Note 572 — Chapter XXIV · PLAYERS OF INTERLUDES

Mullinger, Hist. of Cambridge, ii. 73. Ascham, Epist. (1581), f. 126ᵛ, writing †1550 (quoted Hazlitt-Warton, iii. 304) says that Antwerp excels all other cities ‘quemadmodum aula Iohannis, theatrali more ornata, seipsam post Natalem superat.’ Speaking in The Scholemaster (ed. Mayor, 1863), 168, of his contemporaries at St. John’s (†1530-54), Ascham highly praises the Absalon of Thomas Watson, which he puts on a level with Buchanan’s Jephthah. Watson, however, ‘would never suffer it to go abroad.’ This play apparently exists in manuscript; cf. Texts (iv). Ascham himself, according to his Epistles, translated the Philoktetes into Latin (Hazlitt, Manual, 179). In The Scholemaster, he further says, ‘One man in Cambrige, well liked of many, but best liked of him selfe, was many tymes bold and busie to bryng matters upon stages which he called Tragedies.’ Ascham did not approve of his Latin metre. Possibly he refers to John Christopherson, afterwards bishop of Chichester, to whom Warton, iii. 303; Cooper, Athenae Cantab. i. 188; D. N. B. attribute a tragedy in Greek and Latin of Jepthes (1546). I can find no trace of this. It is not mentioned by Bahlmann.