,^r'ff\^ 
 
 I 
 
 ^ .*■»' J 
 
 . <Mt' 
 
 i<te'I 
 
 t'&^H,.l^' 
 
Htlfara, Ntm ^ork 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013154533 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 2947.R7S98 
 
 The authorship of 'The taming of a shrew 
 
 3 1924 013 154 533 
 
THE SHAKESPEASiiB ASSOCIATION 
 
 THE AUTHORSHIP qF 'THE 
 TAMING OF A SHREW,' 
 •THE FAMOUS VICTORIES 
 OF HENRY V AND THE 
 ADDITIONS TO MARLOWE'S 
 ' FAUSTUS ' 
 
 BY 
 
 H. DUGDALE SYKES 
 
 FOR THE SHAKESPEARE ASSOCIATION 
 
 CHATTO AND WINDUS 
 
 ST. MARTIN'S LANE 
 
 1920 
 
 Price One Shilling and Sixpence net 
 
THE AUTHORSHIP OF 'THE TAMING OF 
 A SHREW,' 'THE FAMOUS VICTORIES 
 OF HENRY V AND THE ADDITIONS 
 TO MARLOWE'S 'FAUSTUS' 
 
 BY 
 
 H. DUGDALE SYKES 
 
 READ BEFORE A MEETING OF THE 
 SHAKESPEARE ASSOCIATION HELD AT 
 KING'S COLLEGE ON FEBRUARY 28, 19 19 
 
 inn 
 
THE AUTHORSHIP OF *THE TAMING 
 OF A SHREW,' *THE FAMOUS VIC- 
 TORIES OF HENRY V ' AND THE AD- 
 DITIONS TO MARLOWE'S ' FAUSTUS.' 
 
 CT^H^ Famous Victories of Henry V and The Taming 
 2. of a Shrew were both published anonymously, and 
 there is no record of the names of their authors either 
 in Henslowe's diary or anywhere else. Nor has any 
 effort to determine the authorship of either play on 
 internal grounds proved successful. The Famous Victories 
 has been conjefturally assigned to the adlor Tarlton, 
 but the conjefture is unsupported by any evidence. 
 The Taming of a Shrew has been ascribed to Marlowe, 
 to Greene, to Kyd, and even (wholly or in part) to 
 Shakespeare himself, but there are good reasons for 
 rejecting all these ascriptions. 
 
 In the following pages I shall endeavour to throw 
 light upon the authorship of both plays, and incident- 
 ally upon the authorship of other anonymous dramatic 
 work of the period. I shall set forth my evidence 
 exadlly in the way and in the order in which it pre- 
 sented itself to me, beginning with my first clue and 
 showing how it took me from one play to another 
 until, with the aid of a small piece of external evidence, 
 I was led to connedt these plays with a dramatist who 
 has hitherto occupied only a very humble place in the 
 annals of Elizabethan dramatic literature. 
 
 On first reading The Taming of a Shrew, a year or two 
 since, I was struck by the constant appearance of the 
 exclamation ' souns ! ' in the prose parts. It occurred 
 to me at the time that this might prove a useful clue ; 
 that it should be possible to 'recognize this writer who 
 
4 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 found such relief in 'souns,' if there were any other 
 work of his extant. I gave no more thought to the 
 matter until, some time afterwards, I made the acquaint- 
 ance of Hhe Famous Victories of Henry V. The style of 
 the prose seemed strangely familiar. Gradually, as my 
 reading progressed, ' souns ' once more obtruded itself 
 upon my notice. Its constant recurrence brought back 
 to my mind T^he Teaming of a Shrew, and led me to 
 compare the texts of the two plays. My suspicion that 
 the prose scenes of A Shrew and T'he Famous Victories 
 were the work of the same hand grew stronger and 
 stronger as the examination proceeded. 
 
 First, I noted that, besides the extraordinary frequency 
 with which the exclamation was used in both plays, in 
 neither was it put into the mouth of one chara<5ler 
 alone, as a distinctive mark of his vocabulary. In A 
 Shrew it is used indiscriminately by Sander, Ferando, 
 Valeria (servant to Aurelius), Tom (Ferando's servant), 
 Polidor's boy, and once also by one of the players in 
 the Induftion. It is the same with The Famous Vic- 
 tories. Here, though it is commonest in the speeches 
 of the clown Dericke, Henry V himself uses it freely 
 and other speakers occasionally. 
 
 Next I observed that ' I warrant you ' was a favourite 
 expression in both plays. No doubt it was in common 
 use at this period ; but in these plays it is unusually 
 common, appearing eight times in the text of A Shrew 
 and five times in The Famous Victories. Then there is 
 the phrase ' as passeth ' — not a rare one at this time, but 
 still sufficiently uncommon to make it noteworthy that 
 it occurs twice in A Shrew : ' 
 
 Boy. . . . your master's gone to church to be married 
 already, and there's such cheer as passeth. 
 
 II, ii, 1 6. 
 
 ' Referenees to J Shrew are by act, scene and line of the 'Shakespeare 
 Classics' reprint, edited by Dr. Boas; for The Famous Victories of Henry V 
 I have used the 1598 quarto. 
 
' THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 5 
 
 Sander. . . my master has such ado with her as it passeth. 
 
 Ill, i, 8. 
 and twice in 'The Famous Vtctories: 
 
 Faith, my lord, such news as passeth. A2 refto. 
 
 . . . for the space of half an hour there was such 
 a bloody fray as passeth. Bi redo. 
 
 A favourite exclamation in the prose parts of A Shrew 
 is ' O brave ! ' : 
 
 Sander. O brave. Sirrah Tom, we must play before 
 
 A foolish Lord. Ind. i, 83. 
 
 Sly. A play, Sim : O bravCi be they my players ? 
 
 Ind. ii, 49. 
 
 Sly. O brave^ here's two fine gentlewomen ! I, i, 331. 
 Sander. O brave, I would I had eat no meat this week ! 
 
 II, ii, 17. 
 
 and this appears five times in The Famous Victories. 
 
 The verb 'to course' in the sense of to beat, or 
 thrash, is distindlly rare — in Elizabethan plays at any 
 rate. In A Shrew it is to be found three times. At 
 III, iii, 17, Sander says to Kate : 
 
 the garlic . . . will make your breath stink, and then 
 my master will course me for letting you eat it. 
 
 and, a few lines later : 
 
 Here comes my master : now he'll course you. 
 
 The word appears once more in the Epilogue, where 
 the Tapster says to Sly : 
 
 your wife will course you for dreaming here tonight. 
 
 In The Famous Victories is is used by Dick during an 
 altercation with John Cobler : 
 
 . . . 'yfaith, you gray-beard knave, I'll course you. 
 
 B4 verso. 
 
6 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 The expression ' let me (him) alone with ' — not a 
 familiar one to me — is also common to these plays. 
 ' Well,' says Prince Henry in T^he Famous Victories 
 (A2 verso) ' if the villains come\ let me alone with them,' 
 and in A Shrew (II, ii, 24) Sander, warned by Polidor's 
 boy that his mistress is ' a devil ' who will make him 
 forget his eating, she'll ' beat him so,' replies ' Let my 
 master alone with her for that, for he'll make her tame 
 well enough ere long, I warrant thee ' — using much 
 the same words as Ferando himself, in an earlier scene 
 of the play : 
 
 And when our nuptial rites be once performed, 
 Let me alone to tame her well enough. I, i, 139-40. 
 
 Other small points of resemblance might be noted, 
 but there are enough tricks of speech here to shew 
 that the same hand has been at work on these dramas. 
 In addition there are two or three curious correspond- 
 ences of phrasing, the significance of which — trivial 
 though they are — it is impossible to mistake. Sander's 
 " he'll make her tame well enough, I warrant thee,' is 
 echoed by the Constable of France in The Famous 
 Victories. Speaking of Henry V, he says to the Arch- 
 bishop of Bourges : 
 
 Tush, we will make him as tame as a lamb, 
 
 I warrant you. Ei verso. 
 
