The Black Year (1606): ‘Others ... arraign other mens works ... when their own are sacrificed in Paul’s Churchyard, for bringing in the Dutch Courtesan to corrupt English conditions and sent away westward for carping both at court, city, and country.’ Evidently Jonson and Chapman, justly or not, put the blame of the obnoxious clauses upon him, and renewed acrimony against Jonson may be traced in his Epistles of 1606. I am inclined to think that it was the publication of the play in the autumn of 1605, rather than its presentation on the stage, that brought the poets into trouble. This would account for the suppression of a passage reflecting upon the Scots (III. iii. 40–7) which appeared in the first issue of Q₁ (cf. Parrott, ii. 862). Other quips at the intruding nation, at James’s liberal knightings, and even at his northern accent (I. ii. 50, 98; II. iii. 83; IV. i. 179) appear to have escaped censure. Nor was the play as a whole banned. It passed to the Lady Elizabeth’s, who revived it in 1613 (Henslowe Papers, 71) and gave it at Court on 25 Jan. 1614 (cf. App. B). There seems to be an allusion to Suffolk’s intervention in Chapman’s gratulatory verses to Sejanus (1605):

The imprisonment was over by Nov. 1605, when Jonson (q.v.) was employed about the Gunpowder plot. I put it and the correspondence in Oct. or Nov. The play may have been staged at any time between that and the staging of Dekker and Webster’s Westward Hoe, late in 1604, to which its prologue refers. Several attempts have been made to divide up the play. Fleay, ii. 81, gives Marston I. i-II. i, Chapman II. ii-IV. i, Jonson IV. ii-V. iv. Parrott gives Marston I. i-II. ii, IV. ii, V. i, Chapman II. iii-IV. i, Jonson the prologue and V. ii-v. Cunliffe gives Marston I, III. iii and V. i, the rest to Chapman, and nothing to Jonson but plotting and supervision. All make III. iii a Chapman scene, so that, if Chapman spoke the truth, Marston must have interpolated the obnoxious clauses.

May Day. c. 1609

1611. May Day. A witty Comedie, diuers times acted at the Blacke Fryers. Written by George Chapman. For John Browne.

Edition by C. W. Dilke (1814, O. E. P. iv).—Dissertation: A. L. Stiefel, G. C. und das italienische Drama (1899, Jahrbuch, xxxv. 180).

The chorus iuvenum with which the play opens fixes it to the occupancy of the Blackfriars by the Chapel and Revels in 1600–9. Parrott suggests 1602 on the ground of reminiscences of 1599–1601 plays, of which the most important is a quotation in IV. i. 18 of Marston’s 2 Antonio and Mellida (1599), V. ii. 20. But the force of this argument is weakened by the admission of a clear imitation in I. i. 378 sqq. of ch. v. of Dekker’s Gull’s Hornbook (1609), which it seems to me a little arbitrary to explain by a revision. The other reasons given by Fleay, i. 57, for a date c. 1601 are fantastic. So is his suggestion that the play is founded on the anonymous Disguises produced by the Admiral’s on 2 Oct. 1595, which, as pointed out by Greg (Henslowe, ii. 177), rests merely on the fact that the title would be appropriate.

The Widow’s Tears. 1603 < > 9

S. R. 1612, Apr. 17. John Browne [see The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois].

1612. The Widdowes Teares. A Comedie. As it was often presented in the blacke and white Friers. Written by Geor: Chap. For John Browne. [Epistle to Jo. Reed of Mitton, Gloucestershire, signed ‘Geo. Chapman’.]

Edition in Dodsley^{1, 2, 3} (1744–1827).

The play was given at Court on 27 Feb. 1613, but the reference on the title-page to Blackfriars shows that it was originally produced by the Chapel or Revels not later than 1609 and probably before Byron (1608). Wallace, ii. 115, identifies it with the Chapel play seen by the Duke of Stettin in 1602 (cf. ch. xii), but Gerschow’s description in no way, except for the presence of a widow, fits the plot. The reference to the ‘number of strange knights abroad’ (iv. 1. 28) and perhaps also that to the crying down of monopolies (I. i. 125) are Jacobean, rather than Elizabethan (cf. M. d’Olive). Fleay, i. 61, and Parrott think that the satire of justice in the last act shows resentment at Chapman’s treatment in connexion with Eastward Ho!, and suggest 1605. It would be equally sound to argue that this is just the date when Chapman would have been most careful to avoid criticism of this kind. The Epistle says, ‘This poor comedy (of many desired to see printed) I thought not utterly unworthy that affectionate design in me’.

Charles, Duke of Byron. 1608

S. R. 1608, June 5 (Buck). ‘A booke called The Conspiracy and Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byronn written by Georg Chapman.’ Thomas Thorp (Arber, iii. 380).

1608. The Conspiracie, And Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron, Marshall of France. Acted lately in two playes, at the Black-Friers. Written by George Chapman. G. Eld for Thomas Thorpe. [Epistle to Sir Thomas and Thomas Walsingham, signed ‘George Chapman’, and Prologue. Half-title to Part II, ‘The Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron. By George Chapman.’]

