Volume 3 / Book 5 — BOOK V PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS (continued 6)

Collections

1842–51. B. Field and J. P. Collier, The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood. 2 vols. (Shakespeare Society). [Intended for a complete edition, although issued in single parts; a title-page for vol. i was issued in 1850 and the 10th Report of the Society treats the plays for 1851 as completing vol. ii. Twelve plays were issued, as cited infra.]

1874. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood. 6 vols. (Pearson Reprints). [All the undoubted plays, with Edward IV and Fair Maid of the Exchange; also Lord Mayors’ Pageants and part of Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas.]

1888. A. W. Verity, The Best Plays of Thomas Heywood (Mermaid Series). [Woman Killed with Kindness, Fair Maid of the West, English Traveller, Wise Woman of Hogsdon, Rape of Lucrece.]

Dissertations: K. L. Bates, A Conjecture as to Thomas Heywood’s Family (1913, J. G. P. xii. 1); P. Aronstein, Thomas Heywood (1913, Anglia, xxxvii. 163).

The Four Prentices of London. 1592 (?)

S. R. 1594, June 19. ‘An enterlude entituled Godfrey of Bulloigne with the Conquest of Jerusalem.’ John Danter (Arber, ii. 654).

1615. The Foure Prentises of London. With the Conquest of Ierusalem. As it hath bene diuerse times Acted, at the Red Bull, by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by Thomas Heywood. For I. W. [Epistle to the Prentices, signed ‘Thomas Heywood’ and Prologue, really an Induction.]

1632.... Written and newly reuised by Thomas Heywood. Nicholas Okes.

Editions in Dodsley^{2, 3} (1780–1827) and by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. iii).

The Prologue gives the title as True and Strange, or The Four Prentises of London. The Epistle speaks of the play as written ‘many yeares since, in my infancy of iudgment in this kinde of poetry, and my first practice’ and ‘some fifteene or sixteene yeares agoe’. This would, by itself, suggest a date shortly after the publication of Fairfax’s translation from Tasso under the title of Godfrey of Bulloigne, or The Recouerie of Ierusalem in 1600. But the Epistle also refers to a recent revival of ‘the commendable practice of long forgotten armes’ in ‘the Artillery Garden’. This, according to Stowe, Annales (1615), 906, was in 1610, which leads Fleay, i. 182, followed by Greg (Henslowe, ii. 166), to assume that the Epistle was written for an edition, now lost, of about that date. In support they cite Beaumont’s K. B. P. iv. 1 (dating it 1610 instead of 1607), ‘Read the play of the Foure Prentices of London, where they tosse their pikes so’. Then, calculating back sixteen years, they arrive at the anonymous Godfrey of Bulloigne produced by the Admiral’s on 19 July 1594, and identify this with The Four Prentices, in which Godfrey is a character. But this Godfrey of Bulloigne was a second part, and it is difficult to suppose that the first part was anything but the play entered on the S. R. earlier in 1594. This, from its title, clearly left no room for a second part covering the same ground as The Four Prentices, which ends with the capture of Jerusalem. If then Heywood’s play is as old as 1594 at all, it must be identified with the first part of Godfrey of Bulloigne. And is not this in its turn likely to be the Jerusalem played by Strange’s men on 22 March and 25 April 1592? If so, Heywood’s career began very early, and, as we can hardly put his Epistle earlier than the opening of the Artillery Garden in 1610, his ‘fifteene or sixteene yeares’ must be rather an understatement. There is of course nothing in the Epistle itself to suggest that the play had been previously printed, but we know from the Epistle to Lucrece that the earliest published plays by Heywood were surreptitious.

Greg, Henslowe, ii. 230, hesitatingly suggests that a purchase by Worcester’s of ‘iiij lances for the comody of Thomas Hewedes & M^r. Smythes’ on 3 Sept. 1602 may have been for a revival of The Four Prentices, ‘where they tosse their pikes so’, transferred from the Admiral’s. But I think his afterthought, that the comedy was Heywood and Smith’s Albere Galles, paid for on the next day, is sound.

Sir Thomas Wyatt. 1602

See s.v. Dekker.

The Royal King and the Loyal Subject. 1602 (?)

S. R. 1637, March 25 (Thomas Herbert, deputy to Sir Henry Herbert). ‘A Comedy called the Royall king and the Loyall Subiects by Master Heywood.’ James Beckett (Arber, iv. 376).

1637. The Royall King, and the Loyall Subject. As it hath beene Acted with great Applause by the Queenes Maiesties Servants. Written by Thomas Heywood. Nich. and John Okes for James Becket. [Prologue to the Stage and Epilogue to the Reader.]

Editions by J. P. Collier (1850, Sh. Soc.) and K. W. Tibbals (1906, Pennsylvania Univ. Publ.).—Dissertation: O. Kämpfer, Th. Heywood’s The Royal King and Painter’s Palace of Pleasure (1903, Halle diss.).

The Epilogue describes the play as ‘old’, and apparently relates it to a time when rhyme, of which it makes considerable use, was more looked after than ‘strong lines’, and when stuffed and puffed doublets and trunk-hose were worn, which would fit the beginning of the seventeenth century. An anonymous Marshal is a leading character, and the identification by Fleay, i. 300, with the Marshal Osric written by Heywood and Smith for Worcester’s in Sept. 1602 is not the worst of his guesses.

A Woman Killed With Kindness. 1603

1607. A Woman Kilde with Kindnesse. Written by Tho: Heywood. William Jaggard, sold by John Hodgets. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

1617.... As it hath beene oftentimes Acted by the Queenes Maiest. Seruants.... The third Edition. Isaac Jaggard.

Editions in Dodsley^{1, 2, 3} (1744–1827) and by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. ii), J. P. Collier (1850, Sh. Soc.), A. W. Ward (1897, T. D.), F. J. Cox (1907), W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.), K. L. Bates (1919).—Dissertation: R. G. Martin, A New Source for a Woman Killed with Kindness (1911, E. S. xliii. 229).

Henslowe, on behalf of Worcester’s, paid Heywood £6 for this play in Feb. and March 1603 and also bought properties for it. It is mentioned in T. M., The Black Book of London (1604), sig. E3.

The Wise Woman of Hogsdon. c. 1604 (?)

S. R. 1638, Mar. 12 (Wykes). ‘A Play called The wise woman of Hogsden by Thomas Haywood.’ Henry Sheapard (Arber, iv. 411).

1638. The Wise Woman of Hogsdon. A Comedie. As it hath been sundry times Acted with great Applause. Written by Tho: Heywood. M. P. for Henry Shephard.

Fleay, i. 291, suggested a date c. 1604 on the grounds of allusions to other plays of which A Woman Killed with Kindness is the latest (ed. Pearson, v. 316), and a conjectural identification with Heywood’s How to Learn of a Woman to Woo, played by the Queen’s at Court on 30 Dec. 1604. The approximate date is accepted by Ward, ii. 574, and others. It may be added that there are obvious parallelisms with the anonymous How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad (1602) generally assigned to Heywood.

If You Know not Me, You Know Nobody. 1605

S. R. 1605, July 5 (Hartwell). ‘A booke called yf you knowe not me you knowe no body.’ Nathaniel Butter (Arber, iii. 295).

1605, Sept. 14 (Hartwell). ‘A Booke called the Second parte of Yf you knowe not me you knowe no bodie with the buildinge of the exchange.’ Nathaniel Butter (Arber, iii. 301).

[Part i]

1605. If you Know not me, You Know no bodie: Or, The troubles of Queene Elizabeth. For Nathaniel Butter.

1606, 1608, 1610, 1613, 1623, 1632, 1639.

[Part ii]

1606. The Second Part of, If you Know not me, you know no bodie. With the building of the Royall Exchange: And the famous Victorie of Queene Elizabeth, in the Yeare 1588. For Nathaniell Butter.

1609.... With the Humors of Hobson and Tawny-cote. For Nathaniell Butter.

N.D. [1623?].

1632. For Nathaniel Butter. [With different version of Act V.]

Editions by J. P. Collier (1851, Sh. Soc.) and J. Blew (1876).—Dissertation: B. A. P. van Dam and C. Stoffel, The Fifth Act of Thomas Heywood’s Queen Elizabeth: Second Part (1902, Jahrbuch, xxxviii. 153).

Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas, 248, has ‘A Prologue to the Play of Queene Elizabeth as it was last revived at the Cockpit, in which the Author taxeth the most corrupted copy now imprinted, which was published without his consent’. It says:

There is also an Epilogue, which shows that both parts were revived. The piracy may serve to date the original production in 1605 and the Caroline revival probably led to the reprints of 1632. As the play passed to the Cockpit, it was presumably written for Queen Anne’s. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 223) rightly resists the suggestion that it was the old Philip of Spain bought by the Admiral’s from Alleyn in 1602. It is only Part i which has characteristics attributable to stenography, and this remained unrevised. According to Van Dam and Stoffel, the 1606 and 1632 editions of Part ii represent the same original text, in the first case shortened for representation, in the second altered by a press-corrector.

Fortune by Land and Sea. c. 1607 (?)

With W. Rowley.

S. R. 1655, June 20. ‘Fortune by Land & sea, a tragicomedie, written by Tho: Heywood & Wm. Rowley.’ John Sweeting (Eyre, i. 486).

1655. Fortune by Land and Sea. A Tragi-Comedy. As it was Acted with great Applause by the Queens Servants. Written by Tho. Haywood and William Rowly. For John Sweeting and Robert Pollard.

Edition by B. Field (1846, Sh. Soc.).—Dissertation: Oxoniensis, Illustration of Fortune by Land and Sea (1847, Sh. Soc. Papers, iii. 7).

The action is placed in the reign of Elizabeth (cf. ed. Pearson, vi, pp. 409, 431), but this may be due merely to the fact that the source is a pamphlet (S. R. 15 Aug. 1586) dealing with Elizabethan piracy. Rowley’s co-operation suggests the date 1607–9 when he was writing for Queen Anne’s men, and other trifling evidence (Aronstein, 237) makes such a date plausible.

The Rape of Lucrece. 1603 < > 8

S. R. 1608, June 3 (Buck). ‘A Booke called A Romane tragedie called The Rape of Lucrece.’ John Busby and Nathanael Butter (Arber, iii. 380).

1608. The Rape of Lucrece. A True Roman Tragedie. With the seuerall Songes in their apt places, by Valerius, the merrie Lord amongst the Roman Peeres. Acted by her Maiesties Seruants at the Red Bull, neare Clarkenwell. Written by Thomas Heywood. For I. B. [Epistle to the Reader, signed ‘T. H.’]

1609. For I. B.

1630.... The fourth Impression.... For Nathaniel Butter.

1638.... The copy revised, and sundry Songs before omitted, now inserted in their right places.... John Raworth for Nathaniel Butter. [Note to the Reader at end.]

Edition in 1825 (O. E. D. i).

Fleay, i. 292, notes the mention of ‘the King’s head’ as a tavern sign for ‘the Gentry’, which suggests a Jacobean date. The play was given at Court, apparently by the King’s and Queen’s men together, on 13 Jan. 1612. The Epistle says that it has not been Heywood’s custom ‘to commit my Playes to the Presse’, like others who ‘have used a double sale of their labours, first to the Stage, and after to the Presse’. He now does so because ‘some of my Playes have (unknowne to me, and without any of my direction) accidentally come into the Printers hands (and therefore so corrupt and mangled, copied only by the eare) that I have beene as unable to knowe them, as ashamed to challenge them’. A play on the subject seems to have been on tour in Germany in 1619 (Herz, 98). The Rape of Lucrece was on the Cockpit stage in 1628, according to a newsletter in Athenaeum (1879), ii. 497, and to the 1638 edition are appended songs ‘added by the stranger that lately acted Valerius his part’. It is in the Cockpit list of plays in 1639 (Variorum, iii. 159).

