ADDITIONAL NOTES ON THE PLAYS

ENDYMION

Endymion was published in 1591, and the title-page states that it had been played "before the Queenes Maiestie at Greenwich on Candlemas day at night, by the Chyldren of Paules." It is fairly certain that this performance took place on Feb. 2, 1586. The present text is based on Bond's reprint of the quarto of 1591, with slight additions from the version included by Blount in his Size Court Comedies, 1632. Like most of Lyly's plays, Endymion is an allegory of the court, with a mythological basis. Very little, however, is here borrowed from the myth of the Moon-goddess and her lover, and the plot is evidently invented with a view to carrying contemporary allusions. Beginning with Halpin's paper in 1843, many attempts have been made to read the riddle, the latest and most ingenious being that of M. Feuillerat, who identifies Cynthia with Elizabeth, Tellus with Mary of Scots, and Endymion with her son, James VI. The credit of having disproved the Endymion-Leicester identification is shared with M. Feuillerat by Dr. P. W. Long, who seeks to read the play as mainly an allegory of Heavenly Beauty (Cynthia) and Earthly Beauty (Tellus), an interpretation perhaps not wholly incompatible with the more personal solution.

THE OLD WIVES TALE

The Old Wife's Tale, as the title should appear in modern spelling (the reference being, of course, to Madge), was first published in 1595, and on this quarto, as reprinted by Gummere, the present text is based. The precise date of production has not been definitely ascertained, but it was probably not far from 1599. Source, in the usual sense of the term, the play can hardly be said to have; it is a medley of a dozen themes from current English folk-tales. Realistic in diction, romantic in subjectmatter, the play was a notable innovation in its day; and through the peculiar irony of the satire on romance, Peele introduced a new and subtler form of humor into English comedy. Both in its main theme, and in its use of the induction, this drama is an interesting forerunner of The Knight of the Burning Pestie.

FRIAR BACON AND FRIAR BUNGAY

This play was first printed in quarto in 1594, and that edition (Q), as printed by Collins and Gayley, forms the basis of the present text. The existence of a second quarto, said to have been issued in 1599, has been rendered highly doubtful by Gayley. Later editions appeared in 1630 (Q.) and 1655 (Q)). The date of production was probably 1589-90. That part of the plot dealing with the marvelous exploits of Friar Bacon is drawn from The Famous Historie of Friar Bacon, a late sixteenth-century account of the legends that had gathered round the name of the Oxford Franciscan, Roger Bacon (born 1214). The love story is Greene's own. It seems probable that this comedy was conceived as a foil to Marlowe's tragedy of Doctor Faustus, some of the scenes approaching an actual parody, and stress being laid on the superiority of the English to the German necromancer.

TAMBURLAINE

Both parts of Tamburlaine were entered in the Stationers' Register on Aug. 14, 1590, and they appeared together in octavo in 1590, and again in 1592. The alleged existence of editions of 1593, 1597, and 1600 is unsupported by evidence; and the third edition seems to be that of 1605 (part i.) and 1606 (part ii.), printed from the first. The issue of 1590 is the basis of the present text. The first part of the play was probably produced three years before, in 1587, and the second part in the following year. All the early editions are anonymous, nor does there survive any pre-Restoration statement as to the authorship; yet so convincing is the internal evidence that the ascription to Marlowe may be regarded as indubitable.

The main source of part i. is Fortescue's Foreste, 1571, a translation of Pedro Mexia's Silva de varia lecion, 1543. Additional details were derived from The Notable History of the Saracens by Thomas Newton, 1575, and from Petrus Perondinus, 1553. The title-rôle was first acted by the gigantic Edward Alleyn.

DOCTOR FAUSTUS

Allusions to contemporary events in the Low Countries fix the limits for the date of Doctor Faustus as 1585 and 1590; and the evidence of style places it after Tamburlaine. A ballad which seems to be inspired by the play was licensed in February, 1589, so that it is generally agreed that the first production of the play fell in the winter of 1588-89. "A booke calld the plaie of Doctor Faustus was entered in the Stationers' Register on Jan. 7, 1601, but if an edition was published in that year, no copy has survived. The earliest extant edition is that of 1604 (Q,), on which the present text is based. This version was reprinted in 1609 and 1611; and in 1616 appeared an enlarged form, followed in the later quartos of 1619, 1620, 1624, and 1631. An edition issued in 1663 has many additions and excisions, but

none with any claim to authority. The question of the authorship of the amplifications in the quarto of 1616 is still under discussion; but recent opinion tends to the view that, except for a few scattered lines, the additions may well be the work of William Birde and Samuel Rowley, engaged by Henslowe in 1602 for this purpose. Marlowe's knowledge of the Faust legend is derived from the German Faustbuch, published at Frankfurt by Johann Spies in 1587, which he probably knew through an English translation.