1625.... at the Blacke-Friers, and other publique Stages.... N. O. for Thomas Thorpe. [Separate t.p. to Part II.]

Dissertation: T. M. Parrott, The Text of C.’s Byron (1908, M. L. R. iv. 40).

There can be no doubt (cf. vol. ii, p. 53) that this is the play denounced by the French ambassador, Antoine Lefèvre de la Boderie, in the following letter to Pierre Brulart de Puisieux, Marquis de Sillery, on 8 April 1608 (printed by J. J. Jusserand in M. L. R. vi. 203, from Bibl. Nat. MS. Fr. 15984):

‘Environ la micaresme ces certains comédiens à qui j’avois fait deffendre de jouer l’histoire du feu mareschal de Biron, voyant toutte la cour dehors, ne laissèrent de le faire, et non seulement cela, mais y introduisirent la Royne et Madame de Verneuil, la première traitant celle-cy fort mal de paroles, et luy donnant un soufflet. En ayant eu advis de-là à quelques jours, aussi-tost je m’en allay trouver le Comte de Salsbury et luy fis plainte de ce que non seulement ces compaignons-là contrevenoient à la deffense qui leur avoit esté faicte, mais y adjoustoient des choses non seulement plus importantes, mais qui n’avoient que faire avec le mareschal de Biron, et au partir de-là estoient toutes faulses, dont en vérité il se montra fort courroucé. Et dès l’heure mesme envoya pour les prendre. Toutteffois il ne s’en trouva que trois, qui aussi-tost furent menez en la prison où ilz sont encore; mais le principal qui est le compositeur eschapa. Un jour ou deux devant, ilz avoient dépêché leur Roy, sa mine d’Escosse et tous ses Favorits d’une estrange sorte; [in cipher car apres luy avoir fait dépiter le ciel sur le vol d’un oyseau, et faict battre un gentilhomme pour avoir rompu ses chiens, ilz le dépeignoient ivre pour le moins une fois le jour. Ce qu’ayant sçu, je pensay qu’il seroit assez en colère contre lesdits commédiens, sans que je l’y misse davantage, et qu’il valoit mieux référer leur châtiment à l’irrévérence qu’ilz lui avoient portée, qu’à ce qu’ilz pourroient avoir dit desdites Dames], et pour ce, je me résolus de n’en plus parler, mais considérer ce qu’ilz firent. Quand ledit Sieur Roy a esté icy, il a tesmoigné estre extrèmement irrité contre ces maraults-là, et a commandé qu’ilz soient chastiez et surtout qu’on eust à faire diligence de trouver le compositeur. Mesme il a fait deffense que l’on n’eust plus à jouer de Comédies dedans Londres, pour lever laquelle deffense quatre autres compagnies qui y sont encore, offrent desja cent mille francs, lesquels pourront bien leur en redonner la permission; mais pour le moins sera-ce à condition qu’ilz ne représenteront plus aucune histoire moderne ni ne parleront des choses du temps à peine de la vie. Si j’eusse creu qu’il y eust eu de la suggestion en ce qu’avoient dit lesdits comédiens, j’en eusse fait du bruit davantage; mais ayant tout subjet d’estimer le contraire, j’ay pensay que le meilleur estoit de ne point le remuer davantage, et laisser audit Roy la vengeance de son fait mesme. Touttefois si vous jugez de-là, Monsieur; que je n’y aye fait assez, il est encore temps.’

In M. L. Review, iv. 158, I reprinted a less good text from Ambassades de M. De La Boderie (1750), iii. 196. The letter is often dated 1605 and ascribed to De La Boderie’s predecessor, M. de Beaumont, on the strength of a summary in F. L. G. von Raumer, History of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ii. 219. The text has been ruthlessly censored; in particular the peccant scene has been cut out of Act II of Part ii, and most of Act IV of Part i, dealing with Byron’s visit to England, has been suppressed or altered. The Epistle offers ‘these poor dismembered poems’, and they are probably the subject of two undated and unsigned letters printed by Dobell in Ath. (1901), i. 433. The first, to one Mr. Crane, secretary to the Duke of Lennox, inquires whether the writer can leave a ‘shelter’ to which ‘the austeritie of this offended time’ has sent him. The other is by ‘the poor subject of your office’ and evidently addressed to the Master of the Revels, and complains of his strictness in revising for the press what the Council had passed for presentment. Worcester’s men had an anonymous play of Byron (Burone or Berowne) in 1602, and Greg (Henslowe, ii. 231) thinks that to this Chapman’s may have borne some relation. But Chapman’s source was Grimeston, General Inventorie of the History of France (1607).

The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois. c. 1610

S. R. 1612, Apr. 17 (Buck). ‘Twoo play bookes, th’ one called, The revenge of Bussy D’Amboys, beinge a tragedy, thother called, The wydowes teares, beinge a Comedy, bothe written by George Chapman.’ Browne (Arber, iii. 481). [Only a 6d. fee charged for the two.]

1613. The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois. A Tragedie. As it hath beene often presented at the priuate Play-house in the White-Fryers. Written by George Chapman, Gentleman. T. S., sold by Iohn Helme. [Epistle to Sir Thomas Howard, signed ‘Geo. Chapman’.]

