Chapter VIII: Book V: Plays and Playwrights (2)

Modern critics have sought in shorthand the source of other ‘bad’ and probably surreptitious texts of plays, and one has gone so far as to trace in them the peculiarities of a particular system expounded in the _Characterie_ (1588) of Timothy Bright.[603] The whole question of surreptitious prints has naturally been explored most closely in connexion with the textual criticism of Shakespeare, and the latest investigator, Mr. Pollard, has come to the conclusion that, in spite of the general condemnation of the Folio editors, the only Shakespearian Quartos which can reasonably be labelled as surreptitious or as textually ‘bad’ are the First Quartos of _Romeo and Juliet_, _Henry V_, _Merry Wives of Windsor_, _Hamlet_, and _Pericles_, although he strongly suspects that there once existed a similar edition of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_.[604] I have no ground for dissenting from this judgement.

The question whether the actors, in protecting their property from the pirates, could look for any assistance from the official controllers of the press is one of some difficulty. We may perhaps infer, with the help of the conditional entries of _The Blind Beggar of Alexandria_ and _The Spanish Tragedy_, and the special order made in the case of _Dr. Faustus_, that before assigning a ‘copy’ to one stationer the wardens of the Company took some steps to ascertain whether any other stationer laid a claim to it. It does not follow that they also inquired whether the applicant had come honestly or dishonestly by his manuscript.[605] Mr. Pollard seems inclined to think that, although they were under no formal obligation to intervene, they would not be likely, as men of common sense, to encourage dishonesty.[606] If this argument stood alone, I should not have much confidence in it. There is a Publishers’ Association to-day, doubtless composed of men of common sense, but it is not a body to which one would naturally commit interests which might come into conflict with those of members of the trade. It would be another matter, however, if the actors were in a position to bring outside interest to bear against the pirates, through the licensers, or through the Privy Council on whom ultimately the licensers depended. And this in fact seems to have been the way in which a solution of the problem was gradually arrived at. Apart altogether from plays, there are instances upon record in which individuals, who were in a position to command influence, successfully adopted a similar method. We find Fulke Greville in 1586 writing to Sir Francis Walsingham, on the information of the stationer Ponsonby, to warn him that the publication of the _Arcadia_ was being planned, and to advise him to get ‘made stay of that mercenary book’ by means of an application to the Archbishop or to Dr. Cosin, ‘who have, as he says, a copy to peruse to that end’.[607] Similarly we find Francis Bacon, in the preface to his _Essayes_ of 1597, excusing himself for the publication on the ground that surreptitious adventurers were at work, and ‘to labour the staie of them had bin troublesome and subiect to interpretation’. Evidently he had come to a compromise, of which the Stationers’ Register retains traces in the cancellation by a court of an entry of the _Essayes_ to Richard Serger, and a re-entry to H. Hooper, the actual publisher, ‘under the handes of Master Francis Bacon, Master Doctor Stanhope, Master Barlowe, and Master Warden Lawson’.[608] The actors, too, were not wholly without influence. They had their patrons and protectors, the Lord Chamberlain and the Lord Admiral, in the Privy Council, and although, as Mr. Pollard points out, it certainly would not have been good business to worry an important minister about every single forty-shilling piracy, it may have been worth while to seek a standing protection, analogous to the old-fashioned ‘privilege’, against a series of such annoyances. At any rate, this is what, while the Admiral’s contented themselves with buying off the printer of _Patient Grissell_, the Chamberlain’s apparently attempted, although at first with indifferent success, to secure. In 1597 John Danter, a stationer of the worst reputation, had printed a surreptitious and ‘bad’ edition of _Romeo and Juliet_, and possibly, if Mr. Pollard’s conjecture is right, another of _Love’s Labour’s Lost_. He had made no entry in the Register, and it was therefore open to another publisher, Cuthbert Burby, to issue, without breach of copyright, ‘corrected’ editions of the same plays.[609] This he did, with suitable trumpetings of the corrections on the title-pages, and presumably by arrangement with the Chamberlain’s men. It was this affair which must, I think, have led the company to apply for protection to their lord. On 22 July 1598 an entry was made in the Stationers’ Register of _The Merchant of Venice_ for the printer James Roberts. This entry is conditional in form, but it differs from the normal conditional entries in that the requirement specified is not an indefinite ‘aucthoritie’ but a ‘lycence from the Right honorable the lord chamberlen’. Roberts also entered _Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose_ on 27 May 1600, _A Larum for London_ on 29 May 1600, and _Troilus and Cressida_ on 7 February 1603. These also are all conditional entries but of a normal type. No condition, however, is attached to his entry of _Hamlet_ on 26 July 1602. Now comes a significant piece of evidence, which at least shows that in 1600, as well as in 1598, the Stationers’ Company were paying particular attention to entries of plays coming from the repertory of the Chamberlain’s men. The register contains, besides the formal entries, certain spare pages upon which the clerk was accustomed to make occasional memoranda, and amongst these memoranda we find the following:[610]

My lord chamberlens menns plaies Entred
viz

[Sidenote: 27 May 1600 To Master Robertes]

A moral of ‘clothe breches and velvet hose’

[Sidenote: 27 May To hym]

Allarum to London

4 Augusti
As you like yt, a booke }
Henry the ffift, a booke }
Every man in his humour, a booke } to be staied
The commedie of ‘muche A doo about }
nothing’, a booke }

