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THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
'Tt^^^ 
 
THE ENGLISH 
 
 CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 A STUDY IN THE POPULAR HISTORICAL 
 
 LITERATURE ENVIRONING 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 
 
 BY 
 FELIX E. SCHELLING 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 
 
 NekD ¥orfe 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
 1902. 
 
Copyright, 1902, by 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 THE New Era priniing Company. 
 Lancaster, pa. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In the following pages an attempt has been made to 
 tell the history of one of the many and various strands 
 which, twisted and' interwoven, form the brilliant and 
 heterogeneous Elizabethan Drama. There is always 
 a danger in thus seeking to separate what in reality is 
 part of an integral whole ; for not only was the Eng- 
 lish Chronicle Play deeply influenced by the wealth 
 of literature in other forms which dealt with the gene- 
 ral subject of English history, but it influenced and was 
 in turn affected by many other varieties of drama that 
 flourished simultaneously with it. None the less the 
 Chronicle Play can be treated independently with 
 greater justice than any other form of the drama; for 
 whatever the superficial influences upon it, it retained 
 from first to last a character essentially national and 
 English. 
 
 The most potent influences on the English drama 
 when Marlowe, Shakespeare and Fletcher held the 
 stage were the spirit of culture which centered in the 
 court and emanated from Italy, and the spirit of learn- 
 ing, the seats of which were appropriately the Uni- 
 versities and the Inns of Court. The spirit of Italian 
 culture was earliest typified in the drama by the court 
 plays of Lyly the Euphuist, and later combined with 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 other influences in the great romantic drama of Mar- 
 lowe and Shakespeare. The spirit of learning first be- 
 came manifest in the regular drama in plays of the type 
 of Gorboduc, and was further exemplified in the trage- 
 dies and comedies of modified classical tone of Jonson, 
 Chapman, Daniel and others. Neither of these general 
 types was wholly unaffected by the other, especially in 
 the many forms which both later evolved. A third 
 master influence in the development of the English 
 drama has been by some unwisely denied. This is 
 the English national spirit, the spirit which, from the 
 days" of the early sacred drama to the present time, 
 has animated those scenes which seek the simple dra- 
 matic representation of everyday life or strive to make 
 real the deeds of great historical personages of the 
 past. When all has been said for the effect of the 
 study of Seneca, the imitation of Plautus, pilferings 
 from Italy and the inspiration of romance, it is this 
 national fiber which remains the heart and soul of the 
 Elizabethan stagfe, whether displayed in overpowering 
 tragedy like Arden of Feversham, in hearty comedies 
 such as The Merry Wives of Windsor, or in the long 
 series of plays depicting the history of English kings 
 which for years disputed with the romantic drama the 
 supremacy of the stage. This is not the place in which 
 to trace these relations. It is sufficient here to affirm 
 that the impulse under which the English Chronicle 
 Play developed was distinctively national and little in- 
 
PREFACE Vll 
 
 fluenced by artistic selection of material or by scholarly 
 avoidance of incongruity and anachronism. The past 
 was frankly translated into the terms of the familiar pres- 
 ent. The life of this drama was its ingenuous fidelity to 
 the actualities of everyday life. In these qualities con- 
 sisted largely its power to move the men of its day. 
 
 That Shakespeare should form the center of any 
 phase of study of the age of Elizabeth needs neither 
 justification' nor excuse. Of the thirty-seven plays 
 commonly included in editions of his works ten con- 
 cern the lives and deeds of English sovereigns and 
 events of their reigns, and three others — King Lear, 
 Macbeth and Cymbeline — are set in legendary British 
 times. It is thus apparent that more than a third of 
 Shakespeare's activity as a dramatist was devoted to 
 the Chronicle Play. Nowhere is his preeminence over 
 all his contemporaries at once so striking and so com- 
 plete. The only approach to his stately procession 
 of English kings from John to Henry VIII. is a single 
 play of Marlowe, another of Ford and a few dis- 
 jointed scenes of Heywood. And yet nowhere is 
 Shakespeare discerned to be so fully and so logically 
 the product of his age ; building on what he found, 
 essaying no miracles, unerring master of every possi- 
 bility of his art, yet contravening no natural law, 
 reaching what had seemed the unattainable not by 
 the cataclysm of irresistible genius and inspired hap- 
 hazard, but by the orderly processes of growth. 
 
VIU PREFACE 
 
 The foundations of the following study are in the 
 plays themselves and in the several contemporary 
 records of the drama, chief among them Henslowe's 
 indispensable Diary and the registers of the Stationers' 
 Company. The author is not' one of those that seek 
 to belittle the eminent services of our elder English 
 dramatic critics. Malone, Dyce and Gifford followed 
 with respect, Lamb and Coleridge with enthusiasm 
 and Collier at all times with circumspection are guides 
 whom none can afford to despise. Admirable too is 
 the assiduous industry and learning with which scholars 
 like Klein and Professor Ward have traversed large 
 sweeps of the drama or, like the many able German 
 writers of monographs, have illuminated specific parts 
 of the subject ; while with all his wanderings and 
 contradictions, in the mass of material which he has 
 unearthed and in the happy suggestiveness of many 
 of his surmises Mr. F. G. Fleay has done all students 
 of the English drama an inestimable service. 
 
 The Table of Extant Plays presents in epitome the 
 classification which has resulted from this study. In 
 the middle column will be found those plays which 
 strictly fulfil the conditions of the historical or bio- 
 graphical Chronicle Play. On either hand are grouped 
 the allied species which owe their method — but not 
 their subject-matter — to the earlier influence of Seneca 
 or which strayed into the fields of pseudo-history, 
 myth or romance. The List of Plays refers the reader 
 
PREFACE IX 
 
 to the sources of information and may serve as a bib- 
 liography in outline. The dates of first acting in both 
 lists must be regarded as approximate from frequent 
 want or conflict of evidence. An edition later than 
 the first is mentioned only where the play has been 
 reprinted in a collection or journal, or separately pub- 
 lished with a more or less authoritative text. Titles, 
 after first mention in the text, are shortened and 
 normalized for convenience. The passages from plays 
 quoted in the text are given as nearly as possible in 
 the typography of the original editions; not, it is 
 hoped, from any idolatrous worship of every " Eliza- 
 bethan goose-print," as Lowell once put it, but from 
 a conviction that the form and the spirit of old liter- 
 ature are generally so indissolubly wedded that the 
 one is certain to be impaired by any tampering with 
 the other. 
 
 For the loan and use of books my thanks are espe- 
 cially due to Dr. Horace Howard Furness, to the 
 libraries of Harvard, Cornell and Columbia Universi- 
 ties and to the British Museum, the courtesies of 
 which, though extended to all, are none the less de- 
 serving of appreciative recognition. To my friend 
 and colleague, Professor Clarence G. Child, I owe 
 grateful acknowledgment for much sympathy, for 
 many valuable suggestions and for the Index. 
 
 Felix E. Schelling. 
 
 December, X901. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Preface . . . v 
 
 I. Forerunners of the Chronicle Play . i 
 
 II. Growth of the Chronicle Play ; Its Distri- 
 bution AND Literary Relations . 30 
 
 III. Shakespeare's Predecessors : Marlowe and 
 
 Historical Tragedy . 56 
 
 IV. The Marlowe-Shakespeare Plays . 75 
 
 V. Shakespeare, and the Triumph of the Epic 
 
 Type 98 
 
 VI. Popular Playwrights : Modifications of the 
 
 Type . 134 
 
 VII. The Legendary Chronicle Play 172 
 
 VIII. The Biographical Chronicle Play . . . 208 
 
 IX. Plays on Henry VIII. and Later Historical 
 
 Dramas ... . 242 
 
 Table of Extant Plays . . . 276 
 
 List of Plays on English Historical Subjects . 278' 
 
 Index 287 
 
THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 FORERUNNERS OF THE CHRONICLE 
 PLAY 
 
 It is the purpose of this book to relate the story of 
 the English Chronicle Play, to treat of its origin, its 
 flourishing in the age of Queen Elizabeth and of its 
 decline in the two folldwing reigns, and to touch so 
 far as necessary its relation to other forms of contem- 
 porary drama and literature. Among the many and 
 diverse forms which the English drama displayed in 
 the latter part of the sixteenth century there is none 
 which was at once so popular in its day and so dis- 
 tinctively English as that which drew its subject-mat- 
 ter from the historical lore of the national chronicles. 
 For years this variety of drama disputed with Ro- 
 mantic comedy and tragedy the supremacy of the 
 stage and only yielded to defeat with the subsidence 
 of the national spirit of which it was born. The 
 English Chronicle Play began with the tide of patriot- 
 ism which united all England to repel the threatened 
 invasion of Philip of Spain. It ebbed and lost its 
 national character with the succession of James, an 
 
 2 I 
 
2 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 un-English prince, to the throne of Elizabeth. Within 
 the period from 1586 to 1606 (counting in a few out- 
 riders before and after) no less than a hundred and 
 fifty plays of the general type of the chronicle history 
 were written and performed, ranging in subject from 
 the mythical coming of Brute to England, through 
 the doings of legendary Britons, of more historical 
 Roman, Saxon and Norman times, to events of which 
 some of the auditors may have been recent witnesses 
 or even participants. These plays spread on broad 
 canvas and with equal facility the civil broils of king 
 and feudal baron, the murderous intrigues of usurping 
 tyranny or the glories of English arms abroad. There 
 is no human passion from the dainty loves of Prince 
 Edward and the fair maid of Fressingfield or the 
 pathos of the repentance of erring Jane Shore to the 
 infatuated <;riminality of Macbeth and the sublime 
 ravings of King Lear which is not found in these re- 
 markable plays ; which, beside the work of a score 
 of lesser playwrights, include some of the most con- 
 summate dramatic work of Marlowe, Greene, Hey- 
 wood, Fletcher and Ford and more than a third of the 
 dramas which have given immortality to Shakespeare. 
 The Chronicle Play has been called distinctively ' 
 English. Its growth was indigenous, its spirit national. 
 Neither the schoolmaster, with his scraps of learning 
 and covert didactic purpose, nor the University man 
 with his Senecan ideals and apothegms had much to 
 
FORERUNNERS 3 
 
 do with it : nor had the Italianate English courtier, 
 whose conduct was guided by the nice rules of Cas- 
 tiglione's // Cortegiano and whose parleyings wereeu- 
 phuistic. Or if either had, he sank the scholar and the 
 courtier , in the Englishman and responded to the 
 mimic appeals to his patriotism as he had responded, 
 irrespective of the ties of tradition and religion, to the 
 actual call of his queen to repel the attack of a for- 
 eign invader. It is for this reason that the Chronicle 
 Play discloses an independence in nature and growth 
 above that of any other species of the contemporary 
 drama. With little of the learning of the schools upon 
 it and less of the exotic culture of Italy, the Chronicle 
 Play may be considered in the development of the 
 English Drama practically as a thing apart. Indeed 
 its affiliation to the wealth of historic literature in verse 
 and prose, which was springing up about it and to 
 which our attention will be presently addressed, was 
 closer than its relation to other varieties of the drama. 
 In this aspect the Chronicle Play becomes the crown 
 of a deeply rooted interest in historic tradition which 
 has animated English literature from the earliest 
 times, an interest which sought utterance in dramatic 
 form in the reign of Elizabeth because the dramatic 
 was the most potent mode of literary expression in 
 that favored age. 
 
 The old sacred drama had been devoid of national 
 feeling or character, and so it remained. It persisted 
 
4 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 in collective and single mysteries, in the morality and 
 bible play, and came to an end when its original 
 design, the teaching of biblical story, was forgotten 
 and a specific didactic purpose had ceased to animate 
 it. But this latter element was not lost. It was 
 merely transferred, undiluted and unrestrained, to the 
 scholastic morality and interlude, whence it continued 
 in diminished rigor in the Senecan play and in the 
 college drama, and percolated even into the popular 
 stage, there to act, for the most part, as a regulative 
 and restraining force. But didacticism had the power, 
 artistically speaking, of leading nowhither. The 
 spark of dramatic life in the midst of all this mum- 
 ming, symbolism, allegory and preaching, lay in the 
 simple representations of the life of the Holy Family 
 and in the interpolated comedy scenes of both mystery 
 and morality, of which the interlude of Mak, the 
 Sheep-stealer, in the Townley Mysteries is an excellent, 
 if a stock, example. This element of comedy is refer- 
 able to man's love of home and familiar surroundings 
 and is ultimately the root of that form of the drama 
 which deals with the relations of everyday hfe and 
 whose instinctive creed is a rigid adherence to fact. 
 But there was another well-spring of secular drama 
 which lay beyond the domain of mystery and moral 
 play. This is to be found in the sturdy undergrowth 
 of medieval balladry, in the rude but wholesome stories 
 of folk-lore in which the popular love of action and 
 
FORERUNNERS 5 
 
 the spirit of English nationality was preserved. The 
 ultimate source of this element is in the sense of com- 
 munity, of feudal faith and loyalty, and in man's love 
 of country. A play may disclose a ruling interest 
 in the present : in the delineation of contemporary 
 civic or rural life, domestic and family relations set in 
 English scene and represented under English condi- 
 tions, or in the travels and adventures of contemporary 
 Englishmen abroad. Or a play may disclose a rul- 
 ing interest in the past : in national history, biography 
 of great personages, legend or folk-lore. Herein is 
 the chief diversity of the two groups just distinguished 
 and the line of their demarcation. The historical 
 group and a large part of the dramas of domestic life 
 are frankly realistic and concerned with the repre- 
 sentation of deeds and the actors of them alone. But 
 an important group of domestic plays give a satirical 
 turn to their representations of life, thus handing down 
 unbroken the traditions of the medieval stage. On 
 the other hand, plays derived from folk-lore or treating 
 of travel and adventure -are frequently tempered with 
 the spirit of romance. Though our present concern 
 is wholly with that class of plays which rises out of. an 
 interest in the deeds of the past and is nourished by 
 the spirit that makes a people a nation, the circum- 
 stance that this spirit often manifested itself in terms 
 of the present makes an arbitrary line of demarcation 
 impossible. Scenes portraying the relations of every- 
 
6 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 day Elizabethan life shall then claim our attention only 
 in so far as they become an element in the presentation 
 of what is more strictly the English historical drama. 
 The English Chronicle Play traced to its origin dis- 
 closes one root in the old sacred drama, a second in 
 the non-religious pageantry of the middle ages and in 
 the popular folk-lore of old English balladry. From 
 the first is derived the play of St. George, from the 
 second that of Robin Hood and the few pageants com- 
 memorative of local historical events, such as the Hock 
 Tuesday Play, of Coventry. Medieval delight in pro- 
 cessions and pageantry calls for no word here. Pag- 
 eantry was universally employed in the presentation of 
 the religious drama and allegorical and figurative de- 
 vices from sacred and classic history were common on 
 secular and political occasions, especially in the "rid- 
 ing" as the ceremonials attending a royal or other 
 entry were called. Here we naturally look for the 
 earliest examples of the representation of historical 
 characters. In "a riding against Queen Margaret," 
 as the phrase went, wife of Henry VI., at Coventry in 
 1455, St. Edward and King Arthur figured, the latter 
 as one of the nine worthies. In 1511 another Margaret, 
 the Scottish Queen, was welcomed to Aberdeen in a 
 riding in which "the giant emperor Bruce" and "the 
 Stewarts" offered addresses of welcome.^ When 
 
 ^ Sharp, Dissertation on Pageants, 1825, p. 146, and The Queen's 
 Reception at Aberdeen, Works of Dunbar, ed. 1863, p. 288. 
 
FORERUNNERS 7 
 
 Queen Elizabeth moved in procession through Lon- 
 don to her coronation the first pageant which she met 
 was that of a battlemented arch spanning the street 
 from two towers, the one supporting the branches of 
 a red rose-tree, the other a white. On successive stages 
 rising to the middle were placed figures personated by 
 children representing the princes of the houses of Lan- 
 caster and York and the parents of the queen, whilst 
 an image of her majesty's self crowned the whole.^ 
 
 But such pageants as these are rare and held but a 
 small place beside the Virtues and Vices, the biblical 
 and classical figures in which medieval pageantry 
 abounds. English annals offer no analogue to the 
 interesting mysteres patriotiques which the misfortunes 
 of the Hundred Years' War caused to flourish in 
 France.^ The germ of the national drama in Eng- 
 land is none the less recognizable in several varieties 
 of early dialogues, pageants and shows. There is 
 record as early as 141 6 of a pageant of St. George 
 of Cappadocia acted before the Emperor Sigismund 
 and Henry V. on the former's visit to Windsor. 
 
 ' See The Passage of our most drad Soveraigne Lady Queue Eliza- 
 beth, 1558-9, reprinted by Nichols, Progresses of Queen Elizabeth, 
 1823, I. 38. This device of the union of the houses of Lancaster and 
 York was repeated at Norwich in 1578. 
 
 2 Cf. Le Mystire du siige d' Orlians, originally a procession, but re- 
 peated yearly with a representation of the events of the siege. La 
 Dicomfiture de Talbot advenue en Bordelais, I453, and the allegorical 
 Le Liopard anglais acted before Charles VIII. at Vienne in 1493. 
 On this general topic see Bapst, Essai sur I' Histoire du Thldtre, 1890, 
 P- 15- 
 
8 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 This production was divided into three parts and ex- 
 hibited first, "the armyng of Seint George and an 
 Angel doyng on his spores" ; secondly, "Seint George 
 ridyng and fightyng with the dragon with his spere 
 in his hand " ; and lastly, " a castel, and Seint George 
 and the Kynges daughter ledyng the lambe in at the 
 castel gates." ' It is not clear from the description 
 whether this performance was a dumb show or a moral 
 play. The subject is certain, however, and we may 
 surmise that in the year succeeding the battle of 
 Agincourt and before a foreign prince who had come 
 to England expressly to mediate peace with a con- 
 quered foe, the spirit of English patriotism had at 
 least as much to do with the choice of theme as any 
 celebrity of the militant Cappadocian saint. Ten 
 Brink is of opinion that the play of St. George was 
 widely spread in England, and he adds : " in many 
 places this drama may have contained remnants of 
 a native tradition reaching far into the past." ^ That 
 this is more than mere surmise is proved by certain evi- 
 dences, few but conclusive. In a letter bearing date 
 April 1 6, 1473, Sir John Paston complains : "I have 
 ben, and ame troblyd with myn over large and curteys 
 delyng with my servants." To instance which he 
 mentions one "W. Woode whyche promysed yow 
 and Dawbeney, God have hys sowle, at Castre, that 
 
 'Collier, History of English Dramatic Poetry, 1831, I. 20. 
 2 Geschichte der englischen Litteratur, 1893, II. 305. 
 
FORERUNNERS 9 
 
 iff ye wolde take hym in to be ageyn with me, that 
 then he wold never goo ffro me, and ther uppon I 
 have kepyd hym thys iij yer to pleye Seynt Jorge 
 and Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyngham, and 
 now when I wolde have good horse, he is goon into 
 Bernysdale, and I withowt a keeper."' Here the 
 juxtaposition of "Seynt Jorge" and "Robyn Hod" 
 with the keeping of a man for the acting of such parts 
 in the household of a baron is highly suggestive and 
 indicates a complete transfer of George from the ca- 
 tegory of saints to the role of a popular hero. Men- 
 tion of a later performance of a play on the subject 
 of St. George is that of Bassingbourne, in 151 1. 
 This play was plainly of a religious cast and con- 
 cerned "the holy martir Seynt George." It was 
 presented on St. Margaret's Day and several neigh- 
 boring villages joined in defraying the expenses. 
 Still another play of St. George was " regularly acted 
 on All Souls' Day at a village a few miles from 
 Chester."^ Two short specimens of plays of this 
 class have been preserved. They are The Oxford- 
 shire St. George Play, performed at various times and 
 places up to 1853, and The Lutterworth Christmas 
 Play, acted apparently for the last time a decade later. 
 Both are too conscious and full of modern and ex- 
 traneous influences to be regarded as in any wise 
 
 ' The Paston Letters, ed. Gairdner, III. 89. 
 
 *See Sharp, as above, p. 34, and Child, English and Scottish 
 Popular Ballads, 1898, V. 291. 
 
lO THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 actually typical of the remote past out of which it is 
 not improbable that they have actually descended. 
 
 From the plays of St. George we turn to those on 
 Robin Hood. The close connection of the two has 
 already been suggested by the passage from the letter 
 of Sir John Paston quoted above. The affiliations of 
 the plays on Robin Hood are neither religious, ethical 
 nor dramatic, but epic, in their relation to popular bal- 
 ladry, and national from the fact that this redoubtable 
 hero of outlawry became in English folk-lore the typ- 
 ical figure of the yeoman's ideal of free England. 
 This is not the place in which to discuss the dramatic 
 qualities of old English ballads, especially as our 
 present concern is wholly with those ballads in which 
 the first growths of national feeling may be traced. 
 In the typical ballad of Robin Hood we have the 
 recital of the deeds of many personages and that 
 recital frequently takes the form of dialogue, at times 
 of the most animated nature, where the countenance 
 and attitude of the reciter, his changes of voice and 
 variety of gesture, must have counted for much. It 
 was only a matter of time for the steps to be taken 
 which transformed epic recital to dramatic presenta- 
 tion. That this step wjsls taken early is proved by 
 the fragment of a dramatic version of Rodin Hood 
 and Guy of Gisborne which has come down to us in 
 manuscript on a half leaf among the Paston papers. 
 From certain memoranda on the other side of this 
 
FORERUNNERS I I 
 
 half leaf, one of which is dated 1475, and from the 
 mention of " Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Notyng- 
 ham " as a play in the letter quoted above, the approxi- 
 mate date of this fragment may be reached. The late 
 Professor Francis James Child informs us that "the 
 grammatical forms of themselves warrant our putting 
 the composition further back." This earliest fragment 
 of an independent dramatic scene founded on folk-lore 
 and free from the pervading religious and ethical pur- 
 pose of the age is so interesting that I quote it entire. 
 The text is that of Professor Child.' The italicized 
 stage directions, which are given for the sake of clear- 
 ness, are not in the original but have been added by 
 Professor Manly.^ 
 
 Enter a Knyght to the Sheryff. 
 Knyght. Syr sheryffe, for thy sake, 
 Robyn Hode wull Y take. 
 Sheryff. I wyll the gyffe golde and fee, 
 This beheste thou holde me ! 
 The Knyght goes to Robyn Hode. 
 Knyght. Robyn Hode, ffayre and fre, 
 
 Vndre this lynde shote we. 
 Rohyn. With the shote Y wyll, 
 
 Alle thy lustes to full fyll. 
 They shoot. 
 Knyght. Have at the pryke ! 
 Robyn. And Y cleue the styke. 
 
 ^Ibid., III. 90. 
 
 ''■Specimens of the Pre-Shaksperean Drama, 1897, I. 297. 
 
12 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Knyght. Late vs caste the stone. 
 Robyn. I graunte well, be Seynt John. 
 
 They cast the stone; Robyn is again successful. 
 
 Knyght. Late vs caste the exaltre. 
 Robyn. Have a foote be-fore the ! 
 
 Then they wrestle. 
 
 Syr knyght, ye haue a falle. 
 Knyght. And I the, Robyn, qwyte shall : 
 
 Owte on the ! I blowe myn home. 
 Robyn. Hit ware better be vnborne. 
 
 Lat vs fyght at outtraunce. 
 Knyght, He that fleth, God gyfe hym myschaunce ! 
 
 Robyn slays the Knyght. 
 
 Robyn. Now I haue the maystry here. 
 Off I smyte this sory swyre 
 This knyghtys clothis wolle I were, 
 And in my hode his hede woU bere. 
 
 He disguises himself. Meantime the Sheryff has attacked 
 Robyn Node's men and a fierce battle is in progress. Robyn 
 meets a man coming from the scene of the battle. 
 
 Robyn. Welle mete, felowe myn : 
 
 What herst thou of gode Robyn ? 
 Man. Robyn Hode and his menye 
 With the sheryff takyn be. 
 
 Robyn. Sette on foote with gode wyll, 
 And the sheryffe wull we kyll. 
 
 They come in sight of the battle. 
 
 Robyn. Beholde wele Ffrere Tuke, 
 
 Howe he dothe his bowe pluke. 
 
FORERUNNERS 1 3 
 
 On the battk-field the Sheryff speaks. 
 
 Sheryff. Yeld yow, syis, to the sheryff [e] . 
 Or elles shall your bowes clyffe. 
 Onecf 
 
 Robyri s Men. Now we be bownden alle in same ; 
 Frere [T]uke this is no game. 
 Sheryff. Co [m] e thou forth, thou fals outlawe : 
 Thou shall b [e] hangyde and ydrawe. 
 Frere Tuke. Now, alias ! what shall we doo ? 
 We [m] oste to the prysone goo. 
 Sheryff. Opy[n] the yatis faste anon. 
 
 An [d] d [00] theis thevys ynne gon. 
 
 Two other specimens of dramatized versions of 
 ballads of Robin Hood are preserved. Both are 
 fragments and are printed together under the title The 
 newe Playe of Robyn Hoode, about 1550, though they 
 must date from a period long prior to that year. 
 They concern respectively the adventures of Robin 
 and the curtal friar and his meeting with the potter. 
 The former contains some lines of great animation 
 and both furnish abundant action. Following the 
 title quoted above we have the words : " for to be 
 played in Maye games." This indicates one of the 
 most popular uses to which the plays of Robin Hood 
 were put ; although it by no means follows that these 
 plays became a constant or typical feature of May Day. 
 The sports of that day, as is well known, were com- 
 posed of many and various features in which giants, 
 
14 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 the morris dance, St. George and the Dragon, and 
 Robin Hood all figured. That royalty even at times 
 condescended to employ the master theme of popular 
 balladry is indicated by the account which Halle gives 
 of a device for the entertainment of Katharine, the 
 queen of Henry VHI., in which "therles of Essex, 
 Wilshire and other noble menne to the nombre of 
 twelue, came sodainly in a mornyng into the Quenes 
 Chambre, all appareled in shorte cotes of Kentishe 
 Kendal, with hodes on their heddes and hosen of the 
 same, euery one of them, his bowe and arrowes, and a 
 sworde and a bucklar, like out lawes or Robyn Hodes 
 men." On another occasion the king's guard per- 
 sonated Robin and his merry men and entertained the 
 king in Windsor Forest with feats of archery.^ 
 
 Whether these fragments of plays of Robin Hood 
 are to be regarded as sporadic instances of the straying 
 of the epic into the form of the drama or as indicative 
 of a considerable body of like dramatized ballads, now 
 lost but once enjoying popularity, is a question which 
 it would be difficult to decide. It is sufficient for our 
 purpose to note that this step in the direction of the 
 secular drama was actually taken and to recognize 
 therein that when Greene wrote his Pinner of Wake- 
 field and Munday his Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, 
 each was returning so far as his subject-matter was 
 
 1 Halle's Chronicle, ed. 1809, p. 513 and Holinshed's Chronicle, ed. 
 1809,111. 611. 
 
FORERUNNERS 1 5 
 
 concerned, to a kind of drama which may possibly 
 once have enjoyed a widespread popularity. 
 
 Another forerunner of the Chronicle Play now claims 
 our attention. This is the Hock Tuesday Play, wit- 
 nessed by Queen Elizabeth during her visit to Kenil- 
 worth in 1575. Of this production we possess two 
 contemporary accounts, the one by the poet, Gascoigne, 
 the other, more complete, by a gossipy clerk of her 
 majesty's council chamber, Robert Laneham, present 
 in attendance. They unite in giving this production a 
 wholly secular character, whilst Laneham's words, 
 "expressed in actionz and rymez after their manner" 
 precludes our acceptance of Collier's idea that it was 
 " merely a dumb show." The Hock or Hox Tues- 
 day Play was acted at Coventry to commemorate 
 either the Massacre of St. Brice, 1102, or the death of 
 Hardicanute, 1042, opinion differs as to which.^ We 
 have knowledge of its performance as early as 14 16, 
 and there is reason to believe that it had been acted 
 periodically, at times yearly, from that date to the 
 time when Elizabeth saw it. In the absence of any 
 account of this performance except that of the two 
 courtiers, its precise character must remain indetermi- 
 nable. But I can not agree with Professor Ward in 
 his opinion that Tlie Hock Tuesday Play was " in the 
 main a mirthful representation of a fight." ^ The 
 
 1 Sharp, p. 132. 
 
 ^A History of English Dramatic Literature, ed. 1899, I. 144. 
 
1 6 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 mirth was in Laneham's attitude throughout his enter- 
 taining pamphlet, and is precisely that of Theseus and 
 his Amazonian bride towards Bottom and his scratch 
 company of handicraftsmen in A Midsummer Nighfs 
 Dream. To the "good-harted men of Coventree" 
 their play was unquestionably a very serious and pa- 
 triotic affair. Its performance evidently impressed its 
 auditors ; for Elizabeth, who was absent during the 
 greater part of its first presentation, ordered it re- 
 peated for her own special behoof.^ As containing 
 the representation of an historical event in action by 
 means of dialogue, of a character altogether secular 
 and animated by a purpose free from didactic intent, 
 The Hock Tuesday Play must be regarded as the ear- 
 liest dramatic production fulfilling, if rudely, the con- 
 ditions of a national historical drama. 
 
 There is nothing to show the existence of a play 
 prior to the year 1580 which exhibits that freedom 
 from extraneous and literary influences, that realism 
 of method, that deep interest in the story for the 
 story's sake, and consciousness of nationality which 
 distinguish the Chronicle Plays as a class. The rela- 
 tion of Bishop Bale's vigorous historical morality, 
 Kynge Johan, to the Chronicle Play is not so close as 
 some have thought it. The spirit which the old 
 morality breathes is that of defiance to the Pope and 
 
 ' For these particulars see Laneham in Nichols, Elizabeth, I. 420- 
 484, and Gascoigne's account, ibid., 485-523. 
 
FORERUNNERS I "J 
 
 the Church of Rome. Its consciousness is theolog- 
 ical and polemic, not political and historical ; and its 
 hero is transformed, in open defiance of anything like 
 historical truth, into a champion of " Crysten libertie." 
 Bale seeks, it is true, to represent actual historical 
 characters on the stage in the persons of the King, 
 Pope Innocent, Cardinal Pandulphus and Stephen 
 Langton ; and it is remarkable that he should have 
 done so. But these figures are surrounded by the 
 usual abstractions, Nobelyte, Syvile Order, Sedycyon 
 and Dan Davy Dyssymulacyon. The degree to 
 which these characters partake of abstraction and to 
 which abstractions stand for characters may be learned 
 from a scene in which the Vices, at one as to their 
 plans, severally assume the characters which they 
 typify, and Sedycyon becomes Stephen Langton, Dys- 
 symulacyon, Raymundus of Toulouse, John's brother- 
 in-law, and Usurpyd Power, the Pope.^ 
 
 But one other morality thus combines social satire 
 with a fable rendered concrete by a reference to 
 events supposedly based on the history of an English 
 king. This is the far later A Knacke to Knowe a 
 Knaue. This production was printed in 1 594, though 
 doubtless much older, and enjoyed great popularity 
 some two years before, as acted by Edward Alleyn 
 and his company "with Kemp's applauded merri- 
 ments of the men of Gotham." The authorship of ^ 
 
 • Kynge Johan, ed. Camden Society, 1838, p. 30. 
 
1 8 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Knack is unknown. Ward considers that " the action 
 and the main characters are historical and the moral 
 element is secondary only." On the contrary, it 
 seems to me that the central design is the exhibition 
 of a just monarch sustained by a wise churchman. 
 On the thread of King Edgar's and Dunstan's moral 
 discourses is strung a series of satirico-moral dialogues 
 in various typical though disconnected incidents, each 
 of which illustrates the same theme. The death of the 
 wicked Baihfif of Hexham, the adventures of his sons, 
 who bear the abstract names of Farmer, Courtier, Priest 
 and Conycatcher or rogue, the unfilial conduct and pun- 
 ishment of Philarchus, the petition of Piers Plowman, 
 are all of the essence of the morality of social satire. 
 The episode in which Prince Ethenwald, sent by his 
 father to court for him the fair Alfrida, falls in love 
 with her and wooes her for himself represents to us 
 actual persons, but is also illustrative of the central 
 theme; while the short scene of the men of Gotham, 
 the popularity of which must surely have been sup- 
 plied by Kemp, the famous actor of clown's parts, 
 with " merriments " which have not descended to us, 
 and Dunstan's unnecessary lugging in of the devil are 
 matters extraneous to the story but wholly in the 
 manner of the morality. The placing of the scene of 
 this play in England is purely a matter of accident, a 
 circumstance the more certain in view of its probable 
 relation to the not dissimilar productions, A Knack 
 
FORERUNNERS I 9 
 
 to Know an Honest Man, and Nobody and Somebody. 
 A Knack to Know a Knave marks no step in the de- 
 velopment of the Chronicle History. If moralities of 
 social satire such as Kynge John and A Knack to 
 Know a Knave, despite their reference to personages 
 of EngUsh history, are to be excluded from the cate- 
 gory of the originals of the Chronicle Play, far less 
 can we include the fragment, Albyon Knight. In this 
 production Albyon personifies England and is sur- 
 rounded by the usual abstractions, Justice, Injury and 
 Divisyon, who is apparently the Vice. The piece is a 
 morality of political and satirical intent, and shows, as 
 Professor Brandl has recently observed, a direct in- 
 fluence of Lyndsay's Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis} 
 It is impossible to overestimate the importance of 
 the position which the tragedy Gorboduc holds at 
 the threshold of the English drama. The composi- 
 tion of gentlemen of the Inns of Court, performed be- 
 fore the queen and following in the wake of the Conti- 
 nental imitations of Seneca, this play is none the less 
 of moment for the effect which it was to have on the 
 popular drama to come. The significance of this 
 tragedy in its choice of English instead of the learned 
 tongue in which such performances continued often to 
 be given, in its use of blank verse in place of the usual 
 riming and tumbling measures, and in its substitution 
 
 1 Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare, 1898, 
 p. lix. 
 
