Part i

was the anonymous _Troy_ produced by the Admiral’s on 22 June 1596. More plausible is the conjecture of Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 180) that this was ‘an earlier and shorter version later expanded into the two-part play’. Spencer had a play on the Destruction of Troy at Nuremberg in 1613 (Herz, 66).

_Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas. 1630–6_ (?)

_S. R._ 1635, Aug. 29 (Weekes). ‘A booke called Pleasant Dialogues and Dramma’s selected out of Lucian Erasmus Textor Ovid &c. by Thomas Heywood.’ _Richard Hearne_ (Arber, iv. 347).

1637. Pleasant Dialogues and Dramma’s, selected out of Lucian, Erasmus, Textor, Ovid, &c. With sundry Emblems extracted from the most elegant Iacobus Catsius. As also certaine Elegies, Epitaphs, and Epithalamions or Nuptiall Songs; Anagrams and Acrosticks; With divers Speeches (upon severall occasions) spoken to their most Excellent Majesties, King Charles, and Queene Mary. With other Fancies translated from Beza, Bucanan, and sundry Italian Poets. By Tho. Heywood. _R. O. for R. H., sold by Thomas Slater._ [Epistle to the Generous Reader, signed ‘Tho. Heywood’, and Congratulatory Poems by Sh. Marmion, D. E., and S. N.]

_Edition_ by W. Bang (1903, _Materialien_, iii).

The section called ‘Sundry Fancies writ upon severall occasions’ (Bang, 231) includes a number of Prologues and Epilogues, of which those which are datable fall between 1630 and 1636. Bang regards all the contents of the volume as of about this period. Fleay, i. 285, had suggested that _Deorum Judicium_, _Jupiter and Io_, _Apollo and Daphne_, _Amphrisa_, and possibly _Misanthropos_ formed the anonymous _Five Plays in One_ produced by the Admiral’s on 7 April 1597, and also that _Misanthropos_, which he supposed to bear the name _Time’s Triumph_, was played with _Faustus_ on 13 April 1597 and carelessly entered by Henslowe as ‘times triumpe & fortus’. Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 183) says of the _Dialogues and Dramas_, ‘many of the pieces in that collection are undoubtedly early’. He rejects Fleay’s views as to _Misanthropos_ on the grounds that it is ‘unrelieved tediousness’ and has no claim to the title _Time’s Triumph_, and is doubtful as to _Deorum Judicium_. The three others he seems inclined to accept as possibly belonging to the 1597 series, especially _Jupiter and Io_, where the unappropriated head of Argus in one of the Admiral’s inventories tempts him. He is also attracted by an alternative suggestion of Fleay’s that one of the _Five Plays in One_ may have been a _Cupid and Psyche_, afterwards worked up into _Love’s Mistress_ (1636). This he says, ‘if it existed’, would suit very well. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that it did exist. Moreover, P. A. Daniel has shown that certain lines found in _Love’s Mistress_ are assigned to Dekker in _England’s Parnassus_ (1600, ed. Crawford, xxxi. 509, 529) and must be from the _Cupid and Psyche_ produced by the Admiral’s _c._ June 1600 (_Henslowe_, ii. 212). There is no indication that Heywood collaborated with Dekker, Chettle, and Day in this; but it occurs to me that, if he was still at the Rose, he may have acted in the play and cribbed years afterwards from the manuscript of his part. I will only add that _Misanthropos_ and _Deorum Judicium_ seem to me out of the question. They belong to the series of ‘dialogues’ which Heywood in his Epistle clearly treats as distinct from the ‘dramas’, for after describing them he goes on, ‘For such as delight in Stage-poetry, here are also divers Dramma’s, never before published: Which, though some may condemne for their shortnesse, others againe will commend for their sweetnesse’. It is only _Jupiter and Io_ and _Apollo and Daphne_, which are based on Ovid, and _Amphrisa_, for which there is no known source, that can belong to this group; and Heywood gives no indication as to their date.

_Lost and Doubtful Plays_

On _How to Learn of a Woman to Woo_, see s.v. _The Wise Woman of Hogsden_. The author of _The Second Part of Hudibras_ (1663) names Heywood as the author of _The Bold Beauchamps_, which is mentioned with _Jane Shore_ in _The Knight of the Burning Pestle_, Ind. 59.

The following is a complete list of the plays, by Heywood or conjecturally assigned to him, which are recorded in Henslowe’s diary:

_Possible plays for the Admiral’s, 1594–7_

For conjectures as to the authorship by Heywood of _Godfrey of Bulloigne_ (1594), _The Siege of London_ (>1594), _Wonder of a Woman_ (1595), _Seleo and Olympo_ (1595), _1, 2 Hercules_ (1595), _Troy_ (1596), _Five Plays in One_ (1597), _Time’s Triumph_ (>1597), see _The Four Prentices_, the anonymous _Edward IV_, W. Rowley’s _A New Wonder_, _The Golden Age_, _The Silver Age_, _The Iron Age_, _Pleasant Dialogues and Dramas_.

_Plays for the Admiral’s, 1598–1603_

(i) _War without Blows and Love without Suit._

Dec. 1598–Jan. 1599; identified, not plausibly, by Fleay, i. 287, with the anonymous _Thracian Wonder_ (q.v.).

(ii) _Joan as Good as my Lady._

Feb. 1599, identified, conjecturally, by Fleay, i. 298, with _A Maidenhead Well Lost_, printed as Heywood’s in 1634.

(iii) _1 The London Florentine._

With Chettle, Dec. 1602–Jan. 1603.

_Plays for Worcester’s, 1602–3_

(iv) _Albere Galles._

With Smith, Sept. 1602, possibly identical with the anonymous _Nobody and Somebody_ (q.v.).

(v) _Cutting Dick_ (additions only).

Sept. 1602, identified by Fleay, ii. 319, with the anonymous _Trial of Chivalry_, but not plausibly (Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 231).

(vi) _Marshal Osric._

With Smith, Sept. 1602, conceivably identical with _The Royal King and the Loyal Subject_ (q.v.).

(vii) _1 Lady Jane._

With Chettle, Dekker, Smith, and Webster, Oct. 1602, doubtless represented by the extant _Sir Thomas Wyatt_ of Dekker (q.v.) and Webster, in which, however, Heywood’s hand has not been traced.

(viii) _Christmas Comes but Once a Year_.

With Chettle, Dekker, and Webster, Nov. 1602.

(ix) _The Blind Eats many a Fly_.

Nov. 1602–Jan. 1603.

(x) [Unnamed play.]

With Chettle, Jan. 1603, but apparently not finished, or possibly identical with the _Shore_ of Chettle (q.v.) and Day. The title _Like Quits Like_, inserted into one entry for this play, is a forgery (Greg, _Henslowe_, i. xliii).

(xi) _A Woman Killed With Kindness_.

Feb.–March 1603. _Vide supra._

Heywood’s hand or ‘finger’ has also been suggested in the _Appius and Virginia_ printed as Webster’s (q.v.), in _Pericles_, and in _Fair Maid of the Exchange_, _George a Greene_, _How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad_, _Thomas Lord Cromwell_, and _Work for Cutlers_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

GRIFFIN HIGGS (1589–1659).

A student at St. John’s, Oxford (1606), afterwards Fellow of Merton (1611), Chaplain to Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia (1627), and Dean of Lichfield (1638). The MS. of _The Christmas Prince_ (_1607_) was once thought to be in his handwriting (cf. ch. xxiv, C).

THOMAS HUGHES (_c._ 1588).

A Cheshire man, who matriculated from Queens’ College, Cambridge, in Nov. 1571 and became Fellow of the College on 8 Sept. 1576.

_The Misfortunes of Arthur. 28 Feb. 1588_

1587. Certain deuises and shewes presented to her Maiestie by the Gentlemen of Grayes Inne at her Highnesse Court in Greenewich, the twenty-eighth day of Februarie in the thirtieth yeare of her Maiesties most happy Raigne. _Robert Robinson._ [‘An Introduction penned by Nicholas Trotte Gentleman one of the society of Grayes Inne’; followed by ‘The misfortunes of Arthur (Vther Pendragons Sonne) reduced into Tragicall notes by Thomas Hughes one of the societie of Grayes Inne. And here set downe as it past from vnder his handes and as it was presented, excepting certaine wordes and lines, where some of the Actors either helped their memories by brief omission: or fitted their

## acting by some alteration. With a note at the ende, of such speaches

as were penned by others in lue of some of these hereafter following’; Arguments, Dumb-Shows, and Choruses between the Acts; at end, two substituted speeches ‘penned by William Fulbecke gentleman, one of the societie of Grayes Inne’; followed by ‘Besides these speaches there was also penned a Chorus for the first act, and an other for the second act, by Maister Frauncis Flower, which were pronounced accordingly. The dumbe showes were partly deuised by Maister Christopher Yeluerton, Maister Frauncis Bacon, Maister Iohn Lancaster and others, partly by the saide Maister Flower, who with Maister Penroodocke and the said Maister Lancaster directed these proceedings at Court.’]

_Editions_ in Collier, _Five Old Plays_ (1833), and Dodsley^4 (1874, iv), and by H. C. Grumbine (1900), J. S. Farmer (1911, _T. F. T._), and J. W. Cunliffe (1912, _E. E. C. T._).

Of the seven collaborators, three--Bacon, Yelverton, and Fulbecke--subsequently attained distinction. It is to be wished that editors of more important plays had been as communicative as offended dignity, or some other cause, made Thomas Hughes.

WILLIAM HUNNIS (?-1597).

[Nearly all that is known of Hunnis, except as regards his connexion with the Blackfriars, and much that is conjectural has been gathered and fully illustrated by Mrs. C. C. Stopes in _Athenaeum_ and _Shakespeare-Jahrbuch_ papers, and finally in _William Hunnis and the Revels of the Chapel Royal_ (1910, _Materialien_, xxix).]

The date of Hunnis’s birth is unknown, except as far as it can be inferred from the reference to him as ‘in winter of thine age’ in 1578. He is described on the title-page of his translation of _Certayne Psalmes_ (1550) as ‘seruant’ to Sir William Herbert, who became Earl of Pembroke. He is in the lists of the Gentlemen of the Chapel about 1553, but he took part in plots against Mary and in 1556 was sent to the Tower. He lost his post, but this was restored between Elizabeth’s accession in 1558 and the opening of the extant _Cheque Book_ of the Chapel in 1561, and on 15 Nov. 1566 he was appointed Master of the Children in succession to Richard Edwardes (q.v.). For the history of his Mastership, cf. ch. xii (Chapel). Early in 1559 he married Margaret, widow of Nicholas Brigham, Teller of the Exchequer, through whom he acquired a life-interest in the secularized Almonry at Westminster. She died in June 1559, and about 1560 Hunnis married Agnes Blancke, widow of a Grocer. He took out the freedom of the Grocers’ Company, and had a shop in Southwark. He was elected to the livery of the Company in 1567, but disappears from its records before 1586. In 1569 he obtained a grant of arms, and is described as of Middlesex. From 1576–85, however, he seems to have had a house at Great Ilford, Barking, Essex. His only known child, Robin, was page to Walter Earl of Essex in Ireland, and is said in _Leicester’s Commonwealth_ to have tasted the poison with which Leicester killed Essex in 1576 and to have lost his hair. But he became a Rider of the Stable under Leicester as Master of the Horse during 1579–83, and received payments for posting services in later years up to 1593. In 1562 William Hunnis became Keeper of the Orchard and Gardens at Greenwich, and held this post with his Mastership to his death. He supplied greenery and flowers for the Banqueting Houses of 1569 and 1571 (cf. ch. i). In 1570 the Queen recommended him to the City as Taker of Tolls and Dues on London Bridge, and his claim was bought off for £40. In 1583 he called attention to the poor remuneration of the Mastership, and in 1585 he received grants of land at Great Ilford and elsewhere. He died on 6 June 1597.

Hunnis published several volumes of moral and religious verse, original and translated: _Certayne Psalmes_ (1550); _A Godly new Dialogue of Christ and a Sinner_ (S. R. 1564, if this is rightly identified with the _Dialogue_ of Hunnis’s 1583 volume); _A Hive Full of Honey_ (1578, S. R. 1 Dec. 1577, dedicated to Leicester); _A Handful of Honnisuckles_ (N.D., S. R. 11 Dec. 1578, a New Year’s gift to the Ladies of the Privy Chamber); _Seven Sobbes of a Sorrowful Soule for Sinne_ (1583, S. R. 7 Nov. 1581, with the _Handful of Honnisuckles_, _The Widow’s Mite_, and _A Comfortable Dialogue between Christ and a Sinner_, dedicated to Lady Sussex); _Hunnies Recreations_ (1588, S. R. 4 Dec. 1587, dedicated to Sir Thomas Heneage). Several poems by Hunnis are also with those of Richard Edwardes and others in _The Paradyse of Daynty Deuises_ (1567); one, the _Nosegay_, in Clement Robinson’s _A Handfull of Pleasant Delites_ (1584); and it is usual to assign to him two bearing the initials W. H., _Wodenfride’s Song in Praise of Amargana_ and _Another of the Same_, in _England’s Helicon_ (1600).

The name of no play by Hunnis has been preserved, although he may probably enough have written some of those produced by the Chapel boys during his Mastership. That he was a dramatist is testified to by the following lines contributed by Thomas Newton, one of the translators of Seneca, to his _Hive Full of Honey_.

In prime of youth thy pleasant Penne depaincted Sonets sweete, Delightfull to the greedy Eare, for youthfull Humour meete. Therein appeared thy pregnant wit, and store of fyled Phraze Enough t’ astoune the doltish Drone, and lumpish Lout amaze, Thy Enterludes, thy gallant Layes, thy Rond’letts and thy Songes, Thy Nosegay and thy Widowes’ Mite, with that thereto belonges.... ... Descendinge then in riper years to stuffe of further reache, Thy schooled Quill by deeper skill did graver matters teache, And now to knit a perfect Knot; In winter of thine age Such argument thou chosen hast for this thy Style full sage. As far surmounts the Residue.

Newton’s account of his friend’s poetic evolution seems to assign his ‘enterludes’ to an early period of mainly secular verse; but if this preceded his _Certayne Psalmes_ of 1550, which are surely of ‘graver matters’, it must have gone back to Henry VIII’s reign, far away from his Mastership. On the other hand, Hunnis was certainly contributing secular verse and devices to the Kenilworth festivities (cf. s.v. Gascoigne) only three years before Newton wrote. Mrs. Stopes suggests, with some plausibility, that the Amargana songs of _England’s Helicon_ may come from an interlude. She also assigns to Hunnis, by conjecture, _Godly Queen Hester_, in which stress is laid on Hester’s Chapel Royal, and _Jacob and Esau_ (1568, S. R. 1557–8), which suggests gardens.

LEONARD HUTTEN (_c._ 1557–1632).

Possibly the author of the academic _Bellum Grammaticale_ (cf. App. K).

THOMAS INGELEND.

Lee (_D. N. B._) conjecturally identifies Ingelend with a man of the same name who married a Northamptonshire heiress.

_The Disobedient Child, c. 1560_

_S. R._ 1569–70. ‘An enterlude for boyes to handle and to passe tyme at christinmas.’ _Thomas Colwell_ (Arber, i. 398). [The method of exhaustions points to this as the entry of the play.]

N.D. A pretie and Mery new Enterlude: called the Disobedient Child. Compiled by Thomas Ingelend late Student in Cambridge. _Thomas Colwell._

_Editions_ by J. O. Halliwell (1848, _Percy Soc._ lxxv), in Dodsley^4 (1874, ii), and by J. S. Farmer (1908, _T. F. T._).--_Dissertation_: F. Holthausen, _Studien zum älteren englischen Drama_ (1902, _E. S._ xxxi. 90).

J. Bolte, _Vahlen-Festschrift_, 594, regards this as a translation of the _Iuvenis, Pater, Uxor_ of J. Ravisius Textor (_Dialogi_, ed. 1651, 71), which Holthausen reprints, but which is only a short piece in one scene. Brandl, lxxiii, traces the influence of the _Studentes_ (1549) of Christopherus Stymmelius (Bahlmann, _Lat. Dr._ 98). The closing prayer is for Elizabeth.

JAMES I (1566–1625).

_An Epithalamion on the Marquis of Huntly’s Marriage. 21 July 1588_

R. S. Rait, _Lusus Regis_ (1901), 2, printed from _Bodleian MS._ 27843 verses by James I, which he dated _c._ 1581. The occasion and correct date are supplied by another text, with a title, in A. F. Westcott, _New Poems of James I_ (1911). The bridal pair were George Gordon, 6th Earl and afterwards 1st Marquis of Huntly, and Henrietta Stuart, daughter of Esme, Duke of Lennox. The verses consist of a hymeneal dialogue, with a preliminary invocation by the writer, and speeches by Mercury, Nimphes, Agrestis, Skolar, Woman, The Vertuouse Man, Zani, The Landvart Gentleman, The Soldat. The earlier lines seem intended to accompany a tilting at the ring or some such contest, but at l. 74 is a reference to the coming of ‘strangers in a maske’.

Westcott, lviii, says that James helped William Fowler in devising a mimetic show for the banquet at the baptism of Prince Henry on 23 Aug. 1594.

JOHN JEFFERE (?-?).

Nothing is known of him, beyond his possible authorship of the following play:

_The Bugbears. 1563 <_

[_MS._] _Lansdowne MS._ 807, f. 57. [The MS. contains the relics of John Warburton’s collection, and on a slip once attached to the fly-leaf is his famous list of burnt plays, which includes ‘Bugbear C. Jo^n. Geffrey’ (Greg in _3 Library_, ii. 232). It appears to be the work of at least five hands, of which one, acting as a corrector, as well as a scribe, may be that of the author. The initials J. B. against a line or two inserted at the end do not appear to be his, but, as there was no single scribe, he may be writer of a final note to the text, written in printing characters, ‘Soli deo honor et gloria Johannus Jeffere scribebat hoc’. This note is followed by the songs and their music, and at the top of the first is written ‘Giles peperel for Iphiginia’. On the last page are the names ‘Thomas Ba ...’ and ‘Frances Whitton’, which probably do not indicate authorship. A title-page may be missing, and a later hand has written at the head of the text, ‘The Buggbears’.]

_Editions_ by C. Grabau (1896–7, _Archiv_, xcviii. 301; xcix. 311) and R. W. Bond (1911, _E. P. I._).--_Dissertation_: W. Dibelius (_Archiv_, cxii. 204).

The play is an adaptation of A. F. Grazzini, _La Spiritata_ (1561), and uses also material from J. Weier (_De Praestigiis Daemonum_) (1563) and from the life of Michel de Nôtredame (Nostradamus), not necessarily later than his death in 1566. Bond is inclined to date the play, partly on metrical grounds, about 1564 or 1565. Grabau and Dibelius suggest a date after 1585, apparently under the impression that the name Giles in the superscription to the music may indicate the composition of Nathaniel Giles, of the Chapel Royal, who took his Mus. Bac. in 1585. But the name, whether of a composer, or of the actor of the part of Iphigenia, is Giles Peperel. The performers were ‘boyes’, but the temptation to identify the play with the _Effiginia_ shown by Paul’s at Court on 28 Dec. 1571 is repressed by the description of _Effiginia_ in the Revels account as a ‘tragedye’, whereas _The Bugbears_ is a comedy. Moreover, Iphigenia is not a leading part, although one added by the English adapter.

LAURENCE JOHNSON (_c._ 1577).

A possible author of _Misogonus_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

BENJAMIN JONSON (1572–1637).