The Golden Age > 1611

S. R. 1611, Oct. 14 (Buck). William Barrenger, ‘A booke called, The golden age with the liues of Jupiter and Saturne.’ William Barrenger (Arber, iii. 470).

1611. The Golden Age. Or The liues of Iupiter and Saturne, with the defining of the Heathen Gods. As it hath beene sundry times acted at the Red Bull, by the Queenes Maiesties Seruants. Written by Thomas Heywood. For William Barrenger. [Epistle to the Reader, signed ‘T. H.’ Some copies have ‘defining’ corrected to ‘deifying’ in the title.]

Edition by J. P. Collier (1851, Sh. Soc.).

The Epistle describes the play as ‘the eldest brother of three Ages, that haue aduentured the Stage, but the onely yet, that hath beene iudged to the presse’, and promises the others. It came to the press ‘accidentally’, but Heywood, ‘at length hauing notice thereof’, prefaced it, as it had ‘already past the approbation of auditors’. Fleay, i. 283, followed hesitatingly by Greg (Henslowe, ii. 175), thinks it a revision of the Olympo or Seleo & Olempo, which he interprets Coelo et Olympo, produced by the Admiral’s on 5 March 1595. The Admiral’s inventories show that they had a play with Neptune in it, but it is only at the very end of The Golden Age that the sons of Saturn draw lots and Jupiter wins Heaven or Olympus. Fleay’s assumption that the play was revised c. 1610, because of Dekker, If it be not Good, i. 1, ‘The Golden Age is moulding new again’, is equally hazardous.

The Silver Age > 1612

1613. The Silver Age, Including. The loue of Iupiter to Alcmena: The birth of Hercules. And the Rape of Proserpine. Concluding, With the Arraignement of the Moone. Written by Thomas Heywood. Nicholas Okes, sold by Beniamin Lightfoote. [Epistle to the Reader, signed ‘T. H,’; Prologue and Epilogue.]

Edition by J. P. Collier (1851, Sh. Soc.).

The Epistle says, ‘Wee begunne with Gold, follow with Siluer, proceede with Brasse, and purpose by Gods grace, to end with Iron’. Fleay, i. 283, and Greg (Henslowe, ii. 175) take this and The Brazen Age to be the two parts of the anonymous Hercules, produced by the Admiral’s men on 7 and 23 May 1595 respectively. It may be so. But the text presumably represents the play as given at Court, apparently by the King’s and Queen’s men together, on 12 Jan. 1612. An Anglo-German Amphitryo traceable in 1626 and 1678 may be based on Heywood’s work (Herz, 66; Jahrbuch, xli. 201).

The Brazen Age > 1613

1613. The Brazen Age, The first Act containing, The death of the Centaure Nessus, The Second, The Tragedy of Meleager: The Third The Tragedy of Iason and Medea. The Fourth. Vulcans Net. The Fifth. The Labours and death of Hercules: Written by Thomas Heywood. Nicholas Okes for Samuel Rand. [Epistle to the Reader; Prologue and Epilogue.]

Cf. s.v. The Silver Age.

The Iron Age. c. 1613 (?)

1632. [Part i] The Iron Age: Contayning the Rape of Hellen: The siege of Troy: The Combate betwixt Hector and Aiax: Hector and Troilus slayne by Achilles: Achilles slaine by Paris: Aiax and Vlesses contend for the Armour of Achilles: The Death of Aiax, &c. Written by Thomas Heywood. Nicholas Okes. [Epistles to Thomas Hammon and to the Reader, signed ‘Thomas Heywood’.]

1632. [Part ii] The Second Part of the Iron Age. Which contayneth the death of Penthesilea, Paris, Priam, and Hecuba: The burning of Troy: The deaths of Agamemnon, Menelaus, Clitemnestra, Hellena, Orestes, Egistus, Pillades, King Diomed, Pyrhus, Cethus, Synon, Thersites, &c. Written by Thomas Heywood. Nicholas Okes. [Epistles to the Reader and to Thomas Mannering, signed ‘Thomas Heywood’.]

Dissertation: R. G. Martin, A New Specimen of the Revenge Play (1918, M. P. xvi. 1).

The Epistles tell us that ‘these were the playes often (and not with the least applause,) Publickely Acted by two Companies, vppon one Stage at once, and haue at sundry times thronged three seuerall Theaters, with numerous and mighty Auditories’; also that they ‘haue beene long since Writ’. This, however, was in 1632, and I can only read the Epistles to the earlier Ages as indicating that the Iron Age was contemplated, but not yet in existence, up to 1613. I should therefore put the play c. 1613, and take the three theatres at which it was given to be the Curtain, Red Bull, and Cockpit. Fleay, i. 285, thinks that Part i was the anonymous Troy produced by the Admiral’s on 22 June 1596. More plausible is the conjecture of Greg (Henslowe, ii. 180) that this was ‘an earlier and shorter version later expanded into the two-part play’. Spencer had a play on the Destruction of Troy at Nuremberg in 1613 (Herz, 66).

Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas. 1630–6 (?)

S. R. 1635, Aug. 29 (Weekes). ‘A booke called Pleasant Dialogues and Dramma’s selected out of Lucian Erasmus Textor Ovid &c. by Thomas Heywood.’ Richard Hearne (Arber, iv. 347).

1637. Pleasant Dialogues and Dramma’s, selected out of Lucian, Erasmus, Textor, Ovid, &c. With sundry Emblems extracted from the most elegant Iacobus Catsius. As also certaine Elegies, Epitaphs, and Epithalamions or Nuptiall Songs; Anagrams and Acrosticks; With divers Speeches (upon severall occasions) spoken to their most Excellent Majesties, King Charles, and Queene Mary. With other Fancies translated from Beza, Bucanan, and sundry Italian Poets. By Tho. Heywood. R. O. for R. H., sold by Thomas Slater. [Epistle to the Generous Reader, signed ‘Tho. Heywood’, and Congratulatory Poems by Sh. Marmion, D. E., and S. N.]

Edition by W. Bang (1903, Materialien, iii).

The section called ‘Sundry Fancies writ upon severall occasions’ (Bang, 231) includes a number of Prologues and Epilogues, of which those which are datable fall between 1630 and 1636. Bang regards all the contents of the volume as of about this period. Fleay, i. 285, had suggested that Deorum Judicium, Jupiter and Io, Apollo and Daphne, Amphrisa, and possibly Misanthropos formed the anonymous Five Plays in One produced by the Admiral’s on 7 April 1597, and also that Misanthropos, which he supposed to bear the name Time’s Triumph, was played with Faustus on 13 April 1597 and carelessly entered by Henslowe as ‘times triumpe & fortus’. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 183) says of the Dialogues and Dramas, ‘many of the pieces in that collection are undoubtedly early’. He rejects Fleay’s views as to Misanthropos on the grounds that it is ‘unrelieved tediousness’ and has no claim to the title Time’s Triumph, and is doubtful as to Deorum Judicium. The three others he seems inclined to accept as possibly belonging to the 1597 series, especially Jupiter and Io, where the unappropriated head of Argus in one of the Admiral’s inventories tempts him. He is also attracted by an alternative suggestion of Fleay’s that one of the Five Plays in One may have been a Cupid and Psyche, afterwards worked up into Love’s Mistress (1636). This he says, ‘if it existed’, would suit very well. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that it did exist. Moreover, P. A. Daniel has shown that certain lines found in Love’s Mistress are assigned to Dekker in England’s Parnassus (1600, ed. Crawford, xxxi. 509, 529) and must be from the Cupid and Psyche produced by the Admiral’s c. June 1600 (Henslowe, ii. 212). There is no indication that Heywood collaborated with Dekker, Chettle, and Day in this; but it occurs to me that, if he was still at the Rose, he may have acted in the play and cribbed years afterwards from the manuscript of his part. I will only add that Misanthropos and Deorum Judicium seem to me out of the question. They belong to the series of ‘dialogues’ which Heywood in his Epistle clearly treats as distinct from the ‘dramas’, for after describing them he goes on, ‘For such as delight in Stage-poetry, here are also divers Dramma’s, never before published: Which, though some may condemne for their shortnesse, others againe will commend for their sweetnesse’. It is only Jupiter and Io and Apollo and Daphne, which are based on Ovid, and Amphrisa, for which there is no known source, that can belong to this group; and Heywood gives no indication as to their date.

Lost and Doubtful Plays

On How to Learn of a Woman to Woo, see s.v. The Wise Woman of Hogsden. The author of The Second Part of Hudibras (1663) names Heywood as the author of The Bold Beauchamps, which is mentioned with Jane Shore in The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Ind. 59.

The following is a complete list of the plays, by Heywood or conjecturally assigned to him, which are recorded in Henslowe’s diary:

Possible plays for the Admiral’s, 1594–7

For conjectures as to the authorship by Heywood of Godfrey of Bulloigne (1594), The Siege of London (>1594), Wonder of a Woman (1595), Seleo and Olympo (1595), 1, 2 Hercules (1595), Troy (1596), Five Plays in One (1597), Time’s Triumph (>1597), see The Four Prentices, the anonymous Edward IV, W. Rowley’s A New Wonder, The Golden Age, The Silver Age, The Iron Age, Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas.

Plays for the Admiral’s, 1598–1603

(i) War without Blows and Love without Suit.

Dec. 1598–Jan. 1599; identified, not plausibly, by Fleay, i. 287, with the anonymous Thracian Wonder (q.v.).

(ii) Joan as Good as my Lady.

Feb. 1599, identified, conjecturally, by Fleay, i. 298, with A Maidenhead Well Lost, printed as Heywood’s in 1634.

(iii) 1 The London Florentine.

With Chettle, Dec. 1602–Jan. 1603.

Plays for Worcester’s, 1602–3

(iv) Albere Galles.

With Smith, Sept. 1602, possibly identical with the anonymous Nobody and Somebody (q.v.).

(v) Cutting Dick (additions only).

Sept. 1602, identified by Fleay, ii. 319, with the anonymous Trial of Chivalry, but not plausibly (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 231).

(vi) Marshal Osric.

With Smith, Sept. 1602, conceivably identical with The Royal King and the Loyal Subject (q.v.).

(vii) 1 Lady Jane.

With Chettle, Dekker, Smith, and Webster, Oct. 1602, doubtless represented by the extant Sir Thomas Wyatt of Dekker (q.v.) and Webster, in which, however, Heywood’s hand has not been traced.

(viii) Christmas Comes but Once a Year.

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

(ix) The Blind Eats many a Fly.

Nov. 1602–Jan. 1603.

(x) [Unnamed play.]

With Chettle, Jan. 1603, but apparently not finished, or possibly identical with the Shore of Chettle (q.v.) and Day. The title Like Quits Like, inserted into one entry for this play, is a forgery (Greg, Henslowe, i. xliii).

(xi) A Woman Killed With Kindness.

Feb.–March 1603. Vide supra.

