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THE ^EEN'S PROGRESS 
 
Queen Elizabeth as Diana 
 
qn TT Tj> 
 
 QUEEN'S 
 
 PROGRESS 
 
 AND 
 
 Other Elizabethan Sketches 
 
 By Felix E. Schelling 
 
 Omnia rerum omnium, si observentur, indicia 
 sunt et argumentum morum ex minimis quoque 
 licet capere. 
 
 Senec. Epist. 52. 12. 
 
 BOSTON & NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY 
 
 I 904 
 
 "D 
 
 ^a 
 

 COPYMGHT 1904 BY FELIX E. SCHELLING 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Putlished Octoler IQ04 
 
 ^?^K 
 
 
THE following sketches — for they claim 
 to be no more — are some of the lighter 
 matters that have floated on a stream 
 of reading and study which has already carried, 
 let it be hoped, a somewhat weightier freight. 
 It is one thing to taste the charm and flavor of 
 an age ; it is another to convey it. The days 
 of Elizabeth and fames were nothing if not 
 multiform. Their trivialities even have their 
 place, and their power to complete the picture, 
 whether historical or literary : a power not al- 
 ways apprehended in view of the number and 
 variety of the important figures that crowd 
 the spacious canvas of that incomparable time. 
 When Ben J onson jotted in his commonplace- 
 book the things which took his fancy as he read 
 or the thoughts which rose in his mind touching 
 certain human actions, he called his notes " dis- 
 coveries made upon men and matter'^ Later 
 
 came 
 
VI 
 
 came the appraiser with his stylus and inventory 
 of good things and of bad. Here is neither ap- 
 praisement nor discovery ; but the object simply 
 written down as it appears to him who writes 
 to-day, more truly seen, let us trust, than yester- 
 day : perchance in need of more light from a 
 clearer to-morrow. 
 
Vll 
 
 Contents 
 
 I. The ^een's Progress . . . Page i 
 II. An Elizabethan Will .... 27 
 
 III. Thomas Stucley, Gentleman Ad- 
 
 venturer 49 
 
 IV. An Old-Time Friendship . . j^ 
 V. "An Aery of Children, Little 
 
 Eyases" 103 
 
 VI. A Groatsworth of Wit . , .129 
 VII. Plays in the Making . . . .149 
 VIII. When Music and Sweet Poetry 
 
 agree 171 
 
 IX. Thalia in Oxford 201 
 
 X. A Journey to the North . . .221 
 Index 253 
 

 ix 
 
 Illustrations 
 
 
 Queen Elizabeth as Diana . Frontispiece 
 
 From the picture in the collection of the Marquess 
 of Salisbury, at Hatfield House 
 
 Bj firmlltlon tf Genfil if Co. 
 
 
 The Masque of Zabeta .... Page 22 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, Juno, Venus, and Minerva. From 
 the picture in the royal collection of Hatfield Court 
 
 B} permijiion of Gonpil & Co. 
 
 
 Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke . .78 
 
 After the original in the collection of Willoughby 
 de Broke 
 
 
 Edward Alleyn, Founder of Dulwich 
 College 156 
 
 After the original in Dulwich College 
 
 
 Ben Jonson 224 
 
 From the painting after Honthorst, in the National 
 Portrait Gallery 
 
 
 William Drummond 242 
 
 After the miniature at Hawthornden 
 
 
THE ^EEN'S PROGRESS 
 
The Queen's Progress 
 
 IT has been said that the character of the 
 great Queen Elizabeth can be painted 
 only in high lights ; that if there were 
 shadows in her nature, there were no depths ; 
 or at least that, if there were once depths, 
 so consummate a mistress of deception and 
 subterfuge had she become that it is idle to 
 enquire if she were ever sincere. Brilliant, 
 accomplished and imperious, tortuous in 
 details, unscrupulous in choice of means to 
 an end as her master Machiavelli himself 
 almost, this latest daughter of the Italian 
 Renaissance preserved — again like Machia- 
 velli — a largeness of design in her political 
 
 doings 
 
The ^lueen*s Progress 
 
 doings which often raises them from the 
 pettiness of intrigue to the wider domain 
 of statesmanship. It was the recognition 
 of this which kept men like Sir Nicholas 
 Bacon, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the 
 Cecils her servants and councillors. But 
 despite her haughty, unreasonable temper, 
 her vanity and susceptibility to gross flattery, 
 her mendacity, and her meanness in money 
 affairs, there must have been something in 
 Elizabeth as a woman to hold to her such 
 men as Sidney, Spenser, and Raleigh, and 
 to beget in them that choice spirit in which 
 were mingled patriotic loyalty to a queen 
 who embodied in her person the glory of 
 England, and a chivalric devotion to ideal 
 womanhood, each ennobling and dignifying 
 the other. Years after Elizabeth's death so 
 grave a man as Camden, the antiquarian, 
 could write : " She was of admirable beauty 
 and well deserving a crown, of modest grav- 
 ity, excellent wit, royal soul, happy mem- 
 ory, 
 
The ^een*s Progress 
 
 ory, and indefatigably given to the study of 
 learning." 
 
 Whatever else may have been true of 
 Queen Elizabeth, she had a genius for so- 
 ciety. Her judgment, her tact, in all that 
 pertained to the daily intercourse of the 
 sovereign with her Court, her Parliament, 
 or her people, was unerring. The skill with 
 which she passed from the gravity of the 
 council-chamber to a flirtation with Alen- 
 9on or a galliard prearranged for the Span- 
 ish minister to witness her Majesty dancing 
 unawares, was " an admiration to behold." 
 For the wise counsellor, the witty courtier, 
 the dull citizen, or the duller college pedant, 
 Elizabeth had ever the proper answer or the 
 ready retort. She could be gracious if she 
 chose after a sore infliction of the inordi- 
 nate length and preternatural learning of 
 an Elizabethan sermon. She could reply, 
 with many graceful womanish qualms as 
 to the quality of her Latinity, in a carefully 
 
 unprepared 
 
The ^lueerPs Progress 
 
 unprepared speech, to learned addresses by 
 the heads, dons, or scholars of Oxford or 
 Cambridge. She could frighten her Com- 
 mons, in language fit for a fishwife, into 
 the obsequious granting of her subsidies 
 against their will ; arouse by her eloquence 
 the untutored train-bands at Tilbury to a 
 frenzy of martial ardor ; or cap an epigram 
 which a saucy courtier had scratched on the 
 window-pane for her Majesty's eye. Fond 
 of pleasure and display, thirsty for praise 
 that might be interpreted to come as the 
 unsought tribute of her beauty or accom- 
 plishment as a woman, Elizabeth none the 
 less maintained, through many deviations 
 and some vicissitude, the attitude of a 
 queen, beloved by her people, and re- 
 spected and feared abroad. How far she 
 was merely a consummate actress, how far a 
 woman, weak in all her strength, pathetic 
 despite her queenly station, must be left for 
 each to decide for himself. Certain it is 
 
 that 
 
The Slueen*s Progress 
 
 that if Elizabeth was an actress, she had the 
 world for her stage and marvelling Christ- 
 endom for her auditors. 
 
 Like her father before her, the Queen 
 was an enthusiastic lover of pomp and dis- 
 play. There was scarcely an action of her 
 life from the trifling forms of the daily 
 routine at Court to the dignified ceremo- 
 nials of sovereignty which was not studied 
 for its effect. Hentzner, a contemporary 
 German traveller, has described the Queen's 
 passage through the presence chamber of 
 her palace at Greenwich on her way to 
 morning service in her chapel. Somewhat 
 shortened, his words run : — 
 
 " First went gentlemen, barons, earls. 
 Knights of the Garter, all richly dressed 
 and bareheaded; next came the Chancellor, 
 bearing the seals in a red silk purse, be- 
 tween two, one of which carried the Royal 
 sceptre, the other the sword of state, in a 
 red scabbard, studded with golden jleurs de 
 
 lis. 
 
8 
 
 The keen's Progress 
 
 lis, the point upwards : next came the 
 Queen, very majestic ; her face oblong, fair, 
 but wrinkled ; her eyes small, yet black 
 and pleasant ; her nose a little hooked ; her 
 lips narrow; she had in her ears two pearls 
 with very rich drops ; she wore false hair, 
 and that red; upon her head she had a 
 small crown ; her bosom was uncovered 
 as all the English ladies have it till they 
 marry, and she had on a necklace of ex- 
 ceeding fine jewels ; her hands were small, 
 her fingers long, and her stature neither 
 tall nor low; her air was stately, her man- 
 ner of speaking mild and obliging. As she 
 went along in all this state and magnifi- 
 cence, she spoke very graciously, first to 
 one, then to another, whether foreign Min- 
 isters or those who attended for different 
 reasons, in English, French, and Italian ; 
 for, besides being well skilled in Greek, 
 Latin, and the languages I have mentioned, 
 she is mistress of Spanish, Scotch, and 
 
 Dutch. 
 
The ^lueen^s Progress 
 
 Dutch. Whoever speaks to her, it is kneel- 
 ing ; now and then she raises some with 
 her hand. Wherever she turned her face, as 
 she was going along, everybody fell down 
 on their knees. The ladies of the Court 
 followed next to her, very handsome and 
 well-shaped, and for the most part dressed 
 in white. She was guarded on each side by 
 the gentlemen pensioners, fifty in number, 
 with gilt battle-axes. In the ante-chapel 
 next the hall where we were, petitions 
 were presented to her, and she received 
 them most graciously, which occasioned 
 the acclamation of * Long live Queen Eliza- 
 beth ! ' She answered it with * I thank you, 
 my good people.' " 
 
 It was amid stately and ceremonious 
 scenes such as this that Elizabeth drank in 
 the adulation so dear to every sovereign and 
 every woman's heart; for in popular accla- 
 mation she must have found justification 
 for the sinuousness and insincerity of a polit- 
 ical 
 
lo The Slueen^s Progress 
 
 ical policy which could not but have preyed 
 on a conscience even so robust as her ow^n. 
 It was, moreover, in the midst of such 
 scenes that she found a solace for that 
 loneliness which fate and her royal deter- 
 mination had decreed for her, and which 
 ever attended her greatness like its shadow. 
 Orations, songs and poems of welcome 
 and farewell, allegorical groups, arches, 
 and decorations, processions, plays, morali- 
 ties and masques were Elizabeth's delight, 
 and continued such to the end. It may be 
 surmised that far more of the success of the 
 earlier Elizabethan drama than is usually 
 supposed is due to this taste of the Queen, 
 which offered an example for the fash- 
 ionable world to follow and afforded an 
 excuse for the existence of theatrical com- 
 panies by royal or other patronage. Of 
 these varied amusements the " progress " 
 was high in the royal favor. It combined 
 several distinct advantages : amongst them a 
 
 change 
 
The ilueen^s Progress n 
 
 change of scene, opportunity for the dis- 
 play of loyalty and hospitality on the part 
 of the Queen's host, and, counting by no 
 means least in the estimation of her prudent 
 Majesty, a material saving in her house- 
 hold budget. Hence it was that Elizabeth 
 was wont to " go on progress " in the sum- 
 mer months, to sojourn with her loving 
 subjects from a few days to weeks ; to pass 
 from one to another, visit the provincial 
 towns and the Universities, and enjoy a 
 surfeit of feasting, adulation, allegorical 
 pageantry and entertainment. According to 
 the excellent antiquarian, John Nichols, 
 nearly three hundred castles, towns, or 
 country-seats were thus visited by the Queen 
 and her Court, and some hundred and sixty 
 of her more important subjects had at one 
 time or another submitted to the glory and 
 the charge of entertaining a royal guest, at 
 times to their permanent impoverishment. 
 To none of the progresses of Queen Eliz- 
 abeth 
 
12 The §lueen*s Progress 
 
 abeth attaches a greater interest than to 
 that during which she spent no less than 
 nineteen days at Kenilworth Castle, the 
 guest of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 
 in July, 1575. The story of this progress 
 has often been told by contemporaries, by 
 antiquarians, and lastly and definitively by 
 Sir Walter Scott, who has used the extant 
 historical material to admirable advantage 
 in his transfer of these brilliant scenes to the 
 delightful pages of Kenilworth. Leicester 
 was then at the height of the elaborate 
 and subtile courtship which he paid to his 
 sovereign through several years, sanguine 
 of success, and eager in pursuit of the most 
 difficult mistress that ever bade lover hope 
 only to play with his despair. It required no 
 little temerity to combine the r6le of sub- 
 ject, lover and councillor to such a woman 
 and to such a queen ; and a cleverer man 
 than Leicester might well have been in- 
 volved in the royal toils that were cease- 
 lessly 
 
The Queen's Progress ^3 
 
 lessly weaving to the confusion, perplexity, 
 and overreaching of foe and friend. An in- 
 terest of a different kind has been assigned 
 by some to this progress, from the possibiHty 
 that the boy Shakespeare may have been 
 present (as was the greater part of the popu- 
 lation of Warwickshire at various times), 
 and that he may have received — as others 
 have been bold to surmise — from this ear- 
 liest contact with pageantry and stage-craft 
 the first strong impetus towards his future 
 career. 
 
 In the absence of an obsequious daily 
 press to chronicle the goings and comings of 
 royalty, we can imagine how impatiently the 
 curious, whose station in life forbade attend- 
 ance at Court, must have awaited the pam- 
 phlet which was sure to appear describing 
 the Queen's last progress. Laneham's Letter, 
 Whearin part of the Entertainment untoo the 
 ^eenz Majesty at Killingworth Castl in War- 
 ivik Sheer in this Soomerz Progress iz signified, 
 
 purports 
 
14 
 
 The §lueen*s Progress 
 
 purports to be no more than a private mes- 
 sage to " hiz freend a Citizen and Merchaunt 
 of London." It was, however, indubitably 
 written for the booksellers, and helped to 
 swell the comfortable coffers of the lively 
 and conceited little " dark " whose duties 
 in office he thus describes : " Now, Sir, if 
 the council sits, I am at hand ; wait at an 
 inch, I warrant you. If any make babling : 
 * Peace,' say I, * wot ye where ye are ? ' If 
 I take a listener or a prier in at the chinks 
 or at the look-hole, I am by and by in the 
 bones of him. If a be a friend or such a 
 one as I like, I make him sit down by me 
 on a form or a chest ; let the rest walk, a 
 God's name." 
 
 Laneham had the maggots of phonetic 
 spelling in his brain, as the title of his 
 letter just given sufficiently shows. They 
 need not infect us, as he had also " the 
 power adays (while the council sits not) to 
 go and to see things sightworthy and to be 
 
 present 
 
The ^ueen^s Progress 15 
 
 present at any show or spectacle anywhere 
 this progress represented unto her High- 
 ness." 
 
 The entertainments of a queen's progress 
 were like the meals of the day — very sub- 
 stantial affairs and of almost an equal va- 
 riety. On the very first day her Majesty's 
 power of endurance was thoroughly put 
 to the test. Starting at noon from Isling- 
 ton, a town some miles from Kenilworth, 
 and hunting by the way, the Queen could 
 scarcely have reached the privacy of her own 
 apartments until ten o'clock that night. Be- 
 tween the tilt-yard where she arrived about 
 eight and the door of the castle alone, she 
 ran the gauntlet of the speeches, music and 
 posturing of ten sibyls, sundry porters, six 
 trumpeters, Proteus, the Lady of the Lake, 
 and " a poet in a long ceruleus garment " 
 who stopped to explain — we may be sure 
 with all the leisure of poets — a succession of 
 pillars decorating the bridge and dedicated 
 
 respectively 
 
i6 
 
 The ^eerPs Progress 
 
 respectively to Sylvanus, Pomona, Ceres, 
 Bacchus, Mars, and Phoebus, ending with 
 a lengthy Latin inscription crowning the 
 door itself. 
 
 In the days that followed, all that princely 
 expenditure could procure and inventive in- 
 genuity could devise was lavished to produce 
 novelty after novelty. There were ridings 
 and hunting attended with enchanted music 
 which spake out of trees and hedges ; unex- 
 pected meetings in the woods with fauns 
 and savage men, who discoursed elegant al- 
 legory ; tilting in the tilt-yard and graceful 
 dancing of lords and ladies in the presence. 
 There were feats of agility, mock fights 
 and bear-baiting by day, and masques in the 
 hall and fireworks on the lake at night. 
 These last made a deep impression upon 
 Laneham, who records how " the Altito- 
 nant displays me his main power ; with a 
 blaze of burning darts, flying to and fro, 
 gleams of stars coruscant and hail of fiery 
 
 sparks. 
 
The ilueen^s Progress 
 
 17 
 
 sparks, lightnings of wildfire, a-water and 
 land, flight and shoot of thunder-bolts, all 
 with such continuance, terror and vehe- 
 mence, that the heavens thundered, the 
 water surged and the earth shook, in such 
 sort surely, as had we not been assured the 
 fulminant deity was all but in amity, and 
 could not otherwise witness his welcoming 
 unto her Highness, it would have made me 
 for my part, as hardy as I am, very venge- 
 ably afeared." 
 
 The second Sunday of the Queen's stay 
 was enlivened with a rustic "bride-ale," de- 
 scribed by the dapper little clerk of the coun- 
 cil chamber door with great gusto and in 
 much the mood of contemptuous pleasan- 
 try in which Shakespeare treats his company 
 of "base mechanicals" in A Midsummer 
 Night's Dream. " The bridegroom fore- 
 most, in his father's tawny worsted jacket, 
 ... a fair strawn hat with a capital crown, 
 steeplewise on his head ; a pair of harvest 
 
 gloves 
 
i8 
 
 The ilueen^s Progress 
 
 gloves on his hands as a sign of good hus- 
 bandry ; a pen and inkhorn at his back, for 
 he would be known to be bookish ; lame of 
 a leg that in his youth was broken at foot- 
 ball : well beloved yet of his mother that 
 lent him a new muffler for a napkin that 
 was tied to his girdle for [fear of] losing. 
 , . . Then followed his worshipful bride, 
 led (after the country manner) between two 
 ancient parishioners, ... a thirty year old, of 
 color brown-bay, not very beautiful indeed, 
 yet marvellously fain at the office because 
 she heard say she should dance before the 
 Queen. . . . After this bride, came there two 
 by two a dozen damsels for bride-maids, 
 that for favor, attire, for fashion and clean- 
 liness were as meet for such a bride as a 
 treen ladle for a porridge-pot." Into the ex- 
 aggerated misadventures of these rustics in 
 their running at quintain and their morris- 
 dancing we shall not follow Laneham, 
 whose jocular impertinence is that of a man 
 
 who 
 
The ilueen^s Progress 
 
 19 
 
 who is at pains to create the impression 
 that he has never been nearer to these com- 
 mon folk than now. 
 
 Following the " bride-ale " was a repre- 
 sentation of the Hock-tide or Hox Tuesday 
 play, as it was called, by men come over 
 from the neighboring town of Coventry. 
 Coventry had been famous throughout the 
 Middle Ages for its pageantry ; and " mira- 
 cle" and "morality" had flourished there as 
 nowhere else in England, if we except York 
 and possibly London. For the Hock-tide 
 play even a greater antiquity was claimed, 
 as it was said to commemorate, by a yearly 
 mock-fight with accompanying "rymez," 
 the overthrow of the Danes by the men 
 of Coventry on Saint Brice's Day, 1012. 
 This commemoration is known to have 
 continued from the year after the battle 
 of Agincourt, 141 6, to the Queen's visit 
 to Kenil worth, on which latter occasion it 
 was repeated at Elizabeth's request. These 
 
 last 
 
2 The keen's Progress 
 
 last presentations were under the direction 
 of one Captain Cox, "an odd man, I pro- 
 mise you," says Laneham, " by profession 
 a mason and that right skilfull, very cun- 
 ning in fence, and hardy as Gawain ; for his 
 long-sword hangs at his table's end." 
 
 We shall not follow our cicerone in his 
 account of "an ambrosial banquet," at 
 which the number of dishes was three hun- 
 dred and whereof " her Majesty eat smally 
 or nothing," in his delight over " a swim- 
 ming mermaid that from top to tail was 
 an eighteen foot long," or into the intri- 
 cacies of the speeches which Triton made 
 or Arion sang in behalf of their master, 
 "the supreme salsipotent monarch, Nep- 
 tune, prince of profundities and sovereign 
 seignior of all lakes." From another source 
 it is related that Arion, having upon this 
 occasion contracted a hoarse voice from 
 sitting so long in the damp on his dolphin, 
 awaiting the coming of the Queen, he 
 
 snatched 
 
The ^^een^s Progress 
 
 21 
 
 snatched off his disguise and swore " that 
 he was no Arion but e'en honest Harry 
 Goldingham, who would sing as well as he 
 could; whereat the Queen was exceeding 
 delighted." 
 
 But if the festivities contained triumphs, 
 there were disappointments as well. " Had 
 her Highness happened this day to have 
 comen abroad," says Laneham, " there was 
 made ready a device of goddesses and 
 nymphs which, as well for the ingenious 
 argument as for the well handling of it 
 in rime and enditing, would undoubtedly 
 have gained great liking and moved no 
 less delight." This device was an elaborate 
 piece of allegory called the Masque of Za- 
 beta, the work of the notable court poet 
 Gascoigne, " being prepared and ready — 
 every actor in his garment — two or three 
 days together, yet never came to execution. 
 The cause whereof I cannot attribute to 
 any other thing," says the author, "than 
 
 to 
 
2 2 The ilueen's Progress 
 
 to a lack of opportunity and seasonable 
 weather." Perhaps there was another rea- 
 son, as a look at Zabeta, which its author 
 was careful to have published in the next 
 year with his account of the festivities in 
 general, makes plain. The chief interlocu- 
 tors of this masque are Diana and several 
 of her nymphs. Mercury, Jove's Messenger, 
 and Iris, the Messenger of Juno. Diana is 
 deploring the loss of her most beloved 
 nymph, Zabeta, and sends out her nymphs 
 in various directions to look for her. In her 
 lament she contrives thus to describe the 
 lost paragon : 
 
 My sister first, which Pallas hath to name, 
 Envyed Zabeta for hyr learned brayne. 
 My sister Fenus feared Zabetaes fame, 
 Whose gleames of grace hyr beuties blase dyd 
 
 stayne ; 
 Apollo dread to touch an Instrument, 
 Where my Zabeta chaunst to come in place : 
 Yea, Mercurie was not so eloquent, 
 Nor in his words had halfe so good a grace. 
 
 My 
 
Masque of Zabeta 
 
The Queen's Progress 23 
 
 My stepdame yuno, in hyr glyttering guyse, 
 Was nothing like so heavenlie to beholde : 
 Short tale to make, Zabeta was the wight. 
 On whom to thinke my heart now waxeth cold. 
 
 In the midst of her lament. Mercury ar- 
 rives from Jove to explain how Zabeta has 
 become a great queen, who, against all the 
 wiles of Juno, has remained " in constant 
 vow of chaste unspotted life;" whereupon 
 Diana and her train kneel in obeisance be- 
 fore her Majesty. But now comes the gist 
 of the matter ; for, Diana and " Mercury 
 being departed. Iris cometh down from the 
 rainbow sent by Juno," 
 
 Who crowned first your comely head with Princely 
 Dyademes ? 
 
 persuading the Queen's Majesty that she 
 be not carried away " with Mercuries filed 
 speach, nor Dyanaes faire words, but that 
 she consider all things by proofe, and then 
 shee shall finde much greater cause to fol- 
 io we Juno then Dyana." 
 
 At 
 
24 The §lueen*s Progress 
 
 At the end the messenger rises to pro- 
 phecy of unmistakable import : 
 
 Where you now in Princely port 
 
 have past one pleasant day, 
 A world of wealth at wil 
 
 you hencefoorth shall enjoy 
 In wedded state, and therewithal! 
 
 holde up from great annoy 
 The staffe of your estate ; 
 
 O Queene, O worthy Queene, 
 Yet never wight felt perfect Wis, 
 
 but such as wedded beene. 
 
 Possibly considering the strength of all 
 this allegory and the warmth of Iris's mes- 
 sage, an intimation that her Majesty pre- 
 ferred not to be so directly courted in 
 similitudes had most to do with the non- 
 performance of Zabeta. That the Queen 
 should have been permitted long to remain 
 in ignorance of the nature of this masque, 
 neither the assiduity of her suitor nor the 
 vanity of his poet could have brooked. 
 The progress came to an end and, contrary 
 
 to 
 
The ^een*s Progress 25 
 
 to the expectations and the fears of many, 
 my lord of Leicester was still no more than 
 my lord of Leicester, and Elizabeth had 
 only passed through another flirtation, one 
 of the many that had been and were yet 
 to come. 
 
II 
 
 AN ELIZABETHAN WILL 
 
29 
 
 II 
 
 An Elizabethan Will 
 
 ON the twelfth of January, 1559, 
 William Breton " of the parryshe 
 of saynt Gyles w^out creplegate of 
 London gentilman" departed this life at his 
 " capitall mansion house in Redcrostrete." 
 William Breton was the younger son of 
 an excellent and ancient family settled in 
 various midland counties of England. He 
 had come up to London in youth, and en- 
 gaged in trade. He had prospered, as his 
 will abundantly proves; and, in the midst 
 of the multifarious popular impulses that 
 struck at the root of feudal tenures and 
 unclasped even the rigid fingers of mort- 
 main, 
 
30 An Elizabethan Will 
 
 main, Breton had contrived to become a 
 landed proprietor of no little wealth and 
 importance ; nay, some of the hereditary 
 lands of the Bretons had fallen into the 
 hands of this younger son in a manner cer- 
 tainly other than that of inheritance. We 
 have no evidence of the nature of the ven- 
 tures in which Breton made his money, and 
 we shall not seek to cloud the memory of 
 a man whose large testamentary charities 
 seem to betoken a kind master and a citi- 
 zen thoughtful of the needs of his indigent 
 neighbors. 
 
 Despite all preconceptions and illusions, 
 the great age of Elizabeth was hard, liti- 
 gious, bloody, and corrupt. It was not un- 
 til the next reign that a philosopher and 
 a lord chancellor of England came to his 
 fall by the confessed acceptance of a bribe ; 
 but Edmund Spenser, the gentlest of poets 
 and of men, helped put to the sword, save 
 for a few officers, a band of surrendered 
 
 Spanish 
 
An Elizabethan Will 
 
 31 
 
 Spanish invaders, at Smerwick in Ireland, 
 and the famous Sir Thomas Gresham grew 
 from modest proportions to the greatest 
 financier and money-lender of his day on 
 his travelling expenses and twenty shillings 
 a day, a miracle which brokerage and com- 
 pound interest alone will not completely 
 explain. But thin partitions did divide 
 merchant adventure from piracy, and the 
 arms of Sir John Hawkins, " a demi-moor 
 proper bound with a cord," were acquired 
 not without much misery and suffering to 
 people not of Sir John's race or color. 
 
 In such a state of society, the prospects 
 of a clear head linked with not too scru- 
 pulous a conscience were boundless ; and 
 William Breton's was not the only case in 
 which the younger son came in time to 
 possess the paternal acres whilst his elder 
 brother pined away in the Fleet, or found 
 his El Dorado in a Spanish dungeon. 
 
 The immediate family of William Breton 
 
 consisted 
 
32 An Elizabethan Will 
 
 consisted of his wife Elizabeth, the daugh- 
 ter of a London merchant and, apparently, 
 considerably her husband's junior, two sons, 
 the younger of whom was afterwards to be- 
 come the graceful poet Nicholas Breton, 
 and three daughters : all minors at their 
 father's death. The will is a carefully writ- 
 ten document, decked out with the flour- 
 ishes and proverbial piety of the age, and 
 offering every evidence, from its inordinate 
 length, that the scrivener was still paid un- 
 der statute by the number of his words. 
 By the terms of this document, William 
 Breton devised certain tenements in Barby- 
 can and Redcross Street to his wife abso- 
 lutely, gave her a life estate in his "key 
 and wharfFe called Dyse," and bequeathed 
 her "tenne kyen" on his farm at Wal- 
 thamstow in Essex, one hundred pounds 
 in money, half his "playt," her jewels, 
 apparel, and many other articles. He also 
 made her the guardian of the children. 
 
 Beside 
 
An Elizabethan Will 33 
 
 Beside many special bequests to each, the 
 elder son received ten tenements in Lon- 
 don of a considerable yearly rental, while 
 the younger was granted the two manors 
 of Burgh in Lincoln and Wykes in Essex. 
 Among many other bequests, each daughter 
 was to receive a marriage portion of two 
 hundred marks (upwards of eight hundred 
 pounds in present value), and no less than a 
 thousand pounds were distributed in lega- 
 cies to servants and in alms to the poor. 
 
 Let us reconstruct to imagination's in- 
 ward eye the home in Redcross Street, its 
 retinue of family servants, its garniture of 
 family plate, jewels, gilt bedsteads, velvet 
 and satin hangings. Stow tells us that " in 
 Redcross Street on the west side from Saint 
 Giles Churchyard, be many faire houses 
 builded outward, with divers allies, turning 
 into a large plot of ground, of old time 
 called the Jewes Garden, as being the onely 
 place appointed them in England wherein 
 
 to 
 
34 
 
 An Elizabethan Will 
 
 to bury their dead. This plot of ground 
 ... is now turned into faire garden plots 
 and summer houses for pleasure." We may 
 imagine the garden of William Breton as 
 not so large indeed or so ambitious as that 
 my lord of St. Albans set forth so deli- 
 ciously in his Essayes or Counsells Civill and 
 Morall, and yet not wanting in rosemary 
 and sweet marjoram, briar, stock and gilly- 
 flowers, " having a faire allie in the midst, 
 ranged on both sides with fruit trees, that 
 you may goe in shade," and prim with 
 " images cut out in juniper or other garden 
 stufl?"." Perhaps our worthy merchant was 
 not above more practical gardening, and 
 planted "melons, pompions, gourds, skirets, 
 turneps and all kinds of salad herbes;" or, 
 much to that worthy's disgust, set his hon- 
 est gardener. King, to the care of rare and 
 curious foreign plants and "simples," "for 
 delectation sake unto the eie and their odor- 
 iferous savours unto the nose." 
 
 We 
 
An Elizabethan Will 35 
 
 We can scarcely suppose our " capitall 
 mansion" to have been constructed of any- 
 thing better than wood, with clay or plaster 
 outer panels of red or white. There were 
 two or three stories, a low roof covered with 
 thatch or perhaps tile, and windows of 
 lattice and small diamond panes of Flem- 
 ish glass. It is likely that all the outbuild- 
 ings to the brew-house and mews were 
 under one roof, and, considering the date, 
 the luxury of a chimney may perhaps be 
 doubted. " Within," as Lemnius, a con- 
 temporary Dutch physician, informs us, " all 
 was strawed with sweet herbes and rushes, 
 . . . Their nosegays, finely entermingled 
 wyth sondrie sortes of fragraunte flowres 
 in their bed-chambers and inner rooms, 
 with comfortable smell cheered mee up 
 and en ty rely delighted all my sences." 
 