Edition by F. S. Boas (1905, B. L.).

Boas has shown that Chapman used Grimeston, General Inventorie of the History of France (1607). Probably the play was written for the Queen’s Revels to accompany Bussy. But whether it was first produced at Whitefriars in 1609–12, or at Blackfriars in 1608–9, can hardly be settled. The title-page and the probability that the Byron affair would render it judicious to defer further plays by Chapman rather point to the Whitefriars. The Epistle commends the play because ‘Howsoever therefore in the scenical presentation it might meet with some maligners, yet considering even therein it passed with approbation of more worthy judgments’.

Chabot Admiral of France, c. 1613 (?)

S. R. 1638, Oct. 24 (Wykes). ‘A Booke called Phillip Chalbott Admirall of France and the Ball. By James Shirley. vj^d.’ Crooke and William Cooke (Arber, iv. 441).

1639. The Tragedie of Chabot Admirall of France. As it was presented by her Majesties Servants, at the private House in Drury Lane. Written by George Chapman, and James Shirly. Tho. Cotes for Andrew Crooke and William Cooke.

Edition by E. Lehman (1906, Pennsylvania Univ. Publ.).

The play was licensed by Herbert as Shirley’s on 29 April 1635 (Variorum, iii. 232). But critics agree in finding much of Chapman in it, and suppose Shirley to have been a reviser rather than a collaborator. Parrott regards I. i, II. iii, and V. ii as substantially Chapman; II. i and III. i as substantially Shirley; and the rest as Chapman revised. He suggests that Chapman’s version was for the Queen’s Revels c. 1613. Fleay, ii. 241, put it in 1604, but it cannot be earlier than the 1611 edition of its source, E. Pasquier, Les Recherches de la France.

Caesar and Pompey, c. 1613 (?)

S. R. 1631, May 18 (Herbert). ‘A Playe called Caesar and Pompey by George Chapman.’ Harper (Arber, iv. 253).

1631. The Warres of Pompey and Caesar. Out of whose euents is euicted this Proposition. Only a iust man is a freeman. By G. C. Thomas Harper, sold by Godfrey Emondson, and Thomas Alchorne. [Epistle to the Earl of Middlesex, signed ‘Geo. Chapman’.]

1631.... Caesar and Pompey: A Roman Tragedy, declaring their Warres.... By George Chapman. Thomas Harper [&c.]. [Another issue.]

1653.... As it was Acted at the Black Fryers.... [Another issue.]

Chapman says that the play was written ‘long since’ and ‘never touched at the stage’. Various dates have been conjectured; the last, Parrott’s 1612–13, ‘based upon somewhat intangible evidence of style and rhythm’ will do as well as another. Parrott is puzzled by the 1653 title-page and thinks that, in spite of the Epistle, the play was acted. Might it not have been acted by the King’s after the original publication in 1631? Plays on Caesar were so common that it is not worth pursuing the suggestion of Fleay, i. 65, that fragments of the Admiral’s anonymous Caesar and Pompey of 1594–5 may survive here.

Doubtful and Lost Plays

Chapman’s lost plays for the Admiral’s men of 1598–9 have already been noted. Two plays, ‘The Fatall Love, a French Tragedy’, and ‘A Tragedy of a Yorkshire Gentlewoman and her sonne’, were entered as his in the S. R. by Humphrey Moseley on 29 June 1660 (Eyre, ii. 271). They appear, without Chapman’s name, in Warburton’s list of burnt plays (W. W. Greg in 3 Library, ii. 231). The improbable ascriptions to Chapman of The Ball (1639) and Revenge for Honour (1654) on their t.ps. and of Two Wise Men and All the Rest Fools (1619) by Kirkman in 1661 do not inspire confidence in this late entry, and even if they were Chapman’s, the plays were not necessarily of our period. But it has been suggested that Fatal Love may be the anonymous Charlemagne (q.v.). J. M. Robertson assigns to Chapman A Lover’s Complaint, accepts the conjecture of Minto and Acheson that he was the ‘rival poet’ of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, believes him to be criticized in the Holophernes of L. L. L. and regards him as the second hand of Timon of Athens, and with varying degrees of assurance as Shakespeare’s predecessor, collaborator or reviser, in Per., T. C., Tp., Ham., Cymb., J. C., T. of S., Hen. VI, Hen. V, C. of E., 2 Gent., All’s Well, M. W., K. J., Hen. VIII. These are issues which cannot be discussed here. The records do not suggest any association between Chapman and the Chamberlain’s or King’s men, except possibly in Caroline days.

For other ascriptions to Chapman, see in ch. xxiv, Alphonsus, Fedele and Fortunio, Sir Giles Goosecap, Histriomastix, and Second Maiden’s Tragedy.

MASK

Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn Mask. 15 Feb. 1613

S. R. 1613, 27 Feb. (Nidd). ‘A booke called the [description] of the maske performed before the kinge by the gent. of the Myddle temple and Lincolns Inne with the maske of Grayes Inne and the Inner Temple.’ George Norton (Arber, iii. 516).