Heywood’s hand or ‘finger’ has also been suggested in the Appius and Virginia printed as Webster’s (q.v.), in Pericles, and in Fair Maid of the Exchange, George a Greene, How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, Thomas Lord Cromwell, and Work for Cutlers (cf. ch. xxiv).

GRIFFIN HIGGS (1589–1659).

A student at St. John’s, Oxford (1606), afterwards Fellow of Merton (1611), Chaplain to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (1627), and Dean of Lichfield (1638). The MS. of The Christmas Prince (1607) was once thought to be in his handwriting (cf. ch. xxiv, C).

THOMAS HUGHES (c. 1588).

A Cheshire man, who matriculated from Queens’ College, Cambridge, in Nov. 1571 and became Fellow of the College on 8 Sept. 1576.

The Misfortunes of Arthur. 28 Feb. 1588

1587. Certain deuises and shewes presented to her Maiestie by the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne at her Highnesse Court in Greenewich, the twenty-eighth day of Februarie in the thirtieth yeare of her Maiesties most happy Raigne. Robert Robinson. [‘An Introduction penned by Nicholas Trotte Gentleman one of the society of Grayes Inne’; followed by ‘The misfortunes of Arthur (Vther Pendragons Sonne) reduced into Tragicall notes by Thomas Hughes one of the societie of Grayes Inne. And here set downe as it past from vnder his handes and as it was presented, excepting certaine wordes and lines, where some of the Actors either helped their memories by brief omission: or fitted their acting by some alteration. With a note at the ende, of such speaches as were penned by others in lue of some of these hereafter following’; Arguments, Dumb-Shows, and Choruses between the Acts; at end, two substituted speeches ‘penned by William Fulbecke gentleman, one of the societie of Grayes Inne’; followed by ‘Besides these speaches there was also penned a Chorus for the first act, and an other for the second act, by Maister Frauncis Flower, which were pronounced accordingly. The dumbe showes were partly deuised by Maister Christopher Yeluerton, Maister Frauncis Bacon, Maister Iohn Lancaster and others, partly by the saide Maister Flower, who with Maister Penroodocke and the said Maister Lancaster directed these proceedings at Court.’]

Editions in Collier, Five Old Plays (1833), and Dodsley⁴ (1874, iv), and by H. C. Grumbine (1900), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), and J. W. Cunliffe (1912, E. E. C. T.).

Of the seven collaborators, three—Bacon, Yelverton, and Fulbecke—subsequently attained distinction. It is to be wished that editors of more important plays had been as communicative as offended dignity, or some other cause, made Thomas Hughes.

WILLIAM HUNNIS (?-1597).

[Nearly all that is known of Hunnis, except as regards his connexion with the Blackfriars, and much that is conjectural has been gathered and fully illustrated by Mrs. C. C. Stopes in Athenaeum and Shakespeare-Jahrbuch papers, and finally in William Hunnis and the Revels of the Chapel Royal (1910, Materialien, xxix).]

The date of Hunnis’s birth is unknown, except as far as it can be inferred from the reference to him as ‘in winter of thine age’ in 1578. He is described on the title-page of his translation of Certayne Psalmes (1550) as ‘seruant’ to Sir William Herbert, who became Earl of Pembroke. He is in the lists of the Gentlemen of the Chapel about 1553, but he took part in plots against Mary and in 1556 was sent to the Tower. He lost his post, but this was restored between Elizabeth’s accession in 1558 and the opening of the extant Cheque Book of the Chapel in 1561, and on 15 Nov. 1566 he was appointed Master of the Children in succession to Richard Edwardes (q.v.). For the history of his Mastership, cf. ch. xii (Chapel). Early in 1559 he married Margaret, widow of Nicholas Brigham, Teller of the Exchequer, through whom he acquired a life-interest in the secularized Almonry at Westminster. She died in June 1559, and about 1560 Hunnis married Agnes Blancke, widow of a Grocer. He took out the freedom of the Grocers’ Company, and had a shop in Southwark. He was elected to the livery of the Company in 1567, but disappears from its records before 1586. In 1569 he obtained a grant of arms, and is described as of Middlesex. From 1576–85, however, he seems to have had a house at Great Ilford, Barking, Essex. His only known child, Robin, was page to Walter Earl of Essex in Ireland, and is said in Leicester’s Commonwealth to have tasted the poison with which Leicester killed Essex in 1576 and to have lost his hair. But he became a Rider of the Stable under Leicester as Master of the Horse during 1579–83, and received payments for posting services in later years up to 1593. In 1562 William Hunnis became Keeper of the Orchard and Gardens at Greenwich, and held this post with his Mastership to his death. He supplied greenery and flowers for the Banqueting Houses of 1569 and 1571 (cf. ch. i). In 1570 the Queen recommended him to the City as Taker of Tolls and Dues on London Bridge, and his claim was bought off for £40. In 1583 he called attention to the poor remuneration of the Mastership, and in 1585 he received grants of land at Great Ilford and elsewhere. He died on 6 June 1597.

Hunnis published several volumes of moral and religious verse, original and translated: Certayne Psalmes (1550); A Godly new Dialogue of Christ and a Sinner (S. R. 1564, if this is rightly identified with the Dialogue of Hunnis’s 1583 volume); A Hive Full of Honey (1578, S. R. 1 Dec. 1577, dedicated to Leicester); A Handful of Honnisuckles (N.D., S. R. 11 Dec. 1578, a New Year’s gift to the Ladies of the Privy Chamber); Seven Sobbes of a Sorrowful Soule for Sinne (1583, S. R. 7 Nov. 1581, with the Handful of Honnisuckles, The Widow’s Mite, and A Comfortable Dialogue between Christ and a Sinner, dedicated to Lady Sussex); Hunnies Recreations (1588, S. R. 4 Dec. 1587, dedicated to Sir Thomas Heneage). Several poems by Hunnis are also with those of Richard Edwardes and others in The Paradyse of Daynty Deuises (1567); one, the Nosegay, in Clement Robinson’s A Handfull of Pleasant Delites (1584); and it is usual to assign to him two bearing the initials W. H., Wodenfride’s Song in Praise of Amargana and Another of the Same, in England’s Helicon (1600).

The name of no play by Hunnis has been preserved, although he may probably enough have written some of those produced by the Chapel boys during his Mastership. That he was a dramatist is testified to by the following lines contributed by Thomas Newton, one of the translators of Seneca, to his Hive Full of Honey.

Newton’s account of his friend’s poetic evolution seems to assign his ‘enterludes’ to an early period of mainly secular verse; but if this preceded his Certayne Psalmes of 1550, which are surely of ‘graver matters’, it must have gone back to Henry VIII’s reign, far away from his Mastership. On the other hand, Hunnis was certainly contributing secular verse and devices to the Kenilworth festivities (cf. s.v. Gascoigne) only three years before Newton wrote. Mrs. Stopes suggests, with some plausibility, that the Amargana songs of England’s Helicon may come from an interlude. She also assigns to Hunnis, by conjecture, Godly Queen Hester, in which stress is laid on Hester’s Chapel Royal, and Jacob and Esau (1568, S. R. 1557–8), which suggests gardens.

LEONARD HUTTEN (c. 1557–1632).

Possibly the author of the academic Bellum Grammaticale (cf. App. K).

THOMAS INGELEND.

Lee (D. N. B.) conjecturally identifies Ingelend with a man of the same name who married a Northamptonshire heiress.

The Disobedient Child, c. 1560

S. R. 1569–70. ‘An enterlude for boyes to handle and to passe tyme at christinmas.’ Thomas Colwell (Arber, i. 398). [The method of exhaustions points to this as the entry of the play.]

N.D. A pretie and Mery new Enterlude: called the Disobedient Child. Compiled by Thomas Ingelend late Student in Cambridge. Thomas Colwell.

Editions by J. O. Halliwell (1848, Percy Soc. lxxv), in Dodsley⁴ (1874, ii), and by J. S. Farmer (1908, T. F. T.).—Dissertation: F. Holthausen, Studien zum älteren englischen Drama (1902, E. S. xxxi. 90).

J. Bolte, Vahlen-Festschrift, 594, regards this as a translation of the Iuvenis, Pater, Uxor of J. Ravisius Textor (Dialogi, ed. 1651, 71), which Holthausen reprints, but which is only a short piece in one scene. Brandl, lxxiii, traces the influence of the Studentes (1549) of Christopherus Stymmelius (Bahlmann, Lat. Dr. 98). The closing prayer is for Elizabeth.

JAMES I (1566–1625).

An Epithalamion on the Marquis of Huntly’s Marriage. 21 July 1588

R. S. Rait, Lusus Regis (1901), 2, printed from Bodleian MS. 27843 verses by James I, which he dated c. 1581. The occasion and correct date are supplied by another text, with a title, in A. F. Westcott, New Poems of James I (1911). The bridal pair were George Gordon, 6th Earl and afterwards 1st Marquis of Huntly, and Henrietta Stuart, daughter of Esme, Duke of Lennox. The verses consist of a hymeneal dialogue, with a preliminary invocation by the writer, and speeches by Mercury, Nimphes, Agrestis, Skolar, Woman, The Vertuouse Man, Zani, The Landvart Gentleman, The Soldat. The earlier lines seem intended to accompany a tilting at the ring or some such contest, but at l. 74 is a reference to the coming of ‘strangers in a maske’.

Westcott, lviii, says that James helped William Fowler in devising a mimetic show for the banquet at the baptism of Prince Henry on 23 Aug. 1594.

JOHN JEFFERE (?-?).

Nothing is known of him, beyond his possible authorship of the following play:

The Bugbears. 1563 <

[MS.] Lansdowne MS. 807, f. 57. [The MS. contains the relics of John Warburton’s collection, and on a slip once attached to the fly-leaf is his famous list of burnt plays, which includes ‘Bugbear C. Joⁿ. Geffrey’ (Greg in 3 Library, ii. 232). It appears to be the work of at least five hands, of which one, acting as a corrector, as well as a scribe, may be that of the author. The initials J. B. against a line or two inserted at the end do not appear to be his, but, as there was no single scribe, he may be writer of a final note to the text, written in printing characters, ‘Soli deo honor et gloria Johannus Jeffere scribebat hoc’. This note is followed by the songs and their music, and at the top of the first is written ‘Giles peperel for Iphiginia’. On the last page are the names ‘Thomas Ba ...’ and ‘Frances Whitton’, which probably do not indicate authorship. A title-page may be missing, and a later hand has written at the head of the text, ‘The Buggbears’.]

Editions by C. Grabau (1896–7, Archiv, xcviii. 301; xcix. 311) and R. W. Bond (1911, E. P. I.).—Dissertation: W. Dibelius (Archiv, cxii. 204).

The play is an adaptation of A. F. Grazzini, La Spiritata (1561), and uses also material from J. Weier (De Praestigiis Daemonum) (1563) and from the life of Michel de Nôtredame (Nostradamus), not necessarily later than his death in 1566. Bond is inclined to date the play, partly on metrical grounds, about 1564 or 1565. Grabau and Dibelius suggest a date after 1585, apparently under the impression that the name Giles in the superscription to the music may indicate the composition of Nathaniel Giles, of the Chapel Royal, who took his Mus. Bac. in 1585. But the name, whether of a composer, or of the actor of the part of Iphigenia, is Giles Peperel. The performers were ‘boyes’, but the temptation to identify the play with the Effiginia shown by Paul’s at Court on 28 Dec. 1571 is repressed by the description of Effiginia in the Revels account as a ‘tragedye’, whereas The Bugbears is a comedy. Moreover, Iphigenia is not a leading part, although one added by the English adapter.