 Furniture was scant, and, besides a few 
 chairs, and tables of common wood but 
 spread with " fine naperie," consisted 
 
 chiefly 
 
36 
 
 An Elizabethan Will 
 
 chiefly of the standing and truckle beds, 
 the garniture of each sleeping room, and 
 of a large number of ornamental cupboards 
 and chests, elevated on feet, of "sweet, rare, 
 carven work," strengthened with wrought- 
 iron bands and fastenings. The pantry was 
 better equipped, and here might be seen 
 abundance of bright pewter platters, tank- 
 ards, fine linen, and possibly even some sil- 
 ver and Venetian glass. All the better rooms 
 were hung with tapestry or " arras of Tur- 
 key work," displaying some classical or bib- 
 lical story ; or, perhaps in the merchant's 
 household, made of but " right painted 
 cloth," depicting such bits of worldly wis- 
 dom as " Beware the mouse, the maggot 
 and the moth," or " Light gaines make 
 heavy purses," and hanging sufficiently far 
 from the wall to protect from damp and 
 afford some eavesdropping city Polonius a 
 hiding-place. With Shakespeare's Gremio 
 might Breton exclaim : 
 
 My 
 
An Elizabethan Will 
 
 37 
 
 My house within the city 
 Is richly furnished with plate and gold ; 
 Basins and ewers ; . . . 
 My hangings all of Tyrian tapestry ; 
 In ivory cofFers have I stuff 'd my crowns; 
 In cypress chests my arras counterpoints, 
 Costly apparel, tents, and canopies, 
 Fine linen, Turkey cushions boss'd with pearl. 
 Valance of Venice gold in needlework, 
 Pewter and brass and all things that belong 
 To house or house-keeping. 
 
 The larder too was well supplied, for " our 
 bodies doe crave a little more ample nour- 
 ishment than the inhabitants of the hotter 
 regions are accustomed withal," says Harri- 
 son. While it is likely that our excellent 
 merchant had not yet become so infected 
 with foreign customs as to employ " musi- 
 call-headed Frenchmen and strangers " as 
 his cooks, he none the less indulged in " not 
 onely beefe, mutton, veale, lambe,kid, porke, 
 conie, capon, pig or so manie of these as 
 the season yieldeth, but also some portion 
 
 of 
 
38 
 
 An Elizabethan Will 
 
 of the red or fallow deere, beside great va- 
 rietie of fish and wild foule, and thereunto 
 other delicates wherein the sweet hand of 
 the Portingale is not wanting." In seasons 
 of entertainment too there were "geliffes of 
 all colours mixed with a varietie in represen- 
 tation of sundrie floures, beastes, foules and 
 fruits, and thereunto marchpanes wrought 
 with no small curiositie, marmilats, codinacs 
 and sundrie outlandish confections." In the 
 case before us, the "tenne kyen " at Wal- 
 thamstow, willed to Elizabeth Breton, sug- 
 gest rural plenty, and doubtless more than 
 one family servant was employed to con- 
 vey game and poultry from the Essex farm 
 to Redcross Street or in the exchange of 
 courtesies with kinsfolk or neighbors. 
 
 It was on his wines, however, that the 
 merchant chiefly prided himself; and no 
 less than fifty-six kinds of light wines and 
 thirty of strong (from FalstafF's " excellent 
 sherris" to the "small wines" of Gascony) 
 
 are 
 
An Elizabethan Will 39 
 
 are "accompted of bicause of their strength 
 and valure." For every-day use the national 
 drink was beer, made in monthly brewings 
 by each matron and her maids, and varying 
 in strength and excellence with the state 
 and purse of the family. 
 
 We may picture to ourselves a wholesome 
 and decorous family life, in which piety and 
 thrift stood for the chiefest household gods. 
 It speaks not a little for the trust which 
 the old merchant reposed in his young wife, 
 that we find him providing that the lega- 
 cies to his daughters shall become void if 
 either should marry without her mother's 
 consent. 
 
 Unfortunately this trust seems not to have 
 been very wisely bestowed. For some few 
 years after her husband's death, Elizabeth 
 Breton took to herself a new spouse in the 
 person of Master George Gascoigne. The 
 marriage was purely a matter of conven- 
 ience. Gascoigne was handsome, dashing, 
 
 well- 
 
40 An Elizabethan Will 
 
 well-born, and penniless ; he had been by 
 turns a student, a courtier, and a man about 
 town. Of late, he had gained a pretty repu- 
 tation as a poet. It was even whispered — 
 and what could be a stronger recommenda- 
 tion to the young city widow — that his 
 name had been coupled in gossip at Court 
 with the names of certain high-born ladies. 
 At all events, in the bulky budget of the 
 courtier's love poems, no sonnet can be 
 found addressed to Elizabeth Breton. The 
 citizen's young widow, comfortably en- 
 sconced in her "capitall mansion house in 
 Redcrostrete," with the rents of a score of 
 tenements and farms, was a tempting bait 
 to the impoverished courtier with his re- 
 cent experiences of a debtors' prison. Her 
 children could offer no resistance, and the 
 executors might prove not unmanageable. 
 Possibly in view of the doubt cast on her 
 first husband's gentility through his engag- 
 ing in trade, the young widow was equally 
 
 prone 
 
An Elizabethan Will 
 
 41 
 
 prone to the alliance, as it was one with a 
 veritable gentleman, whose hands at least 
 had never been sullied with the getting, 
 much less with the keeping of gold. 
 
 From the Diary of a Resident of London, 
 under date of September, 1562, we glean 
 the following : " The sam day at nyght 
 betwyn viii and ix was a grett fray in Red- 
 crossestret betwyn ii gentyllmen and ther 
 men, for they dyd both mare [arrange to 
 marry] one woman, and dyvers wher hurtt ; 
 thes wher there names. Master Boysse 
 [Bowes] and Master Gaskyn [Gascoigne] 
 gentyllmen." There is no proof of the 
 identity of the poet with this Gascoigne, 
 or of the widow Breton with the cause of 
 this brawl. But aside from the fact that 
 the " resident's " orthography will warrant 
 any assumption, the time, the place, the 
 characters and status of both parties make 
 the supposition of identity colorable, and 
 afford us a vivid illustration of the manners 
 
 of 
 
42 
 
 An Elizabethan Will 
 
 of the day, in which the hot blood that 
 prompts to immediate personal encounter 
 had not yet been cooled by the diabolic 
 etiquette of the modern duel. Surely we 
 can forgive the infatuation of the excellent 
 city matron — if infatuation there really was 
 — when so handsome and so well-born a 
 gallant came from Westminster to pay her 
 honorable court and ventured his life in 
 defence of her honor. 
 
 Two years after the solemnization of this 
 marriage, a jury at Guildhall entered into 
 an enquiry before the Lord Mayor, the ap- 
 parent object of which was the protection 
 of William Breton's property against his 
 widow and her new husband. We do not 
 know what became of this suit. Perhaps it 
 was amicably settled. 
 
 Too much is not to be expected from 
 such a marriage ; though there is little ex- 
 cept its social disparity to guide conjecture. 
 Elizabeth probably lived at Walthamstow, 
 
 save 
 
An Elizabethan Will 43 
 
 save for an occasional jaunt to town or visit 
 among her city kinsfolk. Gascoigne, when 
 not abroad in the wars or dancing attend- 
 ance on the royal progresses, was busy with 
 quill and inkhorn inditing sonnets to the 
 Queen's ladies-in-waiting or concocting the 
 bitter moral reflections and apothegms of 
 the Steele Glas in an agony of repentance at 
 the time of his " youth misspent." Eliza- 
 beth's kinsfolk called her " Madam ; " and, 
 on passing her in the street, gave her the 
 wall ; the poet thenceforth at least escaped 
 the debtors' jail and influenced his younger 
 stepson, Nicholas Breton, to a gentlemanly 
 literary career. 
 
 Soon after, Gascoigne went abroad as an 
 adventurer in the Dutch wars, whither we 
 need not follow him. As to Elizabeth Gas- 
 coigne, we are at perfect liberty. She may 
 have been an English Xantippe for aught 
 we know, driving a not very philosophical 
 Socrates into unmerited exile. Quite as pos- 
 sibly 
 
44 
 
 An Elizabethan Will 
 
 sibly she may have been a very Penelope, 
 dwelling meekly on her farm w^ith her five 
 children and besought in marriage for her 
 " tenne kyen " by every eligible suitor in 
 Essex. In either case her Ulysses returned, 
 not w^ithout some damage at the hands of 
 the sirens, and w^e find him restored to 
 court favor, writing much repentant prose, 
 and residing at Walthamstow till within a 
 short time before his death. 
 
 We have thus before us three types of 
 Elizabethan life, all represented with cease- 
 less iteration and variety in the comedies 
 of the age. The rakish, well-born spend- 
 thrift has been a stock hero of the stage, 
 time out of mind. The Elizabethan variety, 
 however, claims a distinction that raises 
 him out of the common category of the 
 Aimwells and Charles Surfaces to a position 
 of his own. There is a naivete about the 
 sinning of the Elizabethan scapegrace that 
 almost justifies palliation. He is often very 
 
 naughty. 
 
An Elizabethan Will 
 
 45 
 
 naughty, but then he always cries peccavi, 
 and his after-qualms of conscience are some- 
 times ludicrously at variance with the real 
 magnitude of his offences. 
 
 Scarcely less familiar is the figure of the 
 city maid or widow, her head full of the 
 romances of a grand alliance, who delights 
 to exclaim : " Though my father be a low- 
 capped tradesman, yet I must be a lady ; 
 and I praise God my mother must call 
 me Madam." The widow Breton was less 
 unfortunate than one of these infatuates, 
 who, having first signed away her settle- 
 ment, drove off to the country in search of 
 her husband's castle and an estate which 
 with its appurtenances existed only in that 
 worthy's fertile imagination. It is consol- 
 ing to know that an even-handed play- 
 wright meted out poetical Nemesis to this 
 wretch. He started on a voyage to Virginia 
 with his ill-gotten wealth, but, wrecked in- 
 gloriously on the Isle of Dogs, was incon- 
 tinently 
 
46 
 
 An Elizabethan Will 
 
 tinently seized and clapped into jail by the 
 bailies. 
 
 Lastly, Touchstone, the goldsmith of 
 Eastward Hoe I is William Breton with a 
 larger infusion of the bourgeois; Eyre of 
 T^he Shoemakers Holiday represents the more 
 jovial and homely character of a trades- 
 man who has raised himself from the low- 
 est round of the ladder by sheer mother 
 wit. Bassanio's Antonio himself, whose no- 
 ble want of the tradesman's knack shows 
 him a merchant made, not born, is again a 
 deviation to a higher class, the merchant 
 adventurer. In all, the type consists of the 
 sturdy, unimaginative Englishman, with an 
 innate proclivity for money-getting, and 
 his chief joy in his reputation for rectitude, 
 his home, and the substantial comforts of 
 life. The Elizabethan merchant was not 
 essentially different from the English mer- 
 chant of to-day, save that he indulged when 
 he could in the slave-trade and displayed a 
 
 decided 
 
An Elizabethan Will 
 
 decided penchant for piracy on the high 
 seas. Shifting social conditions, ineffectu- 
 ally stringent laws against usury, and the 
 pernicious royal grants of monopoly go far 
 to explain the fact that, amongst the Eliza- 
 bethans, Mercury was still the tutelary god 
 of merchants and of thieves ; while the 
 fervid Puritanism that devoutly believed it 
 a service to God to spoil the tents of the 
 children of Abimelech, together with the 
 spirit of retaliation which the horrors of 
 the Inquisition righteously inspired, is am- 
 ply sufficient to transmute those larger ad- 
 venturers, the Grenvilles and the Gilberts, 
 the Hawkinses and the Drakes, from the 
 gross metal of buccaneers into the gold of 
 heroes. 
 
 47 
 
Ill 
 
 rHOMAS SrUCLET 
 GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER 
 
Ill 
 
 Thomas Stucley 
 Gentleman Adventurer 
 
 THE sixteenth century was the hey- 
 day of the adventurer. He infested 
 every station of life, hectoring Uke 
 Bobadil, resorting with needy gallants to 
 Paul's Walk, the centre aisle of the cathe- 
 dral, there to pick up the news of the day 
 and perchance an acquaintance whose well- 
 lined purse might discharge the expense of 
 an " ordinary," the Elizabethan table d'hote, 
 for both ; now pressing into the presence, 
 or attending at the very door of the privy 
 council, with secret information treacher- 
 ously gleaned and a sword and a lying 
 
 tongue 
 
 51 
 
52 Thomas Stucley 
 
 tongue for sale to the highest bidder. The 
 air was full of projects, from Dr. Dee's 
 plan to transmute pewter platters and ale 
 tankards into gold to the capture of Span- 
 ish galleons laden with treasure and the 
 founding of enduring empires beyond the 
 seas. The Queen herself was a sharer in 
 many a venture of trade and some of 
 plunder ; and the protection which many a 
 red-handed marauder of the sea received 
 from her Majesty was the mingled product 
 of the royal admiration for his prowess and 
 daring and an eager desire to participate in 
 the spoils. Prentices standing on the cob- 
 ble-stones of inn-yards craned their necks 
 in the crowd to see rude theatrical repre- 
 sentations of Whittington who, by his cat 
 and the favor of the Emperor of Morocco, 
 had risen to the acme of civic ambition, 
 the lord mayoralty of the City of London. 
 Rude scenes of noise and turmoil displayed 
 the adventures of those four famous English 
 
 prentices. 
 
Gentleman Adventurer 53 
 
 prentices, "30ns of the old Earl of BuUoign," 
 who after surmounting untold perils meet 
 their father at the siege of Jerusalem and 
 obtain, each of them, by the capture of the 
 sacred city, a royal crown and a princely 
 bride. Indeed the imaginations of poets 
 scarcely exceed the actual experiences of 
 many Englishmen at home and abroad, — 
 their sailings on strange seas, their traversing 
 of stranger lands, their hardships and perils, 
 their encounters and hairbreadth escapes. 
 
 Amongst the host of Elizabethan adven- 
 turers there was none more daring, more 
 unscrupulous, and more uniformly success- 
 ful than Thomas Stucley, whom the Pope 
 and the Spanish King afterwards dignified 
 with the title " Duke of Ireland." Stucley 
 was the third son of a small baronet of Dev- 
 onshire, the county that gave to England 
 Raleigh, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Hawkins, 
 and so many other " brave navigators." 
 Stucley's education in war — he seems to 
 
 have 
 
54 
 
 rh 
 
 omas 
 
 Stucley 
 
 have had little other education — dates 
 back to the last years of the reign of Henry 
 the Eighth, under the Duke of Suffolk. 
 Later, Stucley figures as one of the retainers 
 of the Protector Somerset, in the failure of 
 whose plans he was too deeply compromised 
 to remain in England. He oiFered his ser- 
 vices to Henry the Second of France, who 
 shortly became so attached to the young 
 Englishman that he designated him in a 
 letter to King Edward, " our very dear and 
 beloved son, brother, cousin, gossip and 
 ally," and besought the English King to 
 take Stucley back into his royal favor. The 
 warmth of this recommendation is explained 
 by the fact that Stucley was really a spy in 
 the pay of France. With the thrift of his 
 kind, he soon turned his equivocal position 
 to advantage on both sides and maintained 
 himself in a nicely adjusted equilibrium, at 
 once a servant of the King of France and 
 the loyal subject of Edward of England. 
 
 This 
 
Gentleman Adventurer S5 
 
 This could not last, and before long Stucley 
 found himself lodged in the Tower for re- 
 porting of the French King what the French 
 King could never allow that he could pos- 
 sibly have said. From the Tower Stucley 
 was delivered by the accession of Queen 
 Mary. 
 
 Into the checkered career of Stucley for 
 the next few years we need not pry. On the 
 personal recommendation of Queen Mary 
 he was received into the service of the 
 Emperor. About this time Stucley is de- 
 scribed as " commonly pretending himself 
 to be a man of value and livelihood, when 
 in truth he never had in his own right 
 one foot of land, [but lived by] borrow- 
 ing in every place and paying nowhere." 
 Color is lent this, though the statement 
 of an enemy, by the fact that, wishing to 
 return to England in the train of the Duke 
 of Saxony, Stucley wrote to the Queen be- 
 seeching that he might be " exempted from 
 
 all 
 
5 6 'Thomas Stucley 
 
 all danger and arrest by reason of my debts : " 
 a favor which he seems to have obtained. 
 Like most spendthrifts, Stucley was gener- 
 ous with money and was always a popular 
 captain and master. He is reported to have 
 gained the love of his followers by bounti- 
 ful largesses, and he did not forget his kin 
 in the days of his good fortune. No pro- 
 ject was too great or too mad for his under- 
 taking, and his genuine knowledge of war, 
 his success in the management of men, his 
 daring and true bravery in action, raised 
 him into heroic stature on the field of 
 battle or in the intricacies of a campaign. 
 Stucley was not only a spendthrift and a 
 soldier of fortune, he was likewise a most 
 egregious braggart, boasting of his large 
 estate, of his intimacy with princes, his own 
 prowess, his magnificence. It must have 
 been a sight long to be remembered to see 
 Stucley ruffling it at Court with a gorgeous 
 retinue, sufficient in number and costliness 
 
 of 
 
Gentleman Adventurer 
 
 57 
 
 of attire to wait upon an earl. His arrogance 
 was such that, taken with his notorious 
 dare-devil courage, few men cared to cross 
 his path. A characteristic story is related of 
 Stucley, come to take leave of the Queen on 
 the eve of his departure on an expedition 
 the object of which was a much vaunted 
 conquest of Florida. Rallying him on his 
 grand manners and great importance, her 
 Majesty finally " demanded him pleasantly 
 whether he would remember her when 
 settled in his kingdom. • Yes,' saith he, 
 * and write unto you also.' * And what style 
 wilt thou use ? ' 'To my loving sister, as 
 one prince writes unto another,' " was the 
 ready retort. 
 
 This story, with the remarkable freedom 
 of Stucley's intercourse with princes, their 
 evident consideration of him, and the many 
 favors which he seems only to have had to 
 ask to receive at their hands, led to the sur- 
 mise that Stucley may have been related 
 
 to 
 
5 8 Thomas Stucley 
 
 to Henry the Eighth, as Falconbridge was 
 related to Richard Coeur de Lion in Shake- 
 speare's King John. The mere rumor of 
 such a thing would account for Stucley's 
 welcome to foreign courts, his arrogance 
 and his popularity. It is but fair to state, 
 however, that, swaggerer and braggart that 
 Stucley was, he never claimed royal blood, 
 nor did his enemies ever attaint his birth. 
 Before he was cold in his grave he had 
 become one of the heroes of popular folk- 
 lore, celebrated in ballads and represented 
 on the stage. Whence it happens that many 
 of the facts of his life have been grossly 
 distorted by a kind of romantic refraction. 
 
 Amongst the various means which Stuc- 
 ley practised to recoup his periodically 
 battered fortunes was the usual one of a 
 rich marriage. His enemies reported that 
 he made more than one such, and we 
 learn that, in accord with the businesslike 
 methods which attended the arrangement 
 
 of 
 
Gentleman Adventurer 
 
 59 
 
 of such matters in his age, Stucley appears 
 more than once a party to such negotia- 
 tions. When well on in his career he con- 
 trived to marry the young granddaughter 
 and heiress of Alderman Sir Thomas Curtis. 
 " By this marriage," we are told, " he got 
 so good an estate as might have qualified a 
 moderate mind to have lived bountifully 
 and in great esteem, equal to the chief of 
 his house." As it was, the unhappy girl's 
 fortune was dissipated in a few months. 
 The anonymous author of the play entitled 
 Sir Thomas Stucley makes this marriage the 
 starting-point of the adventures of his hero, 
 and gives us a clear presentation of a de- 
 termined and infatuated girl overcoming 
 the reluctance of her prudent parents to 
 yield a consent to her marriage with a 
 young gallant whom they distrust but can 
 learn little about. Married, and his wife's 
 dower and jewels in his hands, the Stuc- 
 ley of the play in a capital scene pays his 
 
 thronging. 
 
6o 
 
 Thomas Stucley 
 
 thronging, cringing creditors, equips a 
 company of soldiers for his sovereign's ser- 
 vice, and declares to his weeping wife : 
 
 It is not chambering. 
 Now I have beauty to be dallying with, 
 Nor pampering of myself, . . . 
 Now I have got a little worldly pelf. 
 That is the end or levels of my thought. 
 I must have honor; honor is the thing 
 Stucley doth thirst for, and to climb the mount 
 Where she is seated ; gold shall be my footstool. 
 
 The connection of these events belongs 
 to the higher logic which dominates the 
 doings of the drama. As to their actual 
 sequence we have no knowledge, so intri- 
 cate and so interwoven were all the projects 
 and doings of this active and enterprising 
 adventurer. Stucley appears to have been 
 one of the first who succeeded in gaining 
 Queen Elizabeth's participancy in the pro- 
 fitable trade of buccaneering. It was as 
 early as 1563 that he formed the design of 
 
 peopling 
 
Gentleman Adventurer 6i 
 
 peopling Florida. " Stucley [was one]," 
 says Fuller, " whose spirit was of so high a 
 strain that it vilified subjection (though in 
 the highest and chiefest degree) as con- 
 temptible, aiming as high as the moon, at 
 not less than sovereignty." 
 
 On the high seas with " five good ships 
 and a pinnace, with 2000 weight of corn- 
 powder, and 100 curriers . . . besides artil- 
 lery to the value of j£i2o," Stucley forgot 
 all about Florida and spent his time, much 
 to his content, in preying upon French and 
 Spanish commerce, although England was 
 at the moment ostensibly at peace with 
 both countries. Sir Thomas Chaloner, Eliz- 
 abeth's ambassador, wrote to Cecil from 
 Madrid : " Stucley's piracies are much railed 
 at here on all parts. I hang down my head 
 with shame enough. Alas, though it cost 
 the Queen roundly, let him for honor's 
 sake be fetched in. These pardons to such 
 folks as be hostes humani generis _ I like not." 
 
 Whether 
 
62 Thomas Stucley 
 
 Whether it was " for honor's sake," or be- 
 cause the royal share in the profits was not 
 sufficiently large, Elizabeth gave Sir Peter 
 Carew, one of Stucley's numerous cousins, 
 a commission to apprehend all pirates in 
 the Irish seas. Sir Peter found one hulk of 
 Stucley's in Cork harbor, and confiscated it. 
 He also managed a little skirmish with a 
 party of pirates who had fortified themselves 
 in a castle, but was repulsed. Stucley having 
 arranged to have his latest victim, a Flem- 
 ish merchant, affirm before the mayor of 
 Kinsale that " he had compounded frankly 
 and freely with Stucley, without any com- 
 pulsion or fear," that gentleman was not 
 further molested, though he never suc- 
 ceeded thereafter in regaining the favor 
 of his Queen. Perhaps Stucley's promises 
 were in too great disparity contrasted with 
 his achievements. A compassionate regard 
 for failure was not amongst the virtues 
 of Elizabeth ; and Stucley, judged by the 
 
 later 
 
Gentleman Adventurer 63 
 
 later golden standards of Hawkins and 
 Drake, was for the nonce an unsuccessful 
 buccaneer. 
 
 Prior to the undertaking of these naval 
 adventures, Stucley had contrived to form 
 an intimacy with the celebrated Shane 
 O'Neill, who had come to the English 
 Court with " a train of Kerns and Gallow- 
 glasses, clothed in linen kilts dyed with 
 saffron." On his return Shane, writing to 
 Elizabeth, declared : " Many of the nobles, 
 magnates, and gentlemen of that kingdom 
 [Scotland] treated me kindly and ingenu- 
 ously, and namely one of your realm. Mas- 
 ter Thomas Stucley, entertained me with 
 his whole heart, and with all the favor he 
 could. But I perceived that his whole inten- 
 tion, and the benevolence he showed me, 
 tended to this — to show me the magnifi- 
 cence and the honor of your Majesty and 
 your realm." If the unsophisticated Irish 
 chief was right in the last surmise, we may 
 
 feel 
 
64 
 
 Thomas Stucley 
 
 feel sure that Stucley was well paid for his 
 pains. Stucley's acquaintance with Shane 
 O'Neill, though he was a dangerous and 
 successful enemy of the English in Ireland, 
 seems to have proved valuable after the fail- 
 ure of his inroads upon the commerce of 
 France and Spain. For we find Stucley soon 
 after recommended by the Earls of Pem- 
 broke and Leicester, as well as by Cecil, to 
 the service of Sir Henry Sidney, Deputy of 
 Ireland, and employed by the last in several 
 negotiations with Shane. Here again we 
 must forbear to follow our clever adventurer 
 too closely lest we become involved in that 
 tangled labyrinth of treachery, bloodshed, 
 injustice, and necessary and unnecessary 
 tyranny which characterized the Tudor 
 relations with Ireland. It appears that al- 
 though Stucley gained the confidence and 
 liking of Sidney, the latter was unable to 
 obtain for him at the royal hands any post 
 in the employ of the government such as 
 
 seemed 
 
Gentleman Adventurer 
 
 65 
 
 seemed to Stucley at all commensurate with 
 his talents. At length, apparently through 
 a private feud, Stucley was committed a 
 close prisoner to Dublin Castle, charged 
 with using coarse language concerning the 
 Queen and with levying war against her. 
 It was then that he fell into the plot of the 
 Catholic clergy and nobility of Ireland by 
 which the crown of Ireland was to be of- 
 fered to the brother of the King of Spain, 
 Don John of Austria, and Ireland was to be 
 separated forever from England. From this 
 time forth the allegiance of Stucley was to 
 the Roman Church, to Mary Stuart, and to 
 Spain. 
 
 In Spain Stucley was well received, given 
 large gifts of money, set up in a handsome 
 establishment with thirty gentlemen to at- 
 tend upon him, and the charges of all de- 
 frayed by the King. He was welcomed 
 in due time to Court and splendidly enter- 
 tained. He was knighted by Philip and 
 
 inducted 
 
66 Thomas Stucley 
 
 inducted into the Spanish order of reli- 
 gious knights, that of Calatrava. Ever urg- 
 ing his plan for the conquest of Ireland, 
 begging for ships to put to sea and prey 
 upon English commerce, at jealousies with 
 other renegades like himself, Stucley wore 
 himself out, as did many a better man, in 
 awaiting the decision and action of Philip, 
 who continued leisurely to spin his toils 
 unguided by advice and undeterred by the 
 recurrent failure that comes to him that is 
 ever too late. Amongst the Spaniards Stuc- 
 ley was popularly known as the " Duke of 
 Ireland," and he was as loud in his boasts 
 of his own importance as he was foul in 
 the calumnies which he spread of Queen 
 Elizabeth and her Court. Into the latter 
 we need not enquire. When asked by the 
 Spanish secretary, ^ayas, to give a list of 
 the lands, his possessions in Ireland, of 
 which the Queen had deprived him, Stucley 
 mentioned "The castle and town of Wex- 
 ford, 
 
Gentleman Adventurer 
 
 67 
 
 ford, and the whole county ; the abbey of 
 Inniscorthy and that country of mosses, 
 and seven or eight farms worth a thousand 
 marks a year. The castle of Ferel and 
 Kinsale belonging to it and the house of 
 Lafylond and the Kavanagh country . . . 
 the castle of Car low and that whole county. 
 The ancient kingdom of Leinster, for which 
 he had paid twenty-two hundred pounds 
 in one day, but which was taken from him 
 because he was a Catholic and loved and 
 commended the King of Spain." Upon 
 another occasion he declared : " For my 
 part I hate an Englishman as I hate a dog; 
 for if ever I be betrayed, I shall be betrayed 
 by them. But Ireland is the country that I 
 and my child must stick to; for I must live 
 by them and they by me. For there will I 
 build a fair Abbey, and have in it twenty- 
 four friars, and one of them to pray for me 
 every hour of the day and night. And there 
 will I be buried." 
 
 Wearied 
 
68 
 
 'Thomas Stucley 
 
 Wearied with dancing attendance on the 
 Spanish Court, Stucley sought and, after the 
 usual delay, obtained a warrant with a laud- 
 atory recommendation from Philip, to go 
 to Rome, where he was received with great 
 honor by Pope Pius the Fifth. While in 
 Rome Stucley held long consultations with 
 the Pope on the state of religion, and of- 
 fered among other things "to conquer Ire- 
 land with 3000 men and to burn the ships 
 in the Thames, with a detachment of two 
 ships and two armed zebras under one of 
 his pilots." 
 
 But the Pope and Philip were otherwise 
 busied at the moment, and Stucley was not 
 the man to remain idle when fighting was 
 to be had. It seems that Stucley was cap- 
 tain of three galleys under Don John at the 
 battle of Lepanto, October 7, 1571, and 
 that he acquitted himself with his usual 
 bravery in that celebrated defeat of the 
 Turk. But though Stucley lost none of the 
 
 Spanish 
 
Gentleman Adventurer 
 
 69 
 
 Spanish King's favor, the plot against Ire- 
 land failed and, with the death of Pius the 
 Fifth, Philip was left to intrigue, vacillate, 
 and postpone to his heart's content and to 
 the perfect security of his enemies. In vain 
 Stucley undertook to defend the narrow seas 
 against the navies of Elizabeth, in vain he 
 tried to instruct the Spaniards how " to 
 frame their ships in our manner." Stucley 
 was living like a prince at this time. A 
 memorandum preserved at Madrid relates : 
 " The King hath given to Thomas Stucley 
 at times from his first coming into Spain 
 in 1570 to this time of August 1574, and 
 for keeping his house at Madrid . . . the' 
 whole sum of 27,576 ducats," a sum the 
 purchasing value of which at that time 
 must have represented nearly the same num- 
 ber of pounds sterling to-day. But Philip 
 was not the only source of Stucley' s reve- 
 nues and honors. From a proclamation 
 which he afterwards made it appears that 
 
 Stucley 
 
70 
 
 Thomas Stucley 
 
 Stucley now flourished under the titles 
 " Baron of Ross and Idron, Viscount of 
 Morough and Kenshlagh, Earl of Wexford 
 and Catherlough, Marquess of Leinster and 
 General of our most Holy Father, Pope 
 Gregory the Thirteenth." That Stucley 
 was regarded by the English government as 
 the head and front of all conspiracies is 
 proved by the diligence with which his 
 movements were reported to Cecil and 
 Walsingham, and the frequency of his name 
 in the reports of the time. 
 
 At length in 1578 an expedition under 
 the command of Stucley was actually fitted 
 "out from Civita Vecchia, the purpose of 
 which was to invade Ireland. Stucley sailed 
 to Cadiz and thence to Lisbon, where he 
 met King Sebastian of Portugal prepar- 
 ing for a Quixotic expedition into Africa. 
 Sebastian was a religious zealot in whose 
 heart the forgotten fires of the Crusades 
 still burned. Surrounded by the incense 
 
 and 
 
Gentleman Adventurer 
 
 71 
 
 and adulation of priests, he had come to 
 believe in himself as "an ideal knight, 
 chaste and strong," before whose victorious 
 lance the infidel must fall. Unfortunately 
 Sebastian as a military commander was in- 
 competency itself. Sebastian's uncle, the 
 astute King of Spain, recognized the situa- 
 tion in its true light, and when Sebastian 
 undertook to interfere in a petty war 
 amongst the Mahometans of Morocco, re- 
 fused him assistance, although the Pope 
 hallowed his banners and gave him the 
 sanction and blessing of the Church. How 
 Stucley could have been induced to take a 
 part in so mad an expedition it is bootless 
 to enquire. His chances of success in his 
 long-cherished scheme for the invasion of 
 Ireland were not promising, he had raised 
 but a thousand of the five thousand men 
 needed. Perhaps he joined Sebastian on the 
 latter's promise to return his favor after the 
 conquest of Morocco; perhaps Philip and 
 
 the 
 
72 'Thomas Stucley 
 
 the Pope were not sorry thus to rid them- 
 selves of a man who had become a consider- 
 able charge upon them both, and whom it 
 was as dangerous to encourage as it was 
 difficult to rebuff. 
 