N.D. The Memorable Maske of the two Honorable Houses or Inns of Court; the Middle Temple, and Lyncolnes Inne. As it was performed before the King, at White-Hall on Shroue Munday at night; being the 15. of February 1613. At the princely Celebration of the most Royall Nuptialls of the Palsgraue, and his thrice gratious Princesse Elizabeth, &c. With a description of their whole show; in the manner of their march on horse-backe to the Court from the Maister of the Rolls his house: with all their right Noble consorts, and most showfull attendants. Inuented, and fashioned, with the ground, and speciall structure of the whole worke, By our Kingdomes most Artfull and Ingenious Architect Innigo Iones. Supplied, Aplied, Digested, and Written, By Geo. Chapman. G. Eld for George Norton. [Epistle by Chapman to Sir Edward Philips, Master of the Rolls, naming him and Sir Henry Hobart, the Attorney-General, as furtherers of the mask; after text, A Hymne to Hymen. R. B. McKerrow, Bibl. Evidence (Bibl. Soc. Trans. xii. 267), shows the priority of this edition. Parts of the description are separated from the speeches to which they belong, with an explanation that Chapman was ‘prevented by the unexpected haste of the printer, which he never let me know, and never sending me a proofe till he had past their speeches, I had no reason to imagine hee could have been so forward’.]

N.D. F. K. for George Norton.

Edition in Nichols, James (1828), ii. 566.

The maskers, in cloth of silver embroidered with gold, olive-coloured vizards, and feathers on their heads, were Princes of Virginia; the torchbearers also Virginians; the musicians Phoebades or Priests of Virginia; the antimaskers a ‘mocke-maske’ of Baboons; the presenters Plutus, Capriccio a Man of Wit, Honour, Eunomia her Priest, and Phemis her Herald.

The locality was the Hall at Whitehall, whither the maskers rode from the house of the Master of the Rolls, with their musicians and presenters in chariots, Moors to attend their horses, and a large escort of gentlemen and halberdiers. They dismounted in the tiltyard, where the King and lords beheld them from a gallery. The scene represented a high rock, which cracked to emit Capriccio, and had the Temple of Honour on one side, and a hollow tree, ‘the bare receptacle of the baboonerie’, on the other. After ‘the presentment’ and the ‘anticke’ dance of the ‘ante-maske’, the top of the rock opened to disclose the maskers and torchbearers in a mine of gold under the setting sun. They descended by steps within the rock. First the torchbearers ‘performed another ante-maske, dancing with torches lighted at both ends’. Then the maskers danced two dances, followed by others with the ladies, and finally a ‘dance, that brought them off’ to the Temple of Honour.

For general notices of the wedding masks, see ch. xxiv and the account of Campion’s Lords’ mask. The German Beschreibung (1613) gives a long abstract of Chapman’s (extract in Sh.-Jahrbuch, xxix. 172), but this is clearly paraphrased from the author’s own description. It was perhaps natural for Sir Edward Philips to write to Carleton on 25 Feb. (S. P. D. Jac. I, lxxii. 46) that this particular mask was ‘praised above all others’. But Chamberlain is no less laudatory (Birch, i. 226):

‘On Monday night, was the Middle Temple and Lincoln’s Inn mask prepared in the hall at court, whereas the Lords’ was in the banqueting room. It went from the Rolls, all up Fleet Street and the Strand, and made such a gallant and glorious show, that it is highly commended. They had forty gentlemen of best choice out of both houses, and the twelve maskers, with their torchbearers and pages, rode likewise upon horses exceedingly well trapped and furnished, besides a dozen little boys, dressed like baboons, that served for an antimask, and, they say, performed it exceedingly well when they came to it; and three open chariots, drawn with four horses apiece, that carried their musicians and other personages that had parts to speak. All which, together with their trumpeters and other attendants, were so well set out, that it is generally held for the best show that hath been seen many a day. The King stood in the gallery to behold them, and made them ride about the Tilt-yard, and then they were received into St. James’ Park, and so out, all along the galleries, into the hall, where themselves and their devices, which they say were excellent, made such a glittering show, that the King and all the company were exceedingly pleased, and especially with their dancing, which was beyond all that hath been seen yet. The King made the masters [? maskers] kiss his hand on parting, and gave them many thanks, saying, he never saw so many proper men together, and himself accompanied them at the banquet, and took care it should be well ordered, and speaks much of them behind their backs, and strokes the Master of the Rolls and Dick Martin, who were chief doers and undertakers.’

Chamberlain wrote more briefly, but with equal commendation, to Winwood (iii. 435), while the Venetian ambassador reported that the mask was danced ‘with such finish that it left nothing to be desired’ (V. P. xii. 532).

