A. H. BULLEN, B.A.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOLUME THE FIRST

LONDON JOHN C. NIMMO 14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C. MDCCCLXXXVII

Two hundred copies of this Edition on Laid paper, medium 8vo, have been printed, viz., 120 for the English Market, and 80 for America. Each copy numbered as issued.

No. 30

TO

AN OLD FRIEND AND FELLOW-STUDENT,

CHARLES H. FIRTH,

These Volumes

ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED

BY THE EDITOR.

PREFACE.

Marston’s Works were edited in 1856 by Mr. Halliwell (3 vols. 8vo.) for Mr. Russell Smith’s Library of Old Authors. I yield to none in my admiration for the best and the most accurate of living Shakespearean scholars; but I am sure that Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, who in his Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare has set so singularly high a standard of excellence, would be the first to acknowledge that his edition of Marston’s Works needs revision.

In the present volumes I have done my best to regulate the text, which is frequently very corrupt; but I am painfully conscious that I have left plenty of work for future editors.

A valuable edition of Marston’s poems was published in 1879, for private circulation, by Dr. Grosart. I have availed myself freely of the results of Dr. Grosart’s Entertainment in vol. iii.

Dr. Brinsley Nicholson, whose recently published edition of Reginald Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft met with the enthusiastic welcome that it deserved, has helped me liberally with advice and suggestions; and I have to thank Mr. P. A. Daniel, whose scholarship is as sound as it is acute, for his kindness in reading my Introduction.

In deference to friendly criticism, I have prefixed to each play a brief summary of the plot.

18th March 1887.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

PAGE

PREFACEvii

INTRODUCTIONxi

FIRST PART OF ANTONIO AND MELLIDA1

ANTONIO’S REVENGE: THE SECOND PART OF ANTONIO AND MELLIDA95

THE MALCONTENT193

INTRODUCTION.

When other poets were repeating Horace’s boast, “Exegi monumentum,” &c., John Marston dedicated the first fruits of his genius “To everlasting Oblivion.” In much of Marston’s satire there is an air of evident insincerity, but the dedicatory address at the close of The Scourge of Villainy is of startling earnestness:—

Those lines were printed in 1598. Six and thirty years afterwards the poet was laid in his grave, and on the grave-stone was inscribed “Oblivioni sacrum.” But prayers cannot purchase oblivion; and the rugged Timon of the Elizabethan drama, who sought to shroud himself “in the uncomfortable night of nothing,” will be forced from time to time to emerge from the shades and pass before the eyes of curious scholars.

[1] that John Marston belonged to the old Shropshire family of Marstons. The dramatist’s father, John Marston, third son of Ralph Marston of Gayton (or Heyton), co. Salop, was admitted a member of the Middle Temple in 1570; married Maria, daughter of Andrew Guarsi[2] (or Guersie), an Italian surgeon who had settled in London, and had married Elizabeth Gray, daughter of a London merchant; migrated to Coventry; was lecturer of the Middle Temple in 1592.

The year of the poet’s birth is unknown, but it may be fixed circ. 1575, and we shall probably not be wrong in assuming that the birthplace was Coventry. For his early education Marston was doubtless indebted to the Coventry free-school. On 4th February 1591-2, “John Marston, aged 16, a gentleman’s son, of co. Warwick,” was matriculated at Brazennose College, Oxford (Grosart’s Introduction, p. x.). There is not the slightest doubt that this John Marston, who was admitted Bachelor of Arts on 6th February 1593-4 as the “eldest son of an Esquire” (Wood’s Fasti, ed. Bliss, i. 602), was the poet; and Wood went wrong in identifying our John Marston with another John Marston, or Marson, who belonged to Corpus. In the will of the elder Marston, proved in 1599, there is a curious passage which shows that the poet, contrary to his father’s wishes, abandoned the profession —

“John Marston of City of Coventry Gent dated 24 Oct. 1599 to Mary my wife, my mansion &c. in Crosse Cheepinge in Coventry and other premises for life rem^r to John my son and heirs of body rem^r to heirs of body of Raphe Marston Gent my father dec^d rem^r to right heirs of my s^d son[;] to s^d wife my interest in certain lands &c. after death of John Butler[3] my father in law and Margaret his now wife in par. Cropedy co. Oxon and others in Wardington co. Oxon rem^r to John my son to s^d wife ½ of plate and household stuff &c. to s^d son John my furniture &c. in my chambers in the Middle Temple my law books &c. to my s^d son whom I hoped would have profited by them in the study of the law but man proposeth and God disposeth &c. to kinsman and servant Tho^s Marston 20 nobles to my poorest brother Rich^d Marston 20 nobles for him and his children all residue to Mary my wife &c. (G. Gascoigne a witness) Proved 29 Nov. 1599.” In the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (82 Kidd.).

Wood vaguely says that the poet (the John Marston of Brazennose College) “after completing that degree [the degree of B.A.] by determination, went his way and improved his learning in other faculties.” It is clear from his father’s will that he found legal studies distasteful, and we may conjecture that he quickly turned from the professional career on which he had entered and devoted his attention to literature and the stage. Few biographical I., and Rector of St. Martin’s, co. Wilts. Ben Jonson told Drummond of Hawthornden that “Marston wrote his father-in-law’s preachings, and his father-in-law his comedies;” a witty remark, contrasting the asperity of Marston’s comedies with the blandness of his father-in-law’s sermons. Marston’s plays—with the exception of The Insatiate Countess—were published between 1602 and 1607. He seems to have definitely abandoned play-writing about the year 1607; but the date at which he entered the Church is not clearly ascertained. On 10th October 1616 he was presented to the living of Christ Church in Hampshire;[4] he compounded for the firstfruits of Christ Church on 12th February 1616-7; and he formally resigned the living (probably from ill-health) on 13th September 1631. William Sheares the publisher issued in 1633 a collective edition of Marston’s plays, and in the dedicatory address to Lady Elizabeth Carey, Viscountess Falkland, speaks of the author as “in his autumn and declining age” and “far distant from this place.” On 25th June 1634 Marston died in Aldermanbury parish, London. His will, dated 17th June 1634, was drawn up when he was so ill as to [5] runs thus:—

“In the name of God Amen I John Marston of London Clarke being sicke in bodie but of perfect and sound mind and memorie doe make my last Will and Testament in manner and forme following Imprimise I give and bequeath my soule into the hands of Allmightie God my Maker and Redeemer and my bodie to be buried in Christian buriall in some convenient place where my executor hereafter named shall appointe Item I give and bequeath to James Coghill and James Boynton both of Christchurch in the County of South^tn the somme of fortie shillinges apeece to be paide within six mounthes after my decease Item I give and bequeath to Marie Fabian the wife of W^m Fabian of Christchurch aforesaide towards the educac’on of hir five sonnes the somme of twentie eight pound of currant money of England to be paide to hir within sixe monthes after my decease Item I give to the parrish Church of Christchurch aforesaide the somme of five poundes to be paide within sixe monthes next after my decease Item I give and bequeath to my couzin Hunt of Ashford in the countie of Saloppe the somme of twentie poundes to be paide within sixe moneths after my decease Item I give and bequeath to my cozen Griffins daughter of Kingston in the Countie of Surrey the somme of five poundes to be paide unto hir within sixe monthes after my decease Item I give to Marie Collice the daughter of my cozen Anne Collis of Chancerie Lane the somme of five poundes to be paide unto hir sixe monthes after my decease Item I give and bequeath to my cozen Richard Marston of Newe Inne in the Countie of Midd’ my silver bason and ewre but my will is ^r Henry Wallie the somme of five poundes apeece to be paide to the saide Henrie for theier vse within sixe monthes after my decease Item all the rest of my goodes and cattles moveable and vnmoveable my debts and legacies and funeral expences being charged I give and bequeathe to my wel beloved wiefe Marie whome I ordaine my soule Executrixe of this my last Will and Testament And I doe hereby renounce and make voide all former Wills by me heretofore made In Witnes whereof I have herevnto putt my hand and seale the seaventeenth daie of June in the tenth yeere of the rainge [sic] of oure Soveraigne Lord Charles 1634.”

