Volume 3 / Book 5 — BOOK V PLAYS AND PLAYWRIGHTS (continued 9)

Massinger, baptized at Salisbury on 24 Nov. 1583, was son of Arthur Massinger, a confidential servant of Henry, 2nd Earl of Pembroke. He entered at St. Alban Hall, Oxford, and left without a degree in 1606. Little is known of him for some years thereafter. He is conjectured to have become a Catholic and thus to have imperilled his relations with the Herbert family, at any rate until the time of Philip, the 4th earl, who was certainly his patron. He was buried at St. Saviour’s on 18 March 1640 and left a widow. The greater part of his dramatic career, to which all his independent plays belong, falls outside the scope of this notice, but on 4 July 1615 he gave a joint bond with Daborne for £3 to Henslowe, and some undated correspondence probably of 1613 shows that he was collaborating in one or more plays with Daborne, Field, and Fletcher.

Collections

T. Coxeter (1759), J. M. Mason (1779), W. Gifford (1805), H. Coleridge (1840, 1848, 1851), F. Cunningham (1871, 3 vols.). [These include The Old Law, The Fatal Dowry, and The Virgin Martyr, but not any plays from the Beaumont and Fletcher Ff.]

Selections

1887–9. A. Symons, The Best Plays of P. M. 2 vols. (Mermaid Series). [Includes The Fatal Dowry and The Virgin Martyr.]

1912. L. A. Sherman, P. M. (M. E. D.).

Dissertations: S. R. Gardiner, The Political Element in M. (1876, N. S. S. Trans. 314); J. Phelan, P. M. (1879–80, Anglia, ii. 1, 504; iii. 361); E. Koeppel, Quellenstudien zu den Dramen G. Chapman’s, P. M.’s und J. Ford’s (1897, Q. F. lxxxii); W. von Wurzbach, P. M. (1899–1900, Jahrbuch, xxxv. 214, xxxvi. 128); C. Beck, P. M. The Fatal Dowry (1906); A. H. Cruickshank, Philip Massinger (1920).

It is doubtful how far Massinger’s dramatic activity began before 1616. For ascriptions to him, s.v. Beaumont and Fletcher (Captain, Cupid’s Revenge, Coxcomb, Scornful Lady, Honest Man’s Fortune, Faithful Friends, Thierry and Theodoret, T. N. K., Love’s Cure), Anthony Brewer (The Lovesick King), and Second Maiden’s Tragedy (ch. xxiv). It has also been suggested that a Philenzo and Hypollita and an Antonio and Vallia, ascribed to him in late records, but not extant, may represent revisions of early work by Dekker (q.v.).

FRANCIS MERBURY (c. 1579).

At the end of the epilogue to the following play is written ‘Amen, quoth fra: Merbury’. The formula may denote only a scribe, but a precisely similar one denotes the author in the case of Preston’s Cambyses (q.v.).

A Marriage between Wit and Wisdom. c. 1579

[MS.] Brit. Mus. Addl. MS. 26782, formerly penes Sir Edward Dering.

Editions by J. O. Halliwell (1846, Sh. Soc.), J. S. Farmer (1909, T. F. T.).

The MS. has a title-page, with the date 1579, an arrangement of the parts for six actors and the title ‘The —— of a Marige betweene wit and wisdome very frutefull and mixed full of pleasant mirth as well for The beholders as the Readers or hearers neuer before imprinted’. There are nine Scenes in two Acts, with a Prologue and Epilogus. The characters are almost wholly allegorical. Idleness is ‘the vice’. The stage-directions mention a ‘stage’. Halliwell prints the mutilated word left blank in the title above as ‘Contract’, no doubt rightly. Conceivably the play was in fact printed in 1579, as ‘Mariage of wit and wisdome’ is in Rogers and Ley’s play-list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, lxxxvii).

The play might be identical with the lost Paul’s moral of The Marriage of Mind and Measure (cf. App. B), which also belongs to 1579. Fleay, ii. 287, 294, infers from a not very conclusive reference to a ‘King’ in sc. iv that it dates from the time of Edward VI. He also identifies it with the Hit Nail o’ th’ Head named in Sir Thomas More (q.v.) because that phrase is quoted in the Epilogus, curiously disregarding the fact that the Sir Thomas More list names the play under its existing title as distinct from Hit Nail o’ th’ Head. Most of the plays in the Sir Thomas More list seem to be pre-Elizabethan; cf. Mediaeval Stage, ii. 200.

THOMAS MIDDLETON (c. 1570–1627).

Thomas Middleton was a Londoner and of a gentle family. The date of his birth can only be roughly conjectured from the probability that he was one of two Thomas Middletons who entered Gray’s Inn in 1593 and 1596, and of his earlier education nothing is known. His first work was The Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased (1597), and he may be the T. M. of The Black Book (1604) and other pamphlets in prose and verse. He appears as a dramatist, possibly as early as 1599 in The Old Law and certainly in Henslowe’s diary during 1602, writing an unnamed play for Worcester’s men, and for the Admiral’s Caesar’s Fall or The Two Shapes with Dekker (q.v), Drayton, Munday, and Webster, and by himself, Randal Earl of Chester, and a prologue and epilogue to Greene’s Friar Bacon (q.v.). This work is all lost, but by 1604 he had also collaborated with Dekker for the Admiral’s in the extant Honest Whore. From 1602, if not from 1599, to the end of their career in 1606 or 1607, he was also writing diligently for the Paul’s boys. I think he is referred to with their other ‘apes and guls’, Marston and Dekker, in Marston’s Jack Drum’s Entertainment (1600), IV. 40:

Brabant, the speaker, represents Jonson, who told Drummond in 1619 that he was ‘not of the number of the Faithfull, i. e. Poets, and but a base fellow’ (Laing, 12). Occasional plays for several companies and the beginnings of employment in city pageantry occupied 1607–16, and to later periods belong a fruitful partnership with William Rowley for Prince Charles’s men, and some slight share in the heterogeneous mass of work that passes under the names of Beaumont and Fletcher. He also wrote a few independent plays, of which A Game at Chess (1624) got him into political trouble. At some time before 1623 a few lines of his got interpolated into the text of Macbeth (cf. Warwick edition, p. 164). In 1620 he obtained a post as Chronologer to the City. He married Maria Morbeck, had a son Edward, and dwelt at Newington Butts, where he was buried on 4 July 1627.

Collections

1840. A Dyce, Works of T. M. 5 vols.

1885–6. A. H. Bullen, Works of T. M. 8 vols. [Omits The Honest Whore.]

1887–90. H. Ellis, The Best Plays of T. M. 2 vols. (Mermaid Series). [Includes Trick to Catch the Old One, Chaste Maid in Cheapside, Widow, Roaring Girl, Mayor of Queenborough, and later plays.]

Dissertations: J. Arnheim, T. M. (1887, Archiv, lxxviii. 1, 129, 369); P. G. Wiggin, An Inquiry into the Authorship of the Middleton-Rowley Plays (1897, Radcliffe College Monographs, ix); H. Jung, Das Verhältniss T. M.’s zu Shakspere (1904, Münchener Beiträge, xxix).

PLAYS

The Old Law. 1599

1656. The Excellent Comedy, called The Old Law; Or A new way to please you. By Phil. Massenger. Tho. Middleton. William Rowley. Acted before the King and Queene at Salisbury House, and at severall other places, with great Applause. Together with an exact and perfect Catalogue of all the Playes, with the Authors Names, and what are Comedies, Tragedies, Histories, Pastoralls, Masks, Interludes, more exactly Printed than ever before. For Edward Archer.

Editions with Massinger’s Works (q.v.).—Dissertation: E. E. Morris, On the Date and Composition of T. O. L. (M. L. A. xvii. 1).

It is generally supposed that in some form the play dates from 1599, as in III. i. 34 a woman was ‘born in an. 1540, and now ’tis 99’. Of the three authors only Middleton can then have been writing. Morris, after elaborate study of the early work and the versification of all three, concludes that Rowley (c. 1615) and Massinger (c. 1625) successively revised an original by Middleton. The Paul’s plays began in 1599, but it cannot be assumed that this was one of them. Stork, 48, doubts the 1599 date and is inclined to assume collaboration between the three writers c. 1615.

Blurt Master Constable. 1601–2

S. R. 1602, June 7. ‘A Booke called Blurt Master Constable. Edward Aldee (Arber, iii. 207).

1602. Blurt Master Constable. Or The Spaniards Night-walke. As it hath bin sundry times priuately acted by the Children of Paules. For Henry Rocket.

Edition [by W. R. Chetwood] in A Select Collection of Old Plays (1750).

Bullen suggests that V. iii. 179, ‘There be many of your countrymen in Ireland, signior’, said to a Spaniard, reflects the raid of Spaniards in Sept. 1601. They were taken at Kinsale in June 1602. A parallel in III. i. 104 with Macbeth, II. ii. 3, cannot be taken with Fleay, ii. 90, as proof of posteriority.

The Phoenix. 1603–4

S. R. 1607, May 9 (Buck). ‘A Booke called The Phenix.’ Arthur Johnson (Arber, iii. 348).

1607. The Phoenix, As It hath beene sundry times Acted by the Children of Paules. And presented before his Maiestie. E. A. for A. I.

1630. T. H. for R. Meighen.

The only available performance before James was on 20 Feb. 1604, and the imitation of Volpone (1605) suggested by Fleay, ii. 92, is not clear enough to cause any difficulty. Knights are satirized in I. vi. 150, II. iii. 4, and there is an allusion to the unsettled state of Ireland in I. v. 6.

A Trick to Catch the Old One. 1604 < > 6 (?)

S. R. 1607, Oct. 7 (Buck). ‘Twoo plaies ... thother A trick to catche the old one.’ George Eld (Arber, iii. 360).

1608. A Trick to Catch the Old One. As it hath beene lately Acted, by the Children of Paules. George Eld.

1608.... As it hath beene often in Action, both at Paules, and the Black Fryers. Presented before his Maiestie on New yeares night last. Composed by T. M. G. E. sold by Henry Rockett. [Another issue.]

1616.... By T. Middleton. George Eld for Thomas Langley.

Editions in O. E. D. (1830, iii) and by C. W. Dilke (1814, O. E. P. v) and W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.).

The date of Q₁ is doubtless 1608/9 and the Court performance that by the Children of Blackfriars on 1 Jan. 1609. They must have taken the play over from Paul’s when these went under in 1606 or 1607. The title is probably proverbial, and therefore the phrase ‘We are in the way to catch the old one’ in Isle of Gulls, II. v, hardly enables us to date the play with Fleay, ii. 92, before Day’s, which was in Feb. 1606.

A Mad World, my Masters. 1604 < > 6 (?)

S. R. 1608, Oct. 4. ‘A Booke called A Mad World (my Maysters).’ Walter Burre and Eleazar Edgar (Arber, iii. 391). [The licenser is Segar, ‘Deputy of Sir George Bucke’.]

1608. A Mad World, My Masters. As it hath bin lately in Action by the Children of Paules. Composed by T. M. H. B. for Walter Burre.

S. R. 1613, April 19. Transfer to John Hodgettes of Edgar’s share (Arber, iii. 520).

1640.... A Comedy. As it hath bin often Acted at the Private House in Salisbury Court, by her Majesties Servants.... For J. S., sold by James Becket. [Epistle to Reader, signed ‘J. S.’]

Edition by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. ii).

The epistle says ‘it is full twenty years since it was written’, which is absurd. A pamphlet of the same title by Breton in 1603, hits at the Jacobean knightings in I. i. 64, II. v. 41, and the Family of Love in I. ii. 73, and the disappearance of Paul’s in 1606 or 1607 are the only indications of date. In Acts IV and V the duplicate names Once-Ill-Brothel, Hargrave-Harebrain, Shortrod-Harebrain suggest revision.