 When (Indudlion to A Shrew) Sly wakes up to find 
 himself clothed in rich apparel, with servants at hand 
 anxious to gratify his least whim, he exclaims : 
 
 By the mass, I think I am a lord indeed. 
 
 In The Famous Victories (B4 v.) John Cobler affirms 
 that he is Lord Chief Justice of England ; Dericke 
 replies : 
 
 Mass, thou saist true, thou art indeed. 
 
' THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 7 
 
 In A Shrew the Duke says to his son Aurelius : 
 1 pray you, sir, who am I ? IV, ii, 40. 
 
 and in The Famous Victories the Judge says to Prince 
 Henry : 
 
 Why, I pray you, my Lord, who am I ? B3 verso. 
 
 and shortly afterwards John puts the same question to 
 Dericke : 
 
 But, I pray you, who am I ? B4 verso. 
 
 Moreover, it is interesting to observe that when 
 Sly, in The Taming of a Shrew (IV, ii, 45-8), roused by 
 the order of the Duke in the play that Phylotus and 
 Valeria are to be sent to prison, exclaims : 
 
 I say we'll have no sending to prison. . . . 
 
 I tell thee, Sim, we'll have no sending to prison, that's 
 
 flat ! Why, Sim, am not I Don Christo Vary .? 
 
 he is echoing the sentiments of Prince Henry in The 
 Famous ViSlories, ' 'Tis enough for me to look into a 
 prison though I come not in myself,' the Prince says 
 to Sir John Oldcastle, ' but here's such ado nowadays, 
 here's prisoning, here's hanging, whipping and the 
 devil and all : but / tell you, sirs, when 1 am king we will 
 have no such things' (Ci refto.) 
 
 The connexions between The Famous Victories and A 
 Shrew being almost without exception confined to the 
 Induftion, interludes and prose ' taming ' scenes of the 
 latter play, and The Famous Victories being obviously 
 the work of one hand, and that a hand one would judge 
 to be incapable of the smooth harmonious lines of the 
 Marlowe-imitating versifier of ^ Shrew, the conclusion 
 that two authors were concerned in A Shrew is scarcely 
 to be avoided. For convenience I have spoken of the 
 taming scenes and the indu<5lion as prose, though in 
 the old copy they are printed in lines of approximately 
 uniform length to look like verse, just like much of the 
 
8 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 text of The Famous Victories, which one may search 
 from end to end without finding a decently rhythmical 
 passage. Although in A Shrew the work of the two 
 authors seems often closely intermingled, the Marlowe- 
 imitating poet having apparently recast lines written by 
 his less skilful coadjutor, an approximate definition of 
 each author's share would not appear to be difficult. 
 It would give the induftion and interludes and all the 
 lively boisterous comedy scenes in prose or prosaic 
 blank verse to the author of The Famous Victories, 
 leaving the more polished, but more insipid, verse 
 scenes to the imitator of Marlowe. The appearance 
 of the text suggests that the whole play was in the 
 first instance written by the author of The Famous 
 Victories, and that the other author revised it, altogether 
 rewriting many scenes, but leaving others praftically 
 untouched. 
 
 Having thus decided that A Shrew was of dual 
 authorship, and that one of its authors was also the 
 author of The Famous Victories, I concluded that there 
 was no hope of throwing any further light upon the 
 identity of the creator of Sander and Sly, The Famous 
 Victories being itself the work of an unknown dramatist. 
 The discovery I had made — incomplete though it was 
 — seemed at least so far valuable that it set at rest 
 all conje<5tures as to the presence of a Shakespearean 
 element in A Shrew. But no sooner had I reached 
 the conclusion just stated than my attention was drawn 
 to a feature connected with the text of this play which, 
 though it ultimately led to a further most interesting 
 discovery, at first seemed completely to contradict the 
 view that it was divisible between two authors, one of 
 whom was the author of The Famous Victories, and the 
 other the plagiarist from Marlowe. On referring to 
 the list of ' passages from Marlowe's Tamhurlaine and 
 Do6lor Faustus' set forth in Dr. Boas's edition of The 
 Taming of a Shrew, I was disconcerted to find that one 
 
* THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 9 
 
 of the DoSior Faustus parallels was in the prose part of 
 A Shrew that I assigned to the author of The Famous 
 Victories. Moreover, in this case the phrasing of A 
 Shrew corresponds with the altered text of Dr. Faustus 
 printed in 1616, and not that of the 1604 quarto. I 
 quote this passage as it appears in the edition of 1 604 : 
 
 fVagner. Sirrah boy, come hither. 
 
 Clown. How, boy ? swouns, boy, I hope you have seen many 
 boys with such pickadevants as I have. Boy quotha. 
 
 In the edition of 1616 it stands thus: 
 
 Wagner. Come hither, sirrah boy. 
 
 Clown. Boy ? O disgrace to my person : Zounds, boy in 
 your face, you have seen many boys with beards, I 
 am sure. 
 
 The later version is echoed in A Shrew, though it 
 will be noticed that the "• pickadevants ' of the 1 604 
 text is retained : 
 
 Boy. Come hither, sirrah boy. 
 
 Sander. Boy, O disgrace to my person, souns, boy 
 
 Of your face, you have many boys with such 
 Pickadevants, I am sure, souns, would you 
 Not have a bloody nose for this ? II, ii, 1-4. 
 
 That Dr. Boas's presumption that the 161 6 additions 
 to Faustus date back to a much earlier period is correft, 
 there can be no reasonable doubt. But, obvious as it 
 may seem that the writer of A Shrew borrowed this 
 passage from the text of Dr. Faustus, there is, in fadt, 
 no evidence here that these additions were written 
 prior to the publication of A Shrew in 1 594, In this 
 instance the correspondence between the two texts 
 is not due to plagiarism. An examination of the 
 prose scenes of the later edition of Marlowe's play 
 soon revealed the real explanation, and it is this: the 
 prose scenes of A Shrew and the prose alterations and 
 
lo 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 additions to the text of Dr. Faustus are the work of the 
 same hand — the hand (as we have seen) of the author 
 of The Famous Victories. Of the truth of this assertion 
 there can be no question. Even the very passage we 
 have just been discussing can be shown to be exadlly 
 in this author's style. To prove this, here is an extract 
 from the dialogue between Robin and Dericke in The 
 Famous Victories: 
 
 Robin. Why I see thou art a plain clown. 
 Dericke. Am I a clown, souns masters. 
 
 Do clowns go in silk apparel? 
 
 I am sure all we gentlemen clowns In Kent scant go so. 
 
 Well, souns, you know clowns very well. 
 
 A4 redlo. 
 
 The words are rather different, but it is the same 
 voice. And in the case of Dr. Faustus we have 
 evidence of a different and more decisive kind. Those 
 familiar with the 1 6 1 6 text may remember that in some 
 cases the reviser has altered and much expanded parts 
 of the earlier text ; in one instance he has condensed a 
 passage and in others he has added entirely new matter. 
 Bearing in mind what has already been said as to the 
 charadleristics of the prose of A Shrew and The Famous 
 Victories, particular interest attaches to the alterations 
 made by the author of the additions in the phrasing of 
 the 1604 text.' 
 
 The first alteration made by the reviser is the re- 
 casting of the prose dialogue between Wagner and the 
 Clown. It begins with the passage so closely paralleled 
 in A Shrew. Next I note that, whereas in the 1604 
 version, when Wagner promises to teach the Clown to 
 turn himself into 'a dog, or a cat, or a mouse, or a rat, or 
 anything,' the Clown replies : 
 
 ' In Mr. Tucker Brooke's edition of Doctor Faustus ('Works of Chris- 
 topher Marlowe,' Clarendon Press, 19 10) the additions are printed in an 
 Appendix (pp. 195-229), apart from the original text. In the citations 
 that follow I have numbered the lines as in his edition. 
 
' THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 1 1 
 
 How ? A Christian fellow to a dog or a cat, a mouse 
 or a rat ? no, no, sir. 
 
 in the 1616 edition he says: 
 
 A dog, or a cat, or a mouse, or a rat ? O l>rave 
 Wagner ! 
 
 A few lines further on in the earlier quarto, Wagner 
 tells the Clown to keep his eye ' diametarily fixt upon 
 my right heel, with quasi vestigias nostras insistere^ and 
 the Clown exclaims : 
 
 God forgive me, he speaks Dutch fustian. 
 
 but in the 161 6 version this is altered to : 
 
 Well, sir, I warrant you. 
 
 The next alteration consists in the interpolation (after 
 the scene presenting the seven deadly sins) of an entirely 
 new prose dialogue between Robin and Dick. The 
 speakers are introduced by the Clown, who tells Dick 
 to look after the horses for him, adding : 
 
 I have gotten one of Doctor Faustus' conjuring 
 books, and now we'll have such knavery as^t passes. 
 
 Then a few lines after Dick says to Robin : 
 
 you had best leave you foolery, for an my Master 
 come, he'll conjure you 'ifaith. 
 
 I note this 'you had best,' because it happens to be a 
 charafteristic locution of the prose author of A Shrew. 
 In the Indudlion, the Tapster says to Sly : 
 
 you had best be gone, 
 And empty your drunken paunch somewhere else. 
 
 and, in the Epilogue : 
 
 you had best get you home. 
 For your wife will course you for dreaming here to-night. 
 
12 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 and in another place (III, i, 17) Sander says to the 
 
 serving- men : , ,, . , 
 
 ... you had best get supper against they come, 
 
 for they be hard at hand. 
 
 Robin's reply to Dick (807-9) is : 
 
 I'll tell thee what, an my Master come here, I'll clap 
 as fair a pair of horns orCs head as e'er thou sawest in thy life. 
 
 In The Famous Victories Henry V, speaking of his 
 
 father, says : 
 
 ... the breath shall be no sooner out of his 
 
 mouth, but 1 will clap the crown on my head. 
 
 Ci verso. 
 
 In Act II, sc. i, of A Shrew Kate warns Valeria : 
 
 And see you come no more into this place. 
 Lest that I clap your fiddle on your face. 
 
 and in the Epilogue of the same play Sly says to the 
 
 Tapster : t l u j 
 
 * I have had 
 
 The bravest dream tonight, that ever thou heardest in 
 
 all thy life. 
 
 Shortly after the speech last quoted, Robin tells Dick 
 that with the aid of the 'conjuring book' they will be 
 able to get any kind of wine they choose at the tavern, 
 without paying for it. Dick greets this joyful news 
 
 O hrave ! prithee let's to it presently, for I am as dry 
 as a dog. 823-4 
 
 at lines looo-i (1604 410) Mephistophiles says to the 
 
 Clown : 
 
 Well villains, for your presumption, I transform thee 
 into an ape, and thee into a dog, and so be gone. 
 
 in the 1 604 edition Robin replies : 
 
 How, into an ape ? that's brave, 
 but in that of 161 6 : 
 
 O brave, an ape ? 
 
'THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 13 
 
 In the later quarto the entry of the Emperor with 
 Faustus is precieded by a long passage not found in the 
 1604 text. Here Frederick says to Martino: 
 
 Where is Benvolio ? 
 
 And Martino replies : 
 
 Fast asleep, T warrant you. 
 
 A little later on Martino tells Benvolio that the 
 Emperor is at hand, and the latter replies : 
 
 TVelly go you attend the Emperor : / am content for this 
 once to thrust my head out of a window. 
 Compare : 
 
 Well, sirrah, your fair words hath something allayed 
 my choler : / am content for this once to put it up and 
 be friends with thee. A Shrew II, ii, 50-2 
 
 moreover, Benvolio concludes his speech with : 
 
 I have a charm in my head, shall control him [the 
 Devil] as well as the conjurer, / warrant you. 
 
 In the 1604 edition the Knight's indignation at the 
 discovery that he has hopis upon his head is manifested 
 in four lines of bombastic verse. Not once does he use 
 the interjection 'zounds!' But his counterpart, the 
 Benvolio of the i6i6 text, three times breaks out into 
 this exclamation : 
 
 zounds, my head ! 1 140 
 Zounds, doctor, is this your villany ? 1 146 
 Hold, hold, zounds, he'll raise up a kennel of divels 
 
 1 think anon. 1 158-9 
 
 After the entry of Faustus with ' a false head,' Ben- 
 volio deals him a blow which he imagines has killed 
 him. Martino asks 'what use shall we put his beard 
 to ? ' and Benvolio replies : 
 
 We'll sell it to a chimney-sweeper ; it will wear out ten 
 birchen brooms, / warrant you. 
 
14 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 When Faustus rises again, Benvolio exclaims : 
 
 Zounds, the Devil's alive again ! 1246 
 
 and, in a later passage, when he finds his head has again 
 been decorated with horns : 
 
 ZounSf horns again ! 
 
 None of these speeches occur in the 1 604 text. 
 
 Next we come to the trick played by Faustus on the 
 horse-courser and the latter's retaliation by pulling off 
 Faustus' leg. In the 1616 version these incidents are 
 treated more briefly than in that of 1604. In both, 
 Faustus, after he has sold the horse, gives the horse- 
 courser a final injunction not to ride it into the water. 
 In the 1 604 text the latter replies simply : 
 
 Well, sir, now am I a made man for ever. 
 
 and in the revised text this is expanded into: 
 
 I warrant you, sir ; O joyful day! Now -am I a made 
 man for ever. 
 
 In the 1 61 6 edition there follows a scene in an inn 
 (not in the 1 604 quarto) with a long dialogue between 
 the Clown, Dick, the Horse-courser and a Carter. The 
 conversation is continually interrupted by clamours for 
 
 ' Dicl{. Why, hostess, I say, fetch us some beer. 
 
 1212 
 Carter. Some more drink, hostess. 1253 
 
 Clown. What ho, give's half a dozen of beer here, and 
 be hang'd. 13 16 
 
 Horse-courser. Zouns, fill us some beer, or we'll break all the 
 barrels in the house. 1 520-1 
 
 Here, we can clearly recognize the voice of the thirsty 
 
 ^ ■ Tapster, I say, fill's a fresh cushion here ! 
 
 Ind. i, 7 
 Tapster, gi's a little small ale. Ind ii, 10 
 
'THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 15 
 
 Gi's some more drink here; souns, where's the Tapster? 
 
 I, i, 326 
 Are they run away, Sim ? That's well ; then gi's some 
 more drink. IV, ii, 52 
 
 In the 161 6 version o{ Fausius, as in the earlier version, 
 the horse-courser enters 'all wet* after his adventure in 
 the horse-pond. In the 1604 edition he describes what 
 has happened to him in these words : 
 
 I was no sooner in the middle of the pond, but my 
 horse vanish't away, and I sat upon a bottle of hay, 
 never so near drowning in my life. 1 1 56-9 
 
 In the 1 6 1 6 edition this is altered to : 
 
 I, riding my horse into the water, thinking some hidden 
 mystery had been in the horse, I had nothing under me 
 but a little straw, and had much ado to escape drowning. 
 
 1 138-41 
 
 The alteration is particularly interesting, because the 
 author of The Famous Victories is much addidted to the 
 use of the word 'ado.' In The Famous Victories it occurs 
 no fewer than six times. In four passages we have ' such 
 ado ' or ' much ado ' : 
 
 what mean you to sleep 
 And such ado in the streets ? A4 re<fto. 
 