Wood tells us that he was buried beside his father “in the church belonging to the Temple in the suburb of London, under the stone which hath written on it Oblivioni Sacrum.” Dr. Grosart prints the following entry from the Temple Church burial-register:

“1634, June 26. Mr. John Marston, Minister, sometimes of the Middle Temple, who died in Aldermanbury parish: buried below the Communion Table on the Middle Temple side.”

The will was proved on 9th July 1634 in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury by his widow, who was buried by his side on 4th July 1657. She had desired in her will,[6] dated 12th June 1657, that she should ^d;” and she bequeathed her “dear husband’s picture” to Master Henry Wally of Stationers’ Hall. Neither in Marston’s will nor in his widow’s is there mention of children.

Marston’s earliest publication was The Metamorphosis of Pygmalion’s Image:[7] And Certain Satires, which was entered in the Stationers’ Registers on 27th May 1598, and issued in the same year. Another series of satires, The Scourge of Villainy, was published later in 1598; it had been entered in the Stationers’ Registers on 8th September. A second edition of the Scourge, containing an additional satire (the tenth), appeared in 1599.

Pygmalion is written in the same metre as Venus and Adonis (from which poem Marston drew his inspiration)—a metre which Lodge had handled with considerable success. A poet who would approach the subject of Pygmalion and his image ought to be gifted with tact and delicacy. In our own day Mr. Morris (in The Earthly Paradise) has told the old Greek story in choice and fluent narrative verse; no poet could have treated it more gracefully. Tact and delicacy were precisely the qualities in which Marston was deficient; but the versification is tolerably smooth, and the licentiousness does not call for any special reprehension. In the Scourge of Villainy (sat. vi.) Marston pretends that Pygmalion was written to bring contempt on the class of poems to which it belongs:—

But it would require keener observation than most readers possess to discover in Pygmalion any trace of that moral motive by which the poet claimed to have been inspired. Archbishop Whitgift did not approve of its moral tone, for in 1599 he ordered it to be committed to the flames with Sir John Davies’ Epigrams, Cutwode’s Caltha Poetarum, and other works of a questionable character. In Cranley’s Amanda, 1635, it is mentioned, in company with Hero and Leander and Venus and Adonis, as part of a courtezan’s library.

There is not much pleasure or profit to be derived from a perusal of Marston’s satires. The author deliberately adopted an uncouth and monstrous style of phraseology; his allusions are frequently quite unintelligible to modern readers, and even the wits of his contemporaries must have been sorely exercised. After a course of Marston’s satires Persius is clear as crystal. In the second satire there are some lines which aptly express the reader’s bewilderment:

Virgidemiæ, 1597, he writes:—

It matters little whether Hall’s claim was well-founded or not; but it has been often pointed out that there is extant a MS. copy of Donne’s satires dated 1593. Hall, who lived to be one of the glories of the English Church, in early manhood certainly did not present an example of Christian meekness and charity. He took a very low view of contemporary writers, but never had the slightest misgivings about his own abilities. It is not easy to ascertain how his quarrel with Marston arose, but it seems clear that he was the aggressor. Pygmalion was published a year later than Virgidemiæ, but it had probably been circulated in manuscript, according to the Virgidemiæ, is directed against Marston. The opening lines run thus:—

When Pygmalion was published Hall wrote a poor epigram (see vol. iii. p. 369), which he contrived to paste in those copies of the poem “that came to the stationers at Cambridge.”[8] One of the satires, entitled “Reactio,”[9] Pygmalion, is a violent attack on Hall. In his “Defiance to Envy,” prefixed to Virgidemiæ, Hall had boasted that he could, an’ that he would, hold his own with any of the poets,—even hinting that he was a match for Spenser. The “Defiance” is a well-written piece of verse, but it gave Marston an excellent opportunity, which he used to the full in “Reactio,” of making a very effective attack. In the first satire of book vi. of Virgidemiæ Hall replies to Marston’s raillery with less vigour than we should have expected. Again and again in The Scourge of Villainy Marston attacks Hall; he would not let the quarrel drop, but worried his adversary with the pertinacity of a bull-dog. In 1601 a certain “W. I.,” who has been doubtfully identified (by Dr. Nicholson) with a Cambridge man, William Ingram, published The Whipping of the Satire, which was chiefly directed against Marston (with gibes at Ben Jonson and others). There is a lengthy and spirited preface, in which Marston is taken to task after this fashion:—

“Think you that foul words can beget fair manners? If you do I will not bate you an ace of an ass, for experience gives you the lie to your face. But your affection over-rules your reason, and therefore you are as sudden of passion in all matters as an interjection and yet as defective in most cases as an heteroclite: you gathered up men’s sins as though they had been strawberries, and picked away their virtues as they had been but the stalks. They shall not make me believe but that you were the devil’s intelligencer, for there went not a lie abroad but it was presently entertained of your ear; and every sin kept

The following stanzas have a sting in them:—

At this easy rate “W. I.” ambles on; and the quiet leisurely stanzas are a relief after the fury of the Scourge. Modern readers will feel that Marston was not driven by “sæva indignatio” to write satire, and they will not be inclined to accept the young author of Pygmalion as a sedate moralist. “W. I.” puts the matter clearly:

The publication of The Whipping of the Satire could hardly have been agreeable to Marston, but it is highly improbable that he is to be held responsible for the poor answer to The Whipping, published anonymously in the same year, under the title of The Whipper of the Satire, his Penance in a White Sheet; or the Beadle’s Confutation.[10] If I have read The Whipper aright, it is the work of one of Marston’s personal friends, or of some admirer who had more zeal than wit. There are some general remarks, of slight account, on the use of satire; and Marston is exhorted to persist in his task of scourging the vices of the age. It will be enough to quote two stanzas:—

The italicised lines give a delightfully ludicrous description of The Scourge of Villainy.