There are possibly two notes here, but we may reasonably date them both in 1600, as _Every Man In his Humour_ was entered to Cuthbert Burby and Walter Burre on 14 August 1600 and _Much Ado about Nothing_ to Andrew Wise and William Aspley on 23 August 1600, and these plays appeared in 1601 and 1600 respectively. _Henry V_ was published, without entry and in a ‘bad’ text by Thomas Millington and John Busby, also in 1600, while _As You Like It_ remained unprinted until 1623. Many attempts have been made to explain the story of 4 August. Mr. Fleay conjectured that it was due to difficulties of censorship; Mr. Furness that it was directed against James Roberts, whom he regarded on the strength of the conditional entries as a man of ‘shifty character’.[611] But there is no reason to read Roberts’s name into the August memorandum at all; and I agree with Mr. Pollard that the evidence of dishonesty against him has been exaggerated, and that the privilege which he held for printing all play-bills for actors makes it prima facie unlikely that his relations with the companies would be irregular.[612] On the other hand, I hesitate to accept Mr. Pollard’s counter-theory that the four conditional Roberts entries were of the nature of a deliberate plan ‘in the interest of the players in order to postpone their publication till it could not injure the run of the play and to make the task of the pirates more difficult’. One would of course suppose that any entry, conditional or not, might serve such a purpose, if the entering stationer was in league with the actors and deliberately reserved publication. This is presumably what the Admiral’s men paid Cuthbert Burby to do for _Patient Grissell_. Mr. Pollard applies the same theory to Edward Blount’s unconditional entries of _Pericles_ and _Antony and Cleopatra_ in 1608, and it would certainly explain the delays in the publication of _Troilus and Cressida_ from 1603 to 1609 and of _Antony and Cleopatra_ from 1608 to 1623, and the absence of any edition of _Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose_. But it does not explain why _Hamlet_, entered by Roberts in 1602, was issued by others in the ‘bad’ text of 1603, or why _Pericles_ was issued by Henry Gosson in the ‘bad’ text of 1609.[613] Mr. Pollard’s interpretation of the facts appears to be influenced by the conditional character of four out of Roberts’s five entries during 1598–1603, and I understand him to believe that the ‘further aucthoritie’ required for _Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose_ and _A Larum for London_ and the ‘sufficient aucthoritie’ required for _Troilus and Cressida_ were of the same nature as the licence from the Lord Chamberlain specifically required for _The Merchant of Venice_.[614] It is not inconceivable that this may have been so, but one is bound to take the Roberts conditional entries side by side with the eight similar entries made between 1601 and 1606 for other men, and in three at least of these (_The Dutch Courtesan_, _Sir Giles Goosecap_, _The Fleir_) it is obvious that the authority demanded was that of the official correctors. Of course, the correctors may themselves have had a hint from the Lord Chamberlain to keep an eye upon the interests of his servants, but if the eleven conditionally entered plays of 1600–6 be looked at as a group, it will be seen that they are all plays of either a political or a satirical character, which might well therefore call for particular attention from the correctors in the discharge of their ordinary functions. I have already suggested that the normal conditional entries represent cases in which the wardens of the Stationers’ Company, while not prepared to license a book on their own responsibility, short-circuited as far as they could the procedure entailed. Properly they ought to have seen the corrector’s hand before adding their own endorsement. But if this was not forthcoming, the applicant may have been allowed, in order to save time, to have the purely trade formalities completed by a conditional entry, which would be a valid protection against a rival stationer, but would not, until the corrector’s hand was obtained, be sufficient authority for the actual printing. No doubt the clerk should have subsequently endorsed the entry after seeing the corrector’s hand, but he did not always do so, although in cases of transfer the transferee might ask for a record to be made, and in any event the owner of the copy had the book with the ‘hand’ to it. The Lord Chamberlain’s ‘stay’ was, I think, another matter. I suppose it to have been directed, not to the correctors, but to the wardens, and to have taken the form of a request not to enter any play of the Chamberlain’s men, otherwise entitled to licence or not, without satisfying themselves that the actors were assenting parties to the transaction. Common sense would certainly dictate compliance with such a request, coming from such a source. The plan seems to have worked well enough so far as _As You Like It_, _Every Man In his Humour_, and _Much Ado about Nothing_ were concerned, for we have no reason to doubt that the subsequent publication of two of these plays had the assent of the Chamberlain’s men, and the third was effectively suppressed. But somehow not only _Hamlet_ but also _The Merry Wives of Windsor_ slipped through in 1602, and although the actors apparently came to some arrangement with Roberts and furnished a revised text of _Hamlet_, the other play seems to have gone completely out of their control. Moreover, it was an obvious weakness of the method adopted, that it gave no security against a surreptitious printer who was in a position to dispense with an entry. Danter, after all, had published without entry in 1597. He had had to go without copyright; but an even more audacious device was successfully tried in 1600 with _Henry V_. This was one of the four plays so scrupulously ‘staied’ by the Stationers’ clerk on 4 August. Not merely, however, was the play printed in 1600 by Thomas Creede for Thomas Millington and John Busby, but on 21 August it was entered on the Register as transferred to Thomas Pavier amongst other ‘thinges formerlye printed and sett ouer to’ him. I think the explanation is that the print of 1600 was treated as merely a reprint of the old play of _The Famous Victories of Henry V_, which was indeed to some extent Shakespeare’s source, and of which Creede held the copyright.[615] Similarly, it is conceivable that the same John Busby and Nathaniel Butter forced the hands of the Chamberlain’s men into allowing the publication of _King Lear_ in 1608 by a threat to issue it as a reprint of _King Leir_.[616] Busby was also the enterer of _The Merry Wives_, and he and Butter, at whose hands it was that Heywood suffered, seem to have been the chief of the surreptitious printers after Danter’s death.

The Chamberlain’s men would have been in a better position if their lord had brought his influence to bear, as Sidney’s friends had done, upon the correctors instead of the Stationers’ Company. Probably the mistake was retrieved in 1607 when the ‘allowing’ of plays for publication passed to the Master of the Revels, and he may even have extended his protection to the other companies which, like the Chamberlain’s, had now passed under royal protection. I do not suggest that the convenience of this arrangement was the sole motive for the change; the episcopal correctors must have got into a good deal of hot water over the affair of _Eastward Ho!_[617] Even the Master of the Revels did not prevent the surreptitious issue of _Pericles_ in 1609. In Caroline times we find successive Lord Chamberlains, to whom the Master of the Revels continued to be subordinate, directing the Stationers’ Company not to allow the repertories of the King’s men or of Beeston’s boys to be printed, and it is implied that there were older precedents for these protections.[618]

A point might come at which it was really more to the advantage of the actors to have a play published than not. The prints were useful in the preparation of acting versions, and they saved the book-keepers from the trouble of having to prepare manuscript copies at the demand of stage-struck amateurs.[619] The influence of the poets again was on the side of publication, and it is perhaps due to the greater share which they took in the management of the boys’ companies that so disproportionate a number of the plays preserved are of their acting. Heywood hints that thereby the poets sold their work twice. It is more charitable to assume that literary vanity was also a factor; and it is with playwrights of the more scholarly type, Ben Jonson and Marston, that a practice first emerges of printing plays at an early date after publication, and in the full literary trappings of dedicatory epistles and commendatory verses. Actor-playwrights, such as Heywood himself and Dekker, followed suit; but not Shakespeare, who had long ago dedicated his literary all to Southampton and penned no prefaces. The characteristic Elizabethan apologies, on such grounds as the pushfulness of publishers or the eagerness of friends to see the immortal work in type, need not be taken at their full face value.[620] Opportunity was afforded on publication to restore passages which had been ‘cut’ to meet the necessities of stage-presentation, and of this, in the Second Quarto of _Hamlet_, even Shakespeare may have availed himself.[621]