 Contemporary report, tradition, ballads, 
 and dramas are at some variance as to the 
 precise circumstances of Stucley's death, 
 some telling how he fell early in the day 
 at the battle of Alcazar, others relating that 
 he died by the treacherous hands of his 
 own troop of Italian soldiers, in their de- 
 spair that the battle was lost. All are agreed 
 that he fell valiantly as became so notable 
 a commander. Burghley thus wrote of 
 Stucley after his death : " Of this man might 
 be written whole volumes to paint out the 
 life of a man in the highest degree of vain- 
 glory, prodigality, falsehood, and vile and 
 filthy conversation of life, and altogether 
 without faith, conscience, or religion. And 
 yet this man was he whom the rebels . . . 
 
 and 
 
Gentleman Adventurer 
 
 73 
 
 and all other fugitives being conversant at 
 Rome did hang all their hope upon to have 
 their malicious purposes performed to the 
 ruin of the Queen their sovereign and their 
 native country. But the end thereof fell 
 out by God's ordinance, as by this traitor 
 neither her Majesty nor her subjects re- 
 ceived any damage, neither yet could any 
 person in England or Ireland become owner 
 of one foot of land by his death. Neither 
 dukedoms, marquisates or lordships was it 
 possible for her Majesty to benefit any per- 
 son with the forfeitures thereof. But if his 
 death did profit any, it was to the King 
 of Spain and the Pope, by determination of 
 their pensions, although it was credibly re- 
 ported that the King of Spain, by advice of 
 some of his wise counsellors, had discharged 
 him of all pensions and entertainments and 
 gave him passage to Rome." 
 
IV 
 AN OLD-TIME FRIENDSHIP 
 
77 
 
 IV 
 
 An Old- Time Friendship 
 
 IN Saint Mary's, the ancient collegiate 
 church of the town of Warwick, in a 
 room once the chapter-house of the 
 dean and canons, and apart from the sepul- 
 chral pomp and recumbent imagery of 
 Beauchamp Chapel, there is a single tomb 
 of black and white marble, somewhat 
 sombre and hearse-like in appearance, al- 
 though of a befitting dignity. On it lies a 
 sword, now rusted into two pieces, and a 
 helmet, dust covered and fallen away with 
 age. This tomb was planned and completed 
 under the direction of its occupant in his 
 lifetime; for he was then the owner of 
 
 Warwick 
 
78 
 
 An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 Warwick Castle and of the neighboring 
 demesne. On a ledge of the table-like 
 lower part of this tomb and running about 
 it is this inscription: 
 
 FVLKE GREVILL 
 
 SERVANT TO QUEENE ELIZABETH 
 
 CONCELLER TO KING JAMES 
 
 FREND TO SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 
 
 TROPHAEUM PECCATI 
 
 Born four years before Elizabeth ascended 
 the throne, entered at Shrewsbury School 
 with Philip Sidney in the year of the birth 
 of Shakespeare, Greville lived on into the 
 reign of King Charles, and befriended the 
 youthful Davenant, an older contemporary 
 of Dryden. Greville's was a remarkable 
 range of life. Scarcely less remarkable, too, 
 were his relations with two of the four 
 sovereigns under whom he lived, his friend- 
 ships among "great ones," and his patron- 
 age of the learned. Greville in his youth 
 
 had 
 
Sir Fulke GrevUle, Lord Brooke 
 
An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 had travelled, like Sidney, with the reformer 
 Languet ; he had entertained that rare spirit 
 Giordano Bruno at his own table ; and con- 
 versed on terms of equality with William 
 the Silent upon the political state of Eu- 
 rope. In the reign of James, Greville was 
 created a baron under title of Lord Brooke 
 of Beauchamp Court, and served the state 
 as a privy councillor and as Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer. But his greatest glory was under 
 Elizabeth, who appears to have treated him 
 exceedingly well, despite the description of 
 her as a monarch who " was never profuse 
 in the delivering out of her treasure, but 
 paid many and most of her servants part in 
 money and the rest with grace . . . leaving 
 the arrear of recompence due to their merit 
 to her great successor." Sir Robert Naunton, 
 who wrote these words in an entertaining 
 and gossipy book entitled Fragmenta Regalia 
 or Observations on the late ^een Elizabeth, her 
 Times and Favorites, declares : " Sir Fulke 
 
 Greville 
 
 79 
 
8o An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 Greville had no mean place in her favor, 
 neither did he hold it for any short term ; 
 for if I be not deceived, he had the longest 
 lease and the smoothest time without rub 
 of any of her favorites." Elsewhere the 
 same authority informs us : " Sir Fulke 
 Greville had much and private access to 
 Queen Elizabeth, which he used honorably, 
 and did many men good." 
 
 The few that remember the name of 
 Greville or connect that name in any wise 
 with literature may recall the clever note 
 which Charles Lamb appended to his selec- 
 tions from Greville's extraordinary dramas 
 Alaham and Mustapha. " These two tra- 
 gedies of Lord Brooke might with more 
 propriety have been termed political trea- 
 tises, than plays. Their author has strangely 
 contrived to make passion, character and 
 interest of the highest order subservient to 
 the expression of state dogma and mysteries. 
 He is nine parts Machiavel and Tacitus, 
 
 for 
 
An Old-Time Friendship 8i 
 
 for one part Sophocles or Seneca. In this 
 writer's estimate of the faculties of his own 
 mind, the understanding must have held 
 a most tyrannical preeminence. Whether 
 we look into his plays or his most passion- 
 ate love-poems, we shall find all frozen 
 and made frigid with intellect. The finest 
 movements of the human heart, the ut- 
 most grandeur of which the soul is capable, 
 are essentially comprised in the actions and 
 speeches of Cslica and Camena. Shake- 
 speare, who seems to have had a peculiar 
 delight in contemplating womanly perfec- 
 tion, whom for his many sweet images of 
 female excellence all women are in an es- 
 pecial manner bound to love, has not raised 
 the ideal of the female character higher 
 than Lord Brooke in these two women has 
 done. But it requires a study equivalent 
 to the learning of a new language to un- 
 derstand their meaning when they speak." 
 Just though all this is, there is another light 
 
 by 
 
82 An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 by which to view this interesting man, by 
 which he appears not wholly " a being of 
 pure intellect," but as one in whom a warm 
 and enthusiastic youthful friendship, ideal- 
 ized by the flight of years, seems to have 
 come to fill the place of those nearer family 
 ties in which the majority of men find their 
 pleasure and solace. 
 
 The friendships of literature are of deep 
 interest, whether the twin stars shine with 
 independent brightness, revolve one about 
 the other like a satellite about its planet as 
 did Boswell about his Johnson, or come 
 to be resolved by the telescope of critical 
 scholarship into a constellation of lumina- 
 ries as the writers of the group of plays 
 still described as those of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher. Not less interesting is the capa- 
 city for worship than the hero whose deeds 
 and perfections inspire adoration. A capa- 
 city for worship implies an intuitive recog- 
 nition of worth, forgetfulness of self, and an 
 
 aspiring 
 
An Old-Time Friendship 83 
 
 aspiring ideality of mind, which the hero is 
 apt to fall far short in. 
 
 Among the literary remains of Fulke 
 Greville, which comprise, besides the dra- 
 mas just mentioned, several difficult trea- 
 tises in verse on government and some love 
 poetry of rare and peculiar excellence, is 
 The Life of the Renowned Sir Philip Sidney. 
 This Life is not so much a biography as a 
 eulogy, combining an " account of [Sid- 
 ney's] principal actions, counsels, designs 
 and death." The work was intended by the 
 author to form an introduction to his other 
 writings, and digresses into reminiscence of 
 " the maxims and policies used by Queen 
 Elizabeth in her government " and into her 
 relations with other states. The literary 
 activities of a Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 in the days of King James were not with- 
 out their lets and hindrances. Greville had 
 proposed soon after Elizabeth's death to 
 write a full account of her reign, and few 
 
 men 
 
84 
 
 An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 men could have been found better fitted for 
 the task. But applying to Secretary Cecil 
 for " his favor to peruse all obsolete records 
 of the council-chest from those times to 
 these as he in his v^isdom should think 
 fit," he w^as first cordially received, though 
 at last put off with the excuse that Cecil 
 " durst not presume to let the council- 
 chest lie open to any man living without 
 his Majesty's knowledge and approbation." 
 This answer was doubtless inevitable on 
 Cecil's hearing Greville's affirmation that 
 he " conceived a historian was bound to tell 
 nothing but the truth." There is some- 
 thing touching in the sight of this gray- 
 haired man of the world sitting down to 
 express in the studied eloquence of old age 
 the images of " this unmatchable Queen 
 and woman," as he calls Elizabeth, and of 
 his boyhood's friendship with Sidney, the 
 paragon of a fresher age. 
 
 In Greville's own words : " The differ- 
 ence 
 
An Old-Tim e Friendship 
 
 8 
 
 ence which I have found between times, 
 and consequently the changes of life into 
 which their natural vicissitudes do violently 
 carry men, as they have made deep fur- 
 rows of impression into my heart, so the 
 same heavy wheels caused me to retire my 
 thoughts from free traffic with the world, 
 and rather seek comfortable ease or em- 
 ployment in the safe memory of dead men, 
 than disquiet in a doubtful conversation 
 amongst the living. Which I ingenuously 
 confess to be one chief motive of dedicat- 
 ing these exercises of my youth to that 
 worthy, Sir Philip Sidney, so long since de- 
 parted." Deep affection amounting almost 
 to veneration for the memory of his friend 
 breathes in these pages. " Though I lived 
 with him and knew him from a child," he 
 says, in one place, " yet I never knew him 
 other than a man : with such steadfastness 
 of mind, lovely and familiar gravity, as 
 carried grace and reverence above greater 
 
 years. 
 
86 
 
 An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 years. His talk ever of knowledge, and his 
 very play tending to enrich his mind : so 
 as even his teachers found something in 
 him to observe and learn, above that which 
 they had read or taught." Elsewhere he 
 summarizes the best in Sidney in these 
 words : " His very ways in the world did 
 generally add reputation to his Prince and 
 country, by restoring amongst us the an- 
 cient majesty of noble and true dealing ; 
 as a manly wisdom that can no more be 
 weighed down by any effeminate craft, than 
 Hercules could be overcome by that con- 
 temptible army of dwarfs. And this was it 
 which, I profess, I loved dearly in him, and 
 still shall be glad to honor in the good 
 men of this time : I mean that his heart 
 and tongue went both one way, and so 
 with every one that went with the truth ; 
 as knowing no other kindred, party or 
 end. Above all, he made the religion he 
 professed the firm basis of his life." It was 
 
 with 
 
An Old-Time Friendship 87 
 
 with such an ideal as this before him that 
 Greville wrote of his youth's friendship, 
 and it is this sweet but dignified adoration 
 of a man who truly merited the mourn- 
 ing and remembrance of a nation, that has 
 given an imperishable value to this work. 
 
 In the youth of Sidney and Greville, 
 the graces of chivalry still lingered. Men 
 had come to recognize that in war the age 
 of personal prowess was a thing of the 
 past, and that gunpowder had reduced the 
 man-at-arms in his panoply of armor to 
 an anachronism. At Court, however, tilt- 
 ing continued to form part of " shews " 
 and ceremonials ; and, on each return of 
 the Queen's coronation day, a champion, 
 mounted and in full armor, appeared in the 
 lists, the heralds announcing his challenge 
 to defend and uphold the title and right of 
 " Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen 
 of England, France and Ireland and of 
 Virginia." Sidney and Greville were both 
 
 notable 
 
88 An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 notable knights, and at Whitsuntide, 1581, 
 were among the chief challengers in a tour- 
 ney given in honor of the commissioners 
 from the French King, sent to negotiate 
 Elizabeth's marriage with the Duke of 
 Anjou. From a contemporary account of 
 these events, we have the following descrip- 
 tion : " Then proceeded Master Philip Sid- 
 ney in very sumptuous manner, with armor 
 part blue and the rest gilt and engraven : 
 with four spare horses having caparisons and 
 furniture very rich and costly, as some of 
 cloth of gold embroidered with pearl . . . 
 very richly and cunningly wrought. He 
 had four pages that rode on his four spare 
 horses, who had cassock hats and Venetian 
 hose all of cloth of silver laid with gold 
 lace, and hats of the same with gold bands 
 and white feathers. . . . Then had he 
 thifty gentlemen and yeomen and four 
 trumpeters, who were all in cassock coats 
 and Venetian hose of yellow velvet laid with 
 
 silver 
 
An Old-Time Friendship 89 
 
 silver lace, yellow caps with silver bands 
 and white feathers. . . . Then came Mas- 
 ter Fulke Greville in gilt armor with rich 
 caparisons and furniture, having four spare 
 horses with four pages upon them, and 
 four trumpeters sounding before him, and 
 a twenty gentlemen and yeomen attend- 
 ing upon him." There follows a minute 
 description of the hose, caps, and feathers 
 of Greville's attendants, which the reader 
 may be spared. Suffice it to tell that the 
 challengers were successful, and Sidney, his 
 friend beside him, in the presence of his 
 Queen and of his beloved, must have passed 
 in that day one of the happiest of his life. 
 Here is a sonnet that Sidney has left us on 
 this occasion : 
 
 Having this day, my horse, my hand, my lance 
 Guided so well that I obtained the prize. 
 Both by the judgement of the English eyes ; 
 And of some sent by that sweet enemie, France, 
 Horsemen, my skill in horsemanship advance : 
 
 Towne-folkes, 
 
9° An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 Towne-folkes, my strength ; a daintier Judge applies 
 His praise to sleight, .which from good use doth rise ; 
 Some lucky wits impute it but to chance; ' 
 Others, because of both sides I doe take 
 My bloud from them who did excel in this. 
 Think Nature me a man of armes did make. 
 How farre they shot awry ? The true cause is, 
 Stella lookt on ; and from her heav'niy face 
 Sent forth the beames which made so faire my race. 
 
 Young men such as these could not re- 
 main content with the shows of war at 
 home. Both strained to get away to actual 
 battle and adventure, and were only re- 
 strained by the imperative mandates of the 
 Queen, who cared not to risk in unneces- 
 sary perils the lives of those she loved to 
 have about her. Sidney especially was 
 deeply interested in the discoveries and ad- 
 venturing of the time. Not only were books 
 of poetry, like 'The Shepheardes Kalender, 
 dedicated to him, but the first edition of his 
 school-friend's, Richard Hakluyt's, Voyages 
 as well. Sidney had ventured a share in 
 
 Frobisher's 
 
An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 91 
 
 Frobisher's voyage of 1575; had sat, while 
 a member of Parliament for Kent, in a com- 
 mittee intrusted with a definition of the 
 elastic boundaries of Virginia ; and had nar- 
 rowly missed going with Sir Humphrey 
 Gilbert on the ill-fated voyage that cost 
 England that brave seaman. An interest- 
 ing part of Greville's Life of his friend de- 
 tails how the two young men slipped away 
 from Court, Sidney finding an errand of state 
 to Plymouth, there to effect, if possible, a 
 junction with Sir Francis Drake and to sail 
 with him on his famous expedition against 
 the colonies of Spain. Sir Francis seems to 
 have been not a little concerned at the pros- 
 pect of having two such prominent young 
 courtiers aboard his ship ; and was, it is 
 likely, not unaware of the manner in which 
 their purpose reached the ear of the Queen. 
 Elizabeth's attitude towards the refractori- 
 ness of her young courtiers in breaking 
 away from her pampering and tyrannical 
 
 favor 
 
92 An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 favor is well illustrated in the words which 
 she is reported to have addressed to young 
 Lord Mountjoy, who had " twice or thrice 
 stole away into Brittany . . . without the 
 Queen's leave or privity." When he had 
 come into her presence, " she fell into a 
 kind of railing, demanding how he durst 
 go. . . . 'Serve me so,' quoth she, 'once 
 more, and I will lay you fast enough for 
 running ; you will never leave till you are 
 knocked on the head, as that inconsider- 
 ate fellow Sidney was ; you shall go when 
 I send. In the mean time see that you 
 lodge in the Court . . . where you may fol- 
 low your book, read, and discourse of the 
 wars.'" Well may Greville exclaim, after 
 relating his own staying on a similar occa- 
 sion : " Wherein whatsoever I felt, yet I ap- 
 peal to the judicious reader, whether there 
 be latitude left — more than humble obe- 
 dience — in these nice cases between duty 
 and selfness, in a sovereign's service ? " 
 
 When 
 
An Old-Time Friendship 93 
 
 When Sidney and Greville were boys 
 there was little promise of the great litera- 
 ture that was about to burst forth in Eng- 
 land. Chaucer was still read, it is true, and 
 all were agreed in calling him the Homer 
 of English poetry. But the jingling satire 
 of Skelton and the rude genre farce of John 
 Heywood had been succeeded in the popu- 
 lar esteem by the lugubrious complaints of 
 The Mirror for Magistrates, in which histori- 
 cal victim after victim of the fatal turn of 
 Fortune's wheel returns from his appointed 
 place of torture to rehearse in long-paced 
 metre and with wearisome alliteration the 
 miseries of his fall, and to warn the reader 
 of the probable coming of a like fate. 
 Even the songs and popular lyrics partook 
 of this dolefulness of subject and inevitable 
 mannerism of style. The collection known 
 as Totters Miscellany, which contained the 
 best lyrical poetry of the time of Henry the 
 Eighth and his son, had indeed been made, 
 
 and 
 
94 
 
 An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 and had run through six editions before 
 Sidney came of age ; but the best work of 
 Wyatt and Surrey, contributed to this col- 
 lection, remained unequalled, if we except 
 the promise of something better in the ori- 
 ginal work of Gascoigne and in scattered 
 poems by some few others. 
 
 But despite all this, there was a general 
 interest in literature such as had never 
 existed before in England. By the year 
 1574, Sidney and Greville had left Shrews- 
 bury and were at Oxford and Cambridge 
 respectively, though still in frequent com- 
 munication with each other. A year later 
 Lyly, Peele, and Watson were at Oxford, 
 while her sister University held Harvey, 
 Spenser, Lodge, and Greene. These are 
 some of the names that achieved literary 
 celebrity, but every young man of promise 
 was writing, translating, poetizing, theoriz- 
 ing about literature. Poetry, philosophy, 
 history, the drama, rhetoric, and versifica- 
 tion 
 
An Old-Time Friendship 95 
 
 tion were the chief topics to which this 
 activity was addressed, and beside the set 
 treatises in which these matters were avow- 
 edly discussed, there was scarcely a preface 
 or a pamphlet, on whatever ostensible sub- 
 ject, which did not enter into a considera- 
 tion of these questions of the day. 
 
 It was in the midst of such conditions 
 as these that young Philip Sidney founded 
 what Gabriel Harvey called the Areopagus. 
 There is a pastoral poem extant, " made by 
 Sir Philip Sidney upon his meeting with his 
 two worthy friends and fellow-poets. Sir 
 Edward Dyer and Master Fulke Greville." 
 A stanza or two will show their relation : 
 
 Joyne, mates, in mirth with me, 
 Graunt pleasure to our meeting ; 
 
 Let Pan, our good god, see 
 How grateful! is our greeting. 
 
 Joyne hearts and hands, so let it be ; 
 
 Make but one minde in bodies three. 
 
 Ye hymnes and singing skill, 
 Of God Apolloe's giving. 
 
 Be 
 
9^ An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 Be prest our reedes to fill 
 With sound of musicke living, 
 
 Joyne hearts and hands, so let it be ; 
 Make but one minde in bodies three. 
 
 Now joyned be our hands. 
 Let them be ne'r a sunder. 
 
 But linkt in binding bands 
 By metamorphoz'd wonder. 
 
 So should our sever'd bodies three 
 
 As one for ever joyned be. 
 
 This "happy, blessed trinity," as it is 
 called in another stanza, was the heart of 
 the Areopagus. About these were clustered 
 a chosen few, deeply interested in poetry 
 and in theories about it. Edmund Spenser, 
 then newly come to Court, could not have 
 failed to be drawn into such a brotherhood. 
 Gabriel Harvey, a somewhat pragmatical 
 Cambridge don, surveyed the proceedings 
 from afar, and penned jocular or censorius 
 letters to Spenser on the subjects discussed, 
 all of which letters he carefully preserved 
 
 in 
 
An Old-Time Friendship 97 
 
 in copy and printed with some of Spenser's 
 a few years later, for general edification 
 and the particular aggrandizement of Ga- 
 briel's own importance. It is unlikely that 
 there was anything in the nature of a for- 
 mal association among these young men. 
 They were all interested in poetry, and each 
 of them — even Harvey in Latin — was a 
 " practitioner " of it. The most important 
 question of the day was the possibility of a 
 future for English literature. It must be re- 
 membered that at the date of the Areopagus, 
 in the late seventies and early eighties, not 
 a play of Marlowe, Shakespeare, or Jonson 
 had been written; that Bacon was a pro- 
 mising lad occasionally at Court with his 
 father, dubbed by the Queen for his clever 
 answers her "little Lord Chancellor," and 
 that the Faerie ^ueene was in the making, 
 but not yet known to any save Harvey, 
 who seems to have set little store by it. 
 To be satisfied with Surrey or Gascoigne, 
 
 recently 
 
98 
 
 An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 recently dead and accounted " the chief of 
 our late rhymers," was out of the question. 
 The Italians had done better than this. But 
 even the Italians had not equalled the an- 
 cients, who, in place of the rational admi- 
 ration which the literatures of Greece and 
 Rome must ever inspire in the man who 
 will be at the pains to know them, were 
 adored by these Latin-taught young men 
 with a superstitious reverence that seems 
 to have lingered in the ferules of their 
 schoolmasters from the Middle Ages and 
 to have been imparted, like much of the 
 education of the time, non sine lacrimis. It 
 was thus that the question of a possible 
 future for English literature was narrowed 
 into an endeavor to foist classical metres 
 upon English verse, and English hexame- 
 ters, alcaics, sapphics, and asclepiads be- 
 came the popular metrical experiments of 
 the day. 
 
 Spenser appears to have toyed with these 
 
 experiments ; 
 
An Old-Time Friendship 99 
 
 experiments ; for all this while he was seri- 
 ously at work on the Faerie ^eene. In a 
 letter to Harvey, Spenser is merry on the 
 subject, likening certain words, to the cus- 
 tomary accent of which the new versifica- 
 tion did violence, to " a lame gosling that 
 draweth one leg after the other," and con- 
 cluding with an irony which may not have 
 been altogether appreciated by Harvey : 
 " But it must be won with custom, and 
 rough words must be subdued with use. 
 For why, a God's name, may not we, as 
 else the Greeks, have the kingdom of our 
 own language?" Not such was the attitude 
 of Sidney, who felt that the question was 
 not to be solved except by extensive and 
 serious experiment. With an enthusiasm 
 and diligence which is amazing in view of 
 his social and political activity, Sidney set 
 himself to the study of this problem and to 
 the demonstration of its success or failure. 
 From the minute details of the rules of 
 
 classical 
 
loo An Old-Time Friendship 
 
 classical prosody to the grasp and assimila- 
 tion of the aesthetic theories of Aristotle, 
 all was the subject of Sidney's attention. 
 Widening the field to include a considera- 
 tion of his contemporaries, French, Spanish, 
 or Italian, he set himself to transplant into 
 England whatever might beautify and en- 
 rich her literature, and accomplished what 
 his short life permitted — his rapturous 
 sonnets, Astrophel and Stella, his romantic 
 pastoral, Arcadia, and his noble "Defence of 
 Poesie — not in the spirit of abject imita- 
 tion, but with that free play of the imagi- 
 nation and original poetic instinct which 
 are his distinguishing characteristics. The 
 shadows and black clouds of disfavor which 
 Elizabeth permitted at times to sweep 
 across the blessed light of the royal favor 
 were not without their advantages to her 
 disconsolate courtiers. It was in a period 
 of eclipse such as this, the result of his 
 bold letter to the Queen arguing against 
 
 her 
 
An Old-Time Friendship loi 
 
 her marriage with the Duke of Anjou, that 
 Sidney found the leisure for the writing of 
 his Arcadia and for carrying on the experi- 
 ments just mentioned. It was Sidney's use 
 of classical and Italian forms of poetry, his 
 writing of sonnets, pastorals, his employ- 
 ment of "conceit" and a flowery, poetical 
 diction, that gave sanction and currency to 
 all these things. They would have existed 
 without him, for they were in the air, 
 the very perfume of the time ; but it was 
 something for English poetry to have had 
 the budding of this blossoming spring at 
 the hands of this sane and gracious poet, this 
 noble, sound-hearted man. 
 
\. 
 
"AN AERY OF CHILDREN 
 LITTLE EYASES" 
 
V 
 
 (i 
 
 An Aery of Children 
 Little Eyases'"'' 
 
 THERE is, sir, an aery of children, 
 little eyases, that cry out on the 
 top of question and are most tyran- 
 nically clapped for 't : these are now the 
 fashion, and so berattle the common stages 
 — so they call them — that many wearing 
 rapiers are afraid of goose-quills and dare 
 scarce come thither. 
 
 " What, are they children ? who main- 
 tains 'em ? how are they escoted ? Will 
 they pursue the quality no longer than they 
 can sing ? will they not say afterwards, if 
 they should grow themselves to common 
 
 players 
 
 105 
 
io6 An Aery of Children 
 
 players — as it is most like, if their means 
 are no better — their writers do them 
 wrong, to make them exclaim against their 
 own succession ? 
 
 " 'Faith, there has been much to do on 
 both sides ; and the nation holds it no sin 
 to tarre them to controversy : there was, 
 for a while, no money bid for argument, 
 unless the poet and the player went to cuffs 
 in the question. 
 
 " Is 't possible ? 
 
 "Oh, there has been much throwing 
 about of brains. 
 
 " Do the boys carry it away ? 
 
 " Ay, that they do, my lord ; Hercules 
 and his load too." 
 
 From this well-known passage of Ham- 
 let it appears that a certain company of boy 
 actors, who are likened for their forward- 
 ness to a nest-full of fledgling hawks, are 
 in great popularity for their high-pitched 
 eloquence and for the satirical intent of 
 
 their 
 
Little Eyases 
 
 107 
 
 their plays. There was controversy between 
 them and other companies, and the town 
 did not hesitate to set them ("tarre them") 
 Hke dogs upon each other, and to grant 
 that the boys, who apparently looked down 
 upon their opponents' theatres as " common 
 stages," had the better of the argument. 
 
 In the London of Spenser's boyhood 
 there was not a single theatre, and Eliza- 
 beth ruled nearly twenty years before the 
 first playhouses were erected. The yards of 
 several inns, it is true, were used for bear- 
 baiting, cock-fighting, or theatrical exhi- 
 bitions, as the case might be; and several 
 companies of strolling actors gained a pre- 
 carious living in and about London under 
 the ostensible patronage of certain nobles. 
 The crudity of their performances was the 
 laughing-stock of the courtiers, and many 
 were the jokes which were cracked at 
 the expense of the English playwright, of 
 whom it was said that " in three hours 
 
 runs 
 
io8 An Aery of Children 
 
 runs he through the world . . . makes 
 children men, men to conquer kingdoms, 
 murder monsters, bringeth gods from hea- 
 ven and devils from hell." At Court, at the 
 Universities, and in the societies of the Inns 
 of Court, another species of drama flour- 
 ished, and v^ith it another species of actor. 
 Here w^as the domain of cultivated life and 
 the sanction of classical study; and the 
 actors, when not courtiers themselves or the 
 gentlemen of the Inner or Middle Tem- 
 ple or of Gray's Inn, were the well-trained 
 boys of her Majesty's Chapel or of the choir 
 of the Cathedral of St. Paul's. Into what 
 depths of antiquity the training of Eng- 
 lish choir-boys for theatrical performances 
 extends, it would be difficult to determine. 
 Considering the customary performance of 
 miracles and moralities by craft-guilds as 
 well as clericals and the frequent acting 
 of plays of Plautus and Terence in Latin 
 at the Universities in the Middle Ages, 
 
 the 
 
Little Eyases 109 
 
 the practice must have been of very early 
 origin. If the choir-boy was not the ear- 
 liest actor, the choir-master was certainly 
 among the earliest playwrights. The duties 
 of Richard Edwards, Doctor of Music and 
 Master of her Majesty's Chapel, must have 
 been multifarious. For not only did he 
 train and lead his choir and accompany 
 them on the organ ; it was his duty also 
 to compose new sacred music and secular 
 songs, to devise pageants and " shews," to 
 write plays and to teach his young charges 
 how to act them to the " contentation " of 
 the Queen. 
 
 In the fragmentary and disjointed re- 
 cords of the office of the Queen's Revels, 
 the function of which was to furnish enter- 
 tainment to the Court on holidays and 
 high days, are many entries of payments 
 for actors, for properties, and services, apper- 
 taining to the presentations of masques and 
 plays before the Queen. Among them, the 
 
 mention 
 
no An Aery of Children 
 
 mention of the Children of Paul's, of Wind- 
 sor, of Westminster, and of her Majesty's 
 Chapel are not infrequent, and many pay- 
 ments are recorded to their Masters. This 
 is the usual form : " Payde upon the coun- 
 cell's warraunt dated at Westminster the 
 ninth daye of March 1561 to Sebastyan 
 Westcot, Master of the children of Polls 
 for an Enterlude played before the Queen's 
 Majesty vj'' xiij* iiij**-" Some entries sug- 
 gest the nature of the performance. Thus a 
 furrier was paid for "ten dosen of Kydd's 
 skinnes together with the woorkmanship 
 by him and his servaunts doone upon the 
 Hobby horses that served the children 
 of Westminster in the Triumphe, where 
 parris [Paris] wan the Christall sheeld for 
 Vienna at the turneye and barryers ; " and 
 the history of "cipio [Scipio] Africanus 
 showen at Whitehall the sondaye night 
 after newe yeares dale [was] enacted by 
 the children of Pawles furnished in this 
 
 Offyce 
 
Little Eyases 
 
 III 
 
 Offyce with sondrey garments and trium- 
 phant ensignes and banners newe made 
 and their head-pieces of white sarcenett, 
 scarfes and garters etc." From a series of 
 entries intended to convey no more than 
 the information of certain extra charges 
 and the reasons for them, a momentary 
 gHmpse of the life of these little actors may 
 be obtained. These entries shall tell their 
 own story : 
 
 "Item, for the diets and lodging of 
 divers children at saint Jones whiles thay 
 Learned theier parts and jestures meet for 
 the Mask in which ix of them did serve 
 at Hampton Coorte xxxiij' iiij''. 
 
 "To Bruton of Powles wharfe for a 
 Bardge and vj ores [oars] with ij Tylt Whir- 
 reyes that carryed the Masking geare and 
 Children with theier tutors and an Italian 
 Woman the which to dresse theier heads 
 as also the Taylers, property makers and 
 haberdashers xxiiij'. 
 
 "To 
 
112 
 
 An Aery of Children 
 
 "To William Skarboro for ffyer and 
 vittels for the Children and theier attend- 
 ants whiles thay wayted to know whether 
 her Majesty would have the Maske that 
 nighte ix' vj^. 
 
 " For trymmyng the Children on Shrove- 
 tuisdaye xij"*, 
 
 " To Mother sparo for the lodgings with 
 ffyer and ffoode that nighte and in the 
 Morning whiles they staled for botes [boats 
 at Kingston] xij**. 
 