Benjamin Johnson, or Jonson, as he took the fancy to spell his name, was born, probably on 11 June 1572, at Westminster, after the death of his father, a minister, of Scottish origin. He was withheld, or withdrawn, from the University education justified by his scholastic attainments at Westminster to follow his step-father’s occupation of bricklaying, and when this proved intolerable, he served as a soldier in the Netherlands. In a prologue to _The Sad Shepherd_, left unfinished at his death in August 1637, he describes himself as ‘He that has feasted you these forty years’, and by 1597 at latest his connexion with the stage had begun. Aubrey tells us (ii. 12, 226) that he ‘acted and wrote, but both ill, at the Green Curtaine, a kind of nursery or obscure play-house, somewhere in the suburbes (I thinke towards Shoreditch or Clarkenwell)’, and again that he ‘was never a good actor, but an excellent instructor’. The earliest contemporary records, however, show Jonson not at the Curtain, but on the Bankside. On 28 July 1597 Henslowe (i. 200) recorded a personal loan to ‘Bengemen Johnson player’ of £4 ‘to be payd yt agayne when so euer ether I or any for me shall demande yt’, and on the very same day he opened on another page of his diary (i. 47) an account headed ‘Received of Bengemenes Johnsones share as ffoloweth 1597’ and entered in it the receipt of a single sum of 3_s._ 9_d._, to which no addition was ever made. Did these entries stand alone, one would infer, on the analogy of other transactions of Henslowe’s and from the signatures of two Admiral’s men as witnesses to the loan, that Jonson had purchased a share in the Admiral’s company for £4, that he borrowed the means to do this from Henslowe, and that Henslowe was to recoup himself by periodical deductions from the takings of the company as they passed through his hands. But there is no other evidence that Jonson ever had an interest in the Admiral’s, and there are facts which, if one could believe that Henslowe would regard the takings of any company but the Admiral’s as security for a loan, would lead to the conclusion that Jonson’s ‘share’ was with Pembroke’s men at the Swan. The day of Henslowe’s entries, 28 July 1597, is the very day on which the theatres were suppressed as a result of the performance of _The Isle of Dogs_ (cf. App. D, No. cx), and it is hardly possible to doubt that Jonson was one of the actors who had a hand with Nashe (q.v.) in that play. The Privy Council registers record his release, with Shaw and Spencer of Pembroke’s men, from the Marshalsea on 3 Oct. 1597 (Dasent, xxviii. 33; cf. App. D, No. cxii); while Dekker in _Satiromastix_ (l. 1513) makes Horace admit that he had played Zulziman in Paris Garden, and Tucca upbraid him because ‘when the Stagerites banisht thee into the Ile of Dogs, thou turn’dst Bandog (villanous Guy) & ever since bitest’. The same passage confirms Aubrey’s indication that Jonson was actor, and a bad actor, as well as poet. ‘Thou putst vp a supplication’, says Tucca, ‘to be a poor iorneyman player, and hadst beene still so, but that thou couldst not set a good face vpon ’t: thou hast forgot how thou amblest (in leather pilch) by a play-wagon, in the high way, and took’st mad Ieronimoes part, to get seruice among the mimickes.’ Elsewhere (l. 633) Tucca taunts him that ‘when thou ranst mad for the death of Horatio, thou borrowedst a gowne of Roscius the stager, (that honest Nicodemus) and sentst it home lowsie’. This imprisonment for the _Isle of Dogs_ is no doubt the ‘bondage’ for his ‘first error’ to which Jonson refers in writing to Salisbury about _Eastward Ho!_ in 1605, and the ‘close imprisonment, under Queen Elizabeth’, during which he told Drummond he was beset by spies (Laing, 19). Released, Jonson borrowed 5_s._ more from Henslowe (i. 200) on 5 Jan. 1598, and entered into a relationship with him and the Admiral’s as a dramatist, which lasted intermittently until 1602. It was broken, not only by plays for the King’s men, whose employment of him, which may have been at the Curtain, was due, according to Rowe, to the critical instinct of Shakespeare (H.-P. ii. 74), and for the Chapel children when these were established at Blackfriars in 1600, but also by a quarrel with Gabriel Spencer, whose death at his hands during a duel with swords in Hoxton Fields on 22 Sept. 1598 was ‘harde & heavey’ news to Henslowe (_Henslowe Papers_, 48) and brought Jonson to trial for murder, from which he only escaped by reading his neck-verse (Jeaffreson, _Middlesex County Records_, i. xxxviii; iv. 350; cf. Laing, 19). Jonson’s pen was critical, and to the years 1600–2 belongs the series of conflicts with other poets and with the actors generically known as the _Poetomachia_ or Stage Quarrel (cf. ch. xi). Meanwhile Jonson, perhaps encouraged by his success in introducing a mask into _Cynthia’s Revels_ (1601), seems to have conceived the ambition of becoming a Court poet. At first he was not wholly successful, and the selection of Daniel to write the chief Christmas mask of 1603–4 appears to have provoked an antagonism between the two poets, which shows itself in Jonson’s qualified acknowledgement to Lady Rutland of the favours done him by Lady Bedford (_Forest_, xii):

though she have a better verser got, (Or poet, in the court-account) than I, And who doth me, though I not him envy,

and long after in the remark to Drummond (Laing, 10) that ‘Daniel was at jealousies with him’. But the mask was a form of art singularly suited to Jonson’s genius. In the next year he came to his own, and of ten masks at Court during 1605–12 not less than eight are his. This employment secured him a considerable vogue as a writer of entertainments and complimentary verses, and a standing with James himself, with the Earl of Salisbury, and with other persons of honour, which not only brought him pecuniary profit, but also enabled him to withstand the political attacks made upon _Sejanus_, for which he was haled before the Council, and upon _Eastward Ho!_, for which he was once more imprisoned. During this period he continued to write plays, with no undue frequency, both for the King’s men and for the Queen’s Revels and their successors, the Lady Elizabeth’s. As a rule, he had published his plays, other than those bought by Henslowe, soon after they were produced, and in 1612 he seems to have formed the design of collecting them, with his masks and occasional verses, into a volume of Works. Probably the design was deferred, owing to his absence in France as tutor to the son of Sir Walter Raleigh, from the autumn of 1612 (_M. P._ xi. 279) to some date in 1613 earlier than 29 June, when he witnessed the burning of the Globe (_M. L. R._ iv. 83). For the same reason he took no part in the masks for the Princess Elizabeth’s wedding at Shrovetide. But he returned in time for that of the Earl of Somerset at Christmas 1613, and wrote three more masks before his folio _Works_ actually appeared in 1616. In the same year he received a royal pension of 100 marks.

Jonson’s later life can only be briefly summarized. During a visit to Scotland he paid a visit to William Drummond of Hawthornden in January 1619, and of his conversation his host took notes which preserve many biographical details and many critical utterances upon the men, books, and manners of his time. In 1621 (cf. ch. iii) he obtained a reversion of the Mastership of the Revels, which he never lived to enjoy. His masks continued until 1631, when an unfortunate quarrel with Inigo Jones brought them to an end. His play-writing, dropped after 1616, was resumed about 1625, and to this period belong his share in _The Bloody Brother_ of the Beaumont and Fletcher series, _The Staple of News_, _The New Inn_, _The Magnetic Lady_, and _The Tale of a Tub_. In 1637, probably on 6 August, he died. He had told Drummond ‘that the half of his comedies were not in print’, as well as that ‘of all his playes he never gained two hundreth pounds’ (Laing, 27, 35), and in 1631 he began the publication, by instalments, of a second volume of his Works. This was completed after his death, with the aid of Sir Kenelm Digby, in 1640 and 1641. But it did not include _The Case is Altered_, the printing of which in 1609 probably lacked his authority, or the Henslowe plays, of which his manuscripts, if he had any, may have perished when his library was burnt in 1623.

_Collections_

_F_{1}_ (_1616_)

_S. R._ 1615, Jan. 20 (Tavernour). William Stansbye, ‘Certayne Masques at the Court never yet printed written by Ben Johnson’ (Arber, iii. 562).

1616. The Workes of Beniamin Jonson. _W. Stansby, sold by Rich. Meighen._ [Contains (_a_) commendatory verses, some reprinted from Qq, signed ‘I. Selden I.C.’, ‘Ed. Heyward’, ‘Geor. Chapman’, ‘H. Holland’, ‘I. D.’, ‘E. Bolton’, and for three sets ‘Franc. Beaumont’; (_b_) nine plays, being all printed in Q, except _The Case is Altered_; (_c_) the five early entertainments; (_d_) the eleven early masks and two barriers, with separate title-page ‘Masques at Court, London, 1616’; (_e_) non-dramatic matter. For bibliographical details on both Ff., see B. Nicholson, _B. J.’s Folios and the Bibliographers_ (1870, _4 N. Q._ v. 573); Greg, _Plays_, 55, and _Masques_, xiii, 11; G. A. Aitken, _B. J.’s Works_ (_10 N. Q._ xi. 421); the introductions to the Yale editions; and B. A. P. van Dam and C. Stoffel, _The Authority of the B. J. Folio of 1616_ (1903, _Anglia_, xxvi. 377), whose conclusion that Jonson did not supervise F_{1} is not generally accepted. It is to be noted that, contrary to the usual seventeenth-century practice, some, and possibly all, of the dates assigned to productions in F_{1} follow the Circumcision and not the Annunciation style; cf. Thorndike, 17, whose demonstration leaves it conceivable that Jonson only adopted the change of style from a given date, say, 1 Jan. 1600, when it came into force in Scotland.]

_F_{2}_ (_1631–41_)

1640. The Workes of Beniamin Jonson. _Richard Bishop, sold by Andrew Crooke._ [Same contents as F_{1}.]

1640. The Workes of Benjamin Jonson. The second volume. Containing these Playes, Viz. 1 Bartholomew Fayre. 2 The Staple of Newes. 3 The Divell is an Asse. _For Richard Meighen._ [Contains (_a_) reissue of folio sheets of three plays named with separate title-pages of 1631; (_b_) _The Magnetic Lady_, _A Tale of a Tub_, _The Sad Shepherd_, _Mortimer his Fall_; (_c_) later masks; (_d_) non-dramatic matter. The editor is known to have been Sir Kenelm Digby.]

_S. R._ 1658, Sept. 17. ‘A booke called Ben Johnsons Workes ye 3^d volume containing these peeces, viz^t. Ffifteene masques at court and elsewhere. Horace his art of Poetry Englished. English Gramar. Timber or Discoveries. Underwoods consisting of divers poems. The Magnetick Lady. A Tale of a Tub. The sad shephard or a tale of Robin hood. The Devill is an asse. Salvo iure cuiuscunque. _Thomas Walkley_ (Eyre, ii. 196).

1658, Nov. 20. Transfer of ‘Ben Johnsons workes ye 3^d vol’ from Walkley to Humphrey Moseley (Eyre, ii. 206). [Neither Walkley nor Moseley ever published the _Works_.]

_F_{3}_ (_1692_)

1692. The Works of Ben Jonson, Which were formerly Printed in Two Volumes, are now Reprinted in One. To which is added a Comedy, called the New Inn. With Additions never before Published. _Thomas Hodgkin, for H. Herringham_ [&c.].

The more important of the later collections are:

1756. P. Whalley, _The Works of B. J._ 7 vols. [Adds _The Case is Altered_.]

1816, 1846. W. Gifford, _The Works of B. J._ 9 vols.

1828. J. Nichols, _The Progresses, Processions and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First_. 4 vols. [Prints the masks.]

1871, &c. W. Gifford, edited by F. Cunningham, _The Works of B. J._ 3 vols.

1875. W. Gifford, edited by F. Cunningham, _The Works of B. J._ 9 vols.

1893–5. B. Nicholson, _The Best Plays of B. J._ 3 vols. (_Mermaid Series_). [The nine plays of F_{1}.]

1905–8 (_in progress_). W. Bang, _B. J.’s Dramen in Neudruck herausgegeben nach der Folio 1616_. (_Materialien_, vi.)

1906. H. C. Hart, _The Plays of B. J._ 2 vols. (_Methuen’s Standard Library_). [_Case is Altered_, _E. M. I._, _E. M. O._, _Cynthia’s Revels_, _Poetaster_.]

In the absence of a complete modern critical edition, such as is promised by C. H. Herford and P. Simpson from the Clarendon Press, reference must usually be made to the editions of single plays in the _Yale Studies_ and _Belles Lettres Series_.

_Select Dissertations_: W. R. Chetwood, _Memoirs of the Life and Writings of B. J._ (1756); O. Gilchrist, _An Examination of the Charges of B. J.’s Enmity to Shakespeare_ (1808), _A Letter to W. Gifford_ (1811); D. Laing, _Notes of B. J.’s Conversations with Drummond of Hawthornden_ (1842, _Sh. Soc._); B. Nicholson, _The Orthography of B. J.’s Name_ (1880, _Antiquary_, ii. 55); W. Wilke, _Metrische Untersuchungen zu B. J._ (1884, _Halle diss._), _Anwendung der Rhyme-test und Double-endings test auf. B. J.’s Dramen_ (1888, _Anglia_, x. 512); J. A. Symonds, _B. J._ (1888, _English Worthies_); A. C. Swinburne, _A Study of B. J._ (1889); P. Aronstein, _B. J.’s Theorie des Lustspiels_ (1895, _Anglia_, xvii. 466), _Shakespeare and B. J._ (1904, _E. S._ xxxiv. 193); _B. J._ (1906, _Literarhistorische Forschungen_, xxxiv); E. Koeppel, _Quellen-Studien zu den Dramen B. J.’s, John Marston’s, und Beaumont und Fletcher’s_ (1895, _Münchener Beiträge_, xi), _B. J.’s Wirkung auf zeitgenössische Dramatiker_ (1906, _Anglistische Forschungen_, xx); J. H. Penniman, _The War of the Theatres_ (1897, _Pennsylvania Univ. Series_, iv. 3); E. Woodbridge, _Studies in J.’s Comedy_ (1898, _Yale Studies_, v); R. A. Small, _The Stage-Quarrel between B. J. and the so-called Poetasters_ (1899); B. Dobell, _Newly Discovered Documents_ (1901, _Athenaeum_, i. 369, 403, 433, 465); J. Hofmiller, _Die ersten sechs Masken B. J.’s in ihrem Verhältnis zur antiken Literatur_ (1901, _Freising progr._); H. C. Hart, _B. J., Gabriel Harvey and Nash_, &c. (1903–4, _9 N. Q._ xi. 201, 281, 343, 501; xii. 161, 263, 342, 403, 482; _10 N. Q._ i. 381); G. Sarrazin, _Nym und B. J._ (1904, _Jahrbuch_, xl. 212); M, Castelain, _B. J., l’Homme et l’Œuvre_ (1907); _Shakespeare and B. J._ (1907, _Revue Germanique_, iii. 21, 133); C. R. Baskervill, _English Elements in J.’s Early Comedy_ (1911, _Texas Univ. Bulletin_, 178); W. D. Briggs, _Studies in B. J._ (1913–14, _Anglia_, xxxvii. 463; xxxviii. 101), _On Certain Incidents in B. J.’s Life_ (1913, _M. P._ xi. 279), _The Birth-date of B. J._ (1918, _M. L. N._ xxxiii. 137); G. Gregory Smith, _Ben Jonson_ (1919, _English Men of Letters_); J. Q. Adams, _The Bones of Ben Jonson_ (1919, _S. P._ xvi. 289). For fuller lists, see Castelain, xxiii, and _C. H._ vi. 417.

PLAYS

_The Case is Altered. 1597 (?)-1609_

_S. R._ 1609, Jan. 26 (Segar, ‘deputy to Sir George Bucke’). ‘A booke called The case is altered.’ _Henry Walley_, _Richard Bonion_ (Arber, iii. 400).

1609, July 20. ‘Entred for their copie by direction of master Waterson warden, a booke called the case is altered whiche was entred for H. Walley and Richard Bonyon the 26 of January last.’ _Henry Walley_, _Richard Bonyon_, _Bartholomew Sutton_ (Arber, iii. 416).

1609. [Three issues, with different t.ps.]

(_a_) Ben: Ionson, His Case is Alterd. As it hath beene sundry times Acted by the Children of the Blacke-friers. _For Bartholomew Sutton._ [B.M. 644, b. 54.]

(_b_) A Pleasant Comedy, called: The Case is Alterd. As it hath beene sundry times acted by the children of the Black-friers. Written by Ben. Ionson. _For Bartholomew Sutton and William Barrenger._ [B.M. T. 492 (9); Bodl.; W. A. White.]

(_c_) A Pleasant Comedy, called: The Case is Alterd. As it hath been sundry times acted by the children of the Black-friers. _For Bartholomew Sutton and William Barrenger._ [Devonshire.]

_Edition_ by W. E. Selin (1917, _Yale Studies_, lvi).--_Dissertation_: C. Crawford, _B. J.’s C. A.: its Date_ (1909, _10 N. Q._ xi. 41).

As Nashe, _Lenten Stuff_ (_Works_, iii. 220), which was entered in S. R. on 11 Jan. 1599, refers to ‘the merry coblers cutte in that witty play of _the Case is altered_’, and as I. i chaffs Anthony Munday as ‘in print already for the best plotter’, alluding to the description of him in Francis Meres’s _Palladis Tamia_ (S. R. 7 Sept. 1598), the date would seem at first sight to be closely fixed to the last few months of 1598. But I. i has almost certainly undergone interpolation. Antonio Balladino, who appears in this scene alone, and whose dramatic function is confused with that later (II. vii) assigned to Valentine, is only introduced for the sake of a satirical portrait of Munday. He is ‘pageant poet to the City of Milan’, at any rate ‘when a worse cannot be had’. He boasts that ‘I do use as much stale stuff, though I say it myself, as any man does in that kind’, and again, ‘An they’ll give me twenty pound a play, I’ll not raise my vein’. Some ‘will have every day new tricks, and write you nothing but humours’; this pleases the gentlemen, but he is for ‘the penny’. Crawford points out that there are four quotations from the play in Bodenham’s _Belvedere_ (1600), of which Munday was the compiler, and suggests that he would have left it alone had the ridicule of himself then been a part of it. I should put the scene later still. Antonio makes an offer of ‘one of the books’ of his last pageant, and as far as is known, although Munday may have been arranging city pageants long before, the first which he printed was that for 1605. Nor does the reference to plays of ‘tricks’ and ‘humours’ necessarily imply proximity to Jonson’s own early comedies, for Day’s _Law Tricks_ and his _Humour out of Breath_, as well as probably the anonymous _Every Woman in her Humour_, belong to 1604–8. Moreover, the play was certainly on the stage about this time, since the actors are called ‘Children of Blackfriars’, although of course this would not be inconsistent with their having first produced it when they bore some other name. The text is in an odd state. Up to the end of Act III it has been arranged in scenes, on the principle usually adopted by Jonson; after ‘Actus 3 [an error for 4] Scaene 1’ there is no further division, and in Act V verse and prose are confused. As Jonson was careful about the printing of his plays, as there is no epistle, and as _C. A._ was left out of the Ff., there is some reason to suppose that the publication in this state was not due to him. Is it possible that Day, whom Jonson described to Drummond as a ‘rogue’ and a ‘base fellow’, was concerned in this transaction? It is obvious that, if I. i is a later addition, the original production may have been earlier than 1598. And the original company is unknown. The mere fact that the Children of the Blackfriars revived it shortly before 1609 does not in the least prove that it was originally written for the Children of the Chapel. If Chapman’s _All Fools_ is a Blackfriars revival of an Admiral’s play, _C. A._ might even more easily be a Blackfriars revival of a play written, say, for the extinct Pembroke’s. With the assumption that _C. A._ was a Chapel play disappears the assumption that the Chapel themselves began their renewed dramatic

## activities at a date earlier than the end of 1600. Selin shows a fair

amount of stylistic correspondence with Jonson’s other work, but it is quite possible that, as suggested by Herford (_R. E. C._ ii. 9), he had a collaborator. If so, Chapman seems plausible.

_C. A._ has nothing to do with the _Poetomachia_. Hart (_9 N. Q._ xi. 501, xii. 161, 263) finds in the vocabulary of Juniper a parody of the affected phraseology of Gabriel Harvey, and in the critical attitude of Valentine a foreshadowing of such autobiographical studies as that of Asper in _E. M. O._ His suggestion that the cudgel-play between Onion and Martino in II. vii represents the controversy between Nashe and Martin Marprelate is perhaps less plausible. Nashe would be very likely to think the chaff of Harvey ‘witty’.

_Every Man In his Humour. 1598_

_S. R._ [1600], Aug. 4. ‘Euery man in his humour, a booke ... to be staied’ (Arber, iii. 37). [_As You Like It_, _Henry V_, and _Much Ado about Nothing_ are included in the entry, which appears to be an exceptional memorandum. The year 1600 is conjectured from the fact that the entry follows another of May 1600.]

1600, Aug. 14 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called Euery man in his humour.’ _Burby and Walter Burre_ (Arber, iii. 169).

1609, Oct. 16. Transfer of Mrs. Burby’s share to Welby (Arber, iii. 421).

1601. Every Man In his Humor. As it hath beene sundry times publickly acted by the right Honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. Written by Ben. Iohnson. _For Walter Burre._

1616. Euery Man In His Humour. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1598. By the then Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. The Author B. I. _By William Stansby._ [Part of F_{1}. Epistle to William Camden, signed ‘Ben. Ionson’, and Prologue. After text: ‘This Comoedie was first Acted, in the yeere 1598. By the then L. Chamberlayne his Seruants. The principall Comœdians were, Will. Shakespeare, Ric. Burbadge, Aug. Philips, Ioh. Hemings, Hen. Condel, Tho. Pope, Will. Slye, Chr. Beeston, Will. Kempe, Ioh. Duke. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

_Editions_ by W. Scott (1811, _M. B. D._ iii), H. B. Wheatley (1877), W. M. Dixon (1901, _T. D._), H. Maas (1901, _Rostock diss._), W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._), C. H. Herford (1913, _R. E. C._ ii), P. Simpson (1919), H. H. Carter (1921, _Yale Studies_, lii), and facsimile reprints of Q_{1} by C. Grabau (1902, _Jahrbuch_, xxxviii. 1), W. Bang and W. W. Greg (1905, _Materialien_, x).--_Dissertations_: A. Buff, _The Quarto Edition of B. J.’s E. M. I._ (1877, _E. S._ i. 181), B. Nicholson, _On the Dates of the Two Versions of E. M. I._ (1882, _Antiquary_, vi. 15, 106).