It is abundantly clear that Marston’s uncouth satires, which to-day are so difficult to read, caused much excitement at the time of their publication. Meres in Palladis Tamia, 1598, reckons Marston among the leading English satirists. John Weever, in his Epigrams, 1599, couples Marston’s name with Jonson’s:—

The following address is from Charles Fitzgeoffrey’s Affaniæ, 1601:—

But the most elaborate notice that any contemporary The Return from Parnassus.[11] The passage has been often quoted, but it must find a place here:—

Under date 28th September 1599 Henslowe records in his Diary (p. 156, ed. Collier) that he lent “unto Mr. Maxton, the new poete (Mr. Mastone), the sum of forty shillings” in earnest of an unnamed play. The name “Mastone” is interlined in a different hand as a correction for “Maxton;” but there can be no doubt that the “new poete,” whose name the illiterate manager misspelled, was John Marston. There is no other mention Diary. In 1602 were published Marston’s First Part of Antonio and Mellida and Antonio’s Revenge, which had been entered in the Stationers’ Registers on 24th October 1601, and had been ridiculed in that year by Ben Jonson in The Poetaster. Considered as a work of art the two parts of Antonio and Mellida cannot be rated highly. The plot is clumsy and grotesque, and the characters, from the prodigious nature of their sins and sorrows, fail to excite in us any real interest. Marston was possessed of high tragic power, but he has not done himself justice. The magnificent prologue to Antonio’s Revenge prepares us to expect an impressive tale of tragic woe, but the promise is not worthily redeemed. He could conceive a fine situation, and he had at his command abundance of striking imagery. But we are never sure of him: from tragic solemnity he passes to noisy rhodomontade; at one moment he gives us a passage Æschylean in its subtle picturesqueness, at another he feebly reproduces the flaccid verbosity of Seneca’s tragedies. Lamb quoted in his Specimens the finest scene of Antonio and Mellida,—the scene where the old Andrugio on the Venice marsh, overthrown by the chance of war and banished from his kingdom, gives tongue to the conflicting passions that shake his breast. That scene deserves the eloquent praise that it received from the hands of Lamb; and if Marston had been able to keep the rest of the play at that level the First Part of Antonio and Mellida would rank with the masterpieces of Webster. But what is to be said of a writer who, in describing a shipwreck, gives us such lines as the following?—

This is hardly a fair specimen of Marston’s powers, but it exhibits to perfection his besetting fault of straining his style a peg too high; of seeking to be impressive by the use of exaggerated and unnatural imagery. When he disencumbers himself of this fatal habit his verse is clear and massive. Neither Webster nor Chapman ever gave utterance to more dignified reflections than Marston puts into the mouth of the discrowned Andrugio in the noble speech beginning, “Why, man, I never was a prince till now” (vol. i., p. 64). There is nothing of bluster in that speech; there is not a word that one would wish to alter. Nor is Marston without something of that power, which Webster wielded so effectively, of touching the reader’s imagination with a vague sense of dread. He felt keenly the mysteries of the natural world; the weird stillness that precedes the breaking of the dawn, and

Antonio and Mellida amply testifies that Marston possessed a strangely subtle and vivid imagination; but few are the traces of that “sanity” which Lamb declared to be an essential condition to true genius.

In 1604 was published The Malcontent;[13] another edition, augmented by Webster, appeared in the same year. From the Induction we learn that it had been originally acted by the Children’s Company at the Blackfriars; and that when the Children appropriated The Spanish Tragedy, in which the King’s Company at the Globe had an interest, the King’s Company retaliated by acting Marston’s play, with Webster’s additions. The Malcontent has more dramatic interest than Antonio and Mellida; it is also more orderly and artistic. Jonson’s &c. Marston has been at pains to give a more civil aspect to his “aspera Thalia.” Moreover, the moralising is less tedious, and the satire more pungent than in the earlier plays. There is less of declamation and more of action. The atmosphere is not so stifling, and one can breathe with something of freedom. There are no ghosts to shout “Vindicta!” and no boys to be butchered at midnight in damp cloisters; nobody has his tongue cut out prior to being hacked to pieces. Marston has on this occasion contrived to write an impressive play without deeming it necessary to make the stage steam like a shambles. As before, the scene is laid in Italy; and again we have a vicious usurper, and a virtuous deposed duke; but the characters are more human than in the earlier plays. Mendoza, the upstart tyrant, is indeed a deeply debased villain, but he is not deformed, like Piero, beyond all recognition. Altofronto, the banished duke, who disguises himself in the character of a malcontent and settles at the usurper’s court, is a more possible personage than Andrugio. The description that the malcontent gives of himself in iii. 1, and the other description of the hermit’s cell in iv. 2, exemplify Marston’s potent gift of presenting bold conceptions in strenuously compact language.

The Malcontent was dedicated by Marston in very handsome terms to Ben Jonson, and there is a complimentary Poetaster on him; the beginning of them were that Marston represented him in the stage in his youth given to venery.”[14] The original quarrel seems to have begun about the year 1598. In the apology at the end of The Poetaster, Jonson writes:

The Poetaster was produced in 1601; so these attacks on Jonson, in which Marston must have taken a leading part, began about 1598. In the address “To those that seem judicial Perusers” prefixed to The Scourge of Villainy, Marston undoubtedly ridicules Ben Jonson for his use of “new-minted epithets[15] (as real, intrinsecate, Delphic).” “Real” occurs in Every Man out of his Humour (ii. 1); “intrinsecate"” in Cynthia’s Revels (v. 2); and “Delphic” in an early poem of Jonson’s. Every Man out of his Humour was first produced at Christmas 1599, and Cynthia’s Revels in 1600, these “new-minted epithets” must have been used by Jonson in some early plays that have perished. Jonson retaliated by attacking Marston in Every Man out of his Humour, and Cynthia’s Revels. In the former play (iii. 1) he introduces two characters, Clove and Orange, who are expressly described as “mere strangers to the whole scope of our play.” They are on the stage only for a few minutes. Clove is represented as a pretender to learning: “he will sit you a whole afternoon sometimes in a bookseller’s shop, reading the Greek, Italian, and Spanish, when he understands not a word of either.” Orange is a mere simpleton who can say nothing but “O Lord, sir,” and “It pleases you to say so, sir.” In the “characters of the persons" (prefixed to the play) we are told that this “inseparable case of coxcombs ... being well flattered” will “lend money and repent when they have done. Their glory is to invite players and make suppers.” Dr. Brinsley Nicholson suggests that Orange was intended as a caricature of Dekker, and that Clove stands for Marston. This view is, doubtless, partly correct, but we must not insist on it too strongly. Dekker—whatever may be said of Marston—had no money to lend, and would rather have expected to sup at the players’ expense than to be made the shot-clog of the feast: again and again in The Poetaster he is ridiculed on the score of poverty. It is undeniable that Jonson, to raise a laugh against Marston, puts into Clove’s mouth grotesque words culled from The Scourge . “Monsieur Orange,” whispers Clove to his companion, as they are walking in the middle aisle of Paul’s, “yon gallants observe us; prithee let’s talk fustian a little and gull them; make them believe we are great scholars.” Presently we have the passage containing the Marstonian words (which I have printed in italics):—

“Now, sirs, whereas the ingenuity of the time and the soul’s synderisis are but embryons in nature, added to the paunch of Esquiline,[16] and the intervallum of the zodiac, besides the ecliptic line being optic and not mental, but by the contemplative and theoric part thereof doth demonstrate to us the vegetable circumference and the ventosity of the tropics, and whereas our intellectual, or mincing capreal (according to the metaphysics) as you may read in Plato’s Histriomastix.[17] You conceive me, sir?"