20 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 of an artistic purpose for the old didactic one, is familiar 
 to every student of English literature. It is the selec- 
 tion of a theme from English historical lore in place 
 of the customary moral, biblical or classical story which 
 gives to Gorboduc its special significance in the history 
 of the national drama ; and this importance is not in 
 the least diminished by the hkelihood that Sackville 
 and Norton were attracted to their subject because of 
 its superficial resemblance to the story of the Thebais 
 of Seneca rather than through any set determination 
 to levy contribution on national sources hitherto un- 
 tried. Whatever the direct impetus, Gorboduc is the 
 earliest of a long list of English dramas which laid 
 under contribution those legendary and pseudo-his- 
 torical materials of the early chronicles of Britain which 
 emanated from the fertile brain of Geoffrey of Mon- 
 mouth. The relation of the earliest English tragedy 
 to the English Chronicle Play is sufficiently defined in 
 the recognition of this fact. 
 
 In 1570 we meet with the- first example of a drama 
 which deals with the biography of an English per- 
 sonage in the Latin play entitled Byrsa Basilica seu 
 Regale Excambium by J. Rickets. It was performed 
 probably before Sir Thomas Gresham, who is repre- 
 sented in the piece under the character Rialto. The 
 story is a somewhat intricate one, setting forth contem- 
 porary citizen life mixed with farce and full of the tech- 
 nicalities of the business proceedings of the day. 
 
FORERUNNERS 2 1 
 
 Professor Churchill, of Amherst, who prepared the 
 report of this play for the list of Latin plays lately 
 published in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch^ notices both 
 morality and Italian influence in it and considers it 
 alone in its kind. This is doubtless true as to plays in 
 Latin, but it might not be difficult to establish a close 
 relation between this play and the later large class of 
 comedies in English dealing intimately with London 
 civic life. Indeed Sir Thomas appears under his own 
 name in a later English play entitled The Second Part 
 of If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody, by Thomas 
 Hey wood and dating about 1604. In Byrsa Basilica 
 we have a transition from that present interest which 
 characterizes any representation of contemporary man- 
 ners to a case in which the interest is centered in the 
 career of a person of prominence. 
 
 Nine years later Thomas Legge's Richardiis Tertius 
 Tragedia was acted at St. John's College, Cambridge. 
 Legge was a notable man in the Cambridge of his 
 day, and was successively Master of Caius College, 
 Regius Professor of Civil Law, Commissary and Vice 
 Chancellor of the University. This play is the earliest 
 recorded drama dealing with a subject derived from 
 the actual history of England and it remains, except 
 for Lacey's transcription of it in 1586, the only aca- 
 demic play which sought for a subject in the national 
 chronicles. Legge followed his source, More's biog- 
 
 1 XXXIV. 221. 
 
22 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 raphy of Richard in Halle's continuation of Hardyng, 
 with great fidelity. But his dramatic models were the 
 Roman tragedies of Seneca. He was drawn to his 
 subject not because of its national character but be- 
 cause the story of the fall of Richard offered a happy 
 English parallel of a favorite Senecan theme. Hence 
 if Legge was " turning the drama of England in an 
 entirely new direction," as has been suggested/ his 
 action was doubtless altogether unconscious and af- 
 fected by no ulterior motives save possibly a wish to 
 compliment the queen by a dramatic picture of the 
 political overthrow of the great rival of the founder of 
 the reigning dynasty. Richardus Tertius is said to have 
 been elaborately staged and enjoyed a great academic 
 success, as no less than seven extant manuscripts and 
 many contemporary allusions attest. So great was 
 its reputation that Sir John Harirtgton, writing nearly 
 ten years later, says : " to omit other famous Tragedies : 
 that, that was playd at S. lohns in Cambridge, of Rich- 
 ard the 3. would moue (I thinke) Phalaris the tyraunt, 
 and terrific all tyrannous minded men, from following 
 their foolish ambitious humors." ^ Such a repute must 
 have had no small influence on University men such 
 as Marlowe, Lodge and Peele. But whether Richardus 
 Tertius " furnished the direct incitement to that dram- 
 atizing from chronicles of the careers of English 
 
 'See Churchill's Richard the Third up to Shakespeare, 1900, p. 270. 
 ">■ An Apologie of Poetrie, 1591, ed. Haslewood, 1815, II. 135. 
 
FORERUNNERS 23 
 
 monarchs which established a national historical drama 
 in popular form upon the popular stage " ^ may be 
 questioned in view of the widely different animus, 
 method and purpose of the popular chronicle plays. 
 An excellent analysis of the play under discussion will 
 be found in Professor Churchill's monograph already 
 mentioned above, in which the close imitation oi 
 Seneca from individual phrases and single passages to 
 the skillful adaptation of whole situations is carefully 
 pointed out. Perhaps the most salient example of the 
 force of Senecan example in this interesting tragedy is 
 to be found in Legge's complete suppression of the mo- 
 tive of conscience which forms so prominent a feature 
 in the chronicler's conception of Richard's character. 
 As Professor Churchill remarks : " Legge's Richard 
 is not only Senecan in conduct but Senecan in es- 
 sence." ^ That both the biographical and historical 
 form of the Chronicle Play should have been thus first 
 essayed in the learned language and by scholars is in 
 accord with expectation. It is somewhat remarkable, 
 however, that except for Lacey's transcription of 
 Legge's play neither drama should have led, so far as 
 we know, to attempts of the same kind. When the 
 plajrwrights next turned to English historical themes, 
 they expressed them in English, and left the Latin 
 drama to classical and satirical topics. 
 
 1 Churchill, p. 272. 
 
24 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 It was in full recognition of the excellence and suc- 
 cess of Gorboduc that Thomas Hughes and his fellow 
 students of Gray's Inn set about the preparation of 
 Certaine Devises and Shewes presented to her Majestic 
 . . . at her Highnesse Court in Greenwich, February 
 28, 1588, and generally known as The Misfortunes of 
 Arthur. This tragedy treats of the stoty of Mordred's 
 incestuous love for his stepmother, Queen Guenevora, 
 his revolt against his father, King Arthur, his usurpa- 
 tion of his father's throne and the ensuing tragedy. 
 The story, like that of Gorboduc, is derived from Geof- 
 frey of Monmouth, and a superficial resemblance to 
 the classic myth of CEdipus must here once more have 
 influenced selection. The Misfortunes of Arthur is al- 
 together Senecan, more so even than Gorboduc. For 
 while the latter play merely borrows the manner of 
 the Roman poet, the authors of The Misfortunes bodily 
 conveyed whole passages from him.' In a word none 
 of these tragedies can be considered as in any direct 
 wise contributing to the upgrowth of the English 
 Chronicle Play. 
 
 Up to this point our inquiry has resulted only in 
 exclusion ; nor is it to be expected that a national 
 drama essentially popular in its appeal should be fos- 
 tered in the cloistered seclusion of the University or 
 in the polite and artificial atmosphere of the Eliza- 
 
 'See on this Cunliffe, The Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan 
 Tragedy, 1893, p. 130. 
 
FORERUNNERS 25 
 
 bethan Inns of Court. In the tragedy oi Locrine, which 
 may have preceded The Misfortunes of Arthur by a 
 year or two, we have a play which essays a union of 
 the Senecan drama with the cruder popular perform- 
 ances which had just begun to present subjects drawn 
 from the prose chronicles of England. The story 
 once more is ultimately traceable to Geoffrey's His- 
 toria Regum Britannm ; but Locrine owes more than 
 the suggestion of subject to the two plays just dis- 
 cussed, for it agrees with them in the Senecan form 
 and nature of the serious dialogue and in the intro- 
 duction of dumb shows. The grandiloquent diction, 
 bombast and extraordinary exuberance of classical 
 allusion which characterize Locrine point to an ac- 
 quaintance with The Spanish Tragedy, itself a newer 
 and more vital offshoot of the influence of Seneca. 
 On the other hand the mingling of tragedy and com- 
 edy, the ruder and less constructive sequence of 
 events, the freer diction and the less chastened rhet- 
 oric all disclose a return to the drama of the people. 
 Locrine is one of several plays which the uninformed 
 zeal of early scholars attributed to the youth of Shake- 
 speare. The play is with little question the work of 
 George Peele, as its excessive use of "high astound- 
 ing terms," of classical proper names and of figures 
 of inflated rhetoric attest.' 
 
 'This was long ago recognized by Ulrici, Shakespeare' s dramatische 
 Kunst, 1847, p. 740. Professor Ward is of the same opinion, Dra- 
 matic Literature, II. 220. 
 
26 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Peele began his dramatic career before he left Ox- 
 ford, where, between the years 1571 and i579> he 
 enjoyed much repute for his poetic talent and for his 
 social gaieties. He was associated in the preparation 
 of academic plays with Dr. William Gager, who later 
 achieved a great reputation as a writer of Latin dramas. 
 It has even been said that Peele himself translated 
 one of the Euripedean Iphigenias, but whether into 
 Latin or English does not appear. In 1581 his Ar- 
 raignment of Paris, a graceful attempt to rival Lyly 
 in his new court drama, Endimion, was performed 
 before the queen, and in 1583 Peele was back again 
 at Oxford assisting his friend Gager in the production 
 of his two Latin plays, Rivales and Dido. The ex- 
 penses of Peele at Oxford had been defrayed in part 
 by the governors of Christ's Hospital, which James 
 Peele, the poet's father, had served for many years in 
 the capacity of clerk. Hence the order dated Sep- 
 tember 19, 1579, that "James Peele . . . discharge 
 his howse of his sonne George Peele and all other his 
 howsold wch have bene chargable to him befor 
 mychellmas day next cominge vppon paine of the 
 gounos [governors'] displeasure," ^ points clearly to 
 the young poet's mode of life immediately upon his 
 leaving the University. A roisterer and a spendthrift, 
 so far as he had to spend, of dramatic talents gener- 
 ally recognized, it was only a matter of time when 
 
 1 Bullen, Works of George Peele, 1888, I. xv. 
 
FORERUNNERS 2/ 
 
 Peele should find his way to the popular theater and 
 seek the career of actor and playwright. The pre- 
 cise date of this we cannot now ascertain, for his 
 dedications to noble patrons and his calls on their 
 charity continue to the errand, in 1 596, by " his eld- 
 est daughter, Necessity's servant," to Lord Burghley 
 with the manuscript of The Tale of Troy. This must 
 have been near the end. 
 
 Did Peele conceive the idea of popularizing the 
 courtly Senecan drama of Sackville and Hughes for 
 inn-yards and strolling companies by joining its 
 violent scenes, its inflated lines and orotund classical 
 proper names with the rude humors of the street 
 and the tavern? Or did Peele only combine in 
 Locrine the drama of Whitehall and the Inns of Court 
 with what he found already existing in vigorous life at 
 the Bull, the Bell Savage or the Cross Keys ? The 
 latter supposition seems the more reasonable, inasmuch 
 as plays dealing with the deeds of kings of England 
 can be shown, with a high degree of probability, to 
 have antedated Locrine on the popular stage. Besides, 
 the other historical plays with which Peele's name has 
 been associated and Edward I., his undoubted and un- 
 aided work, show a far closer following of popular exam- 
 ple and seem to warrant the inference that Peele's con- 
 tact with the boards on which Tarlton danced led in time 
 to the choice of more familiar subjects and to a style less 
 encumbered by classical lore and inflated rhetoric. 
 
28 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Briefly to summarize : the parent stock of the Eng- 
 lish Chronicle Play (as of the comedy of manners and 
 some other forms of the realistic drama) is ultimately 
 the comedy element in the old sacred drama. It 
 was thence that the Chronicle Play drew its sense of 
 comedy and its adhesion to simple realism in the rep- 
 resentation of scenes of actual life. The devices of 
 non-religious pageantry occasionally presented the 
 figures of historical personages, thus marking the first 
 step towards the subject-matter of the Chronicle Play ; 
 while in the plays of St. George and Robin Hood we 
 advance to the representation by means of action and 
 dialogue of personages popularly regarded as national 
 heroes. There was wanting in these representations 
 only the foundation in definite historical fact and 
 what may be termed the historical consciousness. 
 Both were apparently supplied in Tlu Hock Tuesday 
 Play which commemorated an actual historical event 
 by means of dialogue and action, and thus for the first 
 time in English literature fulfilled the conditions of a 
 dramatic presentation of history. In Kynge Johan we 
 have a polemical morality in which history is distorted 
 to serve the purpose of theological attack, while in A 
 Knack to Know a Knave the story of a Saxon king is 
 employed for a rigidly didactic purpose and the choice 
 of an English historical subject is probably accidental. 
 Before this last morality was performed English 
 tragedy had passed though its earliest Senecan stage 
 
FORERUNNERS 29 
 
 and had contributed several dramas to the forerunners 
 of the Chronicle Play. But although the legendary 
 lore of Geoffrey, afterwards to prove so rich a source, 
 was here broached for the first time, and the historical 
 and biographical chronicle presaged in the Latin play 
 Richardus Tertius, neither the Latin nor the English 
 imitators of the Roman dramatist produced the earliest 
 chronicle play. 
 
II 
 
 GROWTH OF THE CHRONICLE PLAY; ITS 
 
 DISTRIBUTION AND LITERARY 
 
 RELATIONS 
 
 The English Chronicle Drama falls naturally into 
 two groups. The one includes those plays which 
 deal with history and the biographies of actual his- 
 torical persons ; the other those in which the sub- 
 jects are legendary or at least such as involve a more 
 or less conscious departure from historical fact. Mar- 
 lowe's Edward II. and Shakespeare's Henry V. may 
 be taken as illustrations of the tragic and non-tragic 
 types of the first class. Shakespeare's King Lear and 
 Greene's Scottish History of James IV. as typical ex- 
 amples similarly contrasted of the second. Neither 
 {he rigid Senecan manner of Gdrboduc nor the mixed 
 Senecan and popular manner of Locrine were immedi- 
 ately followed in dramaS the subjects of which were 
 derived from the mythologic history of the early 
 British times. In The True Chronicle History of King 
 Leir, which furnished Shakespeare with the ground- 
 work of his tragedy, King Lear, and which has 
 been variously assigned to years between 1588 and 
 1 593) we have apparently the earliest successor of 
 these plays. But King Leir is a successor of Gorboduc 
 
 30 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION 3 1 
 
 and Locrine only in choice of subject. Its style and 
 method are altogether those of the popular dramas 
 which dealt with kings of historical times. Deferring 
 the mythological British chronicle then for the present, 
 we address ourselves first to a consideration of the 
 efTects of the awakening spirit of nationality on gen- 
 eral literature and then to the plays which concern 
 themselves with the history and the biography of his- 
 torical personages and form the most persistent type 
 of the Chronicle Play. 
 
 It is a commonplace of English history that the vigi- 
 lant and centralized monarchy of Henry VII. fostered 
 in Englishmen a sense of nationality to which they had 
 become almost complete strangers during the long 
 feuds of the Wars of the Roses. The national con- 
 sciousness once reawakened, waxed strong in the ear- 
 lier days of Henry VIII. and, though submitted to a 
 terrible ordeal in the political and religious persecu- 
 tions that followed, answered with enthusiasm the ap- 
 peals of Elizabeth and rested firm in its appreciation 
 of her good government at home and her successful 
 role in foreign politics. Literature responded at once 
 to this awakened national spirit in a renewed interest 
 in the past evinced in the translation and republication, 
 for example, of such a history as Ralph Higden's 
 Polychronicon and in a revival of the popularity of 
 works like Lydgate's Falls of Princes and the Morte 
 Darthur in which the historical instinct vies with the 
 
32 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 love of romance. A little later came the heyday of 
 the English Chronicle History which flourished in prose 
 and in verse, in extenso and in epitome, in collections 
 and in separate tracts, poems and dramas. Sir Philip 
 Sidney died too early to have felt to the full the lit- 
 erary reflex of this revival of national spirit. But it 
 was this spirit no less than the love of poetry which 
 inspired a familiar passage of An Apologie for Poetrie 
 which quotation can never stale : " Certainly I must 
 confesse my own barbarousnes, I neuer heard the 
 olde song of Percy and Duglas, that I found not my 
 heart mooued more then with a Trumpet : and yet is it 
 sung but by some blinde Crouder, with no rougher 
 voyce, then rude stile." ' 
 
 The amount and variety of literature of the sixteenth 
 century which took English historical and legendary 
 themes for its subject-matter are things commonly for- 
 gotten. This literature began towards the end of the 
 reign of Henry VIH. with Grafton's printing and con- 
 tinuation of the metrical chronicle of Hardyng and his 
 edition of Halle. In the two succeeding reigns such 
 books were discouraged ; Gardiner even discerned 
 concealed heresy in the political examples of The Mi- 
 rour for Magistrates, and the projected publication of 
 that work in 1555 was stayed. On the accession of 
 Elizabeth the publication of historical literature began 
 anew with a third edition of the Chronicle of Fabyan. 
 
 • Arber's reprint of the edition of 1595, p. 46. 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION 33 
 
 In 1562 Grafton brought out ^« Abridgement of the 
 Chronicles of England which attained a fifth edition 
 in 1572. He was rivalled in this undertaking by John 
 Stow in 1565 with A Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles 
 which ran through ten editions up to 1604 and was 
 the accepted short history of England of its day. ' Be- 
 fore a decade had elapsed John Foxe's Actes and Monu- 
 ments, first published in 1563 and popularly known as 
 The Book of Martyrs, had gone into a second edition ; 
 Grafton had abridged his Abridgement which still 
 stretched, however, " from the creacion of the worlde 
 to the yere 1565," and extended it into his Chronicle 
 at large and meere History of the affayres of England 
 and the Kinges of the same, 1 569, while Stow in as- 
 sociation with Bishop Parker brought to the press 
 three earUer Latin chroniclers, Matthew of Westminster, 
 Matthew of Paris and Thomas of Walsingham, and 
 was busily at work in gathering materials for his An- 
 nates of England. In 1577 appeared the most impor- 
 tant of Elizabethan prose histories. The Chronicles of 
 England, Scotlande and Irelande by Ralph Holinshed. 
 In his labors, Holinshed was assisted by William Har- 
 rison, who wrote the racy prefatory Description of 
 England, and by the Irish scholar and translator of 
 
 1 Mr. Sidney Lee corrects the mistake which confuses A breviat 
 Chronicle contaynyng all the Kynges, etc., by J. Mychell, 1561, with a 
 first edition of Stow's Summarie. Grafton anticipated Stow in this. 
 See their quarrel carried on in the prefaces of the successive editions of 
 their books and the Dictionary of National Biography under Stow. 
 
34 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Virgil, Richard Stanyhurst who, working upon ma- 
 terial collected as early as 1569 by Edmund Cam- 
 pion, the Jesuit, contributed the greater part of the 
 history of his own country. The second edition of 
 Holinshed was at first published under the title. 
 The First and Second Volumes of Chronicles , etc. in 
 1587. It was revised and partly rewritten by J. 
 Hooker alias Vowell and others and in the process was 
 much altered and modernized. The book suffered 
 too from excision and in its " corrected " form ap- 
 peared under the new title. The Third Volume of Chron- 
 icles beginning at Duke William the Norman. This 
 edition of 1 587 is the chief quarry of Shakespeare and 
 other contemporary playwrights for the material of 
 English and Scottish history. To this enumeration of 
 chronicles may be added the scattered biographies of 
 historical personages from The Life of Cardinal Wolsey 
 by Cavendish, written in the reign of Mary, to Bacon's 
 Life of Henry F//., dating from the reign of King James. 
 Nor was the prevalent interest in English history 
 less notabk among the poets whose flights, if by no 
 means so sustained as those of the chroniclers, were 
 far more frequent. The Mirour for Magistrates was 
 one of the earliest fruits of the Elizabethan press. 
 This work was originally projected in consequence of 
 the revived popularity of Lydgate's Falls of Princes, 
 which after but one reprinting in 1527, suddenly 
 attained a fourth issue in 1558. This origin gives to 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION 35 
 
 The Mirour for Magistrates a medievalism of tone which 
 is enhanced by the sameness of mood, the moralizing, 
 the somewhat old-fashioned versification of the majority 
 of the "legends " and their connection by an artificial 
 thread. The Mirour is a growth and accretion. The 
 nineteen " legends " which constitute the first edition, 
 that of 1559, are the work of six writers, of whom 
 William Baldwin is the chief They concern events 
 from the days of the two Roger Mortimers and 
 Thomas of Woodstock (1355-1397) to the tragedy 
 of George, Duke of Clarence (1478). The second 
 edition, 1563, reprinted these "legends" and added 
 eight more by several authors, three of whom had 
 already contributed to the first. Nearly all these 
 "legends" concern personages of the time of Richard 
 III. In 1574 John Higgins added seventeen "leg- 
 ends" of mythical and Roman Britain, and as they 
 preceded the other stories in point of time called the 
 new book The first parte of the Mirour for Magistrates. 
 Four years later a rival continuation called The Sec- 
 onde part of the Mirrour for Magistrates conteining the 
 falles of the infortunate Princes of this Lande From the 
 Conquest of Caesar unto the commyng of Duke William 
 the Conquerour was published, the work of Thomas 
 Blenerhasset, Baldwin's work thus becoming the 
 third part. Blenerhasset's collection contains twelve 
 "legends." In 1587 Higgins added to his "first 
 part" no less than twenty -three stories, into which 
 
36 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 several Roman emperors intrude with a few further 
 tales of modern personages by Churchyard and 
 others. The last edition of The Mirour, 1610, picks 
 and chooses from the earlier ones and adds eleven 
 "legends," one by Drayton, the rest by the editor, 
 Richard Niccols. We have thus a corpus of nearly a 
 hundred "legends" varying in length from fifty to 
 four hundred lines each, the work of some fifteen 
 authors, extending over a period of fifty years and ap- 
 pearing in eight issues. If excuse be deemed needful 
 for this digression into particulars, the influence which 
 a production so widely read must have exerted on the 
 coming and the contemporary historical drama need 
 only to be stated to be recognized. Upwards of 
 thirty historical plays exist, the subjects of which are 
 treated in The Mirour for Magistrates. And although 
 from its meditative and elegiac character it is unlikely 
 that it was often employed as an immediate source, the 
 influence of such a work in choice of subject and, 
 at times, in manner of treatment can not but have 
 been exceedingly great. 
 
 The writing of single poems on the model of the 
 separate "legends" of The Mirour began about the 
 time of the earliest popularity of the Chronicle Play. 
 The first of these productions apparently is 772^ Com- 
 plaint of Rosamond by Samuel Daniel, which appeared 
 in 1 592. In the next year we have no less than five 
 poems of this class treating besides other topics, of 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION 37 
 
 the well-known historical figures of Robert of Nor- 
 mandy, Piers Gaveston and Richard II., and the work 
 of men like Lodge, Drayton and Giles Fletcher. The 
 composition of poems of this class continues far into 
 the reign of King James in the works of obscure as 
 well as of better known authors and in poems dis- 
 coursing of Queen Matilda, of "the Love betweene 
 Owen Tudyr and the Queene," of Edward IV's court- 
 ship of Lady Gray, of the Lollard, Oldcastle, of 
 Humphrey of Gloucester, and above all in the favorite 
 theme of the age, the rise and fall of Richard III. and 
 "the Preservation of King Henry VII." The two 
 famous works, Daniel's Civile Wars, enlarged after its 
 first appearance in 1595 to eight books in the final 
 edition of 1609, and Drayton's Mortimeriados, 1596, 
 later rewritten as The Barons Warres, 1603, are epic 
 extensions of the single historical "legend" in verse, 
 showing too the influence of the contemporary versi- 
 fied chronicle which had been revived a few years 
 before in Warner's Albions England. This episodic 
 epic poem was published in 1 5 86 and has for its gen- 
 eral theme the legendary history of England from 
 the division of the world after the flood to the com- 
 ing of the Normans. Warner's book gained an 
 immediate and deserved popularity from its patriotic 
 sentiment and its homely and unpretentious style. 
 He continued his chronicle to the accession of Queen 
 Elizabeth in the edition of 1592 and a final (sixth) edi- 
 
38 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 tion was printed, in 1612, after the author's death, still 
 further enlarged to include some of the events of the 
 reign of James. Although Drayton had already 
 written other "historical" poetry, his Englands Hero- 
 icall Epistles, 1597, a series of letters in verse sup- 
 posedly exchanged between royal and other historical 
 lovers, was doubtless suggested by the serial character 
 of The Mirourfor Magistrates. Five editions of Dray- 
 ton's Epistles were exhausted in six years. In 1604 
 an unsuccessful variation on the rimed chronicle was 
 attempted by Sir William Harbert in A prophesie of 
 Cadwallader . . . containing a comparison of the Eng- 
 lish kings with many worthy Romanes from William 
 Rufus till Henry the Fift. Five years later the drama- 
 tist, Thomas Heywodd, published his Troia Britanica 
 . . . an Universall Chronicle from the Creation untill 
 these present times. This work has more merit than has 
 usually been accorded it, but it came too late to have 
 any effect on the drama, as did Thomas Deloney's 
 The Crowne Garland of Golden Roses, 1 6 1 2, a collection 
 of ballads on stories from English history. Of the 
 many scattered broadsides and ballads on topics drawn 
 from the national history it is impossible here to speak. 
 The illustrated doggeral chronicle of Taylor, the 
 Water Poet, although due to the same general impulse, 
 belongs to a later age. 
 
 It is of interest to observe that the greatest vogue 
 of epic historical verse precisely coincides with the 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION 39 
 
 period of the popularity of the Chronicle Play : the 
 causes which begot the one begot the other. Moreover 
 coincidences in the subject-matter of the two classes and 
 in authorship are by no means wanting. Thus when 
 Chute published his Shores Wife, Churchyard re- 
 printed his contribution to The Miroiir for Magistrates 
 on the same topic and not long after appeared Hey- 
 wood's dramatic treatment of the story in Edivard IV. 
 It was at the height of the interest in Richard III., 
 which produced several plays, that Giles Fletcher 
 wrote The Rising to the Croivne of Richard III.; and 
 John Weever followed the play on Oldcastle and the 
 trilogy of Henry IV. and V. with the Life and Death 
 of Sir John Oldcastle, a kind of biography in verse. 
 The English Chronicle Play is thus seen to be only 
 one, though incomparably the most vigorous, offshoot 
 of a body of literature of many species and of great 
 variety, the very essence of which was the assertion of 
 the national consciousness in recalling the scenes of 
 the past. It was in the very nature of things that the 
 popularity of the Chronicle Play should find its origin 
 in the burst of patriotism and the sense of national 
 unity which reached its climax in the year 1588 and 
 stirred England to meet and to repulse the Spanish 
 Armada. It was because the Elizabethan stage mir- 
 rored the life about it so widely and so minutely that 
 it responded thus readily and deeply to the appeals of 
 patriotism. " How would it haue ioyed braue Talbot 
 
40 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 (the terror of the French)," exclaims Thomas Nashe, 
 " to thinke that after he had lyen two hundred yeare in 
 his Toomb, he should triumph againe on the Stage and 
 haue his bones new embalmed with the teares of ten 
 thousand spectators at least, (at several times) who, 
 in the Tragedian that represents his person, imagine 
 they behold him fresh bleeding." ^ 
 
 To return to the Chronicle Play and to the develop- 
 ment of the type in its earliest species, in February 
 1 567, The Tragedy of the King of Scots, " to the which 
 belonged the scenery of Scotland and a great castle 
 on the other side," was acted at court, William 
 Hunnis, Master of the Chapel Children, receiving 
 payment therefor.^ This play has perished. But its 
 title remains the earliest to which we can attach a 
 story drawn from modern British history, although 
 conjecture as to whether it treated of the recently 
 murdered Darnley or " of the death of Duncan and 
 the succession of Macbeth " must be pronounced idle.^ 
 Turning to plays still extant, three claim our attention 
 on the threshold. These are Tke Famous Victories of 
 Henry the fifth. The life and Death of lack Strawe and 
 The troublesome Raigne of lohn King of England. The 
 Famous Victories was printed in 1598, but is undoubt- 
 
 ' Pierce Penilcsse His Supplication, IS92, Works of Nashe, ed. 
 Grosart, II. 89. 
 
 ^ Uarleian MS., 146, fol. 15. 
 
 'See an article on William Hunnis, the Dramatist, in the Athen- 
 aum, March 31, 1900. 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION 4 1 
 
 edly the oldest. Collier dated it " not long after 1 580," 
 Mr. Fleay a few years later.' It was acted by the 
 Queen's players, a company at the height of its pros- 
 perity between the years 1586 and 1593, and accord- 
 ing to Tarlton's Jests at the Bull." It is certain that 
 this play was popular before September 3, 1588, the 
 date of the death of Richard Tarlton, who seems to 
 have achieved a success in the role of Dericke, the 
 clown, and to have taken such liberties with the part 
 as to make it entirely his own, if he was not actually 
 the author of the whole play as some authorities be- 
 lieve.' The Famous Victories deals with much the 
 historical and traditionary material which Shakespeare 
 afterwards utilized in his historical trilogy on Henry 
 IV. and Henry V. The older play includes scenes 
 depicting the wild life of the Prince and his low-lived 
 companions, but differs widely from Shakespeare's in 
 omitting the conspiracy of Northumberland, Morti- 
 mer and Hotspur, the character of Falstaff and the 
 interesting group of the soldiers of Henry V., headed 
 by Fluellen. On the other hand The Famous Vic- 
 tories devotes a scene to the episode of Prince Henry's 
 commitment to jail for striking Justice Gascoigne in a 
 fit of anger because the Justice had convicted one of 
 Henry's followers of theft. The historical original of 
 
 ' Dramatic Poetry, W\. 70 ; History of the Stage, p. 67. 
 
 * Shakespeare Society s Publications, 1844, p. 24. 
 
 'Cf. Fleay, Biographical Chronicle of the Drama, II. 259. 
 
42 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 both plays is found in Holinshed, and feeble sugges- 
 tions of certain passages of Shakespeare in the histor- 
 ical portions of The Famous Victories have been fre- 
 quently pointed out. Thus although the incident of 
 the Dauphin's gift of a tun of tennis balls is mentioned 
 in Holinshed, the familiar lines beginning : " We are 
 glad the Dauphin is so pleasant with us " certainly 
 hark back to this passage : 
 
 Henry 5. My lord prince Dolphin is very pleausant with 
 me : 
 But tel him, that in steed of balles of leather, 
 We wil tosse him balles of brasse and yron, 
 Yea such balles as neuer were tost in France, 
 The proudest Tennis Court shall rue it. ^ 
 
 Other points of contact among several are Shake- 
 speare's passing reference to an embassy sent from 
 Harfleur to the French King, the bearer of the re- 
 quest being introduced in the old play ; Shakespeare's 
 expansion of the hint of Dericke's capture by a French 
 soldier and escape from him into Pistol's episode with 
 "Signieur Dew" ; King Henry's reproof of his way- 
 ward son and the famous scene in which Henry V. 
 wooes the Princess of France.^ Scarcely less clear is 
 Shakespeare's obligation (if obligation we dare call it) 
 to the suggestions of the comedy scenes of The 
 
 ' The Famous Victories, Facsimile ed., 1887, p. 30. 
 2Cf. ibid., pp. 19, 35, 44 and 46 with 2 Henry IV., IV. S ; Henr 
 K, III. 3,45; IV. 4; andV. S, 2. 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION 43 
 
 Famous Victories. A companion of the Prince, ad- 
 dressed as Ned, furnishes his name at least to Ned 
 Poins, and shows at times a faint touch of the 
 " humor " of Ancient Pistol. The brief scene in 
 which a captain impresses the thief and John Cobler 
 for soldiers to serve the king in France with the ac- 
 companying farewell of Cobler's wife contains the 
 suggestion — and how paltry it is ! — of Shakespeare's 
 laughable scenes of the impressing of Falstaff's rag- 
 ged regiment and the farewell on the road to Staines. 
 More important is the hint which the mock repetition 
 by Dericke and Cobler of the trial before Justice Gas- 
 coigne certainly offered Shakespeare for the delightful 
 mockery of Falstaff and Prince Hal, successively en- 
 acting the gravity of the king and the levity of his 
 scapegrace son. 
 
 Der. Faith lohn, He tel thee what, thou shalt be my 
 Lord chiefe lustice, and thou shalt sit in the 
 chaire, And ile be the yong prince, and hit thee 
 a boxe on the eare, And then thou shalt say, to 
 teach you prerogatiues Meane, I commit you to 
 the Fleete. 
 
 lohn. Come on, lie be your ludge, 
 
 But thou shalt not hit me hard. 
 
 Der. No, no. 
 
 lohn. What hath he done ? 
 
 Der. Marry he hath robd Dericke. 
 
 lohn. Why then I cannot let him go. 
 
 Der. I must needs haue my man. 
 
44 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 lohn. You shall not haue him. 
 Der. Shall I not haue my man, say no and you dare : 
 
 How say you, shall I not haue my man ? 
 lohn. No marry shall you not. 
 Der. Shall I not lohn ? 
 lohn. No Dericke. 
 Der. Why then take you that till more come \the slap\ , 
 
 Sownes, shall I not have him ? 
 lohn. Well I am content to take this at your hand. 
 