 "To Thomas Totnall for ffyer and vit- 
 tells for the Children when they landed, 
 sum of them being sick and colde and 
 hungry v' vj"*." 
 
 Let us hope that Mother Sparrow was 
 kind to her little charges, and that Thomas 
 Totnall, furnishing fire and victuals, did 
 not skimp the weary little fellows in their 
 comforts. 
 
 That abuses should have arisen in this 
 traffic was to be expected. In the early 
 
 years 
 
Little Eyases "S 
 
 years of Elizabeth's reign there was only 
 an occasional use of schoolboys or choir- 
 boys for performances at Court. But while 
 the boys of Westminster School and the 
 Merchant Tailors' continued occasional and 
 amateur performers, the Children of the 
 Chapel and those of St. Paul's were soon 
 formed into regularly organized professional 
 companies each with its place of popular 
 performance in the city, either the singing- 
 school or a theatre constructed for them. 
 The excuse for the earlier popular theatri- 
 cal representations of the day was that of 
 practice for the Queen's entertainment, for 
 without the direct patronage of the Court 
 no company could long maintain itself. 
 The choir-master, thus converted into a 
 theatrical manager, added an eager pursuit 
 of popular favor to his former duty as a 
 purveyor of entertainment to the Court. In 
 1597 letters patent were issued under the 
 great seal authorizing Nathaniel Gyles, then 
 
 Master 
 
1 1 4 An Aery of Children 
 
 Master of the Chapel, and his deputies " to 
 take such children as he . . . should thinke 
 meete, in cathedrall, collegiate, parish 
 churches or chappells " for the better ser- 
 vice of her Majesty's Chapel. This power 
 Gyles abused by taking likely and clever 
 lads from their schools and even apprentices 
 from their masters, "being children noe 
 v^ay able or fitt for singing, nor by anie the 
 sayd confederates endeavoured to be taught 
 to singe," and employing them, as the peti- 
 tion proceeds to set forth, for the manager's 
 " owne corrupte gayne and lucre, to errecte, 
 sett upp, furnish and maynteyne a play 
 house or place in the Blackfryers w^ithin 
 your Majesties cytie of London, and to the 
 end they mighte the better furnish theire 
 sayd playes and enterludes with childeren 
 whome they thought moste fittest to acte 
 and furnish the said playes." 
 
 Relieved of its legal verbiage, this com- 
 plaint proceeds to relate how one Thomas 
 
 Clifton, 
 
Little Eyases 
 
 115 
 
 Clifton, a gentleman's son of some thirteen 
 years of age, had been kidnapped on his way 
 to school and brought to the playhouse in 
 Blackfriars " amongst a companie of lewde 
 and dissolute mercenary players," how the 
 boy was given, " in most scornfuU disdayn- 
 full and dispightful manner, a scroll of 
 paper conteyning parte of one of theire 
 playes and . . . commaunded to learne the 
 same by harte," and told that if he did not 
 obey " he should be surely whipped." To 
 the father of young Clifton, who sought 
 his son at the theatre. Gyles was exceed- 
 ingly abusive, not only refusing to release 
 the boy, but declaring that " if the Queene 
 . . . would not beare them furth in that 
 accion, she should gett another to execute 
 her commission for them" [that is, as far 
 as they were concerned] ; and replying to 
 Clifton's objection that " it was not fitt 
 that a gentleman of his sorte should have 
 his Sonne and heire to be so basely used," 
 
 that 
 
ii6 
 
 An Aery of Children 
 
 that " they had aucthoritie sufficient soe to 
 take any noble mans sonne in this land, and 
 did then and there use theis speeches, that 
 were it not for the benefitt they made by 
 the sayd play house, whoe would, should 
 serve the Cappell with childeren for them." 
 Indeed it was not until the matter was 
 brought to the attention of the Queen's 
 privy council that a warrant was at last is- 
 sued compelling Gyles to release some of 
 the boys, and the upshot of the whole mat- 
 ter was a censure by the Star Chamber by 
 which all " assurances made to him con- 
 cerning the said house or plays " were de- 
 clared utterly void. 
 
 Of the seven boys named in the com- 
 plaint as thus violently inducted into the 
 theatrical profession, two at least remained 
 in it. These were the notable actor and play- 
 wright, Nathaniel Field, and little Salathiel 
 Pavey, who achieved reputation as an actor 
 before his death at the early age of thirteen. 
 
 By 
 
Little Eyases 117 
 
 By the irony of fate. Field was the son of 
 a preacher who wrote in 1581 a letter to 
 the Earl of Leicester " adjuring him not to 
 encourage those wickednesses and abuses 
 that are wont to be nourished by those 
 impure interludes and plays." On an acci- 
 dent at one of the theatres, in which several 
 persons were hurt, the same zealous man 
 published a pamphlet beginning : " A Godly 
 Exhortation by occasion of the late judg- 
 ment of God shewed at Paris Garden," and 
 ending: "given to all estates for their in- 
 struction, concerning the keeping of the 
 Sabbath day, by John Field Minister of 
 the Word of God." John Field died whilst 
 Nathaniel was still an infant, and was thus 
 spared much unhappiness. When Nathan- 
 iel was carried off by Gyles he was a scholar 
 at Westminster School and could have been 
 little over twelve or thirteen years of age. 
 In 1600 and the next year. Field was the 
 chief actor in Jonson's difficult satirical 
 
 plays. 
 
n 8 An Aery of Children 
 
 plays, Cynthia's Revels and the Poetaster. 
 Several years later he took the title-rOle in 
 Eptccene or the Silent Woman. In this play 
 the perplexities of identification reach the 
 highest point as the silent woman in the 
 fifth act is suddenly metamorphosed into a 
 noisy boy, and the actor must thus pretend 
 to be that which he is not, to delude his 
 auditors into believing him not to be that 
 which he is. Field was a kind of protege of 
 Jonson's, who related years after that the 
 boy was his scholar and had read to him 
 the satires of Horace and some epigrams of 
 Martial. It is pleasant to contemplate the 
 picture thus presented to us of the father- 
 less boy, stolen away from his mother and 
 deprived of his schooling, gaining so power- 
 ful a friend as the great dramatist and dic- 
 tator, with the latter's attempt to supply 
 in part the boy's interrupted education. 
 Salathiel Pavey was also among the actors 
 of the earlier two plays just mentioned, but 
 
 suffered 
 
Little Eyases 
 
 119 
 
 suffered an untimely fate. As appears from 
 the verses below, this child was renowned 
 for his ability to play the parts of old men, 
 and must have been deeply beloved by Jon- 
 son to have been so embalmed, fleeting little 
 creature that he was, in the clear amber of 
 the following fine epitaph : 
 
 Weep with me, all you that read 
 
 This little story : 
 And know, for whom a teare you shed, 
 
 Death's selfe is sorry. 
 'T was a child, that so did thrive 
 
 In grace and feature. 
 As Heaven and Nature seem'd to strive 
 
 Which own'd the creature. 
 Yeares he numbred scarce thirteene 
 
 When Fates turn'd cruell. 
 Yet three fill'd Zodiacs had he been 
 
 The Stage's jewell ; 
 And did act, what now we moan. 
 
 Old men so duely. 
 As, sooth, the Parca thought him one. 
 
 He plai'd so truely. 
 So, by error to his fate 
 
 They all consented ; 
 
 But 
 
I20 An Aery of Children 
 
 But viewing him since (alas, too late !) 
 
 They have repented ; 
 And have sought, to give new birth, 
 
 In bathes to steep him ; 
 But, being so much too good for earth. 
 
 Heaven vowes to keep him. 
 
 An examination of the repertoire of 
 these boy companies discloses the fact that 
 they performed for the most part plays of 
 a satirical and allegorical intent : Peele's 
 Arraignment of Paris, in which the apple of 
 Ate is taken from Venus and reawarded to 
 the peerless nymph and queen, Eliza ; Lyly's 
 Endimion, in which is figured forth in elab- 
 orate allegory the vain love of Leicester 
 for Cynthia, that changeful, brilliant lumi- 
 nary and queen of night ; Cynthia's Revels 
 and the Poetaster, in which the gilded life 
 of courtiers and the foibles and jealousies of 
 the poets are respectively satirized. Widely 
 contrasted were such plays with the stirring 
 dramas of Marlowe and Shakespeare with 
 
 which 
 
Little Eyases 
 
 121 
 
 which the popular stages were ringing, in 
 which the characters were no mere witty 
 caricatures of the follies that disported their 
 velvets and plumes at Court or in Paul's 
 Walk, the hero no dainty Euphuist apostro- 
 phizing the moon in measured cadence and 
 with ingenious simile, but merry Prince 
 Hal with his escapades in the free life of 
 Cheapside, his blunt courtship of the coy 
 Princess of France, and the valor, the un- 
 dertone of religious feeling, and the innate 
 manliness, that made Henry the Fifth the 
 popular English hero. 
 
 Toward the end of Elizabeth's reign the 
 boy companies made a strong effort to ob- 
 tain the favorable suffrage of the public. 
 They were notoriously active in what was 
 known as the "war of the theatres," in 
 which the dramatists carried on a seem- 
 ingly internecine conflict by means of a 
 satirical representation of each other on the 
 stage. They procured, too, the services of 
 
 some 
 
122 
 
 An Aery of Children 
 
 some of the greatest playwrights of the age, 
 so that Chapman, Marston, and Jonson all 
 wrote for them for a time. It is not to be 
 doubted that to all this Shakespeare alludes 
 in the passage from Hamlet quoted above. 
 We have here the deliberate judgment of a 
 noble and successful rival on the unusual ef- 
 forts of the boy companies to curry popular 
 favor. It is in the kindly and humorsome 
 vein that we might expect of the master- 
 poet, whose only criticism is contained in 
 the hint that at some time the boys might 
 come to feel that their playwrights had 
 "done them wrong" in thus setting them in 
 opposition to that profession in which most 
 of them were likely to continue as men. 
 
 Some of the contemporary dramas utilized 
 the circumstance that boys were the actors 
 to present us bits of realistic painting of the 
 manners of the time. Thus in Beaumont's 
 Knight of the Burning Pestle, a satirical parody 
 of the absurdity of the romantic adventures 
 
 often 
 
Little Eyases 
 
 123 
 
 often put on the stage, the prologue is spoken 
 by a boy who is easily induced with a couple 
 of shillings to permit an apprentice to be 
 poked into the play and to assume willy- 
 nilly the rdle of hero throughout. 
 
 In the Retumfrom Parnassus the prologue 
 is begun by a boy who breaks down after 
 "Spectators we will act a comedy." Where- 
 upon the stage-keeper tries to prompt him, 
 but has not the matter in his book; so he 
 scolds the lad and lets out the reason of his 
 forgetfulness : 
 
 " You would be whipt, you raskall : you 
 must be sitting up all night at cardes, when 
 you should be conning your part." 
 
 " Its all long of you," sobs the boy, " I 
 could not get my part a night or two before, 
 that I might sleepe on it." 
 
 The stage direction concludes: "the stage- 
 keeper carrieth the boy away under his 
 arme." Sobs, struggles, and well-directed 
 kicking we may imagine for ourselves. 
 
 Cynthia's 
 
124 
 
 An Aery of Children 
 
 Cynthia! s Revels opens with a lively con- 
 tention between three of " the children " 
 as to which is to speak the prologue. They 
 decide the matter by drawing lots, and the 
 two unsuccessful claimants amuse them- 
 selves by badgering the speaker and try- 
 ing to put him out of his part. After this, 
 all fall to mimicking the auditors that 
 are accustomed to sit on the stage, cut- 
 ting precisely the antics which we might 
 expect of a parcel of lively urchins under 
 such circumstances, and employing an as- 
 severation, " Would I were whipped ! " 
 only too appropriate, we may fear, to the 
 method of their training. Here is a bit of 
 their mimicry. The dashes, in Jonson's 
 orthography, denote the airy whiffs of the 
 young mimic as he smokes or — as they 
 then styled it — "drinks" and exhales his 
 "tabacco." 
 
 " Now, sir, suppose I am one of your 
 gentile auditors, that am come in (having 
 
 paid 
 
Little Eyases 
 
 125 
 
 paid my money at the doore, with much 
 adoe) and here I take my place, and sit 
 downe : I have my three sorts of tabacco in 
 my pocket, my Hght by me, and thus I be- 
 gin. * By this light, I wonder that any man 
 is so mad, to come to see these rascally tits 
 play here — they do act like so many wrens 
 ... — not the fifth part of a good face 
 amongst them all. — And then their musick 
 is abominable — able to stretch a man's 
 ears worse than ten — pillories, and their 
 ditties — most lamentable things, like the 
 pitifull fellows that make them — poets. 
 By this vapour [and we may be sure that 
 the little rogue puffed out his smoke with 
 great unction], an 'twere not for tabacco 
 — I think — the very [smell] of hem 
 would poison mee, I should not dare to 
 come in at their gates. A man were bet- 
 ter visit fifteen jay Is, — or a dozen or two 
 hospitals — than once adventure to come 
 near them.' How is 't ? Well ? 
 
 "Excellent: 
 
126 An Aery of Children 
 
 " Excellent : give me my qloake [the 
 badge of the speaker of the prologue] . 
 
 " Stay ; you shall see me doe another 
 now ; but a more sober, or better-gather' d 
 gallant ; that is (as it may be thought) some 
 friend or well-wisher to the house : And 
 here I enter. 
 
 " What ? upon the stage, too ? 
 
 " Yes : and I step forth like one of the 
 children, and aske you, ' Would you have a 
 stoole, sir ? ' 
 
 "'A stoole, boy?' 
 
 " ' Aye, sir, if you 'le give me six pence, 
 I 'le fetch you one.' 
 
 " * For what I pray thee ? what shall I doe 
 with it ? ' 
 
 " * O lord, sir ! will you betray your igno- 
 rance so much ? Why throne your selfe in 
 state on the stage, as other gentlemen use, 
 sir.' 
 
 " * Awaye, wagge ; what, wouldst thou 
 make an implement of me ? Slid the boy 
 
 takes 
 
Little Eyases 127 
 
 takes mee for a peece of perspective (I hold 
 my life), or some silke curtain.' " 
 
 We may feel sure that these sketches 
 were not without their true originals in 
 life, and perchance not always in need of 
 the intervention of a poet for their presen- 
 tation. 
 
 Women first appeared as actresses on the 
 stage about the time of the Restoration, and 
 in a few years the boy actor was a thing 
 of the past. Francis Kynaston is reputed 
 to have been the last male actor to appear 
 in female parts. Kynaston was famed for 
 his delicate beauty and it is of him that 
 Gibber relates the story, that King Charles, 
 coming earlier than was expected to the 
 playhouse, became impatient that the play 
 did not begin, until informed that the Queen 
 was unhappily not yet shaven. 
 
VI 
 A GROATSWORTH OF WIT 
 
VI 
 
 A Groatsworth of Wit 
 
 131 
 
 LATE in the summer of 1 593, a young 
 man lay dying in low lodgings near 
 Dowgate, " sore sick of a surfeit 
 which he had taken with drinking." De- 
 graded with sin, pinched with want, starv- 
 ing and dying in the street, except for the 
 charity of a shoemaker's wife, almost a 
 beggar like himself, he had reached the 
 end of a short and wasted life, and now too 
 late lay repentant in the agony of helpless 
 humiliation, A waste of raging and beat- 
 ing waves seemed to him to have flowed 
 between his miserable present and the sim- 
 ple, godly household of his childhood, the 
 
 memory 
 
132 A Groatsworth of Wit 
 
 memory of which had inspired him with 
 some of his sweetest songs. The one year 
 of calm and righteous life which he had 
 spent with his fair and newly-wedded wife 
 stood out in his memory like an island of 
 bliss in an ocean of bitterness ; and he re- 
 curred again and again to the face of his 
 little son, for years deserted and forgotten, 
 and groaned in agony as he thought how 
 that innocent life might fall and crumble 
 like his own under a burden of sin. 
 
 For the rest, it seemed a hideous dream, 
 a very orgy of weakness, folly, and wicked- 
 ness. At Cambridge Robert Greene had 
 ruffled it with gay and roistering compan- 
 ions and, travelling into Italy, had justified 
 the grave words of the Queen's old tutor, 
 Roger Ascham, who had warned fathers : 
 " Suffer not your sons to pass the Alps, for 
 they shall learn nothing there but pride, 
 blasphemy and atheism," In London, after 
 a short period of study, Greene plunged 
 
 into 
 
A Groatsworth of Wit 133 
 
 into excesses of life and conduct from which 
 he revolted in his saner moments. At last he 
 became the associate and boon companion 
 of thieves and outcasts, and fell to depths 
 whence self-respect could no longer recall 
 him. In the days of Queen Elizabeth 
 men had not yet learned to despise the 
 devil. They believed in his actual exist- 
 ence, horns, hoofs and all. And although 
 they dallied with him — as men have dal- 
 lied, alas, in all ages — they were often over- 
 come with terror, like Faustus, at their 
 dealings with him. It is this which gives 
 a tragic pathos to the despairing words of 
 the dying Robert Greene, and shakes our 
 modern skepticism into something like re- 
 spect for the efficacy of a death-bed repent- 
 ance. 
 
 The sins of Robert Greene lay heavy 
 upon him even in the midst of his bad life. 
 He tells us in his pamphlet, T^he Repentance, 
 how he received an "inward motion in 
 
 Saint 
 
34 
 
 A Groats worth of Wit 
 
 Saint Andrew's Church in the city of Nor- 
 wich at a lecture or sermon preached by a 
 godly learned man. . . , Whosoever was 
 worst, I knew myself to be as bad as he : 
 for being new come from Italy (where I 
 learned all the villainies under heaven) I 
 was drowned in pride . . . and gluttony 
 with drunkenness was my only delight. At 
 this sermon the terror of God's judgment 
 did manifestly teach me that my exer- 
 cises were damnable and that I should be 
 wiped out of the book of life, if I did not 
 speedily repent my looseness of life. ... I 
 began to call unto mind the danger of my 
 soul ... in so much as, sighing, I said in 
 myself: * Lord have mercy upon me, and 
 send me grace to amend and become a new 
 man.' " But returning to his " copesmates," 
 they rallied him on his " solemn humor," 
 " calling me Puritan and a Precisian, and 
 wished that I might have a pulpit . . . that 
 by their foolish persuasion the good and 
 
 wholesome 
 
A Groatsworth of Wit 
 
 wholesome lesson I had learned went quite 
 out of my remembrance." 
 
 There were other thoughts in the mind 
 of the dying man. He remembered an 
 early ambition that had once glowed within 
 him : to be a poet and create those forms 
 of beauty in musical words, which rendered 
 their makers, in the estimation of men, the 
 peers of kings and princes. The reputation 
 of Edmund Spenser, the great "new poet" 
 at Court, burned with a steady, holy flame ; 
 and the splendid boast of the Faerie ^eene 
 was on the lips of many, who agreed that 
 truly this beautiful poem, dedicated " to the 
 Most High, Mightie and Magnificent Em- 
 peresse, . . . Elizabeth, by the Grace of 
 God Queene of England, France, Ireland 
 and Virginia," was " to live with the eter- 
 nity of her fame." And what of the work 
 of Robert Greene? His heart fell within 
 him as he contrasted this priceless achieve- 
 ment with his sweet, twittering lyrics and 
 
 the 
 
 135 
 
136 
 
 A Groatsworth of Wit 
 
 the scores of trifling pamphlets scribbled for 
 bread, some of them wrung from his very 
 heart-strings. He thought of the rewrit- 
 ing, patching, and making of plays for the 
 fickle London play-goers, and his half-suc- 
 cess, half-failure on the stage. Greene, like 
 most of the earlier dramatists, was prob- 
 ably an actor as well as a playwright, and 
 in the moments when his finer nature re- 
 asserted itself, may have felt, like his great 
 and successful rival, Shakespeare, the degra- 
 dation of an art the practitioners of which 
 were coupled on the statute books with 
 "rogues, vagabonds and sturdy beggars." 
 It was but a broken career at best, and the 
 mind of the dying player reverted to the 
 day on which he had taken up this ignoble 
 profession. He was sitting beside a coun- 
 try hedge-row penniless and disowned, and 
 crying out upon the untowardness of his 
 fate, when he was accosted by a stranger 
 from the other side of the hedge. When 
 
 the 
 
A Groatsworth of Wit 
 
 137 
 
 the stranger approached "he saluted Robert 
 in this sort: 
 
 " * Gentleman,' quoth he, * — for you so 
 seem — I have by chance heard you dis- 
 course some part of your grief, which ap- 
 peareth to be more than you will discover, 
 or I can conceit. But if you vouchsafe such 
 simple comfort as my ability will yield, 
 assure yourself that I will endeavor to do 
 the best that either may procure your profit 
 or bring you pleasure : the rather, for that 
 I suppose you are a scholar, and pity it is 
 that men of learning should live in lack.' 
 
 " Roberto, wondering to hear such good 
 words, for that this iron age affords few 
 that esteem of virtue, returned him thank- 
 ful gratulations, and — urged by necessity 
 — uttered his present grief, beseeching his 
 advice how he might be employed, 
 
 " ' Why easily,' quoth he, * and greatly 
 to your benefit ; for men of my profession 
 get by scholars their whole living.' 
 
 " ' What 
 
138 A Groatsworth of Wit 
 
 " ' What is your profession ? ' said Roberto. 
 
 " * Truly, sir,' said he, * I am a player.* 
 
 " * A player ! ' quoth Roberto, * I took you 
 rather for a gentleman of great living; for if 
 by outward habit men should be censured, 
 I can tell you, you would be taken for a 
 substantial man.' 
 
 " * So am I where I dwell,' quoth the 
 player, * reputed able at my proper cost 
 to build a Windmill. What though the 
 world once went hard with me, when I 
 was fain to carry my playing fardle a foot- 
 back. Tempora mutantur. I know you know 
 the meaning of it better than I, but I thus 
 conster it : it is otherwise now ; for my 
 very share in playing apparel will not be 
 sold for two hundred pounds.' 
 
 " ' Truly,' said Roberto, • it is strange that 
 you should so prosper in that vain practice, 
 for that it seems to me your voice is nothing 
 gracious.' 
 
 " ' Nay then,' said the player, ' I mislike 
 
 your 
 
A Groats worth of Wit 139 
 
 your judgment. Why, I am as famous for 
 Delphrigus, the king of the fairies, as ever 
 was any of my time. The twelve labors of 
 Hercules have I terribly thundered on the 
 stage, and placed three scenes of the devil 
 on the highway to heaven.' 
 
 " * Have you so .? ' said Roberto, ' then I 
 pray you pardon me.' 
 
 " ' Nay more,' quoth the player, ' I can 
 serve to make a pretty speech, for I was a 
 country author, passing at a moral ; for it 
 was I that penned the moral of Man's Wit, 
 the Dialogue of Dives, and for seven years' 
 space was absolute interpreter of the pup- 
 pets. But now my almanac is out of date : 
 
 The people make no estimation, 
 Of morals teaching education. 
 
 Was not this pretty for a plain rime extem- 
 pore .? If ye will ye shall have more.' 
 
 " ' Nay, it is enough,' said Roberto, ' but 
 how mean you to use me .? ' 
 
 " ' Why, sir, in making plays,' said the 
 
 other. 
 
140 
 
 A Groatsworth of Wit 
 
 other, * for which you shall be well paid, 
 if you will take the pains.' 
 
 "Roberto, perceiving no remedy, thought 
 best to respect his present necessity, to try 
 his wit, and went with him willingly ; who 
 lodged him at the town's end in a house of 
 retail, where what happened our poet, you 
 shall hereafter hear." 
 
 From this the dying man's mind wan- 
 dered on to his dramatic career ; to his 
 journey in Denmark and Saxony, with the 
 Earl of Leicester's players, the first com- 
 pany of English actors to go abroad, and 
 his sobriquet amongst them of " Robert 
 the Parson." There, too, was his failure 
 to catch, in his big, mouthing, bombastic 
 Alphonsus, the secret of the " mighty line " 
 and passion of Marlowe's Tamburlaine, with 
 the praises of which the town was ringing ; 
 and there was his jealousy and the innuen- 
 does of his pamphlets against another rival 
 that surpassed him, Thomas Kyd, who 
 
 wrote 
 
A Groatsworth of Wit 
 
 141 
 
 wrote the original Hamlet. Success? Yes, 
 there were successes too ; for the ground- 
 lings had approved the " moral," A Looking 
 Glasse for London, which, in one of his re- 
 pentant moods, he had written with the 
 Lord Mayor's young son, Thomas Lodge, 
 and the life and spirit of his vivacious un- 
 aided plays. Friar Bacon and George a Greene, 
 had maintained them in a genuine contem- 
 porary popularity. As to his pamphlets, 
 everybody read them, "and glad was that 
 printer," said Thomas Nashe, " that might 
 be so blest to pay him deare for the very 
 dregs of his wit." 
 
 And now he dwelt in memory upon his 
 fellows of the stage, their bickerings and 
 jealousies, their talents and their waste of 
 them. Above all towered the threatening 
 image of a great and potent spirit that was 
 coming to shape order out of this chaos of 
 the Elizabethan dramatic world, to wrest 
 fortune, position, and esteem from a profes- 
 sion 
 
142 
 
 A Groatsworth of Wit 
 
 sion that had cost the lives — and perchance 
 the souls — of some of its followers, and to 
 leave behind him a monument of literary 
 glory unsurpassed in any age. Greene could 
 not have foreknown all this, nor have felt 
 the coming greatness of Shakespeare, save 
 as a kind of portent betokening he knew 
 not what. But he did know that a rival had 
 arisen to snatch the public favor from Kyd, 
 Marlowe, and himself; and it embittered 
 his last hours to think that this man, who 
 was neither a scholar nor born to even such 
 gentry as he himself might boast, should 
 march on to triumphant success where he 
 had so signally failed. In mingled envy, 
 bitterness, repentance, and despair was then 
 penned that notorious passage which con- 
 tains the first printed allusion to Shake- 
 speare, a passage which must speak here 
 once more for itself. 
 
 " To those gentlemen, his quondam ac- 
 quaintance, that spend their wits in making 
 
 plays, 
 
A Groatsworth of Wit ^43 
 
 plays, R. G. wisheth a better exercise, and 
 wisdom to prevent his extremities. 
 
 " If woful experience may move you, gen- 
 tlemen, to beware, or unheard of wretch- 
 edness entreat you to take heed, I doubt 
 not but you will look back with sorrow 
 on your time past and endeavor with re- 
 pentance to spend that which is to come. 
 Wonder not — for with thee will I first 
 begin — thou famous gracer of tragedians 
 [Marlowe], that Greene, who hath said 
 with thee like the fool in his heart, ' There 
 is no God,' should now give glory unto his 
 greatness. For penetrating is his power ; his 
 hand lies heavy upon me, he hath spoken 
 with a voice of thunder, and I have felt he 
 is a God that can punish enemies. Why 
 should thy excellent wit, his gift, be so 
 blinded, that thou shouldst give no glory 
 to the giver ? Is it pestilent Machiavelian 
 policy that thou hast studied? O punish 
 folly ! What are his rules but mere con- 
 fused 
 
144 A Groatsworth of Wit 
 
 fused mockeries, able to extirpate in small 
 time the generation of mankind ? . . . And 
 wilt thou, my friend, be his disciple ? Look 
 unto me, by him persuaded to that liberty, 
 and thou shalt find it an infernal bond- 
 age. I know the least of my demerits merit 
 this miserable death, but wilful striving 
 against known truth exceedeth all the ter- 
 rors of my soul. Defer not, with me, 
 till this last point of extremity, for little 
 knowest thou how in the end thou shalt 
 be visited. 
 
 " With thee I join young Juvenal, that 
 biting satirist, that lastly with me together 
 writ a comedy. [Lodge, not Nashe, for the 
 Looking Glasse for London is a comedy, de- 
 spite heretical opinion, and a satire ; and it 
 was written by Greene and Lodge.] Sweet 
 boy, might I advise thee, be advised and 
 get not many enemies by bitter words. In- 
 veigh against vain men, for thou canst do 
 it, no man better, no man so well. Thou 
 
 hast 
 
A Groats worth of Wit 145 
 
 hast a liberty to reprove all and none more. 
 For one being spoken to, all are offended ; 
 none being blamed, no man is injured. . . . 
 
 "And thou [George Peele], no less de- 
 serving than the other two, in some things 
 rarer, in none inferior, driven, as myself, to 
 extreme shifts, a little have I to say to thee ; 
 and were it not an idolatrous oath, I would 
 swear by sweet Saint George, thou art un- 
 worthy better hap, sith thou dependest on 
 so mean a stay. 
 
 " Base-minded men, all three of you, if 
 by my misery ye be not warned ; for unto 
 none of you, like me, sought those burs to 
 cleave, those puppets, I mean [the actors], 
 that speak from our mouths, those antics 
 garnished in our colors. 
 
 " Is it not strange that I, to whom they 
 all have been beholding ; is it not like that 
 you, to whom they all have been behold- 
 ing, shall ■ — were ye in that case that I am 
 now — be both at once of them forsaken ? 
 
 Yes 
 
146 
 
 A Groatsworth of Wit 
 
 Yes trust them not ; for there is an upstart 
 crow, beautified with our feathers that, with 
 his * tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide,' 
 supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a 
 blank verse as the best of you ; and being 
 an absolute 'Johannes factotum, is, in his own 
 conceit, the only Shakescene in a country. 
 O, that I might entreat your rare wits to 
 be employed in more profitable courses, and 
 let those apes imitate your past excellence, 
 and never more acquaint them with your 
 admired inventions. I know the best hus- 
 band of you all will never prove an usurer, 
 and the kindest of them all will never 
 prove a kind nurse. Yet whilst you may, 
 seek you better masters, for it is pity men 
 of such rare wits should be subject to the 
 pleasures of such rude grooms." 
 
 According to tradition Robert Greene 
 died the next day, after penning these pa- 
 thetic lines to the wife he had so cruelly 
 wronged : 
 
 " Sweet 
 
A Groats worth of Wit 147 
 
 " Sweet Wife : 
 
 As ever there was any good will or 
 friendship between thee and me, see this 
 bearer, my host, satisfied of his debt : I owe 
 him ten pound, and but for him I had per- 
 ished in the streets. Forget and forgive 
 my wrongs done unto thee, and Almighty 
 God have mercy on my soul. Farewell till 
 we meet in heaven, for on earth thou shalt 
 never see me more. 
 