The conditions of printing therefore furnish us with every variety of text, from the carefully revised and punctuated versions of Ben Jonson’s _Works_ of 1616 to the scrappy notes, from memory or shorthand, of an incompetent reporter. The average text lies between these extremes, and is probably derived from a play-house ‘book’ handed over by the actors to the printer. Mr. Pollard has dealt luminously with the question of the nature of the ‘book’, and has disposed of the assumption that it was normally a copy made by a ‘play-house’ scrivener of the author’s manuscript.[622] For this assumption there is no evidence whatever. There is, indeed, little direct evidence, one way or other; but what there is points to the conclusion that the ‘original’ or standard copy of a play kept in the play-house was the author’s autograph manuscript, endorsed with the licence of the Master of the Revels for performance, and marked by the book-keeper or for his use with indications of cuts and the like, and with stage-directions for exits and entrances and the disposition of properties, supplementary to those which the author had furnished.[623] Most of the actual manuscripts of this type which remain in existence are of Caroline, rather than Elizabethan or Jacobean, date.[624] But we have one of _The Second Maid’s Tragedy_, bearing Buck’s licence of 1611, and one of _Sir Thomas More_, belonging to the last decade of the sixteenth century, which has been submitted for licence without success, and is marked with instructions by the Master for the excision or alteration of obnoxious passages. It is a curious document. The draft of the original author has been patched and interpolated with partial redrafts in a variety of hands, amongst which, according to some palaeographers, is to be found that of Shakespeare. One wonders that any licenser should have been complaisant enough to consider the play at all in such a form; and obviously the instance is a crucial one against the theory of scrivener’s copies.[625] It may also be argued on _a priori_ grounds that such copies would be undesirable from the company’s point of view, both as being costly and as tending to multiply the opportunities for ‘surreptitious’ transmission to rivals or publishers. Naturally it was necessary to copy out individual parts for the actors, and Alleyn’s part in _Orlando Furioso_, with the ‘cues’, or tail ends of the speeches preceding his own, can still be seen at Dulwich.[626] From these ‘parts’ the ‘original’ could be reconstructed or ‘assembled’ in the event of destruction or loss.[627] Apparently the book-keeper also made a ‘plot’ or scenario of the action, and fixed it on a peg for his own guidance and that of the property-man in securing the smooth progress of the play.[628] Nor could the companies very well prevent the poets from keeping transcripts or at any rate rough copies, when they handed over their ‘papers’, complete or in instalments, as they drew their ‘earnests’ or payments ‘in full’.[629] It does not follow that they always did so. We know that Daborne made fair copies for Henslowe;[630] but the Folio editors tell us that what Shakespeare thought ‘he vttered with that easinesse, that we haue scarse receiued from him a blot in his papers’, and Mr. Pollard points out that there would have been little meaning in this praise if what Shakespeare sent in had been anything but his first drafts.[631]

The character of the stage-directions in plays confirm the view that many of them were printed from working play-house ‘originals’. They are primarily directions for the stage itself; it is only incidentally that they also serve to stimulate the reader’s imagination by indicating the action with which the lines before him would have been accompanied in a representation.[632] Some of them are for the individual guidance of the actors, marginal hints as to the ‘business’ which will give point to their speeches. These are not very numerous in play-house texts; the ‘kneeling’ and ‘kisses her’ so frequent in modern editions are merely attempts of the editors to show how intelligently they have interpreted the quite obvious implications of the dialogue. The more important directions are addressed rather to the prompter and the tire-man; they prescribe the exits and the entrances, the ordering of a procession or a dumb-show, the use of the curtains or other structural devices, the introduction of properties, the precise moment for the striking up of music or sounds ‘within’. It is by no means always possible, except where a manuscript betrays differences of handwriting, to distinguish between what the author, often himself an actor familiar with the possibilities of the stage, may have originally written, and what the book-keeper may have added. Either may well use the indicative or the imperative form, or merely an adverbial, participial, or substantival expression.[633] But it is natural to trace the hand of the book-keeper where the direction reduces itself to the bare name of a property noted in the margin; even more so when it is followed by some such phrase as ‘ready’, ‘prepared’, or ‘set out’;[634] and still more so when the note occurs at the point when the property has to be brought from the tire-room, and some lines before it is actually required for use.[635] The book-keeper must be responsible, too, for the directions into which, as not infrequently happens, the name of an actor has been inserted in place of that of the personage whom that actor represented.[636] On the other hand, we may perhaps safely assign to the author directions addressed to some one else in the second person, those which leave something to be interpreted according to discretion, and those which contain any matter not really necessary for stage guidance.[637] Such superfluous matter is only rarely found in texts of pure play-house origin, although even here an author may occasionally insert a word or two of explanation or descriptive colouring, possibly taken from the source upon which he has been working.[638] In the main, however, descriptive stage-directions are characteristic of texts which, whether ultimately based upon play-house copies or not, have undergone a process of editing by the author or his representative, with an eye to the reader, before publication. Some literary rehandling of this sort is traceable, for example, in the First Folio of Shakespeare, although the hearts of the editors seem to have failed them before they had got very far with the task.[639] Yet another type of descriptive stage-direction presents itself in certain ‘surreptitious’ prints, where we find the reporter eking out his inadequately recorded text by elaborate accounts of the details of the business which he had seen enacted before him.[640] So too William Percy, apparently revising plays some of which had already been acted and which he hoped to see acted again, mingles his suggestions to a hypothetical manager with narratives in the past tense of how certain actors had carried out their parts.[641]

It must not be assumed that, because a play was printed from a stage copy, the author had no chance of editing it. Probably the compositors treated the manuscript put before them very freely, modifying, if they did not obliterate, the individual notions of the author or scribe as to orthography and punctuation; and the master printer, or some press corrector in his employment, went over and ‘improved’ their work, perhaps not always with much reference to the original ‘copy’.[642] This process of correction continued during the printing off of the successive sheets, with the result that different examples of the same imprint often show the same sheet in corrected and in uncorrected states.[643] The trend of modern criticism is in the direction of regarding Shakespeare’s plays as printed, broadly speaking, without any editorial assistance from him; the early quartos from play-house manuscripts, the later quartos from the earlier quartos, the folio partly from play-house manuscripts, partly from earlier quartos used in the play-house instead of manuscripts, and bearing marks of adaptation to shifting stage requirements.[644] On this theory, the aberrations of the printing-house, even with the author’s original text before them, have to account in the main for the unsatisfactory condition in which, in spite of such posthumous editing, not very extensive, as was done for the folio, even the best texts of the plays have reached us. Whether it is sound or not--I think that it probably is--there were other playwrights who were far from adopting Shakespeare’s attitude of detachment from the literary fate of his works. Jonson was a careful editor. Marston, Middleton, and Heywood all apologize for misprints in various plays, which they say were printed without their knowledge, or when they were urgently occupied elsewhere; and the inference must be that in normal circumstances the responsibility would have rested with them.[645] Marston, indeed, definitely says that he had ‘perused’ the second edition of _The Fawn_, in order ‘to make some satisfaction for the first faulty impression’.[646]