The mask is but briefly noticed in the published records of the Middle Temple (Hopwood, 40, 42); more fully in those of Lincoln’s Inn (Walker, ii. 150–6, 163, 170, 198, 255, 271). The Inn’s share of the cost was £1,086 8s. 11d. and presumably that of the Middle Temple as much. A levy was made of from £1 10s. to £4, according to status, and some of the benchers and others advanced funds. A dispute about the repayment of an advance by Lord Chief Justice Richardson was still unsettled in 1634. An account of Christopher Brooke as ‘Expenditour for the maske’ includes £100 to Inigo Jones for works for the hall and street, £45 to Robert Johnson for music and songs, £2 to Richard Ansell, matlayer, £1 to the King’s Ushers of the Hall, and payments for a pair of stockings and other apparel to ‘Heminge’s boy’, and for the services of John and Robert Dowland, Philip Rosseter and Thomas Ford as musicians. The attitude of the young lawyer may be illustrated from a letter of Sir S. Radcliffe on 1 Feb. (Letters, 78), although I do not know his Inn: ‘I have taken up 30^s of James Singleton, which or y^e greater part thereof is to be paid toward y^e great mask at y^e marriage at Shrovetide. It is a duty for y^e honour of our Inn, and unto which I could not refuse to contribute with any credit.’

A letter by Chapman, partly printed by B. Dobell in Ath. (1901), i. 466, is a complaint to an unnamed paymaster about his reward for a mask given in the royal presence at a date later than Prince Henry’s death. While others of his faculty got 100 marks or £50, he is ‘put with taylors and shoomakers, and such snipperados, to be paid by a bill of particulars’. Dobell does not seem to think that this was the wedding mask, but I see no clear reason why it should not have been.

HENRY CHEKE (c. 1561).

If the translator, as stated in D. N. B., was Henry the son of Sir John Cheke and was born c. 1548, he must have been a precocious scholar.

Free Will > 1561

S. R. 1561, May 11. ‘ij. bokes, the one called ... and the other of Frewill.’ John Tysdayle (Arber, i. 156).

N.D. A certayne Tragedie wrytten fyrst in Italian, by F. N. B. entituled, Freewyl, and translated into Englishe, by Henry Cheeke. John Tisdale. [Epistles to Lady Cheyne, signed H. C., and to the Reader. Cheyne arms on v^o of t.p.]

The translation is from the Tragedia del Libero Arbitrio (1546) of Francesco Nigri de Bassano. It is presumably distinct from that which Sir Thomas Hoby in his Travaile and Life (Camden Misc. x. 63) says he made at Augsburg in Aug.–Nov. 1550, and dedicated to the Marquis of Northampton.

HENRY CHETTLE (c. 1560– > 1607).

Chettle was apprenticed, as the son of Robert Chettle of London, dyer, to Thomas East, printer, on 29 Sept. 1577, and took up the freedom of the Stationers’ Company on 6 Oct. 1584. During 1589–91 he was in partnership as a printer with John Danter and William Hoskins. The partnership was then dissolved, and Chettle’s imprint is not found on any book of later date (McKerrow, Dictionary, 68, 84, 144). But evidently his connexion with the press and with Danter continued, for in 1596 Nashe inserted into Have With You to Saffron Walden (Works, iii. 131) a letter from him offering to set up the book and signed ‘Your old Compositer, Henry Chettle’. Nashe’s Strange News (1592) and Terrors of the Night (1594) had come, like Have With You to Saffron Walden itself, from Danter’s press. The object of the letter was to defend Nashe against a charge in Gabriel Harvey’s Pierce’s Supererogation (1593) of having abused Chettle. He had in fact in Pierce Penilesse (1592) called Greenes Groats-worth of Wit ‘a scald triuial lying pamphlet’, and none of his doing. And of the Groats-worth Chettle had acted as editor, as he himself explains in the Epistle to his Kind Hearts Dream (cf. App. C, No. xlix), in which, however, he exculpates Nashe from any share in the book. By 1595 he was married and had lost a daughter Mary, who was buried at St. John’s, Windsor (E. Ashmole, Antiquities of Berkshire, iii. 75). By 1598 he had taken to writing for the stage, and in his Palladis Tamia of that year Meres includes him in ‘the best for Comedy amongst vs’. Of all Henslowe’s band of needy writers for the Admiral’s and Worcester’s from 1598 to 1603, he was the most prolific and one of the neediest. Of the forty-eight plays in which he had a hand during this period, no more than five, or possibly six, survive. His personal loans from Henslowe were numerous and often very small. Some were on account of the Admiral’s; others on a private account noted in the margin of Henslowe’s diary. On 16 Sept. 1598 he owed the Admiral’s £8 9s. in balance, ‘al his boockes & recknynges payd’. In Nov. 1598 he had loans ‘for to areste one with Lord Lester’. In Jan. 1599 he was in the Marshalsea, and in May borrowed to avoid arrest by one Ingrome. On 25 Mar. 1602 he was driven, apparently in view of a payment of £3, to seal a bond to write for the Admiral’s. This did not prevent him from also writing for Worcester’s in the autumn. More than once his manuscript had to be redeemed from pawn (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 250). His England’s Mourning Garment, a eulogy of Elizabeth, is reprinted in C. M. Ingleby, Shakespere Allusion-Books, Part i (N. S. S. 1874), 77. Herein he speaks of himself as ‘courting it now and than’, when he was ‘yong, almost thirtie yeeres agoe’, and calls on a number of poets under fanciful names to sing the dead queen’s praise. They are Daniel, Warner, Chapman (Coryn), Jonson (our English Horace), Shakespeare (Melicert), Drayton (Coridon), Lodge (Musidore), Dekker (Antihorace), Marston (Moelibee), and Petowe (?). Chettle was therefore alive in 1603, but he is spoken of as dead in Dekker’s Knight’s Conjuring (1607).