 . . . and at the last with much ado they took them. 
 
 Bi redo. 
 . . . and at the last with much ado we stayed them. 
 
 B2 redto. 
 here's such ado nowadays. Ci redo. 
 
 and it appears twice in A Shrew : 
 
 My master has such ado with her as it passeth. 
 
 Ill, i, 8 
 Here's more ado than needs. Ill, v, 43 
 
 In the 1 61 6 version the horse-courser relates at length 
 to his companions at the inn the story of the trick 
 
1 6 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 played upon him by Faustus, and all with one voice 
 exclaim : 
 
 O brave Doctor ! 
 
 Having traced the hand of this writer who is so free 
 with his 'souns,' 'O brave' and 'I warrant you' in the 
 additions to Doctor Faustus, the task of discovering his 
 identity becomes less hopeless than it at first appeared, 
 for now we have a small scrap of external evidence to 
 assist us. On the 22nd November, 1602, Henslowe — 
 so he tells us in his 'Diary' — paid the sum of ^4 to 
 William Birde and Samuel Rowley for their 'adicyones 
 in doctor fostes.' Of William Birde's literary perform- 
 ances practically nothing is known, no piece bearing his 
 name having survived. But we do know something 
 about Samuel Rowley. He was the author of a play 
 still extant entitled When Tou See Me You Know Me, or 
 The Famous Chronicle History of King Henry the Fight. 
 This piece was published in 1605 'as it was playd by the 
 high and mighty Prince of Wales his servants,' and it 
 bears Rowley's name on its title-page, ' By Samuel 
 Rowley, servant to the Prince.' To one, at least, of the 
 plays we have been discussing it has a most obvious 
 resemblance. In this Famous Chronicle History of King 
 Henry VHI, as in The Famous Victories of Henry V, it is 
 the Clown rather than the King, who is the chief figure 
 in the play." A brief examination of the speeches of 
 Will Summers in the Henry VIII play was sufficient to 
 satisfy me that the hand that created him was that of 
 the augmenter of the clowning scenes of Doctor Faustus, 
 the creator of Sander in A Shrew and Dericke in The 
 Famous Victories. Let us first glance through the text 
 
 ' The aiEnity between these two pieces has been noted by Sir Sidney 
 Lee. ' In 1605 an obscure dramatist, Samuel Rowley, ventured for the 
 first time to bring Henry V III on the stage as the hero of a chronicle- 
 play or history-drama. The dramatist worked on crude, old-fashioned 
 lines which recall The Famous Victories oj Henry V^ ' Life of Shake- 
 speare,' 191 5, p. 442. 
 
'THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 17 
 
 for ' souns,' ' O brave,' and ' I warrant thee.' They are 
 all here : 
 
 I'll be wise and say little / warrant thee. 
 
 1 6 13 4to, Bi redlo. 
 No, no, / warrant thee^ Jane. Bi verso. 
 
 I'll thrust some of you down, I warrant ye. 
 
 B2 verso. 
 Up, cousin, fear nothing, the storm's past, / warrant 
 thee. C3 verso. 
 
 O brave, O brave, give me it cousin. C4 redo, 
 he'll conjure thee, T warrant thee. C4 redo. 
 
 All these are from the speeches of the clowns, Will 
 Summers and Patch. In the two next it is a Watchman 
 who speaks : 
 
 God ye good night and twenty, sir, 1 warrant ye. 
 
 D3 refto. 
 'tis an honest quiet soul, I warrant ye. D3 verso. 
 
 The 'souns' are from 'Black Will,' the Highwayman : 
 
 Souns, I am hurt, hold I say! Ei redo. 
 
 Souns, the moon's a waning harlot. Ei verso, 
 they shall pay thee well . . . I warrant thee. 
 
 Ei verso. 
 / warrant you, sir. Ei verso. 
 
 I'll bail him, T warrant thee. E2 redo, 
 
 had we not been parted, I had taught ye a little school 
 playy I warrant ye. E3 verso. 
 
 Sounsy King Harry ! E3 verso. 
 
 Sounsy I shall to Tyburn presently. E4 redo. 
 Ye never knew fool a flatterer, T warrant ye. 
 
 Fi verso, 
 it should ne'er have been brought for Will, I warrant ye. 
 
 F3 redo. 
 'Tis not your fool, my lord, I warrant ye. 
 
 F3 verso. 
 O brave ! he looks like the mirror of knighthood. 
 
 G3 redo, 
 all the horses i' th* town cannot haul him into thy 
 presence, / warrant thee. K3 verso. 
 
1 8 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 Wine . . . able to set a colour in any man's face, / 
 warrant it. K3 verso. 
 
 I warrant you. Madam. L3 refto. 
 
 Notwithstanding the external evidence that associates 
 Rowley with the additions to Faustus, it will hardly do 
 to rely entirely upon words and phrases so commonplace 
 as these for our corroborative evidence. But other in- 
 ternal marks are not lacking. For one, we have 'as 
 passes,' already noticed in all the other plays. Here it 
 is twice used by Will Summers : 
 
 but I'll tell thee cousin the rarest trick to be revenged 
 as^t passes. Sig. C4 refto. 
 
 thou hast made all the court in such a pitiful case as 
 passes. C4 verso. 
 
 and 'you had best' is here too (Will Summers to the 
 King, Sig. C4 refto) : 
 
 ye had best be friends with us I can tell you : we'll scare 
 ye out of your skin else. 
 
 and 'let me alone': 
 
 let my cousin Patch and T akne, and he go boxing. 
 
 C3 verso. 
 
 reminding us of Henry V in 'The Famous Victories, with 
 
 his '. 
 
 Well, if the villains come, let me alone with them. 
 
 one may also notice ' hard at hand ' : 
 
 His majesty is hard at hand, my Lord. Li redto. 
 
 since this occurs twice in A Shrew : 
 
 my master's hard at hand and my new mistress and all. 
 
 Ill, i, 2 
 you had best get supper ready against they come, for 
 they be hard at hand, I am sure, by this time. 
 
 Ill, i, 17-19 
 
 as well as in the 161 6 additions to Faustus: 
 
 The sleepy cardinals are hard at hand. 1004 
 
'THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 19 
 
 But to put the matter beyond doubt it will be enough 
 to compare these passages from the additions to Faustus: 
 
 an my Master come, he'll conjure you 'ifaith, 806 
 ... an he follow us, I'll so conjure him as he was never 
 so conjured in his life, I warrant him. 
 
 960-1 (p. 208) 
 
 with this speech of Will Summers, addressed to Patch, 
 Cardinal Wolsey's fool {When You See Me, Sig, C4 redo) : 
 
 ... an thou wert the devil himself he'll conjure thee 
 I warrant thee, I would not have such a conjuring for 
 twenty crowns.' 
 
 or his reply so the Countess of Salisbury's threat to thrust 
 him out of the presence-chamber (B2 verso) : 
 
 Thrust me, nay and ye go to thrusting, I'll thrust some 
 of you down, I warrant ye. 
 
 The additions to DoBor Faustus are written partly in 
 prose and partly in quite respectable blank verse, alto- 
 gether superior to that of 'The Famous Victories. The 
 prose passages (for the most part sheer buffoonery) 
 having been traced to Rowley, and Birde having also 
 received payment for the additions made in 1602, it is 
 natural to infer that the more decorous verse additions 
 were contributed by Birde. But a division that would 
 allot all the verse to Birde and the prose alone to Rowley 
 would not be corredt, for the marks of Rowley's hand 
 are as apparent in the verse as in the prose. One need 
 not look beyond the text of the additions for presumptive 
 evidence of the presence of the same hand in both. I 
 have already drawn attention to the expression 'to clap 
 horns on the head' (ed. Tucker-Brooke, p. 196, line 808) 
 in the prose, and shown cause for assigning it to Rowley. 
 