Michaelmas Term. 1606 (?)

S. R. 1607, May 15 (Buck). ‘A Comedy called Mychaelmas terme.’ Arthur Johnson (Arber, iii. 349).

1607. Michaelmas Terme. As it hath been sundry times acted by the Children of Paules. For A. I. [Induction.]

1630.... Newly corrected. T. H. for R. Meighen.

Allusions in II. iii. 226, 376 to the presence of women at a quartering for treason may suggest, as in the case of Marston’s Fawn (q.v.), a date after that of 30 Jan. 1606. There is no reference in II. i. 63 to the leap-year of 1604, as suggested by Fleay, ii. 91. Knightings are satirized in I. i. 191; III. i. 46.

Your Five Gallants. 1607

S. R. 1608, March 22 (Buck). ‘A Plaie called the ffyve Wittie Gallantes as it hath ben acted by the Children of the Chappell.’ Richard Bonyon (Arber, iii. 372).

N.D. Your fiue Gallants. As it hath beene often in Action at the Blacke-friers. Written by T. Middleton. For Richard Bonian. [Induction with ‘Presenter or Prologue’ in dumb-show.]

This may have been in preparation for Paul’s when they ceased playing and taken over by Blackfriars. In any case a reference to closure for plague in IV. ii. 29 and to fighting with a windmill (like Don Quixote) in IV. viii. 7 fit in with a date in 1607.

The Family of Love. 1604 < > 7 (?)

S. R. 1607, Oct. 12 (Buck). ‘A playe called the family of Loue as yt hath bene Lately acted by the Children of his Maiesties Reuelles.’ John Browne and John Helme (Arber, iii. 360).

1608. The Famelie of Love. Acted by the Children of his Maiesties Reuells. For John Helmes. [Epistle to Reader, Prologue, Epilogue.]

The prologue apologizes that ‘expectation’ hath not ‘filled the general round’. The King’s Revels can hardly have existed before 1607. Fleay, ii. 94, thinks that they inherited the play from Paul’s and assigns it to 1604 ‘when the Family of Love were such objects of public attention’. His chief reason is that the epistle regrets that the play was ‘not published when the general voice of the people had sealed it for good, and the newness of it made it much more desired than at this time’. It had ‘passed the censure of the stage with a general applause’. This epistle is clearly by the author, who says ‘it was in the press before I had notice of it, by which means some faults may escape in the printing’. I agree that there must have been some interval between production and publication. But there is no special virtue in the date 1604. References to the Family of Love are to be found in Sir Giles Goosecap (1601–3), II. i. 263; Dutch Courtesan (1603–4), I. i. 156, I. ii. 18; Mad World, My Masters (1604–6), I. ii. 73; Isle of Gulls (1606), p. 26; Every Woman in Her Humour (?), p. 316. The sect was well known in England as early as 1574–81, when an act was passed for its suppression. It petitioned James c. 1604 and was answered in A Supplication of the Family of Love, printed at Cambridge in 1606. On its history, cf. Fuller, Church History (1868), iii. 239; F. Nippold, Heinrich Niclaes und das Haus der Liebe (1862, Z. f. Hist. Theol.); R. Barclay, Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the Commonwealth (1876), 25; A. C. Thomas, The Family of Love (1893); R. M. Jones, Studies in Mystical Religion (1909), 428; E. B. Daw, Love Feigned and Unfeigned (1917, M. L. A. xxxii. 267).

The Roaring Girl. c. 1610.

With Dekker (q.v.).

A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. 1611.

S. R. 1630, April 8 (Herbert). ‘A play called The Chast Mayd of Chepeside.’ Constable (Arber, iv. 232).

1630. A Chast Mayd in Cheape-side. A Pleasant conceited Comedy neuer before printed. As it hath beene often acted at the Swan on the Banke-side by the Lady Elizabeth her Seruants By Thomas Midelton Gent. For Francis Constable.

It is not known where the Lady Elizabeth’s played during 1611–13, and it may very well have been at the Swan. Nor is there anything improbable in the suggestion of Fleay, 186, that this is the Proud Maid’s Tragedy acted by them at Court on 25 Feb. 1612 (App. B).

No Wit, no Help, like a Woman’s. 1613 (?)

S. R. 1653, Sept. 9. ‘No witt, no helpe like a Woman. Mr. Tho. Midleton.’ H. Moseley. (Eyre, i. 428).

1657. No Wit like a Womans. A Comedy. By Tho. Middleton,

Help

Gent. For Humphrey Moseley. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

The text represents a revival by Shirley in 1638, but Fleay, ii. 96, refers the original to 1613 as in III. i. 286 a character, after referring to the almanac for 1638, says he has ‘proceeded in five and twenty such books of astronomy’. Bullen accepts the date, but I feel no confidence in the argument. Stork, 47, attempts to trace Rowley’s hand.

The Widow (?)

S. R. 1652, Apr. 12 (Brent). ‘A play called The Widdow, written by John Fletcher & Tho: Middleton gent.’ Moseley (Eyre, i. 394).

1652. The Widdow A Comedie. As it was Acted at the private House in Black Fryers, with great Applause, by His late Majesties Servants. Written by Ben: Jonson John Fletcher. Tho: Middleton. Gent. Printed by the Originall Copy. For Humphrey Moseley. [Epistle to Reader by Alexander Gough. Prologue and Epilogue.]

Bullen places this ‘from internal evidence’ c. 1608–9, but thinks it revised at a later date, not improbably by Fletcher, although he cannot discover either Jonson’s hand or, ‘unless the songs be his’, Fletcher’s. Allusions to ‘a scornful woman’ (I. ii. 104) and to ‘yellow bands’ as ‘hateful’ (V. i. 52) are consistent with a date c. 1615–16.

The Mayor of Quinborough (?)

[MS.] A copy of the play, said to be ‘of no great antiquity’, is described in an appendix to Wit and Wisdom (Sh. Soc.), 85.

S. R. 1646, Sept. 4 (Langley). ‘Maior of Quinborough.’ Robinson and Moseley (Eyre, i. 244).

1661, Feb. 13. ‘A Comedie called the Maior of Quinborough, By Tho: Middleton. Henry Herringham (Eyre, ii. 288).

1661. The Mayor of Quinborough: A Comedy. As it hath been often Acted with much Applause at Black Fryars, By His Majesties Servants. Written by Tho. Middleton. For Henry Herringham. [Epistle to Gentlemen.]

There is a mention (V. i. 112) of Fletcher’s Wild-Goose Chase (1621), and the introduction of a ‘rebel Oliver’ suggests a much later date. But Bullen thinks this an old play revised, and Fleay, ii. 104, attempts to identify it with an anonymous play called both Vortigern and Hengist (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 181) which was produced by the Admiral’s on 4 Dec. 1596 and bought by the same company from Alleyn in 1601. There is not, however, much to support a theory that Middleton was writing for the stage so early as 1596. Stork, 46, thinks that Middleton and Rowley revised the older play c. 1606, ‘at a time when plays of ancient Britain were in vogue’.

Doubtful Plays

Middleton’s hand has been sought in Birth of Merlin, Puritan, and Second Maiden’s Tragedy (cf. ch. xxiv) and in Wit at Several Weapons of the Beaumont (q.v.) and Fletcher series.

Lost Mask

Mask of Cupid. 4 Jan. 1614

Writing to Carleton on 5 Jan. 1614 of the festivities at the Earl of Somerset’s wedding (Birch, i. 288; cf. s.v. Campion, Mask of Squires), Chamberlain notes that the King had called on the City to entertain the bridal pair, which they had done, though reluctantly, on 4 Jan. in Merchant Taylors’ hall, with a supper, a play and a mask, and a banquet. Howes in Stowe, Annales, 1005, says there were ‘2 seuerall pleasant maskes & a play’. Bullen, Middleton, i. xxxix, gives from the City Repertory, xxxi. 2, f. 239^v, an order of 18 Jan. 1614 for payment to Thomas Middleton in respect of the ‘late solemnities at Merchant Tailors’ Hall’ for ‘the last Mask of Cupid and other shows lately made’ by him.

ENTERTAINMENTS

Running Stream Entertainment. 29 Sept. 1613

1613. The Manner of his Lordships [Sir Thomas Middleton’s] Entertainment on Michaelmas day last, being the day of his Honorable Election, together with the worthy Sir Iohn Swinarton, Knight, then Lord Maior, the Learned and Iuditious, Sir Henry Montague, Maister Recorder, and many of the Right Worshipfull the Aldermen of the Citty of London. At that most Famous and Admired Worke of the Running Streame from Amwell Head, into the Cesterne neere Islington, being the sole Inuention, Cost, and Industry of that Worthy Maister Hugh Middleton, of London Goldsmith, for the generall good of the Citty. By T. M. Nicholas Okes. [Appended to reissue of The Triumphs of Truth.]

The Triumphs of Truth. 29 Oct. 1613

S. R. 1613, Nov. 3. ‘A booke called the tryumphs of truth of all the showes pagiantes Chariots &c. on the Lord Maiours Day octobris 29, 1613.’ Nicholas Okes (Arber, iii. 536).

1613. The Triumphs of Truth. A Solemnity vnparalleld for Cost, Art, and Magnificence, at the Confirmation and Establishment of that Worthy and true Nobly-minded Gentleman, Sir Thomas Middleton, Knight; in the Honorable Office of his Maiesties Lieuetenant, the Lord Maior of the thrice Famous Citty of London. Taking Beginning at his Lordships going, and proceeding after his Returne from receiuing the Oath of Maioralty at Westminster, on the Morrow next after Simon and Iudes day, October 29. 1613. All the Showes, Pageants, Chariots; Morning, Noone, and Night-Triumphes. Directed, Written, and redeem’d into Forme, from the Ignorance of some former times, and their Common Writer, by Thomas Middleton. Nicholas Okes.

1613.... Shewing also his Lordships Entertainment on Michaelmas day last, ... [etc.]. Nicholas Okes. [Reissue, with Running Stream Entertainment added.]

Edition in Nichols, James (1828), ii. 679, with Running Stream.

Civitatis Amor. 4 Nov. 1616

1616. Ciuitatis Amor. The Cities Loue. An entertainement by water, at Chelsey, and Whitehall. At the ioyfull receiuing of that Illustrious Hope of Great Britaine, the High and Mighty Charles, To bee created Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornewall, Earle of Chester, &c. Together with the Ample Order and Solemnity of his Highnesse creation, as it was celebrated in his Maiesties Palace of Whitehall on Monday, the fourth of Nouember, 1616. As also the Ceremonies of that Ancient and Honourable Order of the Knights of the Bath; And all the Triumphs showne in honour of his Royall Creation. Nicholas Okes for Thomas Archer. [Middleton’s name follows the account of the ‘entertainment’.]

ALEXANDER MONTGOMERY (c. 1556–c. 1610).

A Scottish poet (cf. D. N. B.) who has been suggested as the author of Philotus (cf. ch. xxiv).

ROGER MORRELL (c. 1597).

Possibly the author of the academic Hispanus (cf. App. K).

RICHARD MULCASTER (c. 1530–1611).

A contributor to the Kenilworth entertainment (cf. ch. xxiv, C). For his successive masterships of Merchant Taylors and St. Paul’s, see ch. xii.

ANTHONY MUNDAY (c. 1553–1633).

