Note 13 — SOME ACCOUNT OF MIDDLETON AND HIS WORKS.

In act iii. scene 1. (vol. i. p. 48), the Clerk having read from the church-book “Agatha, the daughter of Pollux—born in an. 1540,” adds, “and NOW ’TIS 99.” Similar notices have served to ascertain the periods at which several other old dramas were first brought upon the stage; but they are not always to be relied on as evidence to that effect. In our author’s No Wit, No Help like a Woman’s, act iii. scene 1. (vol. v. p. 87), Weatherwise says, “If I, that have proceeded in five-and-twenty such books of astronomy, should not be able to put down a scholar now in one thousand six hundred thirty and eight, the dominical letter being G, I stood for a goose.” That Middleton wrote this play there cannot, I think, be any doubt; but as he had been dead about ten years before 1638, that date must have been inserted by the actors when the piece was revived.