 But I pray you, who am I ? 
 Der. Who art thou, Sownds, doost not know thy self? 
 John. No. 
 Der. Now away simple fellow. 
 
 Why man, thou art lohn the Cobler. 
 John. No, I am my Lord chiefe Justice of England. 
 Der. Oh lohn. Masse thou saist true, thou art indeed. 
 lohn. Why then to teach you what prerogatiues mean, 
 
 I commit you to the Fleete. ' 
 
 This passage is not devoid of humor, and the touch 
 by which the two simple wags half forget that they are 
 "making believe" and call each other by their true 
 names is natural and not altogether unamasing. 
 
 In contrast with the unity and dramatic consistency, 
 the power and the poetry which this species of drama 
 was soon to acquire in the masterful grasp of Marlowe 
 and Shakespeare, The Famous Victories is unendurably 
 rude and primitive, devoid as it is of the slightest at- 
 tempt at dramatic structure and written almost wholly 
 in a bald and limping prose. But the choice of sub- 
 
 ■ The Famous Victories, p. 15. 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTIOX 45 
 
 ject is noteworthy and the desertion of rimed septen- 
 aries and four stress tumbling measures for prose is an 
 evident groping after a fitter medium for the expres- 
 sion of dramatic dialogue than was common earlier. 
 
 The Life and Death of lack Strawe, a notable Rebell 
 in England: tvIio was kild in Smithfield by the Lord 
 Maior of London, printed in 1593, is so short and slight 
 a production that it amounts to little more than an 
 historical interlude. It is divided into four acts of 
 disproportioned length and shows signs of haste and 
 immaturity in composition. It was registered in the 
 Stationers' Company, October 23, 1593, but is evi- 
 dently of much earlier date. Mr. Fleay assigns it to 
 the year 1587 because the Armada is not mentioned 
 in it and because an insurrection of apprentices had 
 occurred in the previous year.' But there is really 
 nothing to guide us in these allusions and non-allu- 
 sions. The story is strictly confined to a single event, 
 the villeins' revolt in Essex and Kent in the year 1381. 
 The principal role amongst the rebels is maintained by 
 John Tyler, who, according to Holinshed, took upon 
 him to be their " cheefe capteine, naming himselfe lacke 
 Straw." ^ But other rebels of the chroniclers appear, 
 among them the Wyclifite parson, John Ball. Jack 
 Strawe marks little advance in dramatic grasp or char- 
 
 ' Bicgrapkical Chroniclt, II. 153. 
 
 2 Chronicles of England, ed. 1809 II. 736. The correction of 
 Tyler to Jack Straw, which appears in Dodsley's ed. of this play, was 
 made in ignorance of this fact. 
 
46 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 acterization, but the play is vigorous and not ill written. 
 It is the work of a man who could handle English 
 verse, whether blank verse or lines in four stresses, 
 with some fluency. We may share the opinion 
 that " there are passages in The Life and Death of 
 Jack Sirawe which may lead us to suspect that it 
 might prove to be the early work of some distinguished 
 dramatist." * It may be of interest to note that Jack 
 Straw. had been a character of early pageantry. In 
 an order of the Inner Temple, 1519, we learn that 
 the king of Cockneys should sit and have due service 
 on Childermas Day and " that Jack Straw and all 
 his adherents should be thenceforth utterly banished, 
 and no more used in this house," ^ Lastly a produc- 
 tion called The Life and Death of Jack Straw by 
 John Kirke was registered as late as 1638. It is un.- 
 certain if this was a play. 
 
 The two parts of The Troublesome Raigne of John 
 King of England, with the discouerie of King Richard 
 Cordelions Base sonne ( vulgarly named, the Bastard 
 Fawconbridge) : also the death of King John at Swin- 
 stead Abbey were printed together in 1591. With this 
 play we reach a typical specimen of the earlier Chron- 
 icle History before it was transformed by the genius of 
 Marlowe and Shakespeare. That it was acted soon 
 after the performance of Tamburlaine the prologue 
 
 iDodsley, Old English Plays,Y., p. 376. 
 2 Nichols, Elizabeth, I. 252. 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION 47 
 
 discloses. Hence unless the play antedate this pro- 
 logue The Troublesome Raigne was first acted in the 
 year of the Armada. The company which brought it 
 out was the Queen's, and it has been variously ascribed 
 to the joint or several authorship of Lodge, Greene and 
 Marlowe, a matter the decision of which is not perti- 
 nent to the present enquiry. The sources of this play 
 have been traced to Holinshed and Halle and a special 
 interest attaches to it by reason of the fact that it is the 
 immediate though perhaps not the sole source on 
 which Shakespeare modelled The Life and Death of 
 King John. Although The Troublesome Raigne ad- 
 heres to epic sequence of event, the material of the 
 chronicle is treated with some skill and much freedom. 
 Thus the dramatist suppresses, as did Shakespeare 
 after him, the fact of the remarriage of Queen Con- 
 stance and assigns a motive, in his rapacious treat- 
 ment of the clergy, for the poisoning of John in 
 Swinstead Abbey, a point omitted by Shakespeare.' 
 The Troublesome Raigne retains the admixture of comic 
 and serious material which characterized the two older 
 specimens of its class and which descended to the 
 regular drama from the earliest times. These comic 
 scenes are often dependent for their effect on situation, 
 as is that in which the Bastard, seeking for treasure in 
 the sack of a monastery, discovers " a smooth facte 
 [faced] Nunne" locked up in the Prior's treasure- 
 
 ' See Boswell-Stone, Shaksfere' s Holinshed, 1896, p. 45. 
 
48 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 chest, whither she had fled, as she says, " to hide her 
 from lay men." But such scenes have become a more 
 natural and essential part of the drama and less a 
 matter of extraneous clown's play. The clown, such 
 as Dericke, is not a character of the The Troublesome 
 Raigne, and the step to the comedy of Shakespeare's 
 Henry IV. becomes conceivable. Whether from re- 
 luctance to offer so great a relief to the dark picture of 
 the unworthy tyrant John or from the example of Mar- 
 lowe, Shakespeare reduced the comedy element of the 
 older play to the single figure of the Bastard Faulcon- 
 bridge and ennobled that personage with a deeper and 
 richer character than is his in The Troublesome Raigne. 
 To accomplish this last Shakespeare was compelled to 
 omit the finest scene of the older play, that' between 
 Philip and Lady Fawconbridge, in which the youth 
 wrings from his reluctant mother a confession of her 
 frailty and the certainty that his real father was 
 King Richard Cordelion. Shakespeare also confined 
 within bounds the staunch and boisterous Protestant 
 spirit with which the earlier play is pervaded, a spirit 
 which in view of the contemporary struggle with 
 Spain assumes a political rather than a polemical bias. 
 It is in the older play that King John exclaims with 
 prophetic vision : 
 
 The Pope of Rome, tis he that is the cause, 
 He curseth thee, he sets thy subiects free 
 From due obedience to their Soueraigne : 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION 49 
 
 He animates the Nobles in their warres, 
 
 He giues away the Crowne to Philips Sonne, 
 
 And pardons all that seeke to murther thee : 
 
 And thus blinde zeale is still predominant. 
 
 Then lohn there is no way to keepe thy Crowne, 
 
 But finely to dissemble with the Pope ; 
 
 That hand that gaue the wound must giue the salue 
 
 To cure the hurt, els quite incurable. 
 
 Thy sinnes are farre too great to be the man 
 
 T' abolish Pope, and Popery from thy Realrae : 
 
 But in thy Seate, if I may gesse at all, 
 
 A King shall raigne that shall suppresse them all.' 
 
 This spirit, which does not materially interfere with 
 the general purpose of the play, suffices together with its 
 improved style, the greater ease of its verse, its earnest 
 attempt at consistency and clear outlining of charac- 
 ter, to raise this play to a position distinctly above the 
 two earlier productions of its class. It may not be too 
 much to affirm that in the personages of 77?^ Trouble- 
 some Raigne, especially in the king and in Fawcon- 
 bridge (to the vigorous characterization of which 
 Shakespeare himself owes more than a hint) we have 
 the earliest vital representation of an historical person- 
 age upon the English stage. 
 
 From these plays it is clear that the instinctive 
 end and aim of the English Chronicle Drama from the 
 first was "the scenic representation of history." It 
 therefore conformed to the chronological rather than 
 
 > The Troubltsome Raigne, Part II., facsimile reprint, p. 13. 
 5 
 
so THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 to the logical or dramatic order of events, and often 
 followed its narrative sources with a fidelity absolutely 
 slavish. Moreover the authors of these dramas were 
 unselective in their use of material and uncontrolled 
 by questions of authenticity. For these reasons the 
 legends and digressions of the chroniclers, however 
 improbable or unconnected with the main narrative, 
 were accepted and followed with fidelity or expanded 
 into episodic scenes. Besides all this it is to be re- 
 membered that the age of Elizabeth knew no fine dis- 
 tinctions between fact and myth, and was untroubled 
 even in the writing of sober chronicles by the necessity 
 or even the show of a nice adherence to what we now 
 term historical truth. To dramatists as to chroniclers 
 the legends concerning Brute, Cymbeline or King 
 Arthur were not distinguishable in their credibility 
 from the received records of the doings of Harry Mon- 
 mouth, Richard Crookback of bluff King Henry. 
 They accepted whatever they found and used it as 
 they found it. The consequent diversity of subject- 
 matter in these plays is as great as their want of in- 
 dividual unity. Both of these features are abundantly 
 disclosed in their many quaint titles : " The Famous 
 Chronicle of king Edward the first, sirnamed Edward 
 Longshankes, with his returne from the holy land. 
 Also the life of Llevellen rebell in Wales. Lastly, 
 the sinking of Queene Elinor, who sunck at Charing- 
 crosse, and rose againe at Potters- hith, now named 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION 5 I 
 
 Queenehith"; "The First and Second parts of King 
 Edward the Fourth, containing His merie pastime with 
 the Tanner of Tamworth, as also his loue to faire 
 Mistresse Shore, her great promotion, fall and miserie, 
 and lastly the lamentable death of both her and her 
 husband. Likewise the besieging of London, by the 
 Bastard Falconbridge, and the valiant defence of the 
 same by the Lord Maior and the Citizens." In a word 
 in plays such as these was developed the most popu- 
 lar and lasting type of the English Chronicle Play, a 
 type which partook more or less fully of the epic na- 
 ture of its immediate sources, the chronicles, ballads 
 and popular " histories " in verse and in prose. 
 
 Let us now turn to a general survey of the num- 
 ber of these plays and the distribution of them over 
 the period to which our attention is confined. Be- 
 tween 1562, the date of the performance of Gorboduc, 
 and the closing of the theaters in 1642 there is record 
 of more than a hundred and fifty plays dealing with 
 subjects drawn from the history of England and from 
 what went for such at that time. Of these about half 
 are extant ; the remainder, of which many never 
 reached the press, disappeared after having served the 
 purpose of the moment. If we add to these a few 
 plays in which a quasi-historical atmosphere is pre- 
 served by placing the plot in a definite English reign 
 of the past, and also the several in which the travels 
 and adventures of Englishmen abroad (subjects refer- 
 
52 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 able to the same general impulse) are the theme, and 
 if we remember that we have reason to believe that 
 here, as in other classes of the drama, the very name 
 and memory of many plays have perished, we may 
 be able to form some conception of what must have 
 been the complete body of the English historical 
 drama. Every reign, from that of Edward the Con- 
 fessor to that of Elizabeth herself, is laid under con- 
 tribution as the scene for these plays. Some mon- 
 archs figure in many plays : John in six, Edward III., 
 Henry V. and Richard III. in seven each, some of 
 them no longer extant ; Henry VI. in ten. Four plays 
 depict events in the reign of Henry VIII. and as many 
 more concern the lives of his children. The coming 
 of William, English prowess against the French, the 
 Scotch or the Welsh, the struggles of the barons in 
 Stephen's day, in John's or in Henry's ; the renown 
 of Richard Lion Heart, of the Black Prince or of John 
 of Gaunt ; the deeds of lesser heroes such as Talbot, 
 Hereford, Owen Tudor, all come in for their share in 
 this drama of action. Nor were the heroes of Saxon 
 times forgotten, from Hengist to Earl Godwin, nor 
 yet the early British kings Brute, Lear and Gorboduc 
 to the historical opponents of Rome, Caractacus and 
 Boadicea. 
 
 The distribution of these plays over the period of 
 the reigns of Elizabeth and James is significant. 
 About a dozen dramas yet extant fall before the year 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION 53 
 
 I S90, one of them, the Latin comedy, Byrsa Basilica, 
 two others, the Latin college plays on Richard III., 
 mentioned above. Of the remainder, Gorboduc and 
 The Misfortunes of Arthur were written, as we have 
 seen, under the immediate influence of Seneca ; Locrine 
 partially so. Two more of these plays. Fair Em and 
 fames IV. of Scotland, are pseudo-historical and may 
 date a little later. The three undoubted chronicle 
 plays discussed above make up the count. In the 
 next decade, 1590 to 1600, the Chronicle Play attained 
 its greatest popularity. Nearly eighty plays, less than 
 half of which are extant, fall therein. In this period 
 this species of drama was elevated by Marlowe and 
 Shakespeare from a mere drame de circonstance, de- 
 claiming against popery as in The Troublesome Raigne 
 of John, or abusive of the enemies of England as in 
 the gross misrepresentations of Queen Elinor of Cas- 
 tile in Edward I. and of Joan of Arc in / Henry VI., 
 to an artistic utterance containing a universal appeal. 
 With the coming of the new century, this class of 
 plays was superseded in popular esteem by the ro- 
 mantic drama and the comedy of manners, and the 
 recorded examples of the Chronicle Play fall to some 
 thirty, most of them acted in the first few years of 
 the century. Of these less than half have survived. 
 After 1 610 plays the subjects of which are drawn from 
 English history and myth are rare and the choice of 
 such subjects must be regarded as for the most part 
 
54 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 accidental, whilst their treatment is not infrequently 
 purely romantic.^ 
 
 Returning to the consideration of the English 
 Chronicle Drama in the heyday of its popularity, it is 
 of interest to note h6w wholly these plays are of the 
 people. Few were performed at court : none until it 
 had acquired a reputation on the London boards. 
 Scarcely any were presented at the universities or at 
 the Inns of Court, the former turning to dramatic 
 satire, the latter to Senecan tragedy and later to the 
 masque. Apparently the first company of actors to 
 popularize the Chronicle Play was the Queen's which 
 occupied, -off and on with other companies between 
 1584 and 1593, the old Theater in Finsbury Fields, 
 the earliest theatrical structure built in London. This 
 company enjoyed for a short time a monopoly of the 
 stage. Greene, Lodge, Peele and Marlowe all wrote 
 for it, though Greene alone remained with it when 
 fortune had fallen away. Whatever may be their pre- 
 cise and varying relations, it is in the hands of this 
 coterie of playwrights that the chronicle play received 
 its earliest development. In the following years by 
 far the largest number of historical dramas of which 
 we have any record were acted by the companies 
 under the control of Philip Henslowe, by the Earl of 
 Pembroke's, the Admiral's, Lord Derby's, Worcester's 
 
 • See the Table of Extant Plays and the List of Historical Dramas 
 at the end of this book. 
 
GROWTH AND DISTRIBUTION 55 
 
 and Sussex's men, at the Rose, the Fortune and the 
 theater at Newington Butts. This does not prove 
 that Henslowe's companies monopolized the plays of 
 this kind, for our data are too incomplete for any such 
 generalization. But this certainly does show that the 
 vogue of the Chronicle Play was great with companies 
 which were removed from the influence of the court. 
 Of these plays of Henslowe the greater part is lost. 
 A large number of extant plays remain to attest the 
 rival activity of Shakespeare's company under its vari- 
 ous patrons at the Theater, the Globe and Blackfriars. 
 Owing to the fact that we have no record such as 
 Henslowe's Diary for this company, what proportion 
 of plays may have perished must remain matter of 
 pure conjecture. Dekker's Satiromastix, 1601, is the 
 solitary play remotely of this class which we know to 
 have been acted by a company of children. And the 
 English setting of this play, the purpose of which is 
 wholly satirical, is purely accidental. The absurdity 
 of laying the scene in the England of William Rufus 
 is patent, and unaccountable except on the tradition 
 that Dekker was pressed for time in the composition 
 of his work and under the necessity of utilizing old 
 material. It seems reasonable to infer that the vogue 
 of the Chronicle Play was general and shared in by 
 all the public companies of adult actors. 
 
Ill 
 
 SHAKESPEARE'S PREDECESSORS: MAR- 
 LOWE AND HISTORICAL TRAGEDY 
 
 We have seen the English Chronicle Play originat- 
 ing in the years immediately preceding the coming. of 
 the Spanish Armada and have noted that the earlies* 
 productions of the type were performed by the Queen's 
 company of which Richard Tarlton died a member and 
 for which Robert Greene was long a playwright. We 
 have also considered in sketch the number of these 
 plays and their distribution over the period of their 
 popularity ; so that our enquiry must now fall wholly 
 within the limits of a map already outlined. Let us 
 now enquire more specifically into the part which the 
 immediate predecessors of Shakespeare took in the 
 development of this species of drama. Of the group 
 of dramatists which preceded Shakespeare and rivalled 
 him in the apprenticeship of his career, the names of 
 John Lyly and Thomas Kyd alone have escaped as- 
 sociation with the Chronicle Play. No one of the 
 unaided plays of Greene is, strictly speaking, historical ; 
 although English kings figure in no less than three of 
 them and a James IV. of Scotland — whose doings be- 
 long not to chronicles — gives another its title. The 
 name of Greene as a coadjutor, however, has been 
 
 S6 
 
SHAKESPEARE S PREDECESSORS 57 
 
 associated with three or four of the early chronicle 
 histories. There is nothing to show that he had a 
 hand in The Troublesome Raigne ; but the general 
 consensus of criticism allots to him a share in the 
 three plays on Henry VI., which in their later revision 
 are commonly included among the works of Shake- 
 speare. But whatever may have been Greene's share in 
 these and in other historical plays,' his contemporary 
 reputation must have depended far less on scenes of 
 horror, in which he could but follow where Kyd and 
 Marlowe led, than on episodes of light comedy such 
 as made his repute in fiction. 
 
 Thomas Lodge has left no English historical drama 
 wholly of his own composition and his share in The 
 Troublesome Raigne, i Henry VI., The First Contention 
 (the earlier form of 2 Henry V/.), the older Richard 
 HI. and King Leir can not but be regarded as largely a 
 matter of conjecture. Lodge's traffic with the stage 
 was of short duration. In his Scillaes Metamorphosis, 
 a volume of poetry published in 1589, he declares his 
 determination : 
 
 To write no more of that whence shame doth grow : 
 
 Or tie my pen to pennie-knaues delight 
 
 But Hue with fame, and so for fame to wright.* 
 
 ' The late Mr. John Addington Symonds considered parts of Locrine 
 " much in the manner of Greene." Shakspere's Predecessors, p. 308. 
 See the late Dr. Grosart's paper: "Was Robert Greene substantially 
 the Author of Titus Andronicus?" Englische Studien, XXII. 389; 
 and also his edition of Selimus in the Temple Dramatists, 1898. 
 
 ^ Poems of Lodge, ed. Chiswick, 1819, p. 33. 
 
5 8 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 With Peele and Marlowe we reach firmer ground ; 
 for each besides the portions which sound or ingenious 
 criticism has assigned to him in several plays of doubt- 
 ful authorship, is the unassisted author of one his- 
 torical drama : Peele of Edward I., Marlowe of Ed- 
 ward II. Of Peek's relation to the earlier dramas of 
 this class and of the inspiration which Gorboduc was to 
 him in Locrine enough has already been said. There 
 remain the three plays on Henry VI. In the long and 
 intricate discussion as to the authorship of these plays 
 Peek's claims like those of Lodge and Greene, have 
 naturally taken a place second to the more important 
 claims of Shakespeare. The names of the two lesser 
 dramatists were first associated with / Henry VI. by 
 Malone in his famous Dissertation on the Three Parts 
 of King Henry VI. These claims were soon extended 
 by others to the two parts of The Contention betwixt 
 the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, the 
 two old plays which in fuller form are printed in edi- 
 tions of Shakespeare as 2 and j Henry VI. This dis- 
 cussion has continued to Mr. Fleay, who assigns to 
 Peele, as to the other authors whom he thinks con- 
 cerned, each his part, with a certainty which is alike 
 the wonder and the despair of other critics.^ None the 
 less the mention of Peek in this connection has been for 
 the most part faint and uncertain, and in a recent sum- 
 mary of the whole question by Professor Ward has 
 ' See especially his Life of Shakespeare, p. 255. 
 
SHAKESPEARE S PREDECESSORS 59 
 
 sunk to' the statement of a bare possibility.* Even 
 when we add Peele's one undoubted play on an Eng- 
 lish historical subject, it must be confessed that this is 
 slender evidence on which to base any theory which 
 gives to him a prominent place in the early develop- 
 ment of the English Chronicle Drama. Peele had 
 emulated the success of Lyly at Court in his own Ar- 
 raignment of Paris, he had essayed a revival of a time- 
 honored subject in his dramatized version of biblical 
 story, David and Bethsabe, he imitated Tamburlaine in 
 its extravagance and grandiloquence in The Battle of 
 Alcazar, as to all appearances he had imitated Gor- 
 boduc or The Misfortunes of Arthur in the serious parts 
 oi Locrine. Peele's Chronicle of King Edward I. is 
 one more example of the same imitative and adaptable 
 talent. Here, as elsewhere, he seems to have followed 
 in the wake of others. This inartificial and hasty pro- 
 duction was first printed in 1593, and its original per- 
 formance probably dates from 1590 or 1591. Fre- 
 quent mention of a play called "long shankes" in 
 Henslowe' s Diary, which could hardly have been any 
 other than Peele's, points to a not inconsiderable pop- 
 ularity. The story of Edward I. is disfigured by an 
 outrageous and altogether gratuitous libel on the 
 memory of Good Queen Elinor of Castile. Peele was 
 not above utilizing the momentary prejudice of the 
 populace to the full, and he has in consequence pro- 
 ' Dramatic Literature, II. 67 and 73. 
 
6o THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 duced in his "Queen Elinor" a monster of mingled 
 wickedness and absurdity.* Edward I. marks abso- 
 lutely no advance on the earliest dramas of its class 
 and, with every allowance for a text hopelessly corrupt, 
 must be pronounced a production far below the grade 
 of Locrine. We may then conclude that while Greene, 
 Peele and possibly Lodge were engaged at one time or 
 another in the joint or several composition of chronicle 
 histories they really added little to what had already 
 been accomplished by the unknown author of The 
 Troublesome Raigne of John. 
 
 Among several plays which have been dated close 
 to 1 590, The Raigne of King Edward the third. As it 
 hath bin sundrie times plaied about the Citie of London, 
 claims our attention not only from the fact that it is 
 among the most favorable specimens of the English 
 Chronicle Play before its transformation by Shake- 
 speare and Marlowe, but from the additional circum- 
 stance that the hand of Shakespeare has been thought 
 by some to be discernible in it. Edward III. is ex- 
 ceedingly well written, easily maintaining the literary 
 excellence of the plays on Henry VI. in the qualities 
 of spirited dialogue, picturesque phrase and occasional 
 poetical sentiment. Indeed the incisiveness of King 
 Edward's defiance of the French, with which the first 
 act opens compares not altogether unfavorably with 
 
 ' Cf. the ballad entitled A Warning-Piece to England against Pride 
 and Wickedness, reprinted by Mr. BuUen in his ed. of Peele, 1888, I. 
 77. 
 
Shakespeare's predecessors 6i 
 
 the similar scene of Hoiry J '. But Edward III. con- 
 tains somewhat inorganically within it a romantic epi- 
 sode, albeit of its hero, derived from that storehouse of 
 romance, Painter's Palace of Pleasure} This is the story- 
 King Edward's lawless pursuit of the beautiful and 
 \-irtuous Countess of Salisbury, here told with such a 
 power, with so full a realization of its dramatic capa- 
 bilities and with so vigorous a portrayal alike of the 
 amorous king and the true-hearted lady that many 
 have not hesitated to ascribe these scenes to the pen 
 of Shakespeare. Edward has rescued from the be- 
 leaguering Scots the castle of Lady Salisbury', who in 
 gratitude and loyalty courteously entertains him. Here 
 are the sure words with which this earlier Imogen 
 meets the advances of her royal guest, who has taken 
 an unworthy advantage in gaining her oath before- 
 hand to " redeeme " a wrong which he declares he is 
 suffering in her house : 
 
 Countess. As easie may my intellectual soule 
 
 Be lent awaie, and yet my bodie hue. 
 As lend my bodie, pallace to my soule, 
 Awaie from her, and yet retaine my soule. 
 My bodie is her bower, her Gjurt, her abey. 
 And shee an Angell, pine, deuine, \-nspotted : 
 If I should lend her house, my Lord, to thee, 
 I kill my poore soule, and my poore soule me. 
 King. Didst thou not swere to giue me what I would ? 
 
 Countess. I did, my liege, so, what you would, I could. 
 
 1 XmeU XL VI., ed. Jacobs, 1890, I. 334. 
 
62 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 King. I wish no more of thee then thou maist giue : 
 Nor beg I do not, but I rather buie, 
 That is, thy loue ; and for that loue of thine 
 In rich exchaunge I tender to thee myne. 
 Countess. But that your lippes were sacred, my Lord, 
 You would prophane the holie name of loue. 
 That loue you offer me, you cannot giue ; 
 For Csesar owes that tribut to his Queene : 
 That loue you beg of me, I cannot giue ; 
 For Sara owes that duetie to her Lord. 
 He that doth clip or counterfeit your stamp. 
 Shall die, my Lord : And will your sacred 
 
 selfe 
 Comit high treason against the King of heauen, 
 To stamp his Image in forbidden mettel. 
 Forgetting your alleageance and your othe ? ^ 
 
 From the perpetuation of the old epic type of the 
 English Chronicle Play nothing artistic could be ex- 
 pected and nothing came. Save for a more finished 
 diction, more fluent verse and a clearer perception of 
 the historic scenes delineated, the latest plays of the 
 type offer little or no advance, dramatically considered, 
 beyond the first beginnings. The unifying artistic 
 
 1 Edward III., Warnke and Proescholdt, ed. II. I, 235-259. With 
 this passage compare Measure for Measure, II. 4, 42-46. 
 
 It were as good 
 To pardon him, that hath from nature stolne 
 A man already made, as to remit 
 Their sawcie sweetness, that do coyne heauens Image 
 In stamps that are forbid. 
 
Shakespeare's predecessors 63 
 
 motive that crystallized this amorphous mass into a 
 form of beauty came in the first instance from Mar- 
 lowe, and secondly from Shakespeare himself With 
 Marlowe it took a concentrated and tragic form, which 
 Shakespeare at first followed. But it attained at last 
 in the hands of the master dramatist a comprehensive- 
 ness in which comedy and tragedy become reconciled 
 and the whole range of human life is represented in its 
 political and social relations. It is to the considera- 
 tion of the tragic type of the Chronicle Drama as de- 
 veloped by Marlowe in his Edward II., to Shakespeare's 
 successive practice of the older epic manner in those 
 plays in which he worked over the material of others, 
 his following of Marlowe in Richard III. and his 
 growth through Richard II. to the realization of the 
 higher ideal just mentioned in the trilogy oi Henry IV. 
 and V. that we must now. address ourselves. 
 
 The name of Marlowe has been associated with 
 several chronicle plays. We may reject as untenable 
 the notion that Marlowe had a part in The Trouble- 
 some Raigne of John, together with the theory that 
 much of an original Richard III. was actually written 
 by him.' But we must accept' the prevalent opinion 
 which awards to that poet a part in the joint author- 
 ship of the two old plays commonly known as The 
 First and Second Contentions together with a probable 
 
 'Fleay, Life of Shakespeate, p. 276, and Ilalliwell-Phillipps, Out- 
 lines, ed. 1898, I. p. 148. 
 
64 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 share in i Henry VI. The full titles of the former two 
 plays runs : The First part of the Contention betwixt the 
 two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster, with the 
 death of the good Duke Humphrey : And the banish- 
 ment and death of the Duke of Suffolke, and the Trag- 
 icall end of the proud Cardinall of Winchester, with the 
 notable Rebellion of lacke Cade: And the Duke of 
 Yorkes first claime unto the Crowne : and The true 
 Tragedie of Richard Duke of YorTie, and the death of 
 good King Henrie the Sixt, with the whole contention 
 betweene the two Houses Lancaster and Yorke. These 
 plays were printed in the years 1594 and 159S, re- 
 spectively, and have been variously regarded as earlier, 
 ruder drafts or as later and defective copies of 2 and 
 J Henry VI. Neither nice limitations of the extent of 
 Marlowe's authorship in these three plays nor a pre- 
 cise determination of their chronology need concern 
 us here. It has been held that Marlowe's one un- 
 aided chronicle play, Edward II., followed the two 
 Contentions, and that the many parallel passages be- 
 tween these plays and Edward II. are to be referred 
 to Marlowe's borrowings from that earlier work.^ 
 This view Professor Ward combats with the argument 
 that the Contentions " unmistakably represent in some 
 respects, more especially in the treatment of the humor- 
 ous element, an advance which had not been reached 
 
 ' See Halliwell-Phillipps in the Shakespeare Society's Paf-ers, 1844, 
 I. 5 and Miss Lee, Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1875- 
 76, pp. 219-311. 
 
Shakespeare's predecessors 6$ 
 
 in Edward II." ' Whatever may be the relation of 
 these borrowed passages, this last opinion We must 
 absolutely reject, for nothing can be clearer as a result 
 of the study of the English chronicle plays than the 
 fact that the humorous element is present in their 
 earliest type and common to the whole species through- 
 out the period of their popularity, except where occa- 
 sionally deliberately rejected. Edward II. was regis- 
 tered for publication in July, 1593, less than two 
 months after the poet's tragic death at Deptford. His 
 play could not have been above two or three years old 
 at that time. It seems reasonable to regard such a 
 triumph of dramatic art as Marlowe's crowning work 
 in this species of the drama, rather than to suppose 
 that he subsequently returned to collaboration in plays 
 of a less organic structure and of a literary quality 
 generally inferior. 
 
 The descriptive title of Marlowe's play runs The 
 troublesome raigne and lamentable death of Edward the 
 second, King of England : with the tragicallfall of proud 
 Mortimer. . . . Written by Chri. Mar low Gent., 1594. 
 The title of the second quarto, of 1 598, adds And also 
 the life and death of Peirs Gaueston, the greate Earle of 
 Cornewall, and mighty favorite of king Edward the 
 second. The subject of this play is substantially that 
 of Shakespeare's Richard II. : the struggle of a weak 
 and unprincipled king, a prey to favorites, to maintain 
 
 ^Dramatic Literature, I. 349. 
 
66 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 his will and later his crown against a group of rebel- 
 lious nobles whom his arrogance and injustice has 
 estranged and incensed. The parallel is historical, and 
 the tragic element lies in the inherently unkingly nature 
 of both the royal protagonists. Each is odious in his 
 prosperity, but each rises -to dignity when the flood of 
 misfortune flows full upon him and claims our com- 
 passion in his overthrow. The period of the action of 
 Edward II. extends over the events of twenty years 
 and has been condensed into dramatic cohesion with no 
 common skill. As Mr. Verity points out, the troubles 
 in Ireland in 1315 and 13 16 and the Scottish border 
 raids of 1 3 1 8 are made to agree in time, and are re- 
 ferred to the evil counsels of Gaveston, who had actu- 
 ally paid the forfeit of his enmity to the rebellious 
 nobles several years before.' Similarly " Warwick, 
 whd died in 1 3 1 5, is made to take part in the battle of 
 Boroughbridge, and afterwards atone for the execu- 
 tion of Gaveston, so that poetic justice may be satis- 
 fied : the younger Spencer is represented, with great 
 gain to the continuity of the drama, as succeeding 
 Gaveston immediately in the favor of the king ; whereas 
 for several years after Gaveston's death in 1 3 1 2 he 
 sided with Lancaster's party, was the object of 
 Edward's bitter hostility, and did not change till about 
 1 3 18." ^ Other departures from the historical sources 
 are the degrading of the social rank of the Spencers to 
 
 '^ Edward II., Temple Dramatists, •g. ix. 
 ^Ibid., p. viii. 
 
Shakespeare's predecessors 6"] 
 
 match that of the upstart Gaveston, and the sugges- 
 tion of a motive for Queen Isabella's faithlessness to 
 her royal husband in his indifference and neglect of 
 her. As Mr. Verity says : " these . . . are in the main 
 only changes of time or place and do not involve mis- 
 representation of character." * We have here, in a 
 word, the artist's use of material, whereby the essential 
 is distinguished with unerring tact from the non-essen- 
 tial and a truer and severer logic imparted to the se- 
 quence of events and to the characters and their rela- 
 tions to each other than can ever exist in life. The 
 constructive excellence of Edward II. is unusual : 
 when we consider its early date and the exuberant 
 and lyric quality of the genius of Marlowe, the play in 
 its restraint becomes worthy of the highest possible 
 praise. No one will deny that in Marlowe the poet 
 is greater than the dramatist. But to say that his 
 work " was cast by accident and caprice into the im- 
 perfect mould of the drama "^ is to say too much. 
 For in a comparison with his peers Marlowe holds his 
 own as a constructive dramatist, and is not among the 
 least in power of characterization. If we feel in- 
 stinctively that he is not at his best in the glowing 
 extravagance of Tamburlaine or even in the at times 
 too palpable restraint of Edward, it is because we re- 
 member the ravishing melody and rare poetic flights 
 
 ' Ibid., p. ix. 
 