PLAYS

The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. 1598

The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. 1598

For Chettle’s relation to these two plays, see s.v. Munday.

Patient Grissel. 1600

With Dekker (q.v.) and Haughton.

1 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green. 1600

With Day (q.v.).

Sir Thomas Wyatt. 1602

With Dekker (q.v.), Heywood, Smith, and Webster, as Lady Jane, or The Overthrow of Rebels, but whether anything of Chettle’s survives in the extant text is doubtful.

Hoffman or A Revenge for a Father. 1602 <

S. R. 1630, Feb. 26 (Herbert). ‘A play called Hoffman the Revengfull ffather.’ John Grove (Arber, iv. 229).

1631. The Tragedy of Hoffman or A Reuenge for a Father, As it hath bin diuers times acted with great applause, at the Phenix in Druery-lane. I. N. for Hugh Perry. [Epistle to Richard Kiluert, signed ‘Hvgh Perry’.]

Editions by H. B. L[eonard] (1852), R. Ackermann (1894), and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.).—Dissertations: N. Delius, C.’s H. und Shakespeare’s Hamlet (1874, Jahrbuch, ix. 166); A. H. Thorndike, The Relations of Hamlet to Contemporary Revenge Plays (1902, M. L. A. xvii. 125).

Henslowe paid Chettle, on behalf of the Admiral’s, £1 in earnest of ‘a Danyshe tragedy’ on 7 July 1602, and 5s. in part payment for a tragedy of ‘Howghman’ on 29 Dec. It seems natural to take the latter, and perhaps also the former, entry as relating to this play, although it does not bear Chettle’s name on the title-page. But its completion was presumably later than the termination of Henslowe’s record in 1603. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 226) rightly repudiates the suggestion of Fleay, i. 70, 291, that we are justified in regarding Hoffman the unnamed tragedy of Chettle and Heywood in Jan. 1603, for which a blank can of course afford no evidence. But ‘the Prince of the burning crowne’ is referred to in Kempe’s Nine Daies Wonder, 22, not as a ‘play’, but as a suggested theme for a ballad writer.

Doubtful and Lost Plays

Chettle’s hand has been suggested in the anonymous Trial of Chivalry (vide infra) and The Weakest Goeth to the Wall.

The following is a complete list of the plays, wholly or partly by Chettle, recorded in Henslowe’s diary.

(a) Plays for the Admiral’s, 1598–1603

(i), (ii) 1, 2 Robin Hood.

With Munday (q.v.), Feb.–Mar. and Nov. 1598.

(iii) The Famous Wars of Henry I and the Prince of Wales.

With Dekker (q.v.) and Drayton, Mar. 1598.

(iv), (v) 1, 2 Earl Godwin and His Three Sons.

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

(vi) Pierce of Exton.

With Dekker, Drayton, and Wilson, April 1598, but apparently not finished.

(vii), (viii) 1, 2 Black Bateman of the North.

With Wilson, and for Part 1, Dekker and Drayton, May–July 1598.

(ix) The Funeral of Richard Cœur-de-Lion.

With Drayton, Munday, and Wilson, June 1598.

(x) A Woman’s Tragedy.

July 1598, but apparently unfinished.

(xi) Hot Anger Soon Cold.

With Jonson and Porter, Aug. 1598.

(xii) Chance Medley.

By Chettle or Dekker, Drayton, Munday, and Wilson, Aug. 1598.

(xiii) Catiline’s Conspiracy.

With Wilson, Aug. 1598, but apparently not finished.

(xiv) Vayvode.

Apparently an old play revised by Chettle, Aug. 1598.

(xv) 2 Brute.

Sept.–Oct. 1598.

(xvi) ’Tis no Deceit to Deceive the Deceiver.

Nov. 1598, but apparently not finished.

(xvii) Polyphemus, or Troy’s Revenge.

Feb. 1599.

(xviii) The Spencers.

With Porter, March 1599.

(xix) Troilus and Cressida.

With Dekker (q.v.), April 1599.

(xx) Agamemnon, or Orestes Furious.

With Dekker, May 1599.

(xxi) The Stepmother’s Tragedy.

With Dekker, Aug.–Oct. 1599.

(xxii) Robert II or The Scot’s Tragedy.

With Dekker, Jonson, and possibly Marston (q.v.), Sept. 1599.

(xxiii) Patient Grissell.

With Dekker (q.v.) and Haughton, Oct.–Dec. 1599.

(xxiv) The Orphan’s Tragedy.

Nov. 1599–Sept. 1601, but apparently not finished, unless Greg rightly traces it in Yarington’s Two Lamentable Tragedies (q.v.).

(xxv) The Arcadian Virgin.

With Haughton, Dec. 1599, but apparently not finished.

(xxvi) Damon and Pythias.

Feb.–May 1600.

(xxvii) The Seven Wise Masters.

With Day, Dekker, and Haughton, March 1600.

