Note 284 — THE TRIUMPHS OF TRUTH, AND THE ENTERTAINMENT AT THE OPENING OF THE NEW RIVER.

Black Monday] “Middleton here alludes to Anthony Munday, his rival City Poet, who had composed the Pageants of 1605 and 1611, and perhaps others of which no copies are known to exist. Though he this year (and the last, when Dekker was employed) lost the office of author, he did not lose that of supplying the apparell, &c., which was his business as a draper, and to which office only Middleton seems to have considered him competent [see p. 245]. This virulent attack, however, appears to have experienced no greater attention than such violence deserved, since Munday was employed in the three following years.” Nichols.—The inscription on Anthony’s tomb declares that he was a “citizen and draper:” but I am not sure that he furnished “the apparell and porters” for The Triumphs of Truth in the latter capacity; rather, perhaps, in consequence of being keeper of the properties of the pageants. In the remarks prefixed to Munday’s Downfall of the Earl of Huntington (Suppl. vol. to Dodsley’s Old Plays), I am surprised to find Mr. Collier doubting if Middleton alludes to him here; and I can only suppose that when Mr. C. wrote those remarks, his recollection of the present passage was somewhat imperfect.

The play just mentioned is evidence that Munday’s powers were far from contemptible. The ill will which the dramatists appear to have borne towards him was, perhaps, called forth by the extravagant encomium of Meres, who, in the Palladis Tamia, 1598, had chosen to term him “our best plotter,” fol. 283. With respect to the comedy called The Case is altered, in which he is ridiculed under the name of Antonio Balladino, there has been a question among critics, whether it is the work of Ben Jonson. Gifford pronounced it to be an early production of that poet; and he, I am confident, would not have changed his opinion even if he had lived to see the copy, without any author’s name on the title-page, which some years ago was added to the collection of the Duke of Devonshire.