LAURENCE JOHNSON (c. 1577).

A possible author of Misogonus (cf. ch. xxiv).

BENJAMIN JONSON (1572–1637).

Benjamin Johnson, or Jonson, as he took the fancy to spell his name, was born, probably on 11 June 1572, at Westminster, after the death of his father, a minister, of Scottish origin. He was withheld, or withdrawn, from the University education justified by his scholastic attainments at Westminster to follow his step-father’s occupation of bricklaying, and when this proved intolerable, he served as a soldier in the Netherlands. In a prologue to The Sad Shepherd, left unfinished at his death in August 1637, he describes himself as ‘He that has feasted you these forty years’, and by 1597 at latest his connexion with the stage had begun. Aubrey tells us (ii. 12, 226) that he ‘acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of nursery or obscure play-house, somewhere in the suburbes (I thinke towards Shoreditch or Clarkenwell)’, and again that he ‘was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor’. The earliest contemporary records, however, show Jonson not at the Curtain, but on the Bankside. On 28 July 1597 Henslowe (i. 200) recorded a personal loan to ‘Bengemen Johnson player’ of £4 ‘to be payd yt agayne when so euer ether I or any for me shall demande yt’, and on the very same day he opened on another page of his diary (i. 47) an account headed ‘Received of Bengemenes Johnsones share as ffoloweth 1597’ and entered in it the receipt of a single sum of 3s. 9d., to which no addition was ever made. Did these entries stand alone, one would infer, on the analogy of other transactions of Henslowe’s and from the signatures of two Admiral’s men as witnesses to the loan, that Jonson had purchased a share in the Admiral’s company for £4, that he borrowed the means to do this from Henslowe, and that Henslowe was to recoup himself by periodical deductions from the takings of the company as they passed through his hands. But there is no other evidence that Jonson ever had an interest in the Admiral’s, and there are facts which, if one could believe that Henslowe would regard the takings of any company but the Admiral’s as security for a loan, would lead to the conclusion that Jonson’s ‘share’ was with Pembroke’s men at the Swan. The day of Henslowe’s entries, 28 July 1597, is the very day on which the theatres were suppressed as a result of the performance of The Isle of Dogs (cf. App. D, No. cx), and it is hardly possible to doubt that Jonson was one of the actors who had a hand with Nashe (q.v.) in that play. The Privy Council registers record his release, with Shaw and Spencer of Pembroke’s men, from the Marshalsea on 3 Oct. 1597 (Dasent, xxviii. 33; cf. App. D, No. cxii); while Dekker in Satiromastix (l. 1513) makes Horace admit that he had played Zulziman in Paris Garden, and Tucca upbraid him because ‘when the Stagerites banisht thee into the Ile of Dogs, thou turn’dst Bandog (villanous Guy) & ever since bitest’. The same passage confirms Aubrey’s indication that Jonson was actor, and a bad actor, as well as poet. ‘Thou putst vp a supplication’, says Tucca, ‘to be a poor iorneyman player, and hadst beene still so, but that thou couldst not set a good face vpon ’t: thou hast forgot how thou amblest (in leather pilch) by a play-wagon, in the high way, and took’st mad Ieronimoes part, to get seruice among the mimickes.’ Elsewhere (l. 633) Tucca taunts him that ‘when thou ranst mad for the death of Horatio, thou borrowedst a gowne of Roscius the stager, (that honest Nicodemus) and sentst it home lowsie’. This imprisonment for the Isle of Dogs is no doubt the ‘bondage’ for his ‘first error’ to which Jonson refers in writing to Salisbury about Eastward Ho! in 1605, and the ‘close imprisonment, under Queen Elizabeth’, during which he told Drummond he was beset by spies (Laing, 19). Released, Jonson borrowed 5s. more from Henslowe (i. 200) on 5 Jan. 1598, and entered into a relationship with him and the Admiral’s as a dramatist, which lasted intermittently until 1602. It was broken, not only by plays for the King’s men, whose employment of him, which may have been at the Curtain, was due, according to Rowe, to the critical instinct of Shakespeare (H.-P. ii. 74), and for the Chapel children when these were established at Blackfriars in 1600, but also by a quarrel with Gabriel Spencer, whose death at his hands during a duel with swords in Hoxton Fields on 22 Sept. 1598 was ‘harde & heavey’ news to Henslowe (Henslowe Papers, 48) and brought Jonson to trial for murder, from which he only escaped by reading his neck-verse (Jeaffreson, Middlesex County Records, i. xxxviii; iv. 350; cf. Laing, 19). Jonson’s pen was critical, and to the years 1600–2 belongs the series of conflicts with other poets and with the actors generically known as the Poetomachia or Stage Quarrel (cf. ch. xi). Meanwhile Jonson, perhaps encouraged by his success in introducing a mask into Cynthia’s Revels (1601), seems to have conceived the ambition of becoming a Court poet. At first he was not wholly successful, and the selection of Daniel to write the chief Christmas mask of 1603–4 appears to have provoked an antagonism between the two poets, which shows itself in Jonson’s qualified acknowledgement to Lady Rutland of the favours done him by Lady Bedford (Forest, xii):

and long after in the remark to Drummond (Laing, 10) that ‘Daniel was at jealousies with him’. But the mask was a form of art singularly suited to Jonson’s genius. In the next year he came to his own, and of ten masks at Court during 1605–12 not less than eight are his. This employment secured him a considerable vogue as a writer of entertainments and complimentary verses, and a standing with James himself, with the Earl of Salisbury, and with other persons of honour, which not only brought him pecuniary profit, but also enabled him to withstand the political attacks made upon Sejanus, for which he was haled before the Council, and upon Eastward Ho!, for which he was once more imprisoned. During this period he continued to write plays, with no undue frequency, both for the King’s men and for the Queen’s Revels and their successors, the Lady Elizabeth’s. As a rule, he had published his plays, other than those bought by Henslowe, soon after they were produced, and in 1612 he seems to have formed the design of collecting them, with his masks and occasional verses, into a volume of Works. Probably the design was deferred, owing to his absence in France as tutor to the son of Sir Walter Raleigh, from the autumn of 1612 (M. P. xi. 279) to some date in 1613 earlier than 29 June, when he witnessed the burning of the Globe (M. L. R. iv. 83). For the same reason he took no part in the masks for the Princess Elizabeth’s wedding at Shrovetide. But he returned in time for that of the Earl of Somerset at Christmas 1613, and wrote three more masks before his folio Works actually appeared in 1616. In the same year he received a royal pension of 100 marks.

Jonson’s later life can only be briefly summarized. During a visit to Scotland he paid a visit to William Drummond of Hawthornden in January 1619, and of his conversation his host took notes which preserve many biographical details and many critical utterances upon the men, books, and manners of his time. In 1621 (cf. ch. iii) he obtained a reversion of the Mastership of the Revels, which he never lived to enjoy. His masks continued until 1631, when an unfortunate quarrel with Inigo Jones brought them to an end. His play-writing, dropped after 1616, was resumed about 1625, and to this period belong his share in The Bloody Brother of the Beaumont and Fletcher series, The Staple of News, The New Inn, The Magnetic Lady, and The Tale of a Tub. In 1637, probably on 6 August, he died. He had told Drummond ‘that the half of his comedies were not in print’, as well as that ‘of all his playes he never gained two hundreth pounds’ (Laing, 27, 35), and in 1631 he began the publication, by instalments, of a second volume of his Works. This was completed after his death, with the aid of Sir Kenelm Digby, in 1640 and 1641. But it did not include The Case is Altered, the printing of which in 1609 probably lacked his authority, or the Henslowe plays, of which his manuscripts, if he had any, may have perished when his library was burnt in 1623.

Collections

F₁ (1616)

S. R. 1615, Jan. 20 (Tavernour). William Stansbye, ‘Certayne Masques at the Court never yet printed written by Ben Johnson’ (Arber, iii. 562).

1616. The Workes of Beniamin Jonson. W. Stansby, sold by Rich. Meighen. [Contains (a) commendatory verses, some reprinted from Qq, signed ‘I. Selden I.C.’, ‘Ed. Heyward’, ‘Geor. Chapman’, ‘H. Holland’, ‘I. D.’, ‘E. Bolton’, and for three sets ‘Franc. Beaumont’; (b) nine plays, being all printed in Q, except The Case is Altered; (c) the five early entertainments; (d) the eleven early masks and two barriers, with separate title-page ‘Masques at Court, London, 1616’; (e) non-dramatic matter. For bibliographical details on both Ff., see B. Nicholson, B. J.’s Folios and the Bibliographers (1870, 4 N. Q. v. 573); Greg, Plays, 55, and Masques, xiii, 11; G. A. Aitken, B. J.’s Works (10 N. Q. xi. 421); the introductions to the Yale editions; and B. A. P. van Dam and C. Stoffel, The Authority of the B. J. Folio of 1616 (1903, Anglia, xxvi. 377), whose conclusion that Jonson did not supervise F₁ is not generally accepted. It is to be noted that, contrary to the usual seventeenth-century practice, some, and possibly all, of the dates assigned to productions in F₁ follow the Circumcision and not the Annunciation style; cf. Thorndike, 17, whose demonstration leaves it conceivable that Jonson only adopted the change of style from a given date, say, 1 Jan. 1600, when it came into force in Scotland.]

F₂ (1631–41)

1640. The Workes of Beniamin Jonson. Richard Bishop, sold by Andrew Crooke. [Same contents as F₁.]

1640. The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. The second volume. Containing these Playes, Viz. 1 Bartholomew Fayre. 2 The Staple of Newes. 3 The Divell is an Asse. For Richard Meighen. [Contains (a) reissue of folio sheets of three plays named with separate title-pages of 1631; (b) The Magnetic Lady, A Tale of a Tub, The Sad Shepherd, Mortimer his Fall; (c) later masks; (d) non-dramatic matter. The editor is known to have been Sir Kenelm Digby.]

S. R. 1658, Sept. 17. ‘A booke called Ben Johnsons Workes ye 3^d volume containing these peeces, viz^t. Ffifteene masques at court and elsewhere. Horace his art of Poetry Englished. English Gramar. Timber or Discoveries. Underwoods consisting of divers poems. The Magnetick Lady. A Tale of a Tub. The sad shephard or a tale of Robin hood. The Devill is an asse. Salvo iure cuiuscunque. Thomas Walkley (Eyre, ii. 196).

1658, Nov. 20. Transfer of ‘Ben Johnsons workes ye 3^d vol’ from Walkley to Humphrey Moseley (Eyre, ii. 206). [Neither Walkley nor Moseley ever published the Works.]

F₃ (1692)

1692. The Works of Ben Jonson, Which were formerly Printed in Two Volumes, are now Reprinted in One. To which is added a Comedy, called the New Inn. With Additions never before Published. Thomas Hodgkin, for H. Herringham [&c.].

The more important of the later collections are:

1756. P. Whalley, The Works of B. J. 7 vols. [Adds The Case is Altered.]

1816, 1846. W. Gifford, The Works of B. J. 9 vols.

1828. J. Nichols, The Progresses, Processions and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First. 4 vols. [Prints the masks.]