The date assigned by F_{1} is confirmed by an allusion (IV. iv. 15) to the ‘fencing Burgullian’ or Burgundian, John Barrose, who challenged all fencers in that year, and was hanged for murder on 10 July (Stowe, _Annales_, 787). The production must have been shortly before 20 Sept, when Toby Mathew wrote to Dudley Carleton (_S. P. D. Eliz._ cclxviii. 61; Simpson, ix) of an Almain who lost 300 crowns at ‘a new play called, Euery mans humour’. Two short passages were taken from the play in R. Allot’s _England’s Parnassus_ (1600, ed. Crawford, xxxii. 110, 112, 436) which is earlier than Q_{1}. The Q_{1} text (I. i. 184) contains a hit at Anthony Munday in ‘that he liue in more penurie of wit and inuention, then eyther the Hall-Beadle, or Poet Nuntius’. This has disappeared from F_{1}, which in other respects represents a complete revision of the Q_{1} text. Many passages have been improved from a literary point of view; the scene has been transferred from Italy to London and the names anglicized; the oaths have all been expunged or softened. Fleay, i. 358, finding references to a ‘queen’ in F_{1} for the ‘duke’ of Q_{1} and an apparent dating of St. Mark’s Day on a Friday, assigned the revision to 1601, and conjectured that it was done by Jonson for the Chapel, that the Chamberlain’s published the Q in revenge, and that Jonson tried to stay it. Here he is followed by Castelain. But Q_{1} is a good edition and there is no sign whatever that it had not Jonson’s authority, and as the entry in S. R. covers other Chamberlain’s plays, it is pretty clear that the company caused the ‘staying’. St. Mark’s Day did not, as Fleay thought, fall on a Friday in 1601, and if it had, the dating is unchanged from Q_{1} and the references to a queen may, as Simpson suggests, be due to Jonson’s conscientious desire to preserve consistency with the original date of 1598. Nor is the play likely to have passed to the Chapel, since the King’s men played it before James on 2 Feb. 1605 (cf. App. B). This revival would be the natural time for a revision, and in fact seems to me on the whole the most likely date, in spite of two trifling bits of evidence which would fit in rather better a year later. These are references to the siege of Strigonium or Graan (1595) as ten years since (III. i. 103), and to a present by the Turkey company to the Grand Signior (I. ii. 78), which was perhaps the gift worth £5,000 sent about Christmas 1605 (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xv. 3; xvii. 35; xx. 27). No doubt also the revision of oaths in Jacobean plays is usually taken as due to the _Act against Abuses of Players_ (1606), although it is conceivable that the personal taste of James may have required a similar revision of plays selected for Court performance at an earlier date. Or this particular bit of revision, which was done for other plays before F_{1}, may be of later date than the rest. Simpson is in favour, largely on literary grounds, for a revision in 1612, in preparation for F_{1}. The Prologue, which is not in Q, probably belongs to the revision, or at any rate to a revival later than 1598, since it criticizes not only ‘Yorke, and Lancasters long jarres’, but also plays in which ‘Chorus wafts you ore the seas’, as in _Henry V_ (1599). These allusions would not come so well in 1612; on the other hand, Simpson’s date would enable us to suppose that the play in which the public ‘grac’d monsters’ was the _Tempest_ (cf. the similar jibe in _Bartholomew Fair_). The character Matheo or Mathew represents a young gull of literary tendencies, and is made to spout passages from, or imitations of, Daniel’s verses. Perhaps this implies some indirect criticism of Daniel, but it can hardly be regarded as a personal attack upon him.

_Every Man Out of his Humour. 1599_

_S. R._ 1600, April 8 (Harsnett). ‘A Comicall Satyre of euery man out of his humour.’ _William Holme_ (Arber, iii. 159).

1638, April 28. Transfer by Smethwicke to Bishop (Arber, iv. 417).

Q_{1}, 1600. The Comicall Satyre of Every Man Out Of His Humor. As it was first composed by the Author B. I. Containing more than hath been Publickely Spoken or Acted. With the seuerall Character of euery Person. _For William Holme._ [Names and description of Characters; Publisher’s note, ‘It was not neere his thoughts that hath publisht this, either to traduce the Authour; or to make vulgar and cheape, any the peculiar & sufficient deserts of the Actors; but rather (whereas many Censures flutter’d about it) to giue all leaue, and leisure, to iudge with Distinction’; Induction, by Asper, who becomes Macilente and speaks Epilogue, Carlo Buffone who speaks in lieu of Prologue, and Mitis and Cordatus, who remain on stage as Grex or typical spectators.]

Q_{2}, 1600. [_Peter Short_] _For William Holme_. [W. W. Greg (1920, _4 Library_, i. 153) distinguished Q_{1}, of which he found a copy in Brit. Mus. C. 34, i. 29, from Q_{2}, (Bodl. and Dyce).]

Q_{3}, 1600. _For Nicholas Linge._ [‘A careless and ignorant reprint’ (Greg) of Q_{1}.]

F_{1}, 1616. Euery Man Out Of His Humour. A Comicall Satyre. Acted in the yeere 1599. By the then Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. The Author B. I. _William Stansby for Iohn Smithwicke._ [Epistle to the Inns of Court, signed ‘Ben. Ionson’. After text: ‘This Comicall Satyre was first acted in the yeere 1599. By the then Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants. The principall Comœdians were, Ric. Burbadge, Ioh. Hemings, Aug. Philips, Hen. Condel, Wil. Sly, Tho. Pope. With the allowance of the Master of Revels.’]

_Facsimile reprints_ of Q_{1} by W. W. Greg and F. P. Wilson (1920, _M. S. R._) and of Q_{2, 3} by W. Bang and W. W. Greg (1907, _Materialien_, xvi, xvii).--_Dissertations_: C. A. Herpich, _Shakespeare and B. J. Did They Quarrel?_ (1902, _9 N. Q._ ix. 282); Van Dam and C. Stoffel, _The Authority of the B. J. Folio of 1616_ (1903, _Anglia_, xxvi. 377); W. Bang, _B. J. und Castiglione’s Cortegiano_ (1906, _E. S._ xxxvi. 330).

In the main the text of F_{1} follows that of Q_{1} with some slight revision of wording and oaths. The arrangement of the epilogues is somewhat different, but seems intended to represent the same original stage history. In Q_{1} Macilente speaks an epilogue, ‘with Aspers tongue (though not his shape)’, evidently used in the theatre as it begs ‘The happier spirits in this faire-fild Globe’ to confirm applause

as their pleasures Pattent: which so sign’d, Our leane and spent Endeuours shall renue Their Beauties with the _Spring_ to smile on you.

Then comes a ‘Finis’ and on the next page, ‘It had another _Catastrophe_ or Conclusion at the first Playing: which (διὰ τὸ τὴν βασίλισσαν προσωποποιεῖσθαι) many seem’d not to relish it: and therefore ’twas since alter’d: yet that a right-ei’d and solide _Reader_ may perceiue it was not so great a part of the Heauen awry, as they would make it; we request him but to looke downe vpon these following Reasons.’ There follows an apology, from which it is clear that originally Macilente was cured of his envious humour by the appearance on the stage of the Queen; and this introduces a different epilogue of the nature of an address to her. At the end of all comes a short dialogue between Macilente, as Asper, and the _Grex_. There is no mention of the Globe, but as the whole point of the objection to this epilogue, which it is not suggested that Elizabeth herself shared, lay in the miming of the Queen, one would take it, did the Q_{1} stand alone, to have been, like its substitute, a theatre and not a Court epilogue. In F_{1}, however, we get successively (_a_) a shortened version of the later epilogue, (_b_) the dialogue with the _Grex_, followed by ‘The End’, and (_c_) a version of the original epilogue, altered so as to make it less of a direct address and headed ‘Which, in the presentation before Queen E. was thus varyed’. It seems to me a little difficult to believe that the play was given at Court before it had been ‘practised’ in public performances, and I conclude that, having suppressed the address to a mimic Elizabeth at the Globe, Jonson revived it in a slightly altered form when he took the play to Court at Christmas. As to the date of production, Fleay, i. 361, excels himself in the suggestion that ‘the mention of “spring” and the allusion to the company’s new “patent” for the Globe in the epilogue’ fix it to _c._ April 1599. Even if this were the original epilogue, it alludes to a coming and not a present spring, and might have been written at any time in the winter, either before or after the New Year. Obviously, too, there can be no allusion to an Elizabethan patent for the Globe, which never existed. I do not agree with Small, 21, that the Globe was not opened until early in 1600, nor do I think that any inference can be drawn from the not very clear notes of dramatic time in I. iii and III. ii. At first sight it seems natural to suppose that the phrase ‘would I had one of Kempes shooes to throw after you’ (IV. v) was written later than at any rate the planning of the famous morris to Norwich, which lasted from 11 Feb. to 11 March 1600 and at the end of which Kempe hung his shoes in Norwich Guildhall. Certainly it cannot refer, as Fleay thinks, merely to Kempe’s leaving the Chamberlain’s men. Conceivably it might be an interpolation of later date than the original production. Creizenach, 303, however, points out that in 1599 Thomas Platter saw a comedy in which a servant took off his shoe and threw it at his master, and suggests that this was a bit of common-form stage clownery, in which case the Norwich dance would not be concerned. The performance described by Platter was in September or October, and apparently at the Curtain (cf. ch. xvi, introd.). Kempe may quite well have been playing then at the Curtain with a fresh company after the Chamberlain’s moved to the Globe. Perhaps the episode had already found a place in Phillips’s _Jig of the Slippers_, printed in 1595 and now lost (cf. ch. xviii). If 1600 is the date of _E. M. O._, the Court performance may have been that of 3 February, or perhaps more probably may have fallen in the following winter, which would explain the divergence between Q_{1} and F_{1} as to the epilogues. But it must be remembered that the F_{1} date is 1599, and that most, if not quite all, of the F_{1} dates follow Circumcision style, although Jonson may not have adopted this style as early as 1600. On the whole, I think that the balance of probability is distinctly in favour of 1599. If so, the production must have been fairly late in that year, as there is a hit (III. i) at the _Histriomastix_ of the same autumn. The play has been hunted through and through for personalities, most of which are effectively refuted by Small. Most of the characters are types rather than individuals, and social types rather than literary or stage types. I do not think there are portraits of Daniel, Lyly, Drayton, Donne, Chapman, Munday, Shakespeare, Burbadge, in the play or its induction at all. Nor do I think there are portraits in the strict sense of Marston and Dekker, although no doubt some parody of Marston’s ‘fustian’ vocabulary is put into the mouth of Clove (iii. 1), and, on the other hand, the characters of Carlo Buffone and Fastidious Brisk have analogies with the Anaides and Hedon of _Cynthia’s Revels_, and these again with the Demetrius and Crispinus of _Poetaster_, who are undoubtedly Dekker and Marston. But we know from Aubrey, ii. 184, that Carlo was Charles Chester, a loose-tongued man about town, to whom there are many contemporary references. To those collected by Small and Hart (_10 N. Q._ i. 381) I may add Chamberlain, 7, Harington, _Ulysses upon Ajax_ (1596), 58, and _Hatfield Papers_, iv. 210, 221; x. 287. The practical joke of sealing up Carlo’s mouth with wax (V. iii) was, according to Aubrey, played upon Chester by Raleigh, and there may be traits of Raleigh in Puntarvolo, perhaps combined with others of Sir John Harington, while Hart finds in the mouths both of Puntarvolo and of Fastidious Brisk the vocabulary of Gabriel Harvey. The play was revived at Court on 8 Jan. 1605.

_Cynthia’s Revels. 1600–1_

_S. R._ 1601, May 23 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called Narcissus the fountaine of self-love.’ _Walter Burre_ (Arber, iii. 185).

1601. The Fountaine of Selfe-Loue. Or Cynthias Reuels. As it hath beene sundry times priuately acted in the Black-Friers by the Children of her Maiesties Chappell. Written by Ben: Iohnson. _For Walter Burre._ [Induction, Prologue, and Epilogue.]

1616. Cynthias Revels, Or The Fountayne of selfe-loue. A Comicall Satyre. Acted in the yeere 1600. By the then Children of Queene Elizabeth’s Chappel. The Author B. I. _William Stansby._ [Part of F_{1}. Epistle to the Court, signed ‘Ben Ionson’, Induction, Prologue, and Epilogue. After text: ‘This Comicall Satyre was first acted, in the yeere 1600. By the then Children of Queene Elizabeths Chappell. The principall Comœdians were, Nat. Field, Ioh. Underwood, Sal. Pavy, Rob. Baxter, Tho. Day, Ioh. Frost. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

_Edition_ by A. C. Judson (1912, _Yale Studies_, xlv), and facsimile reprint of Q by W. Bang and L. Krebs (1908, _Materialien_, xxii).

The difference between the Q and F_{1} texts amounts to more than mere revision of wording and of oaths. _Criticus_ is renamed _Crites_, and the latter half of the play is given in a longer form, parts of IV. i and IV. iii, and the whole of V. i-iv appearing in F_{1} alone. I think the explanation is to be found in a shortening of the original text for representation, rather than in subsequent additions. Jonson’s date for the play is 1600. This Small, 23, would translate as Feb. or March 1601, neglecting the difficulty due to the possibility that Jonson’s date represents Circumcision style. He relies on V. xi, where Cynthia says:

For so Actaeon, by presuming farre, Did (to our griefe) incurre a fatall doome; ... But are we therefore judged too extreme? Seemes it no crime, to enter sacred bowers, And hallowed places, with impure aspect, Most lewdly to pollute?

Rightly rejecting the suggestion of Fleay, i. 363, that this alludes to Nashe and the _Isle of Dogs_, Small refers it to the disgrace of Essex, and therefore dates the play after his execution on 25 Feb. 1601. But surely the presumption which Jonson has in mind is not Essex’s rebellion, but his invasion of Elizabeth’s apartment on his return from Ireland in 1599, and the ‘fatall doome’ is merely his loss of offices in June 1600. I do not believe that a Court dramatist would have dared to refer to Essex at all after 25 Feb. 1601. I feel little doubt that the play was the subject of the Chapel presentation on 6 Jan. 1601, and the description of this by the Treasurer of the Chamber as including a ‘show’, which puzzled Small, is explained by the presence of a full-blown Court mask in V. vii-x. The original production will have been in the winter of 1600, soon after Evans set up the Chapel plays. As to personalities, Small rightly rejects the identifications of Hedon with Daniel, Anaides with Marston, and Asotus with Lodge. Amorphus repeats the type of Puntarvolo from _E. M. O._ and like Puntarvolo may show traces of the Harveian vocabulary. As _Satiromastix_, I. ii. 191, applies to Crispinus and Demetrius the descriptions (III. iii) of Hedon as ‘a light voluptuous reveller’ and Anaides as ‘a strange arrogating puff’, it seems clear that Marston and Dekker, rightly or wrongly, fitted on these caps. Similarly, there is a clear attempt in _Satiromastix_, I. ii. 376, ‘You must be call’d Asper, and Criticus, and Horace’, to charge Jonson with lauding himself as Criticus. But the description of the ‘creature of a most perfect and diuine temper’ in II. iii surely goes beyond even Jonson’s capacity of self-praise. I wonder whether he can have meant Donne, whom he seems from a remark to Drummond (Laing, 6) to have introduced as Criticus in an introductory dialogue to the _Ars Poetica_.

Of the three children who appear in the induction, both Q and F_{1} name one as Jack. He might be either Underwood or Frost. Q alone (l. 214) names another, who played Anaides, as Sall, i.e. Salathiel Pavy. An interesting light is thrown on the beginnings of the Chapel enterprise by the criticism (_Ind._ 188), ‘They say, the _Vmbrae_, or Ghosts of some three or foure Playes, departed a dozen yeares since, haue been seene walking on your Stage here.’

_The Poetaster. 1601_

_S. R._ 1601, Dec. 21 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called Poetaster or his arrainement.’ _Matthew Lownes_ (Arber, iii. 198).

1602. Poetaster or The Arraignment: As it hath beene sundry times priuately acted in the Blacke-Friers, by the Children of her Maiesties Chappell. Composed by Ben. Iohnson. _For M. L._ [Prologue; after text, Note to Reader: ‘Here (Reader) in place of the Epilogue, was meant to thee an Apology from the Author, with his reasons for the publishing of this booke: but (since he is no lesse restrain’d, then thou depriv’d of it by Authoritie) hee praies thee to think charitably of what thou hast read, till thou maist heare him speake what hee hath written.’]

1616. Poëtaster, Or His Arraignement. A Comicall Satyre, Acted, in the yeere 1601. By the then Children of Queene Elizabeths Chappel. The Author B. I. _W. Stansby for M. Lownes._ [Part of F_{1}. Epistle to Richard Martin, by ‘Ben. Ionson’; Prologue. After text, Note to Reader, with ‘an apologeticall Dialogue: which was only once spoken vpon the stage, and all the answere I euer gaue, to sundry impotent libells then cast out (and some yet remayning) against me, and this Play’. After the dialogue: ‘This comicall Satyre was first acted, in the yeere 1601. By the then Children of Queene Elizabeths Chappell. The principall Comœdians were, Nat. Field, Ioh. Vnderwood, Sal. Pavy, Will. Ostler, Tho. Day, Tho. Marton. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

_Editions_ by H. S. Mallory (1905, _Yale Studies_, xxvii), J. H. Penniman (1913, _B. L._).

The play is admittedly an attack upon the poetaster represented as Crispinus, and his identity is clear from Jonson’s own statement to Drummond (Laing, 20) that ‘he had many quarrells with Marston, beat him, and took his pistol from him, wrote his Poetaster on him’. Marston’s vocabulary is elaborately ridiculed in V. iii. Nor is there any reason to doubt that Demetrius Fannius, ‘a dresser of plaies about the towne, here’, who has been ‘hir’d to abuse Horace, and bring him in, in a play’ (III. iv. 367), is Dekker, who certainly associated himself with Marston as a victim of Jonson’s arraignment, and wrote _Satiromastix_ (q.v.) in reply. At the same time these characters continue the types of Hedon and Anaides from _Cynthia’s Revels_, although these were not literary men. Horace is Jonson himself, as the rival portrait of Horace in _Satiromastix_ shows, while Dekker tells us that Tucca is ‘honest Capten Hannam’, doubtless the Jack Hannam traceable as a Captain under Drake in 1585; cf. the reference to him in a letter of that year printed by F. P. Wilson in _M. L. R._ xv. 81. Fleay, i. 367, has a long list of identifications of minor personages, Ovid with Donne, Tibullus with Daniel, and so forth, all of which may safely be laid aside, and in particular I do not think that the fine eulogies of Virgil (V. i) are meant for Chapman, or for Shakespeare, applicable as some of them are to him, or for any one but Virgil. On the matter of identifications there is little to add to the admirable treatment of Small, 25. But in addition to the personal attacks, the play clearly contains a more generalized criticism of actors, the challenge of which seems to have been specially taken up by the Chamberlain’s men (cf. ch. xi), while there is evidence that Tucca and, I suppose, Lupus were taken amiss by the soldiers and the lawyers respectively. The latter at least were powerful, and in the epistle to Martin Jonson speaks of the play as one ‘for whose innocence, as for the Authors, you were once a noble and timely undertaker, to the greatest Iustice of this Kingdome’, and on behalf of posterity acknowledges a debt for ‘the reading of that ... which so much ignorance, and malice of the times, then conspir’d to haue supprest’. Evidently Jonson had not made matters better by his Apologetical Dialogue, the printing of which with the play was restrained. In this he denies that he

tax’d The Law, and Lawyers; Captaines; and the Players By their particular names;

but admits his intention to try and shame the

Fellowes of practis’d and most laxative tongues,

of whom he says, that during

three yeeres, They did provoke me with their petulant stiles On every stage.

Now he has done with it, will not answer the ‘libells’, or the ‘untrussers’ (i. e. _Satiromastix_), and is turning to tragedy.

Jonson gives the date of production as 1601. The play followed _Cynthia’s Revels_, criticisms on the epilogue of which inspired its ‘armed Prologue’, who sets a foot on Envy. Envy has been waiting fifteen weeks since the plot was an ‘embrion’, and this is chaffed in _Satiromastix_, I. ii. 447, ‘What, will he bee fifteene weekes about this cockatrice’s egge too?’ Later (V. ii. 218) Horace is told, ‘You and your itchy poetry breake out like Christmas, but once a yeare’. This stung Jonson, who replied in the Apologetical Dialogue,

_Polyposus._ They say you are slow, And scarse bring forth a play a yeere. _Author._ ’Tis true. I would they could not say that I did that.

The year’s interval must not be pressed too closely. On the other hand, I do not know why Small, 25, assumes that the fifteen weeks spent on the _Poetaster_ began directly after _Cynthia’s Revels_ was produced, whatever that date may be. It must have come very near that of _Satiromastix_, for Horace knows that Demetrius has been hired to write a play on him. On the other hand, _Satiromastix_ cannot possibly have been actually written until the contents of _Poetaster_ were known to Dekker. The S. R. entry of _Satiromastix_ is 11 Nov. 1601, and the two dates of production may reasonably be placed in the late spring or early autumn of the same year. The Note to the Reader in Q shows that the Dialogue had been restrained before _Poetaster_ itself appeared in 1602. Probably it was spoken in December between the two S. R. entries. Hart (_9 N. Q._ xi. 202) assuming that the contemplated tragedy was _Sejanus_ (q.v.) put it in 1603, but this is too late.

_Sejanus. 1603_

_S. R._ 1604, Nov. 2 (Pasfield). ‘A booke called the tragedie of Seianus written by Beniamin Johnson.’ _Edward Blunt_ (Arber, iii. 273).