The modern editions, with their uniform system of acts and scenes and their fanciful notes of locality--‘A room in the palace’, ‘Another room in the palace’--are again misleading in their relation to the early prints, especially those based upon the play-house. Notes of locality are very rare. Occasionally a definite shift from one country or town to another is recorded;[647] and a few edited plays, such as Ben Jonson’s, prefix, with a ‘dramatis personae’, a general indication of ‘The scene’.[648] For the rest, the reader is left to his own inferences, with such help as the dialogue and the presenters give him; and the modern editors, with a post-Restoration tradition of staging in their minds, have often inferred wrongly. Even the shoulder-notes appended to the accurate reprints of the Malone Society, although they do not attempt localities, err by introducing too many new scenes. In the early prints the beginnings of scenes are rarely marked, and the beginnings of acts are left unmarked to an extent which is rather surprising. The practice is by no means uniform, and it is possible to distinguish different tendencies in texts of different origin. The Tudor interludes and the early Elizabethan plays of the more popular type are wholly undivided, and there was probably no break in the continuity of the performances.[649] Acts and scenes, which are the outward form of a method of construction derived from the academic analysis of Latin comedy and tragedy, make their appearance, with other notes of neo-classic influence, in the farces of the school of Udall, in the Court tragedies, in translated plays, in Lyly’s comedies, and in a few others belonging to the same _milieu_ of scholarship.[650] Ben Jonson and a few other later writers adopt them in printing plays of theatrical origin.[651] But the great majority of plays belonging to the public theatres continue to be printed without any divisions at all, while plays from the private houses are ordinarily divided into acts, but not into scenes, although the beginning of each act has usually some such heading as ‘Actus Primus, Scena prima’.[652] This distinction corresponds to the greater significance of the act-interval in the performance of the boy companies; but, as I have pointed out in an earlier chapter, it is difficult to suppose that the public theatres paid no regard to act-intervals, and one cannot therefore quite understand why neither the poets nor the book-keepers were in the habit of showing them in the play-house ‘originals’ of plays.[653] Had they been shown there, they would almost inevitably have got into the prints. It is a peculiarity of the surreptitious First Quarto of _Romeo and Juliet_, that its later sheets, which differ typographically from the earlier ones, although they do not number either acts or scenes, insert lines of ornament at the points at which acts and scenes may be supposed to begin. It must be added that, so far as an Elizabethan playwright looked upon his work as made up of scenes, his conception of a scene was not as a rule that familiar to us upon the modern stage. The modern scene may be defined as a piece of action continuous in time and place between two falls of a drop-curtain. The Elizabethans had no drop-curtain, and the drawing of an alcove curtain, at any rate while personages remain on the stage without, does not afford the same solution of continuity. The nearest analogy is perhaps in such a complete clearance of the stage, generally with a shift of locality, as enables the imagination to assume a time interval. A few texts, generally of the seventeenth century, are divided into scenes on this principle of clearance; and it was adopted by the editors of the First Folio, when, in a half-hearted way, they attempted to divide up the continuous texts of their manuscripts and quartos.[654] But it was not the principle of the neo-classic dramatists, or of Ben Jonson and his school. For them a scene was a section, not of action, but of dialogue; and they started a new scene whenever a speaker, or at any rate a speaker of importance, entered or left the stage. This is the conception which is in the mind of Marston when he regrets, in the preface to _The Malcontent_, that ‘scenes, invented merely to be spoken, should be enforcively published to be read’. It is also the conception of the French classicist drama, although the English playwrights do not follow the French rule of _liaison_, which requires at least one speaker from each scene to remain on into the next, and thus secures continuity throughout each act by making a complete clearance of the stage impossible.[655]

XXIII

PLAYWRIGHTS

[_Bibliographical Note._--The abundant literature of the drama
is more satisfactorily treated in the appendices to F. E.
Schelling, _Elizabethan Drama_ (1908), and vols. v and vi (1910)
of the _Cambridge History of English Literature_, than in R. W.
Lowe, _Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature_
(1888), K. L. Bates and L. B. Godfrey, _English Drama: a Working
Basis_ (1896), or W. D. Adams, _Dictionary of the Drama_ (1904).
There is an American pamphlet on _Materials for the Study of the
English Drama, excluding Shakespeare_ (1912, Newbery Library,
Chicago), which I have not seen. Periodical lists of new books
are published in the _Modern Language Review_, the _Beiblatt_
to _Anglia_, and the _Bulletin_ of the English Association,
and annual bibliographies by the _Modern Humanities Research
Association_ (from 1921) and in the Shakespeare _Jahrbuch_.
The bibliography by H. R. Tedder in the _Encyclopaedia
Britannica_ (11th ed.) s.v. Shakespeare, A. C. Shaw, _Index to
the Shakespeare Memorial Library_ (1900–3), and W. Jaggard,
_Shakespeare Bibliography_ (1911), on which, however, cf. C. S.
Northup in _J. G. P._ xi. 218, are also useful.

W. W. Greg, _Notes on Dramatic Bibliographers_ (1911, _M.
S. C._ i. 324), traces from the publishers’ advertisements
of the Restoration a _catena_ of play-lists in E. Phillips,
_Theatrum Poetarum_ (1675), W. Winstanley, _Lives of the Most
Famous English Poets_ (1687), G. Langbaine, _Momus Triumphans_
(1688) and _Account of the English Dramatick Poets_ (1691), C.
Gildon, _Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets_
(1698), W. R. Chetwood, _The British Theatre_ (1750), E. Capell,
_Notitia Dramatica_ (1783), and the various editions of the
_Biographica Dramatica_ from 1764 to 1812. More recent are J. O.
Halliwell-Phillipps, _Dictionary of Old English Plays_ (1860),
and W. C. Hazlitt, _Manual of Old English Plays_ (1892); but
all are largely superseded by W. W. Greg, _A List of English
Plays_ (1900) and _A List of Masques, Pageants, &c._ (1902).
His account of Warburton’s collection in _The Bakings of Betsy_
(_Library_, 1911) serves as a supplement. A few plays discovered
later than 1900 appeared in an Irish sale of 1906 (cf.
_Jahrbuch_, xliii. 310) and in the Mostyn sale of 1919 (cf. t.p.
facsimiles in Sotheby’s sale catalogue). For the problems of the
early prints, the _Bibliographical Note_ to ch. xxii should be
consulted.

I ought to add that the notices of the early prints of plays
in this and the following chapter lay no claim to minute
bibliographical erudition, and that all deficiencies in this
respect are likely to be corrected when the full results of Dr.
Greg’s researches on the subject are published.

The fundamental works on the history of the drama are A. W.
Ward, _History of English Dramatic Literature_ (1875, 1899), F.
G. Fleay, _Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama_ (1891),
F. E. Schelling, _Elizabethan Drama_ (1908), the _Cambridge
History of English Literature_, vols. v and vi (1910), and W.
Creizenach, _Geschichte des neueren Dramas_, vols. iv, v (1909,
1916). These and others, with the relevant periodicals, are
set out in the _General Bibliographical Note_ (vol. i); and to
them may be added F. S. Boas, _Shakspere and his Predecessors_
(1896), B. Matthews, _The Development of the Drama_ (1904), F.
E. Schelling, _English Drama_ (1914), A. Wynne, _The Growth of
English Drama_ (1914). Less systematic collections of studies
are L. M. Griffiths, _Evenings with Shakespeare_ (1889), J. R.
Lowell, _Old English Dramatists_ (1892), A. H. Tolman, _The
Views about Hamlet_ (1904), C. Crawford, _Collectanea_ (1906–7),
A. C. Swinburne, _The Age of Shakespeare_ (1908). The older
critical work of Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, and others
cannot be neglected, but need not be detailed here.