Anthony was son of Christopher Munday, a London Draper. He ‘first was a stage player’ (A True Report of ... M. Campion, 1582), but in Oct. 1576 was apprenticed for eight years to John Allde, stationer. Allde went out of business about 1582, and Munday never completed his apprenticeship, probably because his ready pen found better profit in the purveyance of copy for the trade. He began by a journey to Rome in 1578–9, and brought back material for a series of attacks upon the Jesuits, to one of which A True Report of ... M. Campion is an answer. According to the anonymous author, Munday on his return to England ‘did play extempore, those gentlemen and others whiche were present, can best giue witnes of his dexterity, who being wery of his folly, hissed him from his stage. Then being thereby discouraged, he set forth a balet against playes, but yet (o constant youth) he now beginnes againe to ruffle upon the stage’. For the ballad there is some corroborative evidence in a S. R. entry of 10 Nov. 1580 (cf. App. C, No. xxvi), which, however, does not name Munday, and it is a possible conjecture that he also wrote the Third Blast of Retrait from Plaies issued in the same year (cf. App. C, No. xxvii). If so, he was already, before 1580, doing work as a playwright; but of this, with the doubtful exception of the anonymous Two Italian Gentlemen (q.v.), there is no other evidence for another fifteen years. His experiences as an actor may have been with the company of the Earl of Oxford, whose ‘servant’ he calls himself in his View of Sundry Examples (1580). From 1581 he was employed by Topcliffe and others against recusants, and as a result became, possibly by 1584 and certainly by 1588, a Messenger of the Chamber. He still held this post in 1593, and was employed as a pursuivant to execute the Archbishop of Canterbury’s warrants against Martin Marprelate in 1588. J. D. Wilson (M. L. R. iv. 489) suggests that he may also have taken a hand in the literary and dramatic controversy, as ‘Mar-Martin, John a Cant: his hobbie-horse’, who ‘was to his reproche, newly put out of the morris, take it how he will; with a flat discharge for euer shaking his shins about a maypole againe while he liued’ (Protestation of Martin Marprelate, c. Aug. 1589). Certainly Munday’s official duties did not interfere with his literary productiveness, as translator of romances, maker of ballads, lyrist, and miscellaneous writer generally. He is traceable, chiefly in Henslowe’s diary, as a busy dramatist for the Admiral’s men during various periods between 1594 and 1602, and there is no reason to suppose that his activities were limited to these years. Meres in 1598 includes him amongst ‘the best for comedy’, with the additional compliment of ‘our best plotter’. But he was evidently a favourite mark for the satire of more literary writers, who depreciated his style and jested at his functions as a messenger. Small, 172, has disposed of attempts to identify him with the Deliro or the Puntarvolo of E. M. O., the Amorphus of Cynthia’s Revels, the In-and-In Medley of the Tale of a Tub, and the Timothy Tweedle of the anonymous Jack Drum’s Entertainment. But he may reasonably be taken for the Poet Nuntius of E. M. I. and the Antonio Balladino of The Case is Altered (q.v.); and long before Jonson took up the game, an earlier writer had introduced him as the Posthaste of the anonymous Histriomastix (c. 1589). Posthaste suggests the formation of Sir Oliver Owlet’s men, and acts as their poet (i. 124). He writes a Prodigal Child at 1s. a sheet (ii. 94). He will teach the actors to play ‘true Politicians’ (i. 128) and ‘should be employd in matters of state’ (ii. 130). He is always ready to drink (i. 162; ii. 103, 115, 319; vi. 222), and claims to be a gentleman, because ‘he hath a clean shirt on, with some learning’ (ii. 214). He has written ballads (v. 91; vi. 235). The players jeer at ‘your extempore’ (i. 127), and he offers to do a prologue extempore (ii. 121), and does extemporize on a theme (ii. 293). He writes with

The players call him, when he is late for rehearsal, a ‘peaking pageanter’, and say ‘It is as dangerous to read his name at a play door, as a printed bill on a plague door’ (iv. 165). The whole portrait seems to be by the earlier author; Marston only adds a characteristic epithet in ‘goosequillian Posthast’ (iii. 187). But it agrees closely with the later portraits by Jonson, and with the facts of Munday’s career. I do not think that ‘pageanter’ means anything more than play-maker. But from 1605 onwards Munday was often employed by city companies to devise Lord Mayor’s pageants, and it has been supposed that he had been similarly engaged since 1592 on the strength of a claim in the 1618 edition of John Stowe’s Survey of London, which he edited, that he had been ‘six and twenty years in sundry employments for the City’s service’. But there were other civic employments, and it is doubtful (cf. ch. iv) how far there were pageants during the last decade of Elizabeth’s reign for Munday to devise. On the title-pages of his pageants he describes himself as a ‘Cittizen and Draper of London’. The Corporation’s welcome at the creation of Henry as Prince of Wales in 1610 (cf. ch. iv) also fell to him to devise. How long he continued to write plays is unknown. He had several children in St. Giles’s, Cripplegate, between 1584 and 1589, and was buried on 10 Aug. 1633 at St. Stephen’s, Coleman Street.

Dissertations: J. D. Wilson, A. M., Pamphleteer and Pursuivant (1909, M. L. R. iv. 484); W. W. Greg, Autograph Plays by A. M. (1913, M. L. R. viii. 89); M. St. C. Byrne, The Date of A. M.’s Journey to Rome (1918, 3 Library, ix. 106), The Shepherd Tony—a Recapitulation (1920, M. L. R. xv. 364), A. M. and his Books (1921, 4 Library, i. 225); E. M. Thompson, The Autograph MSS. of A. M. (1919, Bibl. Soc. Trans. xiv. 325).

PLAYS

John a Kent and John a Cumber. 1594

[MS.] Autograph MS. in possession of Lord Mostyn, with title ‘The Booke of John a Kent and John a Cumber’, and at end the signature ‘Anthony Mundy’, and in another hand the date ‘—— Decembris 1596’. A mutilation of the paper has removed the day of the month and possibly some memorandum to which the date was appended. The wrapper is in part formed of a vellum leaf of which another part was used for Sir Thomas More (cf. ch. xxiv).

Editions by J. P. Collier (1851, Sh. Soc.) and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.).

The date has been misread ‘1595’. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 172) agrees with Fleay, ii. 114, that the play, of which the scene is at West Chester, must be The Wise Man of West Chester, produced by the Admiral’s on 3 Dec. 1594 and played to 18 July 1597. Their inventory of 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 117) includes ‘Kentes woden leage’. This is not required by the extant text, but two or three leaves of the MS. appear to be missing. If the identification is correct, it is not easy to see how the MS. can be earlier than 1594, although Sir E. M. Thompson’s warning that the date of 1596 may be a later addition is justified. On 19 Sept. 1601 the Admiral’s bought the book from Alleyn. Greg further suggests that Randal Earl of Chester, written by Middleton for the same company in Oct. and Nov. 1602, may have been a ‘refashioning’ of the earlier play, in which Randal is a character.

The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. 1598

S. R. 1600, Dec. 1. ‘The Downe falle of Robert Erle of Huntingdone after Called Robin Hood.’ Leake (Arber, iii. 176).

1601. The Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington, Afterward called Robin Hood of merrie Sherwodde: with his loue to chaste Matilda, the Lord Fitzwaters daughter, afterwardes his faire Maide Marian. Acted by the Right Honourable, the Earle of Notingham, Lord high Admirall of England, his seruants. For William Leake. [Induction.]

Editions by J. P. Collier (1833, Five Old Plays), in Dodsley⁴ viii (1874), and by J. S. Farmer (1913, S. F. T.).—Dissertation: A. Ruckdeschel, Die Quellen des Dramas ‘The Downfall and Death of Robert, Earle of Huntington, otherwise called Robin Hood’ (1897).

Henslowe paid Munday £5 on behalf of the Admiral’s for ‘the firste parte of Robyne Hoode’ on 15 Feb. 1598. From 20 Feb. to 8 March he paid Munday and Chettle sums amounting to £5 in all for a ‘seconde parte’, called in the fullest entry ‘seconde parte of the downefall of earlle Huntyngton surnamed Roben Hoode’. The books and apparel and properties are in the Admiral’s inventories of March 1598 (Henslowe Papers, 114, 115, 120, 121). Both parts were licensed for performance on 28 March. On 18 Nov. he paid Chettle 10s. for ‘the mendynge of’ the first part, and on 25 Nov., apparently, another 10s. ‘for mendinge of Roben Hood for the corte’. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 190) suggests that the last payment was for the second part, and that the two Court performances by the Admiral’s at Christmas 1598 are of these plays. However this may be, Henslowe’s 1, 2 Robin Hood are doubtless the extant Downfall and Death. There is an allusion in The Downfall, IV. ii, to the ‘merry jests’ of an earlier play, which may be The Pastoral Comedy of Robin Hood and Little John, entered in S. R. on 14 May 1594, but not now known. Fleay, ii. 114, thinks that Chettle, besides revising some of Munday’s scenes, added the Induction and the Skeltonic rhymes.

The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon. 1598

With Chettle.

S. R. 1600, Dec. 1. ‘The Death of Robert Earle of Huntingdon with the lamentable trogidye of Chaste Mathilda.’ Leake (Arber, iii. 176).

1601. The Death of Robert, Earle of Huntington. Otherwise called Robin Hood of merrie Sherwodde: with the lamentable Tragedie of chaste Matilda, his faire maid Marian, poysoned at Dunmowe by King Iohn. Acted by the Right Honourable, the Earle of Notingham, Lord high Admirall of England, his seruants. For William Leake. [Epilogue.]

Editions and Dissertation with The Downfall (q.v.).

This is a sequel to The Downfall (q.v.). Fleay, ii. 115, gives Munday the scenes dealing with Robin Hood’s death and Chettle those dealing with Maid Marian’s. The play contains discrepancies, but Henslowe’s entries afford no evidence that Munday revised Chettle’s work, as Fleay thinks. Greg (Henslowe, ii. 191) points out that Davenport borrowed much of his King John and Matilda (1655) from The Death.

1 Sir John Oldcastle. 1599

With Drayton (q.v.), Hathway, and Wilson.

Lost Plays

The following is a complete list of the plays in which Henslowe’s diary shows Munday to have written between 1597 and 1602. All were for the Admiral’s:

(i) Mother Redcap.

With Drayton, Dec. 1597–Jan. 1598.

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

Vide supra.

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

With Chettle, Drayton, and Wilson, June 1598, probably as a sequel to Robin Hood (cf. Greg, Henslowe, ii. 190).

(v) Valentine and Orson.

With Hathway (q.v.), July 1598.

(vi) A ‘comodey for the corte’, for the completion of which Drayton was surety, Aug. 1598, but the entry is cancelled, and presumably the play was not finished, unless it is identical with (vii).

(vii) Chance Medley.

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

(viii), (ix) 1, 2 Sir John Oldcastle.

With Drayton (q.v.), Hathway, and Wilson, Oct.–Dec. 1599.

(x) Owen Tudor.

With Drayton, Hathway, and Wilson, Jan. 1600, but apparently not finished.

(xi) 1 Fair Constance of Rome.

With Dekker, Drayton, Hathway, and Wilson, June 1600.

(xii) 1 Cardinal Wolsey.

With Chettle, Drayton, and Smith, Aug.–Nov. 1601.

(xiii) Jephthah.

With Dekker, May 1602.

(xiv) Caesar’s Fall, or The Two Shapes.

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

(xv) The Set at Tennis.

Dec. 1602. The payment, though in full, was only £3; it was probably, therefore, a short play, and conceivably identical with the ‘[sec]ond part of fortun[es Tenn?]is’ of which a ‘plot’ exists (cf. ch. xxiv) and intended to piece out to the length of a normal performance the original Fortune’s Tennis written by Dekker (q.v.) as a ‘curtain-raiser’ for the Fortune on its opening in 1600. [This is highly conjectural.]

Munday must clearly have had a hand in Sir Thomas More, which is in his writing, and has been suggested as the author of Fedele and Fortunio and The Weakest Goeth to the Wall (cf. ch. xxiv).