 2 Saintsbury, Elizabethan Literature, p. 79- 
 
68 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 of Hero and Leander or the deeper-toned lyrical pas- 
 sages of Faustus. In view of these heights and bursts 
 of melody the conscious restraint of Edward II. be- 
 comes the more noteworthy and the more significant 
 in its promise of the harmonious growth of Marlowe 
 into a world-dramatist as well £is a world-poet, a 
 growth unhappily blighted in its spring and destined 
 never to reach fulfilment. 
 
 Although the main source of Edward II. is Holin- 
 shed, Marlowe took certain particulars from Fabyan 
 and Stow and condensed and rearranged his materials 
 as we have already seen, omitting the customary 
 clownage. So that in place of a series of events, con- 
 nected solely because they all happen to one protag- 
 onist and alternated with scenes of mere comic diver- 
 sion, each scene and character is grouped about the 
 central idea, the struggle of Edward with his barons, 
 and unfolded in such a manner as to lend to the total 
 effect. Up to the turning point of the play (Edward's 
 triumph over his rebellious peers in the third scene of 
 act third) the king is consistently presented to us in a 
 light disadvantageous to our conception of his char- 
 acter as a man and as a sovereign. His vacillation, 
 tergiversation and cowardice are vividly displayed, and 
 his lavish and wanton generosity to Gaveston, the un- 
 worthy favorite, whom he permits to insult the noblest 
 men of the realm and even his queen in the royal 
 presence. His childish threats, his injustice and out- 
 
Shakespeare's predecessors 69 
 
 rage to the church, his'want of royal dignity in per- 
 mitting his barons to quarrel in his presence and bandy 
 abuse, his unchivalrous neglect of his queen and brutal 
 innuendoes as to her relations with Mortimer — all are 
 artfully employed to throw the weight of the specta- 
 tor's sympathy against this unregal sovereign. On 
 the other hand no sooner has fortune turned against 
 Edward and he is surprised in the Abbey of Neath, 
 " heavy with drowsiness of woe," than the weight is 
 shifted and our attention is drawn away from the king's 
 misdeeds and arrogance to the selfishness and dis- 
 loyalty of his enemies : to Mortimer, who is no pas- 
 sionate lover chivalrously in arms to right the wrongs 
 of his queen and beloved, but a vulgar intriguer for 
 the crown, playing on the starved affections of a weak 
 woman, seeking to pervert the young prince ; to 
 Isabella herself, long faithless, now become vindictive 
 and conniving at the murder of her lord ; to the hard 
 jailer, Berkley, and Matrevis, Gurney and their hired 
 assassins. The king's brother, Kent, a just man and 
 siding with the barons against the royal abuses, re- 
 turns to allegiance when Edward's sorrows increase 
 upon him and falls a sacrifice to the royal cause. As 
 to Edward, his faults are forgotten and our attention 
 is riveted on the fading dignity of misused kingship, 
 now slipping away from his reluctant grasp. Face to 
 face with the inevitable, Edward moralizes on the vanity 
 of kingship : 
 
70 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 But what are Kings, when regiment is gone, 
 But perfect shadowes in a sun-shine day ? 
 And cries out in anguish : 
 
 Ah Leister, weigh how hardly I can brooke 
 
 To lose my Crowne and Kingdome without cause, 
 
 To giue ambitious Mortimer my right, 
 
 Here take my Crowne, the life of Edward too. 
 Then taking off his crown and holding it in his hand, 
 he pleads : 
 
 Let me be King till night. 
 That I may gaze vpon this glittering Crowne, 
 So shall my eyes receiue their last content, 
 My head the latest honour due to it, 
 And ioyntly both yeeld vp their wished right. 
 Continue euer thou celestiall Sunne, 
 Let neuer silent night possesse this clime, 
 Stand still you watches of the Element, 
 All times and seasons rest you at a stay, 
 That Edward may be still faire Englands King ! 
 
 At length discrowned forever by his own involuntary 
 act he turns his back on his court and exclaims : 
 
 Now, sweete God of Heauen, 
 Make me despise this transitory pompe. 
 And sit for aye inthronized in Heauen, 
 Come death, and with thy fingers close my eyes, 
 Or if I Hue let me forget my selfe.' 
 
 Deeper and deeper are the drafts of this royal ill-doer 
 upon our sympathy up to that supreme scene in which 
 
 1 Edward II., V. I, 26-III. 
 
SHAKESPEARE S PREDECESSORS "Jl 
 
 a violent and horrible death overtakes him discrowned, 
 dishonored and overwatched. 
 
 Many details might be cited to show the dramatic 
 aptitude of Marlowe. Such is the brief episode of the 
 opening scene in which three poor men seek the ser- 
 vice of Gaveston. Such is the dramatic foreshadow- 
 ing of the character of Spencer before he succeeds to 
 the precarious honors of that favorite, and the skilful 
 interweaving of the two "favorite threads."* Such 
 too is the postponement of Gaveston's death ^ to 
 heighten its effect, and the employment of the report 
 of it to enflame Edward to the climax of the play, his 
 momentary triumph and abuse of that triumph in the 
 execution of Warwick and the banishment of Kent.* 
 The latter's attempted rescue of his brother, the king, 
 too, is opportunely introduced to supply what is tech- 
 nically known as " the force of final suspense." More 
 delicate is the touch by which at the very moment 
 that the reverse action (the queen's and Mortimer's 
 conspiracy hatched in France) is set in motion, the 
 young Prince is made to utter the first note of " the 
 sentimental fallacy of the king's real openness to kind 
 management " which is so effectually employed dur- 
 ing "the decline." The success too with which the 
 Prince is kept clear of the intrigue and made to assert 
 his sense of justice and his kingship in the end is as 
 
 ^Ibid., II. I. 
 
 2 From II. 5 to III. 2. 
 
 ^Ibid., III. 3. 
 
72 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 worthy of praise as the artful manner in which the 
 dramatist has contrived to maintain our interest in 
 the unworthy king when the catastrophe shortly to 
 overwhelm him has become inevitable. 
 
 Well conceived and strongly outlined as are the 
 characters of Edward, the boyish Prince, the haughty 
 insurgent Mortimer and the judicious Kent, it must be 
 acknowledged that in this particular Marlowe does 
 not stand so clearly the superior of his contemporaries 
 as in dramatic constructiveness and poetic richness and 
 vigor of thought. There are breaks and inconsequences 
 in characterization in all Marlowe's plays, and in Ed- 
 ward the figure of Queen Isabella seems especially de- 
 fective in portrayal and is certainly not to be named with 
 the fresh and breathing women of Greene, Margaret of 
 Friar Bacon and Ida oi James IV., or even with Mar- 
 lowe's own Zenocrete or Abigail. Isabella is at first 
 weak and affectionate, content to endure her loveless 
 life in quiet and uncomplaining suffering. In the end 
 she has become a woman hardened in sin and abetting 
 her paramour in his murder of her husband. This 
 transition is not delineated in the play, and the trans- 
 formation if admitted as psychologically possible is in- 
 defensible dramatically, especially when unexpressed. 
 In a series of notes (which contain the best dramatic 
 analysis of this play with which I am acquainted) the 
 late Professor McLaughlin has suggested : "In Mar- 
 lowe's plan of building up sympathy against the king 
 
SHAKESPEARE S PREDECESSORS 73 
 
 until the tragedy was prepared for, he wished to enlist 
 the audience on the queen's side at first, as a loving 
 and injured wife, then after the reverse action was 
 under way, he aimed to intensify pity for the victim 
 by every device ; and what would create a stronger 
 reaction in his favor than the shamelessness of such a 
 woman as this later Isabel? So with this ultimate 
 treatment in mind, and as if to give a clue to what is 
 coming, he tainted her early innocence by slanderous 
 blemishes, which her transformed nature afterward 
 proceeded to verify." ^ This is probably the true so- 
 lution and may likewise account for the fact that 
 Marlowe has been content to assert rather than to 
 delineate the guilty passion of Mortimer and the 
 queen. Inconsequence and sketchiness remain none 
 the less essential defects of Marlowe's portrayal of his- 
 torical personages, and it is not in the delineation of 
 character that his service to the English Chronicle 
 Drama is to be recorded. When all has been said, 
 it is the fine restraint, the artist's feeling of fitness, 
 which has given us in its best scenes no word too 
 much or word irrelevant, the sense of a general design 
 and the severity with which it is carried out, above all 
 the distinction of style and the impelling force of its 
 sheer poetry that distinguishes this remarkable tragedy 
 not only from what had gone before it in its own 
 kind but from its few peers in the English drama. 
 
 ^Edward II., ed. McLaughlin, 1894, p. 163. 
 
74 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Edward II. may be considered the final evolution of 
 the tragic type of the English Chronicle Play. The 
 qualities which differentiate it from the class of plays 
 out of which it was evolved are, briefly to summarize, 
 its superior selectiveness of material, its suppression 
 of scenes of comic diversion and of all matter extrane- 
 ous to the central idea, its conscious constructiveness 
 and self-restraint, all tending towards a fuller artistic 
 and dramatic unity ; lastly its attempt at a higher and 
 more serious conception of character and the infusion 
 of an elevated poetical spirit throughout the whole. 
 
IV 
 
 THE MARLOWE-SHAKESPEARE PLAYS 
 
 We turn now to a consideration of the plays on 
 Henry VL and Richard IIL, the dramas in which 
 Shakespeare, whether in revision or in independent 
 authorship, was working either with Marlowe or 
 directly under his influence. We shall defer Shake- 
 speare's independent development of the possibilities 
 of the Chronicle Play to a later treatment since such 
 was the order of time. Unedifying and wearisome as 
 the intricate crimes and sufferings of the houses of 
 York and Lancaster must seem to the reader of his- 
 tory to-day, this subject had a present interest to the 
 Elizabethan from the fact that these internecine civil 
 feuds were to him the latest events in which English 
 prowess and heroism had displayed themselves in full 
 gtory, and from the additional circumstance that out 
 of these political upheavals had been evolved the 
 stable Tudor dynasty under which Englishmen were 
 then enjoying a national prosperity hitherto unknown. 
 The popularity of the Wars of the Roses and the ac- 
 companing events as subjects for historical, epic and 
 dramatic treatment is attested by numerous contem- 
 porary books. Aside from the parts of general chron- 
 icles like those of Grafton, Stow and Holinshed which 
 
 7S 
 
76 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 are employed with this period, Halle's The Union 
 of the two noble and illustrate famelies of Lancastre and 
 Yorke, 1 548, is devoted wholly to this theme, and Sir 
 Thomas More's fragment of a History of Richard III., 
 authentically published in 1557, to a later portion 
 of it. In narrative verse the events of the reigns of 
 Henry VI. and his two successors may be affirmed to 
 have been for years the most popular of all subjects. 
 In the first edition of 772^ Mlrourfor Magistrates there 
 are eleven stories of historical personages who figured 
 in the Wars of the Roses, nearly half of the whole 
 collection. The second edition added six such stories, 
 and that of 1587 two more, giving us a total of all but 
 twenty " legends " devoted to this one period. Be- 
 sides this Daniel's Civile Wars, three of Drayton's 
 Heroicall Epistles and several chapters of Albions Eng- 
 land concern characters of that age, and some half 
 dozen single poems by lesser men treat of Jane Shore, 
 Edward IV. and his brother Richard. In the drama 
 besides the three parts of Henry VI. and the two Con- 
 tentions, the scene of The Blind Beggar of Bednall 
 Green by Day and Chettle, 1600, is laid in Henry's 
 reign though' it deals little with any real historical 
 event, and a play entitled The Battle of Hexham by 
 Barnaby Barnes of uncertain date was extant in manu- 
 script in 1807. An eighth play, the plot of which 
 must have fallen within the reign of Henry was Duke 
 Humphrey, one of the many old dramas destroyed by 
 
THE MARLOW"E-SHAKESPEARE PLAYS 7/ 
 
 that menial Omar of English dramatic literature. War- 
 burton's cook, and dating 1625, beyond the period 
 with which we are here concerned. Turning to Ed- 
 ivard IV., Heywood's two plays on that monarch and 
 a non-extant Shores Wife by Day and Chettle are the 
 only dramas wholly concerned wth Edward's reign. 
 The rise and fall of the portentous figure of Richard 
 III. was by fer the most popular of English dramatic 
 historical subjects, a fact proved by no less than seven 
 plays between Dr. Legge's Latin tragedy in 1579 and 
 the lost Richard Crookback of Jonson, 1602. An 
 eighth play on this subject was A Tragedy of Richard 
 the TTdrd or the English Prophet with the Reformation 
 by Samuel Rowley, licensed in 1623 and long since 
 perished. Most of these plays must have made the 
 ill-favored figure of Richard their chief study. Such 
 is certainly true .of the several which have come down 
 to us. But one of those now lost but mentioned by 
 Henslowe appears to have centered attention on one 
 of the most prominent of Richard's victims, the Duke 
 of Buckingham, another on Richard's victor and suc- 
 cessor, Henry, Earl of Richmond.^ In short we have 
 in existence or on record a corpus of at least twenty 
 dramas busy with the various events and persons 
 which the tetralogy of the three plays on Henry VI. 
 and Richard III. sought to cover. A passage from The 
 
 ' Cf. Hmslome's Diary, Sh. Soc. Pub., 1845, pp. 31 and 159. The 
 dates of these plays are 1593 and 1599. Mr. Fleay assigns the latter 
 to Robert Wilson the Younger ; Biographical Chronicle s. v. Wilson. 
 
78 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Epistle to the Reader prefixed to The Ghost of Richard 
 III., by Christopher Brooke, pubh'shed in 1614, rec- 
 ognizes how thoroughly the topic had become " staled 
 on the common stage." "And when I undertook 
 this I thought with myselfe, that to draw arguments 
 of invention from a subject, new and probable, would 
 be farre more plaucible to the time, then by insisting 
 upon narrations, made so common in playes and so 
 notorious among all men, have my labour slighted, 
 and my pen tax't for triviall." ' 
 
 The essential epic unity of the plays on Henry VI. 
 and their sequel Richard III. has long been recog- 
 nized. The first of these plays is taken up with the 
 successive steps by which the English lost the con- 
 quests of Henry V. in France. The main figures 
 here are the brave and honorable Talbot, Earl of 
 Shrewsbury, about whom cluster most of the finer 
 scenes, and Joan la Pucelle, whose career is in the end 
 distorted into that of a witch whose converse with evil 
 spirits and whose loose life and denial of her own 
 father go far to explain if not to justify the terrible fate 
 that overtook her.^ In this matter the dramatist was 
 merely following the chroniclers, his sources ; who 
 
 1 The Ghost, Shakespeare Society, 1844, p. 6. 
 
 ^ See a recrudescence of the extraordinary idea once advocated by 
 Malone, that Joan was thus misrepresented because of the insular pre 
 judice that believed "that nothing not tending to British glory was 
 worthy to be recorded at all," in the introduction to the nineteenth 
 volume of The Bankside Shakespeare. 
 
THE MARLOWE-SHAKESPEARE PLAYS 79 
 
 had in turn derived this misrepresentation of the 
 glorious Maid of Orleans from Englishmen, Joan's 
 enemies in the field, to whom she had been a veritable 
 scourge. The superstition of an age that witnessed a 
 French king on his knees in prayer before the pewter 
 images of saints pinned on his hat, and the amour pro- 
 pre of warriors defeated by the nation which they had 
 habitually scorned from Cregy to Agincourt are alone 
 responsible for these distortions of truth. But these 
 subjects are not all. The larger theme of the tetralogy, 
 the discord of Lancaster and York, takes its rise in the 
 disunion of the young king's kindred, Humphrey Duke 
 of Gloucester, the Lord Protector, and Henry Beau- 
 fort, afterwards Cardinal, and the popular feuds which 
 their disunion fostered. In the fine scene in the Tem- 
 ple Garden this motif assumes a definite and pictur- 
 esque form.* It receives a deeper significance in the 
 succeeding scene between the politic Richard Plan- 
 tagenet and the " Nestor-like aged " Edmund Mor- 
 timer, here represented contrary to the historical fact 
 as ending a long life of imprisonment and persecu- 
 tion at the hands of the reigning house. The latter 
 assumes at once a position of contrast, in his practical 
 sagacity, his calculating diplomacy and his bold de- 
 cision of character, to the saintlike and impotent Henry, 
 the royal puppet of the house of Lancaster, whose ill- 
 advised choice of " the badge of Somerset " in his fu- 
 
 ^i Henry VL, II. 4, 11-76. 
 
80 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 tile attempt to reconcile the quarrel of two followers 
 of Richard and Somerset, widens the breach beyond 
 repair. The discord rises until Talbot, the noblest 
 and most chivalrous of Englishmen, is sacrificed to it 
 and the English are all but completely driven out of 
 France. The play ends with the personal quarrel of 
 Duke Humphrey and Cardinal Winchester unabated 
 and the political dissensions of York and Somerset 
 gathering force. We have thus two threads with which 
 to connect the first and the second parts of Henry VI. 
 The last act of the former play supplies us with a third 
 in Suffolk's capture of Margaret, the daughter of the 
 impoverished Reignier, Duke of Anjou and Maine, 
 and the king's acceptance of Suffolk's plan by which 
 Margaret becomes queen of England. The whole 
 story of Margaret of Anjou's guilty love for Suffolk is 
 characterized by Mr. Boswell-Stone as " sheer fiction." 
 None the less there are passages in Holinshed and 
 Halle out of which such " fiction " may not unnatu- 
 rally have taken its rise.* ^ 
 
 In 2 Henry VI. the quarrel of Duke Humphrey 
 and Cardinal Winchester is rapidly developed to a 
 climax by the aid of two new elements. Queen Mar- 
 garet's eagerness to supplant the Protector with her 
 favorite and paramour, the Earl of Suffolk, and her 
 jealousy of Eleanor Cobham, the imprudent and am- 
 bitious wife of Duke Humphrey. In the upshot Dame 
 
 1 Shakspere's Holinshed, p. xiv ; Holinshed, II. 220 ; Halle, p. 218. 
 
THE MARLOWE-SHAKESPEARE PLAYS 8 1 
 
 Eleanor is disgraced and compelled to do penance 
 in a sheet, for her traffic in the black art. Her hus- 
 band, popularly revered as the Good Duke Hum- 
 phrey, is deposed from the Protectorship and mur- 
 dered by Suffolk's and the Cardinal's procurement. 
 The latter dies of remorse for his crime, and Suffolk, 
 banished the realm, is captured and slain by pirates. 
 In the midst of all stands the saturnine figure of 
 the Duke of York, content to " be still awhile, till time 
 doth serve," but ever plotting, strengthening his party 
 and abetting discontent. Entrusted at length with a 
 military expedition into Ireland because of his seeming 
 loyalty, the tool of treason is thrust into his hand and 
 the play ends with the Battle of St. Albans in which 
 York slays his old enemy Somerset. Nearly the 
 whole fourth act of this play is given over to a fresh 
 and admirable dramatic portrayal of the rising of Jack 
 Cade, an episode, like several minor ones in the same 
 play, illustrative of the main theme, but not directly 
 conducive to the unfolding of it. Here, as in the 
 case of Joan of Arc, the alleged misrepresentations of 
 the actual C^de are referable to the sources of the 
 dramatist, who has somewhat confused this uprising 
 of Kentish men in 1450 with the villeins' revolt of 1381.^ 
 The third part of Henry VI. begins with the agree- 
 ment forced from that unhappy monarch by which he 
 accepted the Duke of York as heir to the throne of 
 England and disinherited the young Prince Edward, 
 
 ' See Shaksfere's Holinshed, p. 27 1. 
 
82 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 his and Margaret's son. The civil war is at its height 
 and the first act concludes with the capture, mockery 
 and wanton murder of the Duke of York by "bloody 
 Clifford" and Margaret, "the she-wolf of France." 
 In rapid succession now follow the rallying of the 
 York side, the crowning of Edward IV., his subse- 
 quent deposition by Warwick, the king-maker, for the 
 insult offered to the latter's embassy to France, Ed- 
 ward's precipitate marriage with Lady Gray, his over- 
 throw of Warwick and the second coronation, the 
 murder of Henry by Richard and the postponed but 
 terrible retribution that overtook Queen Margaret in 
 the violent death of her only son, the young Prince 
 Edward. On the death of the Duke of York, Richard, 
 his youngest son, succeeds to his father's earlier atti- 
 tude of temporizing duplicity, uniting this play with 
 the play bearing his own name, as York links the 
 second and third parts of Henry VI. The Richard 
 of J Henry VI. and of Richard III. are the same per- 
 son, and his final overthrow by Henry of Richmond, 
 who, free from the crimes of both parties, is able to 
 unite in his'marriage with Elizabeth of York the claims 
 of each, is a satisfactory close to this long and terrible 
 epic of fratricidal war. 
 
 Omitting for the nonce all reference to Shake- 
 speare's Richard, such unity as these shifting scenes 
 and interspersed episodes possess is wholly epic. It 
 subsists in the general conception, and is main- 
 
THE MAKLOWE-SHAKESPEARE PLAYS 83 
 
 tained by the linking of characters sketched in suc- 
 cessive plays. Thus Queen Margaret figures in all 
 four plays. Henry, York and Warwick in three ; 
 Duke Humphrey, the Cardinal and Suffolk in the 
 first two ; Somerset and Clifford in 2 and j Henry VI.; 
 Edward and his brothers in j Henry VI. and Richard 
 III. Of specific or dramatic unity there is none. The 
 sequence of events is hopelessly jumbled. The epi- 
 sodes are, for the most part, conveyed bodily from the 
 chronicles, although several of them, such as the trial 
 by combat ' and the miracle wrought by the Protector 
 upon the impostor at St. Albans ^ disclose the hand 
 of a dramatist of unusual promise. It is noteworthy 
 that, save for a paltry scene in the first part, ^ the em- 
 ployment of comedy is substantially confined to the 
 second play of the series. In the earlier parts of that 
 play the comedy scenes are all episodic. Even those 
 dealing with Jack Cade, excellent as they are, might 
 be cut out of the play and in no wise impair its epic 
 completeness. 
 
 Similarities between passages of Marlowe's Edward 
 II. and passages of the two Contentions have already 
 been mentioned. It has also been suggested above 
 that these two plays must have preceded Edward II., 
 although the composition of what cannot but be re- 
 garded as their later revisions, namely 2 and j Henry 
 
 •■a Henry VI., II. 3 
 
 ■^Ibid., II. I. 
 
 ^ I Henry VI., II. I. 
 
84 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 V/. and their continuation or sequel, Shakespeare's 
 Richard III., must have followed Marlowe's tragedy. 
 That these similarities are due to the hand of Marlowe 
 either in the original plays (as held by the late Richard 
 Grant White) or in their revision (the theory of Miss 
 Jane Lee) may be accepted, in accord with the best 
 criticism, as all but certain. ' The relation of the char- 
 acters Suffolk, Margaret and King Henry is superfi- 
 cially that of Mortimer, Isabella and Edward, here 
 delineated with fullness and power, but relegated to 
 the background as the plan of Edward II. demanded. 
 That Shakespeare's hand is evident in every play of 
 the finished tetralogy is patent and beyond cavil. The 
 printing of the two Contentions side by side with 2 and 
 J Henry VI. discloses a revision line by line, the re- 
 pression of a passage here, a judicious expansion there. 
 Yet he is a bold critic who dares venture an opinion 
 as to the precise limits of authorship. Let us take a 
 typical passage. Suffolk pursued almost into the 
 presence of the king by Warwick and the commons 
 who are crying out against him for the murder of 
 Duke Humphrey, is banished the realm by Henry, 
 who with Warwick sweeps out of the presence cham- 
 ber followed by his train, leaving Suffolk and Queen 
 Margaret alone. In the older version of the play, 
 Margaret thus wreaks imprecation on her foes : 
 
 ^See White's Essay on the Authorship of King Henry the Sixth, 
 Vol. VII. of his edition of Shakespeare, 1S59, and Miss Lee's On the 
 Authorship of the Second and Third Parts of Henry VI. and their 
 Originals, Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1875-76. 
 
THE MARLOWE-SHAKESPEARE PLAYS 
 
 85 
 
 Queene. Hell fire and vengeance go along with you, 
 
 Theres two of you, the diuell make the third, 
 
 \_Tuming to Suffolk.'^ 
 Fie womanish man, canst thou not curse thy 
 enemies ? 
 Suffolke. A plague vpon them, wherefore should I curse 
 them? 
 Could curses kill as do the Mandrakes groanes, 
 I would inuent as many bitter termes 
 Deliuered strongly through my fixed teeth, 
 With twise so many signes of deadly hate, 
 As leaue fast enuy in her loathsome caue.' 
 
 As expanded in revision this passage reads : 
 
 Queene. Mischance and Sorrow goe along with you, 
 Hearts Discontent, and sowre Affliction, 
 Be play-fellowes to keepe you companie : 
 There's two of you, the Deuill make a third, 
 And three-fold Vengeance tend vpon your steps. 
 
 Suffolke. Cease, gentle Queene, these Execrations, 
 And let thy Suffolke take his heauie leaue. 
 
 Queene. Fye Coward woman, and soft harted wretch. 
 Hast thou not spirit to curse thine enemy. 
 
 Suffolke. A plague vpon them : wherefore should I cursse 
 them? 
 Would curses kill, as doth the Mandrakes grone, 
 I would inuent as bitter searching termes, 
 As curst, as harsh, and horrible to heare, 
 Deliuer'd strongly through my fixed teeth, 
 With full as many signes of deadly hate. 
 As leane-fac'd enuy in her loathsome caue.* 
 
 ^ I Contention, facsimile of the quarto of 1594, p. 39. 
 -2 Henry VI., III. 2, 299-315. 
 
86 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 The improvement in the revision is greater than may 
 at first appear. The first gain is in dignity ; a fish- 
 wife might have screamed the original execration. A 
 second gain is in dramatic sensibility whereby Suffolk's 
 " Cease, gentle Queen," with its ring of unconscious 
 irony marks him as, for the instant, oblivious to his 
 enemies, to the question addressed him, to all, in the 
 overwhelming sense of the doom that is to part him 
 from the woman he so fiercely loves. It is the queen's 
 coarser nature that recalls him to the thought of ven- 
 geance. Once more, the revised passage has gained 
 in quality of diction. Compare especially the conclud- 
 ing lines of the two passages. Lastly the passage has 
 gained in figurative force: "fast (i. e., fastened, teth- 
 ered, if indeed the word be not a misprint) enuy " is 
 replaced by the picturesque epithet " leane-fac'd ; " 
 "many bitter termes " becomes "bitter-searching 
 termes " and the poetical thought which likens " hearts 
 Discontent and sowre Affliction " in their daily compan- 
 ionship to the intimacy of playfellows has been added. 
 
 Farther on in the same scene we meet the follow- 
 ing passage in the older play : 
 
 Queene. No more, Sweete Suffolke, hie thee hence to 
 
 France, 
 Or Hue where thou wilt within this worldes 
 
 globe. 
 He haue an Irish that shall finde thee out. 
 And long thou shalt not staie, but lie haue thee 
 
 repelde, 
 
THE MARLOWE-SHAKESPEARE PLAYS 8/ 
 
 Or venture to be banished my selfe. 
 
 Oh let this kisse be printed in thy hand, 
 
 That when thou seest it, thou maist thinke on 
 
 me. 
 Away, I say, that I may feele my griefe. 
 For it is nothing whilst thou standest here. 
 Suffolke. Thus is poore Suffolke ten times banished, 
 
 Once by the King, but three times thrise by 
 
 thee.' 
 
 In the revision, in which " an Irish " ceases to sug- 
 gest a faithful servitor of a ubiquitous race and is 
 transmuted into the familiar Homeric messenger god- 
 dess Iris, this passage is transferred to the very end of 
 the scene and made in its undertone of fatalism to 
 forebode Suffolk's approaching death. The character 
 of the revision of this passage, which is too familiar 
 and readily accessible to require quotation here, should 
 alone be sufficient to refute once and for all the notion 
 that Shakespeare is the author of both versions, or 
 that the shorter copy is a pirated edition of the text 
 afterwards printed in the folio.^ The clumsiest of re- 
 porters could scarcely have contrived to omit with un- 
 failing regularity the words and phrases which trans- 
 form many passages of the older play from dead 
 material into poetry instinct with dramatic life and 
 vigor. 
 
 But an interesting question arises at this point as to 
 
 ' I Contention, p. 40. 
 
 * See Fleay, Biographical Chronicle, II. 63 ; and his Life of Shake- 
 speare, p. 255. 
 
88 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 the relation of j Henry VI. and its forerunner, 2 Con- 
 tention to Shakespeare's Tragedy of King Richard III. 
 and to The True Tragedy of Richard III, an earlier 
 play distinguishable alike from Shakespeare's and from 
 The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, the fuller 
 title of 2 Contention. The full title of this earlier play- 
 runs : The True Tragedie of Richard the TJiird : 
 Wherein is showne the death of Edward the fourth, with 
 the smothering of the two yoong Princes in the Tower : 
 with the lamentable ende of Shores wife, an example for 
 all wicked women. And lastly the coniunction and ioyn- 
 ing of the two noble Houses, Lancaster and Yorke. . . 
 1594. Collier's assignment of this play to a date 
 prior to the year 1588 certainly places it too early.^ 
 Mr. Fleay and Professor Churchill agree in dating it 
 three or four years later and after the earlier plays on 
 Henry VI. ^ The title page of The True Tragedy of 
 Richard III. states that it " was playd by the Queenes 
 Majesties Players." There is reason to believe that i 
 Henry VI. and / Contention {i. e., 2 Henry VI!) were 
 both earlier plays of the same company.* The 2 Con- 
 tention was acted by the Earl of Pembroke's company 
 and has therefore been regarded as a continuation by 
 that rival company of the Queen's company's play, / 
 Contention. Pembroke's men thus borrowed the title 
 
 •GsUier's ed. oi Shakespeare, 1842, V. 344. 
 
 ''^ Biographical Chronicle, II. 315; and Richard III. bis Shake- 
 speare, p. 38. 
 
 ' Ibid, and Fleay, Stage, p. 406. 
 
THE MARLOWE-SHAKESPEARE PLAYS 89 
 
 of the Queen's company's play in the word " Conten- 
 tion." The Queen's men now retorted with a further 
 continuation of the story of The True Tragedy of the 
 Duke of York and also played on the title by calling 
 their new play The True Tragedy of Richard III. 
 
 That the Richard of j Henry VI. is developed from 
 the preparatory sketch of the 2 Contention even a cur- 
 sory examination of the two texts in parallel will dis- 
 close. The alterations in this revision are less than 
 those which were made in the revision of / Conten- 
 tion ; and the changes, so far as they concern Richard, 
 all make for distinctness and vividness, and generally 
 consist in additions. Thus Richard left alone after 
 witnessing his brother Edward's courtship of Lady 
 Gray soliloquises in the older play : 
 
 I, Edward, will vse women honourablie. 
 Would he were wasted marrow, bones and all, 
 That from his loines no issue might succeed, 
 To hinder me from the golden time I looke for, 
 For I am not yet lookt on in the world. 
 First is there Edward, Clarence, and Henry 
 And his sonne, and all they lookt for issue 
 Of their loines ere I can plant my selfe, 
 A cold premeditation for my purpose.' 
 In the revision these few lines are transformed : 
 
 I, Edward will vse women honourably : 
 Would he were wasted, Marrow, Bones, and all. 
 That from his Loynes no hopeful! Branch may spring, 
 
 '^ Contention, facsimile ed. of the quarto of 1595, p. 47. 
 
go THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 To crosse me from the Golden time I looke for : 
 
 And yet, betweene my Soules desire, and me. 
 
 The lustfull Edwards Title buryed, 
 
 Is Clarence, Henry, and his Sonne young Edward, 
 
 And all the vnlook'd-for Issue of their Bodies, 
 
 To take their Roomes, ere I can place my selfe : 
 
 A cold premeditation for my purpose. 
 
 Why then I doe but dreame on Soueraigntie, 
 
 Like one that stands vpon a Promontorie, 
 
 And spyes a farre-ofif shore, where hee would tread, 
 
 Wishing his foot were equall with his eye. 
 
 And chides the Sea, that sunders him from thence. 
 
 Saying hee'le lade it dry, to haue his way : 
 
 So doe I wish the Crowne, being so farre off. 
 
 And so I chide the meanes that keepes me from it. * 
 
 In a word the impression conveyed in this compar- 
 ison gives to the Richard of the 2 Contention and of j 
 Henry VI. the same general features, but to the latter 
 a quality of deeper subtlety and a higher intellectu- 
 ality. Now if we turn to the Richard of The True 
 Tragedy of Richard III. we find an uncouth if power- 
 ful figure, swayed between an absorbing ambition for 
 kingly power and the torments of a guilty conscience, 
 striding through scenes which are presented with the 
 looseness and want of unity which marks the earlier 
 type of the Chronicle Play, but tinged with a color of 
 the Senecan influence whereby the play becomes alike 
 a history and a tragedy of revenge. If this play was 
 written in continuation or rivalry of the 2 Contention, 
 '5 Benry VI., III. 2, 124-141. 
 
THE MARLOWE-SHAKESPEARE PLAYS 9 1 
 
 the author certainly missed the earher conception of 
 the character of Richard ; while Shakespeare (or Mar- 
 lowe and Shakespeare as the case may be) caught it 
 with a spirit that made certain the development of its 
 possibilities to the full in the later Richard III. 
 