Special dissertations on individual plays and playwrights
are recorded in the body of this chapter. A few of wider
scope may be roughly classified; as dealing with dramatic
structure, H. Schwab, _Das Schauspiel im Schauspiel zur Zeit
Shakespeares_ (1896), F. A. Foster, _Dumb Show in Elizabethan
Drama before 1620_ (1911, _E. S._ xliv. 8); with types of
drama, H. W. Singer, _Das bürgerliche Trauerspiel in England_
(1891), J. Seifert, _Wit-und Science Moralitäten_ (1892), J. L.
McConaughty, _The School Drama_ (1913), E. N. S. Thompson, _The
English Moral Plays_ (1910), R. Fischer, _Zur Kunstentwickelung
der englischen Tragödie bis zu Shakespeare_ (1893), A. C.
Bradley, _Shakespearean Tragedy_ (1904), F. E. Schelling, _The
English Chronicle Play_ (1902), L. N. Chase, _The English
Heroic Play_ (1903), C. G. Child, _The Rise of the Heroic Play_
(1904, _M. L. N._ xix), F. H. Ristine, _English Tragicomedy_
(1910), C. R. Baskervill, _Some Evidence for Early Romantic
Plays in England_ (1916, _M. P._ xiv. 229, 467), L. M. Ellison,
_The Early Romantic Drama at the English Court_ (1917), H.
Smith, _Pastoral Influence in the English Drama_ (1897, _M.
L. A._ xii. 355). A. H. Thorndike, _The Pastoral Element in
the English Drama before 1605_ (1900, _M. L. N._ xiv. 228), J.
Laidler, _History of Pastoral Drama in England_ (1905, _E. S._
xxxv. 193), W. W. Greg, _Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama_
(1906); with types of plot and characterization, H. Graf,
_Der Miles Gloriosus im englischen Drama_ (1891), E. Meyer,
_Machiavelli and the Elizabethan Drama_ (1897), G. B. Churchill,
_Richard the Third up to Shakespeare_ (1900), L. W. Cushman,
_The Devil and the Vice in the English Dramatic Literature
before Shakespeare_ (1900), E. Eckhardt, _Die lustige Person
im älteren englischen Drama_ (1902), F. E. Schelling, _Some
Features of the Supernatural as Represented in Plays of the
Reigns of Elizabeth and James_ (1903, _M. P._ i), H. Ankenbrand,
_Die Figur des Geistes im Drama der englischen Renaissance_
(1906), F. G. Hubbard, _Repetition and Parallelism in the
Earlier Elizabethan Drama_ (1905, _M. L. A._ xx), E. Eckhardt,
_Die Dialekt-und Ausländertypen des älteren englischen Dramas_
(1910–11), V. O. Freeburg, _Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama_
(1915); with _Quellenforschung_ and foreign influences, E.
Koeppel, _Quellen-Studien zu den Dramen Jonson’s, Marston’s,
und Beaumont und Fletcher’s_ (1895), _Quellen-Studien zu
den Dramen Chapman’s, Massinger’s und Ford’s_ (1897), _Zur
Quellen-Kunde der Stuarts-Dramen_ (1896, _Archiv_, xcvii),
_Studien zur Geschichte der italienischen Novelle in der
englischen Litteratur des sechzehnten Jahrhunderts_ (1892),
L. L. Schücking, _Studien über die stofflichen Beziehungen
der englischen Komödie zur italienischen bis Lilly_ (1901),
A. Ott, _Die italienische Novelle im englischen Drama von
1600_ (1904), W. Smith, _The Commedia dell’ Arte_ (1912), M.
A. Scott, _Elizabethan Translations from the Italian_ (1916),
A. L. Stiefel, _Die Nachahmung spanischer Komödien in England
unter den ersten Stuarts_ (1890), _Die Nachahmung spanischer
Komödien in England_ (1897, _Archiv_, xcix), L. Bahlsen,
_Spanische Quellen der dramatischen Litteratur besonders
Englands zu Shakespeares Zeit_ (1893, _Z. f. vergleichende
Litteraturgeschichte_, N. F. vi), A. S. W. Rosenbach, _The
Curious Impertinent in English Drama_ (1902, _M. L. N._ xvii),
J. Fitzmaurice-Kelly, _Cervantes in England_ (1905), J. W.
Cunliffe, _The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_
(1893), O. Ballweg, _Das klassizistische Drama zur Zeit
Shakespeares_ (1909), O. Ballmann, _Chaucers Einfluss auf das
englische Drama_ (1902, _Anglia_, xxv), R. M. Smith, _Froissart
and the English Chronicle Play_ (1915); with the interrelations
of dramatists, A. H. Thorndike, _The Influence of Beaumont and
Fletcher on Shakespeare_ (1901), E. Koeppel, _Studien über
Shakespeares Wirkung auf zeitgenössische Dramatiker_ (1905),
_Ben Jonson’s Wirkung auf zeitgenössische Dramatiker_ (1906).

The special problem of the authorship of the so-called
_Shakespeare Apocrypha_ is dealt with in the editions thereof
described below, and by Halliwell-Phillipps (ii. 413), Ward (ii.
209), R. Sachs, _Die Shakespeare zugeschriebenen zweifelhaften
Stücke_ (1892, _Jahrbuch_, xxvii), and A. F. Hopkinson,
_Essays on Shakespeare’s Doubtful Plays_ (1900). The analogous
question of the possible non-Shakespearian authorship of plays
or parts of plays published as his is too closely interwoven
with specifically Shakespearian literature to be handled here;
J. M. Robertson, in _Did Shakespeare Write Titus Andronicus?_
(1905), _Shakespeare and Chapman_ (1917), _The Shakespeare
Canon_ (1922), is searching; other dissertations are cited
under the plays or playwrights concerned. The attempts to use
metrical or other ‘tests’ in the discrimination of authorship
or of the chronology of work have been predominantly applied to
Shakespeare, although Beaumont and Fletcher (_vide infra_) and
others have not been neglected. The broader discussions of E.
N. S. Thompson, _Elizabethan Dramatic Collaboration_ (1909, _E.
S._ xl. 30) and E. H. C. Oliphant, _Problems of Authorship in
Elizabethan Dramatic Literature_ (1911, _M. P._ viii, 411) are
of value.