ENTERTAINMENTS

The Triumphs of Reunited Britannia. 29 Oct. 1605

N.D. The Triumphes of re-vnited Britania. Performed at the cost and charges of the Right Worship: Company of the Merchant Taylors, in honor of Sir Leonard Holliday kni: to solemnize his entrance as Lorde Mayor of the Citty of London, on Tuesday the 29. of October. 1605. Deuised and Written by A. Mundy, Cittizen and Draper of London. W. Jaggard.

Edition in Nichols, James (1828), i. 564.

London’s Love to Prince Henry. 31 May 1610

See ch. xxiv.

Chryso-Thriambos. 29 Oct. 1611

1611. Chruso-thriambos. The Triumphes of Golde. At the Inauguration of Sir Iames Pemberton, Knight, in the Dignity of Lord Maior of London: On Tuesday, the 29. of October. 1611. Performed in the harty loue, and at the charges of the Right Worshipfull, Worthy, and Ancient Company of Gold-Smithes. Deuised and Written by A. M. Cittizen and Draper of London. William Jaggard.

Himatia Poleos. 29 Oct. 1614

1614. Himatia-Poleos. The Triumphs of olde Draperie, or the rich Cloathing of England. Performed in affection, and at the charges of the right Worthie and first honoured Companie of Drapers: at the enstalment of Sr. Thomas Hayes Knight, in the high office of Lord Maior of London, on Satturday, being the 29. day of October. 1614. Deuised and written by A. M. Citizen and Draper of London. Edward Allde.

Metropolis Coronata. 30 Oct. 1615

1615. Metropolis Coronata, The Triumphes of Ancient Drapery: or, Rich Cloathing of England, in a second Yeeres performance. In Honour of the aduancement of Sir Iohn Iolles, Knight, to the high Office of Lord Maior of London, and taking his Oath for the same Authoritie, on Monday, being the 30. day of October. 1615. Performed in heartie affection to him, and at the bountifull charges of his worthy Brethren the truely Honourable Society of Drapers, the first that receiued such Dignitie in this Citie. Deuised, and written, by A. M. Citizen, and Draper of London. George Purslowe.

Edition in Nichols, James, iii. 107.

Chrysanaleia. 29 Oct. 1616

S. R. 1616, Oct. 29. ‘A booke called the golden Fishing of the showes of Sir John Leman Lord Maiour.’ George Purslowe (Arber iii. 597).

1616. Chrysanaleia: The Golden Fishing: Or, Honour of Fishmongers. Applauding the aduancement of Mr. Iohn Leman, Alderman, to the dignitie of Lord Maior of London. Taking his Oath in the same authority at Westminster, on Tuesday, being the 29. day of October. 1616. Performed in hearty loue to him, and at the charges of his worthy Brethren, the ancient, and right Worshipfull Company of Fishmongers. Deuised and written by A. M. Citizen and Draper of London. George Purslowe.

Editions in Nichols, iii. 195, and by J. G. Nichols (1844, 1869) with reproductions of drawings for the pageant in the possession of the Fishmongers.

Doubtful Entertainment

The Campbell mayoral pageant of 1609 (q.v.) has been ascribed to Munday.

ROBERT NAILE (c. 1613).

Probable describer of the Bristol entertainment of Queen Anne in 1613 (cf. ch. xxiv, C).

THOMAS NASHE (1507–>1601).

Nashe was baptized at Lowestoft, Suffolk, in Nov. 1567, the son of William Nashe, minister, of a Herefordshire family. He matriculated from St. John’s, Cambridge, on 13 Oct. 1582, took his B.A. in 1586, and left the University probably in 1588. According to the Trimming (Harvey, iii. 67), he ‘had a hand in a Show called Terminus & non terminus, for which his partener in it was expelled the Colledge: but this foresaid Nashe played in it (as I suppose) the Varlet of Clubs; which he acted with such naturall affection, that all the spectators tooke him to be the verie same’. He went to London, and his first book, The Anatomie of Absurditie, was entered in S. R. on 19 Sept. 1588. In actual publication it was anticipated by an epistle ‘To the Gentlemen Students of Both Universities’, which he prefixed to the Menaphon (1589) of Robert Greene (cf. App. C, No. xlii). This contains some pungent criticism of actors, with incidental depreciation of certain illiterate dramatists, among whom is apparently included Kyd, coupled with praise of Peele, and of other ‘sweete gentlemen’, who have ‘tricked vp a company of taffata fooles with their feathers’. Evidently Nashe had joined the London circle of University wits, and henceforth lived, partly by his pen, as dramatist and pamphleteer, and partly by services rendered to various patrons, amongst whom were Lord Strange, Sir George Carey, afterwards Lord Hunsdon, and Archbishop Whitgift. His connexion with this last was either the cause or the result of his employment, with other literary men, notably Lyly, in opposition to the anti-episcopalian tracts of Martin Marprelate and his fellows. His precise share in the controversy is uncertain. He has been credited with An Almond for a Parrot, with a series of writings under the name of Pasquil, and with other contributions, but in all cases the careful analysis of McKerrow, v. 49, finds the evidence quite inconclusive.

McKerrow, too, has given the best account (v. 65) of Nashe’s quarrel with Gabriel and Richard Harvey. This arose out of his association as an anti-Martinist with Lyly, between whom and Gabriel there was an ancient feud. It was carried on, in a vein of scurrilous personal raillery on both sides, from 1590 until it was suppressed as a public scandal in 1599. One of the charges against Nashe was his friendship with, and in the Harveian view aping of, Robert Greene, with whom, according to Gabriel’s Four Letters (Works, i. 170), Nashe took part in the fatal banquet of pickled herrings and Rhenish which brought him to his end. Nashe repudiated the charge of imitation, and spoke of Greene in Have With You to Saffron Walden (iii. 132), as ‘subscribing to mee in anything but plotting Plaies, wherein he was his crafts master’. Unless Dido is early work, no play written by Nashe before Greene’s death on 3 Sept. 1592 is known to us. But he is pretty clearly the ‘young Iuuenall, that byting Satyrist, that lastly with mee together writ a Comedie’ of Greene’s posthumous Groats-worth (cf. App. C, No. xlviii), and the tone of his own Defence of Plays in Pierce Penilesse of 1592 (cf. App. C, No. xlvi) as compared with that of the Menaphon epistle suggests that he had made his peace with the ‘taffata fooles’. His one extant unaided play belongs to the autumn of 1592, and was apparently for a private performance at Croydon. Internal evidence enables us to date in Aug.–Oct. 1596, and to ascribe to Nashe, in spite of the fact that his name at the foot is in a nineteenth-century writing, a letter to William Cotton (McKerrow, v. 192, from Cott. MS. Julius C. iii, f. 280) which shows that he was still writing for the stage and gives valuable evidence upon the theatrical crisis of that year (App. D, No. cv). To 1597 belongs the misadventure of The Isle of Dogs, which sent Nashe in flight to Great Yarmouth, and probably ended his dramatic career. He is mentioned as dead in C. Fitzgeffrey, Affaniae (1601).

Collections

1883–5. A. B. Grosart, The Complete Works of T. N. 6 vols. (Huth Library).

1904–10. R. B. McKerrow, The Works of T. N. 5 vols.

PLAYS

Summer’s Last Will and Testament. 1592

S. R. 1600, Oct. 28 (Harsnett). ‘A booke called Sommers last Will and testament presented by William Sommers.’ Burby and Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 175).

1600. A Pleasant Comedie, called Summers last will and Testament. Written by Thomas Nash. Simon Stafford for Walter Burre. [Induction, with Prologue and Epilogue.]

Edition in Dodsley^3–4 (1825–74).—Dissertations: B. Nicholson, The Date of S. L. W. and T. (Athenaeum, 10 Jan. 1891); F. G. Fleay Queen Elizabeth, Croydon and the Drama (1898).

The play was intended for performance on the ‘tyle-stones’ and in the presence of a ‘Lord’, to whom there are several other references, in one of which he is ‘your Grace’ (ll. 17, 205, 208, 587, 795, 1897, 1925). There are also local references to ‘betweene this and Stretham’ (l. 202), to ‘Dubbers hill’ near Croydon (l. 621), to Croydon itself (ll. 1830, 1873), and to ‘forlorne’ Lambeth (l. 1879). The conclusion seems justified that ‘this lowe built house’ (l. 1884) was the palace of Archbishop Whitgift at Croydon.

There was a plague ‘in this latter end of summer’ (l. 80); which had been ‘brought in’ by the dog-days (l. 656), and had led to ‘want of terme’ and consequent ‘Cities harm’ in London (l. 1881). Summer accuses Sol of spiting Thames with a ‘naked channell’ (l. 545) and Sol lays it on the moon (l. 562):

Two passages refer to the Queen as on progress. Summer says (l. 125):

And again, at the end of the play (l. 1841):

The plague and absence of term from London might fit either 1592 or 1593 (cf. App. E), but I agree with McKerrow, iv. 418, that the earlier year is indicated. In 1593 the plague did not begin in the dog-days, nor did Elizabeth go on progress. And it is on 6 Sept. 1592 that Stowe (1615), 764, records the emptying of Thames. I may add a small confirmatory point. Are not ‘the horses lately sworne to be stolne’ (l. 250) those stolen by Germans in the train of Count Mompelgard between Reading and Windsor and referred to in Merry Wives, IV. v. 78. The Count came to Windsor on 19 Aug. 1592 (Rye, xcix). Now I part company with Mr. McKerrow, who thinks that, although the play was written in 1592, it may have been revised for performance before Elizabeth in a later year, perhaps at her visit to Whitgift on 14 Aug. 1600. His reasons are three: (a) Sol’s reference to the Thames seems to date it in a year earlier than that in which he speaks; (b) the seasonal references suggest August, while Stowe’s date necessitates September at earliest, and the want of term points to October; (c) the references to Elizabeth imply her presence. I think there is something in (a), but not much, if the distinction between actual and dramatic time is kept in mind. As to (b), the tone of the references is surely to a summer prolonged beyond its natural expiration for Eliza’s benefit, well into autumn, and in such a year the fruits of autumn, which in this country are chiefly apples, will be on the trees until October. As to (c), I cannot find any evidence of the Queen’s presence at all. Surely she is on progress elsewhere, and due to ‘return’ in the future. I may add that Elizabeth was at Croydon in the spring of 1593, and that it would, therefore, have been odd to defer a revival for her benefit until another seven years had elapsed. The 1592 progress came to an end upon 9 Oct. and I should put the performance not long before. When Q₁ of Pierce Penilesse (S. R. 8 Aug. 1592) was issued, Nashe was kept by fear of infection ‘with my Lord in the Countrey’, and the misinterpretations of the pamphlet which he deprecates in the epistle to Q₂ (McKerrow, i. 154) are hinted at in a very similar protest (l. 65) in the play.

The prologue is spoken by ‘the greate foole Toy’ (ll. 10, 1945), who would borrow a chain and fiddle from ‘my cousin Ned’ (l. 7), also called ‘Ned foole’ (l. 783). The epilogue is spoken (l. 1194) and the songs sung (ll. 117, 1871) by boys. Will Summer (l. 792) gives good advice to certain ‘deminitiue urchins’, who wait ‘on my Lords trencher’; but he might be speaking either to actors or to boys in the audience. The morris (l. 201) dances ‘for the credit of Wostershire’, where Whitgift had been bishop. The prompter was Dick Huntley (l. 14), and Vertumnus was acted by Harry Baker (l. 1567). There is a good deal of Latin in the text. On the whole, I think that the play was given by members of Whitgift’s household, which his biographer describes as ‘a little academy’. The prologue (l. 33) has ‘So fares it with vs nouices, that here betray our imperfections: we, afraid to looke on the imaginary serpent of Enuy, paynted in mens affections, haue ceased to tune any musike of mirth to your eares this twelue-month, thinking that, as it is the nature of the serpent to hisse, so childhood and ignorance would play the goslings, contemning and condemning what they vnderstood not’. This agrees curiously in date with the termination of the Paul’s plays. Whitgift might have entertained the Paul’s boys during the plague and strengthened them for a performance with members of his own household. But would they call themselves ‘nouices’?