THE JEW OF MALTA

The earliest mention of this play occurs in Henslowe's Diary, where a performance is noted as taking place on February 26, 1592, and it is implied that the tragedy was not then new. Its composition is conjecturally placed about 1590. On May 17, 1594, it was entered on the Stationers' Register, but no edition has come down to us earlier than a corrupt quarto of 1633, which is thus our sole authority for the text. As to the source from which Marlowe drew his material, nothing definite is known. Kellner (Englische Studien, X. 80) has elaborated a parallel between the career of Marlowe's hero and that of a sixteenth-century Portuguese Jew, Michesius, who is mentioned by a number of historians; but such accounts as have been found could have furnished only suggestions.

This play was one of the most popular on the Elizabethan stage, Henslowe recording thirty-six performances before June 21, 1596.

EDWARD II

When The troublesom Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second was entered in the Stationers' Register on July 6, 1593, the play had been already on the stage for some time; and it is probable that it was first produced in 1591 or 1592. No copy issued in 1593 is extant, and the earliest surviving quarto belongs to 1594. On this, the best of the early prints, the present text is based. Other editions followed in 1598, 1612, and 1622. Marlowe's main source for the historical basis of the play was Holinshed, Fabyan's and Stowe's Chronicles having also supplied some minor details. Chronologica accuracy is often disregarded, yet in its main lines the action is substantially faithful to history. The play is Marlowe's ripest production, and we are fortunate in having the text preserved in a purer state than that of any of his other plays. In the four plays by Marlowe, Tucker Brooke's reprints of the early editions have been used.

THE SPANISH TRAGEDY

The most definite indication of the date of this, one of the most popular of all Elizabethan plays, is found in an allusion in the Induction to Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair (1614), where it seems to be implied that The Spanish Tragedy was then twenty-five or thirty years old. This gives us the years 1584-89 as limits; and the absence of any reference to the Armada, in a play laid in Spain, has led critics to place it before 1588. The year 1586 may, perhaps, be fairly conjectured as coming within a year of the date of composition. In 1592 it was being successfully performed; and on October 6 of that year it was entered for publication. The first edition has disappeared entirely; and the earliest extant is an undated quarto in the British Museum. Other quartos appeared in 1594 and 1599; and in the edi tion of 1602 are first found the additions made to the play by Ben Jonson, and included in the later quartos of 1610, 1615, 1618, 1623, and 1633. The present text is based on the B. M. quarto for Kyd's part of the play, and on that of 1602 for the additions, which are pointed out in the foot-notes; and I have availed myself of the collations of both Manly and Boas. All the early editions are anonymous; and the ascription of the play to Kyd is made on the authority of a passage in Heywood's Apology for Actors, 1612.

BUSSY D'AMBOIS

The first quarto of Bussy D'Ambois appeared in 1607, and a second in 1608. In 1641 a third quarto appeared, which claimed to be much corrected and amended by the author before his death," and this was reissued in 1646 and 1657. The present text is based on Boas's reprint of the quarto of 1641. The date of the production of the play is uncertain. Certain entries in Henslowe's Inary point to 1598, but if the play was on the stage as early as this, it must have been revised before its publication in 1607. Bussy D'Ambois belongs to the group of Chapman's plays dealing with almost contemporary French politics. D'Ambois himself was born in 1549, and was murdered by Monsoreau's retainers in 1579. The earliest extant accounts of his career are later in date than the play, and the precise sources of Chapman's information have not yet been found. But from the later descriptions it is clear that the action of the play, and the view given of the hero's character, are substantially historical.

EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR

This play, the first example of the "comedy of humours," was performed in 1598 with great success. It was published in quarto in 1601, and in this version the characters bear Italian names, and the scene is laid in Italy. It was revised about 1606, and this second version, with the names and scene made English and with many other changes, was published in the folio of 1616. The present text is based directly on the folio. The plot, which seems to have been entirely of Jonson's invention, is constructed with a view to those classical standards of comedy, which Jonson sought to uphold against the prevailing romantic license.