To the general histories of Elizabethan literature named in
the _General Bibliographical Note_ may be added _Chambers’s
Cyclopaedia of English Literature_ (1901–3), E. Gosse, _Modern
English Literature_ (1897), G. Saintsbury, _Short History of
English Literature_ (1900), A. Lang, _English Literature from
‘Beowulf’ to Swinburne_ (1912), W. Minto, _Characteristics of
English Poets from Chaucer to Shirley_ (1874), G. Saintsbury,
_Elizabethan Literature_ (1887), E. Gosse, _The Jacobean Poets_
(1894), T. Seccombe and J. W. Allen, _The Age of Shakespeare_
(1903), F. E. Schelling, _English Literature during the Lifetime
of Shakespeare_ (1910); and for the international relations, G.
Saintsbury, _The Earlier Renaissance_ (1901), D. Hannay, _The
Later Renaissance_ (1898), H. J. C. Grierson, _The First Half of
the Seventeenth Century_ (1906), C. H. Herford, _The Literary
Relations of England and Germany in the Sixteenth Century_
(1886), L. Einstein, _The Italian Renaissance in England_
(1902), S. Lee, _The French Renaissance in England_ (1910), J.
G. Underhill, _Spanish Literature in the England of the Tudors_
(1899).

I append a chronological list of miscellaneous collections of
plays, covering those of more than one author. A few of minimum
importance are omitted.

(_a_) _Shakespeare Apocrypha_

1664. M^r William Shakespear’s Comedies, Histories, and
Tragedies. Published according to the true Original Copies.
The Third Impression. And unto this Impression is added seven
Playes, never before printed in Folio, viz. Pericles Prince of
Tyre. The London Prodigall. The History of Thomas L^d Cromwell.
Sir John Oldcastle Lord Cobham. The Puritan Widow. A Yorkshire
Tragedy. The Tragedy of Locrine. _For P[hilip] C[hetwinde]._ [A
second issue of the Third Folio (F_{3}) of Shakespeare. I cite
these as ‘The 7 Plays’.]

1685. M^r William Shakespear’s Comedies, Histories, and
Tragedies.... The Fourth Edition. _For H. Herringman, E.
Brewster, and R. Bentley._ [The Fourth Folio (F_{4}) of
Shakespeare, The 7 Plays.]

1709, 1714. N. Rowe, _The Works of Sh._ [The 7 Plays in vol. vi
of 1709 and vol. viii of 1714.]

1728, &c. A. Pope, _The Works of Sh._ [The 7 Plays in vol. ix of
1728.]

1780. [E. Malone], _Supplement to the Edition of Sh.’s Plays
published in 1778 by S. Johnson and G. Steevens_. [The 7 Plays
in vol. ii.]

1848, 1855. W. G. Simms, _A Supplement to the Works of Sh._ (New
York). [_T. N. K._ and the 7 Plays, except _Pericles_.]

N.D. [1851?]. H. Tyrrell, _The Doubtful Plays of Sh._ [The 7
Plays, _T. A._, _Edward III_, _Merry Devil of Edmonton_, _Fair
Em_, _Mucedorus_, _Arden of Feversham_, _Birth of Merlin_, _T.
N. K._]

1852, 1887. W. Hazlitt, _The Supplementary Works of Sh._ [The 7
Plays, _T. A._]

1854–74. N. Delius, _Pseudo-Shakespere’sche Dramen_. [_Edward
III_ (1854), _Arden of Feversham_ (1855), _Birth of Merlin_
(1856), _Mucedorus_ (1874), _Fair Em_ (1874), separately.]

1869. M. Moltke, _Doubtful Plays of Sh._ (Tauchnitz). [_Edward
III_, _Thomas Lord Cromwell_, _Locrine_, _Yorkshire Tragedy_,
_London Prodigal_, _Birth of Merlin_.]

1883–8. K. Warnke und L. Proescholdt, _Pseudo-Shakespearian
Plays_. [_Fair Em_ (1883), _Merry Devil of Edmonton_ (1884),
_Edward III_ (1886), _Birth of Merlin_ (1887), _Arden of
Feversham_ (1888), separately, with _Mucedorus_ (1878) outside
the series.]

1891–1914. A. F. Hopkinson, _Sh.’s Doubtful Plays_ (1891–5).
_Old English Plays_ (1901–2). _Sh.’s Doubtful Works_ (1910–11).
[Under the above collective titles were issued some, but not
all, of a series of plays bearing separate dates as follows:
_Thomas Lord Cromwell_ (1891, 1899), _Yorkshire Tragedy_ (1891,
1910), _Edward III_ (1891, 1911), _Merry Devil of Edmonton_
(1891, 1914), _Warning for Fair Women_ (1891, 1904), _Locrine_
(1892), _Birth of Merlin_ (1892, 1901), _London Prodigal_
(1893), _Mucedorus_ (1893), _Sir John Oldcastle_ (1894),
_Puritan_ (1894), _T. N. K._ (1894), _Fair Em_ (1895), _Famous
Victories of Henry V_ (1896), _Contention of York and Lancaster_
(1897), _Arden of Feversham_ (1898, 1907), _True Tragedy of
Richard III_ (1901), _Sir Thomas More_ (1902). My list may not
be complete.]

1908. C. F. T. Brooke, _The Sh. Apocrypha_. [The 7 Plays except
_Pericles_, _Arden of Feversham_, _Edward III_, _Mucedorus_,
_Merry Devil of Edmonton_, _Fair Em_, _T. N. K._, _Birth of
Merlin_, _Sir Thomas More_.]

(_b_) _General Collections_

1744. _A Select Collection of Old Plays._ 12 vols. (Dodsley).
[Cited as _Dodsley_^1.]

1750. [W. R. Chetwood], _A Select Collection of Old Plays_
(Dublin).

1773. T. Hawkins, _The Origin of the English Drama_. 3 vols.

1779. [J. Nichols], _Six Old Plays_. 2 vols.

1780. _A Select Collection of Old Plays._ The Second Edition ...
by I. Reed. 12 vols. (Dodsley). [Cited as Dodsley^2.]

1810. [Sir W. Scott], _The Ancient British Drama_. 3 vols.
(W. Miller). [Cited as _A. B. D._]

1811. [Sir W. Scott], _The Modern British Drama_. 5 vols.
(W. Miller). [Cited as _M. B. D._]

1814–15. [C. W. Dilke], _Old English Plays_. 6 vols. [Cited
as _O. E. P._]

1825. _The Old English Drama._ 2 vols. (Hurst, Robinson, & Co.,
and A. Constable). [Most of the plays have the separate imprint
of C. Baldwyn, 1824.]

1825–7. _Select Collection of Old Plays._ A new edition ... by
I. Reed, O. Gilchrist and [J. P. Collier]. 12 vols. [Cited as
Dodsley^3.]

1830. _The Old English Drama._ 3 vols. (Thomas White).

1833. J. P. Collier, _Five Old Plays_ (W. Pickering).
[Half-title has ‘Old Plays, vol. xiii’, as a supplement to
Dodsley.]