 In a recent monograph on Richard III. up to 
 Shakespeare, Professor Churchill shows that the au- 
 thor of The True Tragedy of Richard III. and Shake- 
 speare used the same materials. More, Halle and Hol- 
 inshed, excepting that Shakespeare did not have 
 recourse to The Mirour for Magistrates, which the 
 minor playwright may have used for the scenes con- 
 cerning Jane Shore. Professor Churchill further af- 
 firms that Shakespeare did not know the Latin play of 
 Legge, but that the author of The True Tragedy may 
 have used it as a source.' Be all this as it may, The 
 True Tragedy of Richard III. is a production of little 
 intrinsic worth. I cannot agree with Professor 
 Churchill, who finds in this play the history of a char- 
 acter, not a reign. ^ Such unity as exists is due to the 
 commanding personality of the protagonist and the 
 play marks no step in dramatic development beyond 
 the primitive type, far less a step beyond Marlowe's 
 Edward II. Professor Churchill seems on firmer 
 ground when he assigns a peculiar interest to The 
 True Tragedy from the fact that it is the earliest to 
 
 ' Palastra, X. 1900. 
 ^liid., p. 299. 
 
92 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 unite the English historical drama with the tragedy of 
 revenge. Here again the subject-matter is partly re- 
 sponsible, though the influence of Senecan traditions 
 and models is clear. 
 
 As we pass from j Henry VI. to Shakespeare's 
 Ricliard III. the bandying of taunts and defiances and 
 the clash of steel is succeeded by the stealthy tread of 
 murder, the pathos of innocent suffering and the shrill 
 lyric wailings of the widowed and child-bereft queens, 
 Elizabeth and Margaret, the latter more terrible in her 
 impotence than in her power. Crowning all and dom- 
 inating all, is the deformed and monstrous Richard 
 Crookback, insinuating, fascinating in his intellectual 
 poise and subtlety, reptilian alike in his cunning and 
 in his charm, sinuously working his way about obsta- 
 cles till the moment is ripe, then striking with mur- 
 derous and triumphant fangs, remorseless and terrible. 
 We have emerged from the epic chronicle into the do- 
 main of tragic history, from the kaleidoscope of shift- 
 ing colors huddled together by chance to the carefully 
 painted portrait of a unified personality. 
 
 The essential difference between Shakespeare's 
 Richard III. and his other historical plays has long 
 been recognized. There is a tragic unity which centers 
 in the Titanic person of the deformed king and whirls 
 all the other characters of the play into the vortex of 
 his crimes. Richard, it has been observed, is not so 
 criminal as he is diaboUcal. The overpowering force 
 
THE MARLOWE-SHAKESPEARE PLAYS 93 
 
 of his nature, his amazing audacity and remorseless 
 energy, his bold hypocrisy, and brutal cynicism and 
 impiety are all of superhuman dimensions and dilate 
 into the heroic. We lose ourselves in wonder before 
 this stupendous instrument of Fate making for evil, 
 and wonder rises almost to admiration, the admiration 
 with which we contemplate some overwhelming mani- 
 festation of the power of nature, an avalanche or an irre- 
 sistible stream of molten lava. It is precisely this 
 concentration of interest in the heroic dimensions of a 
 unified personality whose master passion carries the 
 auditor's sympathies with it, at times despite his judg- 
 ment, which characterizes the drama of Marlowe from 
 imperious Tamburlaine to piteous Edward. Nor does 
 the likeness of Richard III. to Marlowe's work in plan 
 and conception end here. Not to mention the employ- 
 ment of blank verse and the total absence of the 
 slightest gleam of comedy, this likeness extends to a 
 certain fixity of character, a coarseness of stroke, vio- 
 lence of speech and deed and to a lyricism which con- 
 verts whole scenes into the expression of a single 
 emotion. Such are the recurrent soliloquies of Rich- 
 ard and such is the all but purely lyrical scene in 
 which the queens Margaret and Elizabeth and the 
 Duchess of York, three wretched women bereft of 
 husband and child, oblivious of former rivalry and 
 recrimination, sit on the ground in complete abandon- 
 ment to sorrow and give themselves up to an almost 
 
94 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 choric expression of hopeless woe.' It would be dif- 
 ficult to find in the range of the English drama a 
 scene reproducing so completely the nature and the 
 function of the Greek choric ode. 
 
 All this has. been a frequent theme for comment 
 and has been variously explained : some assigning to 
 Marlowe a hand in Richard III. and regarding it as a 
 joint production of Shakespeare and Marlowe ; others 
 denying Marlowe's hand, but confessing his influence. 
 The latter is assuredly the wiser view. While the 
 precise degree of Marlowe's influence upon Shake- 
 speare and the actual share which each may have had 
 in the writing of the plays which constitute the tetra- 
 logy of Henry VI. and Richard III. must remain in- 
 determinable, in these earlier chronicles better than 
 elsewhere can we discern what must have been the 
 successive stages of the greatest of all literary appren- 
 ticeships. To I Henry VI. Shakespeare contributed 
 isolated scenes, those concerning Talbot and the 
 quarrel in the Temple Garden. Such would be the 
 work assigned to a young and yet untried hand on 
 the revival of an old play, the text of which com- 
 manded respect because of its authorship or (what 
 was far likelier) on account of its former success on 
 the boards. Those who accept the claims of a Shake- 
 spearean authorship which have been advanced for the 
 romantic scenes in which Lady Salisbury is courted 
 
 ^Richard III., IV. 4. 
 
THE MARLOWE-SHAKESPEARE PLAYS 9$ 
 
 by King Edward III., may offer this as another ex- 
 ample of this earliest state of Shakespeare's dramatic 
 authorship. When the preparation of 2 and j Henry 
 VI. followed, emboldened by the popular approval of 
 his interpolations (sufficiently attested in the case of i 
 Henry VI. by the passage concerning Talbot from the 
 pen of Nashe quoted above), the young aspirant 
 would demand a freer hand and submit these plays to 
 a line for line revision, though still leaving the essen- 
 tial fabric of his original untouched and retaining 
 a large part of the text. Chronologists of Shake- 
 speare are in doubt as to the order of King John and 
 the two Richards. All we know is that they all must 
 have followed the three plays on Henry VI. and cer- 
 tainly preceded the trilogy on Henry IV. and V. Be 
 this order what it may, these plays must have come 
 close together and they mark, however ordered, 
 Shakespeare's gradual progress from mere apprentice- 
 ship to complete freedom in the practice of his art. 
 In King John, Shakespeare took two old plays and 
 welded them into one, for the first time treating his 
 material with freedom. We have no longer mere ex- 
 pansion, selection and revision of matter suggested in 
 the older play, but an all but complete rewriting of 
 the text, a suppression of what is trite and unfitting, 
 an elevation of the characters to lifelikeness and 
 dignity and the infusion throughout the whole of a 
 spirit of poetry for which we may look in vain in the 
 
96 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE FLAY 
 
 original play. The similarity of the dramatic method 
 of much of 2 and j Henry VI. to that employed by 
 Marlowe has just been noticed, together with the debt 
 which such a personage as Richard owes to Marlowe's 
 gigantic conceptions of the unbridled lust of power. 
 This play shows the influence of Marlowe to a greater 
 degree than any play of Shakespeare's shows any 
 single influence, and displays to us the young dram- 
 atist advanced a further step and seeking to rival his 
 most successful competitor with his own weapons in 
 his own field. In Richard II. Shakespeare passes be- 
 yond the period of interpolation, revision and imita- 
 tion, but he still has his great rival in view. The sub- 
 ject of Richard II. as already mentioned, is that of 
 Edward II. : the struggle of a weak and unprincipled 
 sovereign to maintain his will and finally his crown 
 against a group of rebellious nobles. But Shake- 
 speare has treated this subject in a manner wholly his 
 own. He has rivalled his competitor in his own field 
 but with weapons, this time, of Shakespeare's own 
 choosing. He has added to Marlowe's power, com- 
 pression and unity of dramatic structure, poetic deli- 
 cacy and a more searching insight into character. 
 But Shakespeare has not surpassed the tragedy of 
 Marlowe in Richard II. This was yet to come in the 
 greater plays of maturity, in the powerfully contrasted 
 effects of temptation, crime and remorse, in the con- 
 ception of the delicately adjusted temper of Lady 
 
THE MARLOWE-SHAKESPEARE PLAYS 97 
 
 Macbeth and of her coarser-fibered if more imagina- 
 tive husband, and in the deeper doubts and psycho- 
 logic questionings of Hamlet. 
 
V 
 
 SHAKESPEARE AND THE TRIUMPH OF 
 THE EPIC TYPE 
 
 Before taking up Shakespeare's tragedy of Richard 
 II., his earUest independent venture in English historical 
 drama and a realization of the highest capabilities of 
 the tragic type of the Chronicle Play, let us turn to 
 an earlier tragedy, the events of which also concern 
 Richard of Bordeaux. The consideration of this play 
 has been deferred to this place because of its subject, 
 although it probably belongs, in point of time, before 
 Richard III. and synchronizes with Edward II. and 2 
 Henry VI. It seems almost incredible that a play 
 dealing with the earlier events of the reign of an 
 English king whom Shakespeare has immortalized in 
 drama, and a play too of merit, should have been 
 allowed to remain in manuscript and practically un- 
 known until the year 1899. In 1870 Halliwell-Phil- 
 lipps printed eleven copies of this play, which he 
 entitled A Tragedy of King Richard the Second con- 
 cluding with the Murder of the Duke of Gloucester a 
 Calais. A Composition anterior to Shakespeare s 
 Tragedy on the same Reign. His original was a manu- 
 script since acquired by the British Museum.' The 
 
 1 Egerton MS. i8g4. Mr. Bullen printed several of the plays of 
 this MS. in his Old English Plays, 1882. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE 99 
 
 editor furnished no account of it or comment on his 
 "find" save a few words in the Athenceum. for April 
 I, 187 1, offered in reply to one who had declared the 
 production " a very close imitation of an old drama, 
 but not the old drama itself." Thus the play has re- 
 mained a mere title even to scholars until its repub- 
 lication with a serviceable commentary by Dr. Wolf- 
 gang Keller, one of the editors of the. Jakrbuch der 
 deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft ip a I'ecent volume 
 of that valuable journal.' The manuscript is without 
 title and the authorship of the play is beyond ascertain- 
 ment. The query of Mr. Fleay as to the possible per- 
 formance of this play by the Queen's company ap- 
 pears as likelyas any other guess. ^ While King Richard 
 seems the protagonist in the earlier acts, the play is 
 really the tragedy of Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of 
 Gloucester, youngest uncle to the king. The story is 
 concerned with the youth of King Richard, who is 
 represented surrounded by favorites and sycophants 
 and as turning a deaf ear to the counsels of his uncles, 
 the three brothers of the Black Prince, his father. 
 These personages are well drawn and clearly individu- 
 alized, and the youngest, conceived as an outspoken, 
 shrewd, but single-hearted patriot, falls in the end a 
 victim to the malice of his enemies who surround the 
 king. The play is well written and not badly con- 
 
 1 XXXV., pp. 3-121. 
 '^Biographical Chronicle, II. 320. 
 
lOO THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 structed and displays a regularity of form which sug- 
 gests acquaintance with classical examples. The un- 
 known author handles his material with skill and is 
 happy in the lighter dialogue of comedy as he is suc- 
 cessful in the more exacting demands of tragic repre- 
 sentation. 
 
 Woodstock delights in the name "plain Thomas" 
 and clothes himself habitually " in frieze coat." He 
 is mistaken by a foppish messenger from court for a 
 groom, and bidden walk his horse. The Duke falls in 
 with the humor of the situation and thus communes as 
 he walks the beast to and fro : 
 
 Is't possible that this fellow that's all made of fashions 
 should be an Englishman ? no maruell if he knewe not me, 
 being see brave and soe beggarlye. Well I shall earne 
 money to inritch me now, and tis the first I earnt, bith 
 rood, this (40) yeare. Com on, sir [/o the horse], you 
 haue sweat hard about this hast, yett I thinke you knowe 
 little of the busines. Why so I say ; youre a very indif- 
 ferent beast, you'le followe any man that will lead you. 
 Now trulye sir you looke but ene leanely an't; you feed 
 not in Westminster Hall adays, wher so many sheepe and 
 oxen are devoured. . . . You knowe not the duke neither, 
 no more then your master, and yett you haue as much 
 witt as he. Ifaith, say a man should steale ye and feed ye 
 fatter : could ye rune away with hime ? Ah your silence 
 argues a consent, I see. 
 
 Soon after, the courtier, having discovered his mis- 
 take, returns and this dialogue ensues. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE lOI 
 
 Woodstock. Now sir, your busines ! 
 
 Courtier. His majestic commends hime to your grace — 
 
 Wood. \Noting the Courtier' s pointed shoes, the ^ pick ' 
 
 or toe supported by a chain attached to the 
 
 knee. J This same' s a rare fashione you haue gott 
 
 at courte. Of whose deuiseing was' t? I pray. 
 
 Cour. I assure your grace king Richards counssell satt 
 
 (3) dayes about it. 
 Wood. By my faith ther wisdomes tooke great paines 
 I assure ye. 
 The state was well imployd the wilse, bith rood. 
 Then this at courte is all the fashione now ? 
 Cour. The king hime self doth weare it : whose most 
 
 gratious maiestie sent me in hast — 
 Wood. This picke doth strangly well becom the foote. 
 Cour. This picke the king doth likewise weare, being 
 a Polonian picke : and me did his highnes 
 picke from foorth the rest — 
 Wood. He could not have pickt out such another, I assure ye . 
 Cour. I thanke your grace, that picks me out so well : 
 
 But as I sayd, his highnes would request — 
 Wood. But this most fashionable chayne, that linckes, 
 
 as it were, the tooe and knee to gether — 
 Cour. In a most kynd choherence, so it like your grace. 
 For these (2) parts being in opperatione and 
 quallity different, as for example : the toe a dis- 
 dayner, or spurner, the knee a duetyfull and 
 most humble oratour, this chayne doth, as it 
 were, soe tooefy the knee, and so kneefye the 
 tooe, that betweene boeth it makes a most 
 methodicall coherence or coherent method. 
 Wood. Tis most excellent, Sir, and full of art.' 
 
 ' Egerton MS. i8g4, edited as to punctuation. Cf. Jahrbuch, p. 80. 
 
I02 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Such an attempt to give historical color by allusion 
 to a passing fashion in the dress of a former age is 
 rare if not unparalleled in the popular historical drama, 
 and might be regarded of greater importance did we 
 not find a passage in Stow's Abridgement of English 
 Chronicles which must have suggested it/ 
 
 Dr. Keller has investigated the sources and dramatic 
 influences upon this play. Into the intricacies of 
 this investigation it is impossible here to follow him. 
 He finds the general sources in Holinshed and Stow 
 and the author's special dramatic inspiration iii 2 Henry 
 VI. and Edward II.; and he shows that not only are 
 certain passages apparently suggested by the older 
 plays, but that situations and conceptions of character 
 are borrowed. For example, the general situation of 
 Edward and Richard is the same with respect to the 
 contrasted groups of the king's flatterers and the re- 
 bellious nobles. The attitude of Queen "Ann a 
 Beame" in the earlier part of the play (which was not 
 her historical attitude) is much that of Queen Isabella; 
 and young Richard's assumption of his crown seems 
 suggested by young Prince Edward's throwing off of 
 the yoke of Mortimer. The whole conception of 
 Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, as a bluff, independent 
 and honest patriot, the idol of the common people 
 and Lord Protector of the realm is without basis in 
 
 ^See ed. 1611, p. 143 : In her [Queen Ann of Bohemia's] daies 
 began the vse of piked shooes, tied to their knees with chains of siluer 
 and gilt. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE IO3 
 
 history and is evidently derived from the character of 
 Good Duke Humphrey, also a Duke of Gloucester, in 
 2 Henry VI. or the older play on that theme.^ But 
 perhaps the most striking instance of a parallel be- 
 tween this play and Marlowe's — and one not men- 
 tioned by Dr. Keller — ^is found in the two catastrophes, 
 the murders respectively of Woodstock and of King 
 Edward. In Marlowe's tragedy we have the murder 
 of a discrowned king. The pathos of the situation 
 lies in the contrast between his regal and his fallen 
 state. Our sympathies are aroused for the wretched 
 if unworthy victim of cruel and extraordinary indigni- 
 ties ; and our feelings rise to the pitch of indignation 
 when we find these indignities instigated by the self- 
 seeking schemer, Mortimer, who has alienated the 
 queen's affections from her unhappy husband and 
 usurped his throne. In the catastrophe of Wood- 
 stock, on the other hand, we have the murder of an 
 innocent man, procured by flattering sycophants at 
 the hands of an unjust king. In the deed he dishon- 
 ors age and kindred as he has violated hospitality; 
 for he has seized the Duke in his own house, having 
 gained admittance for the royal party by the device of 
 a masque offered for the Duke's entertainment. The 
 pathos lies in the wrong that innocence should suffer, 
 for Woodstock's deeds, according to the play, have 
 been those of a true and patriotic man and are in no 
 
 ^Jakrbuch, pp. 27-32. 
 
I04 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 wise contributory to his fall. In the tragedy of Ed- 
 ward the interest centers in the victim with that single- 
 ness and intensity that is one of the striking traits of 
 the genius of Marlowe as a dramatist. The murder 
 of Woodstock, on the other hand, is worked up into 
 greater intricacy. In Lapoole, the custodian of the 
 castle of Calais in which Woodstock is immured, is pre- 
 sented as a loyal man constrained though reluctant to 
 do the bidding of his sovereign and stricken with re- 
 morse in the very act. He is watching for a favorable 
 moment, his assassins in waiting, but the old Duke, 
 presaging his doom, is wakeful and Lapoole quails 
 before his princely eye. At last wearied with watch- 
 ing Woodstock falls asleep and as Lapoole withdraws 
 to call the murderers the spirits of Edward I., his 
 father and of his brother, the Black Prince, appear to 
 the sleeping man and warn him of his impending fate. 
 He starts from his sleep and cries : 
 
 Oh, good angells, guide me, stay thou blessed 
 
 speritt, 
 Thou royal shadow of my kingly ffather, 
 Returne agayne ; I knowe thy reverent lookes. 
 With thy deere sight once more recomfort me. 
 Putt by the feares my trembling harte foretells, 
 And heere is mayd apparant to my sight 
 By dreams and visions of this dreadfull night : 
 Vpon my knees I beg it : ha : protect me 
 
 heauen ! 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE I05 
 
 I heere remayne 
 A poore old man, thrust from my natiue country, 
 Kept and imprisond in a fforrayne kingdome. 
 If I must dye, bear reccord, righteous heaven. 
 How I haue nightly waked for Englands good, 
 
 Enter Lapoole and murderers. 
 
 And yet to right hir wrongs would spend my 
 
 blood. 
 Send thy sadd doome, king Richard, take my 
 
 life: 
 I wish my death might ease my countryes griefe. 
 Lapoole. We are preuented, backe retire agayne, 
 
 Hees ryssen from his bed, what fate preserues 
 
 hime? 
 My lord, how faire you ? 
 W. Thou canst not kill me villayne ! 
 
 Gods holly angle guards a just mans life. 
 And with his radient beames as bright as fire 
 Will guard and keepe his righteous innocence. 
 I am a prince ; thou darst not murder me. 
 L. Your grace mistakes my lord. 
 
 Urged by Lapoole to plead his own case, Wood- 
 stock consents to sit down to a table to write to the 
 king and Lapoole withdraws. While Woodstock is 
 writing, both murderers enter. 
 
 iM. Creepe close to his backe, ye rogue ; be readye with 
 
 the towell, when I have knockt hime downe to 
 
 strangle hime. 
 2M. Doe it quickly while his backe is towards ye ; ye 
 
 dambd villayne, if thou lettst hime speake but a 
 
 word, we shall not kill hime. 
 
I06 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 iM. He watch hime for that ; downe on youre knees and 
 creepe ye rascall. 
 W. Haue mercye god ! my sight oth sudden fayles me, 
 I cannot see my paper, my trembling fingers will 
 not hold my pen, a thicke coniealed mist ore- 
 spreds the chamber. He ryse and view the roome. 
 
 2M. Not to fast for fallinge. Strickes hime. 
 
 W. What villayne hand hath done a deed soe badd, 
 To drench his blacke soule in a princes blood ? 
 
 iM. Doe ye prate sir, take that, and that ; zounes, putt the 
 towell abouts throat and strangle hime, quickly 
 ye slaue : or by the harte of hell. He fell thee too. 
 
 2M. Tis done, ye dambd slaue, pull ye dog : and pull 
 thy soule to hell in doeing it, for thou hast kild 
 the truest subiect that euer breathed in England. 
 
 iM. Pull, rogue, pull ; thinke of the gould we shall haue 
 for doeing [it] , and then lett hime and thee goe 
 toth devell to gether. Bring in the fether bead, 
 and rowle him vp in that till he be smothered 
 and stiffled and life and sowle prest out to 
 gether : quickly, ye hellhound. 
 
 2M. Heere, heere, ye caniball. Zounes, he kickes and 
 spralls ; ly ons breast, ye villayne. 
 
 iM. Lett hime sprall and hang. Hees sure enough for 
 speakeing. Pull of the bed now, smooth downe 
 his hayre and beard, close his eyes and sett his 
 necke right : why so : all fine and cleanely. Who 
 can say that this man was murdered now ? 
 
 Enter Lapoole. 
 
 L. What, is he dead ? 
 2M. As a doore nayle, my lord. What will ye doe with 
 his bodye ? ' 
 
 ' Ibid., and cf., Jahrbuch, p. 8, lio-lll ; pp. 105-111. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE lO/ 
 
 In the sequel the actual perpetrators of the deed are 
 slain as Lightfoot, the murderer of King Edward, is 
 slain in Marlowe's play. Indeed the analogy between 
 the two plays might be easily extended to further de- 
 tails. But enough has been said to show that we 
 have before us a striking example of a thing common 
 to the dramatic literature of many ages, the practice 
 of writing scenes — sometimes whole plays — in direct 
 emulation of a successful drama already well known 
 to the boards. The overpowering pathos of the 
 scenes depicting the murder of King Edward must 
 have created a lasting impression on the play-goers 
 and dramatists of the time and affected subsequent 
 treatment of like situations. The murder of Clarence 
 in Richard III. presents a situation not dissimilar.^ 
 Here, as in the tragedy of Woodstock, the murderers 
 are distinguished, one showing qualms of conscience. 
 Clarence, too, discovers murder in his executioner's 
 face as do both Edward and Woodstock.^ In Richard 
 II., because written in direct emulation of Marlowe's 
 tragedy, Shakespeare has varied the catastrophe and 
 made Richard precipitate his death by a characteristic 
 display of hasty temper.^ 
 
 ' Cf. Richard III., I. 4, 84ff. and Woodstock, as quoted above. 
 
 '^Richard III., I. 4, 169; Edward II., V. 5, 44 ; Woodstock, V. 
 I, 130-134. 
 
 ' See the scene in which the king belabors and kills his keeper for 
 refusing to taste his meat, and thus precipitates his own death. Rich- 
 ard II., V. 5, 98-115. 
 
I08 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 As to the relations of the tragedy of Thomas of 
 Woodstock to Shakespeare's Richard II., it is all but 
 certain that Shakespeare's is the later play. We may 
 agree with Dr. Keller that neither did Shakespeare 
 write Richard II. as a continuation of the tragedy of 
 Woodstock nor did the unknown author of the latter 
 play follow Shakespeare in an endeavor to write a first 
 part to a play already staged. In substantiation of 
 this want of relation between the two plays Dr. Keller 
 notes especially that in the anonymous play Lapoole is 
 made the plotter of Woodstock's death, whilst Shakes- 
 peare, following the chronicles, charges Thomas Mow- 
 bray, Duke of Norfolk, with that crime.^ If Shakes- 
 peare knew this tragedy, he was content to disregard 
 it and return to the usual sources in the chronicles. 
 
 Besides Shakespeare's Richard II., the play just 
 described, and Jack Strawe, which, as we have seen, 
 concerns the early popular rising in Richard's time, 
 there are other mentions of plays in which Richard 
 II. figures. Shakespeare's play was first printed in 
 quarto in 1597 and is usually dated about 1594. On 
 the afternoon of February 7, 1601, one Sir Gilley 
 Merrick, a conspirator with the Earl of Essex, pro- 
 cured the performance of a play described as The De- 
 posing of King Richard II., by the payment of a fee of 
 forty shillings to Augustine Phillips, a fellow sharer 
 with Shakespeare in the Globe Theater. The addi- 
 
 ^ ?iee Jahrbuch, p. 39, and Richard II. ,1. i, 99. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE lOQ 
 
 tional fee was paid because the play was described as 
 old,^ and the actors were seemingly unwilling to under- 
 take the risk of performance unless thus assured 
 against loss. This performance was attended by Mer- 
 rick and his fellow conspirators, and was intended by 
 the representation of the deposition and killing of a 
 king to enflame the auditors to courage in a similar 
 undertaking. Although the actual scene of the depo- 
 sition of Richard does not appear until the third quarto 
 edition of Shakespeare's play, printed five years after 
 the death of Queen Elizabeth, as this scene contains 
 the climax of the whole matter and the scene is seri- 
 ously impaired dramatically by its omission, there is 
 every reason to believe that the omitted scene was 
 written when the rest of the play was written, and 
 suppressed in publication, though probably not in the 
 original performance, either by command or from mo- 
 tives of prudence. It is difficult to escape the convic- 
 tion that the Richard II. which thus figured in the 
 conspiracy of Essex was Shakespeare's when we re- 
 call " the lower but loving likelihood," in which he 
 compares the royal entry of Henry V. into London 
 after the victory of Agincourt with the expected re- 
 turn of Essex, 
 
 The Generall of our gracious Empresse 
 . from Ireland comming. 
 Bringing Rebellion broached on his Sword ; ^ 
 
 • Camden calls it ' ' exoletam tragoediam de tragica abdicatione 
 Regis Richard! Secundi." Annales Serum, ed. 1625, p. 810. 
 ^ Henry V., Chorus to Act V. 
 
no THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 and further remember that Southampton, Shake- 
 speare's patron, was involved with Essex and suffered 
 imprisonment in his cause. 
 
 Among the anecdotes that cluster about the end of 
 the old queen's reign, when the courtiers and even 
 statesmen that she h^d made were covertly plotting 
 treason or at least unloyally coquetting with the 
 shadow of the coming rule of James which cast itself 
 before, there is one which touches the subject of this 
 play. Some months after the execution of Essex the 
 queen was looking through the digest of her Rolls in 
 the Tower, which had been compiled and presented to 
 her by William Lambarde, Keeper of the Rolls. On 
 reaching the reign of Richard II., she remarked : " I 
 am Richard II., knew ye not that ?" To which Lam- 
 barde replied : " Such a wicked imagination was de- 
 termined and attempted by a most unkind gentleman, 
 the most adorned creature that ever your Majesty 
 made." And the queen rejoined : " He that will 
 forget God will also forget his benefactors, this 
 tragedy was played forty times in open streets and 
 houses." ^ 
 
 From The Book of Plays of Dr. Simon Forman, under 
 date of April 30, 161 1, it appears that the company of 
 Shakespeare acted another play on the events of the 
 reign of Richard II. A synopsis of its contents which 
 the diarist made shows, however, that it wsis neither 
 
 • Nichols, Elizabeth, as above. III. 552. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE I I I 
 
 Shakespeare's tragedy, ybf/6 Strawe, northe anonymous 
 tragedy of Woodstock, but a play including apparently 
 a wider range of events than any of these and present- 
 ing more particularly Richard's relations to his uncles, 
 especially Lancaster, the father of Bolingbroke.' 
 
 As already intimated above in Richard II, Shake- 
 speare passes for the first time in the Chronicle Play 
 beyond the shadow of Marlowe's influence and essays 
 to rival him not by recourse to Marlowe's methods, as 
 in Richard III, but by means wholly his own. That 
 there might be no mistake as to his intent, Shake- 
 speare boldly chose as his theme the history of the only 
 English king whose fall paralleled that of Edward II. 
 and confined himself rigidly to tragedy as Marlowe 
 had done before him. Constructively Richard II. is 
 less closely knit than Edward II. in which Marlowe's 
 method demanded the intensest concentration of in- 
 terest on the royal central figure. In Shakespeare's 
 tragedy the effect is produced by means more varied, 
 and the contrasted kingly personages grow by delicate 
 recurrent touches rather than by means of bold out- 
 Hne and heightened light and shade. Mortimer is a 
 mere instrument whereby the fall of Edward is brought 
 about. Richard's fall on the other hand involves the 
 rise of Bolingbroke, and Bolingbroke by his abilities 
 and the specious justice of his cause, dilates into the 
 image of the just and moderate sovereign in whose 
 
 ' Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1875-76, Part I., p. 415. 
 
I 1 2 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 success we can not but feel the deepest interest, 
 despite our knowledge that his claim to kingship is 
 not founded on hereditary right. Richard is shallow, 
 heartless and callous, a man of many words and brim- 
 ming over with fantasy and eloquent imagery. It is a 
 necessity of his nature that he fill at all times the 
 central role. Whether in the lists of Coventry, wan- 
 tonly throwing his warder down and turning into wan- 
 dering exiles two champions armed to decide their 
 differences by the arbitrament of the sword, or whether 
 shaking the dust of humiliation from his comely, dis- 
 crowned head as he rides with silent Bolingbroke 
 through London streets, Richard is always the center 
 of a canvas picturesquely conceived and artistically 
 appreciated, by himself In the very moment of his 
 deposition he calls for a mirror in which to behold the 
 fading lineaments of royalty, and when inevitable death 
 is near, he hurries its oncoming with an impatient 
 daring which would be admirable were it not for its 
 suspicion of melodrama. Over against this figure 
 stands the politic and unimaginative Bolingbroke,' a 
 man taciturn and reserved, and yet solicitous to con- 
 ciliate even the humblest. Single in his aim and not 
 to be swerved, he shows an exhaustless patience among 
 the intricacies that lead to attainment. A dauntless 
 warrior and capable of rigor where rigor is imperative, 
 yet temperate in the moment of triumph ; a politician, 
 yet jealous of his country's honor and respecting her 
 
 ^Ses Richard II., I. 3, 294-303. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE I I 3 
 
 institutions, he commands the respect of all though he 
 gains the love of no one, and stands the embodiment of 
 worldly sagacity and circumspection, a usurper in his 
 conscience, a capable and dreaded sovereign before the 
 world. This contrast reaches its climax in Richard's 
 enforced and reluctant resignation of his crown. In 
 this great scene Richard plays with his sorrow as if it 
 were a bauble, wrapping it in innuendo and word-play 
 and expanding it in similitude and hyperbole. His 
 enemies are Pilates, and he dares impiously to liken 
 himself to Christ betrayed by the kiss of Judas. 
 
 Nothing could present a wider contrast to Richard's 
 torrent of excited eloquence than the calm and half- 
 contemptuous restraint of Bolingbroke throughout this 
 scene. To Richard's conceit, in which the crown is 
 likened to a well and its two claimants to the full 
 and empty buckets, Bolingbroke's only reply is : 
 
 I thought you had been willing to resigne : 
 
 When Richard, calling for a mirror, descants upon the 
 flattery of its reflected image of his face and says : 
 
 A brittle Glory shineth In this Face, 
 As brittle as the Glory, is the Face, 
 
 and, dashing the glass to pieces on the ground, ex- 
 claims : 
 
 For there it is, crackt in an hundred shiuers. 
 Marke silent King, the Morall of this sport, 
 How soone my Sorrow hath destroy 'd my Face, 
 
 9 
 
I 14 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Bolingbroke's answer comes, the cold analysis of the 
 practical man of the world : 
 
 The shadow of your Sorrow hath destroy' d 
 
 The shadow of your Face. 
 
 And even Richard is startled at this searching glance 
 into his shallow soul. Recovering from the shock he 
 has but one desire : to go, 
 
 Whither you will, so I were from your sights.' 
 
 The connection between Ridiard II. and the trilogy 
 of plays consisting of the two parts of Henry IV. and 
 Henry V. is patent. The obvious link is the character 
 of Bolingbroke, who forms, as King Henry IV., the 
 center of the main historical action. But the key-note 
 of Henry's relation to his son, the latter's popular re- 
 pute as a roisterer and unclean liver with its sugges- 
 tion of comedy is foreshadowed in Richard II. 
 
 fCing H. Can no man tell me of my vnthriftie sonne ? 
 
 Tis full three moneths since I did see him last, 
 
 If any plague hang ouer us tis he : 
 
 I would to God my Lordes he might be found : 
 
 Inquire at London, mongst the Tauernes there, 
 
 For there (they say) he daylie doth frequent. 
 
 With vnrestrained loose companions, 
 
 Euen such (they say) as stand in narrow lanes, 
 
 And beate our watch, and rob our passengers.^ 
 
 It is significant that the answer to Henry's en- 
 quiry should be put into the mouth of the Prince's 
 
 ^Ibid., IV. I. 
 ■'Ibid., V. 3. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE I I 5 
 
 later rival, Harry Hotspur. Although he has shown 
 his very enemies his fitness to rule, King Henry re- 
 mains throughout the victim of Nemesis, which seeks 
 him out in the many guises of ingratitude and rebellion, 
 in the lawless conduct of the Prince and in the cease- 
 less gnawings of the king's own conscience. It was 
 the irony of fate that he whose insinuating address 
 and unerring tact had gained him a crown, should re- 
 main a stranger to his own son and mistrustful of him ; 
 and that the intervention of death should deprive him 
 of the expiation which he had so frequently desired 
 and long had planned to seek in an attempt to recover 
 the Holy Sepulchre to Christendom. 
 