(xxviii) The Golden Ass, or Cupid and Psyche.

With Day and Dekker, April-May 1600; on possible borrowings from this, cf. s.v. Heywood, Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas.

(xxix) The Wooing of Death.

May 1600, but apparently not finished.

(xxx) 1 Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green.

With Day (q.v.), May 1600.

(xxxi) All Is Not Gold That Glisters.

March-April 1601.

(xxxii) King Sebastian of Portingale.

With Dekker, April-May 1601.

(xxxiii), (xxxiv) 1, 2 Cardinal Wolsey.

Apparently Chettle wrote a play on The Life of Cardinal Wolsey in June–Aug. 1601, to which was afterwards prefixed a play on The Rising of Cardinal Wolsey, by Chettle, Drayton, Munday, and Smith, written in Aug.–Nov. 1601 (cf. Greg, Henslowe, ii. 218). Chettle was ‘mendynge’ The Life in May–June 1602, and on 25 July Richard Hadsor wrote to Sir R. Cecil of the attainder of the Earl of Kildare’s grandfather ‘by the policy of Cardinal Wolsey, as it is set forth and played now upon the stage in London’ (Hatfield MSS. xii. 248).

(xxxv) Too Good To Be True.

With Hathway and Smith, Nov. 1601–Jan. 1602; the alternative title ‘or Northern Man’ in one of Henslowe’s entries is a forgery by Collier (cf. Greg, Henslowe, i. xliii).

(xxxvi) Friar Rush and the Proud Women of Antwerp.

Written by Day and Haughton in 1601 and mended by Chettle in Jan. 1602.

(xxxvii) Love Parts Friendship.

With Smith, May 1602; identified by Bullen with the anonymous Trial of Chivalry (q.v.).

(xxxviii) Tobias.

May–June 1602.

(xxxix) Hoffman.

July–Dec. 1602, but apparently not finished. Vide supra.

(xl) Felmelanco.

With Robensone (q.v.), Sept. 1602.

(xli), (xlii) 1, 2 The London Florentine.

Part 1 with Heywood, Dec. 1602–Jan. 1603; one payment had been made to Chettle for Part 2 before the diary entries stopped.

(xliii) [Unnamed play].

‘for a prologe & a epyloge for the corte’, 29 Dec. 1602.

(b) Plays for Worcester’s, 1602–3

(xliv) [Unnamed play. Collier’s Robin Goodfellow is forged].

A tragedy, Aug. 1602, but perhaps not finished, unless identical, as suggested by Greg (Henslowe, ii. 229), with the anonymous Byron.

(xlv) 1 Lady Jane, or The Overthrow of Rebels.

With Dekker (q.v.), Heywood, Smith, and Webster, Oct. 1602.

(xlvi) Christmas Comes but Once a Year.

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

(xlvii) [Unnamed play. Collier’s Like Quits Like is forged].

With Heywood, Jan. 1603, but apparently not finished, or possibly identical, as suggested by Greg (Henslowe, ii. 235), with (xlviii).

(xlviii) Shore.

With Day, May 1603, but not finished before the diary ended.

THOMAS CHURCHYARD (1520?-1604).

The best account of Churchyard is that by H. W. Adnitt in Shropshire Arch. Soc. Trans. iii (1880), 1, with a bibliography of his numerous poems. For his share in the devices of the Bristol entertainment (1574) and the Suffolk and Norfolk progress (1578), of both of which he published descriptions, cf. ch. xxiv. He was also engaged by the Shrewsbury corporation to prepare a show for an expected but abandoned royal visit in 1575 (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 255). His A Handful of Gladsome Verses given to the Queenes Maiesty at Woodstocke this Prograce (1592) is reprinted in H. Huth and W. C. Hazlitt, Fugitive Tracts (1875), i. It is not mimetic. His own account of his work in Churchyard’s Challenge (1593) suggests that he took a considerable part in Elizabethan pageantry. He says that he wrote:

‘The deuises of warre and a play at Awsterley. Her Highnes being at Sir Thomas Greshams’,

and

‘The deuises and speeches that men and boyes shewed within many prograces’.

And amongst ‘Workes ... gotten from me of some such noble friends as I am loath to offend’ he includes:

‘A book of a sumptuous shew in Shrouetide, by Sir Walter Rawley, Sir Robart Carey, M. Chidley, and M. Arthur Gorge, in which book was the whole seruice of my L. of Lester mencioned that he and his traine did in Flaunders, and the gentlemen Pencioners proued to be a great peece of honor to the Court: all which book was in as good verse as euer I made: an honorable knight, dwelling in the Black-Friers, can witness the same, because I read it vnto him.’

The natural date for this ‘shew’ is Shrovetide 1587. I do not know why Nichols, Eliz. ii. 279, dates the Osterley device 1579. Elizabeth was often there, but I find no evidence of a visit in 1579. Lowndes speaks of the work as in print, but I doubt whether he has any authority beyond Churchyard’s own notice, which does not prove publication.

ANTHONY CHUTE (ob. c. 1595).