1871, &c. W. Gifford, edited by F. Cunningham, The Works of B. J. 3 vols.

1875. W. Gifford, edited by F. Cunningham, The Works of B. J. 9 vols.

1893–5. B. Nicholson, The Best Plays of B. J. 3 vols. (Mermaid Series). [The nine plays of F₁.]

1905–8 (in progress). W. Bang, B. J.’s Dramen in Neudruck herausgegeben nach der Folio 1616. (Materialien, vi.)

1906. H. C. Hart, The Plays of B. J. 2 vols. (Methuen’s Standard Library). [Case is Altered, E. M. I., E. M. O., Cynthia’s Revels, Poetaster.]

In the absence of a complete modern critical edition, such as is promised by C. H. Herford and P. Simpson from the Clarendon Press, reference must usually be made to the editions of single plays in the Yale Studies and Belles Lettres Series.

Select Dissertations: W. R. Chetwood, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of B. J. (1756); O. Gilchrist, An Examination of the Charges of B. J.’s Enmity to Shakespeare (1808), A Letter to W. Gifford (1811); D. Laing, Notes of B. J.’s Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden (1842, Sh. Soc.); B. Nicholson, The Orthography of B. J.’s Name (1880, Antiquary, ii. 55); W. Wilke, Metrische Untersuchungen zu B. J. (1884, Halle diss.), Anwendung der Rhyme-test und Double-endings test auf. B. J.’s Dramen (1888, Anglia, x. 512); J. A. Symonds, B. J. (1888, English Worthies); A. C. Swinburne, A Study of B. J. (1889); P. Aronstein, B. J.’s Theorie des Lustspiels (1895, Anglia, xvii. 466), Shakespeare and B. J. (1904, E. S. xxxiv. 193); B. J. (1906, Literarhistorische Forschungen, xxxiv); E. Koeppel, Quellen-Studien zu den Dramen B. J.’s, John Marston’s, und Beaumont und Fletcher’s (1895, Münchener Beiträge, xi), B. J.’s Wirkung auf zeitgenössische Dramatiker (1906, Anglistische Forschungen, xx); J. H. Penniman, The War of the Theatres (1897, Pennsylvania Univ. Series, iv. 3); E. Woodbridge, Studies in J.’s Comedy (1898, Yale Studies, v); R. A. Small, The Stage-Quarrel between B. J. and the so-called Poetasters (1899); B. Dobell, Newly Discovered Documents (1901, Athenaeum, i. 369, 403, 433, 465); J. Hofmiller, Die ersten sechs Masken B. J.’s in ihrem Verhältnis zur antiken Literatur (1901, Freising progr.); H. C. Hart, B. J., Gabriel Harvey and Nash, &c. (1903–4, 9 N. Q. xi. 201, 281, 343, 501; xii. 161, 263, 342, 403, 482; 10 N. Q. i. 381); G. Sarrazin, Nym und B. J. (1904, Jahrbuch, xl. 212); M, Castelain, B. J., l’Homme et l’Œuvre (1907); Shakespeare and B. J. (1907, Revue Germanique, iii. 21, 133); C. R. Baskervill, English Elements in J.’s Early Comedy (1911, Texas Univ. Bulletin, 178); W. D. Briggs, Studies in B. J. (1913–14, Anglia, xxxvii. 463; xxxviii. 101), On Certain Incidents in B. J.’s Life (1913, M. P. xi. 279), The Birth-date of B. J. (1918, M. L. N. xxxiii. 137); G. Gregory Smith, Ben Jonson (1919, English Men of Letters); J. Q. Adams, The Bones of Ben Jonson (1919, S. P. xvi. 289). For fuller lists, see Castelain, xxiii, and C. H. vi. 417.

PLAYS

The Case is Altered. 1597 (?)-1609

S. R. 1609, Jan. 26 (Segar, ‘deputy to Sir George Bucke’). ‘A booke called The case is altered.’ Henry Walley, Richard Bonion (Arber, iii. 400).

1609, July 20. ‘Entred for their copie by direction of master Waterson warden, a booke called the case is altered whiche was entred for H. Walley and Richard Bonyon the 26 of January last.’ Henry Walley, Richard Bonyon, Bartholomew Sutton (Arber, iii. 416).

1609. [Three issues, with different t.ps.]

(a) Ben: Ionson, His Case is Alterd. As it hath beene sundry times Acted by the Children of the Blacke-friers. For Bartholomew Sutton. [B.M. 644, b. 54.]

(b) A Pleasant Comedy, called: The Case is Alterd. As it hath beene sundry times acted by the children of the Black-friers. Written by Ben. Ionson. For Bartholomew Sutton and William Barrenger. [B.M. T. 492 (9); Bodl.; W. A. White.]

(c) A Pleasant Comedy, called: The Case is Alterd. As it hath been sundry times acted by the children of the Black-friers. For Bartholomew Sutton and William Barrenger. [Devonshire.]

Edition by W. E. Selin (1917, Yale Studies, lvi).—Dissertation: C. Crawford, B. J.’s C. A.: its Date (1909, 10 N. Q. xi. 41).

As Nashe, Lenten Stuff (Works, iii. 220), which was entered in S. R. on 11 Jan. 1599, refers to ‘the merry coblers cutte in that witty play of the Case is altered’, and as I. i chaffs Anthony Munday as ‘in print already for the best plotter’, alluding to the description of him in Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia (S. R. 7 Sept. 1598), the date would seem at first sight to be closely fixed to the last few months of 1598. But I. i has almost certainly undergone interpolation. Antonio Balladino, who appears in this scene alone, and whose dramatic function is confused with that later (II. vii) assigned to Valentine, is only introduced for the sake of a satirical portrait of Munday. He is ‘pageant poet to the City of Milan’, at any rate ‘when a worse cannot be had’. He boasts that ‘I do use as much stale stuff, though I say it myself, as any man does in that kind’, and again, ‘An they’ll give me twenty pound a play, I’ll not raise my vein’. Some ‘will have every day new tricks, and write you nothing but humours’; this pleases the gentlemen, but he is for ‘the penny’. Crawford points out that there are four quotations from the play in Bodenham’s Belvedere (1600), of which Munday was the compiler, and suggests that he would have left it alone had the ridicule of himself then been a part of it. I should put the scene later still. Antonio makes an offer of ‘one of the books’ of his last pageant, and as far as is known, although Munday may have been arranging city pageants long before, the first which he printed was that for 1605. Nor does the reference to plays of ‘tricks’ and ‘humours’ necessarily imply proximity to Jonson’s own early comedies, for Day’s Law Tricks and his Humour out of Breath, as well as probably the anonymous Every Woman in her Humour, belong to 1604–8. Moreover, the play was certainly on the stage about this time, since the actors are called ‘Children of Blackfriars’, although of course this would not be inconsistent with their having first produced it when they bore some other name. The text is in an odd state. Up to the end of Act III it has been arranged in scenes, on the principle usually adopted by Jonson; after ‘Actus 3 [an error for 4] Scaene 1’ there is no further division, and in Act V verse and prose are confused. As Jonson was careful about the printing of his plays, as there is no epistle, and as C. A. was left out of the Ff., there is some reason to suppose that the publication in this state was not due to him. Is it possible that Day, whom Jonson described to Drummond as a ‘rogue’ and a ‘base fellow’, was concerned in this transaction? It is obvious that, if I. i is a later addition, the original production may have been earlier than 1598. And the original company is unknown. The mere fact that the Children of the Blackfriars revived it shortly before 1609 does not in the least prove that it was originally written for the Children of the Chapel. If Chapman’s All Fools is a Blackfriars revival of an Admiral’s play, C. A. might even more easily be a Blackfriars revival of a play written, say, for the extinct Pembroke’s. With the assumption that C. A. was a Chapel play disappears the assumption that the Chapel themselves began their renewed dramatic activities at a date earlier than the end of 1600. Selin shows a fair amount of stylistic correspondence with Jonson’s other work, but it is quite possible that, as suggested by Herford (R. E. C. ii. 9), he had a collaborator. If so, Chapman seems plausible.

C. A. has nothing to do with the Poetomachia. Hart (9 N. Q. xi. 501, xii. 161, 263) finds in the vocabulary of Juniper a parody of the affected phraseology of Gabriel Harvey, and in the critical attitude of Valentine a foreshadowing of such autobiographical studies as that of Asper in E. M. O. His suggestion that the cudgel-play between Onion and Martino in II. vii represents the controversy between Nashe and Martin Marprelate is perhaps less plausible. Nashe would be very likely to think the chaff of Harvey ‘witty’.

Every Man In his Humour. 1598

S. R. [1600], Aug. 4. ‘Euery man in his humour, a booke ... to be staied’ (Arber, iii. 37). [As You Like It, Henry V, and Much Ado about Nothing are included in the entry, which appears to be an exceptional memorandum. The year 1600 is conjectured from the fact that the entry follows another of May 1600.]

1600, Aug. 14 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called Euery man in his humour.’ Burby and Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 169).

1609, Oct. 16. Transfer of Mrs. Burby’s share to Welby (Arber, iii. 421).

1601. Every Man In his Humor. As it hath beene sundry times publickly acted by the right Honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. Written by Ben. Iohnson. For Walter Burre.

1616. Euery Man In His Humour. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1598. By the then Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. The Author B. I. By William Stansby. [Part of F₁. Epistle to William Camden, signed ‘Ben. Ionson’, and Prologue. After text: ‘This Comoedie was first Acted, in the yeere 1598. By the then L. Chamberlayne his Seruants. The principall Comœdians were, Will. Shakespeare, Ric. Burbadge, Aug. Philips, Ioh. Hemings, Hen. Condel, Tho. Pope, Will. Slye, Chr. Beeston, Will. Kempe, Ioh. Duke. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

Editions by W. Scott (1811, M. B. D. iii), H. B. Wheatley (1877), W. M. Dixon (1901, T. D.), H. Maas (1901, Rostock diss.), W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.), C. H. Herford (1913, R. E. C. ii), P. Simpson (1919), H. H. Carter (1921, Yale Studies, lii), and facsimile reprints of Q₁ by C. Grabau (1902, Jahrbuch, xxxviii. 1), W. Bang and W. W. Greg (1905, Materialien, x).—Dissertations: A. Buff, The Quarto Edition of B. J.’s E. M. I. (1877, E. S. i. 181), B. Nicholson, On the Dates of the Two Versions of E. M. I. (1882, Antiquary, vi. 15, 106).