Dido, Queen of Carthage > 1593

With Marlowe (q.v.).

Lost Plays

Terminus et non Terminus. 1586 < > 8

Vide supra. McKerrow, v. 10, thinks that the name of Nashe’s alleged part may be a jest, and points out that the identification by Fleay, ii. 124, of the play, of which nothing more is known, with the ‘London Comedie’ of the Cards referred to in Harington’s Apology (cf. App. C, No. xlv) is improbable.

The Isle of Dogs. 1597

Meres, Palladis Tamia (S. R. 7 Sept. 1598), writes:

‘As Actaeon was wooried of his owne hounds: so is Tom Nash of his Isle of Dogs. Dogges were the death of Euripedes, but bee not disconsolate gallant young Iuuenall, Linus, the sonne of Apollo died the same death. Yet God forbid that so braue a witte should so basely perish, thine are but paper dogges, neither is thy banishment like Ouids, eternally to conuerse with the barbarous Getes. Therefore comfort thy selfe sweete Tom, with Ciceros glorious return to Rome, & with the counsel Aeneas giues to his seabeaten soldiors.’

We learn something more from Nashes Lenten Stuffe (S. R. 11 Jan. 1599), where he tells us that he is sequestered from the wonted means of his maintenance and exposed to attacks on his fame, through ‘the straunge turning of the Ile of Dogs from a commedie to a tragedie two summers past, with the troublesome stir which hapned aboute it’, and goes on to explain the ‘infortunate imperfit Embrion of my idle houres, the Ile of Dogs before mentioned ... was no sooner borne but I was glad to run from it’; which is what brought him to Yarmouth. In a marginal note he adds ‘An imperfit Embrion I may well call it, for I hauing begun but the induction and first act of it, the other foure acts without my consent, or the least guesse of my drift or scope, by the players were supplied, which bred both their trouble and mine to’ (McKerrow, iii. 153). Of this there is perhaps some confirmation in the list of writings on the cover of the Northumberland MS. which records the item, not now extant in the MS., ‘Ile of doges frmn^t by Thomas Nashe inferior plaiers’. This MS. contains work by Bacon (q.v.), and if the entry is not itself based on Lenten Stuffe, it may indicate that Bacon was professionally concerned in the proceedings to which the play gave rise. McKerrow, v. 31, points out that the evidence is against the suggestion in the Trimming of Thomas Nashe (S. R. 11 Oct. 1597) that Nashe suffered imprisonment for the play. The Privy Council letter of 15 Aug. 1597 (cf. App. D, No. cxi) was no doubt intended to direct his apprehension, but, as I pointed out in M. L. R. iv. 410, 511, the actor and maker of plays referred to therein as actually in prison must have been Ben Jonson, who was released by the Council on 3 Oct. 1597 (cf. App. D, No. cxii). The connexion of Jonson (q.v.) with the Isle of Dogs is noted in Satiromastix. With him the Council released Gabriel Spencer and Robert Shaw, and the inference is that the peccant company was Pembroke’s (q.v.) at the Swan on Bankside. The belief that it was the Admiral’s at the Rose only rests on certain forged interpolations by Collier in Henslowe’s diary. These are set out by Greg (Henslowe, i. xl). The only genuine mention of the affair in the diary is the provision noted in the memorandum of Borne’s agreement of 10 Aug. 1597 that his service is to begin ‘imediatly after this restraynt is recaled by the lordes of the counsell which restraynt is by the meanes of playinge the Ieylle of Dooges’ (Henslowe, i. 203). The restraint was ordered by the Privy Council on 28 July 1597 (App. D, No. cx), presumably soon after the offence, the nature of which is only vaguely described as the handling of ‘lewd matters’. Perhaps it is possible, at any rate in conjecture, to be more specific. By dogs we may take it that Nashe meant men. The idea was not new to him. In Summer’s Last Will and Testament he makes Orion draw an elaborate parallel between dogs and men, at the end of which Will Summer says that he had not thought ‘the ship of fooles would haue stayde to take in fresh water at the Ile of dogges’ (l. 779). But there is nothing offensive to authority here. Nashe returns to the question of his indiscretion in more than one passage of Lenten Stuffe, and in particular has a diatribe (McKerrow, iii. 213) against lawyers who try to fish ‘a deepe politique state meaning’ out of what contains no such thing. ‘Talke I of a beare, O, it is such a man that emblazons him in his armes, or of a woolfe, a fox, or a camelion, any lording whom they do not affect it is meant by.’ Apparently Nashe was accused of satirizing some nobleman. But this was not the only point of attack. ‘Out steps me an infant squib of the Innes of Court ... and he, to approue hymselfe an extrauagant statesman, catcheth hold of a rush, and absolutely concludeth, it is meant of the Emperor of Ruscia, and that it will vtterly marre the traffike into that country if all the Pamphlets bee not called in and suppressed, wherein that libelling word is mentioned.’ I do not suppose that Nashe had literally called the Emperor of Russia a rush in The Isle of Dogs, but it is quite possible that he, or Ben Jonson, had called the King of Poland a pole. On 23 July 1597, just five days before the trouble, a Polish ambassador had made representations in an audience with Elizabeth, apparently about the question, vexed in the sixteenth as in the twentieth century, of contraband in neutral vessels, and she, scouring up her rusty old Latin for the purpose, had answered him in very round terms. The matter, to which there are several allusions in the Cecilian correspondence (Wright, Eliz. ii. 478, 481, 485), gave some trouble, and any mention of it on the public stage might well have been resented. A letter of Robert Beale in 1592 (McKerrow, v. 142) shows that the criticisms of Nashe’s Pierce Penilesse had similarly been due to his attack upon the Danes, with which country the diplomatic issues were much the same as with Poland. In Hatfield MSS. vii. 343 is a letter of 10 Aug. 1597 to Robert Cecil from Richard (misdescribed in the Calendar as Robert) Topcliffe, recommending an unnamed bearer as ‘the first man that discovered to me that seditious play called The Isle of Dogs’.

Doubtful Play

Nashe has been suggested as a contributor to A Knack to Know a Knave (cf. ch. xxiv).

THOMAS NELSON.

The pageant-writer is probably identical with the stationer of the same name, who is traceable in London during 1580–92 (McKerrow, 198).

Allot Pageant. 29 Oct. 1590

1590. The Deuice of the Pageant: Set forth by the Worshipfull Companie of the Fishmongers, for the right honourable Iohn Allot: established Lord Maior of London, and Maior of the Staple for this present Yeere of our Lord 1590. By T. Nelson. No imprint.

Speeches by the riders on the Merman and the Unicorn, and by Fame, the Peace of England, Wisdom, Policy, God’s Truth, Plenty, Loyalty and Concord, Ambition, Commonwealth, Science and Labour, Richard the Second, Jack Straw, and Commonwealth again, representing Sir William Walworth, who was evidently the chief subject of the pageant.

Edition by W. C. Hazlitt (1886, Antiquary, xiii. 54).—Dissertation: R. Withington, The Lord Mayor’s Show for 1590 (1918, M.L.N. xxxiii. 8).

ALEXANDER NEVILLE (1544–1614).

Translator of Seneca (q.v.).

THOMAS NEWTON (c. 1542–1607).

Translator of Seneca (q.v.).

RICHARD NICCOLS (1584–1616?).

This writer of various poetical works and reviser in 1610 of The Mirror for Magistrates may have been the writer intended by the S. R. entry to Edward Blount on 15 Feb. 1612 of ‘A tragedye called, The Twynnes tragedye, written by Niccolls’ (Arber, iii. 478). No copy is known, and it is arbitrary of Fleay, ii. 170, to ‘suspect’ a revival of it in William Rider’s The Twins (1655), which had been played at Salisbury Court.

HENRY NOEL (ob. 1597).

A younger son of Andrew Noel of Dalby on the Wolds, Leicestershire, whose personal gifts and extravagance enabled him to make a considerable figure as a Gentleman Pensioner at Court. He may have been a fellow author with Robert Wilmot (q.v.) of Gismond of Salerne, although he has not been definitely traced as a member of the Inner Temple, by whom the play was produced.

THOMAS NORTON (1532–84).

Norton was born in London and educated at Cambridge and the Inner Temple. In 1571 he became Remembrancer of the City of London, and also sat in Parliament for London. Apparently he is distinct from the Thomas Norton who acted from 1560 as counsel to the Stationers’ Company. He took part in theological controversy as a Calvinist, and was opposed to the public stage (cf. App. D, No. xxxi). In 1583 he escaped with some difficulty from a charge of treason. His first wife, Margaret, was daughter, and his second, Alice, niece of Cranmer.

Ferrex and Porrex, or Gorboduc. 28 Jan. 1562

S. R. 1565–6. ‘A Tragdie of Gorboduc where iij actes were Wretten by Thomas Norton and the laste by Thomas Sackvyle, &c.’ William Greffeth (Arber, i. 296).

1565, Sept. 22. The Tragedie of Gorboduc, Where of three Actes were wrytten by Thomas Nortone, and the two laste by Thomas Sackuyle. Sett forthe as the same was shewed before the Quenes most excellent Maiestie, in her highnes Court of Whitehall, the .xviij. day of Ianuary, Anno Domini .1561. By the Gentlemen of Thynner Temple in London. William Griffith. [Argument; Dumb-Shows.]

N.D. [c. 1571] The Tragidie of Ferrex and Porrex, set forth without addition or alteration but altogether as the same was shewed on stage before the Queenes Maiestie, about nine yeares past, viz., the xviij day of Ianuarie 1561, by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple. Seen and allowed, &c. John Day. [Epistle by ‘The P. to the Reader’.]

1590. Edward Allde for John Perrin. [Part of The Serpent of Division.]

Editions in Dodsley^1–3 (1744–1825), and by Hawkins (1773, O. E. D. ii), W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. i), W. D. Cooper (1847, Sh. Soc.), R. W. Sackville-West, Works of Sackville (1859), L. T. Smith (1883), J. M. Manly (1897, Spec. ii. 211), J. S. Farmer (1908, T. F. T.), J. W. Cunliffe and H. A. Watt (1912, E. E. C. T.).—Dissertations: E. Köppel (E. S. xvi. 357); Koch, F. und P. (1881, Halle diss.); H. A. Watt, G.; or F. and P. (1910, Wisconsin Univ. Bulletin, 351).

Day’s epistle says that the play was ‘furniture of part of the grand Christmasse in the Inner Temple first written about nine yeares agoe by the right honourable Thomas now Lorde Buckherst, and by T. Norton, and after shewed before her Maiestie, and neuer intended by the authors therof to be published’. But one W. G. printed it in their absence, ‘getting a copie therof at some yongmans hand that lacked a litle money and much discretion’. Machyn, 275, records on 18 Jan. 1561 ‘a play in the quen hall at Westmynster by the gentyll-men of the Tempull, and after a grett maske, for ther was a grett skaffold in the hall, with grett tryhumpe as has bene sene; and the morow after the skaffold was taken done’. Fleay, ii. 174, doubts Norton’s participation—Heaven knows why.

Malone (Var. iii. 32) cites the unreliable Chetwood for a performance of Gorboduc at Dublin Castle in 1601.

For the Inner Temple Christmas of 1561, at which Robert Dudley was constable-marshal and Christopher Hatton master of the game, cf. Mediaeval Stage, i. 415. It was presumably at the mask of 18 Jan. that Hatton danced his way into Elizabeth’s heart.

