Typical Elizabethan Plays

PREFACE

THE following collection of plays has been made with a ruling purpose, to present typical examples of the variety and diversity of Elizabethan drama. To this end, excluding Shakespeare, the best examples of each kind of play have been chosen so far as possible; and each play, barring those in the Appendix, has been printed in its integrity. While excellence in a class does not always tally with intrinsic superiority, the prevailingly high dramatic and poetic worth of Elizabethan plays at large maintains in this choice by types the general artistic value of the collection. The greatest names appear, and each is represented by work worthy of his reputation, if not always by every variety of it. The great species of the drama-romantic tragedy, romantic comedy, the chronicle play, the comedy of manners, tragicomedy-exist so numerously that choice within the limitations of such a book as this is embarrassing. Some of these are represented in more than one example, as time altered their characteristics and developed them, in some instances, into practically a new kind. Two minor types of the old drama lend themselves to a less complete representation. These are the college drama, of absorbing interest socially and for its allusions, but less affecting the main currents of the Elizabethan stage; and the biographical chronicle play of collaborative authorship, Sir Thomas More, which has recently attracted renewed attention, by reason of the belief of some that we have, in the manuscript of it, a scene written by the hand of Shakespeare. These have been represented by way of excerpts and relegated to an Appendix. The text of this collection is conservatively based on the original editions which have best stood the tests of scholarship. But no attempt has been made to record variorum readings or to register critical opinion. As the collection is intended for the general reader as well as for the student of the drama, the punctuation and spelling has been modernized, except where metrical or other considerations demand a retention of the earlier form. All statements of scene, stage directions, lists of personages and the like, which are not in the original, are included in square brackets. But such additions are admitted only where imperative, and the original stage directions, especially, are retained wherever possible. These extraneous features, although they are often haphazard, verbose or inconsistent, are valuable as aids to a realization of the

contemporary conception of scene and action, a
by the standardizing of modern editors. Dr
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A brief note concerning the origin, source, authorship and early editions precedes each play, with a short succeeding paragraph as to the author and his more important work. Further matter biographical and bibliographical belongs elsewhere. (See the present author's Elizabethan Playwrights, 1925, in this Series.) Obsolete words, terms of limited, dialect, or specific meaning, not ordinarily accessible in modern dictionaries, and other difficulties in the text are briefly explained on the page on which each occurs. Further "apparatus" there is none; for, when all is said, "the play's the thing."

It is impossible fully to record individual indebtedness to previous work in a field so fertile and well plowed as this. To previous collectors, Neilson and Gayley, I owe much; to the scholarly workers in this subject, who contribute to the collections of the Malone Society and to others like it, and to editors of individual dramatists and single plays. These obligations are duly mentioned in the context. Nor should we who come after forget what the older laborers in the field have done for us, Dyce, Gifford, Bullen and much maligned Collier, to name no more. They cut deep swaths where we are only gleaning; and we were not had they not been.

My acknowledgments are due to the Duke of Portland, who has graciously permitted the use of a reproduction of the fine contemporary portrait of Fletcher, now at Welbeck. The titles of early editions have been reproduced in nearly every case from the originals. For permission to photograph and to use this material my thanks are due to the British Museum, to the Henry E. Huntington Library, to that of my own University of Pennsylvania and especially to the ever ready courtesy of Mr. Andrew Keogh, Librarian of Yale University, and the Elizabethan Club of Yale whose treasures furnish seven of these titles. The generosity of Mr. W. A. White in permitting a similar use of specimens from his precious collections has yielded others, among them the title of the excessively rare quarto of Old Fortunatus, 1600. Lastly I record once more the interest of the general editor of this series, my friend and colleague, Professor Arthur H. Quinn.

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CONTENTS

PAGE

ENDYMION, THE MAN IN THE MOON, by John Lyly, Court Drama .
THE LAMENTABLE AND TRUE TRAGEDY OF MASTER ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM
IN KENT, probably by Thomas Kyd, a Murder Play .