SEJANUS, HIS FALL

Sejanus was first performed in 1603, but, as Jonson admits, failed to please the audience. It was published in 1605, and again in the folio of 1616. On this latter the present text is based. It is not necessary to discuss the sources of this impressive tragedy, since Jonson has supplied us in his ample foot-notes with documentary evidence for nearly every fact in the play. These notes have been reproduced in the present edition, through the first scene, which is probably as far as the modern reader will care to study them. The delineation of Tiberius is one of the most successful attempts in our literature to recreate a highly complex historical character.

VOLPONE, OR THE FOX

Volpone was performed in 1605 or 1606 at the Globe theatre and at both Oxford and Cambridge, and in 1607 was printed in quarto. It was included in the folio of 1616, on which the present text is based. The main plot is founded on an episode in the Satiricon of Petronius Arbiter; but the parts of Celia and of Sir Politic and Lady Would-be are of Jonson's own invention. The song, "Drink to me only with thine eyes," is practically a translation from Philostratus, and "Come, my Celia" is imitated from Catullus. The comedy is a terrible satire on some of the most sordid aspects of human nature, and the superb skill with which it is constructed barely suffices to counteract the depressing effect of the types of character it displays.

THE ALCHEMIST

The Alchemist, which may, perhaps, be regarded as Jonson's supreme masterpiece in comedy, was performed in 1610, and published in quarto in 1612. The present text is based on that of the folio of 1616. It has been frequently stated that for the plot of this play Jonson was indebted to Plautus, but the borrowing is very slight. In the Mostellaria there is a scene which might have suggested the opening dialogue of The Alchemist, and another which bears a slight resemblance to Face's attempt to hoodwink his master in V. i. In the Poenulus, a man speaks Punic, and is misunderstood somewhat as Surly's Spanish is misunderstood in IV. iii. But the plot as a whole is Jonson's own, and the alchemical and astrological matter is drawn from a wide acquaintance with current treatises on these subjects. Attempts have been made to identify Subtle and Face with the famous Dee and Kelley, but identification is much too strong a word. Hathaway has pointed out a more striking correspondence with the activities of Simon Forman, a notorious quack of Jonson's day. The Alchemist has been credited with a considerable effectiveness in clearing London of the type of impostors which it ridicules and exposes so trenchantly and amusingly.

THE SHOEMAKERS' HOLIDAY

This, the first of Dekker's comedies, was acted in 1599, and printed in the following year. On the text of this quarto, as reprinted by Warnke and Proescholdt, the present text is based. The story of the partly historical Simon Eyre was found by Dekker in one of the tales in Thomas Deloney's Gentle Craft, 1597; but the main interest of the play lies in its picture of London tradespeople in the author's own day, and for this Dekker needed no literary source.

THE HONEST WHORE

From a passage in Henslowe's Diary it appears that Middleton had some share in the first part of The Honest Whore, but it is not supposed that he wrote any considerable portion of it. The second part is wholly Dekker's, and is generally regarded as superior to the first. The first edition of part i. appeared in 1604, of part ii. in 1630. Pearson's reprint, on which the present text is based, follows the 1805 quarto of part i. and the 1630 of part ii. A copy of the 1635 quarto of the double play has been used to check Pearson's text. No source of the plot has been discovered. The play is a highly characteristic product of the time, both in its picture of the vices of the city, and in its sound and straightforward, if somewhat coarse, handling of the moral issues involved. The character of Friscobaldo, in part ii., afforded Hazlitt the theme for what he himself justly regarded as one of his finest pieces of critical interpretation.

THE MALCONTENT

The Malcontent was first issued in 1604; and in the same year a second quarto appeared with the title-page, The Malcontent. Augmented by Marston. With the Additions played by the Kings Maiesties servants. Written by Ihon Webster. 1604. At London Printed by V. S. for William Aspley, and are to be sold at his shop in Paules Church-yard." The title-page of the first edition gives John Marston as author; the date and publisher are the same. The second edition, on which the present text is directly based, contains, as new matter, the Induction and a number of additions, marked in the present text by brackets and specified in the foot-notes. Its title-page has proved highly misleading; the facts seem to be that Webster supplied the Induction when the play was revived by the King's men; and that the other additions are restorations of passages from Marston's original play which had been cut for acting purposes. Stoll, who has made this clear, places the composition of the

play in 1600, and has given the tragi-comedy a new importance, in addition to its intrinsic vigor and effectiveness, by arguing forcibly for it as an influence on the characters of Shakespeare's Jaques and Hamlet. The source of the plot has so far not been discovered.