 In / Henry IV. Shakespeare continues to practise 
 the method of dramatic contrast of character which he 
 had employed so effectively in Richard II. Hotspur, 
 the impelling force of the conspiracy against Henry, 
 is of a nature so engaging, so hearty and honest that 
 his very faults endear him to all who know him. He 
 is arrogant and domineering, headstrong and impetu- 
 ous, capricious of temper and possessed of a restless- 
 ness of thought almost amounting to an infirmity. In 
 speech he is boisterous, sharp-tongued and given to 
 exaggeration, and so voluble that at times he speaks 
 thick from the excessive flow of words. But Hotspur 
 is also eloquent, finely imaginative, despite his undis- 
 guised contempt for poetry, honorable, generous, 
 brave in a battle to intrepidity, and " doubly charged," 
 
Il6 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 as it has been well put, " with the electricity of chiv- 
 alry." The momentary glimpses which we get into 
 the daily life of Percy and his Lady are delightful in the 
 picture which they present of the absent-minded, im- 
 patient, self-willed warrior and his devoted wife, who, 
 secure in the love which she knows to be hers, meets 
 her husband's bluntness of speech with equal direct- 
 ness and with a charming playfulness even when her 
 heart is anxious for his safety and mistrustful of the 
 issue of his hidden plans. It is characteristic of Hot- 
 spur that he should chide his Lady for her mincing 
 oath, "in good sooth." 
 
 Not yours in good sooth, Hart, you sweare like a 
 comfit-makers wife, not you in good sooth, and as true as 
 I Hue, and as 
 
 God shall mend me, and as sure as day : 
 And giuest such sarcenet surety for thy oathes, 
 As if thou.neuer walkst further then Finsbury. 
 Sweare me Kate like a ladie as thou art, 
 A good mouthfiUing oath, and leaue in sooth. 
 And such protest of peper ginger bread 
 To veluet gards and Sunday Citizens.^ 
 
 Shakespeare has given us these brief suggestions of 
 the home life of the Percys further to heighten the 
 contrast between Harry Hotspur and the Prince. The 
 court of Henry IV. is represented as totally without 
 the grace of woman's presence. Bereft of a mother's 
 love and solicitude, with a father absorbed in cares of 
 '/ Henry IV., I. 252-261. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE II7 
 
 state and a brother, Prince John (the only other son 
 of King Henry represented in the first part of the play), 
 precociously betraying that hardness and abstractedness 
 of character which had estranged the Prince from his 
 father, it was inevitable that one of so warm and ex- 
 pansive a nature should seek for light and sustenance 
 beyond the somber precincts of the court. It was the 
 love of freedom, the zest for adventure, an intellectual 
 appreciation for the fascinations of Falstaff, not moral 
 depravity, which drew such a nature temporarily into 
 the vortex of a wild and reckless life. Shakespeare, 
 as is notorious, departed from the Prince Henry of 
 tradition, which makes his reformation of character 
 miraculous or at least unaccountable, by represent- 
 ing his delight in low associations to consist in the 
 diversion which such life afforded and then inventing 
 the captivating personality of Falstaff to account for 
 the attraction. Henry, like his creator, was possessed 
 of " an experiencing nature," as Bagehot puts it in an- 
 other connection. His delight was in reality, in life 
 and the fulness thereof. With the unreality of the 
 court he had neither sympathy nor patience ; and he 
 was perhaps too young to see under its irksome forms 
 their causes and justification. The course of the two 
 plays from the plot of Poins and the Prince to rob the 
 robbers on Gadshill to Falstaff's scenes with Doll 
 Tearsheet (in which the Prince is little more than an 
 onlooker) discloses the latter gradually withdrawing 
 
Il8 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 himself from Falstaff and his associates, as his princely 
 nature matured and developed and in consequence of 
 the approaching responsibilities of kingship. 
 
 But it is in his relations to his father that the true 
 metal of Henry of Monmouth is most completely re- 
 vealed. His frank acknowledgment of fault and his 
 dutiful behavior under rebuke, even when likened to 
 Richard, "the skipping king," who "mingled his roy- 
 altie with capring fooles " ; the modest fervor of his 
 reply to his father's parallel between himself, landed 
 at Ravenspurgh, and Richard on the one hand and 
 Hotspur and Prince Henry on the other ; his filial 
 piety to the father who on his very death bed con- 
 tinued to misunderstand his son and wrong him in 
 his judgment — all mark a character as unaffected as 
 honest, as gentle as magnanimous. Whether we be- 
 hold the Prince rescuing the king, brought to his knee 
 by the thundering blows of Douglas ; whether we 
 listen to him exchanging chivalrous taunts with Hot- 
 spur, meeting and overwhelming his impetuous on- 
 slaught with a loftier self-contained valor ; or witness 
 him magnanimously delivering Douglas in generous 
 admiration for his enemy's prowess, " ransomless and 
 free " — we have ever before us the very ideal of young 
 chivalry, sound in body and trained to efficiency in 
 arms, keen, provident, with a mind tempered to the 
 elasticity of a rapier, tender of heart and unaffected, 
 graced in every act with that simplicity which is 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE II 9 
 
 born of true nobility and greatness. It was from 
 such a man, once entered gravely upon his office 
 of sovereign, that we should look for a magnani- 
 mous recognition of the integrity and propriety of 
 the conduct of the Lord Chief Justice who sent him 
 as Prince to prison for his affront to the law in strik- 
 ing its recognized representative, his Lordship. We 
 feel too that the same high sense of right which con- 
 firmed the Lord Chief Justice in his office, demanded 
 the absolute repudiation of Falstafif and his godless 
 rout of folly. 
 
 In Henry V., which is knit to the two plays of the 
 previous reign by the royal central figure, the para- 
 gon of chivalry expands into the hero king. Here as 
 before he is possessed of the fulness of life and brushes 
 aside peremptorily all unrealities as trifling and of no 
 value. There are few finer passages even in Shake- 
 speare than that in which Henry metes out justice to the 
 traitors, Scroop, Gray and Cambridge, for their plot to 
 kill him at Hampton before his departure for France. 
 All three have advised severity in the punishment of a 
 common fellow who when heated with wine had railed 
 against the king. Whereupon the king hands each a 
 paper declaring his treason and judges them unfalter- 
 ingly as they grovel at his feet. Their treason against 
 his person is of little moment to him in comparison 
 with the depths of human faithlessness and ingratitude 
 which that treason discloses. 
 
I20 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Oh, how hast thou with iealousie infected 
 The sweetnesse of affiance ? Shew men dutifull, 
 Why so didst thou : seeme they grave and learned ? 
 Why so didst thou. Come they of Noble Family ? 
 Why so didst thou. Seeme they religious ? 
 Why so didst thou. Or are they spare in diet, 
 Free from grosse passion, or of mirth, or anger. 
 Constant in spirit, not sweruing with the blood. 
 Garnish' d and deck'd in modest complement. 
 Not working with the eye, without the eare, 
 And but in purged iudgement trusting neither ? 
 Such and so finely boulted didst thou seeme : 
 And thus thy fall hath left a kinde of blot, 
 To mark thee full fraught man, and best indued 
 With some suspition, I will weepe for thee. 
 For this reuolt of thine, me thinkes is like 
 Another fall of Man. 
 
 But the king takes no step of false lenity. Although 
 his words kindle the spark of loyalty in the hearts of 
 traitors, their lives must pay the penalty of the offended 
 majesty of the law : 
 
 Touching our person, seeke we no reuenge. 
 But we our Kingdomes safety must so tender. 
 Whose ruine you sought, that to her Lawes 
 We do deliuer you. Get you therefore hence, 
 (Poore miserable wretches) to your death : 
 The taste whereof, God of his mercy giue 
 You patience to indure, and true Repentance 
 Of all your deare offences.^ 
 
 '^ Henry V., II. 2, 126-181. This passage occurs first in the folio. 
 Cf. with this the paltry treatment of the same historical fact in Oldcastle, 
 V. I. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE 121 
 
 In war, as in counsel Henry's straightforwardness and 
 homely honesty shatters all illusions and makes di- 
 rect for the point at issue. It was this which gained 
 for him his triumphs in war and the devotion of his 
 subjects. It was this "fidelity to fact," as it has been 
 called, turned into an irresistible force by the king's 
 enthusiasm for military exploit and his patriotic love 
 of country, which translated a vulgar lust of mere 
 conquest into a great national war and transformed a 
 feudal war-lord into the crowned genius of impassioned 
 victory. To such a man it is the weight of the duties 
 and responsibilities of sovereignty rather than its rights 
 and dignities that are ever present. The latter are to 
 be guarded only as the outward and visible signs of 
 that majesty which he represents ; and a sincere humility 
 comes over him which seeks expression in a simple 
 faith and trust in God. Henry's piety, like his other 
 virtues, is honest and unaffected, even if it does seem 
 somewhat too outspoken in these modern days in which 
 we are wont to cherish our virtues in private, not 
 without some anxiety lest we be caught practising 
 them." 
 
 The trilogy of / and 2 Henry IV. and Henry V. may 
 
 1 1 am not unaware that this orthodox view of Henry of Monmouth 
 has fallen of late into disrepute. In a recent book ( The Later Renais- 
 sance, 1898, p. 256) Henry is summed up in the words : "a perfect 
 portrait of the unconscious hypocrite." It is a consolation to remember 
 that the same writer has given to Euphuism the illuminating definition, 
 "this square-toed finical vacuity," in which it must be agreed that 
 even Sir Percie Shafton is outdone. 
 
122 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 be regarded as representing the height to which the 
 English historical drama attained. These plays are 
 less condensed and unified by singleness of purpose 
 and force of tragic passion than either Richard II. or 
 Richard III, which in these very particulars rise 
 out of the specific class of chronicle history into 
 the wider sphere of tragedy. The plays of Henry 
 IV. — especially the second one — are wanting in inci- 
 dent, and the substitution of an interest in char- 
 acter, however absorbing in the main historical thread 
 and in the interwoven strand of comedy, by no 
 means suffices to remedy this defect. In Henry V. 
 there is more stirring action, and a sort of unity re- 
 sults from the inspiring personality of the king. But 
 this unity is epic, not dramatic. No one felt more 
 deeply than did Shakespeare himself the complete in- 
 adequacy of scenic and theatrical devices for the visual 
 representation of a theme of such magnitude and splen- 
 dor. Well might he exclaim : 
 
 O for a Muse of Fire, that would ascend 
 The brightest Heauen of Inuention : 
 A Kingdome for a Stage, Princes to Act, 
 And Monarchs to behold the swelling Scene. 
 Then should the Warlike Harry, like himselfe. 
 Assume the Port of Mars, and at his heeles 
 (Leasht in, like Hounds) should Famine, Sword, and 
 Fire Crouch for employment. 
 
 Well might the imaginative dramatist conjure his audi- 
 tors to 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE 1 23 
 
 Suppose within the Girdle of these Walls 
 Are now confin'd two mightie Monarchies, 
 Whose high, vp-reared, and abutting Fronts, 
 The perillous narrow Ocean parts asunder. 
 Peece out our imperfections with your thoughts : 
 Into a thousand parts diuide one Man, 
 And make imaginarie Puissance. 
 Thinke when we talke of Horses, that you see them, 
 Printing their prowd Hoofes i' th' receiuing Earth : 
 For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our Kings, 
 Carry them here and there : lumping o're Times ; 
 Turning th' accomplishment of many yeeres 
 Into an Howre-glasse.' 
 
 In this great trilogy we find Shakespeare return- 
 ing to the type of the earlier chronicle history, in its 
 epic quality, in a marshaling of material arranged in a 
 natural order rather than dramatically, and in the 
 admission among serious historical events of a com- 
 edy of fiction, conceived to relieve and lighten the 
 somberness of the council chamber and the taunts and 
 alarms of battle. It is in the last of these things that 
 Shakespeare has contrived once more to show that su- 
 preme originality which is ever his. Working upon 
 the slender suggestions of the trivial old play. The 
 Famous Victories of Henry the fifth, he expanded the 
 customary interludes of farce and horse-play into a 
 connected series of scenes of comedy, and transformed 
 the clowns, Dericke and his mates, into a group of 
 humorous and yet realistic figures, the equal of which 
 
 ' Prologue, 1-8 and 19-39. 
 
124 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 English literature knows nowhere else save in Chau- 
 cer. In this play Shakespeare has done more than 
 return to the type of the old Chronicle Play ; he has 
 absolutely wedded two types of the drama ; the Chron- 
 icle History and the realistic comedy of everyday life. 
 There are no scenes in Dekker, Middleton or Jonson 
 which so consummately depict the humors and droll- 
 eries of the low life of contemporary London. In 
 them Shakespeare was the Dickens of his age ; but 
 where Dickens permitted his unparalleled power of 
 caricature to run away with his imagination, and to 
 weaken by an exuberance of amusing detail the veri- 
 similitude of his picture to life, Shakespeare has al- 
 ways remained true to the verities and escaped not 
 only this but also the chief snare of what is commonly 
 and erroneously called " realism," a penchant for the 
 abnormal, the brutal or the lewd. Falstaff, Bardolph, 
 Mistress Quickly, Nym, the preternaturally puny and 
 witty page, of none of them save perhaps of Ancient 
 Pistol can we say : this is caricature ; and even Pistol 
 with all his bravado, his jargon of play-house bombast 
 and his woeful want of the spark of valor, remains 
 poised dizzily on the brink of actual caricature. 
 
 The popularity of i Henry IV., which was evidently 
 originally written without thought of a second part, 
 was immediate and extraordinary. Six quarto editions 
 of it were printed before the folio of 1623 ; the first of 
 them registered in 1598. In the very next year Jon- 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE 125 
 
 son mentions Falstaff in Every Man Out of His Humour 
 and there is no character in all Shakespeare that was 
 so frequently alluded to in his age. A continuation 
 was at once demanded and enjoyed almost an equal 
 success. Whatever the interest in the Prince, this 
 popularity was largely due to the superlative wit and 
 enchanting personality of Falstaff, who held the stage 
 year after year and inspired many imitations. Nor is 
 it difficult to believe the tradition first related by Den- 
 nis that Queen Elizabeth "was so well pleased with 
 that admirable character of t^alstaff, in the two parts of 
 Henry IV., that she commanded the author to con- 
 tinue it for one play more, and to show him in love," 
 whence came The Merry Wives of Windsor} 
 
 The association of the character Falstaff with the 
 name of Sir John Oldcastle, the famous Lollard leader, 
 condemned for heresy and burnt at the stake in 14 17, 
 calls for a word. In the old play The Famous Victories 
 of Henry fifth, oxv^ of the companions of Prince Henry 
 is Sir John Oldcastle, in this following the chronicles. 
 In it Oldcastle plays no important part and is distin- 
 guished neither for his wit nor for his corporal dimen- 
 sions.^ The single instance in which this character 
 
 ' Epistle Dedicatory to the Comical Gallant, an adaptation of The 
 Merry Wives, acted in 1 702. A condensation of the two parts of 
 Henry IV. into one play, transcribed before 1644, was printed from 
 MS. for the Shakespeare Society in 1845. 
 
 2 Collier' s notion that the Oldcastle of the earlier play was " a fat old 
 knight "is not borne out by an examination of the play. See his 
 Dramatic Literature, III. 69. 
 
126 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 exhibits " the least glimmer of humor " is that in which 
 the Prince says : " If the old king my father were 
 dead, we would be all kings." To which Oldcastle re- 
 plies : " Hee is a good olde man, God take him to his 
 mercy the sooner." In i Henry IV. Prince Henry 
 calls Falstaff " my old lad of the castle." ^ In Field's 
 Amends for Ladies, printed in 1619, there is an allu- 
 sion to " the play where the fat knight, hight Old- 
 castle, did tell you truly what his honor was" ; a plain 
 reference to Falstaff's soliloquy in the fifth act.^ 
 In one place the quarto of 2 Henry IV., the abbrevia- 
 tion Old., for Oldcastle, has been allowed to stand by 
 mistake prefixed to one of Falstaff's speeches ; and 
 elsewhere Falstaff is described as having been, when a 
 boy, page to Sir Thomas Mowbray of Norfolk, which 
 the real Oldcastle actually was.* All this establishes 
 that Shakespeare derived the character, Falstaff, from 
 the Oldcastle of the earlier play, and in his earlier draft 
 retained the name Sir John Oldcastle. That the change 
 to Falstaff was subsequent to the earlier performance 
 of both parts of Henry IV. seems highly probable from 
 the allusion of the epilogue of part second, where, 
 mentioning the possible continuance of the adventures 
 of Falstaff in France, the speaker adds : " For Olde- 
 
 castle died a Martyre, and this is not the man.*" We 
 >l. I, 149. 
 
 ''■ Amends for Ladies, IV. 3 ; and cf. i Henry IV., V. I. 
 ^ 2 Henry IV., facsimile ed. of the quarto of 1600, p. II ; andjiJzV., 
 in. 2, 27 ff. 
 *V. 4, 33- 
 
TRICMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE 12/ 
 
 may agree with those who believe that it was never 
 the intention of Shakespeare to cast ridicule upon the 
 historical Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, and that the change 
 in the name of his character was made to avoid such 
 an inference or perhaps in reply to it. It may be re- 
 membered that a Sir John Fastolfe, an historical per- 
 sonage, figures — doubtless unjustly to his memory — 
 as a coward in / Henry VI. and is disgraced and de- 
 graded by Talbot before the king after Joan's relief of 
 Rouen.' It is likely that the similarity of the names, 
 Fastolfe and Falstaff is accidental. That Oldcastle 
 and Falstaff continued to be confused in the public 
 mind is proved by Field's words quoted above. The 
 Jesuit, Father Parsons, too, who as a Roman Catholic 
 must have relished seeing the old hero of Lollardry 
 gibbetted as a gross sinner and perverter of youth, 
 alludes to Oldcastle as "a Ruffian-Knight, as all 
 England knoweth, commonly brought in by comme- 
 dients on their stages." ^ 
 
 The trilogy of plays on Henry IV. and V. led to 
 many imitations, and Falstaff with the group sur- 
 rounding him gave new life and a more definite form 
 to the comic underplots of the serious drama. As 
 remarked above, the element of comic relief is a promi- 
 nent feature of the Chronicle Play from the first. It is 
 only in plays of the tragic intensity of Edward II. or 
 
 1 / Hmry VI., III. 2, 103 ff. and IV. I. 
 
 * See Father Parsons, Three Conversations, 1603, quoted in Fresh 
 Al/usions to Shakspere, New Shakspere Society, i886, p. 30. 
 
128 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Richard II. or ///., with a few others that we find this 
 element wholly suppressed. In the earlier plays of 
 the chronicle type this feature varies from the intro- 
 duction of a mere clown like Miller in Jack Straive or 
 a single scene of drollery such as that in Edward III., 
 in which Douglas and David are represented dividing 
 the spoils of a castle which they have not yet suc- 
 ceeded in taking, to a string of rude scenes in which 
 a whole group of humorous characters appear. Into 
 Locrine, with all its Senecan terrors, an elaborate 
 string of farcical scenes is interwoven depicting the 
 humors of Strumbo, a cobbler, and his man, Trum- 
 part, and involving the song, the mock flight, the use 
 of dialect and horse-play, all of them stock devices of 
 later comedy. Even in so serious a play as Thomas 
 of Woodstock the element of comic relief is variously 
 supplied by Nimble, a direct descendant of the /old 
 Vice, by the courtier-gull, a not unworthy prede- 
 cessor of Shakespeare's Osric, and by the several 
 scenes which concern the market-folk and the arrest 
 of a country bumpkin on the charge of whistling 
 treason.^ Peele's Edward I. contains all the devices 
 noted above, and besides, the device of disguise, bor- 
 rowed in this particular case perhaps from the ballads 
 of Robin Hood. 
 
 The comedy scenes of Henry IV. and Henry V. as 
 well, in which Shakespeare gives us a fresh and enter- 
 
 ^Jahrbuch, XXXV., p. 87. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE 1 29 
 
 taining group centered in the fiery and loquacious Welsh 
 captain, Fluellen, wholly admirable as they are, are 
 only the crown and perfection of what had gone- 
 before. Without going into particulars, Pistol and 
 Falstaff himself are merely idealized forms developing 
 in different directions of the braggart soldier whose 
 English literary original may be sought in plays like 
 Thersites or Ralph Roister Doister if not in the Herod 
 of the mysteries, although the type is as constant to 
 one age and nation as to all others. Again, the puny, 
 clever-tongued page before whom Falstaff walks, as he 
 expresses it, " like a sow that hath ouerwhelmed al 
 her litter but one," is the pert youngster which Lyly, 
 amongst others, helped to popularize in the three witty 
 pages of Endimion or in Cryticus of Sapho and Phao, 
 and which Shakespeare had already used in the charac- 
 ter of Moth in Love's Labour's Lost. Falstaff and Doll 
 are paralleled in the earlier " Dolls" of Strumbo and 
 of the. Friar in Edward I., and in the later " Doll " of 
 Sir John of Wrotham in Oldcastle. The situation of a 
 prince amusing himself, in familiar discourse, with the 
 humors of a man of lower station was a favorite one 
 on the Elizabethan stage, as it had been in the earlier 
 ballad literature. It recurs again and again : in Ed- 
 ward IV. and the Tanner of Tamworth, in George 
 a Greene and Edward III., in Strumbo and King 
 Albanact, and in Prince Edward and Margaret of 
 
 1 See Der Miles Gloriosus bet Shakespeare, ibid., Vol. XIII. 
 10 
 
130 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Fressingfield. To these may be added Vortigern 
 and Simon, the Mayor of Queenborough, in the play 
 of the latter title, and Simon Eyre, Mayor of London 
 and the king of The Shoemakers' Holiday. Both 
 these plays must have been almost contemporary with 
 Shakespeare's plays on Henry IV. and V. As to the 
 " foreign wit " supported by Fluellen, and Jamey Mac- 
 morris, the Welshmen, the Scotchman and Irishman 
 of Henry V., and Dr. Caius, the French doctor of 
 The Merry Wives, such obvious butts of sport have 
 been the commonplaces of the drama since the days 
 of Aristophanes. 
 
 The success of Henry IV. inspired the production 
 of two plays entitled respectively The first part of the 
 true and honorable historie of the life of Sir John Old- 
 castle, the good Lord Cobham, and The Second Part of 
 Sir John Oldcastle, with his Martyrdom. According 
 to Henslowe these plays were the joint work of Mon- 
 day, Drayton, Wilson and Hathway. They were 
 acted in the autumn of 1599 by the Admiral's com- 
 pany, and the earlier was printed in the next year with 
 the name of Shakespeare on the title, a circumstance 
 due to the confusion between Falstaff and Oldcastle 
 already described, and one of which an enterprising 
 publisher would be loath to disabuse the public mind. ^ 
 Only this first part has come down to us, although it 
 is certain that the second part was acted, as we hear 
 
 ' Oldcastle was reprinted in the third folio of Shakespeare, 1663-64. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE I3I 
 
 that Henslowe possessed properties for it in March, 
 1599.' It has been suggested that Oldcastlev/as writ- 
 ten immediately after the first performance of / Henry 
 IV. and before the second part of that play was writ- 
 ten, perhaps even before the name of Oldcastle was 
 changed to that of Falstaff. This seems borne out by 
 the circumstance that there are several allusions to / 
 Henry IV.; e. g., to the Prince as " a perfect night 
 walker " and a taker of purses, to " Falstaffe that vil- 
 lain so fat he can not get on's horse " — a plain ref- 
 erence to the old knight's fretting " like gumd Vel- 
 vet " when his horse was " remouede '' by the Prince 
 on Gadshill ; while none of these allusions refer to any 
 of the personages or events which belong distinctively 
 to 2 Henry IV? In the prologue to Oldcastle the note 
 of relation to the popular play of a rival company is 
 
 struck : 
 
 The doubfull Title (gentlemen) prefixt 
 Upon the Argument we have in hand, 
 May breed suspence, and wrongfully disturb 
 The peacefuU quiet of your setled thoughts : 
 To stop which scruple, let this brief sufiSce. 
 It is no pamper' d Glutton we present, 
 Nor aged Counsellor to youthful! sin ; 
 But one, whose vertue shone above the rest, 
 A valiant Martyr, and a vertuous Peer. 
 
 Let fair truth be grac'd 
 
 Since forg'd invention former time defac'd.' 
 
 ^ Henslowe' s Diary, p. 166. 
 
 » See Oldcastle, IV. i ; II. i ; III. 4 ; and 7 Henry IV., II. 2. 
 
 ' Oldcastle, I. I, text of the Shakespeare folio, 1663-64. 
 
132 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 But Falstaff had made too good a hit to be repre- 
 sented in a rival play only by contrast with " a valiant 
 Martyr and a vertuous Peer." Sir John of Wrotham, 
 the knavish, lecherous priest and highwayman, a 
 personage of much vigor and some originality, is 
 modelled directly on the more famous and infinitely 
 more witty Sir John of Shakespeare. Among the par- 
 son's escapades is his robbery of the king, who in dis- 
 guise had wandered by night beyond the precincts 
 of his camp. Attracted by the rattle of dice on a drum's 
 head. Sir John enters the camp and, joining in a game 
 of chance, loses the king's money to the king. His 
 identity as the robber who had just bade King Henry 
 stand is disclosed when he offers a broken angel as a 
 stake, the half of one which he had given Henry to 
 insure that his victim should not be "held up" a 
 second time by one of Sir John's pals. The most 
 diverting scene of this play is one which is borrowed 
 outright from Greene's Pinner of Wakefield. In it 
 Harpool, a faithful but eccentric servant of Oldcastle, 
 plays a trick of the Pinner's in forcing a summoner of 
 the Bishop of Rochester, his master's enemy, to eat 
 the seals of his summons.^ The last act of Oldcastle 
 is made up of a series of mystifications and disguisings, 
 a departure from the usual practice of the Chronicle 
 Play, but one not entirely unknown to previous dramas 
 of the class. As a whole the play of Sir John Old- 
 
 ^Ibid., II. I. 
 
TRIUMPH OF THE EPIC TYPE 1 33 
 
 castle seems hasty and far from well written. It is not 
 impossible that the wit of three kingdoms exemplified 
 in Henry's captains, Fluellen, Macmorris and Jamy, 
 may have been Shakespeare's way of outdoing Davy, 
 the humorous Welsh servant of Oldcastle and the cut- 
 throat, Mack Chane, who begged that he might be 
 " hang'd in a wyth after my country the Irish fashion."^ 
 The similarity, too, between the night meeting of King 
 Henry with John a Wrotham and his acceptance of a 
 broken angel from that thief as a token, and the meet- 
 ing of Henry on the eve of the battle of Agincourt with 
 the soldier, Williams, and the latter's acceptance of the 
 royal glove, unknowing the king's identity, as a like 
 token is assuredly a similarity not founded on mere 
 accident. 
 
 ^Ibid., I. I, V. II. 
 
VI 
 
 POPULAR PLAYWRIGHTS; MODIFICA- 
 TIONS OF THE TYPE 
 
 As we have seen above, it was during the last dec- 
 ade of the century that the Chronicle Play flourished 
 in its greatest luxuriance. We have already investi- 
 gated the part which Shakespeare's earlier contempo- 
 raries, Marlowe, Greene and Peele, played in the devel- 
 opment of this species of drama. Let us now consider 
 the authors of chronicle plays in the later years of this 
 decade and then proceed to the treatment of those spe- 
 cies of this drama which fell away in one particular or 
 another from the earlier epic type and from the histor- 
 ical tragedy and later comedy form which we have 
 seen developing in the hands of Marlowe and Shake- 
 speare. 
 
 Robert Greene died in September, 1592, leaving be- 
 hind him in his Groats-worth of Wit the notorious ad- 
 dress " To those Gentlemen his Quondam Acquain- 
 tance, that spend their wits in making Plaies," which 
 contains the earliest allusion to the great sovereign of 
 the Elizabethan drama. In this much-quoted passage 
 it will be remembered that Shakespeare is called " an 
 vpstart Crow, beautified with our feathers " and it is a 
 line from j Henry VI. : " O Tygres Heart wrapt in a 
 
 134 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 1 35 
 
 Womans Hide," which in its parody: "His Tygers 
 heart wrapt in a Players hide, " declares Greene's 
 enmity to Shakespeare to have been caused largely by 
 the success with which the new dramatist was working 
 over the old historical dramas to fit them for repro- 
 duction on the stage. But now Greene was in his 
 grave. Marlowe was killed in the following June, 
 and Peele wrote no chronicle history after Edward I., 
 which was printed in 1593 and must have been first 
 acted three or four years earlier. The chief play- 
 wrights, other than Shakespeare to take up the Chron- 
 icle Play when Greene, Peele and Marlowe left it, were 
 Anthony Munday and Thomas Heywood. Munday 
 was more than ten years older than Shakespeare and 
 appears to have begun life as a Protestant spy on the 
 English Jesuit college at Rome. He was known as 
 an actor as early as 1575 and continued a busy pam- 
 phleteer, small poet and dramatic writer throughout a 
 long life which extended into the reign of King Charles. 
 Munday enjoyed some contemporary repute and was 
 commended by Meres in his Palladis Tamia as " our 
 best plotter," praise which his extant dramatic work 
 by no means warrants.-' On the other hand Munday 
 was lampooned as Antonio Balladino by Jonson in 
 The Case is Altered? Munday's career as a playwright 
 began with a translation entitled Fidele and Fortunio in 
 
 ^ See Haslewood, Art of English Poetry, II. , 154. 
 
 'On this topic see Penniman, The War of the Theatres, p. 37. 
 
136 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 1 584. His first work in the general class of chronicle 
 plays was John a Kent and John a Cumber, a departure, 
 as we shall presently see, fi-om the contemporary type 
 of the historical drama. Six other plays, supposedly 
 chronicle histories, have been attributed to Munday in 
 joint authorship with Henry Chettle and others. Of 
 this number / Oldcastle, and the two parts of Robert 
 Earl of Huntington, are still extant ; the non-extant 
 plays were 2 Oldcastle, Owen Tudor and The Rising of 
 Cardinal Wolsey. Our knowledge of all of these plays 
 is derived from Henslowe. 
 
 Thomas Heywood is in many respects the most 
 typical of Elizabethan playwrights. He was an actor 
 also and a defender of the " qualitie " he professed 
 as appears from his Apology for Actors, a pamphlet 
 of great interest. Heywood' s career as a dramatic 
 writer and general pamphleteer is traceable back cer- 
 tainly to 1 596 and his earliest chronicle history is that 
 of Edward IV., in two parts, printed in 1600 though 
 doubtless several years older. Between this play and 
 If You Know Not Me, Heywood's dramatic chronicle 
 of the chief events in the earlier life of Queen Eliza- 
 beth, acted in 1604, we have record of two non-extant 
 plays of this class, The Bold Beauchamps, 1599, and 
 / Lady Jane Grey, 1602, the work of Heywood and 
 others. Passing The Valiant Welshman which may 
 possibly be capable of identification with The Welsh- 
 man, performed by the Admiral's and Chamberlain's 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 1 37 
 
 companies at Newington in 1595, we reach several 
 new names in Henslowe. Henry Chettle has been 
 associated with eighteen plays, nearly all of this class ; 
 Thomas Dekker and Michael Drayton were part 
 authors of fifteen and thirteen dramas of the chron- 
 icle type respectively ; Robert Wilson the Younger 
 and John Day were employed on nine and seven 
 chronicles each. The habit of collaboration was 
 general with the playwrights of this group and no one 
 of them save Dekker has left a chronicle play of un- 
 divided authorship. Hence the number of these pro- 
 ductions seems greater than it really is. Among the 
 slender remains of these plays which are still extant are 
 the two parts of Munday's Robert Earl of Huntington, 
 mentioned above, in both of which Chettle had a share ; 
 The Blind Beggar of Bednall Green, in which Day was 
 Chettle's collaborator ; the two plays on Sir Thomas 
 Wyatt in which Webster served an apprenticeship 
 with the older dramatist Dekker ; and Oldcastle which, 
 as we have seen above, was the joint effort of no less 
 than four writers. Dekker's one independent play of 
 this general class is The Whore of Babylon, and it is a 
 departure from the type. His Satiromastix, the plot 
 of which is laid in the court of William Rufus, and his 
 Old Fortunatus, the later scenes of which are laid in 
 the England of Athelstan, may be accounted on the 
 border of this class. 
 
 Henry Chettle first appears in the history of the 
 
138 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE FLAY 
 
 drama as the publisher of Greene's Groats-worth of Wit, 
 for the violence of the language in which with regard to 
 Shakespeare he apologized in his Kind-Harts Dreame, 
 printed almost immediately after. Within the decade of 
 his thraldom to Henslowe, 1 597-1607, Chettle contrib- 
 uted nearly fifty plays of various kinds to the drama of 
 his time.' Of Robert Wilson, usually distinguished 
 from the author of The Three Ladies of London and 
 designated "the Younger," we know little beyond what 
 Henslowe tells us.^ This Wilson was active in the 
 writing of chronicle plays but appears to have essayed 
 no unaided effort. Michael Drayton's traffic with the 
 stage rests likewise almost solely on the evidence of 
 Henslowe's old book of accounts in which Drayton's 
 name recurs again and again as the associate of Dek- 
 ker, Chettle, Wilson and others during a period from 
 December, 1597, to May, 1602.^ Drayton's "well 
 written tragedies " are also alluded to in an anonymous 
 book entitled Poems of Diverse Humours, 1598,* al- 
 though this may have been no more than a reference 
 to his epical histories such as that of Meres who called 
 Drayton, " Tragoediographus, for his passionate penning 
 of the downfals of valiant Robert of Normandy, chast 
 Matilda, and great Gaueston."* Henslowe mentions 
 
 ' See Henslowe, pp. 93 et passim, and the list of his plays in Acker- 
 mann's ed. oiHoffman, 1894. 
 ' Henslowe, p. 153, etc. 
 »IHd.,-p^. 95, 96. 
 