 • Cf. Dcricke in The Famous Victories : ' (Give) A Judge a box on the 
 ear, I'll tell thee, John. ... I would not have done it for twenty 
 shillings.' (B4 redto.) 
 
20 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 It appears again not only in another prose passage (p. 214, 
 line 1 171) but also in the verse (p. 203, line 885): 
 
 To beat the beads about the friars' pates 
 Or clap huge horns upon the Cardinals' heads. 
 
 But a comparison of the verse additions with the verse 
 of When Tou See Me Tou Know Me will remove any doubt 
 on the subject. The expanded passages of the revised 
 text of Faustus dealing with the visit of Faustus to the 
 Pope at Rome show the same fiercely anti-papal spirit 
 as is manifested in many of the blank verse scenes of 
 When Tou See Me, and they are couched in the same sort 
 of language, In both plays we find repeated allusions to 
 the Pope's ' triple crown * and to ' St. Peter's Chair ' ; in 
 both we find lines with trochaic endings such as these : 
 
 The which, in state and high solemnity, 
 This day is held through Rome and Italy, 
 In honour of the Pope's triumphant victory. 
 
 Faustus, 1 616, 854-6. 
 
 In quittance of their late conspiracy 
 Against our state and papal dignity. 
 
 Ibid. 971-2. 
 False prelates, for this hateful treachery, 
 Curst be your souls to hellish misery. 
 
 3id. 1055-6. 
 He sends me thus to greet thy majesty 
 With stile and titles of high dignity. 
 
 fFhen Tou See Me, Di redlo. 
 The villain thinks to smooth his treachery. 
 By fawning speeches to our majesty. 
 
 Ibid. 1 1 recfto. 
 You are accused of high conspiracy 
 And treason 'gainst his royal majesty. 
 
 Ibid. I4 refto. 
 
 We get also resemblances of this kind : 
 
 Twelve reverend bishops are sent post to Rome. 
 
 When Tou, etc., Aa redlo. 
 
'THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 21 
 
 . . . our elected Pope 
 That on a fury's back came post from Rome. 
 
 Faustus, 1012-3 (p. 210) 
 
 Both which [Cardinals] if Wolsey be made Pope of Rome, 
 Shall be made famous through all Christendom. 
 
 When Tou, etc., A2 verso. 
 
 Thou shalt be famous through all Italy, 
 And honour'd of the German emperor. 
 
 Faustus, 1067-8 (p. 211) 
 
 Note also the trick of placing polysyllabic adjedtives 
 ending in ' al ' after the nouns that they qualify : 
 
 ... his holiness ascends 
 Saint Peter's chair and state pontifical. 
 
 Faustus, 891-2 (p. 203) 
 And by authority apostolical 
 Depose him from his regal government. 
 
 Ibid., 945-6 (p. 205) 
 
 Make haste again, my good Lord Cardinals, 
 And take our blessing apostolical. 
 
 Ibid., 994-5 (p. 206) 
 
 We would behold that famous conqueror. 
 Great Alexander and his paramour, 
 In their true shapes and state majestical. 
 
 Ibid., 1083-5 (p. 211) 
 And compare : 
 
 . . . see all our train be set in readineas 
 That in our state and pomp pontifical 
 We may pass on to grace King Henry's court. 
 
 When Tou, etc, A3 recto. 
 
 But we shall cross him for't, I doubt it not, 
 And tread upon his pomp imperial. 
 
 Ibid., Fi re<3:o. 
 . . . from his sacred lips 
 I bring a blessing apostolical. Ibid., Di refto. 
 
 The which, without your majesty's consent, 
 Is treason capital against the crown. 
 
 Ibid,, 1 1 redo. 
 
22 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 Birde's share in the Faustus alterations is, I think, con- 
 fined to those made in the closing scenes of the play.' 
 The presence of a hand other than Rowley's is suggested 
 by the frequent use of antithesis, e.g. : 
 
 . . . now sword strike home, 
 For horns he gave, I'll have his head anon. 
 
 Faustus, 1 2 14-5 (p. 215) 
 We'll rather die with grief than live with shame, 
 
 113 (p. 217) 
 And so have hope that this my kind rebuke, 
 Checking thy body, may amend thy soul. 
 
 1283-4 (p. 226) 
 His store of pleasures must be sauc'd with pain. 
 
 1364 (p. 227) 
 Why weep'st thou ? 'tis too late, despair, farewell ! 
 Fools that will laugh on earth must weep in hell. 
 
 1429-30 (p. 228) 
 To want in hell that had on earth such store. 
 
 1439 (p. 228) 
 
 No similar bent for antithesis is traceable in WAen You 
 See Me, and a habit of this kind once acquired is not 
 easily abandoned.* 
 
 We have now traced the hand of Samuel Rowley in 
 three plays, and with these and his named play to guide us 
 we get a clear idea of the kind of work that he produced. 
 We find him the sole author of two quasi-historical 
 dramas, in both of which, though separated from one 
 another by at least ten years, the clown is the most im- 
 portant figure, or at least is elevated to a position of equal 
 prominence with that of the monarch the events of whose 
 reign the author professes to portray. We find him 
 
 ■ His hand first appears after the stage diredtion ' Enter Benvolio, 
 Martino, Frederick, and soldiers,' p. 214 of Tucker Brooke's edition of 
 Marlowe's works (Adt IV, Sc ii of Robinson's and Cunningham's editions). 
 
 * Note also that, simultaneously with the appearance of these anti- 
 theses, we find rimed couplets interspersed in the blank verse. Rowley 
 employs the terminal couplet in his independent play, but does not mix 
 rime and blank verse lines together. 
 
'THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 23 
 
 again in The Taming of a Shrew devoting himself chiefly 
 to the sayings and doings of clowns and servants, leaving 
 the serious scenes involving the fortunes of the well-bred 
 ladies and gentlemen of Athens to his assistant. Quite 
 early in his career Rowley must have earned a reputation 
 for his clowns, and it was doubtless for this reason that 
 Henslowe sele6led him to rewrite and expand the clown- 
 ing scenes of Faustus. That 'tragical history' was 
 evidently too gloomy to please Henslowe and his patrons, 
 and Rowley was the very man to enliven it with such 
 matter as would, to use Heywood's words ' breed in the 
 less capable mirth and laughter,' lest the auditory should 
 be ' dulled with serious courses which are merely weighty 
 and material.' ' At any rate, quite three-fourths of 
 Rowley's share in the additions are pure clowning : what 
 he provides is more patter for Tom and Dick, more 
 diverting escapades and mishaps of the carter and horse- 
 courser. 
 
 We have good reason for inferring that Rowley was 
 regarded by his contemporaries — by contemporary audi- 
 ences at least — as the comic dramatist par excellence of 
 the last decade of the sixteenth century, and the first few 
 years of the seventeenth. We have evidence that he was 
 employed as an improviser of clowning scenes many years 
 before Henslowe set him to work on Marlowe's play. 
 Some time before 1 594 he had added to Greene's Orlando 
 Furioso in the same way, for his hand is plainly apparent 
 in the earliest extant text published in that year.* It 
 
 ' ' It may be objedled why, amongst sad and grave histories, I have 
 here and there inserted fabulous tales and jests, savouring of lightness. 
 I answer, I have therein imitated our historical and comical poets that 
 write to the stage ; who, lest the auditory should be dulled with serious 
 courses, which are merely weighty and material, in every adt present 
 some zany, with his mimic aftion, to breed in the less capable mirth and 
 laughter : for they that write to all must strive to please all.' Thomas 
 Heywood, *The General Historic of Women,' 1624. 
 