The date assigned by F₁ is confirmed by an allusion (IV. iv. 15) to the ‘fencing Burgullian’ or Burgundian, John Barrose, who challenged all fencers in that year, and was hanged for murder on 10 July (Stowe, Annales, 787). The production must have been shortly before 20 Sept, when Toby Mathew wrote to Dudley Carleton (S. P. D. Eliz. cclxviii. 61; Simpson, ix) of an Almain who lost 300 crowns at ‘a new play called, Euery mans humour’. Two short passages were taken from the play in R. Allot’s England’s Parnassus (1600, ed. Crawford, xxxii. 110, 112, 436) which is earlier than Q₁. The Q₁ text (I. i. 184) contains a hit at Anthony Munday in ‘that he liue in more penurie of wit and inuention, then eyther the Hall-Beadle, or Poet Nuntius’. This has disappeared from F₁, which in other respects represents a complete revision of the Q₁ text. Many passages have been improved from a literary point of view; the scene has been transferred from Italy to London and the names anglicized; the oaths have all been expunged or softened. Fleay, i. 358, finding references to a ‘queen’ in F₁ for the ‘duke’ of Q₁ and an apparent dating of St. Mark’s Day on a Friday, assigned the revision to 1601, and conjectured that it was done by Jonson for the Chapel, that the Chamberlain’s published the Q in revenge, and that Jonson tried to stay it. Here he is followed by Castelain. But Q₁ is a good edition and there is no sign whatever that it had not Jonson’s authority, and as the entry in S. R. covers other Chamberlain’s plays, it is pretty clear that the company caused the ‘staying’. St. Mark’s Day did not, as Fleay thought, fall on a Friday in 1601, and if it had, the dating is unchanged from Q₁ and the references to a queen may, as Simpson suggests, be due to Jonson’s conscientious desire to preserve consistency with the original date of 1598. Nor is the play likely to have passed to the Chapel, since the King’s men played it before James on 2 Feb. 1605 (cf. App. B). This revival would be the natural time for a revision, and in fact seems to me on the whole the most likely date, in spite of two trifling bits of evidence which would fit in rather better a year later. These are references to the siege of Strigonium or Graan (1595) as ten years since (III. i. 103), and to a present by the Turkey company to the Grand Signior (I. ii. 78), which was perhaps the gift worth £5,000 sent about Christmas 1605 (S. P. D. Jac. I, xv. 3; xvii. 35; xx. 27). No doubt also the revision of oaths in Jacobean plays is usually taken as due to the Act against Abuses of Players (1606), although it is conceivable that the personal taste of James may have required a similar revision of plays selected for Court performance at an earlier date. Or this particular bit of revision, which was done for other plays before F₁, may be of later date than the rest. Simpson is in favour, largely on literary grounds, for a revision in 1612, in preparation for F₁. The Prologue, which is not in Q, probably belongs to the revision, or at any rate to a revival later than 1598, since it criticizes not only ‘Yorke, and Lancasters long jarres’, but also plays in which ‘Chorus wafts you ore the seas’, as in Henry V (1599). These allusions would not come so well in 1612; on the other hand, Simpson’s date would enable us to suppose that the play in which the public ‘grac’d monsters’ was the Tempest (cf. the similar jibe in Bartholomew Fair). The character Matheo or Mathew represents a young gull of literary tendencies, and is made to spout passages from, or imitations of, Daniel’s verses. Perhaps this implies some indirect criticism of Daniel, but it can hardly be regarded as a personal attack upon him.

Every Man Out of his Humour. 1599

S. R. 1600, April 8 (Harsnett). ‘A Comicall Satyre of euery man out of his humour.’ William Holme (Arber, iii. 159).

1638, April 28. Transfer by Smethwicke to Bishop (Arber, iv. 417).

Q₁, 1600. The Comicall Satyre of Every Man Out Of His Humor. As it was first composed by the Author B. I. Containing more than hath been Publickely Spoken or Acted. With the seuerall Character of euery Person. For William Holme. [Names and description of Characters; Publisher’s note, ‘It was not neere his thoughts that hath publisht this, either to traduce the Authour; or to make vulgar and cheape, any the peculiar & sufficient deserts of the Actors; but rather (whereas many Censures flutter’d about it) to giue all leaue, and leisure, to iudge with Distinction’; Induction, by Asper, who becomes Macilente and speaks Epilogue, Carlo Buffone who speaks in lieu of Prologue, and Mitis and Cordatus, who remain on stage as Grex or typical spectators.]

Q₂, 1600. [Peter Short] For William Holme. [W. W. Greg (1920, 4 Library, i. 153) distinguished Q₁, of which he found a copy in Brit. Mus. C. 34, i. 29, from Q₂, (Bodl. and Dyce).]

Q₃, 1600. For Nicholas Linge. [‘A careless and ignorant reprint’ (Greg) of Q₁.]

F₁, 1616. Euery Man Out Of His Humour. A Comicall Satyre. Acted in the yeere 1599. By the then Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. The Author B. I. William Stansby for Iohn Smithwicke. [Epistle to the Inns of Court, signed ‘Ben. Ionson’. After text: ‘This Comicall Satyre was first acted in the yeere 1599. By the then Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. The principall Comœdians were, Ric. Burbadge, Ioh. Hemings, Aug. Philips, Hen. Condel, Wil. Sly, Tho. Pope. With the allowance of the Master of Revels.’]

Facsimile reprints of Q₁ by W. W. Greg and F. P. Wilson (1920, M. S. R.) and of Q_{2, 3} by W. Bang and W. W. Greg (1907, Materialien, xvi, xvii).—Dissertations: C. A. Herpich, Shakespeare and B. J. Did They Quarrel? (1902, 9 N. Q. ix. 282); Van Dam and C. Stoffel, The Authority of the B. J. Folio of 1616 (1903, Anglia, xxvi. 377); W. Bang, B. J. und Castiglione’s Cortegiano (1906, E. S. xxxvi. 330).

In the main the text of F₁ follows that of Q₁ with some slight revision of wording and oaths. The arrangement of the epilogues is somewhat different, but seems intended to represent the same original stage history. In Q₁ Macilente speaks an epilogue, ‘with Aspers tongue (though not his shape)’, evidently used in the theatre as it begs ‘The happier spirits in this faire-fild Globe’ to confirm applause

Then comes a ‘Finis’ and on the next page, ‘It had another Catastrophe or Conclusion at the first Playing: which (διὰ τὸ τὴν βασίλισσαν προσωποποιεῖσθαι) many seem’d not to relish it: and therefore ’twas since alter’d: yet that a right-ei’d and solide Reader may perceiue it was not so great a part of the Heauen awry, as they would make it; we request him but to looke downe vpon these following Reasons.’ There follows an apology, from which it is clear that originally Macilente was cured of his envious humour by the appearance on the stage of the Queen; and this introduces a different epilogue of the nature of an address to her. At the end of all comes a short dialogue between Macilente, as Asper, and the Grex. There is no mention of the Globe, but as the whole point of the objection to this epilogue, which it is not suggested that Elizabeth herself shared, lay in the miming of the Queen, one would take it, did the Q₁ stand alone, to have been, like its substitute, a theatre and not a Court epilogue. In F₁, however, we get successively (a) a shortened version of the later epilogue, (b) the dialogue with the Grex, followed by ‘The End’, and (c) a version of the original epilogue, altered so as to make it less of a direct address and headed ‘Which, in the presentation before Queen E. was thus varyed’. It seems to me a little difficult to believe that the play was given at Court before it had been ‘practised’ in public performances, and I conclude that, having suppressed the address to a mimic Elizabeth at the Globe, Jonson revived it in a slightly altered form when he took the play to Court at Christmas. As to the date of production, Fleay, i. 361, excels himself in the suggestion that ‘the mention of “spring” and the allusion to the company’s new “patent” for the Globe in the epilogue’ fix it to c. April 1599. Even if this were the original epilogue, it alludes to a coming and not a present spring, and might have been written at any time in the winter, either before or after the New Year. Obviously, too, there can be no allusion to an Elizabethan patent for the Globe, which never existed. I do not agree with Small, 21, that the Globe was not opened until early in 1600, nor do I think that any inference can be drawn from the not very clear notes of dramatic time in I. iii and III. ii. At first sight it seems natural to suppose that the phrase ‘would I had one of Kempes shooes to throw after you’ (IV. v) was written later than at any rate the planning of the famous morris to Norwich, which lasted from 11 Feb. to 11 March 1600 and at the end of which Kempe hung his shoes in Norwich Guildhall. Certainly it cannot refer, as Fleay thinks, merely to Kempe’s leaving the Chamberlain’s men. Conceivably it might be an interpolation of later date than the original production. Creizenach, 303, however, points out that in 1599 Thomas Platter saw a comedy in which a servant took off his shoe and threw it at his master, and suggests that this was a bit of common-form stage clownery, in which case the Norwich dance would not be concerned. The performance described by Platter was in September or October, and apparently at the Curtain (cf. ch. xvi, introd.). Kempe may quite well have been playing then at the Curtain with a fresh company after the Chamberlain’s moved to the Globe. Perhaps the episode had already found a place in Phillips’s Jig of the Slippers, printed in 1595 and now lost (cf. ch. xviii). If 1600 is the date of E. M. O., the Court performance may have been that of 3 February, or perhaps more probably may have fallen in the following winter, which would explain the divergence between Q₁ and F₁ as to the epilogues. But it must be remembered that the F₁ date is 1599, and that most, if not quite all, of the F₁ dates follow Circumcision style, although Jonson may not have adopted this style as early as 1600. On the whole, I think that the balance of probability is distinctly in favour of 1599. If so, the production must have been fairly late in that year, as there is a hit (III. i) at the Histriomastix of the same autumn. The play has been hunted through and through for personalities, most of which are effectively refuted by Small. Most of the characters are types rather than individuals, and social types rather than literary or stage types. I do not think there are portraits of Daniel, Lyly, Drayton, Donne, Chapman, Munday, Shakespeare, Burbadge, in the play or its induction at all. Nor do I think there are portraits in the strict sense of Marston and Dekker, although no doubt some parody of Marston’s ‘fustian’ vocabulary is put into the mouth of Clove (iii. 1), and, on the other hand, the characters of Carlo Buffone and Fastidious Brisk have analogies with the Anaides and Hedon of Cynthia’s Revels, and these again with the Demetrius and Crispinus of Poetaster, who are undoubtedly Dekker and Marston. But we know from Aubrey, ii. 184, that Carlo was Charles Chester, a loose-tongued man about town, to whom there are many contemporary references. To those collected by Small and Hart (10 N. Q. i. 381) I may add Chamberlain, 7, Harington, Ulysses upon Ajax (1596), 58, and Hatfield Papers, iv. 210, 221; x. 287. The practical joke of sealing up Carlo’s mouth with wax (V. iii) was, according to Aubrey, played upon Chester by Raleigh, and there may be traits of Raleigh in Puntarvolo, perhaps combined with others of Sir John Harington, while Hart finds in the mouths both of Puntarvolo and of Fastidious Brisk the vocabulary of Gabriel Harvey. The play was revived at Court on 8 Jan. 1605.

Cynthia’s Revels. 1600–1

S. R. 1601, May 23 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called Narcissus the fountaine of self-love.’ Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 185).

1601. The Fountaine of Selfe-Loue. Or Cynthias Reuels. As it hath beene sundry times priuately acted in the Black-Friers by the Children of her Maiesties Chappell. Written by Ben: Iohnson. For Walter Burre. [Induction, Prologue, and Epilogue.]

1616. Cynthias Revels, Or The Fountayne of selfe-loue. A Comicall Satyre. Acted in the yeere 1600. By the then Children of Queene Elizabeth’s Chappel. The Author B. I. William Stansby. [Part of F₁. Epistle to the Court, signed ‘Ben Ionson’, Induction, Prologue, and Epilogue. After text: ‘This Comicall Satyre was first acted, in the yeere 1600. By the then Children of Queene Elizabeths Chappell. The principall Comœdians were, Nat. Field, Ioh. Underwood, Sal. Pavy, Rob. Baxter, Tho. Day, Ioh. Frost. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

Edition by A. C. Judson (1912, Yale Studies, xlv), and facsimile reprint of Q by W. Bang and L. Krebs (1908, Materialien, xxii).