 * Reprinted in Shakspere Allusion Books, p. 186. 
 ^ Palladis Tamia, ed. Haslewood, as above, II. 151. 
 
MODIFICATIOSS OF THE TYFE 1 39 
 
 twenty-four plays in connection with Drayton's name, 
 of which number about half concern English historical 
 subjects and but one, William Longsuford, was written 
 by Drayton alone. Drayton had been intimate with 
 Lodge and Daniel, with both of whom he vied, at first 
 in carrying on the pastoral mode which Sidney and 
 Spenser had rendered f)opular and, after the publica- 
 tion of the former's Astropkel and Stella and Daniel's 
 Delia, in his own sonnet-sequence Idea. In the writing 
 of narrative history, too, Drayton imitated Daniel, whose 
 Complaint of Rosamund a:ppeaied in 1 592 and was suc- 
 ceeded in the next year by Drajiion's Legend cf Piers 
 Gaveston, the subject of which may have been sug- 
 gested by the contemporary popularity of Marlowe's 
 Edward II. This coinddence taken with some others, 
 such as the appearance of Daniel's Civile Wars in the 
 same year, 1594, with a revived popularity of the 
 plays dealing with the contention of the houses of York 
 and Lancaster, has been thought by some to point to 
 a rivalry- between the stage and the epic in this species 
 of literature.* Be this as it may, Tlu Legend of Robert 
 Duke of Normandy, the Mortimeriados (later remodelled 
 as Tke Barons Warres), together with Englands Hero- 
 icall Epistles and the far later Battle of Agincourt, all 
 attest Drayton's fertility- and perseverance in the epic 
 presentation of subject-matter drawn from the old 
 
 • Elton, An Intrgduetioti to JUichad Drayton, S^tnstr Society s 
 Puiluatiens, 1895, p. 24. 
 
140 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 chronicles. Nothing could have been more natural 
 than that Drayton should have transferred his interest 
 in chronicle history epically told to the planning and 
 penning of historical dramas when the temporary fail- 
 ure of patrons and the stress of circumstances drove 
 him to a temporary cooperation with men his inferiors 
 in birth, station and celebrity. 
 
 Dekker and Day call for no word here. Other 
 names which Henslowe's Diary has associated with the 
 Chronicle Play are William Haughton, who had a 
 hand in eight such plays, besides some others during 
 the years 1600 and 1601 ; Henry Porter, the author 
 of the delightful comedy of situation. The Two Angry 
 Women of Abington ; Richard Hath way whose name 
 suggests a possible Shakespearean relation ; Wentworth 
 Smith whose initials have created some confusion with 
 William Shakespeare and William Smith, the author 
 of the sonnet-sequence, Chloris ; and lastly William 
 Rankins, the satirist. The works of these writers of 
 chronicle plays have perished save for the now indis- 
 tinguishable part which Hathway had in i Oldcastle. 
 
 John Webster and Thomas Middleton are both 
 mentioned in Henslowe} William Rowley is not so 
 mentioned but claims a place here. The part of these 
 three dramatists in the Chronicle Play was slight. 
 Middleton in The Mayor of Queenborough and Row- 
 ley in The Birth of Merlin meet on common ground 
 
 1 Henslowe, pp. no and 227. 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE I4I 
 
 in offering legendary chronicles reconstructed from 
 earlier dramatic material. Neither author has written 
 any other play of the chronicle type, if we except 
 Middleton on the basis of Henslowe's association of 
 his name with a play no longer extant called variously 
 Chester Tragedy and Randall Earl of Chester. Web- 
 ster's share in the Chronicle Play is confined to the 
 assistance rendered Dekker in the extant play on Sir 
 Thomas Wyatt and the two non-extant plays on Lady 
 Jane Grey, if indeed these two titles are not referable 
 to the same production.^ Samuel Rowley cove- 
 nanted in 1599 to act for a year for Henslowe,^ but 
 his one unaided play of the chronicle type When You 
 See Me You Know Me or the Famous Chronicle History 
 of Henry VHL, printed in 1605 and performed not 
 long before, was not written while he was in Hens- 
 lowe's employ. Finally Jonson's name has been 
 attached to three plays of the chronicle class. Hens- 
 lowe mentions Robert //. of Scotland, written by Jon- 
 son in conjunction with Chettle and Dekker in 15 99, 
 and Richard Crookback, 1602, the work of Jonson 
 alone.^ Neither of these is extant. The fragment of 
 Mortimer his Fall which appears in Jonson's works 
 was possibly once complete and may be identified 
 with the play of Mortymore for which Henslowe pro- 
 vided "ij sewtes a licke" {i. e., two suits alike), in 
 
 • Fleay, Biographical Chronicle, I. 130 and II. 269. 
 2 Henslowe, p. 260. 
 ^Ibid., pp. 156 and 223. 
 
142 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 September, 1602.^ By the fragment, which is pre- 
 ceded by an argument of the five acts, it is manifest 
 that this play must have exhibited a complete depar- 
 ture from the customary traditions of the popular 
 Chronicle History. If we are to j udge by the indicated 
 choruses " of Ladyes celebrating the worthinesse of 
 the Queene," of " Countrey Justices and their Wives 
 telling how they were deluded and made beleeve the 
 old king lived, etc.," Jonson's Mortimer his Fall must 
 have been an attempt to carry the English Chronicle 
 History back to a stricter accord with the classical 
 traditions and usages which obtain in Jonson's Roman 
 tragedies, especially Cataline. Such an attempt is 
 precisely what w.e might expect of Jonson's theories 
 as to literature and the drama, theories which com- 
 bine an intelligent and independent appreciation of the 
 excellence of ancient literature with an equally intelli- 
 gent and independent desire to adapt whatever was 
 adaptable to English conditions. It is much to be 
 regretted that we have not Jonson's experiment of an 
 English chronicle play conformed to classical usage 
 in its fulness. 
 
 In the treatment of Shakespeare's and of Marlowe's 
 part in the evolution of historical tragedy of passion 
 out of the epical Chronicle Play, special mention was 
 made of the popularity of the Wars of the Roses, partic- 
 ularly the events involving the rise to power of Richard 
 
 ^ Ibid., p. 226. 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 1 43 
 
 III., as a theme for both epic and dramatic poetry. 
 We have seen too how the reviser of The True Tragedy 
 of Richard Duke of York (otherwise called 2 Conten- 
 tion) heightened the portrait of Gloucester, how The 
 True Tragedy of King Richard sketched in rivalry a 
 gross if vigorous picture of the same deformed usurper, 
 and how Shakespeare's Richard III. surpassed as it 
 succeeded these three earlier plays, not only in the 
 presentation of the protagonist but in the conduct of 
 the whole story as well. This working over of material 
 of approved popularity is one of the most usual as it 
 is one of the most interesting characteristics of the 
 Elizabethan drama, although there are few instances 
 in which it can be traced with the certainty which the 
 case before us exhibits. To the succession of plays 
 just enumerated must be added^Heywood's two chron- 
 icle histories on the reign of Edward IV. Here the 
 author gathered up whatever was left by his predecessors 
 and presented what he was compelled to repeat in a 
 guise at once familiar and yet novel. Moreover this 
 play, while representing in a sense a return to the epic 
 type of the Chronicle Play of mingled history and 
 comedy, marks likewise a falling away from that type, 
 because of the prominence which it gives to the ele- 
 ment of pathos and to the picturing of contemporary 
 London life. The elaborate title of the two plays of 
 Heywood on the reign of Edward IV. has been given 
 above and need not be repeated here.' The two parts 
 »Seep. SI. 
 
144 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 contain no less than five different stories more or less 
 loosely connected by personages which take part in two 
 or more. On the more strictly historical side we have 
 the attack on London by rebels under the adventurer 
 Falconbridge, the last feeble attempt of the defeated 
 Lancastrians to restore saintly and incapable Henry to 
 his crown ; ' secondly, Edward's abortive expedition 
 into France with what the title calls "the trecherous 
 falshood of the Duke of Burgundie and the Constable _ 
 of France" ; and thirdly, the events which immediately 
 preceded and followed the death of Edward, including 
 the murder of the Duke of Clarence and of the young 
 princes and Richard's succession to the crown. To all 
 this is added the episodic scenes of King Edward's diver- 
 sions with the loyal, outspoken Hob, the Tanner of Tam- 
 worth,^ and the pathetic story of Jane Shore, the king's 
 mistress, her temptation and fall and her pitiful death. 
 Of these stories the last alone finds place in both parts. 
 Except for the scenes with the Tanner which the 
 author had from a contemporary ballad, and barring a 
 few modifications (among them the harrowing details 
 of the deaths of the Shores), the material is derived di- 
 rectly from the Chronicle of Holinshed which includes, 
 as is well known. Sir Thomas More's Life of Richard 
 III., although the intervention of an earlier play, such 
 as The Siege of London, mentioned as revived by Hens- 
 
 1 Holinshed, III. 321. 
 
 » See Child, Popular Ballads, V. (i^4 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 1 45 
 
 lowe in 1594, is not impossible/ That the author of this 
 facile production is Thomas Heywood cannot admit 
 of a moment's doubt. The manner is uniformly his 
 in its ease, its unaffectedness and its freedom from the 
 gawds of contemporary poetic diction. In the scenes 
 which concern Shore and his wife, we meet again and 
 again Heywood's generous conception of character 
 and that wholesome and unrestrained pathos which is 
 peculiarly his. Indeed the whole treatment of that 
 delicate subject, the relation of a true and honorable 
 man to the wife who has wronged him, but whom he 
 continues to love in a spirit chastened by his wrongs, 
 is handled with the same innate delicacy, the same 
 wide tolerance and sympathy and yet with the ethical 
 soundness, which Heywood displays with such effect 
 in his characters, the Franklins, in A Woman Killed 
 with Kindness — qualities in which Heywood is prac- 
 tically alone amongst his contemporaries. The changes 
 which Heywood made in the story of Jane Shore are 
 significant. Shore, the husband, is dignified with an 
 important part in the defense of London against Fal- 
 conbridge by a transfer to him of the role actually 
 played in the chronicles by Alderman Basset.^ This 
 links the story of the siege with that of Jane and leads 
 naturally to her meeting with the king at a civic feast.^ 
 Once more Shore is identified with a party of ships- 
 
 'Henslowe, p. 46, and Fleay, Biographical Chronicle,,!. 288. 
 2Cf. / Edward IV., I. 3 and I. 6, with Holinshed, III. 323. 
 ■' J Edward IV., IV. 2. 
 II 
 
146 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 men who have become constructively pirates, though 
 really innocent, and Jane, unknowing, becomes instru- 
 mental in saving her husband's life.* Lastly the story 
 of the murder of the young princes is linked with that 
 of Jane by the device by which Shore, as the assistant 
 of Sir Robert Brackenbury, Keeper of the Tower, falls 
 into an altercation with Tyrrel and his cutthroats and 
 receives a dagger thrust in the arm.^ In the upshot 
 Heywood departs from all the chronicles, narratives 
 and ballads, in making Shore defy Richard's tyran- 
 nical command that no one offer relief or harborage 
 to Jane after her public penance with sheet and candle, 
 and in the final tragedy by which the reunited hus- 
 band and wife perish of want and hunger together.' 
 
 These are examples of that instinctive insight into 
 the possibilities of a subject which mark the born 
 dramatist. Not less successful is Heywood's adapta- 
 bility evidenced in the evasion of repetitions where repe- 
 tition seems all but unavoidable, and in throwing a new 
 light on incidents already treated by others in a pre- 
 vious play. The events of the two parts oi Edward IV. 
 range from a scene in which King Edward's mother, 
 the Duchess of York, is represented chiding Lady 
 Grey for her marriage with Edward to the moment 
 when King Richard, secure as he thinks in the 
 possession of his ill-gotten throne, disregards the 
 
 ' 2 Edward IV., II. I and II. 4. 
 
 ^Ibid., IIL 4. 
 
 ^Ibid., IV. 3, V. I and 2. 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 1 47 
 
 ominous mention of Harry Richmond's name to pro- 
 ceed to "the princely ceremonies " of the founding of 
 the Order of the Bath. Between these extremes there 
 are several points at which Heywood's play comes 
 into contact with Shakespeare's Richard III. and The 
 True Tragedy of Richard III., the latter of which treats 
 not only the steps of Richard's rise to power but the 
 consequences of Edward's death on the fortunes of 
 Jane Shore. In each of these cases it is Heywood's 
 cue to avoid the actual repetition of scenes already 
 part of the earlier plays and to illuminate well-known 
 events with the side light of novelty. In the induction 
 of The True Tragedy the ghost of the Duke of Clarence 
 appears, after the Senecan manner, to call for vengeance 
 on his murderer. In Richard III. Clarence is shown 
 face to face with his murderers in agonized pleading 
 for his hfe, while in Edward IV. the news of his death 
 by drowning in a butt of malmsey is thrown into a 
 conversation between Lovell and Dr. Shaw, two crea- 
 tures of the usurper, and thus presented in contrast 
 with the natural sympathies of the beholder.' The 
 True Tragedy of Richard III. devotes many scenes to 
 the intrigues and subterfuges by which the young 
 princes are separated from their friends, their mother 
 and from each other, to fall into Richard's hands. 
 Shakespeare subordinates all this to the higher unity 
 in which Richard becomes the center of the stage, 
 ^Richard in., I. 4; z Edward IV., III. i. 
 
148 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 while Edward IV. goes at once to the imprisonment 
 of the princes in the Tower. There is a simple pathos 
 in this short scene between the motherless little princes 
 which exhibits Heywood at his best. The scene is a 
 bedroom in the Tower. The young princes Edward 
 and Richard enter "in their gowns and caps, vnbut- 
 toned and vntrust" 
 
 Ric. How does your lordship ? 
 Ed. Well, good brother Richard. 
 
 How does yourself? you told me your head aked. 
 Ric. Indeed it does, my Lord feele with your hands 
 
 How hot it is. 
 He laies his hand on his brothers head. 
 Ed. Indeed you haue caught cold. 
 
 With sitting yesternight to heare me read. 
 
 I pray thee go to bed, sweet Dick, poore little 
 heart. 
 Ric. Youle giue me leaue to wait vpon your lord- 
 ship. 
 Ed. I had more need, brother, to wait on you. 
 
 For you are sick ; and so am not I. 
 Ric. Oh, lord, methinks this going to our bed. 
 
 How like it is to going to our graue. 
 Ed. I pray thee, do not speake of graues sweetheart. 
 
 Indeed thou frightest me. 
 Ric. Why, my lord brother, did not our tutor teach 
 vs. 
 
 That when at night we went vnto our bed. 
 
 We still should think we went vnto our graue ? 
 Ed. Yes, thats true. 
 
 If we should do as eu'ry Christian ought. 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE I49 
 
 To be prepard to die at euery hour, 
 But I am heauy. 
 Ric. Indeed, and so am I. 
 Ed. Then let vs say our prayers and go to bed. 
 They kneel, and solemn musicke the while within. The 
 musicke ceaseth, and they rise. 
 
 Hie. What, bleeds your grace ? 
 Ed. I two drops and no more. 
 jRic. God blesse vs both ; and I desire no more. 
 Ed. Brother \_Opening his prayer-book'], see here 
 what Dauid says, and so say I : 
 Lord ! in thee will I trust, although I die.^ 
 
 In The True Tragedy the innocent doubts and appre- 
 hensions of the young princes with their murderers' 
 contrasted brutality and flickering qualms of conscience 
 had entered as elements in a rude but effective scene.^ 
 Shakespeare reduced all this to a score of pathetic and 
 poetic lines which he put somewhat unfittingly into 
 the mouth of Tyrrel, the instrument of the children's 
 death. 
 
 The tyrannous and bloodie Act is done, 
 
 The most arch deed of pittious massacre 
 
 That euer yet this Land was guilty of: 
 
 Dighton and Forrest, who I did suborne 
 
 To do this peece of ruthfull Butchery, 
 
 Albeit they were flesht Villaines, bloody Dogges, 
 
 Melted with tendernesse, and milde compassion. 
 
 Wept like to Children, in their deaths sad Story. 
 
 O thus (quoth Dighton) lay the gentle Babes : 
 
 ^Ibid., III. 5. 
 
 2 Tht True Tragedy, ed. Shakespeare Society, 1844, p. 42. 
 
150 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Thus, thus (quoth Forrest) girdling one another 
 ' Within their Alablaster innocent Armes : 
 Their lips were foure red Roses on a stalke, 
 And in their Summer Beauty kist each other. 
 A Booke of Prayers on their pillow lay, 
 Which one (quoth Forrest) almost chang'd my minde : 
 But oh the Diuell, there the Villaine stopt : 
 When Dighton thus told on, we smothered 
 The most replenished sweet worke of Nature, 
 That from the prime Creation ere she framed. 
 Hence both are gone with Conscience and Remorse, 
 They could not speake, and so I left them both. 
 To beare this tydings to the bloody King.^ 
 
 In like strait, while the very deed is doing, Hey- 
 wood's Tyrell thus communes with his own blackened 
 soul : 
 
 I haue put my hand into the foulest murder 
 
 That euer was committed since the world. 
 
 The very senselesse stones here in the walles 
 
 Breake out in teares but to behold the fact. 
 
 Methinkes the bodies lying dead in graues, 
 
 Should rise and cry against vs — O hark, [a noise wifhifi] 
 
 harke. 
 The mandrakes shrieks are music to their cries. 
 The very night is frighted, and the starres 
 Do drop like torches, to behold this deed : 
 The very centre of the earth doth shake, 
 Methinks the Towre should rent down from the toppe. 
 To let the heauen look on this monstrous deede. ' 
 
 » Richard III. , IV. 3, 1-23. In the folio, the text of which is here 
 followed, this passage forms part of the second scene. 
 ^2 Edward IV., III. 5. 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 151 
 
 " Heywood," says Charles Lamb, in a much-quoted 
 passage, " is a sort oi prose Shakespeare. His scenes 
 are to the full as natural and affecting. But we miss 
 the Poet, that which in Shakespeare always appears 
 out and above the surface of the nature." ' Is it too 
 bold to query whether the poet in Shakespeare's 
 Tyrrel, taken with the beauty of "the gentle Babes" 
 more than is a murderer's wont — "their Alabaster 
 innocent Armes " and lips, "foure red Roses on a 
 stalke " — "appears out and above the surface of the 
 nature " somewhat to that nature's detriment ? 
 
 It is in such touches of nature as these that Hey- 
 wood excels and it is with expectation rather than 
 with surprise, therefore, that we record the play of 
 Edward IV. as a notable example of the falling away 
 from the epic type of Chronicle Play by the substitu- 
 tion of interests of diverse kind from that which cen- 
 tered in the delineation of events which appealed to 
 patriotic spirit and national feeling. The central story 
 of Edward IV. is, after all, that of Jane Shore. The 
 scenes of the rise of Richard are repetitions in sketchy 
 outline; the siege of London and the king's journey 
 into France possesses next to no power of dramatic 
 appeal. In short the romantic tale of a kingly and 
 conquering lover with the involved emotion of a 
 woman's remorse for sin and a man's constancy and 
 magnanimity have outweighed political intrigues and 
 
 '^specimens of English Dramatic Poets, ed. 1893, ^- ^''S- 
 
152 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 the bluster of arms. To posit strict chronological 
 order in developments and changes of literary taste 
 and form such as this is to lose sight of the facts and 
 obscure their true relations in the attempt to work out 
 a theory. That later chronicle plays were more ex- 
 posed to the intrusion of extraneous influences than 
 the earlier ones is, however, undeniable ; although this 
 species of drama was open from the first to admixture 
 and to modifications from without, most of them ref- 
 erable to two influences : the emphasis of the element 
 of comedy, and the centralization of the whole play in 
 biographical particulars which concerned a single in- 
 dividual. 
 
 Of the several classes of quasi-chronicles in which 
 the comedy element has gained an ascendancy, an in- 
 teresting though limited group has its basis in stories 
 of the heroes of popular balladry. Though the direct 
 evidences are slight, we have already seen that there 
 is much reason to believe that mummings, dialogues 
 and interludes celebrating the deeds of Robin Hood 
 and his associates enjoyed at one time considerable 
 prevalence and popularity. It is then a return to an 
 old and tried subject and the adaptation of it to altered 
 conditions that we recognize in the appropriately named 
 A pleasant conceyted Comedie of George a Greene, the 
 Pinner of Wakefield, the work of Robert Greene. This 
 play is mentioned three times by Henslowe, ^ under 
 
 1 See pp. 31-33. 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 1 53 
 
 date of December, 1592, and the January following. 
 The external evidence attributing this play to Greene 
 is slight ; but its style and manner are all but indubi- 
 tably his. In this play the dramatist has drawn the 
 ideal of the sturdy English yeoman of his day. 
 George a Greene is faithful and loyal to his king 
 though independent in his bearing before him, daring 
 in open fight yet sagacious in stratagem against his 
 sovereign's -enemies and magnanimous to them in their 
 overthrow. The Earl of Kendall has revolted from 
 his allegiance to King Edward and sends Sir Nicholas 
 Mannering to Wakefield to demand supplies for the 
 rebel army. On being refused, Mannering threatens 
 the citizens and George a Greene interposes : 
 
 George. Proud dapper lacke, vayle bonnet to the 
 
 bench 
 That represents the person of the King ; 
 Or sirra, He lay thy head before thy feete. 
 Man. Why, who art thou? 
 George. Why, I am George a Greene, 
 True liegeman to my king. 
 Who scomes that men of such esteeme as these. 
 Should brooke the braues of any trayterous 
 
 squire : 
 You of the bench, and you my fellowe friends. 
 Neighbours, we subiects all vnto the King 
 We are English borne, and therefore Edwards 
 
 friends, 
 Voude vnto him euen in our mothers wombe; 
 Our mindes to God, our hearts vnto our King, 
 
154 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Our wealth, our homage, and our carcases, 
 Be all King Edwards : then, sirra, we haue 
 Nothing left for traytours, but our swordes, ^ 
 Whetted to bathe them in your bloods, and 
 
 dye 
 Gainst you, before we send you any victuals.^ 
 
 In the upshot Mannering is compelled by George to 
 swallow the seals of his rebels' commission and is 
 thrust out of Wakefield. Mention has already been 
 made of the borrowing of this incident by the authors 
 of Oldcastle. The trick of his namesake is related by 
 Nashe as having been actually performed by the dram- 
 atist Greene on an apparator come to serve a citation 
 on him. As pinner, penner or impounder of Wake- 
 field, it is George's duty to impound all strays and to 
 prevent trespass on the crops and the commons of the 
 town. He finds the horses of the Earl of Kendall in 
 the town's corn and orders them to the pound, but 
 is immediately surrounded by the Earl's followers. 
 Craftily pretending to yield to the rebels' invitation to 
 join them, George induces the Earl to visit a holy her- 
 mit of the neighborhood to consult him on the pros- 
 pect of the success of his revolt. The Earl comes 
 with but two attendants. The hermit, who is none 
 other than George in disguise, kills one and puts the 
 other to flight, and makes the Earl his prisoner. 
 King Edward now happens into the neighborhood and 
 comes to " merrie Bradford " in disguise. There he 
 
 ' George a Greene, Works of Greene, ed. Grosart, XIV. 126. 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 1 55 
 
 and his courtiers are compelled to trail their staves by 
 the stalwart shoemakers of that town, who will permit 
 no man to carry his staff on his shoulder in traversing 
 the town unless he iight for that right. George enters 
 at this juncture with Robin Hood, Much and Scarlet, 
 who have just tasted to their sorrow of the pinner's 
 valor at quarter-staff, and the disguised king and his 
 nobles are put to the dilemma of fighting the. shoe- 
 makers for carrying their staves on their shoulders or 
 George and Robin for trailing them. After a merry 
 fight which comes to an end on the shoemakers' dis- 
 covery of the identity of George, a keg of ale is 
 broached in the street and all join in merriment. To 
 the king's praises for his capture of the rebel Earl, 
 George modestly replies : 
 
 I humbly thanke your royall Maiestie. 
 That which I did against the Earle of Kendal, 
 It was but a subiects duetie to his Soueraigne, 
 And therefore little merit [s] such good words. ^ 
 
 The king of Scots is among the royal prisoners and 
 King Edward asks George to fix his ransom. This 
 after some reluctance George consents to do. But in- 
 stead of seeking a large sum of money for himself, 
 after the custom of his time, the honest pinner only 
 
 demands : 
 
 Then let king lames make good 
 Those townes which he hath burnt vpon the borders ; 
 Giue a small pension to the fatherlesse, 
 ^ Ibid., -p. 176. 
 
156 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Whose fathers he caus'd murthered in those warres ; 
 Put in pledge for these things to your grace, 
 And so returne.' 
 
 Just before this, when urged to ask something for 
 himself, George begs for the king's intercession in pro- 
 curing the consent of the father of Bettris, his sweet- 
 heart, to their marriage. But the king is not content 
 thus to leave the young hero, and after bestowing upon 
 him some of the estates of the rebels, bids him kneel. 
 
 George. What will your maiestie do ? 
 Edward. Dub thee a knight, George. 
 
 George. I beseech your grace, grant me one thing. 
 Edward. What is that ? 
 George. Then let me liue and die a yeoman still : 
 So was my father, so must liue his sonne. 
 For tis more credite to men of base degree. 
 To do great deeds, than men of dignitie.'' 
 
 We can imagine how such an apotheosis of the 
 yeomanry of England must have stirred the audience 
 of the Earl of Sussex's servants at the Rose. Indeed 
 it would be difficult to find in the plays of the period 
 a happier realization of that honest loyalty, that spirit 
 of fair play and generosity of heart, which are among 
 the best as they are among the most enduring quali- 
 ties of the English people. 
 
 If we turn to the sources of this comedy we meet 
 
 with some difficulty. In English balladry only one 
 
 ^Ibid., p. 181. 
 ^Itid. 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 1 57 
 
 fragment remains to associate George a Green with 
 the Robin Hood ballads. That fragment exists in 
 several copies but in only two versions, little differing. 
 " It is thoroughly lyrical, and therein 'like the old age,' 
 and was pretty well sung to pieces before it ever was 
 printed," says the late Professor Child. ^ The Jolly 
 Pinder of Wakefield, as the ballad is entitled, relates 
 how the report had gone abroad that such was the 
 prowess of George a Green that none 
 
 Dare make a trespasse to the town of Wakefield, 
 But his pledge goes to the pinfold. 
 
 Robin Hood and his men, Scarlet and John, determine 
 to test this report. They " make a path over the 
 corn " and are challenged by George, who fights each 
 of them in turn until Robin calls for a truce. After 
 bread, beef and ale at the pinner's house, Robin makes 
 his usual offer that George go the greenwood with him, 
 which George accepts upon condition that he first ful- 
 fil the obligation of his engagement to his master to 
 serve him till Michaelmas Day. The subject-matter of 
 this ballad forms the tenth and twelfth scenes of the 
 play but is given a turn, not in the ballad though in 
 the romance presently to be noticed, by making the 
 enmity which the reported beauty of Bettris Grimes, 
 the "leman" of George, has inspired in Maid Marian 
 the cause of Robin's trespass. The immediate source 
 usually ascribed to Greene's play is a prose romance 
 
 ' Poptlar Ballads, III. 129. 
 
158 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 entitled The History of George a Greene, Pinder of the 
 Town of Wakefield, his Birth, Calling, Valor, etc., a late 
 version of which is printed by Thorns.^ This editor's 
 preface contains mention of an earlier extant version of 
 1632, and it is altogether likely that still earlier ver- 
 sions once existed. Although the play and the story 
 exhibit such striking likenesses that it may be regarded 
 as certain that they are either dependent, the one on 
 the other, or referable to a common source, there are 
 points of difference. The chief divergence consists in 
 the introduction into the play of the episode of Lady 
 Barley's spirited resistance to the suit of King James 
 and the subsequent capture of that monarch. Neither 
 of these matters immediately concerns the story of the 
 pinner and both are subversive of unity. These things 
 with the change of the king from Richard I. to Edward, 
 presumably Edward III., and some minor differences 
 seem to point to the fact that here, as is the more 
 usual course, the play followed the tale. On the other 
 hand, the Robin of the play is " poor Robin," and 
 Marian seems reasonably jealous of her equal in sta- 
 tion, Bettris, the squire's daughter ; while in the story 
 the rank of Robin Hood as Robert Earl of Hunting- 
 ton and Marian as " Matilda daughter to the Lord 
 Fitzwalters " is carefully set forth with a reference to 
 the solicitations of Prince John under which the fair 
 lady was still suffering. These things it is well known 
 
 ^ Early English Prose Romances, ed. 1858, II. 150. 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE IJg 
 
 are late sophistications of the old ballads, though it 
 must be confessed not too late for Greene to have 
 met. Lastly, it may be noted that in the scene in 
 which George forces Mannering to swallow the seals 
 of his commission, the playwright (supposing that he 
 had the story before him) appears to have thrown 
 away a point which heightens the climax by omitting 
 the mock courtesy of a cup of ale wherewith to wash 
 down the unusual diet. Altogether it would be diffi- 
 cult to determine whether Greene founded his material 
 on an earlier version of the prose tale or adapted his 
 play from more general sources and was copied by 
 later prose romancers. 
 
 That the most popular hero of the old ballads was 
 not unknown to the Elizabethan stage in a treatment 
 more complete than that accorded him in this minor 
 role in George a Greene is proved by an entry at the 
 Stationers' Register of A Pastoral Pleasant Comedy of 
 Robin Hood and Little John in May, 1 594. In Decem- 
 ber, 1600, Henslowe records a play of Haughton's 
 which he calls Roben hoodes penerthes} None the less 
 it is somewhat remarkable that two plays of Munday 
 and Chettle should be the only ones now extant in 
 which the deeds of Robin Hood are treated in extenso 
 as the major theme of a drama. The complete titles 
 of these plays run : The Downfall of Robert, Earle of 
 
 1 See Arber's Reprint of the Register of the Stationers' Company, 
 II. 649 ; and Henslowe, p. 174. 
 
l6o THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Huntington, afterwards called Robin Hood of merrie 
 Sherwodde : with his love to chaste Matilda, the Lord 
 Fitzwaters Daughter, afterivarde his faire Maide 
 Marian; and The Death of Robert, Earle of Hunting- 
 ton, Otherwise called Robin Hood of merrie Sherwodde : 
 with the lamentable Tragedie of chaste Matilda, his faire 
 maid Marian, poysoned at Dunmowe by King John. 
 Both were published in 1601 and are mentioned by 
 Henslowe under date of February, 1 598, as acted by 
 the Adrniral's company. These plays are disappoint- 
 ing for several reasons, but chiefly because of their 
 inadequate handling of a topic rich in dramatic possi- 
 bilities and their total failure to reproduce the fresh 
 atmosphere of Sherwood Forest which breathes 
 through the ballads. The authors of these plays laid 
 under contribution many ballads, reproducing one of 
 them at least in full and quoting snatches of others.^ 
 But they have employed their materials carelessly, 
 adapting at will and seldom for the better ; and they 
 have subordinated the deeds of Robin, who as an earl 
 loses half his interest, to the story of " Matilda Lord 
 Fitzwater's daughter " in whose dignified repulse of 
 the solicitations of the Prince John and tragic death we 
 lose the sprightly maiden companion of Robin. The 
 general sources of the historical parts of these plays 
 have been traced to Holinshed and Grafton. The 
 story of Matilda, explained as a composite picture of 
 
 •See Dodsley, VIII. 138, and cf. Child, PopularBallads, III. 177. 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE l6l 
 
 the adventures of no less than three maidens of that 
 name has been referred to the recently published 
 treatment of that theme by Drayton in Englands 
 Heroicall Epistles and to a passage in Stow's Annates 
 which is quoted from the. Chronicle of Dunmow} The 
 Downfall is set in an Induction in which the poet 
 Skelton is represented as conducting the rehearsal 
 of a performance intended for the ear of his master, 
 King Henry VIII. An inartificial device for merri- 
 ment is that by which Skelton is made to forget from 
 time to time his part of Friar Tuck and fall into 
 Skeltonic doggerel. Several clumsy attempts are 
 made to utilize the device of disguise, whilst among 
 the personages of the elaborate and abortive dumb 
 shows Ambition and Insurrection, personified ab- 
 stractions of the old drama, still linger. These rem- 
 nants are doubtless Munday's, for he had been bred 
 in an earlier school. The occasional rise in dignity 
 and the improvement in diction which some scenes 
 display may be confidently attributed to the abler 
 hand of the author of Hoffman. But The Death is 
 little better than The Downfall and the adventures of 
 Matilda, set in an incoherent mass of the bickerings 
 and taunts of characters with difficulty distinguished 
 one from the other, are verily " rough-hewn out by 
 an uncunning hand," as the epilogue ingenuously 
 
 ' See a Dissertation on the sources of these plays by A. Ruck- 
 deschel, Erlangen, 1897 ; and Mr. H. L. D. Ward, Catalogue of 
 Romances, 1883, 1. 506, on the three Matildas. 
 
l62 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 informs us. With a perversity not infrequently bom 
 of unwitting failure, Munday employed the figure of 
 Robin Hood once more in his masque Metropolis 
 Coronata, 1615. 
 