Nashe in his Have With You to Saffron Walden (1596, Works, iii. 107), attacking Chute as a friend of Gabriel Harvey, says, ‘he hath kneaded and daub’d vp a Commedie, called The transformation of the King of Trinidadoes two Daughters, Madame Panachaea and the Nymphe Tobacco; and, to approue his Heraldrie, scutchend out the honorable Armes of the smoakie Societie’. I hesitate to take this literally.

GEORGE CLIFFORD (1558–1605).

George Clifford was born 8 Aug. 1558, succeeded as third Earl of Cumberland 8 Jan. 1570, and died 30 Oct. 1605. A recent biography is G. C. Williamson, George, Third Earl of Cumberland (1920). He married Margaret Russell, daughter of Francis, second Earl of Bedford, on 24 June 1577. His daughter, Anne Clifford, who left an interesting autobiography, married firstly Richard, third Earl of Dorset, and secondly Philip, fourth Earl of Pembroke. Cumberland was prominent in Elizabethan naval adventure and shone in the tilt. He is recorded as appearing on 17 Nov. 1587 (Gawdy, 25) and 26 Aug. 1588 (Sp. P. iv. 419). On 17 Nov. 1590 he succeeded Sir Henry Lee (q.v.) as Knight of the Crown. Thereafter he was the regular challenger for the Queen’s Day tilt, often with the assistance of the Earl of Essex. On 17 Nov. 1592 they came together armed into the privy chamber, and issued a challenge to maintain against all comers on the following 26 Feb. ‘that ther M. is most worthyest and most fayrest Amadis de Gaule’ (Gawdy, 67). Cumberland’s tiltyard speeches, as Knight of Pendragon Castle, in 1591 (misdated 1592) and 1593 are printed by Williamson, 108, 121, from manuscripts at Appleby Castle.

His appearance as Knight of the Crown on 17 Nov. 1595 is noted in Peele’s (q.v.) Anglorum Feriae. In F. Davison’s Poetical Rhapsody (1602, ed. Bullen, ii. 128) is an ode Of Cynthia, with the note ‘This Song was sung before her sacred Maiestie at a shew on horse-backe, wherwith the right Honorable the Earle of Cumberland presented her Highnesse on Maie day last’. This is reprinted by R. W. Bond (Lyly, i. 414) with alternative ascriptions to Lyly and to Sir John Davies. But Cumberland himself wrote verses. I do not know why Bullen and Bond assume that the show was on 1 May 1600. The Cumberland MSS. at Bolton, Yorkshire, once contained a prose speech, now lost, in the character of a melancholy knight, headed ‘A Copie of my Lord of Combrlandes Speeche to y^e Queene, upon y^e 17 day of November, 1600’. This was printed by T. D. Whitaker, History of Craven (1805, ed. Morant, 1878, p. 355), and reprinted by Nichols, Eliz. iii. 522, and by Bond, Lyly, i. 415, with a conjectural attribution to Lyly. In 1601 Cumberland conveyed to Sir John Davies a suggestion from Sir R. Cecil that he should write a ‘speech for introduction of the barriers’ (Hatfield MSS. xi. 544), and in letters of 1602 he promised Cecil to appear at the tilt on Queen’s Day, but later tried to excuse himself on the ground that a damaged arm would not let him carry a staff (Hatfield MSS. xii. 438, 459, 574). Anne Clifford records ‘speeches and delicate presents’ at Grafton when James and Anne visited the Earl there on 27 June 1603 (Wiffen, ii. 71).

JO. COOKE (c. 1612).

Beyond his play, practically nothing is known of Cooke. It is not even clear whether ‘Jo.’ stands for John, or for Joshua; the latter is suggested by the manuscript ascription on a copy of the anonymous How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad (q.v.). Can Cooke be identical with the I. Cocke who contributed to Stephens’s Characters in 1615 (cf. App. C, No. lx)? Collier, iii. 408, conjectures that he was a brother John named, probably as dead, in the will (3 Jan. 1614) of Alexander Cooke the actor (cf. ch. xv). There is an entry in S. R. on 22 May 1604 of a lost ‘Fyftie epigrams written by J. Cooke Gent’, and a ‘I. Cooke’ wrote commendatory verses to Drayton’s Legend of Cromwell (1607).

Greenes Tu Quoque or The City Gallant. 1611

1614. Greene’s Tu quoque, or, The Cittie Gallant. As it hath beene diuers times acted by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by Io. Cooke, Gent. For John Trundle. [Epistle to the Reader, signed ‘Thomas Heywood’, and a couplet ‘Upon the Death of Thomas Greene’, signed ‘W. R.’]

1622. For Thomas Dewe.

N.D. M. Flesher.

Editions in Dodsley^1–4 (1744–1875) and by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. ii) and J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.).

Heywood writes ‘to gratulate the love and memory of my worthy friend the author, and my entirely beloved fellow the actor’, both of whom were evidently dead. Satire of Coryat’s Crudities gives a date between its publication in 1611 and the performances of the play by the Queen’s men at Court on 27 Dec. 1611 and 2 Feb. 1612 (cf. App. B). In Aug. 1612 died Thomas Greene, who had evidently played Bubble at the Red Bull (ed. Dodsley, p. 240):