 » I have to thank Mr. J. Dover Wilson (who read in manuscript my 
 notes on the other plays dealt with in this paper) for calling my attention 
 to these additions to Orlando Furioso. 
 
24 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 is again in the comic prose passages that it appears. 
 Rowley's additions to this play are not extensive, but it 
 is surprising to find what a number of marks he has left 
 upon them. There are none in the verse, which is pre- 
 sumably entirely Greene's. The two passages of prose 
 dialogue in the first two acts (Orgalio and Sacripant in 
 I, I, Orgalio and Orlando in II, i) doubtless also belong 
 to the original text, since neither bears any definite trace 
 of Rowley. Nor is there any clear suggestion of his 
 hand in the Orgalio and Orlando dialogue with which 
 the third act opens. But immediately after Orgalio's 
 exit' we come upon the words 'Enter two clowns' and 
 there follows a prose passage of some twenty lines. This 
 is Rowley's. 
 
 The clowns are Tom and Ralph. Tom begins with 
 'Sirrah Ralph, an thoul't go with me, I'll let thee see 
 the bravest madman that ever thou sawest.' This re- 
 minds us of Sly in the Epilogue of A Shrew : ' Oh, lord, 
 sirrah, I have heard the bravest dream tonight that ever 
 thou heardest in all thy life.' It is enough at least to 
 raise suspicion, Ralph now tells Tom a story of Orlando 
 coming to his house and stealing the meat roasting before 
 the fire, and Tom observes : 
 
 By my troth, that was brave : but, sirrah, he did so 
 course the boys last Sunday; and if ye call him madman 
 he'll . . . tickle your ribs so with his flap of leather 
 that he hath, as it passeth. 
 
 At this point they spy Orlando, and shout ' madman,' 
 for which they are soundly beaten. Orlando tells them 
 that they must be his soldiers and fight against Medor, 
 and Ralph breaks in with : 
 
 * Yes, let me alone with him for a bloody nose.' 
 
 ' J. C. Collins's edition of Greene, vol. I, p. 247 ; ' Mermaid ' 
 edition, p. 198. 
 
'THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 25 
 
 Wherever the clowns Tom and Ralph appear we find 
 the marks of Rowley's hand. In the next scene (III, ii) 
 they come in with the mad Orlando armed ' with spits 
 and dripping pans.' ' Back, soldiers,' cries Orlando, * look 
 where the enemy is.' ' Captain,' exclaims Tom, ' they 
 have a woman amongst them.' ' What of that ? ' asks 
 Orlando. ' Why,' says Tom, ' strike you down the men, 
 and then let me alone to thrust in the woman.' Tom 
 makes his escape during the fight that ensues, but he 
 re-enters with Orgalio before the close of the scene, dis- 
 guised as Angelica, Orgalio warns Tom not to laugh. 
 ' No, I warrant you^ replies Tom, ' but I think Ihad best 
 go back and shave my beard.' 'My lord,' says OrgaUo, 
 introducing him to Orlando, ' here is Angelica,' and 
 Orlando answers : 
 
 Mass, thou saist true, 'tis she indeed. 
 
 The next scene in which Tom figures is IV, ii. This 
 time he enters as a fiddler. Orlando, in a passage that 
 reminds us of the scene of the music-lesson in A Shrew, 
 breaks his fiddle about his head. The dialogue here is 
 just in the vein of the comic dialogue of ^ Shrew, though 
 it is not easy to point to any definite suggestion of Rowley, 
 apart from a solitary 'Tush, I warrant thee ' from Orgalio. 
 There is also one 'souns' from Orlando a little later on, 
 after Melissa's entry : 
 
 Souns, Orgalio, why sufFerest thou this old trot to 
 come so nigh me ? 
 
 The ' I warrant thee ' and ' souns ' test is, it must be 
 confessed, of little use here. But when Orlando exclaims : 
 
 What? be all the Trojans fled? 
 Then give me some drink. 
 
 we again hear the voice of the thirsty tinker of ^ Shrew: 
 
 Are they run away, Sim? That's well : then gi's some 
 more drink. 
 
26 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 Though Rowley may have given a few touches to 
 some of the later speeches, the rest of the text, after 
 the point where Orlando falls asleep, is substantially 
 Greene's. 
 
 There is yet another anonymous play in which Rowley 
 was concerned, and that is the comedy Wily Beguiled, first 
 printed in 1 606, but probably written several years earlier. 
 Here once more we have a piece almost certainly the work 
 of two authors, scenes of realistic prose being interspersed 
 with passages of incongruously high-flown verse. The 
 prose scenes, in which the chief figures are Gripe, a usurer, 
 Churms, a lawyer, Peter Plod-all and Will Cricket, con- 
 stitute Rowley's part of the play. It is curious that his 
 partner, whose verse is much like that of the poet of The 
 Taming of a Shrew, borrows from Kyd's tragedies almost 
 as flagrantly as the latter does from Marlowe's.' This 
 circumstance long ago suggested to my mind the possi- 
 bility that the verse parts of these plays might be from 
 the same hand. A further examination of the text of 
 Wily Beguiled prompted by the discovery of Rowley's 
 authorship of the prose has yielded unexpe6led confirma- 
 tion of the accuracy of this conclusion ; the evidence in 
 its support being, indeed, so strong that it is scarcely to 
 be resisted. Apart from the general resemblance in the 
 style of the verse, both plays are full of classical allusions, 
 and of classical allusions whose unsuitability to the con- 
 text in which they are used immediately strikes the 
 reader. They are as out of place as gold lace on a suit 
 of homespun. But this is not all. Many of the allusions 
 are the same, and some are introduced in the same fashion 
 
 ' Compare especially Wily Beguiled, ' Hazlitt's Dodsley,' vol. IX, 
 p. 235, line 22, and The Spanish Tragedy (Kyd's Works, ed. Boas), I, 
 ii, 83 ; W. B. p. 247, line 9, and Soliman and Perseda, III, ii, 27 ; W. B. 
 p. 278, line 5, and S. T. I, i, 66 ; W. B. p. 281, 19 ; S. T. II, iii, 7, and 
 S. & P. I, ii, 2; W.B. p. 282, 18, and S. & P. II, ii, 73-4; ff. B. 
 p. 282, 25, and S. T. I, i, 13; W. B. p. 286, 5, and S. T. Ill, ii, 3; 
 PF. B. p. 286, 25-6, and S. T. II, iii, 45 ; W. B. p, 287, i-2, and S.T. 
 Ill, ii, 37-8. 
 
'THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 27 
 
 — in identical, or almost identical, words. Nor are the 
 parallelisms between the plays confined to classical allu- 
 sions, as will be seen from my quotations : 
 
 (i) Wily Beguiled, Hazlitt-Dodsley IX, p. 248: 
 
 Churms. He mews her up as men do mew their hawks ; 
 And so restrains her from her Sophos' sight. 
 
 A Shrew, III, i, 47-8 : 
 
 Ferando. I'll mew her up as men do mew their hawks, 
 And make her gently come unto the lure. 
 
 (2) Wily Beguiled, p. 298 : 
 
 Churms. Ere I would wrong my love by one day's absence 
 I would pass the boiling Hellespont 
 As once Leander did for Hero's love. 
 
 A Shrew, III, vi, 35-8: 
 
 Fhilema. And should my love, as erst Leander did, 
 Attempt to pass the boiling Hellespont 
 For Hero's love, no towers of brass should hold. 
 But I would follow through those raging floods. 
 
 (3) Wily Beguiled, p. 306 : 
 
 Sophos. Yet would I pass the burning vaults of Ork' 
 As erst did Hercules to fetch his love. 
 
 A Shrew, III, vi, 28-9 : 
 
 Emelia. And should my love, as erst did Hercules, 
 Attempt to pass the burning vaults of hell. 
 