A WOMAN KILLED WITH KINDNESS

This tragedy, one of the earliest and most pathetic examples of domestic drama, was first published in 1607; and the present text is based on Pearson's reprint of this quarto. The play was acted in 100, as appears from an entry in Henslowe's Diary. The title, like those of several other plays by Heywood was a proverbial phrase. Creizenach (IV. 264) states that Heywood borrowed the two plots of this drama from Margaret of Navarre and from Bandello. The thirty-second tale in the Heptameron does indeed tell of a husband who refrained from killing a wife taken in adultery, but the resemblance is far from close.

THE KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE

The Knight of the Burning Pestle was printed in quarto in 1613, and on Murch's reproduction of this edition the present text is based. A second and a third quarto were issued in 1635, and the play was included in the second folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher in 1679. The date of compositică is uncertain, but recent opinion tends to place it about 1610. It cannot be said that there is as yet a general agreement as to the respective shares of the two authors in this comedy, but according to the most careful examination of the question so far made, that of Dr. Murch, most of the play should be ascribed to Beaumont, Fletcher having probably written only the three love scenes, I. 1. 1-60; III. 1, and IV. iv. 18-93. In spite of the similarity between the satirical purpose of this play and of Don Quixote, it has not been shown that the authors had any knowledge of the work of Cervantes, or that they could read Spanish. (The first English translation of Don Quixote appeared in 1612.) In the mock-here-s part of the play, the object of the satire was the type of play founded upon medieval romance and popular at that time among the tradespeople of London; and of this type, Heywood's Four Prentices of London seems to have been especially in view. Koeppel has pointed out the resemblance between the coffin scene in Act IV. and an episode in Marston's Antonio and Mellida (1602). The love-plot is too commonplace to have a definitely assignable source, and the scenes between Merrythought and his wife, like those of the Induction, are, one may be sure, due to direct observation of contemporary life and manners.

PHILASTER

The first quarto of Philaster, issued in 1620, seems to have been unauthorized, and to have been made up in part from a report taken down at a performance. At the beginning and end it is quite different from the other quartos. The second quarto, 1622, as reprinted by Thorndike, is the basis fër the present text, with occasional readings from the later quartos and the folio of 1679. The play was probably written about 1608-10. The respective shares of the two authors are difficult to assign. 077 phant and Thorndike give to Fletcher I. i. 99-369; II. ii.; II. iv. 69-203; passages in III. ii.; V. iii.; as V. iv.; the rest to Beaumont; the prose scenes with less assurance. Macaulay gives little beyond V iii., iv. to Fletcher. This distribution is made mainly on the grounds of the characteristics of the metre: it does not exclude the probability of intimate collaboration in plot and characterization. I story of the play seems to have been original, though several of the motives are common enoug There is marked indebtedness to Hamlet, and much resemblance to Cymbeline, though Thorndike has argued plausibly for the view that in the latter case Shakespeare was the borrower.

THE MAID'S TRAGEDY

As in the case of Philaster, the first quarto of the The Maid's Tragedy (1619) is corrupt and uns thorized. The second quarto (1622), with Thorndike's collations of the first and third (1630, is the basis for the present text. The date of composition is probably about 1609-11. There is more actie ment here than in the case of Philaster as to the respective shares of the joint authors. Most erais give Fletcher II. ii; IV. i; V. i. 1–111; V. ii; the rest to Beaumont, with the exception of I. ii, which is uncertain. Macaulay gives II. ii. also to Beaumont. The source of the plot has not been found, though minor resemblances have been noted, such as that of the duel between Aspatia and Amintor, to the fight between Parthenia and Amphialus in Sidney's Arcadia, book iii, and that of the quarrel betwee Melantius and Amintor to that between Brutus and Cassius in Julius Caesar.

THE FAITHFUL SHEPHERDESS

The first quarto of The Faithful Shepherdess is undated, but it was certainly issued before May, 1610, and the play had been unsuccessfully produced not long before, perhaps in 1008 or 1000. The present text is based on the first edition, and is dependent on the collations in the Glover and Wallet edition of Beaumont and Fletcher. Fletcher's chief model in this pastoral seems to have been Gự • rini's Pastor Fido, and some few details are borrowed from Spenser; but the plot itself seems to lư original. The play, as Fletcher confesses in his address. To the Reader, was unsuccessful on the stags but the beauty of its lyrie and descriptive poetry has given it, in spite of its weak dramatic quality, a distinguished place in literature. It is notable also as having in part suggested Milton's Comus.