 This 2 of September 
 
 1592 
 Written by thy dying husband 
 
 Robert Greene," 
 
VII 
 PLAYS IN THE MAKING 
 
VII 
 
 Plays in the Making 
 
 IT would be difficult to find two careers 
 more completely in contrast than those 
 of Shakespeare and Thomas Dekker. 
 Beginning with almost equal disadvantages 
 as to education and place in the world, the 
 greater poet rose, as we all know, to repute 
 in " the quality which he professed," to 
 esteem amongst his fellows, to great con- 
 temporary fame as a poet (be it ever re- 
 membered), and to a handsome competence 
 earned by his address and industry as an 
 actor, a manager, and a playwright. On the 
 other hand amongst the many stories of 
 sorrow, want, and privation that belong to 
 
 English 
 
 151 
 
152 
 
 Plays in the Making 
 
 English men of letters, Dekker's is almost 
 the saddest of all. The little we know 
 of his life presents a weary succession of 
 borrowings, imprisonments for debt, and 
 prayers for relief in a wilderness of incessant 
 toil. The writing of new plays, alone or 
 with coadjutors at least as needy as him- 
 self, the revamping of old plays, the trim- 
 ming of masques for Court, the additions 
 of prologues, epilogues, or comic scenes, the 
 penning of innumerable pamphlets — the 
 incipient journalism of the day — on sub- 
 jects realistic, satirical, moral, and even reli- 
 gious ; these were the tasks of an agile and 
 inventive brain, hack-driven and goaded to 
 unceasing effort through a period of thirty- 
 five years to procure the bare necessities of 
 life. In all this writing there is much that 
 might well be blotted out, not in scorn but 
 with tears of compassion. Yet if we turn 
 to Dekker's life, there remains on it no 
 breath of aspersion, and that in an age in 
 
 which 
 
Plays in the Making 
 
 153 
 
 which a Marlowe died a death almost too 
 disgraceful to relate, in which even the au- 
 gust form of Shakespeare casts its shadow 
 of the Sonnets into the impenetrable obscu- 
 rity of which it is perhaps better not too 
 curiously to peer. Dekker's outlook on life 
 was sweetened with that charity which 
 comes to a good man with the chastening of 
 adversity ; his humor and his poetry welled 
 spontaneous from a heart which no sorrow 
 could make old nor privation wither. It is 
 inexpressibly touching to hear such a man 
 singing : 
 
 Virtue's branches wither, Virtue pines, 
 
 O pity, pity and alack the time ; 
 Vice doth flourish. Vice in glory shines, 
 
 Her gilded boughs above the cedar climb ; 
 
 apostrophizing " sweet content," and taking 
 for his motto : 
 
 Work apace, apace, apace, apace; 
 Honest labor bears a lovely face ; 
 
 Then hey nonny nonny, hey nonny nonny ! 
 
 There 
 
154 Plays in the Making 
 
 There is more of the sigh than of song in 
 this little meaningless refrain ; the sigh of a 
 heart in troubled equilibrium between the 
 impelling force which urges liberty and the 
 inexorable restraint of duty. The song is 
 the song of a prisoned bird. 
 
 The extraordinary diversity of the careers 
 of Shakespeare and Dekker is not explain- 
 able wholly by dissimilarity in their per- 
 sonal characters. It is dependent as well 
 upon the conjunction of circumstances that 
 made Shakespeare the most popular drama- 
 tist of the most successful theatrical com- 
 pany of the time and that threw Dekker, 
 on the other hand, into the employ of 
 Henslowe and into what became the slav- 
 ery of a lifetime. Philip Henslowe was 
 one of those shrewd, hard men of common 
 stock and coarse fibre who seem predes- 
 tined to acquire riches. His illiteracy is 
 almost beyond belief, when we consider 
 his years of association with the stage ; but 
 
 his 
 
Plays in the Making ^55 
 
 his astuteness and ability to drive a hard 
 bargain were held in doubt by no one who 
 had ever had dealings with him. Henslowe 
 was engaged in various trading enterprises 
 before he hit upon theatrical management, 
 and was variously a dealer in wood, a dyer, 
 the owner of a starch factory, a purchaser 
 and seller of real estate, an inn or lodging- 
 house keeper, and a pawnbroker. He is 
 described as unscrupulously hard to his ten- 
 ants, though apparently careful at all times 
 to keep well within the bounds of the law. 
 He thrived in his ventures and, emulous of 
 respectability, figured as a vestryman and 
 churchwarden of St. Saviour's, Southwark. 
 Between the years 1584 and 16 16, the year 
 of his death, Henslowe was interested in 
 some five or six theatres, of which the Rose, 
 the Swan, the Fortune, and the playhouse 
 at Newington Butts were the chief. In 
 his management of these houses he must 
 have been greatly assisted by the famous 
 
 actor. 
 
15^ Plays in the Making 
 
 actor, Edward Alleyn, who had married his 
 step-daughter and entered into a kind of 
 partnership with him. But Henslowe had 
 an ambition even above playhouses. After 
 much bargaining and negotiation he con- 
 trived to obtain, soon after the accession of 
 James, " the mastership of the royal game 
 of bears, bulls, and mastiff dogs," thus be- 
 coming an officer of the crown. This office 
 he retained till his death, and he transmitted 
 it to Alleyn. 
 
 Most of our information about Henslowe 
 and his traffic with the stage has come down 
 to us in a manuscript commonly called 
 Henslowe' s Diary. It is really not a diary 
 at all, but a species of account-book, con- 
 taining memoranda of matters of interest 
 to Henslowe in his conduct of the man- 
 agement of his several theatres. Neither 
 the name of Shakespeare nor that of Beau- 
 mont nor of Fletcher, occurs in it. But it 
 contains the names of nearly every other 
 
 dramatist 
 
Edward Alkyn 
 
Plays in the Making 157 
 
 dramatist of importance during the heyday 
 of the Elizabethan age and many of their 
 autographs. The volume is a large folio, 
 vellum covered, and soiled and grimy with 
 use. It is mostly in the illiterate hand- 
 writing of Henslowe himself, although 
 entries by other scribes, clerks, and parties 
 to agreements and receipts therein noted 
 are of frequent occurrence. Not only is 
 the manuscript badly written and execrably 
 spelled, but the entries are much confused 
 through the evident desire of its owner to 
 utilize every blank page. The book de- 
 scended to Alleyn by will, who in turn left 
 it to the College of God's Gift, which he 
 had charitably founded with his own and 
 Henslowe's money, where it still remains at 
 Dulwich. Henslowe's Diary has long been 
 known to scholars and antiquaries, and has 
 unfortunately suffered from this acquaint- 
 ance, having lost some of its leaves by tear- 
 ing and some of its autographs by excision, 
 
 besides 
 
158 Plays in the Making 
 
 besides showing, what is worse, the inter- 
 polations of the forger. 
 
 As owner and manager of so many thea- 
 tres, Henslowe was concerned with the 
 procuring of suitable plays, their revision 
 and adaptation for given performances, with 
 the purchase of materials for his playhouses 
 and the making of contracts for the build- 
 ing of them, with properties, costumes, and 
 the staging of plays, and with payments to 
 actors and " sharers," as the partners in the 
 theatrical companies were called. All of 
 these matters are abundantly illustrated in 
 the Diary, together with others kindred but 
 not so obvious. From being a mere mana- 
 ger, Henslowe came insensibly to be a sort 
 of middle-nian between the company and 
 the playwrights, and banker or money- 
 lender for those in his employ, standing 
 towards them at times in the relation of 
 a patron. Thus we find him advancing 
 money " to harey chettell to paye his 
 
 charges 
 
Plays in the Making 159 
 
 charges in the marshallsey " and " to dise- 
 charge Mr. Dicker [Dekker] out of the 
 counter [the prison for debtors] in powl- 
 trey." In like straits. Field writes to him : 
 " Father Hinchlow, I am unluckily taken 
 on an execution of 30'. I can be dis- 
 charged for xx'. x' I have from a friend : 
 if now, in my extremity, you will venture 
 x' more for my liberty, I will never share 
 penny till you have it again, and make any 
 satisfaction, by writing or otherwise, that 
 you can devise." Henslowe's method of 
 binding needy playwrights to his service 
 was as simple as it was effective. On the 
 submission and acceptance of a plan for a 
 play an advance of money was easily ob- 
 tained, a written memorandum of which 
 was made and signed by the playwright. 
 Further advances of money were dependent 
 upon the precise performance of the play- 
 wright's part of the contract ; but all ad- 
 vances were so contrived as to leave the 
 
 playwright 
 
i6o 
 
 Plays in the Making 
 
 playwright always in Henslowe's debt and 
 the obligation between the parties was never 
 entirely cancelled. Many a piteous appeal 
 for money is preserved among the AUeyn 
 papers at Dulwich, by which the inner 
 workings of this Elizabethan sweating sys- 
 tem for the manufacture of plays is dis- 
 closed. " Sir, if you do not like this play 
 when it is read," writes the obscure drama- 
 tist, Robert Daborne, " you shall have the 
 other, which shall be finished with all ex- 
 pedition ; for, before God, this is a good 
 one, and will give you content : howsoever 
 you shall never lose a farthing by me, 
 wherefor I pray you misdoubt me not; ... 
 and, I pray you, send me ten shillings." 
 Again : " Sir, your man was with me, who 
 found me writing the last scene, which I 
 had thought to have brought you to-night, 
 but it will be late ere I can do it ; and being 
 Saturday night, my occasion urges me to 
 request you spare me ten shillings more." 
 
 And 
 
Plays in the Making i6i 
 
 And lastly in great urgency : " Mr. Hinch- 
 low, of all friendship let me be beholding 
 to you for one twenty shillings, which shall 
 be the last I will request till the play be 
 fully by us ended," 
 
 In the consideration of plots for new 
 plays Henslowe employed the expert advice 
 of Alleyn. Thus Daborne writes Henslowe 
 that a promised play " shall come upon the 
 neck of this new play they are now study- 
 ing ; if you please to appoint any hour to 
 read to Mr. Alleyn, I will not fail, nor 
 after this day lose any time til it be con- 
 cluded." The bids of rival companies are 
 at times quoted to raise the price of plays, 
 a device which does not seem to have proved 
 very effective, but which resulted in an 
 agreement by one playwright to write only 
 for Henslowe's company. Instances are not 
 wanting in which the subtle old manager 
 appears to have been taken in by writers 
 who would not hesitate, could it be safely 
 
 done. 
 
1 62 Plays in the Making 
 
 done, to palm off old productions for new 
 and thus perhaps quit old scores. 
 
 From these battered pages we obtain 
 thus a momentary picture of a busy public 
 mart for the buying and selling of plays ; 
 a glimpse of the wires that moved the pup- 
 pets of the time : puppets that played their 
 parts in emulation of the puppets of Shake- 
 speare, that strained to rival him in his 
 might, nay held their own in the judg- 
 ment of the contemporary play-goer to the 
 enrichment of Henslowe. Henslowe's pa- 
 trons seem to have demanded a new play 
 about once a fortnight, contenting them- 
 selves meanwhile with plays which had al- 
 ready received their suffrage. It was not 
 customary to repeat a play on successive 
 days. Popular plays were repeated, how- 
 ever, at not infrequent intervals ; thus Mar- 
 lowe's Faustus was performed fifteen times 
 within a twelvemonth, his yew of Malta 
 and Tamburlaine nearly as often, both parts 
 
 of 
 
Plays in the Making 163 
 
 of the last play being given on two occa- 
 sions on successive days. Besides these 
 plays of Marlowe, Kyd's Spanish Tragedy 
 and a play which Henslowe calls " hary 
 vj " enjoyed the greatest popularity among 
 the plays still extant and enumerated by 
 Henslowe. It was of scenes in this play that 
 Thomas Nashe wrote, in a pamphlet con- 
 temporary with these entries of Henslowe : 
 " Nay what if I prove plays to be no ex- 
 treme, but a rare exercise of virtue ? First, 
 for the subject of them, for the most part 
 it is borrowed out of our English chroni- 
 clers, wherein our forefathers' valiant acts 
 (that have lain long buried in rusty brass 
 and worm-eaten books) are revived, and 
 they themselves raised from the grave of 
 oblivion and brought to plead their aged 
 honors in open presence ; than which what 
 can be a sharper reproof of these degenerate 
 effeminate days of ours ? How would it 
 have joyed brave Talbot, the terror of the 
 
 French, 
 
164 Plays in the Making 
 
 French, to think that after he had lain two 
 hundred years in his tomb, he should tri- 
 umph again on the stage, and have his bones 
 new embalmed with the tears of ten thou- 
 sand spectators at least (at several times), 
 who, in the tragedian that represents his 
 person, imagine they behold him fresh 
 bleeding." The most captious critics grant 
 to Shakespeare these scenes of an old play 
 refashioned by his hand and raised to an 
 immediate and overwhelming popularity. 
 The Elizabethan play-goer with unerring 
 instinct singled out for his signal approval 
 the great dramas of Kyd and Marlowe and 
 the unsurpassable work of the master play- 
 wright. 
 
 The lists of Henslowe exhibit many titles 
 similar to those borne by plays of Shake- 
 speare. We nieet with an Adronicus, a 
 " Venesyons [Fenice'sj comodey" a " Seser and 
 Pompey," and a "Harry the V." Neither 
 identity of title nor sameness of plot need 
 
 mislead 
 
Plays in the Making 165 
 
 mislead the reader of Elizabethan litera- 
 ture, who soon learns that there are some 
 half dozen plays, Latin and English, on 
 Julius CEBsar and on Richard the Third, 
 three Romeos and Antonies, and at least 
 two Hamlets, Timons, and Lears. When a 
 character caught the public fancy, his story 
 was followed up in a second play, at times 
 even in a third. It is thus that the career of 
 the ideal Englishman of action. King Henry 
 the Fifth, is carried out in the trilogy of the 
 two parts of Henry the Fourth and Henry 
 the Fifth. FalstafF, a great popular favor- 
 ite, runs through the same three dramas to 
 appear once more in the Merry Wives of 
 Windsor^ according to a pleasing tradition 
 upon the express wish of the Queen to be- 
 hold the fat knight in love. But not only 
 was a success of this kind followed up by 
 those who had wrought it, it was emu- 
 lated by humbler rivals in the imitation 
 of the subjects, personages, and situations of 
 
 the 
 
i66 
 
 Plays in the Making 
 
 the successful drama. The character of Fal- 
 staif was originally represented under the 
 name of Sir John Oldcastle, a dissolute com- 
 panion (not otherwise distinguished) of the 
 wild young prince in an old play on the 
 Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth. Shake- 
 speare at first retained the name Oldcastle, 
 as appears from certain traces in the quarto 
 edition of Henry the Fourth and from the 
 prince's punning reply to Falstaif's ques- 
 tion : " Is not my hostess of the tavern a 
 most sweet wench ? — As the honey of Hy- 
 bla, my old lad of the castle." Shakespeare 
 afterwards substituted the name FalstafF, as 
 better fitted to " the gross knight " than 
 that of Oldcastle, the illustrious Lollard 
 of history. On the basis of these circum- 
 stances and the great popularity of Henry 
 the Fourth, Henslowe procured the writing 
 by several of his poets of a play called the 
 First Part of Sir John Oldcastle, in which 
 ostentatious justice is done to the memory 
 
 of 
 
Plays in the Making 
 
 of the famous old Lollard, and we are in- 
 formed in the prologue : 
 
 It is no pamper'd glutton we present, 
 Nor aged counsellor to youthful sin, 
 But one whose virtues shone above the rest, 
 A valiant martyr and a virtuous peer.. 
 
 In this play King Henry may be seen 
 once more in contact incognito with the low 
 life of London, robbed of his purse and 
 winning back his loss from the thief with 
 dice on a drum-head. And here, too, a di- 
 rect bid is made to rival the popularity of 
 FalstafF in the person of a witty, knavish 
 priest. Sir John, the Parson of Wrotham. 
 Sir John Oldcastle is a readable play yet, 
 and shows what four clever men — among 
 them no less a person than Michael Dray- 
 ton, the author of the Polyolbion — could do 
 to stem for the moment the overwhelm- 
 ing current of Shakespeare's popularity. 
 
 What Shakespeare received in money for 
 a single play we have no means of learning ; 
 
 we 
 
 167 
 
i68 
 
 Plays in the Making 
 
 we know that he came to London a poor 
 lad and retired with a handsome compe- 
 tence some twenty years later, realizing the 
 greatest fortune which had been made out 
 of literature directly or indirectly until we 
 come to the golden days of Scott and his 
 Waverley Novels. As to Shakespeare's rivals 
 in the thraldom of Henslowe, it appears that 
 a play miight be purchased of Chettle or 
 Hey wood for as small a sum as four or six 
 pounds, while Chapman, Dekker, or Jon- 
 son might demand as much as ten or eleven 
 pounds and get it. The disparity between 
 the price of a play and the cost of staging 
 it has often been dilated upon. For while 
 properties and scenes in the modern accep- 
 tation of that term were few and simple, 
 the costumes of the actors were often of 
 great richness and costliness. It has been 
 related that Heywood received less for his 
 wholly admirable A Woman Killed with 
 Kindness than the company laid out for the 
 
 gown 
 
Plays in the Making 
 
 169 
 
 gown of the heroine, and that the costumes 
 and caparisons of a play called Cardinal 
 Wolsey must have reached a total of more 
 than two hundred pounds. When a play 
 was very successful, as was Oldcastle, men- 
 tioned above, Henslowe occasionally opened 
 his heart and presented the authors with a 
 gratuity. Ten shillings was thus distributed 
 among the four authors of that play, and 
 this ridiculous sum may be regarded as the 
 height of Henslowe's bounty on these occa- 
 sions. Even such matters are duly charged 
 to the company by their thrifty manager, 
 as appears from such an entry as this : 
 " Layd owt for the company, at the mer- 
 mayd, when we weare at owre agrement, 
 the 21 of aguste 1602, toward our super, 
 the sum of ix'." 
 
 In this mart of Henslowe's some of the 
 greatest dramatists served their apprentice- 
 ship to the trade. The old manager was a 
 notable respecter of persons where fortune 
 
 or 
 
lyo 
 
 Plays in the Making 
 
 or success was concerned. Chapman, who 
 was born a gentleman, is generally referred 
 to in the Diary as " Mr. Chapman," as is 
 " Mr. Maxton [Marston] the newe poete ;" 
 but « Harey Chettell," " Samwell Rowley," 
 and " Thomas Dickers " were not usually 
 treated with such a show of respect. The 
 greater men came out of this thraldom, 
 Jonson to the post of laureate and enter- 
 tainer of the Court, Chapman to fame as 
 the great translator of Homer. It is not to 
 be wondered that Drayton, when the pa- 
 tronage of "great ones" and his talents as a 
 poet had raised him to repute, tried to cover 
 up the disgraceful time of his bondage to 
 Henslowe and refrained from avowing the 
 authorship of any work written under such 
 blighting conditions. As to the lesser men, 
 many of them died, as they had lived, with 
 the clutch of Henslowe and poverty at their 
 throats. 
 
VIII 
 
 WHEN MUSIC AND SWEET 
 POETRY AGREE 
 
173 
 
 VIII 
 
 When Music and Sweet 
 Poetry agree 
 
 If Music and sweet Poetry agree. 
 As they must needs, the Sister and the Brother, 
 Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me, 
 Because thou lov'st the one and I the other. 
 Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch 
 Upon the Lute doth ravish human sense ; 
 Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such, 
 As passing all conceit, needs no defence. 
 Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound. 
 That Phoebus' lute, the qiieen of music, makes ; 
 And I in deep delight am chiefly drowned, 
 Whenas himself to singing he betakes. 
 One god is god of both, as poets feign ; 
 One knight loves both, and both in thee remain. 
 
 It 
 
174 When Music and 
 
 IT was thus that one of the most tuneful 
 of Elizabethan lyrists, Richard Barn- 
 field, addressed a bosom friend. Nor 
 can we wonder, considering Shakespeare's 
 love of the sister art of music and the ex- 
 cellence of this sonnet, that it has passed 
 current, until lately, as the work of the 
 master dramatist himself. Shakespeare's age 
 was nothing if not musical. No gentleman's 
 or lady's education was complete without a 
 knowledge of plain-song and a competent 
 skill on cittern or lute, on the recorder or 
 the " viol de gamboys," all of them popu- 
 lar musical instruments of the day. To be 
 unable to bear a part in singing at sight or 
 to " descant," as it was called, on a simple 
 melody, was to imperil the genuineness of 
 a man's gentility ; and not to know Byrd, 
 Morley, or Campion, the composers, and 
 Dowland, the famous lutenist, was to be- 
 tray oneself uncultured indeed. Even among 
 the middle and lower classes, the carter had 
 
 his 
 
Sweet Poetry agree 175 
 
 his catches, the tinker his rounds ; the very 
 beggars sang ballads in the streets and so 
 proverbially expert were the weavers in 
 sweet singing that " to draw a soul out of 
 a weaver " was to sing beyond criticism and 
 comparison. There was music at the thea- 
 tres, at Court, and at home ; music out-doors 
 and in church. The dawn was ushered 
 in with " hunts-ups " and " aubades," and 
 the night rendered melodious with "seras" 
 and serenades. There were ballads for daily 
 singing, carols for Christmas, " dumps " for 
 despondency, and merry burdens for May- 
 day. Foundlings were trained in the art of 
 song that from their musical abilities they 
 might the more readily procure places as 
 servants. A fool with "a good breast," as a 
 fine voice was then called, might demand 
 a noble for his patron. Royalty set this 
 musical example. Aside from the singing 
 children of her chapel and the occasional 
 musicians that figured at court entertain- 
 ments 
 
176 
 
 When Music and 
 
 ments and plays, " Elizabeth was accus- 
 tomed," we are told, "to be regaled dur- 
 ing dinner with twelve trumpets and two 
 kettle-drums ; which together with fifes, 
 cornets and side drums, made the hall ring 
 for half an hour together," Nor was "the 
 Queenes noise," as the quaint phrase went, 
 always equally robust. Elizabeth loved 
 song and was herself " well seene " in the 
 virginals, an instrument, through spinet and 
 harpsichord, to develop into the modern 
 pianoforte. The Queen's father before her 
 had written songs and sung in his own 
 glees. 
 
 Modern musicians sometimes set beauti- 
 ful lyrics to music ; but for the most part 
 we esteem any stuff good enough to sing. 
 Such was not the Elizabethan feeling; and 
 it was conceived not only that a poem might 
 be clothed in a fitting or unfitting raiment 
 of song, but that a lovely air deserved to 
 carry fair freight on its clear and liquid 
 
 stream : 
 
Sweet Poetry agree ^ii 
 
 stream ; for, to vary the figure, it was a 
 conviction that out of the wedded arts a 
 completer beauty might arise. The lyric, 
 when all has been said, is cousin-german 
 to vocal song, and many an Elizabethan 
 lyrist thought doubtless as he wrote that 
 his poetry would be sung as well as read. 
 " These poems," prints old Gascoigne in 
 a marginal note to his Posies, "have verie 
 sweete notes adapted unto them, the which 
 I would you should also enjoy as well as 
 myself." But the Elizabethan stopped not 
 at lyrics, but set other forms of poetry to 
 music. Thus Robert Southwell, the Jesuit 
 father, proposed that his fervid, if ingen- 
 iously "conceited," poetry should be sung; 
 and so late as 1622 John Hanay, a very 
 small and obscure poetling, furnished music 
 for the first stanza of his poem Philomela, 
 with the evident and unabashed intent that 
 the remaining ninety and nine stanzas be 
 sung, all to the same tune. Nor was this so 
 
 very 
 
178 When Music and 
 
 very eccentric; narrative poems of consider- 
 able length must have been popularly sung 
 far into literary times. Sir Philip Sidney 
 writes in his 'Defence of Poesie : " I never 
 heard the old song of Percy and Douglas 
 [CAevy CAase], that I found not my heart 
 moved more than with a trumpet; and 
 yet it is sung by some blind crowder, 
 with no rougher voice than rude style." 
 And the rhetorical courtier, Puttenham, 
 declares : " The over busy and too speedy 
 return of one manner of tune doth too 
 much annoy and, as it were, glut the ear, 
 unless it be small and popular musics sung 
 by those Cantabanqui upon benches- and 
 barrel heads, where they have none other 
 audience than boys and country fellows 
 that pass by them in the street; or else 
 by blind harpers, or such like tavern min- 
 strels that give a fit of mirth for a groat ; 
 and their matter being for the most part 
 stories of old time, as the Tale of Sir 
 
 Thopas, 
 
Sweet Poetry agree 179 
 
 Thopas, Bevis of Southampton, Guy of War- 
 wick, Adam Bell, and Clym of the Clough, 
 and such other old romances or historical 
 rimes, made purposely for the amuse- 
 ment of the common people at Christmas 
 dinners, and bride-ales, and in taverns and 
 alehouses, and such other places of base 
 resort." 
 
 The modern practitioner in music who 
 makes his living by the practical teaching 
 of his art and professes — perhaps knows 
 — nothing of the science of counterpoint, 
 must have been entirely unknown to the. 
 age of Elizabeth. Or, if known, he was 
 probably regarded in the category with 
 fencing and dancing masters. Indeed the 
 piper, fiddler, or other common musician 
 was held in great contempt. Mercutio 
 meets Tybalt's taunt, "Thou consort' st 
 with Romeo," with the rejoinder : " Con- 
 sort ! What, dost thou make us minstrels ? 
 And thou make minstrels of us, look for 
 
 nothing 
 
i8o When Music and 
 
 nothing but discords : here 's my fiddle- 
 stick ; here 's that shall make you dance. 
 Zounds, consort ! " And Prince Hal is re- 
 lated to have once broken FalstafF's head 
 for likening his father, the King, to "a 
 singing-man of Windsor." On the other 
 hand famous performers on the lute and 
 other instruments there were, and some of 
 these were held in high repute. Some of 
 them even travelled abroad to foreign 
 courts to exhibit their English skill. Apart 
 from mere " cantabanqui " and minstrels, 
 the Elizabethan musician was a man of re- 
 finement and learning, versed in ancient 
 lore as well as modern art, and claiming, 
 like the Elizabethan poet, the University as 
 his nesting-place. 
 
 The popularity of song-books in this 
 era was extraordinary and unexampled, ex- 
 tending, should a list be made, to some 
 seventy titles between the date of the Ar- 
 mada and that of the death of Shakespeare. 
 
 There 
 
Sweet Poetry agree 
 
 i8i 
 
 There were fashions in poetry as well as in 
 the costume of the time, and both were 
 quick to rise and quick to fall. In the 
 eighties poetry was " all for pastorals," and 
 "that smooth song, ' Come live with me 
 and be my love,' which was made by Kit 
 Marlowe," is the measure at once of a quaint 
 taste and a perfect achievement in its dainty 
 kind. In the nineties came the sonneteers 
 with their sugared similitudes, a cult of 
 Petrarch, beauty and " conceit ; " artificial 
 and repetitious for the most part, yet reach- 
 ing real passion in Sidney, supreme beauty in 
 Spenser, and sounding depths beyond mere 
 passing fashion, if not beyond all other 
 lyrical poetry, in the superlative sonnets of 
 Shakespeare. With the waning of the popu- 
 larity of the sonnet, the writing of words 
 intended to be set to music succeeded as 
 the lyrical vogue in England, and was long 
 to continue so. 
 
 " I endeavored to get into my hands all 
 
 such 
 
l82 
 
 When Music and 
 
 such English songs as were praiseworthy, 
 and amongst others I had the happiness to 
 find in the hands of some of my friends 
 certain Italian madrigals translated most 
 of them five year ago by a gentleman for 
 his private delight." Thus writes Nicholas 
 Yong, a London merchant in 1588, an 
 enthusiastic collector of " songs in part," 
 whose house was musical with their fre- 
 quent performance, and who employed his 
 correspondents in Italy to seek out and send 
 him the compositions of Marenzio, Con- 
 verso, and other Italian writers of vocal 
 music. 
 
 The Elizabethan song-book supplied 
 both music and words, and was often so 
 printed that three or four singers might sit 
 on opposite sides of a small table, placing 
 the book open before them, and sing each 
 from his own part, all printed on the same 
 page. The secular song-book was made up 
 usually of madrigals or of "ayres." Aii ayre 
 
 was 
 
Sweet Poetry agree 183 
 
 was a simple musical composition for one 
 voice or more accompanied by instruments ; 
 a madrigal was a far more complicated 
 affair. Not only was the madrigal written 
 for voices alone, but it was contrapuntal, 
 that is, based on an elaborate system of 
 themes and counter-themes interwoven and 
 entwined, of which the suites of Scarlotti 
 and Palestrina and the fugues of John 
 Sebastian Bach are later examples. It was 
 thus that Thomas Morley commented on 
 the structure of the madrigal : " As for 
 the music, it is, next unto the motet, the 
 most artificial and to men of understand- 
 ing the most delightful. If therefore you 
 will compose in this kind you must possess 
 yourself with an amorous humor, (for in 
 no composition shall you prove admirable 
 except you put on and possess yourself 
 wholly with that vein wherein you com- 
 pose) so that you must in your music be 
 wavering like the wind, sometimes wanton, 
 
 sometimes 
 
184 
 
 When Music and 
 
 sometimes drooping, sometime grave and 
 staid, otherwhile effeminate ; you may retain 
 points and revert them, use tri-plays and 
 show the uttermost of your variety, and the 
 more variety you show the better shall you 
 please." 
 
 But if the music of the madrigal was 
 elaborate, the words were simplicity itself. 
 A tiny gem of verse is the madrigal, con- 
 veying one thought directly and daintily 
 expressed in a succession of equal sentences. 
 Its very words are in the nature of song. 
 
 Faustina hath the fairer face. 
 And Phyllida the feater grace ; 
 
 Both have mine eye enriched : 
 This sings full sweetly with her voice ; 
 Her fingers make as sweet a noise : 
 
 Both have mine ear bewitched. 
 Ah me ! sith Fates have so provided, 
 My heart, alas, must be divided. 
 
 At times the madrigal contains much of 
 the essence of the epigram, as in Michael 
 
 Drayton's 
 
Sweet Poetry agree 185 
 
 Drayton's lines addressed to Morley, the 
 celebrated composer mentioned above : 
 
 Such was old Orpheus' cunning, 
 
 That senseless things drew near him, 
 
 And herds of beasts to hear him. 
 The stock, the stone, the ox, the ass, came running. 
 
 Morley, but this enchanting 
 
 To thee, to be the music god, is wanting ; 
 And yet thou needst not fear him ; 
 
 Draw thou the shepherds still, and bonny lasses. 
 
 And envy him not stocks, stones, oxen, asses. 
 
 But it is not to be supposed that the free 
 Elizabethan Muse was long to be confined 
 in such gossamer trammels as these. Sidney 
 had already written the lines, " My true 
 love hath my heart," so charming in their 
 simplicity, and in Shakespeare's " Take, 
 O take, those lips away," and " Full fathom 
 five my father lies," we have more exqui- 
 site words for the madrigal (albeit freer in 
 form) than all the Italian poets could con- 
 trive among them. 
 
 The ayre afforded a freer and happier 
 
 union 
 
i86 
 
 When Music and 
 
 union of the arts than did the madrigal 
 with its contrapuntal music and its brief 
 range of words and ideas. The Elizabethan 
 ayre set to the successive stanzas of a fine 
 lyric must be regarded as the highest tri- 
 umph of combined musical and poetic art. 
 And lovely as the enchanting words of the 
 best lyrics are — those in the song-books 
 of Campion, Jones, Morley, Hume, Wil- 
 son, and many more — they were not un- 
 worthily set. Some of the music has been 
 preserved by Chappell and others. It seems 
 to us quaint and old-fashioned, for music 
 changes more rapidly than poetry, and is 
 more conventional in its temporary modes 
 and passing mannerisms. And yet there is 
 often a pleasing cadence about these old 
 tunes, which, taken all in all, do not seem 
 more old-fashioned than the ruffs, the 
 farthingales, and the falling bands which 
 characterized the costumes of our English 
 forefathers. 
 