 (4) Wily Beguiled, p. 313: 
 
 Fortmatus. Now rests nought but my father's free consent 
 To knit the knot that time can ne'er untwist. 
 
 Ibid., p. 313: 
 
 To work his will to knit this Gordian knot. 
 
 ' Cf. ' Orcus' burning gulf.' Tamburlaine, Pt. II, ii, 3, 
 
28 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 A Shrew^ HI, vi, 72-5 : 
 
 Polidor. And at the church your father and the rest 
 Do stay to see our marriage rites performed, 
 And knit in sight of heaven this Gordian knot, 
 That teeth of fretting time may ne'er untwist. 
 
 (5) Wily Beguiled, p. 328 : 
 
 Sophos. The love of Lelia is to me more dear, 
 
 Than is a kingdom, or the richest crown 
 That e'er adorned the temples of a king. 
 
 A Shrew, H, i, 1 30-2 : 
 
 Ferando. ... as richly wrought 
 
 As was the massy robe that late adorned 
 The stately legate of the Persian king. 
 
 These parallels seem to me to be altogether different 
 in charafter from those between T!he Teaming of A Shrew 
 and the dramas of Marlowe, or between Wily 'Beguiled 
 and those of Kyd, which clearly imply plagiarism. And 
 the inference of identity of authorship is borne out by 
 a comparison of the vocabularies of A Shrew and Wily 
 Beguiled, which reveals the presence of numbers of words 
 and phrases common to the two plays, as in the following 
 lines, the first in each case being from Wily Beguiled and 
 the second from A Shrew : 
 
 (a) And sound the depth of all their ploffed drifts. P. 269 
 By whom we must comprise our plotted drift. Ill, ii, 31 
 
 (b) The senseless trees do grieve at my laments. P. 277 
 The senseless trees by music have been moved. II, i, i 
 
 (c) That with shrill notes and high resounding voice 
 Doth pierce the very caverns of the earth. P. 278 
 To undermine the caverns of the earth. II, i, 78 
 
 (d) That thou forgett'st the lasting league of love. 
 
 Long since was vow'd betwixt thyself and me. P. 281 
 We will confirm these leagues of lasting love. Ill, iv, 64 
 
'THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 29 
 
 (e) That he may think she loves him as her life. P. 286 
 She's willing, sir, and loves me as her life. I, i, 161 
 
 (f) '^h.dit frantic fit possess'd my foolish brain ? ?• 323 
 
 . . . vouchsafe 
 To look on me and leave t\\es& frantic fits. Ind. ii, 40 
 
 (g) Thou great commander of the circled orbs. P> 3^9 
 . . . the great commander of the vforld. V, i, 126 
 
 There is one identity of phrase that deserves special 
 notice. Marlowe in Part I of his Tamburlaine (III, ii, 19) 
 refers to the moon as ' Phoebe's silver eye ' : 
 
 Eternal heaven sooner be dissolv'd 
 And all that pierceth Phoebe's silver eye 
 Before such hap fall to Zenocrate. 
 
 The poet of ^ Shrew, substituting the name ' Polidor' for 
 'Zenocrate,' repeats the rest of this passage verbatim, 
 except that Marlowe's ' Phoebe's silver eye ' becomes 
 ' Phcebus' silver eye.' This may be a mistake either on 
 the part of the plagiarist or of his printer, as Dr. Boas 
 assumes, but there is an excellent reason for believing 
 that it is not, or at any rate that the author of A Shrew 
 wrote 'Phoebus' silver eye' deliberately, assuming that 
 Marlowe was alluding, not to the moon, but to the sun.' 
 The poet of Wily Beguiled, who, as we have seen, uses 
 so many of the allusions and phrases found in A Shrew, 
 twice speaks of ' Phoebus' silver eye,' and — inappropriate 
 as the adjeftive ' silver ' becomes in its altered applica- 
 tion — on neither occasion does he allow us to remain 
 in any doubt that he is referring to the sun. In one 
 passage (p. 265) he has : 
 
 I swear by Sol, fair Phoebus' silver eye. 
 
 and in another (p. 310) : 
 
 Now Phoebus' silver eye is drench'd in western deep, 
 And Luna 'gins to show her splendent rays. 
 
 ' Strangely enough the 1605 edition of Marlowe's play also substitutes 
 'Phoebus' for 'Phoebes.' 
 
30 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 No doubt the discovery of connexions between the 
 prose parts of Wily Beguiled and A Shrew, and also 
 between the verse of these plays, seems to favour 
 the conclusion that the complete text of both plays is 
 the work of a single author. I am, however, con- 
 vinced that when these plays are considered in the 
 light of the evidence of Rowley's authorship of 'The 
 Famous Victories and When Tou See Me such a conclusion 
 is impossible. 
 
 So far as Rowley's authorship of the prose scenes of 
 Wily Beguiled is concerned, I was first led to suspe6l 
 this by the constant occurrence of ' I warrant thee ' and 
 ' I warrant ye.' It is even commoner here than in any 
 of the other plays, occurring altogether twenty times — 
 always in the prose. 'O brave' is absent, but 'Zounds' is 
 introduced ten times. During the course of a dialogue 
 between the Nurse and the scholar Sophos (Hazlitt- 
 Dodsley, vol. IX, p. 284) the former, speaking of her 
 mistress Lelia, says to Sophos, 'she leads such alifeforyou, 
 it passes' There are links with the prose oi AShreiv]vLSt of 
 the same sort as those already noted in The Famous Victories. 
 ' I swear . . . that I could get her as soon as he my- 
 self,' says Will Cricket in Wily Beguiled (p. 244), speak- 
 ing of Peter Plod-all's wooing of Lelia, 'And if 1 had 
 not a month's mind in another place, I would have a 
 Hing at her, that's flat.' \vi A Shrew (II, 2) Sander, 
 speaking of Emelia, says to Polidor's boy, ' If I thought 
 thy master would not have her, Td have a jling at her 
 myself.' ' I'll see soon whether 'twill be a match or 
 no,' Sander continues, ' and it will not, /'// set the matter 
 hard for myself, I warrant thee ' ; and in Wily Beguiled 
 Robin Goodfellow advises Peter Plod-all how to get 
 into Lelia's good graces (p. 256) : 'Tell her thou hast 
 a good stock, some hundred or two a year, and that will 
 set her hard, I warrant thee.' 
 
 At another point in the play (p. 270) Mother 
 Midnight enters to find Peg alone with Will Cricket. 
 
'THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 31 
 
 ' What mak'st thou here in this twatter light ? ' she says 
 to Peg, ' I think thou'rt in a dream ; I think the fool 
 haunts thee.' In a voice whose accents have by this 
 time become familiar. Will Cricket replies : 
 
 Zounds, fool in your face ! Fool ? O monstrous intitu- 
 lation ! Fool ? O disgrace to my person 1 Zounds, fool 
 not me, for I cannot brook such a cold rasher, I can tell 
 thee. 
 
 It can scarcely be necessary to give further proof of 
 Rowley's hand, but it is perhaps worth adding that 
 when Will Cricket acknowledges Mother Midnight's 
 attempt to soothe his injured feelings with 
 
 Well, your good words have something laid my choler, 
 
 he uses all but exactly the same words as those with 
 which, in A Shrew, Polidor's boy brings his quarrel 
 with Sander to a close (II, ii, 50-1) : 
 
 Well, sirrah, your fair words hath something alaid my 
 choler. 
 