THOMAS NUCE (ob. 1617).

Translator of Seneca (q.v.).

OWEN AP JOHN (c. 1600).

A late sixteenth-century MS. (Peniarth MS. 65 = Hengwrt MS. 358) of The Oration of Gwgan and Poetry is calendared as his in Welsh MSS. (Hist. MSS. Comm.), i. 2. 454, and said to be ‘in the form of interludes’. He may be merely the scribe.

PHILIP PARSONS (1594–1653).

Fellow of St. John’s, Oxford, and later Principal of Hart Hall (D. N. B.), and author of the academic Atalanta (cf. App. K).

MERCURIUS (?) PATEN (c. 1575).

Gascoigne names a ‘M. [Mr.] Paten’ as a contributor to the Kenilworth entertainment (cf. ch. xxiv, C.). He might be the Patten described in D. N. B. as rector of Stoke Newington (but not traceable in Hennessy) and author of an anonymous Calendars of Scripture (1575). But I think he is more likely to have been Mercurius, son of William Patten, teller of the exchequer and lord of the manor of Stoke Newington, who matriculated at Trinity, Cambridge, in 1567 and was Blue Mantle pursuivant in 1603 (Hist. of Stoke Newington in Bibl. Top. Brit. ii; Admissions to T. C. C. ii. 70).

GEORGE PEELE (c. 1557–96).

As the son of James Peele, clerk of Christ’s Hospital and himself a maker of pageants (vol. i, p. 136; Mediaeval Stage, ii. 166), George entered the grammar school in 1565, proceeded thence to Broadgates Hall, Oxford, in 1571, and became a student of Christ Church in 1574, taking his B.A. in 1577 and his M.A. in 1579. In Sept. 1579 the court of Christ’s Hospital required James Peele ‘to discharge His howse of his sonne George Peele and all other his howsold which have bene chargable to him’. This perhaps explains why George prolonged his residence at Oxford until 1581. In that year he came to London, and about the same time married. His wife’s business affairs brought him back to Oxford in 1583 and in a deposition of 29 March he describes himself as aged 25. During this visit he superintended the performance before Alasco at Christ Church on 11 and 12 June of the Rivales and Dido of William Gager, who bears testimony to Peele’s reputation as wit and poet in two sets of Latin verses In Iphigeniam Georgii Peeli Anglicanis versibus redditam (Boas, 166,180). Presumably the rest of his life was spent in London, and its wit and accompanying riot find some record in The Merry Conceited Jests of George Peele (S. R. 14 Dec. 1605: text in Bullen and in Hazlitt, Jest Books, ii. 261, and Hindley, i), although this is much contaminated with traditional matter from earlier jest books. It provided material for the anonymous play of The Puritan (1607), in which Peele appeared as George Pyeboard. His fame as a dramatist is thus acknowledged in Nashe’s epistle to Greene’s Menaphon (1589):

‘For the last, though not the least of them all, I dare commend him to all that know him, as the chief supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of poetry, and primus verborum artifex; whose first increase, the Arraignment of Paris, might plead to your opinions his pregnant dexterity of wit and manifold variety of invention, wherein (me iudice) he goeth a step beyond all that write.’

Some have thought that Peele is the

of Spenser’s Colin Clout’s Come Home Again (1591). It seems difficult to accept the suggestions of Sarrazin that he was the original both of Falstaff and of Yorick. An allusion in a letter to Edward Alleyn (cf. ch. xv) has unjustifiably been interpreted as implying that Peele was actor as well as playwright, and Collier accordingly included his name in a forged list of housekeepers at an imaginary Blackfriars theatre of 1589 (cf. vol. ii, p. 108). He was, however, clearly one of the three of his ‘quondam acquaintance’ to whom Greene (q.v.) addressed the attack upon players in his Groats-worth of Wit (1592). In 1596 Peele after ‘long sickness’ sent a begging letter by his daughter to Lord Burghley, with a copy of his Tale of Troy. He was buried as a ‘householder’ at St. James’s, Clerkenwell, on 9 Nov. 1596 (Harl. Soc. Registers, xvii. 58), having died, according to Meres’s Palladis Tamia, ‘by the pox’. He can, therefore, hardly be the Peleus of Birth of Hercules (1597 <).

Collections

1828–39. A. Dyce. 3 vols.

1861, 1879. A. Dyce. 1 vol. [With Greene.]

1888. A. H. Bullen. 2 vols.

Dissertations: R. Lämmerhirt, G. P. Untersuchungen über sein Leben und seine Werke (1882); L. Kellner, Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamides (1889, E. S. xiii. 187); E. Penner, Metrische Untersuchungen zu P. (1890, Archiv, lxxxv. 269); A. R. Bayley, P. as a Dramatic Artist (Oxford Point of View, 15 Feb. 1903); G. C. Odell, P. as a Dramatist (1903, Bibliographer, ii); E. Landsberg, Der Stil in P.’s sicheren und zweifelhaften dramatischen Werken (1910, Breslau diss.); G. Sarrazin, Zur Biographie und Charakteristik von G. P. (1910, Archiv, cxxiv. 65); P. H. Cheffaud, G. P. (1913).

PLAYS

The Arraignment of Paris, c. 1584

1584. The Araygnement of Paris A Pastorall. Presented before the Queenes Maiestie, by the Children of her Chappell. Henry Marsh. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

Editions by O. Smeaton (1905, T. D.) and H. H. Child (1910, M. S. R.).—Dissertation: F. E. Schelling, The Source of P.’s A. of P. (1893, M. L. N. viii. 206).

Fleay, ii. 152, assigns the play to 1581 on the assumption that the Chapel stopped playing in 1582. But they went on to 1584. Nashe’s allusion (vide supra) and the ascription of passages from the play to ‘Geo. Peele’ in England’s Helicon (1600) fix the authorship.

The Battle of Alcazar, c. 1589

[MS.] Addl. MS. 10449, ‘The Plott of the Battell of Alcazar’. [Probably from Dulwich. The fragmentary text is given by Greg, Henslowe Papers, 138, and a facsimile by Halliwell, The Theatre Plats of Three Old English Dramas (1860).]

1594. The Battell of Alcazar, fought in Barbarie, betweene Sebastian king of Portugall, and Abdelmelec king of Marocco. With the death of Captaine Stukeley. As it was sundrie times plaid by the Lord high Admirall his seruants. Edward Allde for Richard Bankworth. [Prologue by ‘the Presenter’ and dumb-shows.]

Edition by W. W. Greg (1907, M. S. R.).

Interest in Sebastian was aroused in 1589 by the expedition of Norris and Drake to set Don Antonio on the throne of Portugal. This started on 18 April, and Peele wrote A Farewell, in which is a reference to this amongst other plays (l. 20, ed. Bullen, ii. 238):

There are some possible but not very clear allusions to the Armada in the play. From 21 Feb. 1592 to 20 Jan. 1593 Strange’s men played fourteen times for Henslowe Muly Mollocco, by which this play, in which Abdelmelec is also called Muly Mollocco, is probably meant (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 149). The ‘plot’ must belong to a later revival by the Admiral’s, datable, since both Alleyn and Shaw acted in it, either in Dec. 1597 or in 1600–2 (cf. ch. xiii).

The authorship has been assigned to Peele, both on stylistic evidence and because ll. 467–72 appear over his name in R. A.’s England’s Parnassus (1600), but R. A. has an error in at least one of his ascriptions to Peele, and he ascribes l. 49 of this play to Dekker (Crawford, E. P. xxxv. 398, 474; M. S. C. i. 101).

Edward I > 1593

S. R. 1593, Oct. 8. ‘An enterlude entituled the Chronicle of Kinge Edward the firste surnamed Longeshank with his Retourne out of the Holye Lande, with the lyfe of Leublen Rebell in Wales with the sinkinge of Quene Elinour.’ Abel Jeffes (Arber, ii. 637).

1593. The Famous Chronicle of king Edwarde the first, sirnamed Edwarde Longshankes, with his returne from the holy land. Also the life of Lleuellen, rebell in Wales. Lastly, the sinking of Queene Elinor, who sunck at Charingcrosse, and rose againe at Potters-hith now named Queenehith. Abel Jeffes, sold by William Barley. [At end, ‘Yours. By George Peele, Maister of Artes in Oxenford’.]

1599. W. White.

Edition by W. W. Greg (1911, M. S. R.).—Dissertations: W. Thieme, P.’s Ed. I und seine Quellen (1903, Halle diss.); E. Kronenberg, G. P.’s Ed. I (1903, Jena diss.).

Fleay, ii. 157, makes the date 1590–1, on the ground that lines are quoted from Polyhymnia (1590). A theory that Shakespeare acted in the play is founded on ll. 759–62, where after Baliol’s coronation Elinor says:

This is not very convincing.

A play called Longshank, Longshanks, and Prince Longshank was played fourteen times by the Admiral’s, from 29 Aug. 1595 to 14 July 1596. It is marked ‘ne’, and unless there had been substantial revision, can hardly be Peele’s play. ‘Longe-shanckes sewte’ is in the Admiral’s inventory of 10 March 1598. On 8 Aug. 1602 Alleyn sold the book of the play to the Admiral’s with another for £4. (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 176; Henslowe Papers, 113.)

David and Bethsabe > 1594

S. R. 1594, May 14. ‘A booke called the book of David and Bethsaba.’ Adam Islip (Arber, ii. 649). [Islip’s name is cancelled and Edward White’s substituted.]

1599. The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe. With the Tragedie of Absalon. As it hath ben divers times plaied on the stage. Written by George Peele. Adam Islip. [Prologue.]

Editions by T. Hawkins (1773, O. E. D. ii), J. M. Manly (1897, Specimens, ii. 419), and W. W. Greg (1912, M. S. R.).—Dissertations: B. Neitzel (1904, Halle diss.); M. Dannenberg, Die Verwendung des biblischen Stoffes von David und Bathseba im englischen Drama (1905, Königsberg diss.).

Fleay, ii. 153, dates the play c. 1588 on the ground of some not very plausible political allusions. The text as it stands looks like a boildown of a piece, perhaps of a neo-miracle type, written in three ‘discourses’. It had choruses, of which two only are preserved. One is ll. 572–95 (at end of sc. iv of M. S. R. ed.). The other (ll. 1646–58; M. S. R. sc. xv) headed ‘Chorus 5’, contains the statement:

and is followed by a misplaced fragment of a speech by Absalon.

In Oct. 1602 Henslowe (ii. 232) laid out money for Worcester’s on poles and workmanship ‘for to hange Absolome’; but we need not assume a revival of Peele’s play.

The Old Wive’s Tale. 1591 < > 4

S. R. 1595, Apr. 16. ‘A booke or interlude intituled a pleasant Conceipte called the owlde wifes tale.’ Ralph Hancock (Arber, ii. 296).

1595. The Old Wiues Tale. A pleasant conceited Comedie, played by the Queenes Maiesties players. Written by G. P. John Danter, sold by Ralph Hancock and John Hardie.

Editions by F. B. Gummere (1903, R. E. C.), W. W. Greg (1908, M. S. R.), W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.), F. R. Cady (1916).—Dissertation: H. Dutz, Der Dank des Tödten in der englischen Literatur (1894).

The Queen’s men had presumably produced the play by 1594, when they left London. Peele borrowed some lines and the name Sacrapant from Greene’s Orlando Furioso (1591). The hexameters of Huanebango are a burlesque of Gabriel Harvey.

Lost Plays

Iphigenia. c. 1579

A translation of one of the two plays of Euripides, probably written at Oxford, is only known by some laudatory verses of William Gager, In Iphigeniam Georgii Peeli Anglicanis versibus redditam, printed by Bullen, i. xvii.