 These 
 
Sweet Poetry agree 
 
 187 
 
 These old musicians must have been 
 an interesting class, with their University 
 breeding, their practice of the learned and 
 intricate counterpoint of the day, and their 
 foreign and courtly associations. William 
 Byrd, the Queen's instructor on the virgi- 
 nals, held for some years a monopoly of 
 the music published, out of which he seems 
 to have made less than Raleigh contrived to 
 obtain out of his monopoly of sweet wines. 
 Thomas Morley of the Chapel Royal, a 
 prolific writer of secular music, as seven or 
 eight books of his attest, is ever memor- 
 able as one of the earliest composers of 
 music to Shakespeare's perfect songs. It 
 was Morley, we are told, who set " It was 
 a lover and his lass" to a tune which has a 
 lilt and a freshness which time has been 
 little able to impair. A third musician of 
 great repute in his day as a lutenist was 
 John Dowland, immortalized in the sonnet, 
 " In praise of Music and sweet Poetry, " 
 
 already 
 
i88 When Music and 
 
 already quoted above. There may be seen 
 the estimation in which music was held in 
 the comparison of Dowland's repute to that 
 of Spenser in poetry. Dowland was one of 
 those that carried the fame of English mu- 
 sicians to the continent. He was lutenist at 
 various times to the Landgrave of Hesse, to 
 the King of Denmark, and to other noble 
 and royal patrons. It is interesting to find 
 the Landgrave addressing Dowland in terms 
 of respectful consideration, denoting a re- 
 cognition of that equality with princes 
 which the mastery of a fine art can at times 
 confer. Dowland appears to have been a 
 victim of what we now call " the artistic 
 temperament," through which he became 
 an object of deep sympathy and concern to 
 himself and a sore trial, doubtless, to all 
 his friends. 
 
 A difference of opinion has arisen as to 
 whether the composers of madrigals and 
 ayres were usually the authors of the words 
 
 of 
 
Sweet Poetry agree 189 
 
 of their songs or not. Mr. Bullen, a pio- 
 neer in the recognition and collection of 
 the lyrics of Elizabeth's age, is of opinion 
 that " the composers are responsible only 
 for the music." Whereas Mr. Davey, the 
 author of an excellent history of music, 
 says : " It appears to me that as a rule the 
 tunes and the poetry were simultaneously 
 conceived. I ground this belief on the de- 
 tailed parallelism in the metre of the suc- 
 cessive stanzas in the ayres through which 
 the same music affects them all." There 
 seems something in this ; although another 
 argument might be found in the uniform- 
 ity of the poetical style which often ac- 
 companies the musical works of the same 
 composer. In the works of the greatest 
 man of this class, -Thomas Campion, we 
 are certain that the two arts were fittingly 
 and indissolubly wedded. As to the lesser 
 lights, it matters very little, though I should 
 like to be sure that Robert Jones and Cap- 
 tain 
 
I go When Music and 
 
 tain Tobias Hume are the delightful poets 
 which the words to the songs in their books 
 would indicate if they wrote them. Mr. 
 Bullen has picked out the following perfect 
 stanza to form the text for one of his vol- 
 umes of lyrics : 
 
 Love ! they wrong thee much 
 That say thy sweet is bitter, 
 When thy rich fruit is such 
 As nothing can be sweeter. 
 Fair house of joy and bliss. 
 Where truest pleasure is, 
 
 I do adore thee : 
 
 1 know thee what thou art, 
 I serve thee with my heart 
 
 And fall before thee. 
 
 Alas that a man who could write like this 
 should remain forever a flitted shade and 
 mere simulacrum of departed glory. Could 
 Captain Tobias Hume have wielded his 
 sword as his pen he could scarcely have 
 left the world a more consummate swords- 
 man. Quite as perfect for the music of 
 
 their 
 
Sweet Poetry agree 191 
 
 their words are such lines as these, half 
 whimsical, half daintily serious : 
 
 How many new years have grown old 
 Since first thy servant old was new ! 
 How many long hours have I told 
 Since first my love was vowed to you ! 
 And yet, alas ! she doth not know 
 Whether her servant love or no. 
 
 This stanza is from one of the songs of 
 Robert Jones's Garden of Delight, a book 
 now hopelessly lost. Doubtless many a jewel 
 choice as this, with much that was weightier 
 if less precious, has fallen a prey to " envi- 
 ous and calumniating Time." 
 
 When all has been said, we find in 
 Thomas Campion the most notable example 
 of the poet-musician. As to him, at least, 
 there can be no doubt, for he writes con- 
 cerning his own song-books : " Some words 
 are in these books which have been clothed 
 in music by others, and I am content they 
 then served their turn : yet give me leave to 
 
 make 
 
192 
 
 When Music and 
 
 make use of mine own." In a similar ad- 
 dress prefixed to his Third Book of Ay res, 
 he adds : " In these English ayres I have 
 chiefly aimed to couple my words and notes 
 lovingly together, which will be much for 
 him to do that hath not power over both." 
 A member of Gray's Inn in his youth, a 
 distinguished practitioner of the sister art 
 of medicine in his maturer years. Campion 
 was esteemed for his Latin poetry and for 
 his English music ; for his critical theories 
 wherein he sought to turn English poetry 
 back into the well-worn channels of the 
 classics ; and for the admirable practice with 
 which he confuted these theories in his 
 beautiful English lyrical verse. Campion 
 was a very accomplished man and held an 
 honored place among contemporary musi- 
 cians alike for his compositions and for his 
 excellent treatise on counterpoint. Although 
 a conservative as to prosody. Campion was 
 remarkably liberal as to music and wrote 
 
 ayres 
 
Sweet Poetry agree 193 
 
 ayres in preference to madrigals of set pur- 
 pose. He says : " What epigrams are in 
 poetry, the same are ayres in music ; then 
 in their chief perfection when they are 
 short and well seasoned. But to cloy a 
 sweet song with a long preludium is to 
 corrupt the nature of it." 
 
 The poetry of Campion is saturated with 
 Catullus and it shares in the Roman poet's 
 sweetness, sensuousness, and mellifluous flow 
 of musical words. Campion is not wholly 
 a poet of love, although he lavishes on 
 Venus's altars his richest and loveliest fruits. 
 There is a purity and simple childlike fer- 
 vor, a genuine singing quality and happy 
 mastery of phrase in the more serious of 
 his songs that raise Campion measurably 
 above the chorus of amourists and dainty 
 gilded sonneteers who rise and fall in a 
 singing swarm among the sallows of the 
 Elizabethan garden of Love. 
 
 But this pure and natural union of lyr- 
 ical 
 
194 
 
 When Music and 
 
 ical poetry and song was not the only unity 
 of the arts attempted in this ingenious time. 
 True the opera was as yet in embryo in 
 far-away Italy, the home of beauty and of 
 many perversions thereof. Florentine Peri 
 and Caccini, seeking quixotically to resur- 
 rect and rejuvenate the dead Muse of Greek 
 tragedy, had invented modern opera, " the 
 anarchy of the arts " as Schlegel was later 
 to call it. Campion might have known 
 the authors of Dafne and Euridice, both of 
 which were presented in Florence before 
 Elizabeth had ceased to reign. Whether 
 the English composer knew le nuove mu- 
 siche, may be questioned, although his atti- 
 tude of preference for the ayre over the 
 older scientific music was precisely that of 
 the early Italian writers of opera. The 
 English masque, too, attempted this union 
 of arts, and keeping sound ever subser- 
 vient to the sense of sight, with dancing, 
 artistic grouping and costuming, combined 
 
 the 
 
Sweet Poetry agree 
 
 195 
 
 the earthly Muse of comedy with the spir- 
 itual Muse of song. When Jonson wrote a 
 masque for Court he called in the aid of 
 Inigo Jones, the royal architect, who devised 
 the scenes, decorations, and costumes and, 
 with the practical assistance of " the King's 
 master carpenter," contrived the mechani- 
 cal devices for change and effect. For the 
 music, Jonson resorted to " his excellent 
 friend, Alphonso Ferrabosco," the English- 
 born son of a celebrated Italian composer 
 of Henry the Eighth's Court of the same 
 name, whose works, whether in song or in- 
 strumental, were of equal repute in his day. 
 The music of the masque was of great 
 variety, now descriptive with pipe and tabor 
 or drum and trumpet ; now arranged in 
 "consorts," as the harmony of instruments 
 of one kind was called ; now " broken," as 
 the mingling of various instruments or in- 
 struments with voices was described. It 
 would be difficult to conceive of a man 
 
 better 
 
196 When Music and 
 
 better fitted than Campion, by nature and 
 by study, for the devising of such minglings 
 of the arts. Characteristically, as a musi- 
 cian. Campion begins the description of 
 his Masque at the Marriage of the Lord Hayes 
 with an account of the music. The great 
 hall, wherein the masque was presented, he 
 tells us, " received this division and order. 
 The upper part, where the cloth and chair 
 of state were placed, had scaffolds and seats 
 on either side continued to the screen ; right 
 before it was a partition for the dancing- 
 place ; on the right hand whereof were con- 
 sorted ten musicians, with bass and mean 
 lutes, a bandora, a double sackbut, and an 
 harpsichord, with two treble violins; on 
 the other side somewhat nearer the screen 
 were placed nine violins and three lutes, 
 and to answer both the consorts (as it were 
 in a triangle), six cornets and six chapel 
 voices were seated almost right against 
 them, in a place raised higher in respect of 
 
 the 
 
Sweet Poetry agree 
 
 197 
 
 the piercing sound of those instruments ; 
 eighteen foot from the screen another stage 
 was raised higher by a yard than that which 
 was prepared for dancing. This higher 
 stage was all enclosed with a double veil, 
 so artificially painted, that it seemed as if 
 dark clouds had hung before it : within 
 that shroud was concealed a green valley, 
 with green trees about it, and in the midst 
 of them nine golden trees of fifteen foot 
 high, with arms and branches very glorious 
 to behold." 
 
 In the great variety of songs that followed, 
 much was made of the differences in posi- 
 tion of the various bands or consorts of 
 musicians and in the contrasted qualities, 
 combinations and volume of the instruments 
 and voices ; and the songs — many of them 
 lyrics of great beauty — were variously set 
 for solos, answering duets, and choruses, 
 accompanied or free. Thus "four Sylvans" 
 played on their musical instruments the first 
 
 strain 
 
198 When Music and 
 
 strain of a song by way of prelude, "and 
 at the repetition thereof the voices fell in 
 with the instruments which were thus di- 
 vided : a treble and a bass were placed near 
 his Majesty, and another treble and bass 
 near the grove, that the words of the song 
 might first be heard of all, because the trees 
 of gold instantly at the first sound of their 
 voices began to move and dance accord- 
 ing to the measure of the time which the 
 musicians kept in singing, and the nature 
 of the words which they delivered." Little 
 by little the trees sank out of sight, " a 
 matter effected," we are informed, " by an 
 engine placed under the stage," and out of 
 them emerged the noble dancers ; for be 
 it remembered that one of the joys of the 
 masque consisted in the circumstance that it 
 was not a performance wholly to be looked 
 at, but that the noblest lords and the fairest 
 ladies were partakers in its dazzling scenes 
 and graceful figures, and even royalty in 
 
 the 
 
Sweet Poetry agree 
 
 199 
 
 the persons of the Queen, Princes and Prin- 
 cesses condescended at times to bear a part. 
 The climax of this masque Campion thus 
 describes: "This chorus was in the manner 
 of an echo, seconded by the cornets, then 
 by the consort of ten, then by the consort 
 of twelve, and by a double chorus of voices 
 standing on either side, the one against 
 [that is, opposite to] the other, bearing five 
 voices apiece, and sometime every chorus 
 was heard severally, sometime mixed, but 
 in the end all together : which kind of har- 
 mony so distinguished by the place [that 
 is, position], and by the several nature of 
 instruments and changeable conveyance of 
 the song, and performed by so many ex- 
 cellent masters as were actors in that mu- 
 sic, (their number amounting to forty-two 
 voices and instruments) could not but yield 
 great satisfaction to the hearers," 
 
 In these days of grand opera and of musical 
 festivals punctuated with cannon. Campion's 
 
 musical 
 
200 Music and Poetry 
 
 musical masque seems but a small affair. 
 It was successful and amazingly novel for 
 its age ; and who shall say that the Eliza- 
 bethan's ideal to wed music and lyrical verse, 
 environed in scenic beauty and illustrated 
 by the poetry of motion, differed so very 
 widely from the Wagnerian dream where- 
 in that lordly bridegroom, the drama of 
 Shakespeare, was to lead to an indissoluble 
 marriage before the altar of all the arts, his 
 bride the heaven-born music of Beethoven ? 
 
IX 
 THALIA IN OXFORD 
 
IX 
 
 Thalia in Oxford 
 
 203 
 
 ENGLAND had adored mummings, pa- 
 geants, and interludes for genera- 
 tions when Elizabeth came to her 
 throne. There had been, time out of mind, 
 disguisings and masquings on high days and 
 holidays, puppets in booths at fairs, and 
 "bride-ales" as the commoner wedding fes- 
 tivities were called, theatricals in barns, inn- 
 yards, and on London streets. Before the 
 reign was half over, if a murder was com- 
 mitted, it was staged for a warning. Had a 
 continental city been besieged or a foreign 
 political criminal fallen, all was arranged for 
 the boards before it was stale in the mem- 
 
 ories 
 
204 
 
 'Thalia in Oxford 
 
 ories of men. But this popular side of the 
 drama is far from all. Parallel to the great 
 drama which the names of Marlowe and 
 Shakespeare adorned and carried home to 
 the hearts of common men, ran a scholar's 
 and a courtier's drama, earlier and more 
 august in its originals, equally tenacious of 
 its more conservative ideals, and equally po- 
 tent in its influences on contemporary times 
 and on times to come. This scholar's and 
 courtier's drama claimed the earliest of the 
 great English playwrights wholly for its 
 own ; and the name which ranks next to 
 Shakespeare's was two thirds of its making. 
 For Lyly and Jonson were alike purveyors 
 of amusement to nobility and royalty. And 
 even when, under newer influences, the 
 Court drama failed, and the succeeding 
 masque, a union of the arts of Thalia, Eu- 
 terpe, and Terpsichore, was waning in the 
 glare of Puritanism, which unveiled, like 
 day, the tawdry unrealities of the stage, 
 
 the 
 
Thalia in Oxford 205 
 
 the Universities cherished the old traditions 
 and continued to perform primitive trage- 
 dies that Sackville might have disdained, 
 and comedies the crude classicality of which 
 would have moved the seasoned comedians 
 of London to derisive laughter. 
 
 Not that there were not notable triumphs 
 among the university plays both Latin and 
 English. Ezechias, written in English verse 
 in the fifties by Nicholas Udall, the au- 
 thor of Ralph Roister Doister, the first Eng- 
 lish comedy, was so "handled by King's 
 College men" that a learned Welsh prelate 
 declared it " worthy for a queen to behold." 
 Nashe and Harington combined to praise 
 the Richardus Tertius of Dr. Legge, who to 
 his dramatic honors added the distinction 
 of being twice chosen Vice-Chancellor of 
 Cambridge. Oxford Bellum Grammaticale 
 and Cambridge Pedantius remained for 
 years approved and praised as models of 
 university comedy, and shared with Igno- 
 ramus 
 
2o6 Thalia in Oxford 
 
 ramus (which was even translated into 
 English that the vulgar might share in its 
 choice university wit) a popularity which 
 lasted through a couple of generations. 
 The drama had been a passion with the Hu- 
 manists, who flourished throughout the Eu- 
 rope of Charles the Fifth and the Borgias. 
 Ralph RadclifFe, a schoolmaster of Hert- 
 fordshire, transformed the refectory of the 
 old monastery in which he held his school 
 into a veritable theatre, wherein his stu- 
 dents acted plays of his composing for the 
 strengthening of their memories and the 
 betterment of their Latinity. George Bu- 
 chanan, grave historian and tutor to Mary 
 Queen of Scots and her son. King James, 
 wrote Latin plays for his students when a 
 teacher in the new college at Boulogne, and 
 the young Montaigne is related to have 
 acted in them. Whilst excellent John Pals- 
 grave (in his zeal for learning) transmuted 
 Acolastus, a Latin comedy of a famous 
 
 Dutch 
 
Thalia in Oxford 207 
 
 Dutch scholar often performed by school- 
 boys, into a text-book from which to learn 
 Latin, translating each scene, interpreting 
 the characters, the style, and the metres of 
 the author as a Latin classic, "not only," he 
 said, " for because I esteem that little vol- 
 ume to be a very curious and artificial com- 
 pacted nosegay, gathered out of the much 
 excellent and odoriferous sweet-smelling 
 garden of the most pure Latin authors, but 
 also because the maker thereof — as far as 
 I can learn — is yet living, whereby I would 
 be glad to move into the hearts of your 
 Grace's clerks some little grain of honest 
 and virtuous envy." 
 
 In fine, it had long been the custom of 
 the grammar schools, the colleges, and Inns 
 of Court to invent devices, to hold revels 
 and entertainments, to revive Roman com- 
 edies or perform original plays, and to live 
 in an atmosphere of invention, rehearsal, 
 and persistent theatrical activity. At times 
 
 these 
 
2o8 Thalia in Oxford 
 
 these attacks of dramatic craze extended 
 through protracted periods, and play after 
 play was performed, the whole combined 
 by means of an elaborate connecting cere- 
 monial. Thus in the year 1 594 the students 
 of Gray's Inn "betwixt All-HoUantide 
 and Christmas " carried on a series of fes- 
 tivities before their self-elected " Prince of 
 Purpoole " which, although " the rather to 
 be preferred by witty inventions than by 
 chargeable expenses," must have been as 
 sumptuous as they were novel and elaborate. 
 What with a "family and followers" of 
 upwards of a hundred " nobles and attend- 
 ants," each bearing his part, what with the 
 coronation, the receptions of " homagers 
 and tributaries," proclamations, revels, the 
 arguments before the throne on the ex- 
 ercise of war or the study of philosophy, 
 with other orations, letters " from abroad," 
 the replies of his Majesty, the founding of 
 royal orders of knighthood, and the per- 
 formance 
 
Thalia in Oxford 209 
 
 formance of three complete and difficult 
 masques — some conception may be formed 
 of the magnitude, elaborated ceremonial, 
 and the curious particulars of the Gesta 
 Grayorum as the whole function was called. 
 The masques were by Beaumont, Chapman, 
 and Campion, all recognized poets in their 
 day ; and in the final entertainment Queen 
 Elizabeth herself was " Prince Purpoole's " 
 guest. 
 
 But it is with a somewhat less known 
 period of dramatic craze that we are now 
 concerned; and with Oxford, not Gray's 
 Inn. In an interesting manuscript still pre- 
 served in the Library of St. John's College, 
 one Griffin Higgs, evidently a student who 
 was in the midst of it all, has left us an 
 account of a series of festivities, dramatic 
 in kind, which starting, so far as the ar- 
 rangements were concerned, early in Octo- 
 ber, 1607, were continued until Lent put 
 a stop to the hilarity. During this period a 
 
 sort 
 
2IO 
 
 Thalia in Oxford 
 
 sort of theatrical contagion spread from 
 gownsmen to the town, and from the 
 freshmen, who had a simple farce of their 
 own in English, to the Dons, who gravely 
 enacted matter didactic in the learned 
 tongue. 
 
 The whole thing began at St. John's 
 among " the poulderings " or students of 
 the second year, who, ascertaining that 
 thirty years before similar festivities had 
 been held, determined to emulate the past. 
 First of all a Christmas Prince was chosen 
 who issued under his royal seal, in such 
 Latin as the combined learning of " the 
 poulderings" could muster, solemn procla- 
 mations of various kinds, chiefly concerned 
 with the raising of revenue. For the 
 Prince's instalment "a schoUarlike device 
 called Ara Fortunee " was given. The inter- 
 locutors were Princeps, Philosophus, Rus- 
 ticus, and Stultus and the language was 
 evidently Latin. This play was not given 
 
 on 
 
T^halia in Oxford 
 
 211 
 
 on a stage but on the tables of the refec- 
 tory or dining-hall set closely together. 
 The applause was so vociferous at one point 
 that it brought down the canopy of For- 
 tune ; but, says Higgs, " it was cleanly sup- 
 ported by some of the standers by till the 
 company was voided." The play is not 
 given in the manuscript, " because of its 
 length." 
 
 The next performance was " a private 
 shewe in the manner of an interlude con- 
 taining the order of Saturnalls, and shew- 
 ing the first cause of Christmas candles." 
 The characters were Hercules, Curius, and 
 • Doulus. "This shew," naively remarks our 
 student informant, " was very well liked of 
 ourselves." Two days later, it being St. 
 John's Day, a masque with a morris dance 
 was given in the afternoon, and in the even- 
 ing a second masque entitled the Twoehe 
 Days, " the holy-daies speaking Latin and 
 the working daies English." The Tragedy 
 
 of 
 
2 12 
 
 Thalia in Oxford 
 
 of Philomela was booked for December the 
 twenty-ninth, but there was much trouble 
 in getting it ready and when all was done, 
 unhappily, " the Prince himselfe, who was 
 to play Tereus, had got such an exceeding 
 cold that it was impossible for him to speak, 
 or speaking to be heard." "At length it was 
 concluded that in case the Prince should 
 not hold out, that then the author of the 
 tragedy, who was best acquainted with it 
 and could say most of the verses, should go 
 forward." Fortunately the Prince's voice 
 " held out " and the tragedy was a great 
 success. " Itys was much wondered at for 
 speaking Latin, because he was so little in 
 his long coat that he was taken to be a 
 child but of seven or eight years old." 
 
 The performance of New Year's Day was 
 " a shew called Times Complaint." The piece 
 was badly given. The Prologue forgot his 
 lines and " Goodwife Spiggott [one of the 
 characters] coming forth before her time, 
 
 was 
 
Thalia in Oxford 213 
 
 was most miserably at a non plus and made 
 others so also, whilst herself stalked in the 
 midst like a great Harry lyon as it pleased 
 the audience to term it, either saying no- 
 thing at all or nothing to the purpose." 
 The drunken man too, " who in the repe- 
 titions had much pleased and done very 
 well, was now so ambitious of his actions 
 that he would needes make his part much 
 longer than it was, and stood so long upon 
 it all that he grew tedious." " Expecta- 
 tion," says our young student with a sigh, 
 " the devourer of all good endeavours, has 
 swallowed more in the very name and title 
 of this interlude than was either provided 
 or intended in the whole matter. We our- 
 selves thought not so ill of it as others, 
 neither will future times, we hope, judge 
 it so vile as the present did." How wise a 
 dispensation it is that authorship and mo- 
 therhood are alike blind and dote often- 
 times on the least favored of their weans ! 
 
 On 
 
2 14 Thalia in Oxford 
 
 On counting the cost of Time's Complaint, 
 our young adventurers discovered to their 
 dismay that the exchequer of his Majesty 
 was running lov7. Therefore a proclama- 
 tion, egregious alike in its solemnity and 
 its Latinity, was promulgated whereby his 
 Majesty's liege subjects were adjured to pay 
 the charges, and assessed in proportion to 
 their dignities, a freshman two shillings, a 
 pouldering, four. 
 
 On the tenth of January two private 
 " shews " were given in the lodgings of St. 
 John's. The first was called Somnium Fun-, 
 datoris, and concerned matters traditionary 
 in the history of the college ; the other was 
 a mock play entitled the Seven Days of the 
 Week. Besides the Days, the " clarke of St. 
 Gyles," a woman, and a pair of snuffers 
 figured amongst the dramatis persona or the 
 properties, which shall we say ? This play 
 is given in the manuscript and, while but 
 a slight piece of fooling, is far from devoid 
 
 of 
 
Thalia in Oxford 
 
 215 
 
 of wit. " Enter Sunday Night, cum Luna et 
 aliis pertinentiis" reminds us of Bottom's fa- 
 mous scratch company where Starveling or 
 Snug is advised to " come in with a bush 
 of thorns and a lanthorn and say he comes 
 to disfigure or to present the person of 
 Moonshine," The Seven Days of the Week 
 was written for younger boys "who could 
 not do serious things." It went in conse- 
 quence so well that it was repeated publicly 
 by request a few days later. 
 
 Here his "Highness" was constrained to 
 descend to asking the Dons for an extension 
 of his rule, and they granted him seven 
 more days. On the fifteenth of January a 
 Latin play entitled Philomanthes was acted 
 with great applause, the audience crying 
 again and again, " Abunde satisfactum est ! '' 
 and giving other signs of encouragement. 
 The subsequent performances were a Tule- 
 tide Melody of Christmas Sports, whatever 
 that may have been, a Vigilate on Candlemas 
 
 Night 
 
2l6 
 
 'Thalia in Oxford 
 
 Night preceded by a mock proclamation 
 and a masque "sudden and extempore," a 
 " shew " by the masters and officers " in 
 mete and semely Latin phrase," a masque 
 of Penelope's Wooers, and lastly, on Shrove 
 Tuesday, on a great stage, the masque of 
 the Prince's resignation entitled Ira sen Tu- 
 mulus Fortuna. "The stage," says our scribe, 
 " was never so oppressed with company, in 
 so much that it was verily thought that it 
 would not be performed that night for want 
 of room ; but the audience was so favorable 
 as to stand as close and yield as much back 
 as was possible," and hence the masque was 
 successfully presented. 
 
 Although the Prince had now given up 
 his rule, the theatrical spirit was still ram- 
 pant at Oxford, and as an English tragedy 
 was almost ready, argument arose as to 
 whether it should be acted or not. Against 
 its presentation it was argued that Lent 
 was approaching and enough attention had 
 
 already 
 
Thalia in Oxford 217 
 
 already been bestowed on performances 
 which, when all had been said in their 
 favor, were little better than toys. More- 
 over it was credibly reported that the in- 
 tended play was written in English, "a 
 language unfit for the University." After 
 protracted and heated argument both objec- 
 tions were finally overruled, and Periander 
 was given, with a very large cast, by the pick 
 of the long-trained actors of St. John's, 
 Profiting by their former troublesome ex- 
 perience, " the stage was kept void of all 
 company." " It is almost incredible," says 
 our enthusiastic devotee of Melpomene, " to 
 think how well this tragedy was performed 
 of all parties." One of the characters was 
 called Detraction, and was placed, accord- 
 ing to a familiar device of the contempo- 
 rary stage, in the audience. He played his 
 part so well that " he was like to have been 
 beaten for his sauciness." Another actor, 
 who played the part of Periander, when 
 
 about 
 
2i8 Thalia in Oxford 
 
 about to kill his daughter Eugenia, " did 
 not so couch his dagger with his hand but 
 that he pricked her through all her attire. 
 But, as God would have it," piously adds 
 our informant, " it was only a scratch, and 
 so it passed." As only a small part of the 
 Oxonians could be accommodated with 
 standing room within the hall, several un- 
 ruly spirits — rival poulderings, no doubt 
 — raised what our friend Higgs called " a 
 tumult, without the windows." Where- 
 upon " the whifflers made a raid upon them 
 with their swords and drove the crowd out 
 of the precincts, imprisoning some until 
 after the play was over." 
 
 Such was the violence of this attack of 
 theatro-mania that we hear of yet other 
 productions, by their authors and actors in- 
 tended. A Controversy of Irus and his ragged 
 company. An Embassy from Lubberland, The 
 Creation of the White Knights of the Order of 
 Aristotles Well: such were some of the pro- 
 jected 
 
Thalia in Oxford 219 
 
 jected matters which the patient but wearied 
 Dons contrived to consign to the Limbo 
 of unfulfilled achievement. Nor were the 
 youthful projectors without their troubles. 
 Our friend complains that in the repetitions 
 as in the performances " some there were 
 that stood by and gave aim, willing to see 
 much and do little." And he ends his en- 
 tertaining and ingenuous little tract with 
 this sound advice : " Let others, hereafter, 
 take heed how they attempt the like, unless 
 they find better meanes at home and better 
 minds abroad." 
 
X 
 
 A JOURNEY TO THE NORTH 
 
223 
 
 X 
 
 A Journey to the North 
 
 IN the summer of 1 6 1 8, two years after 
 the death of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, 
 the greatest Hving EngHsh poet, con- 
 ceived the original idea of a journey to 
 Scotland on foot and unattended. There 
 was much to attract him thither. Scotland 
 was the native land of his friend and royal 
 patron. King James. Jonson's father and 
 grandfather had been of Carlisle, and the 
 latter came thither, Jonson had reason to 
 believe, from Annandale across the Solway ; 
 so that Jonson may well have shared that 
 " salmon-like instinct" which the King had 
 alleged as a sufficient reason for the royal 
 
 visit 
 
224 
 
 A Journey to the North 
 
 visit to the seat of his northern empire in 
 the previous year. Jonson w^as now in his 
 forty-fifth year, and w^as already show^ing 
 signs of that extreme corpulency which, 
 turning scorbutic and dropsical, cost him 
 much later his life. This journey to the 
 north may have been undertaken on his 
 physician's advice as a prolonged and heroic 
 constitutional. It was an eccentric and no 
 uncourageous thing to attempt in an age in 
 which the ways were notoriously bad and 
 beset with dangers by no means imaginary. 
 And the witticism of Sir Francis Bacon, 
 who told Jonson that he " loved not to 
 see Poesie goe on other feet than poeticall 
 Dactylus and Spondasus," may well have 
 been prompted by a friendly solicitude for 
 the safety and well-being of a man whom 
 even the worldly and unsympathetic Lord 
 Chancellor must have prized for his learn- 
 ing and personal worth, if not for the 
 lighter graces of his poetry. 
 
 At 
 
Ben Jonson 
 
A Journey to the North 225 
 
 At this time Jonson stood alone, the ac- 
 knowledged leader among the men of let- 
 ters of his day, a successful dramatist, critic, 
 translator, lyrist, and writer of occasional 
 verse, above all the accepted entertainer, in 
 his magnificent masques at Court, of the 
 nobility and of royalty itself. Jonson had 
 outstood the unpopularity which his uncom- 
 promising arrogance had raised against him 
 in his earlier plays on the boards of the 
 common theatres. He had braved and tri- 
 umphed over the attacks of envy and rivalry. 
 He had won the patronage, and with it 
 the regard and respect, of a larger number 
 of "great ones" than any poet before his 
 time, and now lived on terms of easy fa- 
 miliarity with half the gentry and nobility 
 of England. Lastly Jonson had just com- 
 pleted a careful gathering in of all his 
 works in his folio edition of 1 6 1 6, the first 
 example of a collective edition of an Eng- 
 lish poet superintended by himself, and in 
 
 that 
 
2 26 A Journey to the North 
 
 that an unexampled attestation of Jonson's 
 vogue and repute among his contempora- 
 ries. 
 