 How does the attribution of this fresh work to Rowley 
 fit in with what is already known of his career? It 
 dates the commencement of his dramatic authorship 
 back to a period certainly eight, possibly twelve or 
 thirteen, years before we find any mention of him as a 
 playwright. There is no record of him as such in 
 Henslowe's diary until December, 1601, when he and 
 Birde were paid £6 for a play called Judas, no longer 
 extant, though his name occurs in the diary more than 
 four years before this, on the 3rd August, 1597, as 
 witness of a loan by the playhouse manager to 'John 
 Helle, the clown.' The Famous Victories, though not 
 printed before 1598, was entered in the Stationers' 
 Register on the 14th May, 1594, the first performance 
 
32 'THE TAMING OF A SHREW AND 
 
 recorded by Henslowe being on the 28th November, 
 1 595. It was a6ted by the Admiral's men, the company 
 to which Rowley belonged. It is stated that Tarlton 
 afted the part of Dericke,^ and Tarlton died in Septem- 
 ber, 1588. The 'Taming of a Shrew was entered in the 
 Register just twelve days before The Famous Victories, 
 on the 2nd May, 1 594, and performed in the following 
 month by the Admiral's and Chamberlain's men. The 
 play was printed in the same year ' as it was sundry 
 times afted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants,' and 
 it is usually assumed that it was from them that (he 
 Admiral's and Chamberlain's men acquired it, since it 
 is known that it in September, 1593, Pembroke's com- 
 pany was in such straits that it was driven to pawn its 
 wardrobe. There is presumptive evidence that A Shrew 
 was written in or about 1590, since the author of the 
 verse parts, while borrowing freely from the two parts 
 of Marlowe's Tamhurlaine (c. 1587-8) and from Doctor 
 Faustus (c. 1589), makes no use of his later works. The 
 yew of Malta and Edward II, probably composed in 
 1590 and 1 59 1 respeftively. The earliest extant edition 
 of Orlando Furioso is also dated 1594, but though there 
 is no record of any earlier edition, the play was entered 
 in the Register on the 7th December, 1593, and Hens- 
 lowe records a performance by the combined Admiral's 
 and Strange's companies on the 21st February, 1592. 
 Moreover, in 1592, the author of The Defence of Conny- 
 Catching taunted Greene with having sold the play twice 
 over, first to the Queen's players for twenty nobles, and 
 then, when they were in the country, to the Admiral's 
 men for a like sum. It was no doubt for the Admiral's 
 men that Rowley altered it, in or shortly after 1592. 
 
 ' The authority for the statement is Tarlton's Jests (l6i i) where (' An 
 excellent jest of Tarlton's suddenly spoken ') it is recorded that ' At the 
 Bull at Bishops-gate was a play of Henry the fift, wherein the Judge was 
 to take a box on the eare ' and that ' because he was absent that should 
 take the blow, Tarlton himselfe (ever forward to please) tooke upon him 
 to play the same Judge, besides his owne part of the Clowne.' 
 
' THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 33 
 
 Wily Beguiled is probably rather later, for the verse seems 
 to show the influence of Kyd's Soliman and Perseda 
 (c. 1592). The charafter both of the prose and of the 
 blank verse suggests a date before the end of the six- 
 teenth century, say 1 595 or a year or two earlier.' Next 
 comes the first dramatic work of Rowley's mentioned 
 in Henslowe's diary, the non-extant Judas^ which (as 
 already stated) was written in conjundlion with Birde 
 and completed in December, i6oi. In September, 
 1602, this was followed by another lost play recorded 
 by Henslowe, Joshua, for which Rowley received £y. 
 Two months later we have the additions to Marlowe's 
 Faustus, in the composition of which Rowley was again 
 assisted by Birde. Finally we come to the sole play 
 published under Rowley's name. When Tou See Me Tou 
 Know Me, printed, as we have seen, in 1605, and 
 obviously written not long after the Faustus additions. 
 The chronological order of Rowley's writings for the 
 stage would therefore appear to be as under, it being 
 understood that the dates are in some instances con- 
 jedlural only : 
 
 The Famous Victories of Henry V . 
 
 The Taming of a Shrew (with an unknown author) 
 
 Additions to Greene's Orlando Furioso 
 
 Wily Beguiled (with unknown author) 
 
 Judas (with Birde ; not extant) . 
 
 Joshua (not extant) ..... 
 
 Additions to Marlowe's Faustus (with Birde) 
 
 When Tou See Me Tou Know Me 
 
 I do not include in this list The Noble Soldier (printed 
 in 1634 as by S. R.) because I doubt the corre(5lness 
 of its attribution to Rowley, a close scrutiny of its 
 
 ' It is not necessary to assume that the Lelia-Sophos dialogue beginning 
 *In such a night did Paris win his love' (Hazlitt-Dodsley, p. 314) is an 
 imitation of the Lorenzo- Jessica dialogue in The Merchant of Venice, 
 V, i. Shakespeare may have been the borrowrer, or the two passages 
 may derive from a eommon source. 
 
 . c. 
 
 1588 
 
 ) c. 
 
 1590 
 
 
 1592 
 
 . c. 
 
 1595 
 
 
 1 601 
 
 
 1602 
 
 
 1602 
 
 . c. 
 
 1604 
 
34 ' THE TAMING OF A SHREW ' AND 
 
 text having failed to reveal any suggestion of its 
 author's identity with the author of When Tou See Me 
 or of the work here assigned to Rowley on internal 
 grounds. 
 
 The years that elapsed between Rowley's early work 
 on T'Ae Taming of a Shrew and The Famous Victories of 
 Henry V on the one hand, and his additions to Faustus 
 and the Henry VHI play on the other, show a great 
 improvement in his literary technique. Nevertheless, 
 Sander in The Taming of a Shrew is far his most valuable 
 legacy to the English stage. It was clearly as a creator 
 of clowns that Rowley excelled, but neither Will 
 Cricket nor Will Summers — still less Dericke or the 
 tiresome buffoons that disfigure Marlowe's play — are 
 worthy to rank with Sander. But for Sander we should 
 have had no Grumio. And it is well to remember that 
 it is to the hand that created Sander, almost as much as 
 to Shakespeare's, that we owe The Taming of the Shrew. 
 'AH the force and humour alike of charadler and 
 situation,' to quote the words of Swinburne,' ' belong 
 to Shakespeare's eclipsed and forlorn precursor ; he 
 [Shakespeare] has added nothing ; he has tempered and 
 enriched everything,' and he continues : ' that the luck- 
 less author of the first sketch is like to remain a man as 
 nameless as the deed of the witches in Macbeth, unless 
 some chance or caprice of accident should suddenly 
 flash favouring light on his now impersonal and indis- 
 coverable individuality, seems clear enough when we 
 take into account the double and final disproof of his 
 imaginary identity with Marlowe which Mr. Dyce 
 has put forward. . . . He is a clumsy and coarse- 
 fingered plagiarist from that poet, and his stolen jewels 
 of expression look so grossly out of place in the homely 
 setting of his usual style that they seem transmuted 
 from real to sham. On the other hand he is of all 
 
 ' 'A Study of Shakespeare,' p. 124. 
 
'THE FAMOUS VICTORIES OF HENRY V.' 35 
 
 the pre-Shakespeareans known to us incomparably the 
 truest, the richest, the most powerful and original 
 humorist ; one indeed without a second on that ground 
 for " the rest are nowhere." ' 
 
 If I am right, the eclipsed and forlorn precursor of 
 Shakespeare to whom Swinburne has paid so handsome 
 a tribute is Samuel Rowley ; it is he who is the power- 
 ful and original humorist, the ' man of real if rough 
 genius for comedy,' but he is not the clumsy plagiarist 
 from Marlowe. On refleftion it is indeed rather strange 
 that it should have been supposed that qualities so 
 diverse could be united in one person — that the same 
 man should have been at once an original humorist and 
 a servile plagiarist, a writer of rough realistic prose, 
 and of polished artificial verse. 
 
THE DE LA MORE PRESS LTD. 32 GEORGE 
 STREET HANOVER SQUARE LONDON W. 1