Hunting of Cupid > 1591

S. R. 1591, July 26 (Bp. of London). ‘A booke intituled the Huntinge of Cupid wrytten by George Peele, Master of Artes of Oxeford. Provyded alwayes that yf yt be hurtfull to any other Copye before lycenced, then this to be voyde.’ Richard Jones (Arber, ii. 591).

Probably the play—I suppose it was a play—was printed, as Drummond of Hawthornden includes jottings from ‘The Huntinge of Cupid by George Peele of Oxford. Pastoral’ amongst others from ‘Bookes red anno 1609 be me’, and thereby enables us to identify extracts assigned to Peele in England’s Parnassus (1600) and England’s Helicon (1600) as from the same source. The fragments are all carefully collected by W. W. Greg in M. S. C. i. 307.

The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek > 1594

The Merry Conceited Jests (Bullen, ii. 394) gives this as the title of a ‘famous play’ of Peele’s. Conceivably it, rather than Greene’s Alphonsus (q.v.), may be the ‘Mahomet’s Poo’ of Peele’s Farewell of 1589 (vide supra, s.v. Battle of Alcazar). An Admiral’s inventory of 10 March 1598 includes ‘owld Mahemetes head’. The Admiral’s had played Mahomet for Henslowe from 16 Aug. 1594 to 5 Feb. 1595, and a play called The Love of a Grecian Lady or The Grecian Comedy from 5 Oct. 1594 to 10 Oct. 1595. In Aug. 1601 Henslowe bought Mahemett from Alleyn, and incurred other expenses on the play for the Admiral’s (Henslowe, ii. 167; Henslowe Papers, 116). Possibly all the three titles of 1594–5 stand for Peele’s play. Jacob Ayrer wrote a play on the siege of Constantinople and the loves of Mahomet and Irene. This may have had some relation on the one hand to Peele’s, and on the other to a play of the siege of Constantinople used by Spencer (cf. ch. xiv) in Germany during 1612–14 (Herz, 73). Pistol’s ‘Have we not Hiren here?’ (2 Hen. IV, II. iv. 173) is doubtless from the play.

The Knight of Rhodes

This also is described in the Merry Jests (cf. ch. xxiv, s.v. Soliman and Perseda).

Doubtful Plays

Peele’s hand has been sought in nearly every masterless play of his epoch: Alphonsus of Germany, Captain Thomas Stukeley, Clyomon and Clamydes, Contention of York and Lancaster, George a Greene, Henry VI, Histriomastix, Jack Straw, Troublesome Reign of King John, Knack to Know a Knave, Leire, Locrine, Mucedorus, Soliman and Perseda, Taming of A Shrew, True Tragedy of Richard III, Wily Beguiled, Wisdom of Dr. Dodipoll (cf. ch. xxiv).

ENTERTAINMENTS

Dixie Pageant. 29 Oct. 1585

1585. The Device of the Pageant borne before Woolstone Dixi Lord Maior of the Citie of London. An. 1585. October 29. Edward Allde. [At end, ‘Done by George Peele, Master of Arts in Oxford’.]

Editions in Nichols, Eliz. (1823), ii. 446, and F. W. Fairholt, Lord Mayor’s Pageants (1843, Percy Soc. xxxviii).

Polyhymnia. 17 Nov. 1590

See s.v. Lee.

Descensus Astreae. 29 Oct. 1591

1591. Descensus Astreae. The Deuice of a Pageant, borne before M. William Web, Lord Maior of the Citie of London on the day he tooke his oath; beeing the 29. of October. 1591. Wherevnto is annexed A Speech deliuered by one clad like a Sea Nymph, who presented a Pinesse on the water brauely rigd and mand, to the Lord Maior, at the time he tooke Barge to go to Westminster. Done by G. Peele Maister of Arts in Oxford. For William Wright.

Edition in F. W. Fairholt, Lord Mayor’s Pageants (1843, Percy Soc. xxxviii).

Anglorum Feriae. 1595

[MS.] Brit. Mus. Addl. MS. 21432 (autograph). ‘Anglorum Feriae, Englandes Hollydayes, celebrated the 17th of Novemb. last, 1595, beginninge happyly the 38 yeare of the raigne of our soveraigne ladie Queene Elizabeth. By George Peele M^r of Arte in Oxforde.’

S. R. 1595, Nov. 18. ‘A newe Ballad of the honorable order of the Runnynge at Tilt at Whitehall the 17. of November in the 38 yere of her maiesties Reign.’ John Danter (Arber, iii. 53). [This is not necessarily Peele’s poem.]

Edition by R. Fitch (n.d. c. 1830).

This is a blank-verse description of tilting, like Polyhymnia; on the occasion, cf. s.v. Bacon.

Lost Entertainment. 1588

S. R. 1588, Oct. 28. ‘Entred for his copie vppon Condicon that it maye be lycenced, ye device of the Pageant borne before the Righte honorable Martyn Calthrop lorde maiour of the Cytie of London the 29th daie of October 1588 George Peele the Authour.’ Richard Jones (Arber, ii. 504).

In the Merry Conceited Jests it is said that Peele had ‘all the oversight of the pageants’ (Bullen, ii. 381).

Doubtful Entertainment

For the ascription to Peele of a Theobalds entertainment in 1591, see s.v. Cecil.

JOHN PENRUDDOCK (c. 1588).

The Master ‘Penroodocke’, who was one of the directors for the Misfortunes of Arthur of Thomas Hughes (q.v.) in 1588, was presumably John Penruddock, one of the readers of Gray’s Inn in 1590, and the John who was admitted to the inn in 1562 (J. Foster, Admissions to Gray’s Inn).

WILLIAM PERCY (1575–1648).

Percy was third son of Henry Percy, eighth Earl of Northumberland, and educated at Gloucester Hall, Oxford. He was a friend of Barnabe Barnes, and himself published Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia (1594). His life is obscure, but in 1638 he was living in Oxford and ‘drinking nothing but ale’ (Strafford Letters, ii. 166), and here he died in 1648.

PLAYS

[MS.] Autograph formerly in collection of the Duke of Devonshire, with t.p. ‘Comædyes and Pastoralls ... By W. P. Esq.... Exscriptum Anno Salutis 1647’. [Contains, in addition to the two plays printed in 1824, the following:

Arabia Sitiens, or A Dream of a Dry Year (1601).

The Aphrodysial, or Sea Feast (1602).

Cupid’s Sacrifice, or a Country’s Tragedy in Vacuniam (1602).

Necromantes, or The Two Supposed Heads (1602).]

[Edition] 1824. The Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants or The Bearing down the Inne. A Comædye. The Faery Pastorall, or Forrest of Elves. By W. P. Esq. (Roxburghe Club). [Preface by [Joseph] H[aslewood].]—Dissertations: C. Grabau, Zur englischen Bühne um 1600 (1902, Jahrbuch, xxxviii. 230); V. Albright, P.’s Plays as Proof of the Elizabethan Stage (1913, M. P. xi. 237); G. F. Reynolds, W. P. and his Plays (1914, M. P. xii. 241).

Percy’s authorship appears to be fixed by a correspondence between an epigram in the MS. to Charles Fitzgeffrey with one Ad Gulielmum Percium in Fitzgeoffridi Affaniae (1601), sig. D 2. 6.

The Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants is dated 1601 and The Faery Pastorall 1603. The other plays are unprinted and practically unknown, although Reynolds gives some account of The Aphrodysial. There are elaborate stage-directions, which contain several references to Paul’s, for which the plays, whether in fact acted or not, were evidently intended, as is shown by an author’s note appended to the manuscript (cf. ch. xii, s.v. Paul’s).

I feel some doubt as to the original date of these plays. It seems to me just conceivable that they were originally produced by the Paul’s boys before 1590, and revised by Percy after 1599 in hopes of a revival. Some of the s.ds. are descriptive in the past tense (cf. ch. xxii), which suggests actual production. The action of C. and C. Errant is during the time of the Armada, but the composition must be later than the death of Tarlton, as his ghost prologizes. Here the author notes, ‘Rather to be omitted if for Powles, and another Prologue for him to be brought in Place’. Faery Pastoral uses (p. 97) the date ‘1647’; it is in fairy time, but points to some revision when the MS. was written. There are alternative final scenes, with the note, ‘Be this the foresayd for Powles, For Actors see the Direction at later end of this Pastorall, which is separate by itself, Extra Olens, as they say’. Similarly in Aphrodysial a direction for beards is noted ‘Thus for Actors; for Powles without’, and another s.d. is ‘Chambers (noise supposd for Powles) For Actors’. A reference to ‘a showre of Rose-water and confits, as was acted in Christ Church in Oxford, in Dido and Aeneas’ is a reminiscence of Gager’s play of 12 June 1583, and again makes a seventeenth-century date seem odd.

PETER (?) PETT (c. 1600).

Henslowe’s diary records a payment of £6 on 17 May 1600 for the Admiral’s ‘to pay Will: Haulton [Haughton] and Mr. Pett in full payment of a play called straunge newes out of Poland’. Fleay, i. 273, says: ‘Pett is not heard of elsewhere. Should it not be Chett., i.e. Chettle? The only Pett I know of as a writer is Peter Pett, who published Time’s journey to seek his daughter Truth, in verse, 1599.’ To which Greg, Henslowe, ii. 213, replies: ‘Henslowe often has Cett for Chettle, which is even nearer, but only where he is crowded for room and he never applies to him the title of Mr.’

JOHN PHILLIP (> 1570–> 1626).

John Phillip or Phillips was a member of Queens’ College, Cambridge, and author of various ballads, tracts, and elegies, published between 1566 and 1591. I do not know whether he may be the ‘Phelypes’, who was apparently concerned with John Heywood and a play by Paul’s (q.v.) in 1559. A John Phillipps, this or another, is mentioned (1619) as a brother-in-law in the will of Samuel Daniel (Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 157).

Dissertation: W. W. Greg, J. P.—Notes for a Bibliography (1910–13, 3 Library, i. 302, 395; iv. 432).

Patient Grissell. 1558–61

S. R. 1565–6. ‘An history of meke and pacyent gresell.’ Thomas Colwell (Arber, i. 309).

1568–9. ‘The history of payciente gresell &c.’ Thomas Colwell (Arber, i. 385).

N.D. The Commodye of pacient and meeke Grissill, Whearin is declared, the good example, of her patience towardes her husband: and lykewise, the due obedience of Children, toward their Parentes. Newly. Compiled by Iohn Phillip. Eight persons maye easely play this Commody.... Thomas Colwell. [Preface; Epilogue, followed by ‘Finis, qd. Iohn Phillipp’.]

Edition by R. B. McKerrow and W. W. Greg (1909, M. S. R.).

The characters include Politic Persuasion, the ‘Vice’. Elizabeth is mentioned as Queen in the epilogue, and a reference (51) to the ‘wethercocke of Paules’ perhaps dates before its destruction in 1561.

JOHN PICKERING (c. 1567–8).

Brie records several contemporary John Pickerings, but there is nothing to connect any one of them with the play.

Horestes. 1567–8

1567. A Newe Enterlude of Vice Conteyninge, the Historye of Horestes, with the cruell reuengment of his Father’s death, vpon his one naturtll Mother. By John Pikeryng.... The names deuided for VI to playe.... William Griffith. [On the back of the t.p. is a coat of arms which appears to be a slight variant of that assigned by Papworth and Morant, Ordinary of British Armorials, 536, to the family of Marshall. Oddly enough, there was a family of this name settled at Pickering in Yorkshire, but they, according to G. W. Marshall, Miscellanea Marescalliana, i. 1; ii. 2, 139, had quite a different coat.]

Editions by J. P. Collier (1866, Illustrations of Old English Literature), A. Brandl (1898, Q. W. D.), J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.).—Dissertation: F. Brie, Horestes von J. P. (1912, E. S. xlvi. 66).