 Jonson's life had never been that of a 
 recluse. He lived in the public eye; and 
 converse with men, the opinion of the ju- 
 dicious and the praise of his prince w^ere 
 to him as the very breath of his nostrils. 
 At Court, v^here his beautiful and artistic 
 masques w^ere recognized as the height of 
 the social elegance and poetical spirit of 
 their time ; on the boards of the London 
 theatres, where the sheer genius of the Al- 
 chemist and the Silent Woman had disarmed 
 the " mews of opposed rascality," as well 
 as the leers of " envious criticasters ; " in 
 the tavern (Elizabethan for the later club or 
 coffee-house), where Jonson sat enthroned 
 in state, the earliest of that august succession 
 of literary autocrats that ruled literary Bo- 
 hemia and annexed large provinces of bar- 
 barous neighboring Philistia — Jonson was 
 
 alone 
 
A Journey to the North 227 
 
 alone and unmatched. Hence when the pro- 
 ject of his journey was formed it was much 
 bruited about, and when at last he shook 
 the dust of London from his feet and " the 
 Dog, the Sunne, and the Tripple Tun " 
 for a time knew him not, it was like the 
 departure of a sovereign from the seat of 
 his empire. ' 
 
 Among the familiar figures of the day was 
 one John Taylor, a water-man or wherry- 
 man, popularly known as " the water poet." 
 Taylor was one of the two or three thou- 
 sand " poore men " who made their living 
 on the river conveying passengers from 
 point to point : for the river was often 
 safer than the highway. Taylor appears to 
 have commenced poet by presenting his 
 little doggerel rimes to passengers of note, 
 thereby increasing the returns for his ferri- 
 age. He was encouraged by the wits, partly 
 in sport and out of curiosity to see what he 
 might do ; and Jonson sagely reports that 
 
 King 
 
228 A Journey to the North 
 
 King James on one occasion, adjudging Sir 
 Philip Sidney " no poet," declared that he 
 had seen no verses in England like to " the 
 sculler's : " a remark that may well have 
 been true, though hardly in the sense in 
 w^hich his Majesty meant it. Be Taylor's 
 poetry what it may, this royal opinion was 
 the making of the water-man. He was now 
 a recognized author and emulous of the 
 fame of his rival in literary freakishness, 
 Tom Coryat, who had sailed all the way 
 to Hamburg in a cock-boat and traversed 
 most of the countries of Europe on foot, 
 writing up his adventures in his Crudities, 
 as he called them, and in other books. 
 Hence, whether by accident or design, when 
 Jonson set out north, Taylor followed him, 
 undertaking what he called the Pennyles 
 Pilgrimage or the Money-lesse Perambulation 
 of John Taylor, alias the Kings Majesties 
 Water-Poet, in which " he travailed on foot 
 from London to Edenborugh in Scotland 
 
 not 
 
A Journey to the North 229 
 
 not carrying any money to or fro, neither 
 begging, borrowing or asking meate drinke 
 or lodging." The wits of the town may 
 have put Taylor up to his " pilgrimage ; " 
 Jonson certainly believed for a time that 
 the water-man was "sent hither to scorn 
 him." But this Taylor denied in his pre- 
 face, declaring : " Reader, these travailes of 
 mine into Scotland were not undertaken, 
 neither in imitation or emulation of any 
 man, but onely devised by my selfe on 
 purpose to make triall of my friends, both 
 in this kingdome of England and that 
 of Scotland, and because I would be an 
 eye-witnes of things which I had heard of 
 that countrey ; and whereas many shallow- 
 brain' d critickes doe lay an aspersion on 
 me that I was set on by others or that I 
 did undergoe this project either in malice 
 or mockage of Master Benjamin Jonson, I 
 vow by the faith of a Christian that their 
 imaginations are all wide, for he is a gentle- 
 man 
 
2 3° A Journey to the North 
 
 man to whom I am so much obliged for 
 many undeserved courtesies that I have re- 
 ceived from him and from others by his 
 favour, that I durst never be so impudent 
 or ingratefuU as either to suffer any mans 
 persw^asions or mine ovrne instigation to in- 
 cite me to make so bad a requitall for so 
 much goodness formerly received." 
 
 Jonson appears to have set out in June, 
 and to have taken the eastern route by way 
 of York and Newcastle, It is likely that 
 he found a warm welcome and fitting en- 
 tertainment at many a gentleman's house 
 on his way. Jonson's fame was widespread 
 over England and his journey had been 
 much talked of when in plan. Many would 
 welcome the man for his repute who cared 
 less for the poet. For the age was hospit- 
 able, and all doors were open to the ac- 
 credited bearer of news from Court and 
 from London. Even in company where he 
 was unknown, Jonson's commanding per- 
 son, 
 
A Journey to the North 
 
 231 
 
 son, his confident and outspoken opinions, 
 and convivial habits, must have won him 
 many a friend by the way-side. Jonson 
 knew both London and Westminster, and 
 could discourse the latest gossip of the thea- 
 tre and the tap-room. He could chat with 
 the collegian of Oxford or Cambridge, for 
 " he was Master of Arts in both Universi- 
 ties," albeit " by their favor, not his studie ;" 
 nor could the most learned men of the age 
 have disdained the friend of Camden, Sel- 
 den, and Bacon ; nor the most aristocratically 
 exclusive, the accepted companion of the 
 literary and amiable D'Aubigny, Duke of 
 Lennox. 
 
 We have only one trace of Jonson on 
 his way north, and that is at Darlington 
 in Durham, where we find him engaged in 
 the trivial but necessary matter of the pur- 
 chase of a pair of new shoes, in the use of 
 which the great poet seems to have suf- 
 fered rather more than men of less weight. 
 
 Jonson 
 
!32. 
 
 A Journey to the North 
 
 Joiison may well have appreciated Taylor's 
 account of " the last lap " of his long walk. 
 " Having but fifteene miles to Edenbor- 
 ough, mounted upon my ten toes, [I] be- 
 gan first to hobble and after to amble, and 
 so being warme, I fell to pace by degrees." 
 And Jonson must often, too, have agreed 
 with the water-man's impressions, when he 
 says : " The Scots doe allow almost as large 
 measure of their miles as they doe of their 
 drinke ; for an English gallon either of ale 
 or wine is but their quart, and one Scottish 
 mile, now and then, may well stand for a 
 mile and a halfe or two English." 
 
 At what time in the year Jonson arrived 
 in Edinburgh it is impossible to say, and we 
 can but surmise side jaunts to his ancestral 
 Annandale and Carlisle, to Stirling, to Loch 
 Lomond and the Highlands. Dominated by 
 its queenly castle perched on a rock, the 
 Edinburgh of the day was a fine walled town, 
 "wherein I observed," writes Taylor, "the 
 
 fairest 
 
A Journey to the North 233 
 
 fairest and goodliest streete that ever mine 
 eyes beheld ; for I did never see or heare of 
 a street of that length, vv^hich is halfe an 
 English mile from the castle to a faire port 
 which they call the Neather Bov7, and from 
 that port, the street which they call the 
 Kenny-hate is one qua'rter of a mile more, 
 downe to the Kings Palace, called Holy- 
 rood-House, the buildings on each side of 
 the way being all of squared stone, five, six, 
 and seven stories high and many by-lanes 
 and closes on each side of the way, wherein 
 are gentlemens houses ; for in the high- 
 street the marchants and tradesmen do dwell, 
 but the gentlemens mansions and goodliest 
 houses are obscurely founded in the afore- 
 said lanes : the walles are eight or tenne 
 foote thicke, exceeding strong, not built for 
 a day, a weeke or a moneth or a yeere, but 
 from antiquitie to posterite, for many ages." 
 Edinburgh, indeed, was still the proud 
 capital of a separate nation which had given 
 
 her 
 
23 + 
 
 A Journey to the North 
 
 her richer southern neighbor its King; and 
 although the royal promise of a return every 
 third year had been commuted, amid the 
 cares of state, to a single visit in fourteen 
 years, the Scots were too loyal and too inter- 
 ested in the larger political issues in w^hich 
 they were now sharing, to complain over- 
 much. Besides, Edinburgh was not with- 
 out its own politics and social life. The 
 Scottish Privy Council met in High Street 
 twice each week throughout the greater 
 part of the year, an august body duly pre- 
 serving the picturesque ceremonial of the 
 past and composed of forty of the chief 
 nobles and commons of Scotland, repre- 
 senting in its completeness the flower of 
 the realm. The City Council in its neigh- 
 boring quarters near the Tolbooth was 
 scarcely less august, whilst the Scottish bar, 
 like the bench, was already renowned for 
 its learning and its gravity, as for its social, 
 if not for its convivial graces. Neither 
 
 could 
 
A Journey to the North 235 
 
 could Henry Charteris, the then principal 
 of " the town's college," a man famed 
 alike for his scholarship, his piety, and his 
 modesty, nor yet Sir William Nisbit, Lord 
 Provost of Edinburgh, the owner of a fine 
 neighboring estate of Deans, have either of 
 them been wanting in the proverbial hearti- 
 ness and open-handedness of Scottish hospi- 
 tality. 
 
 Taylor had reached Scotland, it appears, 
 by quite a different route, passing through 
 Preston and Carlisle and stopping first at 
 Moffat, Nor did he remain long in the 
 capital after visiting Holyrood, the Castle, 
 and " the haven and towne of Leeth," but 
 passing over to Burntisland, where he met 
 many friends, mostly petty officials of King 
 James's Court or royal pensioners, he betook 
 himself to the Highlands in quest of his 
 patrons, the Earl of Mar and Sir William 
 Murray of Abercarny, These he finally 
 overtook at what he calls the " Brae of 
 
 Marr " 
 
236 A Journey to the North 
 
 Marr " (Braemar) at a great hunting which 
 he joined and which he describes con amore, 
 returning towards the end of September to 
 Edinburgh. Taylor further tells us : " Now 
 the day before I came from Edenborough, 
 I went to Leeth where I found my long 
 approved and assured good friend Master 
 Benjamin Jonson, at one Master John Stu- 
 arts house : I thanke him for his great kind- 
 nesse towards me : for at my taking leave 
 of him, he gave me a piece of gold of two 
 and twenty shillings to drink his health in 
 England. And withall, willed me to re- 
 member his kind commendations to all his 
 friends. So with a friendly farewell, I left 
 him as well, as I hope never to see him in 
 a worse estate : for he is amongst noblemen 
 and gentlemen that knowe his true worth 
 and their owne honours, where with much 
 respective love he is worthily entertained." 
 The late Professor Masson identified the 
 Master John Stuart of this passage with a 
 
 substantial 
 
A Journey to the North 
 
 237 
 
 substantial householder, " incumbent of the 
 office of Water-Bailie of Leith and owning 
 a ship called the Post of Leith of which one 
 hears as employed some times in the govern- 
 ment service." How Jonson came to know 
 him, it is impossible to surmise. The poet 
 must have been comfortably lodged with 
 Master Stuart, within easy walk of town, for 
 Leith Walk was but a mile in length, and 
 although the precise particulars of his stay 
 in the northern capital are beyond recovery 
 we may feel assured that in the water poet's 
 words, "for he is amongst noblemen and 
 gentlemen that knowe his worth," we have 
 no idle compliment but a simple statement 
 of the fact. Happily in this we are not left 
 wholly to surmise. For in the register of the 
 Edinburgh Town Council, September 25, 
 16 1 8, and therefore much about the time 
 of Taylor's farewell visit, it appears that the 
 Provost, Bailies, Dean of the Guild, and 
 Council "being conveynitt," the following 
 
 order 
 
238 A Journey to the North 
 
 order was passed : " Ordanis the Deyne of 
 Gild to male Benjamyn Jonsoun, Inglisman, 
 burges and gild-brother in communi forma.'' 
 Now we are informed that " the common 
 form of admission in the case of ordinary 
 burgesses was that the applicant, armed in 
 some regulated manner with a corselet, a 
 hagbut, or the like, appeared before the 
 Dean of Guild and his colleagues of the 
 Guild Chamber, took the customary oath, 
 and paid a larger or smaller sum for his free- 
 dom according to the kind and the degree 
 of the trading privileges to which it entitled 
 him." But it is plain that Ben Jonson was 
 not seeking trading rights in the city of 
 Edinburgh, and the subsequent entries of 
 the register make patent that this was an 
 honorary admission to the rights and privi- 
 leges of citizenship, a favor bestowed only 
 on men of acknowledged rank or promi- 
 nence and such alone as the city delighted 
 to honor. A later entry grants ;^i3 6s. 8 d. 
 
 to 
 
A Journey to the North 239 
 
 to " Alexander Pattersone for wrytting and 
 gilting of Benjamine Johnestounes burges 
 ticket, being thryis writtin." The Council 
 was apparently not easily satisfied with Pat- 
 tersone's calligraphy, and wished the Eng- 
 lish poet to take back with him a becoming 
 memorial of their esteem and the honor of 
 their bestowal. Nor was this all ; a later min- 
 ute of the Council orders " the Thesaurer 
 to pay to James Ainslie, laite baillie, twa 
 hundreth twenty-ane pound, sex schillingis, 
 four pennyis, debursit be him upone the den- 
 ner maid to Benjamin Jonstoun, conforme 
 to the act maid thairanent and compt given 
 in of the same." No mean sum for a ban- 
 quet was £,11^ 6s. 4d,, even when computed 
 in debased Scottish coinage. Dear to the 
 heart of convivial Jonson must have been 
 this public honoring of the Muses in his 
 person in the city sometime to be called the 
 Athens of the North; and we may let our 
 imaginations play as we will about this 
 
 memorable 
 
240 A Journey to the North 
 
 memorable feast in which Sir William Nis- 
 bit,the Lord Provost, in the chair surrounded 
 by noblemen, scholars, chosen citizens, and 
 gentlemen of Scotland, sought worthily to 
 honor the greatest living poet of England. 
 Depend upon it, the tables groaned with 
 substantial fare and curious delicacies which 
 even the Nodes Ambrosiance of later days 
 were not to surpass ; nor could these north- 
 ern potations have been measured in terms 
 of the Mermaid, or even in the more tem- 
 perate draughts of the Apollo Room of the 
 Devil Tavern, Jonson's later favorite Lon- 
 don haunt. Though Ben Jonson might hold 
 his own in this as in all else, we may feel 
 sure that his hosts, remembering the occa- 
 sion, might have addressed their guest in 
 Herrick's hearty words : 
 
 For we such clusters had 
 As made us nobly wild, not mad, 
 
 And yet each verse of thine 
 Outdid the meat, outdid the frolic wine. 
 
 From 
 
A Journey to the North 
 
 241 
 
 From a literary point of view, however, 
 by far the most interesting man of Jonson's 
 meeting in Edinburgh was William Drum- 
 mond, Laird of Hawthornden, a poet of no 
 mean worth and a man of exemplary and 
 unaffected life. Thanks to his father's post 
 of gentleman usher to King James, young 
 Drummond, in his transit from the Univer- 
 sity of Edinburgh to the schools of Paris and 
 Bourges, had caught a glimpse of the Eng- 
 lish Court in 1606. He had stayed in Lon- 
 don long enough to purchase and to read — 
 we may believe with zest and profit to his 
 taste — some of the popular English books 
 of the time. For a contemporary list of his 
 reading contains Sidney's Arcadia, Lyly's 
 Euphues, poems of Drayton and other popu- 
 lar living poets, and, above all. Love's La- 
 bour 's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 Romeo and "Juliet, Lucrece, and The Passion- 
 ate Pilgrim. Drummond indeed was a very 
 cultivated man and added to the classical 
 
 training 
 
2 42 A Journey to the North 
 
 training befitting a gentleman of his station, 
 an acquaintance with French, Spanish, and 
 ItaHan authors, which travel, at least as far 
 as France, and reading had rendered consid- 
 erable. Although deeply interested in the 
 course of political affairs in his own and in 
 his foster country of England, and touching 
 at times the skirts of public life, Drummond 
 had nothing in common with the adventur- 
 ous horde of his fellow countrymen, which, 
 some dozen years before he had come into 
 his estate, had pressed southwards after their 
 King, intent to wrest their fortunes from 
 opulent England, and frequently offering no 
 better claim to the royal recognition than 
 the accident of their Scottish birth and their 
 unquestionable needs. Nor did Drummond 
 take an active part in the later turmoils that 
 hurried the nation to civil war and regicide, 
 though he was ever bold in the expression 
 of his loyalty to his King, and is reported 
 by some to have died of the shock received 
 
 in 
 
William Drummond 
 
A Journey to the North 243 
 
 in the news of King Charles's execution. 
 To the reserved and delicate temper of Wil- 
 liam Drummond, touched as he was with a 
 mellowing streak of the Epicurean, the inde- 
 pendence and seclusion of his paternal Haw- 
 thornden, its groves of oaks and beeches, its 
 rocky glens, "silvery Esk gliding between," 
 were things beyond the price of rubies. And 
 he doubtless envied very little his friend. Sir 
 William Alexander of Menstrie, a poet like 
 himself, but one who had exchanged the 
 reminiscent making of Senecan Monarchic 
 Tragedies, as he called them, for an active 
 life at the brilliant, frivolous, and vexatious 
 English Court, to the end that he might 
 write himself the Earl of Stirling. 
 
 Hawthornden House is still one of the 
 sights of the tourist to Edinburgh, who may 
 now go part way by train. He will recall 
 the depleted and polluted Esk, with much, 
 however, that is still picturesque and de- 
 lightful. Hawthornden is a fine old house, 
 
 hung 
 
244 
 
 A Journey to the North 
 
 hung on the edge of a cliff, half stronghold, 
 half commodious Jacobean dwelling. Above 
 are many and diamond-paned turret win- 
 dows, looking across the tree-tops to where 
 the stream, far below, swerves around a bend 
 to Polton. Beneath the house, cut in the 
 primitive red sandstone, are underground 
 chambers in which tradition affirms that 
 Robert Bruce once hid from the pursuing 
 soldiers of King Edward ; but which were 
 originally as likely as not the far earlier 
 stronghold of marauding Pictish chiefs. It 
 was to this pleasant seat, surrounded with 
 gardens, then as now, that Drummond wel- 
 comed Jonson and there he hospitably enter- 
 tained him for many days. 
 
 The two poets must have offered a strik- 
 ing contrast as they sat together under the 
 great sycamore tree that is still pointed out 
 to the credulous visitor. Jonson was a man 
 of great stature and exceeding bulk, with a 
 harsh-featured face, pitted with small-pox, a 
 
 stubble 
 
A Journey to the North 245 
 
 stubble beard, a tousled head, and careless 
 in his dress. Drummond, twelve years his 
 junior, was of delicate build and feature, of 
 somewhat precise manners, and, if we may 
 believe a contemporary miniature, rather 
 dainty in his attire, and fastidious even to 
 the curl and the trimming of his beard. 
 But Jonson, despite the misrepresentation 
 of three centuries, was no boor. Nor was 
 Drummond a fop. For twenty years the 
 English dramatist had known every man in 
 England worth knowing. He had conversed 
 with princes and received with self-respect 
 the patronage of lords and ladies. But he 
 had also served as a pikeman in his young 
 manhood, trod the stage as an unsuccessful 
 actor, and experienced the horrors of an 
 Elizabethan felon's cell. Drummond's life 
 had been far less eventful. He had lost the 
 bride of his youthful choice before their 
 marriage day and was still a bachelor, cher- 
 ishing the past with a sincere, if somewhat 
 
 sentimental. 
 
246 
 
 A Journey to the North 
 
 sentimental, regret, Jonson, who reported 
 his late wife " a shrew, but honest," was 
 now a widower. The years had taken from 
 him, also, a son and a daughter and touched 
 his rugged nature with Death's irreparable 
 stroke. But Jonson was no sentimentalist 
 and deprecated any unmanly show of feel- 
 ing as much as he deified the Jonsonian trin- 
 ity. Wit, Learning, and Honesty or Moral 
 Worth. 
 
 Nor were the literary ideals of the two 
 poets less at variance than their personalities 
 and their experience in life. Jonson's learn- 
 ing was almost wholly classical. Drummond 
 even affirmed that all the Englishman's criti- 
 cisms " of stranger poets " were " to no pur- 
 pose, for he neither doeth understand French 
 nor Italiannes." Be this as it may, Jonson 
 certainly had less sympathy and apprecia- 
 tion for the glories of Italian literature, for 
 Petrarch, Tasso, or Ariosto, than almost any 
 Elizabethan writer of note. The Scottish 
 
 poet. 
 
A Journey to the North 247 
 
 poet, on the contrary, was saturated with the 
 poetry of Italy, and in his love of that sweet 
 sensuousness and in his adoration of sym- 
 metry and convention in form, practised the 
 sonnet, the canzon, and the madrigal — 
 those exquisite yet artificial flowers of the 
 Italian Renaissance — in a manner which 
 Sir Philip Sidney had hallowed to the Eng- 
 land of a generation before. 
 
 Jonson's visit was the great event of Drum- 
 mond's life. Nor was it a trifle to hold the 
 greatest of living English poets in familiar 
 colloquy by the fireside. Drummond was 
 full of question and Jonson answered with 
 candor and the large overstatement of inti- 
 mate discourse. Happily for us, Drummond 
 regarded the occasion as so memorable that 
 he reduced to writing many of the remarks, 
 the criticisms of contemporary authors and 
 other personages, the anecdotes, and the opin- 
 ions of his distinguished guest ; in no wise 
 purposing, as has been unjustly and injuri- 
 ously 
 
248 A Journey to the North 
 
 ously inferred, to blazon them to the world, 
 but that all might inure to an interested pos- 
 terity. The Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversa- 
 tions with William Drummond is one of the 
 most valuable and interesting documents re- 
 lating to the great Elizabethan age which 
 time has suffered to reach us. In it we have 
 the unguarded utterance of a man whose 
 critical attainments and unparalleled oppor- 
 tunities entitled him to speak as few have 
 been privileged to speak. Many of his opin- 
 ions, it is true, were hasty, and some were 
 prompted by prejudice and personal ani- 
 mosity. Thus Daniel, his predecessor as the 
 chief poetical entertainer of the Court, was 
 "a good honest man, . . .but no poet;" 
 the dramatists, Dekker, Middletoh, and Day, 
 " were all rogues ; " " Francis Beaumont 
 loved too much himself and his own verses; " 
 and " Marston wrote his father-in-lawes 
 preachings, and his father-in-law his come- 
 dies." But who can doubt that the gleam 
 
 of 
 
A Journey to the North 
 
 249 
 
 of truth flashes out in the words that " Sir 
 Walter Raughley esteemed more of fame 
 than conscience," that " Salisbury never cared 
 for any man longer nor he could make use of 
 him," and that the late Queen "never saw 
 herself after she became old in a true glass." 
 Jonson was a good hater and an honest 
 one. Taxed by Inigo Jones, the King's 
 architect, with whom he had quarrelled, for 
 naming him a fool behind his back, Jonson 
 denied it; but declared: "You're ane ar- 
 rant knave, and I avouch it." On another 
 occasion he declared to Prince Charles 
 that " when he wanted words to express the 
 greatest villaine in the world, he would call 
 him ane Inigo." On the other hand Jon- 
 son was equally warm in his praises, getting 
 by heart and quoting with delight bits of 
 Spenser, Wotton, and other poets, affirming 
 that " so he had written The Burning Babe of 
 Father Southwell, he would have been con- 
 tent to destroy many of his own [poems]," 
 
 and 
 
250 A Journey to the North 
 
 and declaring of Donne that he was " the 
 first poet in the world in some things." 
 Modesty was not among the cardinal virtues 
 of Jonson. Half in jest but half in earnest 
 he called himself "The Poet." He hon- 
 estly stated it as his conviction that "next 
 himself, only Fletcher and Chapman could 
 make a masque ; " and he maintained with 
 warmth " that he was better versed, and 
 knew more Greek and Latin than all the 
 poets in England, and [even the] quintes- 
 sence [of] their braines." 
 
 We must add to all this an equally candid 
 and openly expressed opinion of his host, 
 in which he told Drummond that he was 
 " too good and simple, and that oft a man's 
 modestie made a fool of his wits ; " that as 
 to Drummond' s verses, " they were all good 
 . . . save that they smelled too much of the 
 schooles, and were not after the fancie of 
 the tyme." He even dissuaded Drummond 
 from poetry, "for that she had beggared 
 
 him 
 
A Journey to the North 251 
 
 him when he might have been a rich lawer, 
 physitian, or merchant." Can we wonder 
 that Drummond summarized Jonson as " a 
 great lover and praiser of himself; a con- 
 temner and scorner of others ; given rather 
 to losse a friend than a jest; . . . [he] 
 thinketh nothing well but what either he 
 himself or some of his friends and country- 
 men hath said or done ; he is passionately 
 kynde and angry ; careless either to gaine 
 or keep ; vindictive, but, if he be well an- 
 swered, at himself" ? 
 
 And yet the two poets exchanged many 
 subsequent greetings of friendship and es- 
 teem. One of several extant letters of Drum- 
 mond to Jonson contains information con- 
 cerning emblems and impressa, as they were 
 called, gathered at the solicitation of the 
 English poet. Others convey other archso- 
 logical information. On the other hand, 
 Jonson transcribed for Drummond certain 
 of his unpublished poems, one of which he 
 
 pompously 
 
252 A Journey to the North 
 
 pompously dedicates "To the honouring 
 respect born to the friendship contracted 
 with the right virtuous and learned Mr. 
 William Drummond, and the perpetuating 
 the same by all offices of love hereafter, I, 
 Benjamin Johnson, w^hom he hath honoured 
 w^ith the leave to be called his, have w^ith 
 rnine ovi^n hand, to satisfy his request, v^rit- 
 ten this imperfect song." Jonson never saw^ 
 Drummond's written opinion of his charac- 
 ter, which be it remembered Drummond 
 never sought to publish. Drummond knew 
 Jonson's summary of his own. Was Drum- 
 mond a traitor to friendship ? Are his Notes 
 to be regarded " a tissue of malevolence ? " 
 Let him who has never entertained a single 
 arriere pensee of his friend be both judge and 
 jury, while all others hold in respectful re- 
 membrance the Scottish laird, not only for 
 his poetry, but for his honest and unideal- 
 ized portrait of a veritably great, if superfi- 
 cially faulty, man. 
 
INDEX 
 
Index 
 
 Abercarny, 235. 
 
 Acokstus, 206. 
 
 Actors, 105-127, no. III, 136, 
 
 140, 145, 151, 156, 158, 168. 
 Adam Bell, 179. 
 Adventurers, 30, 31, 47, 51-53, 90, 
 
 91. 
 Aery of Children, An, 105-127. 
 Africa, 70, 71. 
 Aimwell, 44. 
 Ainslie, James, 239. 
 Alaham, 80, 81. 
 Alcaics, 98. 
 
 Alcazar, the battle of, 72. 
 Alchemist, The, 226. 
 Alchemy, 52. 
 Alenyon, Duke of, 5. 
 Alexander, Sir William, 243. 
 AU-HoUantide, 208. 
 Allegory, 10, 16. 
 
 AUeyn, Edward, 156,157,160,161. 
 Alphonsus, 140. 
 Anjou, Duke of, 88, loi. 
 Annandale, 223, 232. 
 Antony and Cleopatra, 165. 
 Apollo, 22. 
 
 Apollo Room, the, 240. 
 Ara Fortune, 210. 
 Arcadia, 100, 241. 
 Areopagus, the, 95-97- 
 
 Arion, 20, 21. 
 Ariosto, 246. 
 Aristotle, 100. 
 Armada, 180. 
 
 Arraignment of Paris, The, 120. 
 Arras, 36. 
 
 Ascham, Roger, 132. 
 Asclepiads, 98. 
 Astrophel and Stella, 100. 
 Ate, 120. 
 Aubades, 175. 
 
 Ayres, 182, 183, 186, 188, 189, 
 192, 193. 
 
 Bacchus, 16. 
 
 Bach, 183. 
 
 Bacon, Sir Francis, 30, 97, 224, 231. 
 
 Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 4. 
 
 Baiting, 16, 107, 156. 
 
 Ballads, 72, 175, 178, 179. 
 
 Bandora, the, 196. 
 
 Banquet at Kenilworth, 20. 
 
 Barbycan Street, 32. 
 
 Barnfield, Richard, 174. 
 
 Barns as theatres, 203. 
 
 Beauchamp Chapel, 77. 
 
 Beaumont, Francis, 82, 1 22, 1 56, 209, 
 
 248. 
 Beer, 39. 
 Beethoven, 200. 
 
 ^S^ 
 
Index 
 
 Bellum Grammaticale, 205. 
 
 Bevis of Southampton, 179. 
 
 Blackfriars, 1 1 4. 
 
 Borgias, the, zo6. 
 
 Bottom, 215. 
 
 Boulogne, 206. 
 
 Bourges, 241. 
 
 Braemar, 236. 
 
 Breast, a good, 175. 
 
 Breton, Elizabeth, 32, 38-45. 
 
 Breton, Nicholas, 32. 
 
 Breton, WiUiam, 29-47. 
 
 Bride-ales, 17-19, 179, 203. 
 
 Bruce, Robert, 244. 
 
 Bruno, Giordano, 79. 
 
 Buccaneering, 47, 52, 60-63. 
 
 Buchanan, George, 206. 
 
 Bullen, A. H., 189, 190. 
 
 Burdens, May-day, 175. 
 
 Burgh, 33. 
 
 Burghley, Lord, 4, 72. 
 
 Burning Babe, The, 249. 
 
 Burntisland, 235. 
 
 Byrd, William, 174, 187. 
 
 Caccini, 194. 
 Cadiz, 70. 
 Caelica, 81. 
 Caesar, Julius, 165. 
 Calatrava, the order of, 66. 
 Cambridge, 6, 11, 94, 108, 
 
 132, 205, 231. 
 Camden, William, 4, 231. 
 Camena, 81. 
 Campion, Thomas, 174, 186, 
 
 191-200, Z09. 
 Cardinal Wohey, 169. 
 Carew, Sir Peter, 62. 
 
 Carlisle, 223, 232, 235. 
 
 Carlow, 67. 
 
 Carols, 175. 
 
 Castle, Edinburgh, 235. 
 
 Catherlough, 70 
 
 Catullus, 193. 
 
 Cayas, 66. 
 
 Cecil, Robert, 4, 61, 64, 70, 84, 249. 
 
 Ceres, 16. 
 
 Chaloner, Sir Thomas, 61. 
 
 Champion, the royal, 87. 
 
 Chapel, her Majesty's, 7, 1 08-1 10, 
 113, 114, 116, 187. 
 
 Chapel children, the, 113. 
 
 Chapman, George, 122, 168, 170, 
 209. 
 
 Chappell, W., 186. 
 
 Charles I, 78, 242, 243. 
 
 Charles II, 127. 
 
 Charles V, 55, 206. 
 
 Charles, Prince, 249. 
 
 Charteris, Henry, 235. 
 
 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 93. 
 
 Chettle, Henry, 158, 168, 170. 
 
 Chevy Chase, 178. 
 
 Children actors, 105-127. 
 
 Chimneys, 35. 
 
 Chivalry, 87-90. 
 
 Choir-boys, 108, 109. 
 
 Choir-master, the, 109, 113, 114. 
 109, Christian IV, 188. 
 
 Christmas, 175, 179, 208, 210-212, 
 215, 216. 
 
 Cibber, Colley, 127. 
 189, Cittern, the, 174. 
 
 City, 39' 4°> 42> 45-47. 52. S3- 
 City Council of Edinburgh, 234, 237. 
 Civita Vecchia, 70. 
 256 
 
Index 
 
 Classic influence, 97, 98, 100, 246. 
 
 Clifton, Thomas, 115. 
 
 Clym of the C lough, 179. 
 
 Cock-fighting, 107. 
 
 College of God's Gift, 157. 
 
 Colleges, 207. 
 
 Come live with me and be my love, 181. 
 
 Comedy, 195, 205. 
 
 Commissioners, French, 88. 
 
 Conceit, loi, 181. 
 
 Consorts, 195, 199. 
 
 Contrapuntal composition, 179, 183, 
 
 186, 187, 192. 
 Controversy of Irus, A, 218. 
 Converso, 182. 
 Cork, 6z. 
 
 Cornets, 176, 196, 199. 
 Cory at, Thomas, 228. 
 Costume, 8, 88, 89, no, in, 158, 
 
 169, 181, 186, 194, 195. 
 Court, s, 7-9, II, 91, 92, 108, 
 
 204, 230. 
 Coventry, 19. 
 Cox, Captain, 20. 
 Creation of the White Knights of the 
 
 Order of Aristotles Well, The, 218. 
 Criticism, 225. 
 Crudities, 228. 
 Curtis, Sir Thomas, 59. 
 Cynthia, 120. 
 Cynthia' s Revels, 118, 120, 124. 
 