1605, Aug. 6. Transfer from Blount to Thomas Thorpe (Arber, iii. 297).

1610, Oct. 3. Transfer from Thorpe to Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 445).

1605. Seianus his fall. Written by Ben: Ionson. _G. Eld for Thomas Thorpe._ [Epistle to Readers, signed ‘Ben. Jonson’; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘Georgius Chapmannus’, ‘Hugh Holland’, ‘Cygnus’, ‘Th. R.’, ‘Johannes Marstonius’, ‘William Strachey’, ‘ΦΙΛΟΣ’, ‘Ev. B.’; Argument.]

1616. Seianus his Fall. A Tragœdie. Acted, in the yeere 1603. By the K. Maiesties Servants. The Author B. I. _William Stansby._ [Part of F_{1}. Epistle to Esmé, Lord Aubigny, signed ‘Ben. Ionson’. After text: ‘This Tragœdie was first acted, in the yeere 1603. By the Kings Maiesties Servants. The principall Tragœdians were, Ric. Burbadge, Will. Shake-Speare, Aug. Philips, Ioh. Hemings, Will. Sly, Hen. Condel, Ioh. Lowin, Alex. Cooke. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

_Editions_ by W. D. Briggs (1911, _B. L._) and W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._).--_Dissertations_: B. Nicholson, _Shakespeare not the Part-Author of B. J.’s S._ (1874, _Acad._ ii. 536); W. A. Henderson, _Shakespeare and S._ (1894, _8 N. Q._ v. 502).

As the theatres were probably closed from Elizabeth’s death to March 1604, the production may have been at Court in the autumn or winter of 1603, although, if _Sejanus_ is the something ‘high, and aloofe’ contemplated at the end of the Apologetical Dialogue to _Poetaster_ (q.v.), it must have been in Jonson’s mind since 1601. The epistle to Aubigny admits the ‘violence’ which the play received in public, and ‘Ev. B.’s’ verses indicate that this ‘beastly rage’ was at the Globe. Marston’s verses were presumably written before his renewed quarrel with Jonson over _Eastward Ho!_ (q.v.), and there appears to be an unkindly reference to _Sejanus_ in the epistle to his _Sophonisba_ (1606). But either _Eastward Ho!_ or something else caused publication to be delayed for nearly a year after the S. R. entry, since Chapman’s verses contain a compliment to the Earl of Suffolk,

Who when our Hearde came not to drink, but trouble The Muses waters, did a Wall importune, (Midst of assaults) about their sacred River,

which seems to refer to his share in freeing Jonson and Chapman from prison about Sept. or Oct. 1605. Chapman also has compliments to the Earls of Northampton and Northumberland. It must therefore be to a later date that Jonson referred, when he told Drummond (Laing, 22) that ‘Northampton was his mortall enimie for beating, on a St. George’s day, one of his attenders; He was called before the Councell for his Sejanus, and accused both of poperie and treason by him’. Fleay, i. 372, suggests that the reference at the end of the Q version of the Argument to treason against princes, ‘for guard of whose piety and vertue, the _Angels_ are in continuall watch, and _God_ himselfe miraculously working’, implies publication after the discovery of the Plot. On the other hand, one would have expected Chapman’s reference to Northumberland, if not already printed, to be suppressed, in view of the almost immediate suspicion of a connexion with the Plot that fell upon him. Castelain, 907, considers, and rightly rejects, another suggestion by Fleay that _Sejanus_ and not _Eastward Ho!_ was the cause of the imprisonment of Jonson and Chapman in 1605. Fleay supposed that Chapman was the collaborator of whom Jonson wrote in the Q epistle, ‘I would informe you, that this Booke, in all numbers, is not the same with that which was acted on the publike Stage, wherein a second pen had good share; in place of which I have rather chosen, to put weaker (and no doubt lesse pleasing) of mine own, then to defraud so happy a _Genius_ of his right, by my lothed usurpation’. Shakespeare also has been guessed at. If Jonson’s language was seriously meant, there were not, of course, many contemporaries of whom he would have so spoken. Probably the problem is insoluble, as the subject-matter of it has disappeared. It is difficult to believe that the collaborator was Samuel Sheppard, who in his _The Times Displayed in Six Sestyads_ (1646) claims to have ‘dictated to’ Ben Jonson ‘when as Sejanus’ fall he writ’. Perhaps he means ‘been amanuensis to’.

_Eastward Ho!_ (_1605_)

_With_ Chapman (q.v.) _and_ Marston.

_Volpone_ or _The Fox. 1606_

[_MS._] J. S. Farmer (_Introd._ to _Believe As You List_ in _T. F. T._) states that a holograph MS. is extant. He may have heard of a modern text by L. H. Holt, used by J. D. Rea. If so, App. N is in error.

_S. R._ 1610, Oct. 3. Transfer from Thomas Thorpe to Walter Burre of ‘2 bookes the one called, Seianus his fall, the other, Vulpone or the ffoxe’ (Arber, iii. 445).

1607. Ben: Ionson his Volpone Or The Foxe. _For Thomas Thorpe._ [Dedicatory epistle by ‘Ben. Ionson’ to the two Universities, dated ‘From my House in the Black Friars, the 11^{th} day of February, 1607’; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘I. D[onne]’, ‘E. Bolton’, ‘F[rancis] B[eaumont]’, ‘T. R.’, ‘D. D.’, ‘I. C.’, ‘G. C.’, ‘E. S.’, ‘I. F.’; Argument; Prologue and Epilogue.]

1616. Volpone, or The Foxe. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1605. By the K. Maiesties Servants. The Author B. I. _William Stansby._ [Part of F_{1}. After text: ‘This Comoedie was first acted, in the yeere 1605. By the Kings Maiesties Servants. The principall Comœdians were, Ric. Burbadge, Ioh. Hemings, Hen. Condel, Ioh. Lowin, Will. Sly, Alex. Cooke. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

_Editions_ by W. Scott (1811, _M. B. D._ iii) in _O. E. D._ (1830, i) and by H. B. Wilkins (1906), W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._), J. D. Rea (1919, _Yale Studies_).--_Dissertations_: F. Holthausen, _Die Quelle von B. J.’s V._ (1889, _Anglia_, xii. 519); J. Q. Adams, _The Sources of B. J.’s V._ (1904, _M. P._ ii. 289); L. H. Holt, _Notes on J.’s V._ (1905, _M. L. N._ xx. 63).

Jonson dates the production 1605, and the uncertainty as to the style he used leaves it possible that this may cover the earlier part of 1606. Fleay, i. 373, attempts to get nearer with the help of the news from London brought to Venice by Peregrine in II. i. Some of this does not help us much. The baboons had probably been in London as early as 1603 at least (cf. s.v. _Sir Giles Goosecap_). The Tower lioness had a whelp on 5 Aug. 1604, another on 26 Feb. 1605, and two more on 27 July 1605 (Stowe, ed. 1615, 844, 857, 870). The ‘another whelp’ of _Volpone_ would suggest Feb.–July 1605. On the other hand, the whale at Woolwich is recorded by Stowe, 880, a few days after the porpoise at West Ham (not ‘above the bridge’ as in _Volpone_) on 19 Jan. 1606. Holt argues from this that, as Peregrine left England seven weeks before, the play must have been produced in March 1606, but this identification of actual and dramatic time can hardly be taken for granted. There are also allusions to meteors at Berwick and a new star, both in 1604, and to the building of a raven in a royal ship and the death of Stone the fool, which have not been dated and might help. Gawdy, 146, writes on 18 June 1604 that ‘Stone was knighted last weeke, I meane not Stone the foole, but Stone of Cheapsyde’. Stone the fool was whipped about March, 1605 (Winwood, ii. 52). The suggested allusion to _Volpone_ in Day’s _Isle of Gulls_ (q.v.) of Feb. 1606 is rather dubious. The ambiguity of style must also leave us uncertain whether Q and its dedication belong to 1607 or 1608, and therefore whether ‘their love and acceptance shewn to his poeme in the presentation’ by the Universities was in 1606 or 1607. This epistle contains a justification of Jonson’s comic method. He has had to undergo the ‘imputation of sharpnesse’, but has never provoked a ‘nation, societie, or generall order, or state’, or any ‘publique person’. Nor has he been ‘particular’ or ‘personall’, except to ‘a mimick, cheater, bawd, or buffon, creatures (for their insolencies) worthy to be tax’d’. But that he has not wholly forgotten the _Poetomachia_ is clear from a reference to the ‘petulant stiles’ of other poets, while in the prologue he recalls the old criticism that he was a year about each play, and asserts that he wrote _Volpone_ in five weeks. The commendatory verses suggest that the play was successful. Fleay’s theory that it is referred to in the epilogue to the anonymous _Mucedorus_ (q.v.), as having given offence, will not bear analysis. The passage in III. iv about English borrowings from Guarini and Montaigne is too general in its application to be construed as a specific attack on Daniel. But the gossip of Aubrey, ii. 246, on Thomas Sutton, the founder of the Charterhouse, relates that ‘’Twas from him that B. Johnson took his hint of the fox, and by Seigneur Volpone is meant Sutton’.

_Epicoene. 1609_

_S. R._ 1610, Sept. 20 (Buck). ‘A booke called, Epicoene or the silent woman by Ben Johnson.’ _John Browne and John Busby_ (Arber, iii. 444).

1612, Sept. 28. Transfer from Browne to Walter Burre (Arber, iii. 498).

1609, 1612. Prints of both dates are cited, but neither is now traceable. The former, in view of the S. R. date, can hardly have existed; the latter appears to have been seen by Gifford, and for it the commendatory verses by Beaumont, found at the beginning of F_{1}, were probably written.

1616. Epicoene, Or The silent Woman. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1609. By the Children of her Maiesties Revells. The Author B. I. _W. Stansby._ [Part of F_{1}. Epistle to Sir Francis Stuart, signed ‘Ben. Ionson’; Two Prologues, the second ‘Occasion’d by some persons impertinent exception’; after text: ‘This Comœdie was first acted, in the yeere 1609. By the Children of her Maiesties Revells. The principall Comœdians were, Nat. Field, Will. Barksted, Gil. Carie, Will. Pen, Hug. Attawel, Ric. Allin, Ioh. Smith, Ioh. Blaney. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

1620. _William Stansby, sold by John Browne._

_Editions_ in _O. E. D._ (1830, iii) and by A. Henry (1906, _Yale Studies_, xxxi) and C. M. Gayley (1913, _R. E. C._ ii).

The first prologue speaks of the play as fit for ‘your men, and daughters of _white-Friars’_, and at Whitefriars the play was probably produced by the Revels children, either at the end of 1609, or, if Jonson’s chronology permits, early in 1610. Jonson told Drummond (Laing, 41) that, ‘When his play of a Silent Woman was first acted, ther was found verses after on the stage against him, concluding that that play was well named the Silent Woman, ther was never one man to say _Plaudite_ to it’. Fleay, i. 374, suggests an equation between Sir John Daw and Sir John Harington. In I. i. 86 Clerimont says of Lady Haughty, the President of the Collegiates, ‘A poxe of her autumnall face, her peec’d beautie’. I hope that this was not, as suggested by H. J. C. Grierson, _Poems of Donne_, ii. 63, a hit at Lady Danvers, on whom Donne wrote (Elegy ix):

No _Spring_, nor _Summer_ Beauty hath such grace, As I have seen in one _Autumnall_ face.

In any case, I do not suppose that these are the passages which led to the ‘exception’ necessitating the second prologue. This ends with the lines:

If any, yet, will (with particular slight Of application) wrest what he doth write; And that he meant or him, or her, will say: They make a libell, which he made a play.

Jonson evidently refers to the same matter in the Epistle, where he says: ‘There is not a line, or syllable in it changed from the simplicity of the first copy. And, when you shall consider, through the certaine hatred of some, how much a mans innocency may bee indanger’d by an vn-certaine accusation; you will, I doubt not, so beginne to hate the iniquitie of such natures, as I shall loue the contumely done me, whose end was so honorable, as to be wip’d off by your sentence.’ I think the explanation is to be found in a dispatch of the Venetian ambassador on 8 Feb. 1610 (_V. P._ xi. 427), who reports that Lady Arabella Stuart ‘complains that in a certain comedy the playwright introduced an allusion to her person and the part played by the Prince of Moldavia. The play was suppressed.’ The reference may be to V. i. 17 of the play:

_La Foole._ He [_Daw_] has his boxe of instruments ... to draw maps of euery place, and person, where he comes.

_Clerimont._ How, maps of persons!

_La Foole._ Yes, sir, of Nomentack, when he was here, and of the Prince of _Moldauia_, and of his mistris, mistris _Epicoene_.

_Clerimont._ Away! he has not found out her latitude, I hope.

The Prince of Moldavia visited London in 1607 and is said to have been a suitor for Arabella, but if Jonson’s text is really not ‘changed from the simplicity of the first copy’, it is clear that Arabella misunderstood it, since Epicoene was Daw’s mistress.

_The Alchemist. 1610_

_S. R._ 1610, Oct. 3 (Buck). ‘A Comoedy called The Alchymist made by Ben: Johnson.’ _Walter Burre_ (Arber, iii. 445).

1612. The Alchemist. Written by Ben Ionson. _Thomas Snodham for Walter Burre, sold by John Stepneth._ [Epistles to Lady Wroth, signed ‘Ben. Jonson’ and to the Reader; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘George Lucy’; Argument and Prologue.]

1616. The Alchemist. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1610. By the Kings Maiesties Seruants. The author B. I. _W. Stansby._ [Part of F_{1}. After text: ‘This Comoedie was first acted, in the yeere 1610. By the Kings Maiesties Servants. The principall Comœdians were, Ric. Burbadge, Ioh. Hemings, Ioh. Lowin, Will. Ostler, Hen. Condel, Ioh. Vnderwood, Alex. Cooke, Nic. Tooley, Rob. Armin, Will. Eglestone. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.’]

_Editions_ by W. Scott (1811, _M. B. D._ iii), C. M. Hathaway (1903, _Yale Studies_, xvii), H. C. Hart (1903, _King’s Library_), F. E. Schelling (1903, _B. L._), W. A. Neilson (1911, _C. E. D._), G. A. Smithson (1913, _R. E. C._).

Jonson’s date is confirmed by the references in II. vi. 31 and IV. iv. 29 to the age of Dame Pliant, who is 19 and was born in 1591. In view of the S. R. entry, one would take the production to have fallen in the earlier half of the year, before the plague reached forty deaths, which it did from 12 July to 29 Nov. The action is set in plague-time, but obviously the experience of 1609 and early years might suggest this. Fleay, i. 375, and others following him argue that the action of the play is confined to one day, that this is fixed by V. v. 102 to ‘the second day of the fourth week in the eighth month’, and that this must be 24 October. They are not deterred by the discrepancy of this with III. ii. 129, which gives only a fifteen-days interval before ‘the second day, of the third weeke, in the ninth month’, i. e. on their principles 17 November. And they get over the S.R. entry by assuming that Jonson planned to stage the play on 24 October and then, finding early in October that the plague continued, decided to publish it at once. This seems to me extraordinarily thin, in the absence of clearer knowledge as to the system of chronology employed by Ananias of Amsterdam. Aubrey, i. 213, says that John Dee ‘used to distill egge-shells, and ’twas from hence that Ben Johnson had his hint of the alkimist, whom he meant’. The play was given by the King’s men at Court during 1612–13.

_Catiline his Conspiracy. 1611_

1611. Catiline his Conspiracy. Written by Ben: Ionson. _For Walter Burre._ [Epistles to William Earl of Pembroke, and to the Reader, both signed ‘Ben. Jonson’; Commendatory Verses, signed ‘Franc: Beaumont’, ‘John Fletcher’, ‘Nat. Field’.]

1616. Catiline his Conspiracy. A Tragoedie. Acted in the yeere 1611. By the Kings Maiesties Seruants. The Author B. I. _William Stansby._ [Part of F_{1}. After text: ‘This Tragœdie was first Acted, in the yeere 1611. By the Kings Maiesties Servants. The principall Tragœdians were, Ric. Burbadge, Ioh. Hemings, Alex. Cooke, Hen. Condel, Ioh. Lowin, Ioh. Underwood, Wil. Ostler, Nic. Tooly, Ric. Robinson, Wil. Eglestone.’]

1635.... ‘now Acted by his Maiesties Servants’.... _N. Okes for I. S._

_Edition_ by L. H. Harris (1916, _Yale Studies_, liii).--_Dissertation_: A. Vogt, _B. J.’s Tragödie C. und ihre Quellen_ (1905, _Halle diss._).

_Bartholomew Fair. 1614_

1631. Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedie, Acted in the Yeare, 1614. By the Lady Elizabeths Seruants. And then dedicated to King Iames of most Blessed Memorie; By the Author, Beniamin Iohnson. _I. B. for Robert Allot._ [Part of F_{2}. Prologue to the King; Induction; Epilogue. Jonson wrote (n.d.) to the Earl of Newcastle (_Harl. MS._ 4955, quoted in Gifford’s memoir and by Brinsley Nicholson in _4 N. Q._ v. 574): ‘It is the lewd printer’s fault that I can send ... no more of my book. I sent you one piece before, The Fair, ... and now I send you this other morsel, The fine gentleman that walks the town, The Fiend; but before he will perfect the rest I fear he will come himself to be a part under the title of The Absolute Knave, which he hath played with me.’]

_Edition_ by C. S. Alden (1904, _Yale Studies_, xxv).--_Dissertation_: C. R. Baskervill, _Some Parallels to B. F._ (1908, _M. P._ vi. 109).

No dedication to James, other than the prologue and epilogue, appears to be preserved, but Aubrey, ii. 14, says that ‘King James made him write against the Puritans, who began to be troublesome in his time’. The play was given at Court on 1 Nov. 1614 (App. B), and a mock indenture between the author and the spectators at the Hope, on 31 Oct. 1614, is recited in the Induction and presumably fixes the date of production. One must not therefore assume that a ballad of _Rome for Company in Bartholomew Faire_, registered on 22 Oct. 1614 (Arber, iii. 554), was aimed at Jonson. Greg, _Henslowe Papers_, 78, follows Malone and Fleay, i. 80, in inferring from a mention of a forthcoming ‘Johnsons play’ in a letter of 13 Nov. 1613 from Daborne to Henslowe that the production may have been intended for 1613, but I think that Daborne refers to the revival of _Eastward Ho!_ The Induction describes the locality of the Hope as ‘being as durty as _Smithfield_, and as stinking euery whit’, and possibly glances at the _Winter’s Tale_ and _Tempest_ in disclaiming the introduction of ‘a _Seruant-monster_’ and ‘a nest of _Antiques_’, since the author is ‘loth to make Nature afraid in his _Playes_, like those that beget _Tales_, _Tempests_, and such like _Drolleries_’. There is no actor-list, but in V. iii ‘Your best _Actor_. Your _Field_?’ is referred to on a level with ‘your _Burbage_’. Similarly the puppet Leander is said to shake his head ‘like an hostler’ and it is declared that ‘one _Taylor_, would goe neere to beat all this company, with a hand bound behinde him’. Field and Taylor were both of the Lady Elizabeth’s men in 1614, while the allusion to Ostler of the King’s men is apparently satirical. The suggestion of Ordish, 225, that Taylor is the water poet, who had recently appeared on the Hope stage, is less probable. The ‘word out of the play, _Palemon_’ (IV. iii) is set against another, _Argalus_ ‘out of the _Arcadia_’, and might therefore, as Fleay, i. 377, thinks, refer to Daniel’s _Queen’s Arcadia_ (1605), but the Palamon of _T. N. K._ was probably quite recent. I see no reason to accept Fleay’s identification of Littlewit with Daniel; that of Lanthorn Leatherhead with Inigo Jones is more plausible. Gifford suggested that the burlesque puppet-play of Damon and Pythias in V. iv may have been retrieved by Jonson from earlier work, perhaps for the real puppet-stage, since ‘Old Cole’ is a character, and in _Satiromastix_ Horace is called ‘puppet-teacher’ (1980) and in another passage (607) ‘olde Coale’, and told that Crispinus and Demetrius ‘shal be thy Damons and thou their Pithyasse’.

_The Devil Is An Ass 1616_

1631. The Diuell is an Asse: A Comedie Acted in the yeare, 1616. By His Maiesties Seruants. The Author Ben: Ionson. _I. B. for Robert Allot._ [Part of F_{2}. Prologue and Epilogue. The play is referred to in Jonson’s letter to the Earl of Newcastle, quoted under _Bartholomew Fair_.]

1641. _Imprinted at London._

_Edition_ by W. S. Johnson (1905, _Yale Studies_, xxix).--_Dissertation_: E. Holstein, _Verhältnis von B. J.’s D. A. und John Wilson’s Belphegor zu Machiavelli’s Novelle vom Belfagor_ (1901).

In the play itself are introduced references to a performance of _The Devil_ as a new play, to its playbill, to the Blackfriars as the house, and to Dick Robinson as a player of female parts (I. iv. 43; vi. 31; II. viii. 64; III. v. 38). Probably the production was towards the end rather than the beginning of 1616.