In the first scene of the second act, Puntarvolo addresses Carlo Buffone as “thou Grand Scourge, or Second Untruss of the time,” in allusion to Marston’s Scourge of Villainy.

Cynthia’s Revels was produced in 1600 and printed in 1601. In this play, Anaides and Hedon are represented as being jealous of Crites, and as seeking by underhand In the second scene of the third act, Crites, defending himself against his two traducers, observes:—

Dekker in Satiromastix[18] puts four of these lines (“I think but what they are ... arrogant enough”) into the mouth of Horace (Jonson), plainly assuming that the abuse was intended for Marston and himself. Marston, too, in What You Will (p. xlviii.), fastens on this speech of Crites and uses it as a weapon against Jonson. Cynthia’s Revels was quickly followed by The Poetaster, which was produced in 1601 by the Children of the Queen’s Chapel. Hitherto, Jonson had merely skirmished with his adversaries; in The Poetaster he assails them might and main with all the artillery of invective. Marston

The Poetaster was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 21st December 1601, and Satiromastix had already been entered on the 11th of the preceding month. The title-page of Satiromastix bears only Dekker’s name, and to Dekker the play is attributed in the Stationers’ Register. It was doubtless with Marston’s approval that Dekker took up the cudgels against the truculent Satiromastix. It is not necessary to deal here with Dekker’s spirited rejoinder, but there is one difficult passage, put into the mouth of Horace, to which passing attention must be called:—

“As for Crispinus, that Crispin-ass and Fannius his play-dresser, who (to make the Muses believe their subjests’ [sic] ears were starved and that there was a dearth of poesy) cut an innocent Moor i’th middle, to serve him in twice, and when he had done made Poules’ work of it; as for these twins, these poet-apes,

The meaning of this obscure passage seems to be that Marston and Dekker wrote in conjunction a play which had a Moor for its leading character; that the writers’ barren invention prompted them to treat the story again in a Second Part; and that the two parts, when they had served their time upon the stage, were published in Paul’s Churchyard. At least that is the only intelligible explanation that I can give to the words; but I am altogether unable to fix on any extant play, in which a Moor figures, that could be attributed to Marston and Dekker. From Henslowe’s Diary we know that Dekker was concerned in the authorship of a play called The Spanish Moor’s Tragedy (which has been doubtfully identified with Lust’s Dominion, printed in 1657 as a work of Marlowe’s); but Dekker’s coadjutors in that play were William Haughton and John Day.

It is curious to note that in the very year (1601) when Divers Poetical Essays appended to Robert Chester’s tedious and obscure Love’s Martyr. The other contributors were Shakespeare and Chapman; Marston’s verses follow Shakespeare’s Phœnix and Turtle. In 1604, as we have noticed, Marston dedicated his Malcontent to Jonson in very cordial terms; and in 1605 he prefixed some complimentary verses to Sejanus.

In 1605 was published the comedy of The Dutch Courtezan, which had been acted by the Children’s Company at the Blackfriars. There is more of life and movement in this play than in any other of Marston’s productions. The character of the passionate and implacable courtesan, Franceschina, is conceived with masterly ability. Few figures in the Elizabethan drama are more striking than this fair vengeful fiend, who is as playful and pitiless as a tigress; whose caresses are sweet as honey and poisonous as aconite. All the characters are drawn with skill and spirit. Young Freevill is a typical Elizabethan gallant, very frank in his utterances, and not burthened with an excess of modesty. Malheureux, his moody friend, is noted for his strictness of life, but a glance from Franceschina scatters his virtuous resolutions, and he is ready at the temptress’ bidding to kill his friend in order to satisfy his passion. The innocent shamefaced Beatrice, affianced to young Freevill, is drawn with more tenderness than Marston usually shows; and her gay prattling sister Crispinella recalls (longo intervallo) another more famous Beatrice. Cockledemoy, the The Black Year, 1606, speaks of the play as “corrupting English conditions”;[19] but Nixon’s protest went for little. In December 1613 The Dutch Courtezan was acted at Court (Cunningham’s Extracts from the Accounts of the Revels, p. xliv.). Having received some alterations at the hands of Betterton, it was revived in 1680 under the title of The Revenge, or A Match in Newgate.

A singularly fresh and delightful study of city-life is the comedy of Eastward Ho, published in 1605. Three dramatists combined to produce this genial masterpiece—Chapman, Jonson, and Marston. It seems to have been written shortly after James’ accession, when the hungry Scots were swarming southwards in quest of preferment. Englishmen were justly indignant at the favours bestowed by James on these Scotch adventurers, and a passage in Eastward Ho stated the grievance very i.e., in Virginia], says Seagull, “without sergeants, or courtiers, or lawyers, or intelligencers, only a few industrious Scots, perhaps, who, indeed, are dispersed over the face of the whole earth. But as for them, there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England, when they are out on’t, in the world, than they are. And for my part, I would a hundred thousand of ’hem were there, for we are all one countrymen now, ye know; and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than we do here.” At the instance of Sir James Graham, one of James’ newly-created knights, the playwrights were committed to prison[20] for their abuse of the Scots, and the report went that their ears were to be cut and their noses slit. Ben 4tos; in others it was expunged. Scotch pride seems to have been easily wounded. On 15th April, 1598, George Nicolson, the English agent at the Scotch Court, writing from Edinburgh to Lord Burghley, stated that “it is regretted that the Comedians of London should scorn the king and the people of this land in their play; and it is wished that the matter be speedily amended, lest the king and the country be stirred to anger” (Cal. of State Papers, Scotland, ii. 749). Certainly the reflections in Eastward Ho have somewhat more of bitterness than banter; but one would have thought that the favoured Scots about the Court would be content to let the matter pass. Sir James Murray was the person who acted as delator, and it is not improbable that he found in the play some uncomplimentary allusions to himself, in addition to the sweeping satire on his countrymen. In the first scene of the fourth act there is a curious

“1st Gent. I ken the man weel; he’s one of my thirty pound knights.

“2d Gent. No, no, this is he that stole his knighthood o’ the grand day for four pound given to a page; all the money in’s purse, I wot well.”

Satirical references to King James’ knights, the men who purchased knighthood from the king, are as common as blackberries; but in the present passage there must be a covert allusion to some person who procured the honour by an unworthy artifice, and I suspect that the allusion is to Sir James Murray. It is surprising that, when the reflections on the Scots were expunged, the passage in iv. 1 was allowed to stand; for, whether Sir James Murray was or was not personally ridiculed, the mimicry of James’ Scotch accent is unmistakeable. Perhaps the king joined in the laugh against himself, when the play was acted before him by the Lady Elizabeth’s Servants at Whitehall on 25th January 1613-4 (Cunningham’s Extracts from the Account of the Revels, p. xliv.).