THE WILD-GOOSE CHASE

The Wild-Goose Chase, we are told by the publisher of the first folio edition of Beaumont and Fletcher, was lost when that volume was compiled; it reappeared later, and was issued separately, in folio, in 1652. A second edition appeared in the folio of 1679. The present text is based on the reprint of Waller, following, however, the edition of 1652 in preference to that of 1679. The comedy is known to have been acted as early as 1621. No source for the plot seems as yet to have been found. Farquhar ased on it his comedy of The Inconstant, a fact which points to the obvious relationship between the Fletcherian comedy, of which this is a typical example, and the drama of the Restoration.

THE DUCHESS OF MALFI

The first edition of The Duchess of Malfi appeared in quarto in 1623, and was followed by others in 1640, 1678, and 1708. The present text follows chiefly the Harvard copy of the first quarto, with occasional readings supplied by Sampson's collation of the other editions. The date of first performance cannot be later than 1614, since the actor who created the part of Antonio died in that year. The main plot is taken from Painter's Palace of Pleasure, vol. II, Nov. 23(1567). Painter translated his story from Belle-Forest's paraphrase (1565) of the twenty-sixth novella of Bandello (1554). The story appears in many places, and had been dramatized by Lope de Vega. Crawford (Notes and Queries, Sept. 17-Nov. 12, 1904) has shown many incidental and even literal borrowings from Sidney's Arcadia. Among the elements in the play not found in Painter are the underplot of Julia and the Cardinal, the scenes of torture, and the most of the fifth act. Some of these are derived from the tradition of the tragedy of revenge, especially as represented by Shakespeare, Marston, and Tourneur; but, in spite of frequent echoes, this impressive tragedy, almost the last of its kind, derives its vitality mainly from the powerful and sombre imagination of Webster.

A TRICK TO CATCH THE OLD ONE

This comedy was licensed October 7, 1607, and published in quarto in 1608. A second edition appeared in 1616. The present text is based directly on the copy of the first quarto in the Boston Public Library, with the aid of the readings from the second quarto given by Bullen. The plot is supposed to have given Massinger a suggestion for A New Way to Pay Old Debts, but where Middleton found it, if he did not originate it, is not known. This play is an excellent example of Middleton's comedies of intrigue and manners, full of bustle and fun, niore careful of theatrical effect than of moral or aesthetic consistency.

THE CHANGELING

The Changeling was performed as early as 1623, but did not appear in print till 1653. On a copy of this quarto in the Harvard Library the present text is based. The source of the tragic plot is the fourth history in book i. of John Reynolds's Triumph of God's Revenge against Murder (1621), but the prose narrative is not followed closely. The under-plot, which gives its title to the play, may be original. Miss Wiggin assigns to Rowley the whole under-plot, and the opening and closing scenes of the main plot. Symons finds the greatness of the play as a whole due to the collaboration of the two authors, and beyond the powers of either alone (Cf. Camb. Hist. of Eng. Lit., vi. 76-7).

A NEW WAY TO PAY OLD DEBTS

This play, Massinger's masterpiece in comedy, appeared in quarto in 1633, and on the Harvard Library copy of this edition the present text is based. The play was acted before 1626, and Fleay places it as early as 1622. Few plays of this whole period have held the English stage so continuously or so long as this. The central idea of the plot seems to have been taken from Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One; but there is almost as great a difference in the dramatic method between the two plays as there is in moral tone. Massinger's didacticism here finds eloquent expression, without destroying theatrical effectiveness. Prototypes of Sir Giles Overreach and Greedy have been found in the notorious monopolist, Sir Giles Mompesson and his tool, Michael.

THE BROKEN HEART

The only early edition of The Broken Heart was published in 1633, and the present text is based on a copy of this quarto in the Boston Public Library. There is no evidence as to the date of composition except the hitherto unnoted fact that The Garland of Good Will, mentioned in IV. ii. 15, was published in 1631. The prologue seems to imply that the plot of the play is founded on fact, and Sherman has argued plausibly that the reference is to the story of Penelope Devereux, Sidney's "Stella." whose second husband Ford had eulogised in his first publication, Fame's Memorial (1606). It is certain that Ford was interested in both Sidney and Stella, and there are many correspondences between their situation and that of Orgilus and Penthea. The catastrophe is, of course, entirely changed; but in the spiritual situation there is much to recall the sonnets of Astrophel to Stella There are traces of the influence of the Arcadia also in the play, such as the laying of the plot in Sparta; and in the delineation of the jealousy of Bassanes Ford draws upon Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.