_Lost Plays_

I do not feel able to accept the view, expounded by Fleay, i. 370, 386, and adopted by some later writers, that _A Tale of a Tub_, licensed by Herbert on 7 May 1633, was only a revision of one of Jonson’s Elizabethan plays. It appears to rest almost wholly upon references to a ‘queen’. These are purely dramatic, and part of an attempt to give the action an old-fashioned setting. The queen intended is not Elizabeth, but Mary. There are also references to ‘last King Harry’s time’ (I. ii), ‘King Edward, our late liege and sovereign lord’ (I. v). A character says, ‘He was King Harry’s doctor and my god-phere’ (IV. i). The priest is ‘Canon’ or ‘Sir’ Hugh, and has a ‘Latin tongue’ (III. vii). ‘Old John Heywood’ is alive (V. ii).

In 1619 Jonson told Drummond (Laing, 27) ‘That the half of his Comedies were not in print’. The unprinted ones of course included _Bartholomew Fair_ and _The Devil is an Ass_. He went on to describe ‘a pastorall intitled The May Lord’, in which he figured himself as Alkin. As it had a ‘first storie’, it may not have been dramatic. But Alkin appears in _The Sad Shepherd_, a fragment of a dramatic pastoral, printed in F_{2} with a prologue in which Jonson describes himself as ‘He that hath feasted you these forty yeares’, and which therefore cannot have been written long before his death in 1637. This is edited by W. W. Greg (1905, _Materialien_, xi) with an elaborate discussion in which he arrives at the sound conclusions that the theory of its substantial identity with _The May Lord_ must be rejected, and that there is no definite evidence to oppose to the apparent indication of its date in the prologue.

It is doubtful whether any of Jonson’s early work for Pembroke’s and the Admiral’s, except perhaps _The Case is Altered_, ever found its way into print. The record of all the following plays, except the first, is in Henslowe’s diary (cf. Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 288).

(_a_) _The Isle of Dogs._

See s.v. Nashe.

(_b_) On 3 Dec. 1597 he received £1 ‘vpon a boocke w^{ch} he showed the plotte vnto the company w^{ch} he promysed to dd vnto the company at crysmas’. It is just possible that this was _Dido and Aeneas_, produced by the Admiral’s on 8 Jan. 1598. But no further payment to Jonson is recorded, and it is more likely that _Dido and Aeneas_ was taken over from Pembroke’s repertory; and it may be that Jonson had not carried out his contract before the fray with Spencer in Sept. 1598, and that this is the ‘Bengemens plotte’ on which Chapman was writing a tragedy on the following 23 Oct. The theory that it is the _Fall of Mortimer_, still little more than a plot when Jonson died, may safely be rejected (Henslowe, ii. 188, 199, 224).

(_c_) _Hot Anger Soon Cold._

Written with Chettle and Porter in Aug. 1598 (Henslowe, ii. 196).

(_d_) _Page of Plymouth._

Written with Dekker in Aug. and Sept. 1599 (Henslowe, ii. 205).

(_e_) _Robert the Second, King of Scots._

A tragedy, written with Chettle, Dekker, ‘& other Jentellman’ (probably Marston) in Sept. 1599 (Henslowe, ii. 205).

(_f_) Additions to _Jeronimo_.

See s.v. Kyd, _Spanish Tragedy_.

(_g_) _Richard Crookback._

For this Jonson received a sum ‘in earnest’ on 22 June 1602, but it is not certain that it was ever finished (Henslowe, ii, 222).

_Doubtful Plays_

Jonson’s hand has been sought in _The Captain_ of the Beaumont (q.v.) and Fletcher series, and the anonymous _Puritan_ (cf. ch. xxiv).

MASKS

_Mask of Blackness. 6 Jan. 1605_

[_MS._] _Brit. Mus. Royal MS._ 17 B. xxxi. [‘The Twelvth Nights Reuells.’ Not holograph, but signed ‘Hos ego versiculos feci. Ben. Jonson.’ A shorter text than that of the printed descriptions, in present tense, as for a programme.]

_S. R._ 1608, April 21 (Buck). ‘The Characters of Twoo Royall Maskes. Invented by Ben. Johnson.’ _Thomas Thorpe_ (Arber, iii. 375).

N.D. The Characters of Two royall Masques. The one of Blacknesse, The other of Beautie. personated By the most magnificent of Queenes Anne Queene of Great Britaine, &c. With her honorable Ladyes, 1605. and 1608. at Whitehall: and Inuented by Ben: Ionson. _For Thomas Thorp._

1616. The Queenes Masques. The first, Of Blacknesse: Personated at the Court, at White-Hall, on the Twelu’th night, 1605. [Part of F_{1}.]

_Edition_ in J. P. Collier, _Five Court Masques_ (1848, _Sh. Soc._ from MS.).

The maskers, in azure and silver, were twelve nymphs, ‘negroes and the daughters of Niger’; the torchbearers, in sea-green, Oceaniae; the presenters Oceanus, Niger, and Aethiopia the Moon; the musicians Tritons, Sea-maids, and Echoes.

The locality was the old Elizabethan banqueting-house at Whitehall (Carleton; Office of Works). The curtain represented a ‘landtschap’ of woods with hunting scenes, ‘which falling’, according to the Quarto, ‘an artificial sea was seen to shoot forth’. The MS. describes the landscape as ‘drawne uppon a downe right cloth, strayned for the scene, ... which openinge in manner of a curtine’, the sea shoots forth. On the sea were the maskers in a concave shell, and the torchbearers borne by sea-monsters.

The maskers, on landing, presented their fans. They gave ‘their own single dance’, and then made ‘choice of their men’ for ‘several measures and corantoes’. A final dance took them back to their shell.

This was a Queen’s mask, danced by the Queen, the Countesses of Bedford, Derby, and Suffolk, the Ladies Rich, Bevill, Howard of Effingham, Wroth, and Walsingham, Lady Elizabeth Howard, Anne Lady Herbert, and Susan Lady Herbert. The ‘bodily part’ was the ‘design and act’ of Inigo Jones.

Sir Thomas Edmondes told Lord Shrewsbury on 5 Dec. that the mask was to cost the Exchequer £3,000 (Lodge, iii. 114). The same sum was stated by Chamberlain to Winwood on 18 Dec. to have been ‘delivered a month ago’ (Winwood, ii. 41). Molin (_V. P._ x. 201) reported the amount on 19 Dec. as 25,000 crowns. On 12 Dec. John Packer wrote to Winwood of the preparations, and after naming some of the maskers added, ‘The Lady of Northumberland is excused by sickness, Lady Hartford by the measles. Lady of Nottingham hath the polypus in her nostril, which some fear must be cut off. The Lady Hatton would feign have had a part, but some unknown reason kept her out’ (Winwood, ii. 39). The performance was described by Carleton to Winwood, as following the creation of Prince Charles as Duke of York on 6 Jan. (Winwood, ii. 44): ‘At night we had the Queen’s maske in the Banquetting-House, or rather her pagent. There was a great engine at the lower end of the room, which had motion, and in it were the images of sea-horses with other terrible fishes, which were ridden by Moors: The indecorum was, that there was all fish and no water. At the further end was a great shell in form of a skallop, wherein were four seats; on the lowest sat the Queen with my Lady Bedford; on the rest were placed the Ladies Suffolk, Darby, Rich, Effingham, Ann Herbert, Susan Herbert, Elizabeth Howard, Walsingham, and Bevil. Their apparell was rich, but too light and curtizan-like for such great ones. Instead of vizzards, their faces, and arms up to the elbows, were painted black, which was disguise sufficient, for they were hard to be known; but it became them nothing so well as their red and white, and you cannot imagine a more ugly sight, then a troop of lean-cheek’d Moors. The Spanish and Venetian ambassadors were both present, and sate by the King in state, at which Monsieur Beaumont quarrells so extreamly, that he saith the whole court is Spanish. But by his favour, he should fall out with none but himself, for they were all indifferently invited to come as private men, to a private sport; which he refusing, the Spanish ambassador willingly accepted, and being there, seeing no cause to the contrary, he put off Don Taxis, and took upon him El Señor Embaxadour, wherein he outstript our little Monsieur. He was ... taken out to dance, and footed it like a lusty old gallant with his country woman. He took out the Queen, and forgot not to kiss her hand, though there was danger it would have left a mark on his lips. The night’s work was concluded with a banquet in the great Chamber, which was so furiously assaulted, that down went table and tressels before one bit was touched.’ Carleton gives some additional information in another account, which he sent to Chamberlain on 7 Jan. (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xii. 6, quoted by Sullivan, 28), as that the ‘black faces and hands, which were painted and bare up to the elbowes, was a very lothsome sight’, and he was ‘sory that strangers should see owr court so strangely disguised’; that ‘the confusion in getting in was so great, that some Ladies lie by it and complain of the fury of the white stafes’; that ‘in the passages through the galleries they were shutt up in several heapes betwixt dores and there stayed till all was ended’; and that there were losses ‘of chaynes, jewels, purces and such like loose ware’. References in letters to one Benson and by the Earl of Errol to Cecil (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xii. 16; xix. 25) add nothing material. Carleton’s account of the triumph of the Spanish ambassador is confirmed by reports of the Venetian (_V. P._ x. 212) and French (_B. M. King’s MS._ cxxvii, ff. 117, 127^v, 177^v; cf. Sullivan, 196–8) ambassadors. Beaumont had pleaded illness in order to avoid attending a mask on 27 Dec. 1604 in private, and the Court chose to assume that he was still ill on 6 Jan. This gave De Taxis and Molin an opening to get their private invitations converted into public ones. Beaumont lost his temper and accused Sir Lewis Lewknor and other officials of intriguing against him, but he had to accept his defeat.

The Accounts of the Master of the Revels (Cunningham, 204) record ‘The Queens Ma^{tis} Maske of Moures with Aleven Laydies of honnour’ as given on 6 Jan. Reyher, 358, 520, notes references to the mask in accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber and of the Office of Works, and quotes from the latter items for ‘framinge and settinge vpp of a great stage in the banquettinge house xl foote square and iiij^{or} foote in heighte with wheeles to goe on ... framinge and settinge vpp an other stage’.

Many of the notices of the Queen’s mask also refer to another mask which was performed ‘among the noblemen and gentlemen’ (Lodge, iii. 114) on 27 Dec. 1604, at the wedding of Sir Philip Herbert and Lady Susan Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford. The bride was herself a dancer in the Queen’s mask. The wedding mask, the subject of which was Juno and Hymenaeus, is unfortunately lost. The Revels Accounts (Cunningham, 204) tell us that it was ‘presented by the Earl of Pembroke, the Lord Willowbie and 6 Knightes more of the Court’, and Stowe’s _Chronicle_, 856, briefly records ‘braue Masks of the most noble ladies’. Carleton gave Winwood details of the wedding, and said (Winwood, ii. 43): ‘At night there was a mask in the Hall, which for conceit and fashion was suitable to the occasion. The actors were the Earle of Pembrook, the Lord Willoby, Sir Samuel [James?] Hays, Sir Thomas Germain, Sir Robert Cary, Sir John Lee, Sir Richard Preston, and Sir Thomas Bager. There was no smal loss that night of chaines and jewells, and many great ladies were made shorter by the skirts, and were well enough served that they could keep cut no better.’ Carleton wrote to Chamberlain (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xii. 6, quoted by Sullivan, 25): ‘Theyre conceit was a representacion of Junoes temple at the lower end of the great hall, which was vawted and within it the maskers seated with staves of lights about them, and it was no ill shew. They were brought in by the fower seasons of the yeare and Hymeneus: which for songs and speaches was as goode as a play. Theyre apparel was rather costly then cumly; but theyr dancing full of life and variety; onely S^r Tho: Germain had lead in his heales and sometimes forgott what he was doing.’ There was a diplomatic contretemps on this occasion. At the wedding dinner the Venetian ambassador Molin was given precedence of the Queen’s brother, the Duke of Holstein, to the annoyance of the latter. But after dinner Molin was led to a closet and forgotten there until supper was already begun. Meanwhile the Duke took his place. There was a personal apology from the King, and at the mask Molin was given a stool in the royal box to the right of the King, and the Duke one to the left of the Queen. He preferred to stand for three hours rather than make use of it (Winwood, ii. 43; Sullivan, 25; _V. P._ x. 206).

Carleton wrote to Winwood (ii. 44), ‘They say the Duke of Holst will come upon us with an after reckoning, and that we shall see him on Candlemas night in a mask, as he hath shewed himself a lusty reveller all this Christmas’. But if this mask ever took place, nothing is known of it.

_Hymenaei. 5 Jan. 1606_

1606. Hymenaei: or The Solemnities of Masque, and Barriers, Magnificently performed on the eleventh, and twelfth Nights, from Christmas; At Court: To the auspicious celebrating of the Marriage-vnion, betweene Robert, Earle of Essex, and the Lady Frances, second Daughter to the most noble Earle of Suffolke. By Ben: Ionson. _Valentine Sims for Thomas Thorp._

1616. Hymenaei, or The solemnities of Masque and Barriers at a Marriage. [Part of F_{1}.]

This was a double mask of eight men and eight women. The men, in carnation cloth of silver, with variously coloured mantles and watchet cloth of silver bases, were Humours and Affections; the women, in white cloth of silver, with carnation and blue undergarments, the Powers of Juno; the presenters Hymen, with a bride, bridegroom, and bridal train, Reason, and Order; the musicians the Hours.

The locality was probably the Elizabethan banqueting-house, which seems to have been repaired in 1604 (Reyher, 340). ‘The scene being drawn’ discovered first an altar for Hymen and ‘a microcosm or globe’, which turned and disclosed the men maskers in a ‘mine’ or ‘grot’. On either side of the globe stood great statues of Hercules and Atlas. They bore up the ‘upper part of the scene’, representing clouds, which opened to disclose the upper regions, whence the women descended on _nimbi_.

Each set of maskers had a dance at entry. They then danced together a measure with strains ‘all notably different, some of them formed into letters very signifying to the name of the bridegroom’. This done, they ‘dissolved’ and took forth others for measures, galliards, and corantoes. After these ‘intermixed dances’ came ‘their last dances’, and they departed in a bridal procession with an epithalamion.

The mask was in honour of the wedding of the Earl of Essex and Frances Howard, daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, and was probably given by their friends. The only Household expenses appear to have been for the making ready of the room (Reyher, 520), but Lady Rutland’s share seems to have cost the Earl over £100 (_Hist. MSS. Rutland Accounts_, iv. 457). The dancers were the Countesses of Montgomery, Bedford, and Rutland, the Ladies Knollys, Berkeley, Dorothy Hastings, and Blanch Somerset, and Mrs. A. Sackville, with the Earls of Montgomery and Arundel, Lords Willoughby and Howard de Walden, Sir James Hay, Sir Thomas Howard, Sir Thomas Somerset, and Sir John Ashley. The ‘design and act’ and the device of the costumes were by Inigo Jones, the songs by Alphonso Ferrabosco, and the dances by Thomas Giles.

On the next day followed a Barriers, in which, after a dialogue by Jonson between Truth and Opinion, sixteen knights fought on the side of either disputant (cf. vol. i, p. 146).

The following account was sent by John Pory to Sir Robert Cotton on 7 Jan. (_B.M. Cotton MS. Julius_ C. iii. 301, printed in Goodman, ii. 124; Collier, i. 350; Birch, i. 42; Sullivan, 199):

‘I haue seen both the mask on Sunday and the barriers on Mundy night. The Bridegroom carried himself as grauely and gracefully as if he were of his fathers age. He had greater guiftes giuen him then my lord Montgomery had, his plate being valued at 3000£ and his jewels, mony and other guiftes at 1600£ more. But to returne to the maske; both Inigo, Ben, and the actors men and women did their partes with great commendation. The conceite or soule of the mask was Hymen bringing in a bride and Juno pronuba’s priest a bridegroom, proclaiming those two should be sacrificed to nuptial vnion, and here the poet made an apostrophe to the vnion of the kingdoms. But before the sacrifice could be performed, Ben Jonson turned the globe of the earth standing behind the altar, and within the concaue sate the 8 men maskers representing the 4 humours and the fower affections which leapt forth to disturb the sacrifice to vnion; but amidst their fury Reason that sate aboue them all, crowned with burning tapers, came down and silenced them. These eight together with Reason their moderatresse mounted aboue their heades, sate somewhat like the ladies in the scallop shell the last year. Aboue the globe of erth houered a middle region of cloudes in the center wherof stood a grand consort of musicians, and vpon the cantons or hornes sate the ladies 4 at one corner, and 4 at another, who descended vpon the stage, not after the stale downright perpendicular fashion, like a bucket into a well; but came gently sloping down. These eight, after the sacrifice was ended, represented the 8 nuptial powers of Juno pronuba who came downe to confirme the vnion. The men were clad in crimzon and the weomen in white. They had euery one a white plume of the richest herons fethers, and were so rich in jewels vpon their heades as was most glorious. I think they hired and borrowed all the principal jewels and ropes of perle both in court and citty. The Spanish ambassador seemed but poore to the meanest of them. They danced all variety of dances, both seuerally and promiscue; and then the women took in men as namely the Prince (who danced with as great perfection and as setled a maiesty as could be deuised) the Spanish ambassador, the Archdukes, Ambassador, the Duke, etc., and the men gleaned out the Queen, the bride, and the greatest of the ladies. The second night the barriers were as well performed by fifteen against fifteen; the Duke of Lennox being chieftain on the one side, and my Lord of Sussex on the other.’

_Mask of Beauty. 10 Jan. 1608_

_S. R._ 1608, 21 April. [See _Mask of Blackness_.]

N.D. [See _Mask of Blackness_.]

1616. The Second Masque. Which was of Beautie; Was presented in the same Court, at White-Hall, on the Sunday night after the Twelfth Night. 1608. [Part of F_{1}.] The maskers, in orange-tawny and silver and green and silver, were the twelve Daughters of Niger of the Mask of Blackness, now laved white, with four more; the torchbearers Cupids; the presenters January, Boreas, Vulturnus, Thamesis; the musicians Echoes and Shades of old Poets.

The locality was the new banqueting-house at Whitehall. January was throned in midst of the house. The curtain, representing Night, was drawn to discover the maskers on a Throne of Beauty, borne by a floating isle.

The maskers gave two dances, which were repeated at the King’s request, and then danced ‘with the lords’. They danced galliards and corantoes. They then gave a third dance, and a fourth, which took them into their throne again.

This was a Queen’s mask, danced by the Queen, Arabella Stuart, the Countesses of Arundel, Derby, Bedford, and Montgomery, and the Ladies Elizabeth Guildford, Katherine Petre, Anne Winter, Windsor, Anne Clifford, Mary Neville, Elizabeth Hatton, Elizabeth Gerard, Chichester, and Walsingham. The torchbearers were ‘chosen out of the best and ingenious youth of the Kingdom’. The scene was ‘put in act’ by the King’s master carpenter. Thomas Giles made the dances and played Thamesis.

The mask was announced by 9 Dec. (_V. P._ xi. 74). On 10 Dec. La Boderie (ii. 490) reported that it would cost 6,000 or 7,000 crowns, and that nearly all the ladies invited by the Queen to take part in it were Catholics. Anne’s preparations were in swing before 17 Dec. (_V. P._ xi. 76). On 22 Dec. La Boderie reported (iii. 6) that he had underestimated the cost, which would not be less than 30,000 crowns, and was causing much annoyance to the Privy Council. On 31 Dec. Donne (_Letters_, i. 182) intended to deliver a letter ‘when the rage of the mask is past’. Lord Arundel notes his wife’s practising early in Jan. (Lodge, App. 124). The original date was 6 Jan. ‘The Mask goes forward for Twelfth-day’, wrote Chamberlain to Carleton on 5 Jan. (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxxi. 2; Birch, i. 69), ‘though I doubt the new room will be scant ready’. But on 8 Jan. (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxxi. 4; Birch, i. 71) he wrote again:

‘We had great hopes of having you here this day, and then I would not have given my part of the mask for any of their places that shall be present, for I suppose you and your lady would find easily passage, being so befriended; for the show is put off till Sunday, by reason that all things are not ready. Whatsoever the device may be, and what success they may have in their dancing, yet you would have been sure to have seen great riches in jewels, when one lady, and that under a baroness, is said to be furnished far better then a hundred thousand pounds. And the Lady Arabella goes beyond her; and the queen must not come behind.’