Of the merits of Eastward Ho it would be difficult to speak too highly. To any who are in need of a pill to purge melancholy this racy old comedy may be safely commended. Few readers, after once making his acquaintance, will forget Master Touchstone, the honest shrewd old goldsmith, rough of speech at times but ever gentle at heart, thrifty to outward show but bountiful as the sun in May: he lives in our affections with Orlando

It is very certain that Marston could never have written single-handed so rich and genial a play. In all Marston’s comedies there is a strong alloy of bitterness; we are never allowed to rise from the comic feast with a pleasant taste in the mouth. What precise share Marston had in Eastward Ho it would be difficult to determine with any approach to certainty. In the vol. iii. p. 8) we come across a passage which is distinctly in Marston’s manner:—

“I am entertained among gallants, true; they call me cousin Frank, right; I lend them monies, good; they spend it well.”

Compare a passage of The Fawn (vol. ii. p. 181):—

“His brother your husband, right; he cuckold his eldest brother, true; he get her with child, just.”

But in the same opening scene there are equally unmistakable signs of Jonson’s presence. Touchstone says of Golding:—“He is a gentleman, though my prentice ...; well friended, well parted.” The curious expression “well parted” will be at once recognised as Jonsonian by the vigilant reader, who will remember how Macilente, in “The Characters of the Persons” prefixed to Every Man out of his Humour,[21] is described as “A man well parted, a sufficient scholar,” &c. Jonson and Marston worked on the first scene together; and it seems to me that throughout the first two acts we have the mixed work of these two writers. In the second scene of the third act, as Mr. Swinburne notices, Chapman’s hand is clearly seen in the quaint allusion to “the ship of famous Draco.” Quicksilver’s moralising, in iv. 1, after he has scrambled ashore at Wapping on the night of the drunken shipwreck, is again in Chapman’s manner; but his elaborate devices for blanching copper and sweating angels (later in the The Alchemist. It would be of doubtful advantage to pursue the inquiry at length.

Eastward Ho was revived at Drury Lane on Lord Mayor’s day 1751, under the title of The Prentices (n. d. 12mo), and again in 1775 under the title of Old City Manners. Hogarth is said to have drawn from Eastward Ho the plan of his prints The Industrious and Idle Prentices. Nahum Tate’s farce Cuckold’s Haven, published in 1685, is drawn partly from Eastward Ho and partly from The Devil is an Ass.

Parasitaster, or the Fawn, published in 1606, takes us again to Italy, and once more we have to listen to a satirical exposure of the courtiers’ vices and follies. In spite of occasional tediousness the play is interesting. Dulcimel, Gonzago’s witty daughter, who gulls her self-conceited old father by a pretended discovery of Tiberio’s love for her, and succeeds by her blandishments in converting the young misogynist into a perfervid wooer, is a delightfully attractive heroine. The stratagem employed by Dulcimel is of ancient date: it is found in Terence’s Adelphi, Boccaccio’s Decameron (third tale of the third day), and Molière’s L’École des Maris. I am half inclined to suspect that Marston was slily glancing at the “wise fool” King James in the person of the silly and pedantic Gonzago; and it is probable that some social scandals of the time afforded material for the description of the intrigues of Gonzago’s courtiers. Granuffo, who gains a reputation for wisdom Noble Spanish Soldier (attributed to Samuel Rowley, though the play may properly belong to Dekker), and Littleword in Nabbes’ Covent Garden, are somewhat similar characters. The address To the Equal Reader, prefixed to Parasitaster, is excellently written, and exhibits Marston in a very pleasant light. “For mine own interest for once,” he writes, with a frankness which is not without a touch of pathos, “let this be printed,—that of men of my own addiction I love most, pity some, hate none; for let me truly say it, I once only loved myself, for loving them, and surely I shall ever rest so constant to my first affection, that let their ungentle combinings, discourteous whisperings, never so treacherously labour to undermine my unfenced reputation, I shall (as long as I have being) love the least of their graces and only pity the greatest of their vices.” A candid and creditable avowal, but, alas, “words is wind and wind is mutable.” In the second edition there follows a briefer address, in which the writer promises to “present a tragedy which shall boldly abide the most curious perusal;” and from a marginal note we learn that the tragedy of Sophonisba, published in 1606, was the work which was so boldly to challenge criticism. It is to be feared that this cherished offspring of Marston’s imagination will not be regarded with affection by many readers. For hideous blood-curdling realism the description of the witch Eumenides must surely have been unavoidable. Regarded, however, as a whole, the play is not impressive. Sophonisba is a fearless and magnanimous heroine, but her temper is too masculine; she talks too much and too bluntly, and is too fond of striking an attitude. Syphax, the villain of the play, is so prodigiously brutal as to appear perfectly grotesque; and the hero Massinissa bores us by his trite moral reflections. Marston strove to produce a stately tragedy, and was under the impression that his efforts had been crowned with success; but candid readers will judge the performance to be stiff and crude, wanting in energy and dramatic movement, too rhetorical, “climbing to the height of Seneca his style.” In the prefatory address he has a hit at Sejanus (to which in the previous year he had contributed a copy of eulogistic verses), informing us that “to transcribe authors, quote authorities, and translate Latin prose orations into English blank verse, hath, in this subject, been the least aim of my studies.” But Sejanus has certainly not less of dramatic interest than Sophonisba, and in other respects it is far superior.

In 1607 was published the comedy of What You Will (written, I suspect, shortly after the appearance of Cynthia’s Revels), which is largely indebted for its plot Amphitruo. In the Induction, Marston again has his fling at Ben Jonson. Philomusus’ heated denunciation of censorious critics,

was evidently written in derisive mimicry of Jonson’s scornful addresses to the audience; and Doricus’ remonstrance,

was unquestionably intended as a stiff rebuke to Jonson’s towering arrogance. But these strokes of personal satire are not confined to the Induction. Quadratus’ scathing ridicule of Lampatho Doria, in the first scene of the second act, was certainly aimed at some adversary of Marston’s; and there can be little doubt that this adversary was Ben Jonson. Lampatho is described in the following terms by his admirer Simplicius Faber:—

“Monsieur Laverdure, do you see that gentleman? He goes but in black satin, as you see, but, by Helicon! he hath a cloth of tissue wit. He breaks a jest;[22] ha, he’ll rail against the court till the gallants—O God! he is very nectar: if you but sip of his love, you were immortal.”

At first Lampatho speaks the language of an affected gallant; it is nothing but “protest” with him. Quadratus is disgusted with him:—

After listening to much abuse, Lampatho turns on his assailant:—

The threat only irritates Quadratus the more:—

Curious that Marston should apply his own nom de plume “Kinsayder” to the adversary whom he is bullying! In the Scourge of Villainy he sneered at his own poem Pygmalion, and here he is referring contemptuously to his own achievements in satire. A man who openly ridicules himself blunts the edge of an enemy’s sarcasm.

We have seen (p. xxxiii.) that Crites’ bitter abuse of Anaides and Hedon (i.e., Marston and Dekker), in Cynthia’s Revels, was flung back in Jonson’s face by —

Who “discreet Mastigophorus” and “acute Canaidus” were it would be useless to conjecture. But it is not to be doubted that Quadratus’ abuse of Lampatho was levelled at Ben Jonson; and that Marston was avenging himself in this way for the insults showered upon him by Jonson. In iv. 1, Quadratus sneers at Lampatho’s verse. Lampatho threatens to be revenged. “How, prithee?” says Quadratus; “in a play? Come, come, be sociable.”