The difference between the Q and F₁ texts amounts to more than mere revision of wording and of oaths. Criticus is renamed Crites, and the latter half of the play is given in a longer form, parts of IV. i and IV. iii, and the whole of V. i-iv appearing in F₁ alone. I think the explanation is to be found in a shortening of the original text for representation, rather than in subsequent additions. Jonson’s date for the play is 1600. This Small, 23, would translate as Feb. or March 1601, neglecting the difficulty due to the possibility that Jonson’s date represents Circumcision style. He relies on V. xi, where Cynthia says:

Rightly rejecting the suggestion of Fleay, i. 363, that this alludes to Nashe and the Isle of Dogs, Small refers it to the disgrace of Essex, and therefore dates the play after his execution on 25 Feb. 1601. But surely the presumption which Jonson has in mind is not Essex’s rebellion, but his invasion of Elizabeth’s apartment on his return from Ireland in 1599, and the ‘fatall doome’ is merely his loss of offices in June 1600. I do not believe that a Court dramatist would have dared to refer to Essex at all after 25 Feb. 1601. I feel little doubt that the play was the subject of the Chapel presentation on 6 Jan. 1601, and the description of this by the Treasurer of the Chamber as including a ‘show’, which puzzled Small, is explained by the presence of a full-blown Court mask in V. vii-x. The original production will have been in the winter of 1600, soon after Evans set up the Chapel plays. As to personalities, Small rightly rejects the identifications of Hedon with Daniel, Anaides with Marston, and Asotus with Lodge. Amorphus repeats the type of Puntarvolo from E. M. O. and like Puntarvolo may show traces of the Harveian vocabulary. As Satiromastix, I. ii. 191, applies to Crispinus and Demetrius the descriptions (III. iii) of Hedon as ‘a light voluptuous reveller’ and Anaides as ‘a strange arrogating puff’, it seems clear that Marston and Dekker, rightly or wrongly, fitted on these caps. Similarly, there is a clear attempt in Satiromastix, I. ii. 376, ‘You must be call’d Asper, and Criticus, and Horace’, to charge Jonson with lauding himself as Criticus. But the description of the ‘creature of a most perfect and diuine temper’ in II. iii surely goes beyond even Jonson’s capacity of self-praise. I wonder whether he can have meant Donne, whom he seems from a remark to Drummond (Laing, 6) to have introduced as Criticus in an introductory dialogue to the Ars Poetica.

Of the three children who appear in the induction, both Q and F₁ name one as Jack. He might be either Underwood or Frost. Q alone (l. 214) names another, who played Anaides, as Sall, i.e. Salathiel Pavy. An interesting light is thrown on the beginnings of the Chapel enterprise by the criticism (Ind. 188), ‘They say, the Vmbrae, or Ghosts of some three or foure Playes, departed a dozen yeares since, haue been seene walking on your Stage here.’

The Poetaster. 1601

S. R. 1601, Dec. 21 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called Poetaster or his arrainement.’ Matthew Lownes (Arber, iii. 198).

1602. Poetaster or The Arraignment: As it hath beene sundry times priuately acted in the Blacke-Friers, by the Children of her Maiesties Chappell. Composed by Ben. Iohnson. For M. L. [Prologue; after text, Note to Reader: ‘Here (Reader) in place of the Epilogue, was meant to thee an Apology from the Author, with his reasons for the publishing of this booke: but (since he is no lesse restrain’d, then thou depriv’d of it by Authoritie) hee praies thee to think charitably of what thou hast read, till thou maist heare him speake what hee hath written.’]

1616. Poëtaster, Or His Arraignement. A Comicall Satyre, Acted, in the yeere 1601. By the then Children of Queene Elizabeths Chappel. The Author B. I. W. Stansby for M. Lownes. [Part of F₁. Epistle to Richard Martin, by ‘Ben. Ionson’; Prologue. After text, Note to Reader, with ‘an apologeticall Dialogue: which was only once spoken vpon the stage, and all the answere I euer gaue, to sundry impotent libells then cast out (and some yet remayning) against me, and this Play’. After the dialogue: ‘This comicall Satyre was first acted, in the yeere 1601. By the then Children of Queene Elizabeths Chappell. The principall Comœdians were, Nat. Field, Ioh. Vnderwood, Sal. Pavy, Will. Ostler, Tho. Day, Tho. Marton. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

Editions by H. S. Mallory (1905, Yale Studies, xxvii), J. H. Penniman (1913, B. L.).

The play is admittedly an attack upon the poetaster represented as Crispinus, and his identity is clear from Jonson’s own statement to Drummond (Laing, 20) that ‘he had many quarrells with Marston, beat him, and took his pistol from him, wrote his Poetaster on him’. Marston’s vocabulary is elaborately ridiculed in V. iii. Nor is there any reason to doubt that Demetrius Fannius, ‘a dresser of plaies about the towne, here’, who has been ‘hir’d to abuse Horace, and bring him in, in a play’ (III. iv. 367), is Dekker, who certainly associated himself with Marston as a victim of Jonson’s arraignment, and wrote Satiromastix (q.v.) in reply. At the same time these characters continue the types of Hedon and Anaides from Cynthia’s Revels, although these were not literary men. Horace is Jonson himself, as the rival portrait of Horace in Satiromastix shows, while Dekker tells us that Tucca is ‘honest Capten Hannam’, doubtless the Jack Hannam traceable as a Captain under Drake in 1585; cf. the reference to him in a letter of that year printed by F. P. Wilson in M. L. R. xv. 81. Fleay, i. 367, has a long list of identifications of minor personages, Ovid with Donne, Tibullus with Daniel, and so forth, all of which may safely be laid aside, and in particular I do not think that the fine eulogies of Virgil (V. i) are meant for Chapman, or for Shakespeare, applicable as some of them are to him, or for any one but Virgil. On the matter of identifications there is little to add to the admirable treatment of Small, 25. But in addition to the personal attacks, the play clearly contains a more generalized criticism of actors, the challenge of which seems to have been specially taken up by the Chamberlain’s men (cf. ch. xi), while there is evidence that Tucca and, I suppose, Lupus were taken amiss by the soldiers and the lawyers respectively. The latter at least were powerful, and in the epistle to Martin Jonson speaks of the play as one ‘for whose innocence, as for the Authors, you were once a noble and timely undertaker, to the greatest Iustice of this Kingdome’, and on behalf of posterity acknowledges a debt for ‘the reading of that ... which so much ignorance, and malice of the times, then conspir’d to haue supprest’. Evidently Jonson had not made matters better by his Apologetical Dialogue, the printing of which with the play was restrained. In this he denies that he

but admits his intention to try and shame the

of whom he says, that during

Now he has done with it, will not answer the ‘libells’, or the ‘untrussers’ (i. e. Satiromastix), and is turning to tragedy.

Jonson gives the date of production as 1601. The play followed Cynthia’s Revels, criticisms on the epilogue of which inspired its ‘armed Prologue’, who sets a foot on Envy. Envy has been waiting fifteen weeks since the plot was an ‘embrion’, and this is chaffed in Satiromastix, I. ii. 447, ‘What, will he bee fifteene weekes about this cockatrice’s egge too?’ Later (V. ii. 218) Horace is told, ‘You and your itchy poetry breake out like Christmas, but once a yeare’. This stung Jonson, who replied in the Apologetical Dialogue,

The year’s interval must not be pressed too closely. On the other hand, I do not know why Small, 25, assumes that the fifteen weeks spent on the Poetaster began directly after Cynthia’s Revels was produced, whatever that date may be. It must have come very near that of Satiromastix, for Horace knows that Demetrius has been hired to write a play on him. On the other hand, Satiromastix cannot possibly have been actually written until the contents of Poetaster were known to Dekker. The S. R. entry of Satiromastix is 11 Nov. 1601, and the two dates of production may reasonably be placed in the late spring or early autumn of the same year. The Note to the Reader in Q shows that the Dialogue had been restrained before Poetaster itself appeared in 1602. Probably it was spoken in December between the two S. R. entries. Hart (9 N. Q. xi. 202) assuming that the contemplated tragedy was Sejanus (q.v.) put it in 1603, but this is too late.

Sejanus. 1603

S. R. 1604, Nov. 2 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called the tragedie of Seianus written by Beniamin Johnson.’ Edward Blunt (Arber, iii. 273).

1605, Aug. 6. Transfer from Blount to Thomas Thorpe (Arber, iii. 297).

1610, Oct. 3. Transfer from Thorpe to Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 445).

1605. Seianus his fall. Written by Ben: Ionson. G. Eld for Thomas Thorpe. [Epistle to Readers, signed ‘Ben. Jonson’; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘Georgius Chapmannus’, ‘Hugh Holland’, ‘Cygnus’, ‘Th. R.’, ‘Johannes Marstonius’, ‘William Strachey’, ‘ΦΙΛΟΣ’, ‘Ev. B.’; Argument.]

1616. Seianus his Fall. A Tragœdie. Acted, in the yeere 1603. By the K. Maiesties Servants. The Author B. I. William Stansby. [Part of F₁. Epistle to Esmé, Lord Aubigny, signed ‘Ben. Ionson’. After text: ‘This Tragœdie was first acted, in the yeere 1603. By the Kings Maiesties Servants. The principall Tragœdians were, Ric. Burbadge, Will. Shake-Speare, Aug. Philips, Ioh. Hemings, Will. Sly, Hen. Condel, Ioh. Lowin, Alex. Cooke. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

Editions by W. D. Briggs (1911, B. L.) and W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.).—Dissertations: B. Nicholson, Shakespeare not the Part-Author of B. J.’s S. (1874, Acad. ii. 536); W. A. Henderson, Shakespeare and S. (1894, 8 N. Q. v. 502).

As the theatres were probably closed from Elizabeth’s death to March 1604, the production may have been at Court in the autumn or winter of 1603, although, if Sejanus is the something ‘high, and aloofe’ contemplated at the end of the Apologetical Dialogue to Poetaster (q.v.), it must have been in Jonson’s mind since 1601. The epistle to Aubigny admits the ‘violence’ which the play received in public, and ‘Ev. B.’s’ verses indicate that this ‘beastly rage’ was at the Globe. Marston’s verses were presumably written before his renewed quarrel with Jonson over Eastward Ho! (q.v.), and there appears to be an unkindly reference to Sejanus in the epistle to his Sophonisba (1606). But either Eastward Ho! or something else caused publication to be delayed for nearly a year after the S. R. entry, since Chapman’s verses contain a compliment to the Earl of Suffolk,

which seems to refer to his share in freeing Jonson and Chapman from prison about Sept. or Oct. 1605. Chapman also has compliments to the Earls of Northampton and Northumberland. It must therefore be to a later date that Jonson referred, when he told Drummond (Laing, 22) that ‘Northampton was his mortall enimie for beating, on a St. George’s day, one of his attenders; He was called before the Councell for his Sejanus, and accused both of poperie and treason by him’. Fleay, i. 372, suggests that the reference at the end of the Q version of the Argument to treason against princes, ‘for guard of whose piety and vertue, the Angels are in continuall watch, and God himselfe miraculously working’, implies publication after the discovery of the Plot. On the other hand, one would have expected Chapman’s reference to Northumberland, if not already printed, to be suppressed, in view of the almost immediate suspicion of a connexion with the Plot that fell upon him. Castelain, 907, considers, and rightly rejects, another suggestion by Fleay that Sejanus and not Eastward Ho! was the cause of the imprisonment of Jonson and Chapman in 1605. Fleay supposed that Chapman was the collaborator of whom Jonson wrote in the Q epistle, ‘I would informe you, that this Booke, in all numbers, is not the same with that which was acted on the publike Stage, wherein a second pen had good share; in place of which I have rather chosen, to put weaker (and no doubt lesse pleasing) of mine own, then to defraud so happy a Genius of his right, by my lothed usurpation’. Shakespeare also has been guessed at. If Jonson’s language was seriously meant, there were not, of course, many contemporaries of whom he would have so spoken. Probably the problem is insoluble, as the subject-matter of it has disappeared. It is difficult to believe that the collaborator was Samuel Sheppard, who in his The Times Displayed in Six Sestyads (1646) claims to have ‘dictated to’ Ben Jonson ‘when as Sejanus’ fall he writ’. Perhaps he means ‘been amanuensis to’.