The delay was really due to ambassadorial complications, which are reported by Giustinian (_V. P._ xi. 83, 86) and very fully by La Boderie (iii. 1–75; cf. Sullivan, 35, 201). The original intention was to invite the Spanish and Venetian, but not the French and Flemish ambassadors. This, according to Giustinian, offended La Boderie, because Venice was ‘the nobler company’. But the real sting lay in the invitation to Spain. This was represented to La Boderie about 23 Dec. as the personal act of Anne, in the face of a remonstrance by James on the ground of the preference already shown to Spain in 1605. La Boderie replied that he had already been slighted at the King of Denmark’s visit, that the mask was a public occasion, and that Henri would certainly hold James responsible. A few days later he was told that James was greatly annoyed at his wife’s levity, and would ask him and the Venetian ambassador to dinner; but La Boderie refused to accept this as a compliment equivalent to seeing the Queen dance, and supping with the King before 10,000 persons. He urged that both ambassadors or neither should be invited, and hinted that, if Anne was so openly Spanish in her tendencies, Henri might feel obliged to leave the mission in charge of a secretary. An offer was made to invite La Boderie’s wife, but this he naturally refused. The Council tried in vain to make Anne hear reason, but finally let the mask proceed, and countered Henri diplomatically by calling his attention to the money debts due from France to England. Meanwhile Giustinian had pressed for his own invitation in place of the Flemish ambassador, and obtained it. The Spanish and Venetian ambassadors were therefore present. La Boderie reported that much attention was paid to Giustinian, and little to the Spanish ambassador, and also that James was so angry with Anne that he left for a hunting trip the next day without seeing her. Giustinian admired the mask, which was, James told him (_V. P._ xi. 86), ‘to consecrate the birth of the Great Hall, which his predecessors had left him built merely in wood, but which he had converted into stone’. Probably this is the mask described in a letter of Lady Pembroke to Lord Shrewsbury calendared without date among letters of 1607–8 in Lodge, iii, App. 121. On 28 Jan. the Spanish ambassador invited the fifteen ladies who had danced to dinner (Lodge, iii. 223; La Boderie, iii. 81). On 29 Jan. Lord Lisle wrote to the Earl of Shrewsbury regretting that he could not send him the verses, because Ben Jonson was busy writing more for the Haddington wedding (Lodge, App. 102).

A warrant for expenses was signed 11 Dec. (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxviii). A payment was made to Bethell (Reyher, 520).

_Lord Haddington’s Mask_ [_The Hue and Cry after Cupid_]. _9 Feb. 1608_

N.D. The Description of the Masque. With the Nuptiall Songs. Celebrating the happy Marriage of Iohn, Lord Ramsey, Viscount Hadington, with the Lady Elizabeth Ratcliffe, Daughter to the right Honor: Robert, Earle of Sussex. At Court On the Shroue-Tuesday at night. 1608. Deuised by Ben: Ionson. [_No imprint._]

1616. [Part of F_{1}.] The maskers were the twelve Signs of the Zodiac in carnation and silver; the antimaskers Cupid and twelve Joci and Risus, who danced ‘with their antic faces’; the presenters Venus, the Graces and Cupid, Hymen, Vulcan and the Cyclopes; the musicians Priests of Hymen, while the Cyclopes beat time with their sledges.

Pilasters hung with amorous trophies supported gigantic figures of Triumph and Victory ‘in place of the arch, and holding a gyrlond of myrtle for the key’. The scene was a steep red cliff (Radcliffe), over which clouds broke for the issue of the chariot of Venus. After the antimasque, the cliff parted, to discover the maskers in a turning sphere of silver. The maskers gave four dances, interspersed with verses of an epithalamion. The mask was given by the maskers, seven Scottish and five English lords and gentlemen, the Duke of Lennox, the Earls of Arundel, Pembroke, and Montgomery, Lords D’Aubigny, De Walden, Hay, and Sanquhar, the Master of Mar, Sir Robert Rich, Sir John Kennedy, and Mr. Erskine. (Quarto and Lodge, iii. 223.) The ‘device and act of the scene’ were supplied by Inigo Jones, the tunes by Alphonso Ferrabosco, and two dances each by Hierome Herne and Thomas Giles, who also beat time as Cyclopes.

Rowland White told Lord Shrewsbury on 26 Jan. that the mask was ‘now the only thing thought upon at court’, and would cost the maskers about £300 a man (Lodge, iii. 223). Jonson was busy with the verses on 29 Jan. (Lodge, App. 102).

Sussex and Haddington intended to ask the French ambassador both to the wedding dinner and to the mask and banquet, but the Lord Chamberlain, having Spanish sympathies, would not consent. In the end he was asked by James himself to the mask and banquet, at which Prince Henry would preside. He accepted, and suggested that Henri should present Haddington with a ring, but this was not done. He thought the mask ‘assez maigre’, but Anne was very gracious, and James regretted that etiquette did not allow him to sit at the banquet in person. La Boderie’s wife and daughter, who danced with the Duke of York, were also present. Unfortunately he did not receive in time an instruction from Paris to keep away if the Flemish ambassador was asked, and did not protest against this invitation on his own responsibility, partly out of annoyance with the Venetian for attending the Queen’s mask without him, and partly for fear of losing his own invitation. The Fleming had had far less consideration than himself (La Boderie, iii. 75–144). So both the French and the Flemish ambassador were present, with two princes of Saxony (_V. P._ xi. 97).

English criticisms were more kindly than La Boderie’s. Sir Henry Saville described it to Sir Richard Beaumont on the same night as a ‘singular brave mask’, at which he had been until three in the morning (_Beaumont Papers_, 17), and Chamberlain wrote to Carleton on 11 Feb. (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxxi. 26; Birch, i. 72): ‘I can send you no perfect relation of the marriage nor mask on Tuesday, only they say all, but especially the motions, were well performed; as Venus, with her chariot drawn by swans, coming in a cloud to seek her son; who with his companions, Lusus, Risus, and Janus [? Jocus], and four or five more wags, were dancing a matachina, and acted it very antiquely, before the twelve signs, who were the master maskers, descended from the zodiac, and played their parts more gravely, being very gracefully attired.’

_Mask of Queens. 2 Feb. 1609_

[_MSS._] (a) _B.M. Harl. MS._ 6947, f. 143 (printed Reyher, 506). [Apparently a short descriptive analysis or programme, without the words of the dialogue and songs.]

(b) _B.M. Royal MS._ 18 A. xlv. [Holograph. Epistle to Prince Henry.]

_S. R._ 1609, Feb. 22 (Segar). ‘A booke called, The maske of Queenes Celebrated, done by Beniamin Johnson.’ _Richard Bonion and Henry Walley_ (Arber, iii. 402).

1609. The Masque of Queenes Celebrated From the House of Fame: By the most absolute in all State, And Titles. Anne, Queene of Great Britaine, &c. With her Honourable Ladies. At White-Hall, Febr. 2. 1609. Written by Ben: Ionson. _N. Okes for R. Bonian and H. Wally._ [Epistle to Prince Henry.]

1616. [Part of F_{1}.]

_Edition_ in J. P. Collier, _Five Court Masques_ (1848, _Sh. Soc._ from _Royal MS._).

Jonson prefaces that ‘because Her Majesty (best knowing that a principal part of life in these spectacles lay in their variety) had commanded me to think on some dance, or shew, that might precede hers, and have the place of a foil, or false masque: I was careful to decline, not only from others, but mine own steps in that kind, since the last year, I had an antimasque of boys; and therefore now devised that twelve women, in the habit of hags or witches, sustaining the persons of Ignorance, Suspicion, Credulity, &c., the opposites to good Fame, should fill that part, not as a masque, but as a spectacle of strangeness’ [it is called a ‘maske’ in the programme] ‘producing multiplicity of gesture, and not unaptly sorting with the current and whole fall of the device’.

The maskers, in various habits, eight designs for which are in _Sh. England_, ii. 311, were Bel-Anna and eleven other Queens, who were attended by torchbearers; the antimaskers eleven Hags and their dame Ate; the presenters Perseus or Heroic Virtue and Fame.

The locality was the new banqueting-house at Whitehall (_T. of C. Acct._, quoted by Sullivan, 54). The scene at first represented a Hell, whence the antimask issued. In the middle of a ‘magical dance’ it vanished at a blast of music, ‘and the whole face of the scene altered’, becoming the House of Fame, a ‘_machina versatilis_’, which showed first Perseus and the maskers and then Fame. Descending, the maskers made their entry in three chariots, to which the Hags were bound. They danced their first and second dances; then ‘took out the men, and danced the measures’ for nearly an hour. After an interval for a song, came their third dance, ‘graphically disposed into letters, and honouring the name of the most sweet and ingenious Prince, Charles Duke of York’. Galliards and corantoes followed, and after their ‘last dance’ they returned in their chariots to the House of Fame.

This was a Queen’s mask, danced by the Queen, the Countesses of Arundel, Derby, Huntingdon, Bedford, Essex, and Montgomery, the Viscountess Cranborne, and the Ladies Elizabeth Guildford, Anne Winter, Windsor, and Anne Clifford. Inigo Jones was responsible for the attire of the Hags, and ‘the invention and architecture of the whole scene and machine’; Alphonso Ferrabosco for the airs of the songs; Thomas Giles for the third dance, and Hierome Herne for the dance of Hags. John Allen, ‘her Majesty’s servant’, sang a ditty between the measures and the third dance.

As early as 14 Nov. Donne wrote to Sir Henry Goodyere (_Letters_, i. 199), ‘The King ... hath left with the Queen a commandment to meditate upon a masque for Christmas, so that they grow serious about that already’. The performance was originally intended for 6 Jan. (_V. P._ xi. 219), but on 10 Jan. Chamberlain wrote to Carleton (Birch, i. 87), ‘The mask at court is put off till Candlemas, as it is thought the Spaniard may be gone, for the French ambassador hath been so long and so much neglected, that it is doubted more would not be well endured’. The intrigues which determined this delay are described in the diplomatic correspondence of the French and Venetian ambassadors (La Boderie, iv. 104, 123, 136, 145, 175, 228; _V. P._ xi. 212, 219, 222, 231, 234; cf. Sullivan, 47, 212). Hints of a _rapprochement_ between France and Spain had made James anxious to conciliate Henri IV. Even Anne had learnt discretion, and desired that La Boderie should be present at the mask. He was advised by Salisbury to ask for an invitation, which he did, through his wife and Lady Bedford. He had instructions from Henri to retire from Court and leave a secretary in charge if his master’s dignity was compromised. Unfortunately the Spanish ambassador leiger was reinforced by an ambassador extraordinary, Don Fernandez de Girone, and took advantage of this to press on his side for an invitation. Etiquette gave a precedence to ambassadors extraordinary, and all that could be done was to wait until Don Fernandez was gone. This was not until 1 Feb. La Boderie was at the mask, and treated with much courtesy. He excused himself from dancing, but the Duke of York took out his daughter, and he supped with the King and the princes. He found the mask ‘fort riche, et s’il m’est loisible de le dire, plus superbe qu’ingenieux’. He also thought that of the ‘intermédes’ there were ‘trop et d’assez tristes’. The Spanish influence, however, was sufficiently strong, when exercised on behalf of Flanders, to disappoint the Venetian ambassador of a promised invitation, and La Boderie was the only diplomatic representative present. Anne asked Correr to come privately, but this he would not do, and she said she should trouble herself no more about masks.

It was at first intended to limit the cost of the mask to £1,000, but on 27 Nov. Sir Thomas Lake wrote to Salisbury that the King would allow a ‘reasonable encrease’ upon this, and had agreed that certain lords should sign and allow bills for the charges (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxxvii. 96, printed and misdated 1607 in Sullivan, 201). This duty was apparently assigned to Lord Suffolk as Lord Chamberlain and Lord Worcester as Master of the Horse, in whose names a warrant was issued on 1 Dec. (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, xxxviii. 1). The financial documents cited by Reyher, 520, suggest that the actual payments passed through the hands of Inigo Jones and Henry Reynolds. Reyher, 72, reckons the total cost at near £5,000. This seems very high. A contemporary writer, W. Ffarrington (_Chetham Soc._ xxxix. 151), gives the estimate of ‘them that had a hand in the business as “at the leaste two thousand pounde”’.

_Oberon, the Faery Prince. 1 Jan. 1611_

1616. Oberon the Faery Prince. A Masque of Prince Henries. _W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen._ [Part of F_{1}.]

The maskers were Oberon and his Knights, accompanied by the Faies, ‘some bearing lights’; the antimaskers Satyrs; the presenters Sylvans; some of the musicians Satyrs and Faies.

This was ‘a very stately maske ... in the beautifull roome at Whitehall, which roome is generally called the Banquetting-house; and the King new builded it about foure yeeres past’ (Stowe, _Annales_, 910). ‘The first face of the scene’ was a cliff, from which the antimask issued. The scene opened to discover the front of a palace, and this again, after ‘an antick dance’ ended by the crowing of the cock, to disclose ‘the nation of Faies’, with the maskers on ‘sieges’ and Oberon in a chariot drawn by two white bears. ‘The lesser Faies’ danced; then came a first and second ‘masque-dance’, then ‘measures, corantos, galliards, etc.’, and finally a ‘last dance into the work’.

This was a Prince’s mask, and clearly Henry was Oberon, but the names of the other maskers are not preserved.

Henry’s preparation for a mask is mentioned on 15 Nov. by Correr, who reports that he would have liked it to be on horseback, if James had consented (_V. P._ xii. 79), on 3 Dec. by Thomas Screven (_Rutland MSS._ iv. 211), ‘The Prince is com to St. James and prepareth for a mask’, and on 15 Dec. by John More (Winwood, iii. 239), ‘Yet doth the Prince make but one mask’.

The diplomatic tendency at this time was to detach France from growing relations from Spain, and it was intended that both the masks of the winter 1610–11 should serve to entertain the Marshal de Laverdin, expected as ambassador extraordinary from Paris for the signature of a treaty. But the Regent Marie de Médicis was not anxious to emphasize the occasion, and the Marshal did not arrive in time for the Prince’s mask, which took place on 1 Jan. ‘It looked’, says Correr, ‘as though he did not understand the honour done him by the King and the Prince.’ The Spanish and Venetian ambassadors were therefore invited, and were present. The Dutch ambassador was invited, but professed illness, to avoid complications with the Spaniard. Correr found the mask ‘very beautiful throughout, very decorative, but most remarkable for the grace of the Prince’s every movement’ (_Rutland MSS._ i. 426; _V. P._ xii. 101, 106; cf. Sullivan, 61).

None of the above notices in fact identify Henry’s mask of 1 Jan. 1611 with the undated _Oberon_, but proof is forthcoming from an Exchequer payment of May 1611 for ‘the late Princes barriers and masks’ (text in Reyher, 511) which specifies ‘the Satires and faeries’. The amount was £247 9_s._, and the items include payments to composers, musicians, and players. We learn that [Robert] Johnson and [Thomas] Giles provided the dances, and Alphonse [Ferrabosco] singers and lutenists, that the violins were Thomas Lupo the elder, Alexander Chisan, and Rowland Rubidge, and that ‘xiij^n Holt boyes’ were employed, presumably as fays. There is a sum of £15 for ‘players imployed in the maske’ and £15 more for ‘players imployed in the barriers’, about which barriers no more is known. This account, subscribed by Sir Thomas Chaloner, by no means exhausts the expense of the mask. Other financial documents (Devon, 131, 134, 136; cf. Reyher, 521) show payments of £40 each to Jonson and Inigo Jones, and £20 each to Ferrabosco, Jerome Herne, and Confess. These were from the Exchequer. An additional £16 to Inigo Jones ‘devyser for the saide maske’ fell upon Henry’s privy purse, together with heavy bills to mercers and other tradesmen, amounting to £1,076 6_s._ 10_d._ (Cunningham, viii, from _Audit Office Declared Accts._). Correr had reported on 22 Nov. that neither of the masks of this winter was to ‘be so costly as last year’s, which to say sooth was excessively costly’ (_V. P._ xii. 86). The anticipation can hardly have been fulfilled. I suppose that ‘last year’s’ means the _Tethys’ Festival_ of June 1610, as no mask during the winter of 1609–10 is traceable.

_Love Freed from Ignorance and Folly. 3 Feb. 1611_

1616. A Masque of her Maiesties. Love freed from Ignorance and Folly. _W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen._ [Part of F_{1}.]

The maskers were eleven Daughters of the Morn, led by the Queen of the Orient; the antimaskers twelve Follies or She-Fools; the presenters Cupid and Ignorance, a Sphinx; the musicians twelve Priests of the Muses, who also danced a measure, and three Graces, with others.

The locality was probably the banqueting-hall. The scene is not described. There were two ‘masque-dances’, with ‘measures and revels’ between them. This was a Queen’s mask, but the names of the maskers are not preserved.

John More wrote on 15 Dec. (Winwood, iii. 239), ‘Yet doth the Prince make but one mask, and the Queen but two, which doth cost her majesty but £600.’ Perhaps the writer was mistaken. Anne had not given more than one mask in any winter, nor is there any trace of a second in that of 1610–11. Correr, on 22 Nov., anticipates one only, not to be so costly as last year’s. It was to precede the Prince’s. It was, however, put off to Twelfth Night, and then again to Candlemas, ‘either because the stage machinery is not in order, or because their Majesties thought it well to let the Marshal depart first’. This was Marshal de Laverdin, whose departure from France as ambassador extraordinary was delayed (cf. _Mask of Oberon_). He was present at the mask when it actually took place on 3 Feb., the day after Candlemas. Apparently the Venetian ambassador was also invited. (_V. P._ xii. 86, 101, 106, 110, 115.)

Several financial documents bearing on the mask exist (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, lvii, Nov.; Devon, 135; Reyher, 509, 521), and show that the contemplated £600 was in fact exceeded. An account signed by the Earls of Suffolk and Worcester, to whom the oversight of the charges was doubtless assigned as Household officers, shows that in addition to £600 14_s._ 3_d._ spent in defraying the bills of Inigo Jones and others and in rewards, there was a further expenditure of £118 7_s._ by the Wardrobe, and even then no items are included for the dresses of the main maskers, which were probably paid for by the wearers. The rewards include £2 each to five boys who played the Graces, Sphinx, and Cupid, and £1 each to the twelve Fools. This enables us to identify Jonson’s undated mask with that of 1611. Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones had £40 each; Alphonso [Ferrabosco] £20 for the songs; [Robert] Johnson and Thomas Lupo £5 each for setting the songs to lutes and setting the dances to violins, and Confess and Bochan £50 and £20 for teaching the dances.

_Love Restored. 6 Jan. 1612_

1616. Love Restored, In a Masque at Court, by Gentlemen the Kings Seruants. _W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen._ [Part of F_{1}.]

The maskers were the ten Ornaments of Court--Honour, Courtesy, Valour, Urbanity, Confidence, Alacrity, Promptness, Industry, Hability, Reality; the presenters Masquerado, Plutus, Robin Goodfellow, and Cupid, who entered in a chariot attended by the maskers. There were three dances. Jonson’s description is exceptionally meagre.

The dialogue finds its humour in the details of mask-presentation themselves. Masquerado, in his vizard, apologizes for the absence of musicians and the hoarseness of ‘the rogue play-boy, that acts Cupid’. Plutus criticizes the expense and the corruption of manners involved in masks. Robin Goodfellow narrates his difficulties in obtaining access. He has tried in vain to get through the Woodyard on to the Terrace, but the Guard pushed him off a ladder into the Verge. The Carpenters’ way also failed him. He has offered, or thought of offering, himself as an ‘enginer’ belonging to the ‘motions’, but they were ‘ceased’; as an old tire-woman; as a musician; as a feather-maker of Blackfriars; as a ‘bombard man’, carrying ‘bouge’ to country ladies who had fasted for the fine sight since seven in the morning; as a citizen’s wife, exposed to the liberties of the ‘black-guard’; as a wireman or a chandler; and finally in his own shape as ‘part of the Device’.

There are several financial documents relating to a mask at Christmas 1611, for which funds were issued to one Meredith Morgan (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxvii, Dec.; lxviii, Jan.; Reyher, 521). The Revels Account (Cunningham, 211) records a ‘princes Mask performed by Gentelmen of his High [ ]’ on 6 Jan. 1612. According to Chamberlain, the Queen was at Greenwich ‘practising for a new mask’ on 20 Nov., but this was put off in December as ‘unseasonable’ so soon after the death of the Queen of Spain (Birch, i. 148, 152). Jonson does not date _Love Restored_, but Dr. Brotanek has successfully assigned it to 1611–12 on the ground of its reference to ‘the Christmas cut-purse’, of whom Chamberlain wrote to Carleton on 31 Dec. 1611 that ‘a cut-purse, taken in the Chapel Royal, will be executed’ (Brotanek, 347; cf. _S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxvii. 117, and _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614), III. v. 132). This was one John Selman, executed on 7 Jan. 1612 for picking the pocket of Leonard Barry, servant to Lord Harington, on Christmas Day (Rye, 269). I may add that Robin Goodfellow, when pretending to be concerned with the motions, was asked if he were ‘the fighting bear of last year’, and that the chariot of Oberon on 1 Jan. 1611 was drawn by white bears. There is, of course, nothing inconsistent in a Prince’s mask being performed by King’s servants, and the ‘High[ness]’ of the Revels Account may mean James, just as well as Henry. Simpson (_E. M._ 1. xxxiv) puts _Love Restored_ in 1613–14, as connected with the tilt (cf. p. 393), but there is no room for it (cf. p. 246).

_The Irish Mask. 29 Dec. 1613_

1616. The Irish Masque at Court, by Gentlemen the Kings Servants. _W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen._ [Part of F_{1}.]

The maskers were twelve Irish Gentlemen, first in mantles, then without; the antimaskers their twelve Footmen; the presenters a Citizen and a Gentleman; one of the musicians an Irish bard. The Footmen dance ‘to the bag-pipe and other rude music’, after which the Gentlemen ‘dance forth’ twice.