The tragedy of The Insatiate Countess was published in 1613, with Marston’s name on the title-page. In the Duke of Devonshire’s library there is a copy,[23] dated 1616, with no name on the title-page. The play was reprinted [24] in which the author’s name is given as William Barksteed. In the collected edition of Marston’s plays, 1633, The Insatiate Countess is not included. It is therefore clear that Marston’s authorship is not established by external evidence. When we come to examine the play itself, which has unfortunately descended in a most corrupt state, the difficulty is not removed. Two picturesque lines at the close of the last scene,

are found verbatim in Barksteed’s poem Myrrha. We know little of Barksteed, but it is probable that he is to be identified with the William Barksted, or Backsted, who was one of Prince Henry’s players in August 1611 (Collier’s Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, p. 98), and belonged to the company of the Prince Palatine’s players in March 1615-6 (ibid., p. 126). He is the author of two poems,[25] which display some graceful fancy (though the subject of the first is ill-chosen),—Myrrha the Mother of Adonis, 1607, and Hiren and the Fair Greek, 1611. As we read The Insatiate Countess we cannot fail to notice passages —

Again: the play contains an unusually large number of imitations of Shakespearean passages. In fact I know no play of this early date in which Shakespeare is so persistently imitated or plagiarised. Again and again we find images and expressions borrowed more or less closely from Hamlet. Shakespeare’s historical plays, too, were laid under contribution. In the very first scene we have these lines:—

A very cool piece of plagiarism from Richard II. (i. 1):—

In the lines,

the italicised words were unquestionably suggested by a passage of Hotspur’s famous speech in Henry IV., i. 2,—

When Don Sago in iv. 3 exclaims—

we are immediately reminded of Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar (ii. 2),

and Sago’s lament in v. 1,

decidedly smacks of Macbeth. Occasionally, it is true, Marston does not scruple to borrow from Shakespeare, but in none of his plays are the Shakespearean echoes so clear and frequent as in The Insatiate Countess. The text, as I have said, is extremely corrupt, and the confusion among the dramatis personæ is perplexing to the last degree (see note, vol. iii. p. 154). I suspect that Marston, on entering the church, left this tragedy in a fragmentary state, and that it was completed by the actor Barksteed. The whole interest centres in the beautiful

In addition to his plays, his poem of Pygmalion, and his satires, Marston wrote a Latin pageant on the occasion of the visit paid by the King of Denmark to James I. in 1606, and an entertainment, which is not without elegance, in honour of a visit paid by the Dowager Countess of Derby to her son-in-law and daughter, Lord and Lady Huntingdon, at Ashby. I strongly doubt whether The Mountebank’s Masque, performed at Court in February 1616-17 (when Marston was attending to his clerical duties in Hampshire), has been correctly assigned to Marston.

There are two anonymous plays[26] in which Marston’s hand is plainly discernible,—Histriomastix, published in 1610, and Jack Drum’s Entertainment, published in 1616. It has been mentioned (see note, p. xxxii.) that Jonson in Every Man out of his Humour puts into Clove’s mouth, with the object of ridiculing Marston, words and expressions found in Histriomastix (coupling them with flowers of speech culled from The Scourge of Villainy), and even mentions the play by name—“as you may read in Plato’s Histriomastix.” Only in a few scenes of Histriomastix can Marston’s hand be detected. It is a Every Man out of his Humour was produced), on the occasion of some revival. The following lines, which occur early in the second act, seem to refer to Ben Jonson:—

Jack Drum’s Entertainment, an indifferent comedy, which appears to have been written about the year 1600,[27] bears the clearest traces of Marston’s early style. All the monstrous phraseology of The Scourge of Villainy and Antonio and Mellida is seen here in perfection. When Jonson in The Poetaster (v. 1) ridiculed Marston’s absurd vocabulary, he selected, inter alia, for castigation, some expressions which occur only in Jack Drum, and are not found (in so closely parallel a form) in the works published under Marston’s name: clear proof that the authorship of this play is to be ascribed, at least in part if not entirely, to Marston. In act iii. of Jack Drum we have—

which is ridiculed in The Poetaster—

ii. are these ridiculous lines—

so in The Poetaster—

In act iv. Planet’s reflections on the arrogant Old Brabant are clearly directed against Jonson.

Collier in his Memoirs of Edward Alleyn (p. 154) printed a letter of Marston to Henslowe; but, as “the whole letter is manifestly a forgery, having been first traced in pencil, the marks of which are in places still visible” (Warner’s Catalogue of Dulwich Manuscripts and Muniments, p. 49), this relic is of no interest. Another letter, addressed to Lord Kimbolton by a “John Marston,"[28] is printed in Collier’s Shakespeare[29] (i. 179, ed. 1858); but as it was written in 1641, the writer could not have been the dramatist, who died in 1634. Among the additional MSS. (14,824-6) in the British Museum is a poem entitled The New Metamorphosis, , 1600, which has been, not very wisely, ascribed to Marston. I must confess that I have only a superficial acquaintance with this poem; but, as the work fills nearly nine hundred closely-packed pages, I trust that my confession will not be severely criticised. After the title-page is a leaf containing the arguments of books i.-vi.; then comes a new title-page An Iliad of Metamorphosis or the Arraignment of Vice, followed by a dialogue between Cupid and Momus. Six lines headed “The Author to his Book” follow the dialogue, and then comes “The Epistle Dedicatory,” consisting of a couple of lines—

After the commendably brief epistle come two lines which inform us that—

(Marston’s name was certainly not French; it was a good old Shropshire name.) The prologue begins thus:—

Presently the poet indulges in his invocation:—

Having turned some thirty thousand verses off the reel, “J. M., Gent.” abruptly concludes, with the remark,—

There is a fine field for an editor in The New Metamorphosis; virgin soil, I warrant.

Manningham in his Diary, under date 21st November 1602, has been at the pains to record a bon mot of Marston:—“Jo. Marstone, the last Christmas, when he daunct with Alderman Mores wives daughter, a Spaniard borne, fell into a strange commendation of hir witt and beauty. When he had done she thought to pay him home, and told him, she thought he was a poet. ’Tis true, said he, for poets feigne and lye, and soe did I, when I commended your beauty, for you are exceeding foule.” Not a very witty saying, and not very polite.

In 1633, William Sheares the publisher issued, in 1 vol. sm. 8vo, The Workes[30] of Mr. John Marston, being Tragedies and Comedies collected into one volume containing the two parts of Antonio and Mellida, Sophonisba, What You Will, The Fawn, and The Dutch Courtezan. —

“To the Right Honourable, the Lady Elizabeth Carey, Viscountess Falkland.