Eastward Ho! (1605)

With Chapman (q.v.) and Marston.

Volpone or The Fox. 1606

[MS.] J. S. Farmer (Introd. to Believe As You List in T. F. T.) states that a holograph MS. is extant. He may have heard of a modern text by L. H. Holt, used by J. D. Rea. If so, App. N is in error.

S. R. 1610, Oct. 3. Transfer from Thomas Thorpe to Walter Burre of ‘2 bookes the one called, Seianus his fall, the other, Vulpone or the ffoxe’ (Arber, iii. 445).

1607. Ben: Ionson his Volpone Or The Foxe. For Thomas Thorpe. [Dedicatory epistle by ‘Ben. Ionson’ to the two Universities, dated ‘From my House in the Black-Friars, the 11^th day of February, 1607’; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘I. D[onne]’, ‘E. Bolton’, ‘F[rancis] B[eaumont]’, ‘T. R.’, ‘D. D.’, ‘I. C.’, ‘G. C.’, ‘E. S.’, ‘I. F.’; Argument; Prologue and Epilogue.]

1616. Volpone, or The Foxe. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1605. By the K. Maiesties Servants. The Author B. I. William Stansby. [Part of F₁. After text: ‘This Comoedie was first acted, in the yeere 1605. By the Kings Maiesties Servants. The principall Comœdians were, Ric. Burbadge, Ioh. Hemings, Hen. Condel, Ioh. Lowin, Will. Sly, Alex. Cooke. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

Editions by W. Scott (1811, M. B. D. iii) in O. E. D. (1830, i) and by H. B. Wilkins (1906), W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.), J. D. Rea (1919, Yale Studies).—Dissertations: F. Holthausen, Die Quelle von B. J.’s V. (1889, Anglia, xii. 519); J. Q. Adams, The Sources of B. J.’s V. (1904, M. P. ii. 289); L. H. Holt, Notes on J.’s V. (1905, M. L. N. xx. 63).

Jonson dates the production 1605, and the uncertainty as to the style he used leaves it possible that this may cover the earlier part of 1606. Fleay, i. 373, attempts to get nearer with the help of the news from London brought to Venice by Peregrine in II. i. Some of this does not help us much. The baboons had probably been in London as early as 1603 at least (cf. s.v. Sir Giles Goosecap). The Tower lioness had a whelp on 5 Aug. 1604, another on 26 Feb. 1605, and two more on 27 July 1605 (Stowe, ed. 1615, 844, 857, 870). The ‘another whelp’ of Volpone would suggest Feb.–July 1605. On the other hand, the whale at Woolwich is recorded by Stowe, 880, a few days after the porpoise at West Ham (not ‘above the bridge’ as in Volpone) on 19 Jan. 1606. Holt argues from this that, as Peregrine left England seven weeks before, the play must have been produced in March 1606, but this identification of actual and dramatic time can hardly be taken for granted. There are also allusions to meteors at Berwick and a new star, both in 1604, and to the building of a raven in a royal ship and the death of Stone the fool, which have not been dated and might help. Gawdy, 146, writes on 18 June 1604 that ‘Stone was knighted last weeke, I meane not Stone the foole, but Stone of Cheapsyde’. Stone the fool was whipped about March, 1605 (Winwood, ii. 52). The suggested allusion to Volpone in Day’s Isle of Gulls (q.v.) of Feb. 1606 is rather dubious. The ambiguity of style must also leave us uncertain whether Q and its dedication belong to 1607 or 1608, and therefore whether ‘their love and acceptance shewn to his poeme in the presentation’ by the Universities was in 1606 or 1607. This epistle contains a justification of Jonson’s comic method. He has had to undergo the ‘imputation of sharpnesse’, but has never provoked a ‘nation, societie, or generall order, or state’, or any ‘publique person’. Nor has he been ‘particular’ or ‘personall’, except to ‘a mimick, cheater, bawd, or buffon, creatures (for their insolencies) worthy to be tax’d’. But that he has not wholly forgotten the Poetomachia is clear from a reference to the ‘petulant stiles’ of other poets, while in the prologue he recalls the old criticism that he was a year about each play, and asserts that he wrote Volpone in five weeks. The commendatory verses suggest that the play was successful. Fleay’s theory that it is referred to in the epilogue to the anonymous Mucedorus (q.v.), as having given offence, will not bear analysis. The passage in III. iv about English borrowings from Guarini and Montaigne is too general in its application to be construed as a specific attack on Daniel. But the gossip of Aubrey, ii. 246, on Thomas Sutton, the founder of the Charterhouse, relates that ‘’Twas from him that B. Johnson took his hint of the fox, and by Seigneur Volpone is meant Sutton’.

Epicoene. 1609

S. R. 1610, Sept. 20 (Buck). ‘A booke called, Epicoene or the silent woman by Ben Johnson.’ John Browne and John Busby (Arber, iii. 444).

1612, Sept. 28. Transfer from Browne to Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 498).

1609, 1612. Prints of both dates are cited, but neither is now traceable. The former, in view of the S. R. date, can hardly have existed; the latter appears to have been seen by Gifford, and for it the commendatory verses by Beaumont, found at the beginning of F₁, were probably written.

1616. Epicoene, Or The silent Woman. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1609. By the Children of her Maiesties Revells. The Author B. I. W. Stansby. [Part of F₁. Epistle to Sir Francis Stuart, signed ‘Ben. Ionson’; Two Prologues, the second ‘Occasion’d by some persons impertinent exception’; after text: ‘This Comœdie was first acted, in the yeere 1609. By the Children of her Maiesties Revells. The principall Comœdians were, Nat. Field, Will. Barksted, Gil. Carie, Will. Pen, Hug. Attawel, Ric. Allin, Ioh. Smith, Ioh. Blaney. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

1620. William Stansby, sold by John Browne.

Editions in O. E. D. (1830, iii) and by A. Henry (1906, Yale Studies, xxxi) and C. M. Gayley (1913, R. E. C. ii).

The first prologue speaks of the play as fit for ‘your men, and daughters of white-Friars’, and at Whitefriars the play was probably produced by the Revels children, either at the end of 1609, or, if Jonson’s chronology permits, early in 1610. Jonson told Drummond (Laing, 41) that, ‘When his play of a Silent Woman was first acted, ther was found verses after on the stage against him, concluding that that play was well named the Silent Woman, ther was never one man to say Plaudite to it’. Fleay, i. 374, suggests an equation between Sir John Daw and Sir John Harington. In I. i. 86 Clerimont says of Lady Haughty, the President of the Collegiates, ‘A poxe of her autumnall face, her peec’d beautie’. I hope that this was not, as suggested by H. J. C. Grierson, Poems of Donne, ii. 63, a hit at Lady Danvers, on whom Donne wrote (Elegy ix):

In any case, I do not suppose that these are the passages which led to the ‘exception’ necessitating the second prologue. This ends with the lines:

Jonson evidently refers to the same matter in the Epistle, where he says: ‘There is not a line, or syllable in it changed from the simplicity of the first copy. And, when you shall consider, through the certaine hatred of some, how much a mans innocency may bee indanger’d by an vn-certaine accusation; you will, I doubt not, so beginne to hate the iniquitie of such natures, as I shall loue the contumely done me, whose end was so honorable, as to be wip’d off by your sentence.’ I think the explanation is to be found in a dispatch of the Venetian ambassador on 8 Feb. 1610 (V. P. xi. 427), who reports that Lady Arabella Stuart ‘complains that in a certain comedy the playwright introduced an allusion to her person and the part played by the Prince of Moldavia. The play was suppressed.’ The reference may be to V. i. 17 of the play:

La Foole. He [Daw] has his boxe of instruments ... to draw maps of euery place, and person, where he comes.

Clerimont. How, maps of persons!

La Foole. Yes, sir, of Nomentack, when he was here, and of the Prince of Moldauia, and of his mistris, mistris Epicoene.

Clerimont. Away! he has not found out her latitude, I hope.

The Prince of Moldavia visited London in 1607 and is said to have been a suitor for Arabella, but if Jonson’s text is really not ‘changed from the simplicity of the first copy’, it is clear that Arabella misunderstood it, since Epicoene was Daw’s mistress.

The Alchemist. 1610

S. R. 1610, Oct. 3 (Buck). ‘A Comoedy called The Alchymist made by Ben: Johnson.’ Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 445).

1612. The Alchemist. Written by Ben Ionson. Thomas Snodham for Walter Burre, sold by John Stepneth. [Epistles to Lady Wroth, signed ‘Ben. Jonson’ and to the Reader; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘George Lucy’; Argument and Prologue.]

1616. The Alchemist. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1610. By the Kings Maiesties Seruants. The author B. I. W. Stansby. [Part of F₁. After text: ‘This Comoedie was first acted, in the yeere 1610. By the Kings Maiesties Servants. The principall Comœdians were, Ric. Burbadge, Ioh. Hemings, Ioh. Lowin, Will. Ostler, Hen. Condel, Ioh. Vnderwood, Alex. Cooke, Nic. Tooley, Rob. Armin, Will. Eglestone. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

Editions by W. Scott (1811, M. B. D. iii), C. M. Hathaway (1903, Yale Studies, xvii), H. C. Hart (1903, King’s Library), F. E. Schelling (1903, B. L.), W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.), G. A. Smithson (1913, R. E. C.).

Jonson’s date is confirmed by the references in II. vi. 31 and IV. iv. 29 to the age of Dame Pliant, who is 19 and was born in 1591. In view of the S. R. entry, one would take the production to have fallen in the earlier half of the year, before the plague reached forty deaths, which it did from 12 July to 29 Nov. The action is set in plague-time, but obviously the experience of 1609 and early years might suggest this. Fleay, i. 375, and others following him argue that the action of the play is confined to one day, that this is fixed by V. v. 102 to ‘the second day of the fourth week in the eighth month’, and that this must be 24 October. They are not deterred by the discrepancy of this with III. ii. 129, which gives only a fifteen-days interval before ‘the second day, of the third weeke, in the ninth month’, i. e. on their principles 17 November. And they get over the S.R. entry by assuming that Jonson planned to stage the play on 24 October and then, finding early in October that the plague continued, decided to publish it at once. This seems to me extraordinarily thin, in the absence of clearer knowledge as to the system of chronology employed by Ananias of Amsterdam. Aubrey, i. 213, says that John Dee ‘used to distill egge-shells, and ’twas from hence that Ben Johnson had his hint of the alkimist, whom he meant’. The play was given by the King’s men at Court during 1612–13.