The antimaskers say that their lords have come to the bridal of ‘ty man Robyne’ to the daughter of ‘Toumaish o’ Shuffolke’, who has knocked them on the pate with his ‘phoyt stick’, as they came by. There are also compliments to ‘King Yamish’, ‘my Mistresh tere’, ‘my little Maishter’, and ‘te vfrow, ty daughter, tat is in Tuchland’. It is therefore easy to supply the date which Jonson omits, as the mask clearly belongs to the series presented in honour of the wedding of Robert Earl of Somerset with the Earl of Suffolk’s daughter during the Christmas of 1613–14. The list in Stowe, _Annales_, 928 (cf. s.v. Campion), includes one on 29 Dec. by ‘the Prince’s Gentlemen, which pleased the King so well that hee caused them to performe it againe uppon the Monday following’. This was 3 Jan.; the 10 Jan. in Nichols, ii. 718, is a misreading of the evidence in Chamberlain’s letters, which identify the mask as Jonson’s by a notice of the Irish element. On 30 Dec. Chamberlain wrote to Alice Carleton (Birch, i. 285), ‘yesternight there was a medley mask of five English and five Scots, which are called the high dancers, amongst whom Sergeant Boyd, one Abercrombie, and Auchternouty, that was at Padua and Venice, are esteemed the most principal and lofty, but how it succeeded I know not’. Later in the letter he added, probably in reference to this and not Campion’s mask, ‘Sir William Bowyer hath lost his eldest son, Sir Henry. He was a fine dancer, and should have been of the masque, but overheating himself with practising, he fell into the smallpox and died.’ On 5 Jan. he wrote to Dudley Carleton (Birch, i. 287), ‘The---- maskers were so well liked at court the last week that they were appointed to perform again on Monday: yet their device, which was a mimical imitation of the Irish, was not pleasing to many, who think it no time, as the case stands, to exasperate that nation, by making it ridiculous’. On the finance cf. s.v. Campion.

_Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists. 6 Jan. 1615_

1616. Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists at Court by Gentlemen the Kings Seruants. _W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen._ [Part of F_{1}.]

The maskers were twelve Sons of Nature; the first antimaskers Alchemists, the second Imperfect Creatures, in helms of limbecs; the presenters Vulcan, Cyclops, Mercury, Nature, and Prometheus, with a chorus of musicians.

The locality was doubtless Whitehall. The scene first discovered was a laboratory. After the antimasks it changed to a bower, whence the maskers descended for ‘the first dance’, ‘the main dance’, and, after dancing with the ladies, ‘their last dance’. Donne (_Letters_, ii. 65) wrote to Sir Henry Goodyere on 13 Dec. [1614], ‘They are preparing for a masque of gentlemen, in which M^r. Villiers is and M^r. Karre whom I told you before my Lord Chamberlain had brought into the bedchamber’. On 18 Dec. [1614] (ii. 66) he adds, ‘M^r. Villiers ... is here, practising for the masque’. The year-dates can be supplied by comparison with Chamberlain’s letters to Carleton. On 1 Dec. 1614 (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxxviii. 65) Chamberlain wrote, ‘And yet for all this penurious world we speake of a maske this Christmas toward which the King gives 1500£ the principall motiue wherof is thought to be the gracing of younge Villers and to bring him on the stage’. It should be borne in mind that there was at this time an intrigue amongst the Court party opposed to Somerset and the Howards, including Donne’s patroness Lady Bedford, to put forward George Villiers, afterwards Duke of Buckingham, as a rival to the Earl of Somerset in the good graces of James I. On 5 Jan. Chamberlain wrote again (_S. P. D. Jac. I_, lxxx. 1; Birch, i. 290, but there misdated), ‘Tomorrow night there is a mask at court, but the common voice and preparations promise so little, that it breeds no great expectation’; and on 12 Jan. (_S. P. D._ lxxx. 4; Birch, i. 356), ‘The only matter I can advertise ... is the success of the mask on Twelfth Night, which was so well liked and applauded, that the King had it represented again the Sunday night after [8 Jan.] in the very same manner, though neither in device nor show was there anything extraordinary, but only excellent dancing; the choice being made of the best, both English and Scots’. He then describes an ambassadorial incident, which is also detailed in a report by Foscarini (_V. P._ xiii. 317) and by Finett, 19 (cf. Sullivan, 95). The Spanish ambassador refused to appear in public with the Dutch ambassador, although it was shown that his predecessor had already done so, and in the end both withdrew. The Venetian ambassador and Tuscan agent were alone present. An invitation to the French ambassador does not appear to have been in question.

Financial documents (Reyher, 523; _S. P. D._ lxxx, Mar.) show that one Walter James received Exchequer funds for the mask.

I am not quite sure that Brotanek, 351, is right in identifying _Mercury Vindicated_ with the mask of January 1615 and _The Golden Age Restored_ with that of January 1616, but the evidence is so inconclusive that it is not worth while to disturb his chronology. _Mercury Vindicated_ is not dated in the Folio, but it is printed next before _The Golden Age Restored_, which is dated ‘1615’. Now it is true that the order of the Folio, as Brotanek points out, appears to be chronological; but it is also true that, at any rate for the masks, the year-dates, by a practice characteristic of Jonson, follow Circumcision and not Annunciation style. One or other principle seems to have been disregarded at the end of the Folio, and who shall say which? Brotanek attempts to support his arrangement by tracing topical allusions (_a_) in _Mercury Vindicated_ to Court ‘brabbles’ of 1614–15, (_b_) in _The Golden Age Restored_ to the Somerset _esclandre_. But there are always ‘brabbles’ in courts, and I can find no references to Somerset at all. Nor is it in the least likely that there would be any. _Per contra_, I may note that Chamberlain’s description of the ‘device’ in 1615 as not ‘extraordinary’ applies better to _The Golden Age Restored_ than to _Mercury Vindicated_.

_The Golden Age Restored. 1 Jan. 1616_

1616. The Golden Age Restor’d. In a Maske at Court, 1615. by the Lords, and Gentlemen, the Kings Seruants. _W. Stansby, sold by Richard Meighen._ [Part of F_{1}.]

The maskers were Sons of Phoebus, Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, Spenser, and presumably others; the antimaskers twelve Evils; the presenters Pallas, Astraea, the Iron Age, and the Golden Age, with a chorus of musicians.

The locality was doubtless Whitehall. Pallas descended, and the Evils came from a cave, danced to ‘two drums, trumpets, and a confusion of martial music’, and were turned to statues. The scene changed, and later the scene of light was discovered. After ‘the first dance’ and ‘the main dance’, the maskers danced with the ladies, and then danced ‘the galliards and corantos’.

Finett, 31 (cf. Sullivan, 237), tells us that ‘The King being desirous that the French, Venetian, and Savoyard ambassadors should all be invited to a maske at court prepared for New-years night, an exception comming from the French, was a cause of deferring their invitation till Twelfe night, when the Maske was to be re-acted, ... [They] were received at eight of the clock, the houre assigned (no supper being prepared for them, as at other times, to avoid the trouble incident) and were conducted to the privy gallery by the Lord Chamberlaine and the Lord Danvers appointed (an honour more than had been formerly done to Ambassadors Ordinary) to accompany them, the Master of the Ceremonies being also present. They were all there placed at the maske on the Kings right hand (not right out, but byas forward) first and next to the King the French, next him the Venetian, and next him the Savoyard. At his Majesties left hand sate the Queen, and next her the Prince. The maske being ended, they followed his Majesty to a banquet in the presence, and returned by the way they entered: the followers of the French were placed in a seate reserved for them above over the Kings right hand; the others in one on the left. The Spanish ambassadors son, and the agent of the Arch-Duke (who invited himselfe) were bestowed on the forme where the Lords sit, next beneath the Barons, English, Scotish, and Irish as the sonns of the Ambassador of Venice, and of Savoy had been placed the maske night before, but were this night placed with their countreymen in the gallery mentioned.’

Financial documents (Reyher, 523; _S. P. D._ lxxxix. 104) show Exchequer payments for the mask to Edmund Sadler and perhaps Meredith Morgan.

On the identification of the mask of 1 and 6 Jan. 1616 with _The Golden Age Restored_, s.v. _Mercury Vindicated_.

ENTERTAINMENTS

_Althorp Entertainment_ [_The Satyr_]. _1603_

_S. R._ 1604, March 19. [See _Coronation Entertainment_.]

1604. A particular Entertainment of the Queene and Prince their Highnesse to Althrope, at the Right Honourable the Lord Spencers, on Saterday being the 25. of Iune 1603. as they come first into the Kingdome; being written by the same Author [B. Jon:], and not before published. _V.S. for Edward Blount._ [Appended to the _Coronation Entertainment_.]

_Editions_ in _Works_ and by Nichols, _James_ (1828), i. 176.

The host, Sir Robert Spencer, of Althorp, Northants, was created Lord Spencer of Wormleighton on 21 July 1603. On arrival (25 June) the Queen and Prince were met in the park by a Satyr, Queen Mab, and a bevy of Fairies, who after a dialogue and song, introduced Spencer’s son John, as a huntsman, to Henry; and a hunt followed. On Monday afternoon (27 June) came Nobody with a speech to introduce ‘a morris of the clowns thereabout’, but this and a parting speech by a youth could not be heard for the throng.

_Coronation Entertainment. 1604_

_S. R._ 1604, March 19 (Pasfield). ‘A Parte of the Kinges Maiesties ... Entertainement ... done by Beniamin Johnson.’ _Edward Blunt_ (Arber, iii. 254).

1604. B. Jon: his part of King James his Royall and Magnificent Entertainement through his Honorable Cittie of London, Thurseday the 15. of March, 1603. So much as was presented in the first and last of their Triumphall Arch’s. With his speach made to the last Presentation, in the Strand, erected by the inhabitants of the Dutchy, and Westminster. Also, a briefe Panegyre of his Maiesties first and well auspicated entrance to his high Court of Parliament, on Monday, the 19. of the same Moneth. With other Additions. _V.S. for Edward Blount._ [This also includes the _Althorp Entertainment_.]

_Editions_ in _Works_ of Jonson, and by Nichols, _James_ (1828), i. 377.

For other descriptions of the triumph and Jonson’s speeches cf. ch. xxiv, C.

_Highgate Entertainment_ [_The Penates_]. _1604_

1616. [Head-title] A Priuate Entertainment of the King and Queene, on May Day in the Morning, At Sir William Cornwalleis his house, at Highgate. 1604. [Part of F_{1}.]

_Editions_ in _Works_ and by Nichols, _James_ (1828), i. 431.

The host was Sir William Cornwallis, son of Sir Thomas, of Brome Hall, Suffolk. On arrival, in the morning (1 May), the King and Queen were received by the Penates, and led through the house into the garden, for speeches by Mercury and Maia, and a song by Aurora, Zephyrus, and Flora. In the afternoon was a dialogue in the garden by Mercury and Pan, who served wine from a fountain.

_Entertainment of King of Denmark. 1606_

1616. [Head-title] The entertainment of the two Kings of Great Brittaine and Denmarke at Theobalds, Iuly 24, 1606. [Part of F_{1}.]

_Editions_ in _Works_ and by Nichols, _James_, ii. 70.

This consists only of short speeches by the three Hours to James (in English) and Christian (in Latin) on their entry into the Inner Court at Lord Salisbury’s house of Theobalds, Herts. (24 July), and some Latin inscriptions and epigrams hung on the walls. But the visit lasted until 28 July, and further details are given, not only in the well-known letter of Sir John Harington (cf. ch. vi) but also in _The King of Denmarkes Welcome_ (1606; cf. ch. xxiv), whose author, while omitting to describe ‘manie verie learned, delicate and significant showes and deuises’, because ‘there is no doubt but the author thereof who hath his place equall with the best in those Artes, will himselfe at his leasurable howers publish it in the best perfection’, gives a Song of Welcome, sung under an artificial oak of silk at the gates. Probably this was not Jonson’s, as he did not print it. Bond, i. 505, is hardly justified in reprinting it as Lyly’s.

_Theobalds Entertainment. 1607_

1616. An Entertainment of King Iames and Queene Anne, at Theobalds, When the House was deliuered vp, with the posession, to the Queene, by the Earle of Salisburie, 22. of May, 1607. The Prince Ianvile, brother to the Duke of Guise, being then present. [Part of F_{1}.]

_Editions_ in _Works_ and by Nichols, _James_ (1828), ii. 128.

The Genius of the house mourns the departure of his master, but is consoled by Mercury, Good Event, and the three Parcae, and yields the keys to Anne. The performance took place in a gallery, known later as the green gallery, 109 feet long by 12 wide. Boderie, ii. 253, notes the ‘espéce de comedie’, and the presence of Prince de Joinville.

_Prince Henry’s Barriers. 6 Jan. 1610_

1616. The Speeches at Prince Henries Barriers. [Part of F_{1}.]

_Editions_ in _Works_ and by Nichols, _James_ (1828), ii. 271.

The barriers had a spectacular setting. The Lady of the Lake is ‘discovered’ and points to her lake and Merlin’s tomb. Arthur is ‘discovered as a star above’. Merlin rises from his tomb. Their speeches lament the decay of chivalry, and foretell its restoration, now that James ‘claims Arthur’s seat’, through a knight, for whom Arthur gives the Lady a shield. The Knight, ‘Meliadus, lord of the isles’, is then ‘discovered’ with his six assistants in a place inscribed ‘St. George’s Portico’. Merlin tells the tale of English history. Chivalry comes forth from a cave, and the barriers take place, after which Merlin pays final compliments to the King and Queen, Henry, Charles, and Elizabeth.

Jonson does not date the piece, but it stands in F_{1} between the _Masque of Queens_ (2 Feb. 1609) and _Oberon_ (1 Jan. 1611), and this, with the use of the name Meliadus, enables us to attach it to the barriers of 6 Jan. 1610, of which there is ample record (Stowe, _Annales_, 574; Cornwallis, _Life of Henry_, 12; Birch, i. 102; Winwood, iii. 117; _V. P._ xi. 400, 403, 406, 410, 414). It was Henry’s first public appearance in arms, and he had some difficulty in obtaining the King’s consent, but His Majesty did not wish to cross him. The challenge, speeches for which are summarized by Cornwallis, was on 31 Dec. in the presence-chamber, and until 6 Jan. Henry kept open table at St. James’s at a cost of £100 a day. With him as challengers were the Duke of Lennox, the Earls of Arundel and Southampton, Lord Hay, Sir Thomas Somerset, and Sir Richard Preston. There were fifty-eight defendants, of whom prizes were adjudged to the Earl of Montgomery, Thomas Darcy, and Sir Robert Gordon. Each bout consisted of two pushes with the pike and twelve sword-strokes, and the young prince gave or received that night thirty-two pushes and about 360 strokes. Drummond of Hawthornden, who called his elegy on Henry _Tears on the Death of Moeliades_, explains the name as an anagram, _Miles a Deo_.

_A Challenge at Tilt. 1 Jan. 1614_

1616. A Challenge at Tilt, at a Marriage. [Part of F_{1} where it follows upon the mask _Love Restored_ (q.v.), and the type is perhaps arranged so as to suggest a connexion, which can hardly have existed.]

_Editions_ in _Works_ and by Nichols, _James_ (1828), ii. 716.

On the day after the marriage, two Cupids, as pages of the bride and bridegroom, quarrelled and announced the tilt. On 1 Jan. each came in a chariot, with a company of ten knights, of whom the Bride’s were challengers, and introduced and followed the tilting with speeches. Finally, Hymen resolved the dispute.

This tilt was on 1 Jan. 1614, after the wedding of the Earl of Somerset on 26 Dec. 1613, as is clearly shown by a letter of Chamberlain (Birch, i. 287). The bride’s colours were murrey and white, the bridegroom’s green and yellow. The tilters included the Duke of Lennox, the Earls of Rutland, Pembroke, Montgomery, and Dorset, Lords Chandos, Scrope, Compton, North, Hay, Norris, and Dingwall, Lord Walden and his brothers, and Sir Henry Cary.

_Lost Entertainment_

When James dined with the Merchant Taylors on 16 July 1607 (cf. ch. iv), Jonson wrote a speech of eighteen verses, for recitation by an Angel of Gladness. This ‘pleased his Majesty marvelously well’, but does not seem to have been preserved (Nichols, _James_, ii. 136; Clode, i. 276).

FRANCIS KINWELMERSHE (>1577–?1580).

A Gray’s Inn lawyer, probably of Charlton, Shropshire, verses by whom are in _The Paradise of Dainty Devices_ (1576).

_Jocasta. 1566_

Translated with George Gascoigne (q.v.).

THOMAS KYD (1558–94).

Kyd was baptized on 6 Nov. 1558. His father, Francis Kyd, was a London citizen and a scrivener. John Kyd, a stationer, may have been a relative. Thomas entered the Merchant Taylors School in 1565, but there is no evidence that he proceeded to a university. It is possible that he followed his father’s profession before he drifted into literature. He seems to be criticized as translator and playwright in Nashe’s Epistle to Greene’s _Menaphon_ in 1589 (cf. App. C), and a reference there has been rather rashly interpreted as implying that he was the author of an early play on Hamlet. About the same time his reputation was made by _The Spanish Tragedy_, which came, with _Titus Andronicus_, to be regarded as the typical drama of its age. Ben Jonson couples ‘sporting Kyd’ with ‘Marlowe’s mighty line’ in recording the early dramatists outshone by Shakespeare. Towards the end of his life Kyd’s relations with Marlowe brought him into trouble. During the years 1590–3 he was in the service of a certain noble lord for whose players Marlowe was in the habit of writing. The two sat in the same room and certain ‘atheistic’ papers of Marlowe’s got mixed up with Kyd’s. On 12 May 1593 Kyd was arrested on a suspicion of being concerned in certain ‘lewd and mutinous libels’ set up on the wall of the Dutch churchyard; the papers were discovered and led to Marlowe (q.v.) being arrested also. Kyd, after his release, wrote to the Lord Keeper, Sir John Puckering, to repudiate the charge of atheism and to explain away his apparent intimacy with Marlowe. It is not certain who the ‘lord’ with whom the two writers were connected may have been; possibly Lord Pembroke or Lord Strange, for whose players Marlowe certainly wrote; possibly also Henry Radcliffe, fourth Earl of Sussex, to whose daughter-in-law Kyd dedicated his translation of _Cornelia_, after his disgrace, in 1594. Before the end of 1594 Kyd had died intestate in the parish of St. Mary Colchurch, and his parents renounced the administration of his goods.

_Collection_

1901. F. S. Boas, _The Works of T. K._ [Includes _1 Jeronimo_ and _Soliman and Perseda_.]

_Dissertations_: K. Markscheffel, _T. K.’s Tragödien_ (1886–7, _Jahresbericht des Realgymnasiums zu Weimar_); A. Doleschal, _Eigenthümlichkeiten der Sprache in T. K.’s Dramen_ (1888), _Der Versbau in T. K.’s Dramen_ (1891); E. Ritzenfeldt, _Der Gebrauch des Pronomens, Artikels und Verbs bei T. K._; G. Sarrazin, _T. K. und sein Kreis_ (1892, incorporating papers in _Anglia_ and _E. S._); J. Schick, _T. K.’s Todesjahr_ (1899, _Jahrbuch_, xxxv. 277); O. Michael, _Der Stil in T. K.’s Originaldramen_ (1905, _Berlin diss._); C. Crawford, _Concordance to the Works of T. K._ (1906–10, _Materialien_, xv); F. C. Danchin, _Études critiques sur C. Marlowe_ (1913, _Revue Germanique_, ix. 566); _T. L. S._ (June, 1921).

_The Spanish Tragedy, c. 1589_

_S. R._ 1592, Oct. 6 (Hartwell). ‘A booke whiche is called the _Spanishe tragedie_ of Don Horatio and Bellmipeia.’ _Abel Jeffes_ (Arber, ii. 621). [Against the fee is a note ‘Debitum hoc’. Herbert-Ames, _Typographical Antiquities_, ii. 1160, quotes from a record in Dec. 1592 of the Stationers’ Company, not given by Arber: ‘Whereas Edw. White and Abell Jeffes have each of them offended, viz. E. W. in having printed the Spanish tragedie belonging to A. J. And A. J. in having printed the Tragedie of Arden of Kent, belonginge to E. W. It is agreed that all the bookes of each impression shalbe confiscated and forfayted according to thordonances to thuse of the poore of the company ... either of them shall pay for a fine 10_s._ a pece.’]

N.D. The Spanish Tragedie, Containing the lamentable end of Don Horatio, and Bel-Imperia: with the pittiful death of olde Hieronimo. Newly corrected, and amended of such grosse faults as passed in the first impression. _Edward Allde for Edward White._ [Induction. Greg, _Plays_, 61, and Boas, xxvii, agree in regarding this as the earliest extant edition. Boas suggests that either it may be White’s illicit print, or, if that print was the ‘first impression’, a later one printed for him by arrangement with Jeffes.]

1594. _Abell Jeffes, sold by Edward White._

_S. R._ 1599, Aug. 13. Transfer ‘salvo iure cuiuscunque’ from Jeffes to W. White (Arber, iii. 146).

1599. _William White._

_S. R._ 1600, Aug. 14. Transfer to Thomas Pavier (Arber, iii. 169).

1602.... Newly corrected, amended, and enlarged with new additions of the Painters part, and others, as it hath of late been diuers times acted. _W. White for Thomas Pavier._

1602 (colophon 1603); 1610 (colophon 1611); 1615 (two issues); 1618; 1623 (two issues); 1633.