“Many opprobies and aspersions have not long since been cast upon Plays in general, and it were requisite and expedient that they were vindicated from them; but, I refer that task to those whose leisure is greater, and learning more transcendent. Yet, for my part, I cannot perceive wherein they should appear so vile and abominable, that they should be so vehemently inveighed against. Is it because they are Plays? The name, it seems, somewhat offends them; whereas, if they were styled Works, they might have their approbation also. I hope that I have now somewhat pacified that precise sect, by reducing all our Author’s several Plays into one volume, and so styled them The Works of Mr. John Marston, who was not inferior unto any in this kind of writing, in those days when these were penned; and, I am persuaded, equal unto the best poets of our times. If the lines be not answerable to my encomium of him, yet herein bear with him, because they were his Juvenilia and youthful recreations. Howsoever, he is free from all obscene speeches, which is the chief cause that makes Plays to be so odious unto most men. He abhors such writers, and their works; and hath professed himself an enemy to all such as stuff their scenes with ribaldry, and lard their lines with scurrilous taunts and jests; so that, whatsoever, even in the spring of his years, he hath presented upon the private and public theatre, now, in his autumn and declining age, he need not be ashamed of. And, were it not that he is so far Works unto your Honour’s view; and the rather, because your Honour is well acquainted with the Muses. In brief, Fame hath given out that your Honour is the mirror of your sex, the admiration, not only of this island, but of all adjacent countries and dominions, which are acquainted with your rare virtues and endowments. If your Honour shall vouchsafe to accept this work, I, with my book, am ready pressed and bound to be

“Your truly devoted,

“WILLIAM SHEARES.”

Ben Jonson’s copy of the 1633 edition of Marston’s plays is preserved in the Dyce Library at South Kensington.

Marston’s literary career barely covers a space of ten years: his satires were published in 1598, and he seems to have entered the Church, and to have abandoned the writing of plays, about the year 1607. It is hard to picture Marston as a preacher of the Gospel of Glad Tidings. Were we to judge him by his writings we should say that he was a scornful spirit, at strife with himself and with the world; a man convinced of the hollowness of present life, and yet not looking forward hopefully to any future sphere of activity; only anxious to drop into the jaws of that oblivion which he invoked in his verse and courted even on his gravestone. There was another, a greater than Marston, who [31] Dean of St. Paul’s, are imperishable. At the thought of that oblivion for which Marston hungered the soul of Donne turned sick. “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Fearful indeed; but “to fall out of the hands of the living God,” said Donne in a sermon preached before the Earl of Carlisle, “is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination.” In a strain of marvellous eloquence he proceeds; and surely no utterance of poet or divine is more pitiful and passionate than this cry wrung from the heart of the great Dean Donne:—

“That God should let my soul fall out of His hand into a bottomless pit and roll an unremovable stone upon it, ... and never think more of that soul, never have more to do with it; that of that providence of God, that studies the life of every weed, and worm, and ant, and spider, and toad, and viper, there should never, never any beam flow out upon me; that that God, who looked upon me, when I was nothing, and called me when I was not, as though I had been, out of the womb and depth of darkness, will not look upon me now, when, though a miserable, and a banished, and a damned creature, yet I am His creature still, and contribute something to His glory, even in my damnation; that that God, who hath often looked upon me in my foullest uncleanness, and when I had shut out the eye of the day, the sun, and the eye of the night, the Quare morieris? Why wilt thou die? and so often sworn to my soul Vivit Dominus, As the Lord liveth I would not have thee die but live,—will neither let me die nor let me live, but die an everlasting life and live an everlasting death; that that God, who when He could not get into me by standing and knocking, by His ordinary means of entering, by His word, His mercies, hath applied His judgments and hath shaked the house, this body, with agues and palsies, and set this house on fire with fevers and calentures, and frighted the master of the house, my soul, with horrors and heavy apprehensions, and so made an entrance into me; that that God should frustrate all His own purposes and practises upon me, and leave me and cast me away, as though I had cost Him nothing; that this God at last should let this soul go away, as a smoke, as a vapour, as a bubble, and that then this soul cannot be a smoke, a vapour, nor a bubble, but must lie in darkness, as long as the Lord of light is light itself, and never spark of that light reach to my soul: what Tophet is not Paradise, what brimstone is not amber, what gnashing is not a comfort, what gnawing of the worm is not a tickling, what torment is not a marriage-bed to this damnation, to be secluded eternally, eternally, eternally from the sight of God!”

ADDENDA.

Vol. i. page 13. “Blind Gew.”—I have come upon a mention of this actor in the fifth satire of Edward Guilpin’s Skialetheia, 1598:—

Guilpin’s eleventh epigram is addressed “To Gue”:—

Page 15, line 17. “Heavy dryness.”—I was wrong in accepting the reading of ed. 1633 in preference to the “heathy dryness” of ed. 1602. Heathy is a Marstonian word; and we find it in act iv. of Jack Drum’s Entertainment:—

Page 60, line 256. Dr. Nicholson proposes “Her own heels, God knows, are not half so light”—a good emendation.

Page 239, line 21. “Distilled oxpith,” &c.—We have a similar list of provocatives in John Mason’s Turk, first published in 1610, but written some years previously:—

“Here is a compound of Cantharides, diositerion, marrow of an ox, hairs of a lion, stones of a goat, cock-sparrows’ brains, and such like.” (Sig. F. 3, verso.)

Page 311, lines 88, 89. “Life is a frost ... vanity.”—I have discovered that these lines are from an epigram in Thomas Bastard’s Chrestoleros, 1598, sig. H. I quote the epigram in full, as it is of striking solemnity:—

Vol. ii. page 355, line 274. Mr. P. A. Daniel suggests that for “others’ fate” we should read “adverse fate.”

Vol. iii. page 51, lines 41-2. “But a little higher, but a little higher,” &c.—These lines are from a song of Campion, beginning—

No. xvi. in Campion and Rosseter’s Book of Airs, 1601. They occur again in Campion’s Fourth Book of Airs, No. xxii.

Page 243, line 247. “Like Mycerinus,” &c.—I notice that a similar emendation is made, in a seventeenth century hand, in the margin of one of Dyce’s copies at South Kensington. My emendation was printed before I discovered that it had been anticipated.

ERRATA.

VOL. I.

Page 64, line 48, for Tyrrian read Tyrian.

Page 120, note 2, for Grumean read Grumeau.

Page 159, note 1, for “The star-led wisards hasten” read “The star-led wisards haste.”

Page 191, after “Antonii Vindictæ” the word “Finis” should be added (i.e., “End of Antonio’s Revenge”).

VOL. II.

Page 125, note 2, after “The Famous History of Fryer” add “Bacon.”

Page 322, line 15, for “Sir Signior” read “Sir, Signior” (comma after “Sir”).

Page 363, for “Still went on went I” read “Still on went I” (an annoying blunder).

Page 394, lines 158-9, in “delicious, sweet” the comma should be struck out, as “sweet” is doubtless to be taken as a substantive.

VOL. III.

Page 3, five lines from the bottom, read “insists on starting.”

Page 342, note 2, in “Huc usque of Xylinum” del. “of.”

ADDITIONAL CORRECTIONS AND EMENDATIONS.

For the following corrections and emendations I am indebted to Mr. P. A. Daniel. I am sorry that I did not have them earlier.

First I will correct the actual mistakes for which I must bear the responsibility (in whole or part).