1841–53. _Publications of the Shakespeare Society._ [Include,
besides several plays of T. Heywood (q.v.), Dekker, Chettle,
and Haughton’s _Patient Grissell_, Munday’s _John a Kent
and John a Cumber_, Legge’s _Richardus Tertius_, Norton and
Sackville’s _Gorboduc_, Merbury’s _Marriage between Wit and
Wisdom_, and _Sir Thomas More_, _True Tragedy of Richard III_,
_1 Contention_, _True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York_, _Taming
of A Shrew_, _Timon_, by various editors. Some copies of these
plays, not including Heywood’s, were bound up in 4 vols., with
the general date 1853, as a _Supplement_ to Dodsley.]

1848. F. J. Child, _Four Old Plays_.

1851. J. P. Collier, _Five Old Plays_ (Roxburghe Club).

1870. J. S. Keltie, _The Works of the British Dramatists_.

[Many of the collections enumerated above are obsolete, and I
have not usually thought it worth while to record here the plays
included in them. Lists of the contents of most of them are
given in Hazlitt; _Manual_, 267.]

1874–6. _A Select Collection of Old English Plays_: Fourth
Edition, now first Chronologically Arranged, Revised and
Enlarged; with the notes of all the Commentators, and New Notes,
by W. C. Hazlitt. Vols. i-ix (1874), x-xiv (1875), xv (1876).
[Cited as Dodsley, or Dodsley^4; incorporates with Collier’s
edition of Dodsley the collections of 1833, 1848, 1851, and
1853.]

1875. W. C. Hazlitt, _Shakespeare’s Library_. Second Edition.
Part i, 4 vols.; Part ii, 2 vols. [Part i is based on
Collier’s _Shakespeare’s Library_ (1844). Part ii, based
on the collections of 1779 and 1841–53, adds the dramatic
sources, Warner’s _Menaechmi_, _True Tragedie of Richard
III_, Legge’s _Richardus Tertius_, _Troublesome Raigne of
John_, _Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth_, _1 Contention of
York and Lancaster_, _True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York_,
Shakespeare’s _Merry Wives of Windsor_ (Q_{1}), Whetstone’s
_Promos and Cassandra_, _King Leire_, _Timon_, _Taming of A
Shrew_.]

1878. R. Simpson, _The School of Shakspere_. 2 vols. [_Captain
Thomas Stukeley_, _Nobody and Somebody_, _Histriomastix_, _Jack
Drum’s Entertainment_, _Warning for Fair Women_, _Fair Em_, with
_A Larum for London_ (1872) separately printed.]

1882–5. A. H. Bullen, _A Collection of Old English Plays_. 4
vols. [Cited as Bullen, _O. E. P. Maid’s Metamorphosis_,
_Noble Soldier_, _Sir Giles Goosecap_, _Wisdom of Doctor
Dodipoll_, _Charlemagne or The Distracted Emperor_, _Trial of
Chivalry_, Yarington’s _Two Lamentable Tragedies_, _Costly
Whore_, _Every Woman in her Humour_, with later plays.]

[1885]-91. _43 Shakspere Quarto Facsimiles._ Issued under the
superintendence of F. J. Furnivall. [Photographic facsimiles
by W. Griggs and C. Praetorius, with introductions by various
editors, including, besides accepted Shakespearian plays,
_Pericles_ (Q_{1}, Q_{2}), _1 Contention_ (Q_{1}), _True Tragedy
of Richard Duke of York_ (Q_{1}), _Whole Contention_ (Q_{3}),
_Famous Victories of Henry V_ (Q_{1}), _Troublesome Raigne of
John_ (Q_{1}), _Taming of A Shrew_ (Q_{1}).]

1888. _Nero and other Plays_ (Mermaid Series). [_Nero_ (1624),
Porter’s _Two Angry Women of Abingdon_, Day’s _Parliament
of Bees_ and _Humour Out of Breath_, Field’s _Woman is a
Weathercock_ and _Amends for Ladies_, by various editors.]

1896–1905. _The Temple Dramatists._ [Cited as _T. D._ Single
plays by various editors, including, besides plays of Beaumont
and Fletcher, Dekker, Heywood, Jonson, Kyd, Marlowe, Peele,
Udall, Webster (q.v.), _Arden of Feversham_, _Edward III_,
_Merry Devil of Edmonton_, _Selimus_, _T. N. K._, _Return from
Parnassus_.]

1897. J. M. Manly, _Specimens of the Pre-Shakspearean Drama_.
2 vols. issued. [Udall’s _Roister Doister_, _Gammer Gurton’s
Needle_, Preston’s _Cambyses_, Norton and Sackville’s
_Gorboduc_, Lyly’s _Campaspe_, Greene’s _James IV_, Peele’s
_David and Bethsabe_, Kyd’s _Spanish Tragedy_ in vol. ii;
earlier plays in vol. i.]

1897. H. A. Evans, _English Masques_ (Warwick Library). [Ten
masks by Jonson (q.v.), Daniel’s _Twelve Goddesses_, Campion’s
_Lords’ Mask_, Beaumont’s _Inner Temple Mask_, _Mask of
Flowers_, and later masks.]

1897–1912. _Jahrbuch der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft_,
vols. xxxiii-xlviii. [Wilson’s _Cobbler’s Prophecy_ (1897), _1
Richard II_ (1899), Wager’s _The Longer Thou Livest, the More
Fool Thou Art_ (1900), _The Wars of Cyrus_ (1901), Jonson’s
_E. M. I._ (1902), Lupton’s _All for Money_ (1904), Wapull’s
_The Tide Tarrieth No Man_ (1907), Lumley’s translation of
_Iphigenia_ (1910), _Caesar and Pompey_, or _Caesar’s Revenge_
(1911, 1912), by various editors.]

1898. A. Brandl, _Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England vor
Shakespeare_. Ein Ergänzungsband zu Dodsley’s Old English Plays.
(_Quellen und Forschungen_, lxxx.) [_King Darius_, _Misogonus_,
_Horestes_, Wilmot’s _Gismond of Salern_, _Common Conditions_,
and earlier plays.]

1902–8. _The Belles Lettres Series._ Section iii. _The English
Drama._ General Editor, G. P. Baker. [Cited as _B. L._ Plays
of Beaumont and Fletcher, Chapman, Dekker, Gascoigne, Jonson,
Webster (q.v.), in separate volumes by various editors.]

1902–14. _Materialien zur Kunde des älteren englischen Dramas_
... begründet und herausgegeben von W. Bang. 44 vols. issued.
(A. Uystpruyst, Louvain.) [Includes, with other ‘material’, text
facsimile reprints of plays, &c., of Barnes, Brewer, Daniel,
Chettle and Day, Dekker, Heywood, Jonson, Mason, Sharpham
(q.v.), with _How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad_,
_Sir Giles Goosecap_, the Latin _Victoria_ of A. Fraunce and
_Pedantius_, and translations from Seneca.]