_Editions_ in Dodsley^{1–4} (1744–1874, v), and by T. Hawkins (1773, _O. E. D._ ii), W. Scott (1810, _A. B. D._ i), J. M. Manly (1897, _Specimens_, ii), J. Schick (1898, _T. D._; 1901, _Litterarhistorische Forschungen_, xix). _Dissertations_: J. A. Worp, _Die Fabel der Sp. T._ (1894, _Jahrbuch_, xxix, 183); G. O. Fleischer, _Bemerkungen über Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy_ (1896).

Kyd’s authorship of the play is recorded by Heywood, _Apology_, 45 (cf. App. C, No. lvii). The only direct evidence as to the date is Ben Jonson’s statement in the Induction to _Bartholomew Fair_ (1614), ‘He that will swear _Ieronimo_ or _Andronicus_ are the best plays yet, shall pass unexcepted at here as a man whose judgment shows it is constant, and hath stood still these five and twenty or thirty years’. This yields 1584–9. Boas, xxx, argues for 1585–7; W. Bang in _Englische Studien_, xxviii. 229, for 1589. The grounds for a decision are slight, but the latter date seems to me the more plausible in the absence of any clear allusion to the play in Nashe’s (q.v.) _Menaphon_ epistle of that year.

Strange’s men revived _Jeronymo_ on 14 March 1592 and played it sixteen times between that date and 22 Jan. 1593. I agree with Greg (_Henslowe_, ii. 150, 153) that by _Jeronymo_ Henslowe meant _The Spanish Tragedy_, and that the performances of it are distinguishable from those which the company was concurrently giving of a related piece called _Don Horatio_ or ‘the comedy of Jeronimo’, which is probably not to be identified with the extant anonymous _1 Jeronimo_ (q.v.). On 7 Jan. 1597 the play was revived by the Admiral’s and given twelve times between that date and 19 July. Another performance, jointly with Pembroke’s, took place on 11 Oct. Finally, on 25 Sept. 1601 and 22 June 1602, Henslowe made payments to Jonson, on behalf of the Admiral’s, for ‘adicyons’ to the play. At first sight, it would seem natural to suppose that these ‘adicyons’ are the passages (II. v. 46–133; III. ii. 65–129; III. xii^a. 1–157; IV. iv. 168–217) which appear for the first time in the print of 1602. But many critics have found it difficult to see Jonson’s hand in these, notably Castelain, 886, who would assign them to Webster. And as Henslowe marked the play as ‘n. e.’ in 1597, it is probable that there was some substantial revision at that date. There is a confirmation of this view in Jonson’s own mention of ‘the old Hieronimo (as it was first acted)’ in the induction to _Cynthia’s Revels_ (1600). Perhaps the 1597 revival motived Jonson’s quotation of the play by the mouth of Matheo in _E. M. I._ I. iv, and in _Satiromastix_, 1522, Dekker suggests that Jonson himself ‘took’st mad Ieronimoes part, to get service among the Mimickes’. Lines from the play are also recited by the page in _Poetaster_, III. iv. 231. In the Induction, 84, to Marston’s _Malcontent_ (1604) Condell explains the appropriation of that play by the King’s from the Chapel with this retort, ‘Why not Malevole in folio with us, as well as Jeronimo in decimo sexto with them’. Perhaps _1 Jeronimo_ is meant; in view of the stage history of _The Spanish Tragedy_, as disclosed by Henslowe’s diary, the King’s could hardly have laid claim to it.

The play was carried by English actors to Germany (Boas, xcix; Creizenach, xxxiii; Herz, 66, 76), and a German adaptation by Jacob Ayrer is printed by Boas, 348, and with others in German and Dutch, in R. Schönwerth, _Die niederländischen und deutschen Bearbeitungen von T. K.’s Sp. T._ (1903, _Litterarhistorische Forschungen_, xxvi).

_Cornelia. 1593_

_S. R._ 1594, Jan. 26 (Dickins). ‘A booke called Cornelia, Thomas Kydd beinge the Authour.’ _Nicholas Ling and John Busbye_ (Arber, ii. 644).

1594. Cornelia. _James Roberts for N. L. and John Busby._ [‘Tho. Kyd’ at end of play.]

1595. Pompey the Great, his fair Corneliaes Tragedie. Effected by her Father and Husbandes downe-cast, death, and fortune. Written in French, by that excellent Poet Ro: Garnier; and translated into English by Thomas Kid. _For Nicholas Ling._ [A reissue of the 1594 sheets with a new title-page.]

_Editions_ in Dodsley^4, iv. 5 (1874) and by H. Gassner (1894).

A translation of the _Cornélie_ (1574) of Robert Garnier, reissued in his _Huit Tragédies_ (1580). In a dedication to the Countess of Sussex Kyd expressed his intention of also translating the _Porcie_ (1568) of the same writer, but this he did not live to do. He speaks of ‘bitter times and privy broken passions’ endured during the writing of _Cornelia_ which suggests a date after his arrest on 12 May 1593.

_Lost and Doubtful Plays_

_The ‘Ur-Hamlet’_

_Dissertations_: J. Corbin, _The German H. and Earlier English Versions_ (1896, _Harvard Studies_, v); J. Schick, _Die Entstehung des H._ (1902, _Jahrbuch_, xxxviii. xiii); M. B. Evans, _Der bestrafte Brudermord, sein Verhältniss zu Shakespeare’s H._ (1902); K. Meier (1904, _Dresdner Anzeiger_); W. Creizenach, _Der bestrafte Brudermord and its Relation to Shakespeare’s H._ (1904, _M. P._ ii. 249), _Die vorshakespearesche Hamlettragödie_ (1906, _Jahrbuch_, xlii. 76); A. E. Jack, _Thomas Kyd and the Ur-Hamlet_ (1905, _M. L. A._ xx. 729); J. W. Cunliffe, _Nash and the Earlier Hamlet_ (1906, _M. L. A._ xxi. 193); J. Allen, _The Lost H. of K._ (1908, _Westminster Review_); J. Fitzgerald, _The Sources of the H. Tragedy_ (1909); M. J. Wolff, _Zum Ur-Hamlet_ (1912, _E. S._ xlv. 9); J. M. Robertson, _The Problem of Hamlet_ (1919).

The existence of a play on Hamlet a decade or more before the end of the sixteenth century is established by Henslowe’s note of its revival by the Admiral’s and Chamberlain’s on 11 June 1594 (cf. Greg, _Henslowe_, ii. 164), and some corroborative allusions, but its relationship to Shakespeare’s play is wholly conjectural. The possible coupling of ‘Kidde’ and ‘Hamlet’ in Nashe’s epistle to _Menaphon_ has led to many speculations as to Kyd’s authorship and as to the lines on which the speculators think he would have treated the theme. Any discussion of these is matter for an account of _Hamlet_.

Kyd’s hand has also been sought in _Arden of Feversham_, _Contention of York and Lancaster_, _Edward III_, _1 Jeronimo_, _Leire_, _Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune_, _Soliman and Perseda_, _Taming of A Shrew_, and _True Tragedy of Richard III_ (cf. ch. xxiv), and in Shakespeare’s _Titus Andronicus_.

MAURICE KYFFIN (?-1599).

A Welshman by birth, he left the service of John Dee, with whom he afterwards kept up friendly relations, on 25 Oct. 1580 (_Diary_, 10, 15, 48). His epistles suggest that in 1587 he was tutor to Lord Buckhurst’s sons. In 1592 he was vice-treasurer in Normandy. His writings, other than the translation, are unimportant.

_Andria of Terence > 1587_

1588. Andria The first Comoedie of Terence, in English. A furtherance for the attainment vnto the right knowledge, & true proprietie, of the Latin Tong. And also a commodious meane of help, to such as haue forgotten Latin, for their speedy recouering of habilitie, to vnderstand, write, and speake the same. Carefully translated out of Latin, by Maurice Kyffin. _T. E. for Thomas Woodcocke._ [Epistle by Kyffin to Henry and Thomas Sackville; commendatory verses by ‘W. Morgan’, ‘Th. Lloid’, ‘G. Camdenus’, ‘Petrus Bizarus’, ‘R. Cooke’; Epistle to William Sackville, dated ‘London, Decemb. 3, 1587’, signed ‘Maurice Kyffin’; Preface to the Reader; Preface by Kyffin to all young Students of the Latin Tongue, signed ‘M. K.’; Argument.]

_S. R._ 1596, Feb. 9. Transfer of Woodcock’s copies to Paul Linley (Arber, iii. 58).

_S. R._ 1597, Apr. 21 (Murgetrode). ‘The second Comedy of Terence called Eunuchus.’ _Paul Lynley_ (Arber, iii. 83).

_S. R._ 1600, June 26. Transfer of ‘The first and second commedie of Terence in Inglishe’ from Paul Linley to John Flasket (Arber, iii. 165).

Presumably the _Andria_ is the ‘first’ comedy of the 1600 transfer, and if so the lost _Eunuchus_ may also have been by Kyffin. The _Andria_ is in prose; Kyffin says he had begun seven years before, nearly finished, and abandoned a version in verse.

JOHN LANCASTER (_c._ 1588).

A Gray’s Inn lawyer, one of the devisers of dumb-shows and director for the _Misfortunes of Arthur_ of Thomas Hughes (q.v.) in 1588.

SIR HENRY LEE (1531–1611).

[The accounts of Lee in _D. N. B._ and by Viscount Dillon in _Bucks., Berks. and Oxon. Arch. Journ._, xii (1906) 65, may be supplemented from Aubrey, ii. 30, J. H. Lea, _Genealogical Notes on the Family of Lee of Quarrendon_ (_Genealogist_, n.s. viii-xiv), and F. G. Lee in _Bucks. Records_, iii. 203, 241; iv. 189, _The Lees of Quarrendon_ (_Herald and Genealogist_, iii. 113, 289, 481), and _Genealogy of the Family of Lee_ (1884).]

Lee belonged to a family claiming a Cheshire origin, which had long been settled in Bucks. From 1441 they were constables and farmers of Quarrendon in the same county, and the manor was granted by Henry VIII to Sir Robert Lee, who was Gentleman Usher of the Chamber and afterwards Knight of the Body. His son Sir Anthony married Margaret, sister of Sir Thomas Wyatt, the poet. Their son Henry was born in 1531, and Aubrey reports the scandal that he was ‘supposed brother to Elizabeth’. He was page of honour to the King, and by 1550 Clerk of the Armoury. He was knighted in 1553. By Sept. 1575 he was Master of the Game at Woodstock (Dasent, ix. 23), and by 1577 Lieutenant of the manor and park (Marshall, _Woodstock_, 160), holding ‘le highe lodge’ and other royal houses in the locality. Probably he was concerned with the foundation of Queen’s Day (cf. ch. i) in 1570, which certainly originated near Oxford, and when the annual tilting on this day at Whitehall was instituted, Lee acted as Knight of the Crown until his retirement in 1590. He used as his favourite device a crowned pillar. He took some part in the military enterprises of the reign, and in 1578 became Master of the Armoury. In 1597 he was thought of as Vice-Chamberlain, and on 23 April was installed as K.G. He was a great sheep-farmer and encloser of land, and a great builder or enlarger of houses, including Ditchley Hall, four or five miles from Woodstock, in the parish of Spelsbury, where he died on 12 Feb. 1611. By his wife, Anne, daughter of William Lord Paget, who died in 1590, he had two sons and a daughter, who all predeceased him. His will of 6 Oct. 1609 provides for the erection of a tomb in Quarrendon Chapel near his own for ‘M^{rs}. Ann Vavasor alias Finch’. There are no tombs now, but the inscriptions on Lee’s tomb and on a tablet in the chancel, also not preserved, are recorded. The former says:

‘In courtly justs his Soveraignes knight he was’,

and the latter adds:

‘He shone in all those fayer partes that became his profession and vowes, honoring his highly gracious Mistris with reysing those later Olympiads of her Courte, justs and tournaments ... wherein still himself lead and triumphed.’

The writer is William Scott, who also, with Richard Lee, witnessed the will. Anne Vavasour does not in fact appear to have been buried at Quarrendon. Aubrey describes her as ‘his dearest deare’, and says that her effigy was placed at the foot of his on the tomb, and that the bishop threatened to have it removed. Anne’s tomb was in fact defaced as early as 1611. Anne was daughter of Sir Henry and sister of Sir Thomas Vavasour of Copmanthorpe, Yorks. She was a new maid of honour who ‘flourished like the lily and the rose’ in 1590 (Lodge, ii. 423). Another Anne Vavasour came to Court as ‘newly of the beddchamber’ after being Lady Bedford’s ‘woman’, about July 1601 (Gawdy, 112, conjecturally dated; cf. vol. iv, p. 67). Anne Clifford tells us that ‘my cousin Anne Vavisour’ was going with her mother Lady Cumberland and Lady Warwick and herself to meet Queen Anne in 1603, and married Sir Richard Warburton the same year (Wiffen, ii. 69, 72). The Queen is said to have visited Sir Henry and his mistress at a lodge near Woodstock called ‘Little Rest’, now ‘Lee’s Rest’, in 1608. After Lee’s death his successor brought an action against Anne and her brother for illegal detention of his effects (_5 N. Q._ iii. 294), and the feud was still alive and Anne had added other sins to her score in 1618, when Chamberlain wrote (Birch, ii. 86):

‘M^{rs}. Vavasour, old Sir Henry Lee’s woman, is like to be called in question for having two husbands now alive. Young Sir Henry Lee, the wild oats of Ireland, hath obtained the confiscation of her, if he can prove it without touching her life.’

Aubrey’s story that Lee’s nephew was disinherited in favour of ‘a keeper’s sonne of Whitchwood-forest of his owne name, a one-eied young man, no kinne to him’, is exaggerated gossip. Lee entailed his estate on a second cousin.

I have brought together under Lee’s name two entertainments and fragments of at least one other, which ought strictly to be classed as anonymous, but with which he was certainly concerned, and to which he may have contributed some of the ‘conceiptes, Himmes, Songes & Emblemes’, of which one of the fragments speaks.

_The Woodstock Entertainment. Sept. 1575_

[_MS._] _Royal MS._ 18 A. xlviii (27). ‘The Tale of Hemetes the Heremyte.’ [The tale is given in four languages, English, Latin, Italian, and French. It is accompanied by pen-and-ink drawings, and preceded by verses and an epistle to Elizabeth. The latter is dated ‘first of January, 1576’ and signed ‘G. Gascoigne’. The English text is, with minor variations, that of the tale as printed in 1585. Its authorship is not claimed by Gascoigne, who says that he has ‘turned the eloquent tale of _Hemetes the Heremyte_ (wherw^{th} I saw yo^r lerned judgment greatly pleased at Woodstock) into latyne, Italyan and frenche’, and contrasts his own ignorance with ‘thaucto^{rs} skyll’.]

_S. R._ 1579, Sept. 22. ‘A paradox provinge by Reason and Example that Baldnes is muche better than bushie heare.’ _H. Denham_ (Arber, ii. 360).

1579. A Paradoxe, Proving by reason and example, that Baldnesse is much better than bushie haire.... Englished by Abraham Fleming. Hereunto is annexed the pleasant tale of Hemetes the Heremite, pronounced before the Queenes Majestie. Newly recognized both in Latine and Englishe, by the said A. F. _H. Denham._ [Contains the English text of the Tale and Gascoigne’s Latin version.]

1585. _Colophon_: ‘Imprinted at London for Thomas Cadman, 1585.’ [Originally contained a complete description of an entertainment, of which the tale of Hemetes only formed part; but sig. A, with the title-page, is missing. The unique copy, formerly in the Rowfant library, is now in the B.M. The t.p. is a modern type-facsimile, based on the head-line and colophon (McKerrow, _Bibl. Evidence_, 306).]

_Editions_ (_a_) from 1579, by J. Nichols, _Eliz._ i. 553 (1823), and W. C. Hazlitt, _Gascoigne_, ii. 135 (1870); (_b_) from _MS._ by J. W. Cunliffe, _Gascoigne_, ii. 473 (1910); (_c_) from 1585, by A. W. Pollard (1910, partly printed 1903) and J. W. Cunliffe (1911, _M. L. A._ xxvi. 92).

Gascoigne’s manuscript is chiefly of value as fixing the locality of the entertainment, which is not mentioned in the mutilated print of 1585. The date can hardly be doubtful. Elizabeth spent considerable periods at Woodstock in 1572, 1574, and 1575, but it so happens that only in 1575 was she there on the 20th of a month (_vide infra_ and App. B). Moreover, Laurence Humphrey’s _Oratio_ delivered at Woodstock on 11 Sept. 1575 (Nichols, i. 590) refers to the entertainment in the phrase ‘an ... Gandina spectacula ... dabit’. The description takes the form of a letter from an eyewitness, evidently not the deviser, and professing ignorance of Italian; not, therefore, Gascoigne, as pointed out by Mr. Pollard. At the beginning of sig. B, Hemetes, a hermit, has evidently just interrupted a fight between Loricus and Contarenus. He brings them, with the Lady Caudina, to a bower, where Elizabeth is placed, and tells his Tale, of which the writer says, ‘hee shewed a great proofe of his audacity, in which tale if you marke the woords with this present world, or were acquainted with the state of the deuises, you should finde no lesse hidden then vttered, and no lesse vttered then shoulde deserue a double reading ouer, euen of those (with whom I finde you a companion) that haue disposed their houres to the study of great matters’. The Tale explains how the personages have come together. Contarenus loved Caudina, daughter of Occanon Duke of Cambia. At Occanon’s request, an enchantress bore him away, and put him in charge of the blind hermit, until after seven years he should fight the hardiest knight and see the worthiest lady in the world. Caudina, setting out with two damsels to seek him, met at the grate of Sibilla with Loricus, a knight seeking renown as a means to his mistress’s favour. Sibilla bade them wander, till they found a land in all things best, and with a Princess most worthy. Hemetes himself has been blinded by Venus for loving books as well as a lady, and promised by Apollo the recovery of his sight, where most valiant knights fight, most constant lovers meet, and the worthiest lady looks on. Obviously it is all a compliment to the worthiest lady. Thus the Tale ends. The Queen is now led to the hermit’s abode, an elaborate sylvan banqueting-house, built on a mound forty feet high, roofed by an oak, and hung with pictures and posies of ‘the noble or men of great credite’, some of which the French ambassador made great suit to have. Here Elizabeth was visited by ‘the Queen of the Fayry drawen with 6 children in a waggon of state’, who presented her with an embroidered gown. Couplets or ‘posies’ set in garlands were also given to the Queen, to the Ladies Derby, Warwick, Hunsdon, Howard, Susan and Mary Vere, and to Mistresses Skidmore, Parry, Abbington, Sidney, Hopton, Katherine Howard, Garret, Bridges, Burrough, Knowles, and Frances Howard. After a speech from Caudina, Elizabeth departed, as it was now dark, well pleased with her afternoon, and listening to a song from an oak tree as she went by. A somewhat cryptic passage follows. Elizabeth is said to have left ‘earnest command that the whole in order as it fell, should be brought her in writing, which being done, as I heare, she vsed, besides her owne skill, the helpe of the deuisors, & how thinges were made I know not, but sure I am her Maiesty hath often in speech some part hereof with mirth at the remembrance.’ Then follows a comedy acted on ‘the 20 day of the same moneth’, which ‘was as well thought of, as anye thing ever done before her Maiestie, not onely of her, but of the rest: in such sort that her Graces passions and other the Ladies could not [? but] shew it selfe in open place more than euer hath beene seene’. The comedy, in 991 lines of verse, is in fact a sequel to the Tale. In it Occanon comes to seek Caudina, who is persuaded by his arguments and the mediation of Eambia, the Fairy Queen, to give up her lover for her country’s sake.

Pollard suggests Gascoigne as the author of the comedy, but of this there is no external evidence. He also regards the intention of the whole entertainment as being the advancement of Leicester’s suit. Leicester was no doubt at Woodstock, even before the Queen, for he wrote her a letter from there on 4 Sept. (_S. P. D. Eliz_. cv. 36); but the undated letter which Pollard cites (cv. 38), and in which Leicester describes himself as ‘in his survey to prepare for her coming’, probably precedes the Kenilworth visit. Pollard dates it 6 Sept., but Elizabeth herself seems to have reached Woodstock by that date. Professor Cunliffe, on the other hand, thinks that the intention was unfavourable to Leicester’s suit, and thus explains the stress laid on Caudina’s renunciation of her lover for political reasons. I doubt if there is any reference to the matter at all; it would have been dangerous matter for a courtly pen. Doubtless the writer of the description talks of ‘audacity’, in the Tale, not the comedy. But has he anything more in mind than Sir Henry Lee, whom we are bound to find, here as elsewhere, in Loricus, and his purely conventional worship of Elizabeth?

_The Tilt Yard Entertainment. 17 Nov. 1590_

There are two contemporary descriptions, viz.:

1590. Polyhymnia Describing, the Honourable Triumph at Tylt, before her Maiestie, on the 17 of Nouember last past, being the first day of the three and thirtith yeare of her Highnesse raigne. With Sir Henrie Lea, his resignation of honour at Tylt, to her Maiestie, and receiued by the right honorable, the Earle of Cumberland. _R. Jones._ [Dedication by George Peele to Lord Compton on verso of t.p.]

1602. W. Segar, Honor, Military and Ciuill,