Vol. i., page xxxviii., line 11, for “Sir James Graham” read “Sir James Murray.”

Vol. i., page 26, line 205, for “The first thing he spake” read “The first word that he spake.”

Vol. i., page 60, line 263, for “in time to come” the old eds. read “time to come.” (I prefer "in time,” but should not have added "in” silently.)

Vol. i., page 89, line 296, “His father’s” [fathers] is the reading of ed. 1602; but ed. 1633 gives “His father”—a better reading.

Vol. i., page 121, line 318, for “aspish” read “apish.”

Vol. i., page 175, line 78, for “scorn’d” read “scorn’t.”

Vol. ii., page 17, the stage-direction “Enter Cocledemoy” is superfluous.

Vol. ii., page 28, line 160, for “feast o’ grace” (where old eds. give fiest) read “fist o’ grace,” and compare page 42, line 58, &c.

Vol. ii., page 32, line 33, for “not swaggering” read “not of swaggering.”

Vol. ii., page 109. The address should be headed “To my Equal Reader.”

Vol. ii., page 197, line 417, for “show” read “sue” (the reading of ed. 1633).

Vol. ii., page 213, line 92, delete “not.”

Vol. ii., page 222, line 308, in “thy vice from apparent here” delete “from.” (But query “thy vice from apparent heir”?)

Vol. ii., page 277, line 117, “All but Zanthia and Vangue depart.” Unquestionably these words are a stage-direction. They are printed as part of the text in ed. 1633; but in ed. 1606 they are italicised, and (though printed in the same line as “Withdraw, withdraw”) evidently form part of the previous stage-direction.

Vol. ii., page 328, for “For many debts” read “For many many debts.”

Vol. ii., page 341, line 227, for “For” read “Fore.”

Vol. ii., page 346, line 51, for “hoary eld” ed. 1607 reads “hoard,” and ed. 1633 “hoar’d.” Probably the true reading is “hoar.”

Vol. ii., page 369, lines 37-38. These lines have been transposed by my printers; line 38 ("And those that rank,” &c.) should stand before line 37 (“Study a faint salute,” &c.).

In the foregoing instances it is I who am chiefly to blame, and not the old copies. I now come to Mr. Daniel’s valuable emendations.

Vol. i., page 8, line 35, for “great” read “create” (an excellent emendation).

Vol. i., page 32, line 56. Does not this speech belong to Feliche?

Vol. i., page 53, line 107. The prefix should be “Cat.”

Vol. i., page 60, line 247. Add the stage-direction “Exit Antonio.”

Vol. i., page 70, line 182. Mr. Daniel suggests that for “Spavento” (an awkward word here) we should read “Speranza.”

Vol. i., page 110. “Enter Antonio,” &c.—Strike out the names of Feliche and Forobosco.

Vol. i., page 128, line 107, for “How could he come on?” Mr. Daniel proposes “How coldly he comes on!”

[Vol. i., page 142, line 2. In old eds. the line stands thus:—“Bout heauens brow. (12) Tis now starke dead night.” The bracketed “(12)” I expanded into a stage-direction; but Mr. Swinburne suggests to me that “the word ‘twelve’—ejaculated by Antonio on hearing the clock strike—is wanted for the metre.” If we are to insert the word “twelve” I should place it at the end of the line.]

Vol. i., page 145, line 54, for “The neat gay mists of the light’s not up” Mr. Daniel suggests “The neat gay mistress,” &c. (i.e., Aurora)—an admirable emendation.

[Vol. i., page 150, line 190, for “swell thy hour out” Mr. Swinburne proposes “honour.” If any change is needed I should prefer to read “horror;” but “hour” frequently has a dissyllabic value.]

Vol. i., page 151, line 211, for “night-ghosts and graves” Mr. Daniel would read “Night (i.e., good-night), ghosts and graves.”

Vol. i., page 156, line 99, for “Why lags delay” Mr. Daniel would read “Why, lags, delay?” taking lags as a substantive (“the sooty coursers of the night”).

Vol. i., page 158, line 41. I should have mentioned in a footnote that “stirs” is an old form of “steers.”

[Vol. i., page 172, line 22. Mr. Swinburne doubts whether my correction “see” for “sir” is necessary, as the apostrophe “sir” or “sirs” is occasionally found in a monologue.]

Vol. ii., page 9, line 54. Here, and in line 58, the prefix should be “Tys.”; and at line 62 Tysefew’s exit should be marked.

Vol. ii., page 16. At the bottom of the page should be marked “Exit Mary,” and at line 180 “Exit Cocledemoy.”

Vol. ii., page 86. “Enter Franceschina,” &c. Among those who enter should be included “Freeville disguised.”

Vol. ii., page 93, line 46. “Ha, get you gone.” It is a question whether these words apply to Freeville’s disguise or are addressed to musicians. (In spite of line 32, “I bring some music,” it is doubtful whether there are any musicians on the stage.)

Vol. ii., page 139, line 111. “Nymphadoro, in direct phrase.” Mr. Daniel proposes (rightly) to read:— “Nym. In direct phrase,” &c.

Vol. ii., page 145, line 252. This speech should probably be given to Herod.

Vol. ii., page 153, line 460. The prefix should doubtless be “Zuc.”

Vol. ii., page 154, lines 477, 478. “And nose” should doubtless be given to Hercules, and “And brain” to Zuccone.

Vol. ii., page 157, line 569. The old. eds give “Venice duke,” but we should read “Urbin’s duke” (cf. page 226, line 444).

Vol. ii., page 171, line 299. Mr. Daniel suggests that we should place a full stop after the word “speaks” and read “His signs to me and mien of profound reach.”

Vol. ii., page 248, line 134. The words “No more: I bleed” appear to belong to the wounded Carthalon.

Vol. ii., page 261, lines 21, 22. Query “bemoan’t” and “revenge’t”?

Vol. ii., page 414, line 244, for “prolonged” Mr. Daniel ingeniously suggests “prologued.”

Vol. iii., page 214, line 78, for “faint” Mr. Daniel proposes “feigned” (a certain emendation). In line 91, for “I resisted” he proposes “if resisted.”

Vol. iii., page 240, line 166, for “stung” Mr. Daniel proposes “stone.”

Mr. Daniel sends me the following note on the plot of What You Will:—

“A somewhat similar plot is found in I Morti Vivi, Comedia, del molto excellente signore Sforza D’Oddi, nell’Academia degli Insensati detto Forsennato, 1576. Oranta, a lady of Naples, whose husband, Tersandro, is supposed drowned at sea, is about to re-marry with Ottavio. Luigi, another suitor for her hand, to hinder the marriage conspires with others to induce one Iancola to personate Tersandro. Tersandro, however, has escaped the sea, and arrives to find himself denied by his own family (who have discovered Luigi’s plot), and to be mistaken by the conspirators themselves for Iancola. Tersandro’s adventures till his identity is established are somewhat similar to those of Albano in What You Will.

“D’Oddi apparently derived many incidents of his plot from the Greek romance of Clitophon and Leucippe, by Achilles Tatius; as also did Anibal Caro for his comedy of Gli Straccioni, 1582.”