The play has a Vice, and ends with prayer for Queen Elizabeth and the Lord Mayor of ‘this noble Cytie’. Feuillerat, Eliz. 449, thinks it too crude to be the Court Orestes of 1567–8, but the coincidence of date strongly suggests that it was.

JOHN POOLE (?).

Possible author of Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany (cf. ch. xxiv).

HENRY PORTER (c. 1596–9).

Porter first appears in Henslowe’s diary as recipient of a payment of £5 on 16 Dec. 1596 and a loan of £4 on 7 March 1597, both on account of the Admiral’s. It may be assumed that he was already writing for the company, who purchased five plays, wholly or partly by him, between May 1598 and March 1599. Meres, in his Palladis Tamia of 1598, counts him as one of ‘the best for Comedy amongst vs’. He appears to have been in needy circumstances, and borrowed several small sums from the company or from Henslowe personally (Greg, Henslowe, ii. 304). On 28 Feb. 1599, when he obtained £2 on account of Two Merry Women of Abingdon, ‘he gaue me his faythfulle promysse that I shold haue alle the boockes w^ch he writte ether him sellfe or w^th any other’. On 16 April 1599, in consideration of 1s. he bound himself in £10 to pay Henslowe a debt of 25s. on the following day, but could not meet his obligation. Porter is not traceable as a dramatist after 1599. His extant play, on the title-page of which he is described as ‘Gent.’, suggests a familiarity with the neighbourhood of Oxford, and I see no a priori reason why he should not be the Henry Porter, son of a London gentleman, who matriculated from Brasenose on 19 June 1589 (Boase and Clark, ii. 2, 170), or the Henricus Porter, apparently a musician, of John Weever’s Epigrammes (1599), v. 24, or the Henry Porter of Christ Church who became B.Mus. in July 1600 (Wood, Fasti Oxon. i. 284), or the Henry Porter who was a royal sackbut on 21 June 1603 (Nagel, 36), or the Henry Porter whose son Walter became Gentleman of the Chapel Royal on 5 Jan. 1616 and has left musical works (D. N. B.). Gayley’s argument to the contrary rests on the unfounded assumption that the musician could not have been writing Bankside plays during the progress of his studies for his musical degree.

The Two Angry Women of Abingdon > 1598

1599. The Pleasant Historie of the two angrie women of Abington. With the humorous mirthe of Dicke Coomes and Nicholas Prouerbes, two Seruingmen. As it was lately playde by the right Honorable the Earle of Nottingham, Lord High Admirall, his seruants. By Henry Porter Gent. For Joseph Hunt and William Ferbrand. [Prologue. Greg shows this to be Q₁.]

1599. For William Ferbrand.

Editions in Dodsley⁴ (1874), and by G. M. Gayley (1903, R. E. C. i), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.), W. W. Greg (1912, M. S. R.).

The play shows no signs of being a sequel, and is presumably the First Part, to which Porter wrote a Second Part (vide infra) in the winter of 1598–9. It was an Admiral’s play, and therefore one would expect to find it in Henslowe’s very full, if not absolutely exhaustive, chronicle of the company’s repertory. Of the plays named as his by Henslowe, Love Prevented seems the only likely title. But he was in the pay of the company before the diary began to record the authorship of plays, and Part i may therefore be among the anonymous plays of 1596–7 or an earlier season. Gayley suggests The Comedy of Humours, produced 11 May 1597, but that is more plausibly identified with Chapman’s Humorous Day’s Mirth (q.v.). Another possibility is Woman Hard to Please, produced 27 Jan. 1597.

Lost Plays

Henslowe’s diary records the following plays for the Admiral’s men, in which Porter had a hand in 1598 and 1599:

(i) Love Prevented.

May 1598. Vide Two Angry Women of Abingdon, supra.

(ii) Hot Anger Soon Cold.

With Chettle and Jonson, Aug. 1598.

(iii) 2 Two Angry Women of Abingdon.

Dec. 1598–Feb. 1599.

(iv) Two Merry Women of Abingdon.

Feb. 1599.

(v) The Spencers.

With Chettle, March 1599.

THOMAS POUND (1538?-1616?).

Pound was of Beaumonds in Farlington, Hants, the son of William Pound and Anne Wriothesley, daughter of Thomas, first Earl of Southampton. William Pound had a brother Anthony, whose daughter Honora married Henry, fourth Earl of Sussex (V. H. Hants, iii. 149; Harl. Soc. lxiv. 138; Berry, Hants Genealogies, 194; Recusant Rolls in Catholic Record Soc. xviii. 278, 279, 330, 334). Thomas was in youth a Winchester boy, a Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, and a courtier of repute. About 1570 he left the world and became a fervent Catholic, and the record of his recusancy, of his relations with the Jesuit order, which he probably joined, of the help he gave to Edmund Campion, and of his long life of imprisonment and domiciliary restraint is written in H. Morus, Historia Missionis Anglicanae Societatis Jesu (1660); D. Bartoli, Dell’ Istoria della Compagnia di Gesu: L’Inghilterra (1667); N. Sanders and E. Rishton, De Origine Schismatis Anglicani (1586); M. Tanner, Societas Jesu Apostolorum Imitatrix (1694); R. Simpson in 2 Rambler (1857), viii. 29, 94; H. Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus, iii (1878), 567; J. H. Pollen, English Catholics in the Reign of Elizabeth (1920), 333 sqq. I am only concerned with his worldly life and his quitting of it. As a Winchester alumnus, he is said to have delivered a Latin speech of welcome to Elizabeth (Bartoli, 51), presumably at her visit of 1560 (App. A), but he can hardly still have been a schoolboy; perhaps he was at New College. He had already been entered at Lincoln’s Inn on 16 Feb. 1560 (Adm. Reg. i. 66), and it was on behalf of Lincoln’s Inn that he wrote and pronounced two mask orations which are preserved in Bodl. Rawl. Poet. MS. 108, ff. 24, 29, whence they are described in E. Brydges, British Bibliographer, ii. 612. Both seem to have been before Elizabeth (cf. vol. i, p. 162, and App. A). The first, at the wedding of his cousin Henry, Earl of Southampton, in Feb. 1566, is headed in the manuscript ‘The copye of an oration made and pronounced by Mr. Pownde of Lyncolnes Inne, with a brave maske out of the same howse, all one greatte horses att the mariage off the yonge erle of South hampton to the Lord Mountagues dawghter abowt Shrouetyde 1565’. The second, at the wedding on 1 July 1566 of another cousin, Frances Radcliffe, is similarly headed ‘The copye of an oration made and pronounced by Mr. Pownd of Lincolnes Inne, with a maske att y^e marriage of y^e Earl of Sussex syster to Mr. Myldmaye off Lyncolnes Inne 1566’. From this, which is in rhyming quatrains, Brydges quotes 119 lines; they are of no merit. In 1580 Pound wrote from his prison at Bishop’s Stortford to Sir Christopher Hatton (S. P. D. Eliz. cxlii. 20) commending a petition to the Queen, ‘for her poeticall presents sake, which her Majesty disdayned not to take at poore Mercuries hands, if you remember it, at Killiegeworth Castle’. The reference must be to the Kenilworth visit of 1568, rather than 1573 or 1575, for soon after Thomas Pound’s days of courtly masking came to an abrupt end. The story is told in Morus, 46:

‘Natales Christi dies, ut semper solemnes, ita anno sexagesimo quarto fuere celeberrimi; dabantur in Curia ludi apparatissimi Thoma Pondo instructore. Inter saltandum, nudam eius manum manu nuda prensat Regina, tum ei caput, abrepto Leicestrie Comitis pileo, ipsa tegit, ne ex vehementi motu accensus subito refrigeraretur. Imposita ei videbatur laurea: cum (secundo eandem saltationis formam flagitante Regina) celerrime de more uno in pede circumuolitans, pronus concidit; Plausu in risum mutato, surge, inquit Regina, Domine Taure; ea voce commotus, surrexit quidem; at flexo ad terram poplite, vulgatum illud latine prolocutus, sic transit gloria mundi, proripuit se, et non longo interuallo Aulam spesque fallaces deseruit, consumptarum facultatum et violatae Religionis praemium ludibrium consecutus.’

There is a little difficulty as to the date. Morus puts it in 1564, but goes on to add that Pound was in his thirtieth year, and he was certainly born in 1538 or 1539. And Bartoli, 51, followed by Tanner, 480, gives 1569, citing, probably from Jesuit archives, a letter written by Pound himself on 3 June 1609. No doubt 1569, which may mean either 1568–9 or 1569–70, is right.

THOMAS PRESTON (> 1569–1589 <).

A Thomas Preston entered King’s, Cambridge, from Eton in 1553, and became Fellow in 1556, taking his B.A. in 1557 and his M.A. in 1561. At Elizabeth’s visit in 1564 he disputed with Thomas Cartwright before her in the Philosophy Act, and also played in Dido, winning such favour that she called him her ‘scholar’ and gave him a pension of £20 a year from the privy purse (Cunningham, xx; Nichols, Eliz. i. 270; Fuller, Cambridge, 137; Wordsworth, Ecclesiastical Memorials, iv. 322). He held his fellowship at King’s until 1581. In 1583 a newswriter reported him to be ‘withdrawen into Scotland as a malcontent and there made much of by the King’ (Wright, Eliz. ii. 215). In 1584 he became Master of Trinity Hall, and in 1589 was Vice-Chancellor. In 1592, with other Heads of Houses, he signed a memorial to Burghley in favour of the stay of plays at Cambridge (M. S. C. i. 192). It seems to me incredible that he should, as is usually taken for granted, have been the author of Cambyses, about which there is nothing academic, and I think that there must have been a popular writer of the same name, responsible for the play, and also for certain ballads of the broadside type, of which A Lamentation from Rome (Collier, Old Ballads, Percy Soc.) was printed in 1570, and A Ballad from the Countrie, sent to showe how we should Fast this Lent (Archiv, cxiv. 329, from Bodl. Rawl. Poet. MS. 185) is dated 1589. Both are subscribed, like Cambyses, ‘Finis Quod Thomas Preston’. A third was entered on S. R. in 1569–70 as ‘A geliflower of swete marygolde, wherein the frutes of tyranny you may beholde’.

A Thomas Preston is traceable as a quarterly waiter at Court under Edward VI (Trevelyan Papers, i. 195, 200, 204; ii. 19, 26, 33), and a choirmaster of the same name was ejected from Windsor Chapel as a recusant about 1561 (cf. ch. xii).

Cambyses > 1570

S. R. 1569–70. ‘An enterlude a lamentable Tragedy full of pleasaunt myrth.’ John Allde (Arber, i. 400).

N.D. [1569–84]. A Lamentable Tragedie, mixed full of pleasant mirth, containing the life of Cambises King of Percia ... By Thomas Preston. John Allde. [Arrangement of parts for eight actors; Prologue; Epilogue, with prayer for Queen and Council. At end, ‘Amen, quod Thomas Preston’.]

N.D. [1584–1628]. Edward Allde.

Editions by T. Hawkins (1773, O. E. D. i), in Dodsley⁴, iv (1874), and by J. M. Manly (1897, Specimens, ii), and J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.).

Line 1148 mentions Bishop Bonner whose ‘delight was to shed blood’, and Fleay, 64, therefore dates the play 1569–70, as Bonner died 5 Sept. 1569. But he may merely be put in the past as an ex-bishop. Three comic villains, Huf, Ruf, and Snuf, are among the characters, and chronology makes it possible that the play was the Huff, Suff, and Ruff (cf. App. A) played at Court during Christmas 1560–1. Preston may, however, have borrowed these characters, as Ulpian Fulwell borrowed Ralph Roister, from an earlier play.