 Daborne, Robert, 160, 161. 
 
 Dafne, 194. 
 
 Dancing, 194, 196, 197—200, 204, 
 
 21 1. 
 Dancing-masters, 179. 
 Danes, overthrow of the, 1 9. 
 
 Daniel, Samuel, 248. 
 
 Darlington, 231. 
 
 Davenant, Sir WiUiam, 78. 
 
 Davey, H., 189. 
 
 Day, John, 248. 
 
 Days, the, as characters, 214. 
 
 Dee, Dr., 52. 
 
 Defence of Poesie, 100, 178. 
 
 Dekker, Thomas, 1 51-154, 159, 
 168, 170, 248. 
 
 Denmark, 140, 188. 
 
 Descanting, 174. 
 
 Detraction, 217. 
 
 Devil Tavern, 240. 
 
 Diana, 22, 23. 
 
 Diary, Henslowe's, 156-170. 
 
 Diary of a Resident of London, 41. 
 
 Discovery, 90, 91. 
 
 Dog Tavern, the, 227. 
 
 Donne, John, 250. 
 
 Douglas, 178. 
 
 Dowgate, 131. 
 
 Dovyland, John, 173, 174, 187, 188. 
 
 Drake, Sir Francis, 47, 63, 91. 
 
 Drama, Elizabeth and the, 10; adven- 
 ture commemorated in the, 52, 53; 
 on Stucley's life, 59, 60, 72; of 
 Greville, 80—82; children players 
 in the, 105—127; of Spenser's boy- 
 hood, 107, 108; the courtly and 
 academic, 108, 109, Z03— 219; 
 the Revels, 109; Field's attacks on 
 the, 117; ofjonson, 1 17, 1 18, 226; 
 satirical and allegorical, 117, 118, 
 120; of Marlovye and Shakespeare, 
 120, 121; realisdc, 122, 123; 
 playwrights often actors, 136; Eng- 
 lish, abroad, 140; of Greene, 140, 
 
 57 
 
Index 
 
 141 ; of Shakespeare, 141, 142; 
 Henslowe and the, 154-170; pro- 
 duction of new plays, 162, 163; 
 payment for plays, 168. See also 
 Actors, Masques, Playwrights, and 
 the various dramatic authors. 
 
 Drayton, Michael, 167, 169, 170, 
 184, 185, 241. 
 
 Dress, 8, 88, 89, no, in, 158, 
 168, 169, 186, 194. 
 
 Drum, the, 176, 195. 
 
 Drummond, William, his education, 
 241, 242; in London, 241; read- 
 ing in English poets, 241; not an 
 adventurer, 242; his loyalty, 242; 
 at Hawthornden, 243; contrasted 
 withjonson, 244; his bereavement, 
 245; his love of Italian poetry, 
 246; his entertainment of Jonson, 
 244—251; literary ideals of, 248, 
 249; his Notes of Conversations, 
 247, 24S, 252; Jonson's opinion 
 of, 250; letters of, to Jonson, 251, 
 252. 
 
 Dublin Castle, 65. 
 
 Duel, the, 41, 42. 
 
 Dulwich, 157, 160. 
 
 Dumps, 175. 
 
 Dutch, 9. 
 
 Dutch vyars, 43. 
 
 Dyer, Sir Edvirard, 95. 
 
 Eastward Hoe ! 46. 
 Edinburgh, 228, 232-241, 243. 
 Edward VI, 54, 93, 244. 
 Edwards, Richard, 109. 
 Elizabeth, her character and talents, 3— 
 II, 79; and Parliament, 5, 6; 
 
 learning of, 5, 8; and her Court, 5, 
 7-9, 91, 92, 100; a contemporary 
 portrait of, 8, 9; and the drama, 10, 
 107, 109, 113; the progresses of, 
 10-25; the age of, 30; and trade- 
 ventures, 52; and Stucley, 57, 60, ^ 
 62, 63, 65—67, 73; and buc- 
 caneering, 60—62; letter of Shane 
 O'Neill to, 63; and Greville, 78- 
 80, 83, 84, 91, 92; Greville' s remi- 
 niscences of, 83, 84; champion of, 
 87; negotiations for marriage of^ 88; 
 and the departure of Sidney and 
 Greville from- Court, 91, 92; her 
 withdrawals of favor, 100; pro- 
 jected marriage to Anjou, 100; and 
 theatres,__io2;_ allegorized in Epdi- 
 mion, l_20^ in the Arraignment of 
 Paris, 120; and the Faerie, ^eene, 
 135; and music, 175, 176; at 
 Gray's Inn, 209; Jonson's remark ' 
 upon, 249. 
 
 Embassy from Lubber land. An, 218. 
 
 Emblems, 251. 
 
 Endimion, 120, 121. 
 
 Epicaene or the Silent Woman, 118, 
 226. 
 
 Epigram, 6, 184, 193. 
 
 Epitaph on Salathiel Pavey, 1 1 9. 
 
 Esk, the, 243. 
 
 Essayes, Bacon's, 34. 
 
 Essex, 33. 
 
 Eugenia, 218. 
 
 Euphues, 241. 
 
 Euridice, 194. 
 
 Eyases, little, 105-127. , 
 
 Eyre, Simon, 46. 
 
 E zee hi as, 205. 
 
 58 
 
Index 
 
 Faerie ^eene. The, 97, 99, 135. 
 Falconbridge, 58. 
 Falstaff, 38, 165-167, 1 80. 
 Famous Victories of Henry V, The, 
 
 166. 
 Fauns, 16. 
 
 Faustina hath the fairer face, 184. 
 Faust us, 162. 
 Fencing-masters, 179. 
 Ferel, 67. 
 
 Ferrabosco, Alphonso, 195. 
 Festivals, musical, 199. 
 Fiddlers, 179. 
 Field, John, 117. 
 Field, Nathaniel, 1 16-1 18. 
 Fife, the, 176. 
 Fireworks, 16, 17. 
 Fletcher, John, 82, 122, 156, 250. 
 Florence, 194. 
 Florida, 57, 61. 
 Food, 20, 37, 38. 
 Fortune Theatre, the, 155. 
 Four Prentices of London, 52, 53. 
 Fragmenta Regalia, 79. 
 France, 8, 54, 55, 61, 64, 88, 100, 
 
 135, 242, 246. 
 French, 8, 100, 242, 246. 
 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 141. 
 Friendships, literary, 82. 
 Frobisher, Sir John, 9 1 . 
 Fuller, Thomas, 61. 
 Full fathom five my father lies, 185. 
 Furniture, 33, 35-37. 
 
 Galliard, the, 5. 
 
 Garden, an Elizabethan, 33, 34. 
 Garden of Delight, The Muses' ,191. 
 Garter, Knights of the, 7. 
 
 Gascoigne, George, 39-45, 97, 177. 
 
 Gascoigne, Thomas, 94, 
 
 Gawain, Sir, 20. 
 
 Geliffes, 38. 
 
 George a Greene, 141. 
 
 Gesta Grayorum, 209. 
 
 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 47, 53, 91. 
 
 Giles, Saint, 29, 33. 
 
 Glass panes, 35. 
 
 Glass, Venetian, 36. 
 
 Glees, 176. 
 
 Godly Exhortation, A, 117. 
 
 God's Gift, College of, 157. 
 
 Gray's Inn, 108, 192, 208, 209. 
 
 Greek, 8, 98, 99, 194, 250. 
 
 Greene, Robert, 94, 1 31-147. 
 
 Greenwich, 7. 
 
 Gregory XIII, 70—72, 
 
 Gremio, 36. 
 
 Grenville, Sir Richard, 47. 
 
 Gresham, Sir Thomas, 31. 
 
 Greville, Fulke, his tomb, 77; his glory 
 under Elizabeth, 79, 80; his dramas, 
 80; his friendship with Sidney, 82- 
 87; his Life of Sidney, 83; his part 
 in tourney, 87-89; his attempt to 
 sail with Drake, 9 1 ; celebrated with 
 Dyer by Sidney, 95. 
 
 Groatszuorth of Wit, A, 1 31-147. 
 
 Guilds, 108. 
 
 Guy of Warwick, 179. 
 
 Gyles, Nathaniel, 1 1 3-1 1 7. 
 
 Hakluyt, Richard, 90. 
 Hal, Prince, 121, 180. 
 Hamlet, 105, 106, 141, 165. 
 Hampton Court, 1 1 1 . 
 Hanay, John, 177. 
 
 ■59 
 
Index 
 
 Harington, Sir John, zoj. 
 Harpers, 178. 
 
 Harpsichord, the, 176, 196. 
 Harrison, William, 37. 
 Harvey, Gabriel, 94-99. 
 Hathway, Richard, 167, 169. 
 Having this day, my horse, my hand, my 
 
 lance, 89, 90. 
 Hawkins, Sir John, 31, 47, 53, 63. 
 Hawthornden, 241—252. 
 Henry II of France, 54. 
 Henry IV, 180. 
 Henry IV, 38, 165, 166. 
 Henry V, 121, 164, 165, 167, 180. 
 Henry V, 165. 
 
 Henry V, Famous Victories of, 166. 
 Henry VI, 163, 164. 
 Henry VI, 163, 164. 
 Henry VIII, 54, 58, 78, 93. '76, 
 
 195. 
 Henslowe, Philip, 154-170. 
 Henslowe' s Diary, 156—170. 
 Hentzner, Paul, 7. 
 Herrick, Robert, 240. 
 Hertfordshire, 206. 
 Hesse, Landgrave of, 188. 
 Hexameter, 98. 
 Heyvsrood, John, 93. 
 Heywood, Thomas, 52, 53, 168. 
 Higgs, Griffin, 209—219. 
 High Street, 234. 
 Highlands, the, 234, 235. 
 History, 84, 94. 
 Hobby-horses, no. 
 Hock-tide play, 1 9, 20. 
 HoUand, 9, 43. 
 Holyrood, 233, 235. 
 Homer, 170. 
 
 Horace, 118. 
 
 Houses, Elizabethan, 33—39, 233. 
 
 Hox-Tuesday play, 19, 20. 
 
 Humanism, 206. 
 
 Hume, Tobias, 186, 190. 
 
 Hunting, 16. 
 
 Hunts-up, the, 175. 
 
 Idron, 70. 
 
 Ignoramus, 205, 206. 
 
 Impresses, 251. 
 
 In praise of Music and Sweet Poetry, 
 
 173, 184, 187. 
 Inns of Court, 108, 192, 207—209. 
 Inns used for theatres, 107, 203. 
 Inquisition, the, 47. 
 Instruments, 174, 176, 179, 180, 
 
 189, 195-197, 199. 
 Interludes, no, 114, 203, 211. 
 Ira seu Tumulus Fortune, 216. 
 Ireland, 31, 62-67, 69, 70, 73, 
 
 135- 
 Iris, 22-24. 
 Isle of Dogs, 45. 
 // was a Lover and his Lass, 187. 
 Italian, 8, 242, 246. 
 Italy, 8, 97, 98, 100, 132, 134, 
 
 182, 185, 194, 242, 246, 247. 
 Itys, 212. 
 
 James I, 78, 79, 83, 156, 206, 223, 
 
 224, 235, 241. 
 Jew of Malta, The, 162. 
 Jevyes Garden, 33. 
 John, Don, of Austria, 65, 68. 
 John, Sir, Parson of Wrotham, 167. 
 Jones, Inigo, 195, 249. 
 Jones, Robert, 186, 189, 1 91. 
 
 260 
 
Index 
 
 Jonson, Ben, relation of, in time to the 
 members of the Areopagus, 97; and 
 Field, 117, 118; plays of, cited, 
 117, 118, 227; and Pavey, 118- 
 1 20; wrote for boy companies, 122; 
 payment of, as playwright, 168; 
 andHenslowe, 168, 170; masques 
 of, 195,226; and Inigo Jones, 195, 
 249; Ferrabosco, the composer for, 
 195; and the courtly drama, 204; 
 journey of, to the north, 223-252; 
 Scotch ancestry of, 223; appearance 
 andphysical infirmities of, 225, 244, 
 245; character of, 224, 232, 250- 
 2 5 2 ; the position of, 225-227,230, 
 240, 245, 246; folio of, 225; and 
 John Taylor, 228—230; purchases 
 shoes, 23 1; at Leith, 236, 237; 
 freedom of Edinburgh bestowed 
 on, 2 3 7-240 ; entertained by Drum- 
 mond, 244-25 1 ; wife of, 246; and 
 literature, 246, 247; conversation 
 of, with Drummond, 248—252; 
 estimate of himself, 250; Drum- 
 mond' s estimate of, 251. 
 
 Jonson, An Ode for Ben, 240. 
 
 yonson's Conversations with William 
 Drummond, Notes of Ben, 248. 
 
 Journey to the North, A, 223-259. 
 
 Jove, 22. 
 
 Julius Ctesar, 164, 165. 
 
 Juno, 22-24. 
 
 Juvenal, 144. 
 
 Katharine, 121. 
 Kavanagh, 67. 
 Kenilworth, 12-25. 
 Kenny-hate, 233. 
 
 Kenshlagh, 70. 
 
 King John, 58. 
 
 King Lear, 165. 
 
 King's College, 205. 
 
 Kinsale, 62, 67. 
 
 Knight of the Burning Pestle, 122. 
 
 Kyd, Thomas, 140, 142, 163, 164. 
 
 Kynaston, Francis, 127. 
 
 Lady of the Lake, 15. 
 
 Lafylond, 67. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 80, 81. 
 
 Laneham, Robert, 13-24. 
 
 Languet, Stephen, 79. 
 
 Latin, 5, 8, 16, 98, 108, 165, 192, 
 
 205-207, 210, 211, 214-216, 
 
 250. 
 Lear, King, 165. 
 Legge, Thomas, 205. 
 Leicester, Earl of, 12-25, 64> ii7> 
 
 120, 140. 
 Leinster, 67, 70. 
 Leith, 235-237. 
 Lennox, Duke of, 231. 
 Lent, 209, 216. 
 Lepanto, battle of, 68. 
 Letter, Laneham' s, 13-24. 
 Lincoln, 33. 
 Lisbon, 70. 
 
 Lodge, Thomas, 94, 141, 144. 
 Lomond, Loch, 232. 
 Looking Glasse for London, A, 141, 
 
 144. 
 Love's Labour's Lost, 241. 
 Lucrece, 241. 
 Luna, 215. 
 
 Lute, the, 174, 180, 196. 
 Lyly, John, 94, 120, 121, 204, 241. 
 61 
 
Index 
 
 Lyric, the, 174-177, 181, 186, 189, 
 192-194,200,225. See also M<»(/- 
 rigab. Song. 
 
 Machiavelli, 3, 80, 143. 
 
 Madrid, 61, 69. 
 
 Madrigals, 182-186, 188, 193, 247. 
 
 Mar, Earl of, 235. 
 
 Marenzio, Luca, 182. 
 
 Marlowe, Christopher, 97, 120, 140, 
 
 142, 143, 153, 162-164, 181, 
 
 204. 
 Marriage portions, 33, 39. 
 Mars, 16. 
 Marshalsea, 159. 
 Marston, John, 122, 170, 248. 
 Martial, 118. 
 Mary, Queen, 55. 
 Mary Queen of Scots, 206. 
 Masque, the, 10, 16, 109, 111, 152, 
 
 194-200, 203, 204, 209, 211, 
 
 216, 225, 226, 250. 
 Masque at the Marriage of the Lord 
 
 Hayes, 196. 
 Masson, David, 236. 
 May-day, 175. 
 Menstrie, 243. 
 Merchant, the, 30, 31, 39, 45-47, 
 
 5z» 53- 
 Merchant adventirrers, 47, 51-63. 
 Merchant of Venice, The, 1 64. 
 Merchant Tailors' School, 113. 
 Mercury, 22, 23. 
 Mercutio, 179, 180. 
 Mermaid at Kenilworth, the, 20. 
 Mermaid Tavern, the, 169, 240. 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 165. 
 Middleton, Thomas, 248. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, A, 17, 
 
 185, 215, 241. 
 Minstrels, 178-180. 
 Miracles, 19, 108. 
 Mirror for Magistrates, The, 93. 
 Mock-fights, 16, 19. 
 Moffat, 235. 
 
 Monarchic Tragedies, 243. 
 Monopolies, 47. 
 Montaigne, 206. 
 Moonshine, 215. 
 Moralities, 10, 19, 108. 
 Morley, Thomas, 174, 183, 185, 
 
 186. 
 Morocco, 52, 71. 
 Morough, 70. 
 Morris-dancing, 18, 211. 
 Mountjoy, Lord, 92. 
 Mummings, 203. 
 Munday, Anthony, 167, 169. 
 Murray, Sir William, 235. 
 Musa Transalpina, 181, 182. 
 Music, 15, 16, 109, 114, 173-200. 
 Musicians, 179, 180, 187, 188, 196. 
 Music-teachers, 179. 
 Mustafha, 80, 81. 
 My true love hath my heart, 185. 
 
 Nashe, Thomas, 141, 163, 205. 
 
 Naunton, Sir Robert, 79. 
 
 Neather Bow, 233. 
 
 Neptune, 20. 
 
 New Year's Day, 212. 
 
 Newcastle, 230. 
 
 Newington Butts, 155. 
 
 Nichols, John, 1 1 . 
 
 Nisbit, Sir William, 235, 240. 
 
 Noctes Ambrosiante, 240. 
 
 262 
 
Index 
 
 Norwich, 1 34. 
 
 Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations 
 zoith WilliamDrummond, 248, 252. 
 
 O Love ! they wrong thee much, 1 90. 
 O Sweet Content, 153. 
 Ode for Ben Jonson, An, 240. 
 Old Fortunatus, 153. 
 Oldcastle, Sir John, 166, 169. 
 O'Neill, Shane, 63, 64. 
 Opera, the, 194, 199. 
 Orations, 10. 
 
 Oxford, 6, II, 94, 108, 109, 203— 
 219, 231. 
 
 Pageants, 109, 203. 
 
 Palestrina, 183. 
 
 Pallas, 22. 
 
 Palsgrave, John, 206. 
 
 Pamphlet, the, 95, 135, 140, 152, 
 
 163. 
 Paris, 1 10, 241. 
 Parliament, 5, 6. 
 Passionate Pilgrim, The, 241. 
 Pastoral, the, 100. 
 Patient Grissil, 153. 
 Pattersone, Alexander, 239. 
 Paul's, children of, 108, no, 113. 
 Paul's Walk, 51, 121. 
 Pavey, Salathiel, 116, 118, 119. 
 Pedantius, 205. 
 Peele, George, 94, 120, 145. 
 Pembrolce, Earl of, 64. 
 Penelope's Wooers, zi6. 
 Penny les Pilgrimage . . . of John Tay- 
 lor, 228-230, 232, 233, 235-237. 
 Percy, 178. 
 Peri, 194. 
 
 Periander, 217. 
 
 Petrarch, 181, 246. 
 
 Pewter, 36. 
 
 Philip II, 65, 68-73. 
 
 Philomanthes, 215. 
 
 Philomela, 177. 
 
 Philosophus, 210. 
 
 Philosophy, 94. 
 
 Phoebus, 16. 
 
 Pianoforte, the, 176. 
 
 Piers Penniless, 163. 
 
 Pipe, the, 179, 195. 
 
 Piracy, 31, 47, 52, 60-63, 66. 
 
 Pius V, 53, 68, 69, 73. 
 
 Plain-song, 174. 
 
 Plautus, 108. 
 
 Playwrights, 136, 139-142, iji, 
 158-170. 
 
 Plymouth, 91. 
 
 Poet at Kenilworth, the, 15. 
 
 Poetaster, The, 118, 120. 
 
 Poetry, and Elizabeth, 10 ; of Gre- 
 vilie, 83 ; Sidney and the culti- 
 vation of, 90, 94, 99, 100, 181, 
 247; in Sidney's youth, 93, 94; the 
 Areopagus and, 94—101; of Spen- 
 ser, 135; and music, 173-200; 
 Bacon's witticism on, and Jonson, 
 224; of Jonson, 223—226, 247; of 
 Taylor, 227, 228; of Drummond, 
 246, 247; Jonson on certain poets, 
 248-250. 
 
 Polton, 244. 
 
 Polyolbiott, 167. 
 
 Pomona, 16. 
 
 Porters at Kenilworth, 15. 
 
 Portugal, 70. 
 
 Posies, 177. 
 63 
 
Ind 
 
 ex 
 
 Post of Leith, 237. 
 
 Poulderings, 210, Z14, zi8. 
 
 Prentices, 52, 53. 
 
 Preston, 235. 
 
 Prince, Christmas, 210, 212, 215, 
 
 2 1 6. 
 Prince of Purpoole, 208, 209. 
 Princeps, zio. 
 
 Privy Council of Scotland, 235. 
 Processions, 10. 
 Progresses, 3-25, 43. 
 Prologues, IZ3-126, 152, 212. 
 Properties, stage, 109-1 1 1, 158, 168, 
 
 169. 
 Proteus, 15. 
 Puppets, 203. 
 Puritanism, 47, 134, 204. 
 Purpoole, Prince of, 208, Z09. 
 Puttenham, George, 178. 
 
 Quintain, 18. 
 
 Radcliffe, Ralph, zo6. 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 4, 53, 187, 249. 
 
 Ralph Roister Doister, 205. 
 
 Recorder, the, 174. 
 
 Redcross Street, 29, 33, 40, 41. 
 
 Religion, 86. 
 
 Renaissance, the, 3, 247. 
 
 Repentance, The, 133. 
 
 Return from Parnassus, The, 123. 
 
 Revels, Queen's, 109. 
 
 Rhetoric, 94. 
 
 Richard Coeur de Lion, 58. 
 
 Richard III, 165. 
 
 Richard III, 165. 
 
 Richardus Tertius, 205. 
 
 Romances, 179. 
 
 Rome, 68, 73. 
 
 Romeo, 165, 179.' 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, 165, 179, 180, 
 
 241. 
 Rose Theatre, the, 155. 
 Ross, 70. 
 
 Rovrley, Samuel, 170. 
 Rusticus, 210. 
 
 Sackbut, the, 196. 
 
 Sackville, Thomas, 205. 
 
 St. Andrew's, Norwich, 134. 
 
 St. Brice's Day, 19. 
 
 St. Gyles, the clarke of, 214. 
 
 St. John's College, Oxford, Z09, zio, 
 
 214. 
 St. John's Day, 21 1.. 
 St. Mary's Church, Warwick, 77. 
 St. Paul's, 108, no, 113, 121. 
 St. Saviour's, Southwark, 155. 
 Salisbury, Earl of. See Cecil. 
 Sapphics, 98. 
 Savage men, 16. 
 Saxony, 55, 140. 
 Scarlotti, 183. 
 Scenery, 168, 195, 200. 
 Schlegel, 194. 
 
 Schools, 78, no, 113, 117, 207. 
 Scipio Africanus, no. 
 Scotch, 8. 
 
 Scotland, 8, 63, 2Z3-252. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 12. 
 Scrivener, the, 32. 
 Sebastian of Portugal, 70, 71. 
 Selden, John, 231. 
 Seneca, 81, 243. 
 Seras, 175. , 
 
 Serenades, 175. 
 
 264 
 
Index 
 
 Sermon, an Elizabethan, 5. 
 
 Seven Days of the Week, 214, 215. 
 
 Shakespeare, William, and the Queen's 
 progress, 13; works of, cited, 17, 
 36, 38, 58, 105, 106, 122, 141, 
 165, 179, 180, 185, 215, 241; 
 relation in time to Sidney, 97; and 
 the courtly drama, 121, 204; and 
 the boy companies, 122 ; and the 
 actor's profession, 136; Greene on, 
 141, 142, 145, 146; and Dekker, 
 151, 154; his career, 151; the 
 sonnets of, 153, 18 1; and Hens- 
 lowe, 156, 164, 165; the Falstaff 
 of, 165—167; payment of, 167; 
 love for music, 174; song-books 
 during the life of, 180; songs of, 
 185, 187; and Beethoven, 200; 
 read by Drummond, 241. 
 
 Sharers, 158. 
 
 Shepheardes Kalender, The, 90. 
 
 Shews, 87, 109, 211, 212, 216. 
 
 Shoemakers Holiday, The, 46. 
 
 Shrewsbury School, 78. 
 
 Shrove Tuesday, 216. 
 
 Sibyls, 15. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Henry, 64. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, and Elizabeth, 
 4; schoolmate of Greville, 78; trav- 
 elled with Languet, 79; friendship 
 with GreviUe, 82-101; life of, by 
 Greville, 83-86, 91; Greville' s 
 tribute to, 85, 86; at the tourney, 
 87-90; sonnet of, 89, 90; inter- 
 ested in discovery and adventure, 
 90, 91; plans to leave Court, 91, 
 92; literature in the youth of, 93, 
 94; at Oxford, 94; founded the 
 
 Areopagus, 95-99; study of pros- 
 ody, 99, 100; aims and achieve- 
 ments in literature, 94, 99, 100, 
 181, 247; works of, 99, 100, 241; 
 Defence quoted, 178; My true love 
 hath my heart, 185. 
 
 Sidney, Life of the Renowned Sir 
 Philip, 83-86, 91. 
 
 Silent if Oman, The, 118, 226. 
 
 Silver, 36. 
 
 Simples, 34. 
 
 Singing, 114, 174, 176. 
 
 Sir John Oldcastle, First Part, 166, 
 167. 
 
 Sir Thomas Stucley, 59, 60. 
 
 Sir Thopas, The Tale of, 178. 
 
 Skelton, John, 93. 
 
 Slavery, 31, 46. 
 
 Smerwick, 3 1 . 
 
 Snuffers, a pair of, as a character, 214. 
 
 Snug, 215. 
 
 Somerset, Duke of, 54. 
 
 Somnium Fundatoris, 214. 
 
 Song-books, 180, 182, 183, 186, 191, 
 192. 
 
 Songs and song- writing, 10, 173-200. 
 
 Sonnet, the, 40, 43, 100, 174, 181, 
 247. 
 
 Sophocles, 81. 
 
 South wark, 155. 
 
 Southwell, Robert, 177, 249. 
 
 Spain, 5, 8, 31, 52, 53, 61, 64-73, 
 91, 100, 242. 
 
 Spanish, 8, 31, 242. 
 
 Spanish Tragedy, The, 163. 
 
 Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 
 80, 81. 
 
 Spendthrift, the Elizabethan, 44. 
 
 65 
 
Index 
 
 Spenser, Edmund, and Elizabeth, 4; 
 and the Spanish invaders of Ireland, 
 30, 31; at Cambridge, 94; corre- 
 spondence with Harvey, 96; ex- 
 periments in classical metres, 98, 
 99; London in boyhood of, 107; 
 the Faerie ^eene of, 135; referred 
 to in Barnfield's sonnet, 173, 188; 
 supreme beauty of the poetry of, 
 181; quoted by Jonson, 249. 
 
 Spiggott, Good wife, 212. 
 
 Spinet, the, 176. 
 
 Stage, the, 216. 
 
 Star-Chamber, the, 116. 
 
 Starveling, 215. 
 
 Steele Glas, The, 43. 
 
 Stirling, 232. 
 
 Stow, John, 33. 
 
 Stuart, John, 236, 238. 
 
 Stuart, Mary, 65. 
 
 Stucley, Thomas, 51-73. 
 
 Stucley, Sir Thomas, 59, 60. 
 
 Stultus, 210. 
 
 Such was old Orpheus' cunning, 185. 
 
 SulFolk, Duke of, 54. 
 
 Sun Tavern, the, 227. 
 
 Sunday night, 215. 
 
 Sur&ce, Charles, 44. 
 
 Surrey, Earl of, 94, 97. 
 
 Swan Theatre, the, 155. 
 
 Sycamore at Hawthornden, 244. 
 
 Sylvanus, 16. 
 
 Table, the, 20, 37, 38. 
 
 Tabor, the, 195. 
 
 Tacitus, 80. 
 
 Tah, O take, those lips away, 185. 
 
 Tamburlaine, 140, 162, 
 
 Taming of the Shrew, The, 36. 
 
 Tapestry, 36. 
 
 Tasso, 246. 
 
 Tavern, the, 226, 227, 231, 240. 
 
 Taylor, John, 227—230, 232, 233, 
 
 235-237- 
 Temple, Inner and Middle, 108. 
 Terence, 108. 
 Thalia in Oxford, 203-219. 
 Theatres, the, 107, 114-116, 121, 
 
 155-170, 216. 
 Third Book of Ayres, 192. 
 Tilbury, 6. 
 
 Tilting, 15, 16, 87, 88. 
 Time's Complaint, 212-214. 
 Timon of Athens, 165. 
 Titus Andronicus, 164. 
 Tobacco, as a character, 125. 
 Tolbooth, the, 234. 
 Tottel's Miscellany, 93, 94. 
 Touchstone (in Eastward Hoe !'), 46. 
 Tourney in 1 581, 88. 
 Tragedy, 194, 205, 216-218. 
 Tragedy of Philomela, The, 211. 
 Translation, 225. 
 Triple Tvm Tavern, the, 227. 
 Triton, 20. 
 Triumph, a, 1 10. 
 Trumpet, the, 15, 176, 195. 
 Turkey, 68. 
 Twelve Days, 211. 
 Two Pastorals, 95, 96. 
 Tybalt, 179. 
 
 Udall, Nicholas, 205. 
 
 Universities, 6, 11, 94, 108, 132, 
 
 203-219, 231, 235, 241. 
 Usury, 47. 
 z66 
 
Index 
 
 Venus, 22, 1 20. 
 
 Versification, 93, 94, 98-100, 192, 
 
 224. 
 Vigikte on Candlemas Night, 215, 
 
 216. 
 Viol de gamboys, the, 174. 
 Violin, the, 196. 
 Virginals, the, 176, 187. 
 Virginia, 91, 135. 
 Voyages, Hakluyt's, 90. 
 
 Wagner, 200. 
 
 Walsingham, Sir Francis, 4, 70. 
 
 Walthamstow, 32, 42, 44. 
 
 War of the Theatres, the, 121. 
 
 Warwick, 77. 
 
 Warwick Castle, 78. 
 
 Warwickshire, 12—25. 
 
 Watson, Thomas, 94. 
 
 Waver ley Novels, 168. 
 
 Weavers, 175. 
 
 Westcot, Sebastian, no. 
 
 Westminster School, no, 113, 117. 
 
 Wexford, 70. 
 
 When Music and Sweet Poetry agree, 
 
 173-200. 
 Whitsuntide, 88. 
 Whittington, Sir Richard, 52. 
 Will, An Elizabethan, 29-47. 
 William the Silent, 79. 
 Wilson, John, 186. 
 Wilson, Robert, 167, 169. 
 Windsor, no, 180. 
 Woman Killed with Kindness, A, 168. 
 Women-actors, 127. 
 Worthies of England, 61. 
 Wotton, Sir Henry, 249. 
 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 94. 
 Wykes, 33. 
 
 Yong, Nicholas, 181, 182. 
 York, 230. 
 
 Yule-tide Melody of Christmas Sports, 
 215. 
 
 Zabeta, 22, 23. 
 
 Zabeta, Masque of, 21-24. 
 
 267 
 
Elactroty^ed and prinUd by H. O. Houghton &' Co. 
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