1903, 1913, 1914. C. M. Gayley, _Representative English
Comedies_. 3 vols. [Plays of Udall, Lyly, Peele, Greene, Porter,
Jonson, and Dekker, with _Gammer Gurton’s Needle_, _Eastward
Ho!_, _Merry Devil of Edmonton_, and later plays, by various
editors.]

1905–8. J. S. Farmer, _Publications of the Early English Drama
Society_. [Modernized texts, mainly of little value, but
including a volume of _Recently Recovered Plays_, from the
quartos in the Irish sale of 1906.]

1907–20. _Malone Society Reprints._ 46 vols. issued. [In
progress; text-facsimile reprints of separate plays, by various
editors, under general editorship of W. W. Greg; cited as _M. S.
R._]

1907–14. J. S. Farmer, _The Tudor Facsimile Texts_, with a Hand
List (1914). [Photographic facsimiles, mostly by R. B. Fleming;
cited as _T. F. T._ The Hand List states that 184 vols. are
included in the collection, but I believe that some were not
actually issued before the editor’s death. Some or all of these,
with reissues of others, appear in _Old English Plays, Student’s
Facsimile Edition_; cited as _S. F. T._]

1908–14. _The Shakespeare Classics._ General Editor, I.
Gollancz. (_The Shakespeare Library_). [Includes Warner’s
_Menaechmi_ and _Leire_, _Taming of A Shrew_, and _Troublesome
Reign of King John_.]

1911. W. A. Neilson, _The Chief Elizabethan Dramatists excluding
Shakespeare_. [Plays by Lyly, Peele, Greene, Marlowe, Kyd,
Chapman, Jonson, Dekker, Marston, Heywood, Beaumont, Fletcher,
Webster, Middleton, and later writers; cited as _C. E. D._]

1911. R. W. Bond, _Early Plays from the Italian_. [Gascoigne’s
_Supposes_, _Bugbears_, _Misogonus_.]

1912. J. W. Cunliffe, _Early English Classical Tragedies_.
[Norton and Sackville’s _Gorboduc_, Gascoigne and Kinwelmersh’s
_Jocasta_, Wilmot’s _Gismond of Salerne_, Hughes’s _Misfortunes
of Arthur_.]

1912. _Masterpieces of the English Drama._ General Editor, F.
E. Schelling, [Cited as _M. E. D._ Plays of Marlowe, Beaumont
and Fletcher, Webster and Tourneur (q.v.), with Massinger and
Congreve, in separate volumes by various editors.]

1915. C. B. Wheeler, _Six Plays by Contemporaries of
Shakespeare_ (_World’s Classics_). [Dekker’s _Shoemaker’s
Holiday_, Beaumont and Fletcher’s _K. B. P._ and _Philaster_,
Webster’s _White Devil_ and _Duchess of Malfi_, Massinger’s _New
Way to Pay Old Debts_.]

* * * * *

[In this chapter I give under the head of each playwright (_a_) a brief sketch of his life in relation to the stage, (_b_) a list of contemporary and later collections of his dramatic works, (_c_) a list of dissertations (books, pamphlets, articles in journals) bearing generally upon his life and works. Then I take each play, mask, &c., up to 1616 and give (_a_) the MSS. if any; (_b_) the essential parts of the entry, if any, on the Stationers’ Register, including in brackets the name of any licenser other than an official of the Company, and occasionally adding a note of any transfer of copyright which seems of exceptional interest; (_c_) the essential parts of the title-page of the first known print; (_d_) a note of its prologues, epilogues, epistles, and other introductory matter; (_e_) the dates and imprints of later prints before the end of the seventeenth century with any new matter from their t.ps. bearing on stage history; (_f_) lists of all important 18th-20th century editions and dissertations, not of the collective or general type already dealt with; (_g_) such notes as may seem desirable on authorship, date, stage history and the like. Some of these notes are little more than compilations; others contain the results of such work as I have myself been able to do on the plays concerned. Similarly, I have in some cases recorded, on the authority of others, editions and dissertations which I have not personally examined. The section devoted to each playwright concludes with lists of work not extant and of work of which his authorship has, often foolishly, been conjectured. I ought to make it clear that many of my title-pages are borrowed from Dr. Greg, and that, while I have tried to give what is useful for the history of the stage, I have no competence in matters of minute bibliographical accuracy.]

WILLIAM ALABASTER (1567–1640)

Alabaster, or Alablaster, was born at Hadleigh, Suffolk, in 1567 and entered Trinity College, Cambridge, from Westminster in 1583. His Latin poem _Eliseis_ is mentioned by Spenser in _Colin Clout’s Come Home Again_ (1591). He was incorporated M.A. of Oxford in 1592, and went as chaplain to Essex in the Cadiz expedition of 1596. On 22 Sept. 1597 Richard Percival wrote to Sir Robert Cecil (_Hatfield MSS._ vii. 394), ‘Alabaster has made a tragedy against the Church of England’. Perhaps this is not to be taken literally, but only refers to his conversion to Catholicism. Chamberlain, 7, 64, records that he was ‘clapt up for poperie’, had escaped from the Clink by 4 May 1598, but was recaptured at Rochelle. This was about the beginning of Aug. 1599 (_Hatfield MSS._ ix. 282). Later he was reconverted and at his death in 1640 held the living of Therfield, Herts. He wrote on mystical theology, and a manuscript collection of 43 sonnets, mostly unprinted, is described by B. Dobell in _Athenaeum_ (1903), ii. 856.

_Roxana. c. 1592_

[_MSS._] _T. C. C. MS._ (‘Authore Domino Alabaster’); _Camb. Univ. MS._ Ff. ii. 9; _Lambeth MS._ 838 (‘finis Roxanae Alabastricae’).

_S. R._ 1632, May 9 (Herbert). ‘A Tragedy in Latyn called Roxana &c.’ _Andrew Crooke_ (Arber, iv. 277).

1632. Roxana Tragædia olim Cantabrigiae, Acta in Col. Trin. Nunc primum in lucem edita, summaque cum diligentia ad castigatissimum exemplar comparata. _R. Badger for Andrew Crook._ [At end is Herbert’s imprimatur, dated ‘1 March, 1632’.]

1632. Roxana Tragædia a plagiarii unguibus vindicata, aucta, & agnita ab Authore Gulielmo Alabastro. _William Jones._ [Epistle by Gulielmus Alabaster to Sir Ralph Freeman; commendatory verses by Hugo Hollandius and Tho. Farnabius; engraved title-page, with representation of a stage (cf. ch. xviii, _Bibl. Note_).]

The Epistle has ‘Ante quadraginta plus minus annos, morticinum hoc edidi duarum hebdomadarum abortum, et unius noctis spectaculo destinatum, non aevi integri’. The play is a Latin version of Luigi Groto’s _La Dalida_ (1567).

SIR WILLIAM ALEXANDER, EARL OF STIRLING (_c._ 1568–1640).