 It is strange that the best dramatic realization of 
 Robin Hood and his merry men should have come 
 from the pen of an avowed classicist and should have 
 been interwoven into that most artificial of all species 
 of the drama, a pastoral play : for The Sad Shepherd, 
 or a Tale of Robin Hood is commonly so described. 
 The date of the writing of this fragment of Jonson's is 
 doubtful. It was probably acted, if acted at all, earlier 
 than 16 1 9, for there seems reason in Mr. Fleay's 
 identification of this play with The May Lord mentioned 
 by Jonson in his Conversations with Drummond in that 
 year and generally supposed to be lost. ^ As a matter 
 of fact the "forest element," as it has been not inaptly 
 called, much prevails over the pastoral.^ The scene 
 is Sherwood not Arcadia, and the story turns upon an 
 invitation of Robin to the neighboring shepherds to 
 come to the greenwood and feast a day with him. It 
 is difficult for the non-impressionist critic to find any 
 such "preposterous" and "irritating" incongruity, 
 any such "inexcusable" and "inexplicable " artistic of- 
 fence as Mr. Swinburne contrives to discover in all 
 
 ^Biographical Chronicle, I. 379. Symonds accepted this view; 
 Ward thinks it not sufficiently proved. 
 
 *Dr. Homer Smith, Pastoral Influences in the Snglish Drama, 
 1897, pp. 29-32. 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 1 63 
 
 this.* The juxtaposition of Aeglamour, Robin Hood 
 and Puck-hairy under the beeches of Nottinghamshire 
 seems hardly more startling than that of Titania, The- 
 seus and Bottom in the copses bordering a certain very 
 unclassical Athens. Indeed their fine names and the 
 poetry of their lines alone ally Jonson's shepherds and 
 shepherdesses with the old pastoral conventions. The 
 freshness and naturalness with which the familiar fig- 
 ures of Robin and Marian, and the witch of Papplewicke 
 with her attendants Maudlin and Lorell, are drawn 
 scarcely admit of too much praise. The Sad Shepherd 
 is a refreshing piece of open-air realism and is entitled 
 to a place in the drama of English folk-lore with A 
 Midsummer Nights Dream, Friar Bacon and Old For- 
 tunatus. 
 
 Robin Hood fills an interesting but minor role in 
 the sprightly comedy of disguises, Look About You, 
 first printed in 1600 and variously dated between 
 1 594 and that year. Here Robin is represented in his 
 boyhood as the young Earl of Huntington, ward of 
 Prince Richard and the intimate companion and play- 
 fellow of the young and virtuous Lady Fauconbridge, 
 whom the prince courts for her love. On the histor- 
 ical side Look About You deals with the dissensions be- 
 tween Henry H. and his three sons. But the gist of 
 the matter is in the disguises and opposed mystifica- 
 tions of an eccentric earl, Robert of Gloster, and one 
 Skink, a sharper and creature of Prince John. In this 
 
 ' A Study of Ben Jonson, p. 87. 
 
164 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 intricate comedy Skink passes through nine disguises, 
 Gloster through four, while the princes Richard and 
 John, Lady Fauconbridge and Robin each plays at 
 least one part other than his own. The clearness of 
 design is not less remarkable than the intricacy of this 
 diverting comedy, which belongs, however, in purpose 
 and in kind, despite the scenes which depict Henry's 
 troubles with his sons, with the comedy of disguise. 
 In the long list of non-extant plays the titles of which 
 betray historical subject-matter there is no other ap- 
 parently that can be connected with a subject drawn 
 from ballad lore. In November, 1602, Henslowe paid 
 Middleton for a play called Randall Earl of Chester. 
 This worthy, known in history as Randulph de Blun- 
 devill, is one of the characters in Munday's extant 
 play, John a Kent, and is mentioned with Robin Hood 
 in Piers Plowman} 
 
 One other play fulfils the conditions of a comedy of 
 disguises superimposed upon an historical background. 
 This is The Blind Beggar of Bednall Green, the joint 
 production of John Day and Henry Chettle, first re- 
 corded by Henslowe in 1600, and printed for the first 
 time in 1659. The popularity of this play, which was 
 great, seems to have depended chiefly on the character 
 of Old Stroud, a hearty Norfolk yeoman. Two other 
 "parts" are named by Henslowe, in both of which 
 Haughton assisted Day. In the first and only extant 
 part, Lord Momford, a deserving but broken soldiel' 
 
 1 Ed. Skeat, Early English Text Society, 1873, p. 121. 
 
MODIFICATIOXS OF THE TYFE 165 
 
 in the French wars, assumes the halxt of a beggar and- 
 a serving-man, as a counterplot to a conspiracy against 
 his fame and the fortunes of his daughter, and much 
 of the comedy is also supported by similar disguisings 
 of other characters. The play is bustling and fuU of 
 action, and a spirited trial by combat, over which King 
 Henry VL presides, brings out the cUmax. Except 
 for the scenes in which Humphrey, Duke of Glouces- 
 ter, and Cardinal Beaufort play a ver\- undignified and 
 unhistorical part, the drama displaj'S not the slig;htest 
 basis in even supposed history. Munday's inferior 
 play, John a Kent and John a Cumber, is likewise a 
 comedy of disguises in which personages supplied 
 with historical names figure. But here not even the 
 shadow of an actual event enters into the plot, and the 
 mystifications are eSected by the supernatural powers 
 of two rival magicians as in Friar Bacon and Friar 
 Bungay. It is with this latter play and with Tlu 
 Marry Devil cf Edmotiton that John a Kent belongs. 
 The one manuscript of this play is in Munday's own 
 hand, and is dated 1595. Mr. Fleay's identification 
 of it with Tlie Wise Man of Wist Cluster, mentioned 
 by Henslowe as acted at the Rose, in December, 
 1 594, by the Admiral's men seems not improbable.* 
 The Ballad of British Sidarun, on which this play is 
 in part founded, was entered in the Stationers" Register 
 as early as 1579. 
 
 ^ BiografhiaU CkrmicU, II. 114. 
 
1 66 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 In that species of the vernacular drama which seeks 
 subject-matter in popular folk-lore we have already 
 found history playing a subordinate part. That the ad- 
 ventures of the heroes of romance and drama were ficti- 
 tious mattered little to the novelty-loving Elizabethan. 
 Other steps in the growth of myth were taken : that 
 of attributing imaginary events to actual personages of 
 history and that of adding to the interest of foreign 
 stories by giving them an English coloring or setting. 
 Thus we iind Greene, in his search after novelty, not only 
 attempting a revival of the Robin Hood play but also 
 endeavoring to enhance popular interest in his dramas 
 by both of these devices. In the best of his comedies. 
 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, he heightens the effect 
 by introducing into a tale of magic a story of romantic 
 love and generosity told of an English prince. King 
 Henry III. and Edward his son both appear in this 
 play : but the events in which they figure might with 
 equal irrelevancy attach to any English or other prince. 
 In The Scottish Historic of lames the fourth, slaine at 
 Flodden. Entermixed with a pleasant Comedie pre- 
 sented by Oboram King of Fayeries we have a play 
 the title of which clothes, besides much else, a ro- 
 mantic tale of love and jealousy until then uncon- 
 nected with the historical King James. The com- 
 position of this play has been assigned to various 
 dates from 1589 to 1592. It was most likely earlier 
 than George a Greene and subsequent to Alphonsus 
 and Orlando. There seems no reason to question the 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 1 6/ 
 
 view of Storojenko, "that Greene, dissatisfied with 
 his former plays in which he had imitated the style 
 of Lyly [a point decidedly questionable] and the 
 manner of Marlowe, decided on striking out a new 
 and independent course." ^ There is no mention of 
 The Scottish History in Henslowe, and though the play 
 was registered in 1594, the earliest extant edition is 
 that of 1598. A wider departure from history, even 
 from the liberal type of the chronicles, than that of this 
 play it would be difficult to find. The events of two 
 different reigns are, confounded and crimes imputed to 
 King James of which he never could have been guilty. 
 But neither intentional misrepresentation nor sheer ig- 
 norance need be attributed to the playwright for all 
 that. It was his task to write a play which should 
 strike the fancy of the moment. " James IV., slain at 
 Flodden " was a pure catchpenny, for James is not 
 slain and Flodden does not form a part of the play. 
 Under this misleading title the author set forth a ro- 
 mantic drama which he borrowed entire from a 
 romance of Cinthio's Hecatomithi, although the Irish 
 and Scottish kings of his original may have suggested 
 his fathering the story on James and making Henry 
 VII., of England, a character in it.^ Further into the 
 
 'See Grosart's ed. of Greene, I. 184. 
 
 2 The source of this play was discovered by Mr. P. A. Daniel and 
 communicated to the Athenaum, Oct. 8, 1881. There is » play on 
 the subject by Cinthio, entitled Arenopia. Greene follows the story, 
 not the play. Creizenach's paper in Anglia VIII., p. 419, is later 
 188(5) *°<i sdds nothing. 
 
l68 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 characteristics of this curious and by no means inferior 
 production it is not necessary to go here as in the 
 mingled elements of romance, melodrama, fairy-lore 
 and comedy which form its components the historical 
 is the least conspicuous. 
 
 An example of the assignment of fictitious adven- 
 tures to a well-known name which is even more strik- 
 ing is to be found in a play which may possibly ante- 
 date The Scottish History. This is A Pleasant Comedie 
 of Faire Em, The Millers Daughter of Manchester. With 
 the Love of William the Conqueror, the main plot of which 
 is a wholly absurd quest into Denmark undertaken by 
 King William in search of a fair lady whose face he 
 has beheld painted on the shield of one of his knights. 
 The source of this story, which suggests the extrava- 
 gance of degenerate heroic romance, has not been 
 traced although Simpson thought that he discerned 
 "some distant resemblance" to Greene's Arbasto} 
 The two plots, which are remarkable for their complete 
 independence, may well have been invented by the 
 author of the play whoever he was. Fair Em is one 
 of several plays which the credulity of Tieck assigned 
 to the authorship of Shakespeare on the strength of 
 a book-binder's blunder. This notion Simpson sup- 
 ported with painstaking and futile ingenuity.^ Mr. 
 Fleay attributes this comedy to Robert Wilson the 
 Elder, the known or putative author of several early 
 
 ' The School of Shakspere, II. 341. 
 
 ^ Das altenglische Theater, Kriiische Schriften, 1848,1. 279, and 
 Simpson, as above, II. 337. 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 1 69 
 
 plays, the diction and general nature of which are not 
 altogether unlike those of Fair Em} This is not the 
 place in which to discuss the question of personal satire 
 and controversy supposed by some critics to be in- 
 volved in this play. The thing which allies it to 
 the group of chronicle histories — as with The Scottish 
 History of James IV. — ^is the use in the title of a well- 
 known historical name to cloak adventures altogether 
 fictitious, a relationship surely very slight. A later 
 instance of the assignment of apocryphal adventures 
 to an actual historical personage may be found in 
 Anthony Brewer's mediocre tragedy The Lovesick 
 King, in which King Canute is represented as reaching 
 the tragedy of his life through an unholy infatuation 
 which impels him to force the beautiful nun, Cartes- 
 munda, to become his wife. This play, although not 
 printed before 1655, has been assigned by Mr. Fleay, 
 not without a show of reason, to about the year 1604.- 
 An earlier play on Canute is mentioned by Henslowe 
 in 1597. Even less tied to the merest semblance of 
 history must have been the original English comedy 
 from which was translated Eine schoene lustige trium- 
 phirende Comoedia von eines Koeniges Sohn aufs En- 
 gellandt vnd des Koeniges Tochter aufs Schottlandt, one 
 of a collection of Engelische Comedien vnd Tragedien 
 printed in Germany in the year 1620. In this pro- 
 duction the English prince is named Serule, the Scottish 
 
 ^ Biographical Chronicle , II. 281. 
 
 '^md.,\. 34. 
 
I/O THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 princess, Astrea. The two countries are at war and 
 the prince, disguised as a fool, visits the princess, his 
 beloved. An element of the supernatural is added in 
 the black art of one Runcifax.' Tieck regarded this 
 as one of the oldest plays of the collection.^ 
 
 The chronicle histories in which Dekker had a hand 
 in his earlier career have perished, but the simplicity 
 of his nature and the realism of his art made Dekker 
 precisely the dramatist from whom an adherence to 
 English scenes might be expected so far as the fashion 
 of the day might permit. Accordingly, beside his 
 share in such non-extant chronicle plays as The Fa- 
 mous Wars of Henry I. and the Prince of Wales, the 
 two plays on Godwin and his sons, Conan of Corn- 
 wall and Robert II. of Scots, we find Dekker contriv- 
 ing to give an English coloring to several dramas the 
 actual design of which is wide of the Chronicle Play. 
 In the fanciful and highly poetical Comedy of Old For- 
 tunatus the scene of the adventures of the sons of that 
 universal personage, who was the hapless possessor of 
 the inexhaustible purse and the cap which rendered the 
 wearer of it invisible, is laid in an imaginary England 
 of Athelstan, while Satiromastix, Dekker's reply to 
 Jonson's satirical attack on his fellow playwrights, as 
 we have seen, is preposterously placed at the court of 
 William Rufus. The Shoemakers' Holiday, a happily - 
 
 ' See Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany, 1865, p. cviii. 
 ^ Die Anfaenge des deutschen Theaters, 'iSill, Kritische Schriften, 
 I- 353- 
 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE TYPE 17I 
 
 conceived and well-executed comedy of London life, 
 introduces an indeterminable English king whose 
 function it is to straighten out the complications of a 
 troubled course of true love. Another play in which 
 an English king is employed as a deus ex machina to 
 unravel the difficulties of a dramatic situation is the 
 domestic drama, The Fair Maid of Bristow, in which, 
 as in 2 Robert Earl of Huntington, Richard I. so fig- 
 ures. Equally remote from the genuine Chronicle 
 Play are such productions as Alphonsus, Emperor of 
 Germany, " a Machiavelian revenge-play," attributed 
 to George Chapman, in which appear a Richard of 
 Cornwall and a young English Prince Edward ; and 
 Heywood's Royal King and Loyal Stibject. This last 
 play is referable to the story of the Persian king Arta- 
 xerxes and his seneschal Ariobarzanes, as told in 
 Painter's Palace of Pleasure} It is an instance of the 
 sporadic reversion from Italian dukedoms and pseudo- 
 Greek courts to an English scene. Whether modelled 
 on an earlier play of Heywood and Smith, entitled 
 Marshall Osric, referred to by Henslowe in 1602,'' or 
 a new play a few years before its publication in 1637, 
 the spirit of nationality, if it may so be called, has 
 wholly evaporated from this play, and it may be re- 
 garded as a specimen of the final absorption of the 
 Chronicle History into romantic drama. 
 
 lEd. Jacobs, 1890, II. 198, and see Koeppel, Quellen-studien %u 
 den Dramm Ben Jonson's, etc., 1895, Muenchener Beitraege, XI. 
 
 133-135- 
 
 'Plsay, Bio?rai>hical Chronicle, I. 300. 
 
VII 
 
 THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Dramas of the chronicle type on subjects derived from 
 the romantic myths of fabulous Britain have already 
 been mentioned, and they have been included in our 
 estimates of the number and distribution of the Chron- 
 icle Play. The earliest plays on such subjects, Gorboduc, 
 The Misfortunes of Arthur, and Locrine, have received 
 our attention among the forerunners of the historical 
 drama. The Elizabethan conception of history ac- 
 cepted such tales and gave them the credence which 
 we accord to historical fact. Hence to a certain ex- 
 tent the division of plays of mythical plot from those 
 on later and more genuinely historical topics is defen- 
 sible only as a means to a clearer understanding of 
 both. That an appreciable loss of historic interest re- 
 sulted in scenes so remote from their own contempo- 
 rary life can not admit of doubt, and the playwrights 
 sought in various ways to supply this loss by a height- 
 ened and inflated style, by the interpolation of scenes 
 of humor and buffoonery or by an empha.sis of the 
 elements of the strange or the supernatural. In truth 
 the chronicle plays the subjects of which are English 
 legend and myth have as deep a root in romance as in 
 
 172 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 1 73 
 
 history. The persistence of this variety of play after 
 the subsidence of the more strictly historical drama is 
 due in a large degree to the romantic quality of the 
 myths themselves, whether told in the first instance by 
 Goeffrey of Monmouth or by the sober historians or 
 confessed romancers that followed him. This roman- 
 tic quality deeply affected the Elizabethan age as it 
 stirred the ages before and has touched our own 
 century, and it produced a more lasting, if a less vivid, 
 impression on the English drama than direct appeals 
 to the sense of historical reality. 
 
 It is somewhat remarkable that the suggestion of 
 Gorboduc and of Locrine should not have been im- 
 mediately followed and a tragedy developed which was 
 founded on British myth as the tragedy of Seneca was 
 founded on the myths of ancient Greece. The diver- 
 gence of the spirit of the tragedy of Sackville from that 
 of the legends of Merlin and King Arthur was as- 
 suredly not greater than the divergence of the spirit of 
 imperial Rome from the anthropomorphic myths of 
 early Greece. And if the scholars alone had had their 
 way the Chronicle Drama might have presented an 
 analogue to the Roman tragedy of Seneca. As it was, 
 the Universities preferred classical subjects as well as 
 classical treatment, the court had become thoroughly 
 Italianate, while the popular audiences of the Bankside 
 demanded subjects less remote from their daily habits 
 of thought. Here alone was a real demand for the 
 
174 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Chronicle Play, and this demand was sufficiently sup- 
 plied in the earlier years by the chronicles of sover- 
 eigns who had reigned since the conquest and by the 
 pseudo-histories and comedies of folk-lore of Greene 
 and others. The earliest extant play on a mytholog- 
 ical British subject which satisfies the conditions and 
 retains the general artlessness of treatment which dis- 
 tinguish the earlier type of the Historical Drama is 
 The True Chronicle Historv of King Leir, and his three 
 daughters, Gonorill, Ragan and Cordelia. This play, 
 which ends as a comedy, deserves attention not onlj'' 
 as the immediate source of Shakespeare's tragedy 
 but also because of its genuine intrinsic worth. King 
 Leir was acted according to Henslowe by the Sussex 
 and Queen's men jointly, April 6, 1594.^ It is not 
 stated that this was a first performance. The play 
 does not appear to have been printed until 1605, when 
 interest in the story was revived by the appearance of 
 Shakespeare's tragedy on the stage. The older play 
 contains only the story of Leir and his daughters : 
 the parallel underplot of Gloucester and his sons was 
 added from another source by Shakespeare, as was the 
 daring picture of madness real and feigned, the pathos 
 of the contrasted folly of Lear and " the sad-eyed 
 fool," and the wonderful climax of storm in which 
 the warring elements of nature unite in subtle sympa- 
 thy with the wild tumult of human suffering and pas- 
 1 See p. 34. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 1 75 
 
 sion. Yet the old comedy retains a merit of its own, . 
 especially in the simple candor and beauty of the char- 
 acter of Cordelia — the earlier Cordelia — to the " un- 
 affected loveliness" of whose nature, as Dr. Furness 
 expresses it, "justice has never been done."' In the 
 older play, as befits a comedy, " the Gallian king's " 
 wooing of Cordelia is made much of, a feature com- 
 pletely subordinated in the sterner tragedy. This ro- 
 mantic young prince sets out, like Romeo, disguised 
 as a pilgrim, and attended by a single courtier. Mum- 
 ford, who is the humorous man of the play. Chided 
 by the king for addressing him as " my lord," Mum- 
 ford replies : 
 
 For Gods sake name your selfe some proper name. 
 King. Call me Tresillus : He call thee Denapoll. 
 Mum. Might I be made the Monarch of the World 
 
 I could not hit upon these names, I sweare. 
 King. Then call me Will, He call thee lacke.^ 
 
 The two young Gallians arrive at the British court 
 just as Leir has promulgated his unju.st decree disin- 
 heriting his youngest daughter. They overheard Cor- 
 delia's lament in which daughterly obedience and sub- 
 mission to her sad fortune mingle with heart-broken 
 sorrow. Seeking to comfort her and yet maintain his 
 disguise, the young king loses his heart, and the 
 matter is concluded in the following little idyl, which 
 
 ^ King Lear, Variorum ed., 1880, p. 398. 
 
 ^ King Leir, Hazlitt, Shakespeare' s Library, 1875, Part II., Vol. 
 II., p. 324. 
 
176 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 is as naive as it is poetical. Indeed this scene is by- 
 no means unworthy of the pen of Thomas Lodge, the 
 author of Rosalynde, to whom a share in King Leir 
 has been by some assigned.' 
 
 King. Sweet Lady, say there should come a king 
 As good as eyther of your sisters husbands, 
 To craue your loue, would you accept'of him ? 
 Cor. Oh, doe not mocke with those in misery, 
 
 Nor do not think, though fortune haue the power. 
 
 To spoyle mine honour, and debase my state, 
 
 That she hath any interest in my mind : 
 
 For if the greatest Monarch on the earth, 
 
 Should sue to me in this extremity. 
 
 Except my heart could loue, and heart could like, 
 
 Better than any that I euer saw, 
 
 His great estate no more should moue my mind 
 
 Than mountaynes moue by blast of euery wind. 
 
 King. Think not, sweet Nymph, tis holy Palmers guise, 
 To grieued souls fresh torments to deuise : 
 Therefore in witness of my true intent. 
 Let heauen and earth beare record of my words : 
 There is a young and lusty Gallian king. 
 So like to me, as I am to my selfe. 
 That earnestly doth craue to have thy love. 
 And ioyne with thee in Hymens sacred bonds. 
 
 Cor. Ah Palmer, my estate doth not befit 
 
 A kingly marriage, as the case now stands. 
 Whilome when as I lined in honours height, 
 A Prince perhaps might postulate my loue : 
 Now misery, dishonour and disgrace, 
 
 • Fleay, Biographical Chronicle, II. 51. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 1 77 
 
 Hath light on me and quite reuersed the case. 
 Thy King will hold thee wise, if thou surcease 
 The sute, whereas no dowry will insue. 
 Then be advised, Palmer, what to do : 
 Cease for thy King, seeke for thy selfe to woo.' 
 
 Indeed the gentler, though no less natural, pathos of 
 the situation of the older Leir as compared with the 
 tempest of the passion of Shakespeare's hero, the 
 steadfast fidelity of Perillus, from which character 
 Shakespeare received more than a hint for his Kent, 
 and the womanly tenderness which marks Cordelia's 
 conduct towards her broken and repentent old father 
 in the later scenes go far to justify the words of Pro- 
 fessor Ward that " while Shakespeare's genius no- 
 where exerted itself with more transcendent force and 
 marvelous versatility, it nowhere found more promis- 
 ing materials ready to its command."^ 
 
 Of much the same date as Leir is the inferior pro- 
 duction printed in 1606 and entitled Nobody and Some- 
 body With the true Chroiiicle Historie of Elydure, who 
 was fortunately three several times crowned King of 
 England. From the circumstances that one Archi- 
 gallo is an important character in this play, Mr. Fleay 
 has identified it with " Alberte galles" for which Hen- 
 slowe paid Hey wood and Smith in 1602.^ Be this as 
 it may, it is of interest to note that Nobody and Some- 
 
 ' Shakespeare' s Library, p. 326. 
 
 ^Dramatic Literature, I. 126. 
 
 ' See Henslowe, p. 239, and Biographical Chronicle, I. 290. 
 
 13 
 
178 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 body is one of the plays taken to Germany by English 
 actors and there translated and published in 1620.* 
 The main plot of this play is a meagre and inartificial 
 chronicle of the relations of the pious Elydure to his 
 three brothers and the rivalry of the queens of Elydure 
 and Archigallo. The underplot satirizes popular abuses 
 in the adventures of the two personages who give 
 title to the play. According to Simpson, " the early 
 edition contains two woodcuts . . . representing the 
 stage dress of the two chief characters. The picture 
 of Nobody at the beginning represents him in a huge 
 pair of slops, all legs, head and arms, but no body. 
 Somebody has an equally exaggerated doublet, with 
 no legs to speak of " ^ The witticisms of these two 
 worthies may be readily imagined, and must have been 
 of an interest, however farcical, sufficient completely 
 to overbalance the dull "historical" plot. In 1594, 
 too, the Earl of Sussex' players acted a play not now 
 extant entitled King Lud? «/ 
 
 If a drama fulfilling the conditions of the older type 
 of the Chronicle Play and yet dealing in subject-matter 
 with history treated as legend be sought, no better ex- 
 ample could be offered than The Valiant Welshman. 
 This play was printed in 161 5 and again in 1663 with 
 "by R. A. Gent" on the title page, and this has led to 
 the assignment of it to the authorship of Robert Armin, 
 
 ' Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany, pp. cviii and ex. 
 '^ The School of Shakspere I. 272. 
 'Henslowe, p. 32. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 1 79 
 
 the actor and the known author of a comedy entitled 
 The Two Maids of Moreclacke. Whatever the facts as 
 to this, the structure and style of this play point to the 
 period of the height of the Chronicle Drama, and it 
 seems not impossible that this was a later form of the 
 old play called The Welshman, acted at the Rose, No- 
 vember 29, I S9S-' The Valiant Welshmati; or, the true 
 chronicle history of the life and valiant deedes of Caradoc 
 the Great, King of Cambria, now called Wales, exhibits 
 the incessant action, the epical nature, the looseness of 
 construction and the comic relief, all of which will be 
 remembered as common to the general epic type of the 
 Chronicle Play. The interest is sustained by a pre- 
 senter in likeness of an ancient bard, by dumb shows 
 and by a masque, but none of these things nor the 
 comedy which is supported by one Morgan and 
 Morion his fool, is permitted to interfere with the cen- 
 tral interest which lies in the prowess and magnanimity 
 of the Welsh hero. As this play, which has not been 
 reprinted, is inaccessible to the general reader, two 
 short passages may be quoted. The first is the reply 
 of an enchanter whose power over the elements has 
 been ignorantly questioned ; it exhibits the author in a 
 typical "King Cambyses vaine." 
 
 Know Gloster that our skill 
 Commands the Moone drop from her siluer sphere, 
 And all the stars to vayle their golden heads, 
 
 'Henslowe, p. 61. This surmise is Malone's. 
 
l80 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 At the black horrour that our Charmes present, 
 
 Atlas throwes downe the twinckling Arch of heauen, 
 
 And leaues his burthen [;] at our dreadful spels 
 
 This pendant element of solid earth 
 
 Shakes with amazing Earthquakes, as if the frame 
 
 Of this vast continent would leave her poles, 
 
 Neptune swels high, and with impetuous rage 
 
 Dashes the haughty Argosey with winds 
 
 Against the Christall battlements of heauen. 
 
 The troubled ayre appeares in flakes of fire, 
 
 That, till about the ayres circumference 
 
 We make the upper Region 
 
 Thick full of fatal comets, and the skie 
 
 Is filde with fiery signes of armed men.' 
 
 The second passage contains the climax of the play 
 and discloses, if crudely, the animating spirit which 
 was the excuse for the existence of this species of the 
 drama. The scene is Rome. British captives are 
 brought before Csesar. All bow the knee save Cara- 
 doc, whom Caesar thus addresses : 
 
 Ces. What's he that scorns to bow, when Cesar bids? 
 
 Car. Cesar, a man that scorns to bow to Jove 
 Were he a man like Cesar ; such a man. 
 That neither cares for life, nor feares to die. 
 I was not borne to kneele but to the Gods, 
 Nor basely bow unto a lumpe of clay. 
 In adoration of a clod of earth. 
 Were Cesar Lord of all the spacious world, 
 Euen from the Articke to the Antarticke poles. 
 And but a man ; in spite of death and him, 
 
 ' The Valiant Wilshman, ed. 1615, III. 4. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY l8l 
 
 Ide keepe my legs upright, honour should stand 
 Fixt as ihe Center, at no Kings command. 
 Thou mayst as well inforce the foming surge 
 Of high-swoln Neptune, with a word retire, • 
 And leave his flowing tide, as make me bow.' 
 
 And there is much more of it ; well may " Cesar " 
 have exclaimed at the conclusion of this tirade : "So 
 braue a Brytaine hath not Cesar heard." In the up- 
 shot Caradoc proves to be the British soldier who 
 earlier in the play disarmed Caesar in battle and sent 
 him back to the Roman camp ransomless. Caesar had 
 on this occasion pressed upon his generous captor the 
 gift of a golden lion hung on a chain as a pledge of 
 gratitude. On the recognition of this talisman a recon- 
 ciliation ensues which knits Rome and England in 
 bonds of lasting friendship. 
 
 Two plays of this immediate class now claim our 
 attention ; these are The Mayor of Queenborough, by 
 Thomas Middleton, and The Birth of Merhn, the work 
 of William Rowley. They may be best considered 
 together because both plays treat of the same group 
 of legendary characters, because of the likelihood that 
 the earliest performances of them nearly coincided, and 
 from the circumstance that the versions which we now 
 have are late revisions and were published after the 
 Restoration. Between November, 1596, and Novem- 
 ber, 1 60 1, there are several entries in Henslowe's Diary 
 
 ^Ibid., V. 5. 
 
1 82 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 concerning a play variously entitled Valtiger or Vor- 
 tiger. This is evidently Vortigern, the legendary king 
 of Kent at the time of the landing of Hengist at Ebbs- 
 fleet.^ In June, 1597, there is entry of a play which 
 Henslowe calls " Henges," i. e., Hengist} As it was 
 no unusual thing for Henslowe to call his plays by 
 any catch-word sufficient to identify them, it is more 
 than likely that these two titles refer to the same play 
 and that they constitute an earlier version of the extant 
 romantic historical drama. The Mayor of Queenbor.ough, 
 which shows clear evidence of revision and in which 
 both Vortigern and Hengist appear as important char- 
 acters. Indeed this last identification rises to all but 
 certainty, as Collier found a play entitled Hengist King 
 of Kent in a manuscript of several dramas "in the 
 library of an ancient family in the East of England," 
 the prologue of which he quotes, unaware that it is 
 identical with the prologue of The Mayor of Queen- 
 borough, save for a word or two.^ In this powerful 
 but unpleasing drama the main story is that of the rise 
 of Vortigern to kingly power by the murder of his 
 saintly sovereign Constantius, his aUiance with the 
 newlyarrived Saxons under Hengist against the efforts 
 
 'See pp. 76, 83, etc., to 274. 
 
 2 Ibid. , p. 89. 
 
 ^ Early Illustrations of Shakespeare and the English Drama, Shake- 
 speare Society's Publications, 1846, p. 85 ; and see a note on this sub- 
 ject by the author of this book, entitled Valtiger, Henges and The 
 Mayor of Queenborough, in Modem Langtcage Notes, May, igoo. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 1 83 
 
 of Aurelius and Uther Pendragon to regain their 
 brother's kingdom, and the final overthrow of Vorti- 
 gern with his false and insidious allies by these princes. 
 The humors of one Simon the Tanner, who is raised 
 by the Saxons to the dignity of Mayor of Queen- 
 borough, relieve the otherwise somber story and give 
 a new title to the late version which we possess. 
 
 The Birth of Merlin: Or, the Childe hath found his 
 Father was first printed by Francis Kirkman, the first 
 English publisher to evince an interest in the old 
 drama, in 1662. Kirkman printed on the title page : 
 " Written by William Shakespear, and William Row- 
 ley "; and it is generally admitted on internal evidence 
 that Rowley, whoever may have been his coadjutor, 
 had a hand in this play as we now have it. If so, it 
 must date in its present state from a period subsequent 
 to 1607, which is the earliest known date of Rowley's 
 connection with the stage. Considering the universal 
 custom of revision and alteration and the circumstance 
 that this prince plays the leading part in Rowley's 
 play, it is not improbable that in Uther Pendragon, a. 
 play several times mentioned by Henslowe during the 
 year 1597, we have the original of The Birth of Mer- 
 lin} As to Kirkman's assignment of a share in this 
 revision to Shakespeare, this has seriously imposed 
 upon the credulity of no one except the German poet 
 Tieck, whose enthusiasm laid him open to incessant 
 
 'JHenslowe, p. 87. 
 
1 84 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 visitations of the ghost of alleged Shakespearean au- 
 thorship.' The Birth of Merlin is a strange mixture 
 of legendary chronicle history, romantic comedy, broad 
 humor and diablerie. The story is occupied with the 
 deeds of Aurelius, King of Britain, and of tJther Pen- 
 dragon, his brother, the plot by which the beautiful Ar- 
 tesia, sister to the Saxon general, seeks their ruin and 
 actually effects that of Aurelius, and the warfare of 
 Uther against Vortigern and the Saxons. ^ An under- 
 plot depicts the romantic but somewhat unreasonable 
 preference which two young British maidens display 
 for the cloister to their faithful lovers. The rest of 
 the play is taken up with the birth and prophecies of 
 Merlin in which are involved many things mundane and 
 the supernatural interferences of Merlin's father, the 
 devil. Notwithstanding this extraordinary diversity 
 which ii^enhanced by processions, the raising of spirits, 
 the appearance of the worthies. Hector and Achilles, 
 the goddess Lucina with the Fates and even the abstrac- 
 tion. Death, The Birth of Merlin is a remarkably clear 
 and well-written play. In the grossly represented but 
 pathetic plight of Joan, Merlin's mother, and in the 
 coarse humor of her foul-mouthed but faithful brother 
 we have a favorable specimen of the vigorous comedy of 
 William Rowley. Not less excellent in its kind is the 
 well-drawn character of the artful and merciless Saxon 
 
 ' Shakespeare's Vorschule, Kritische Schrifien, I. 288. 
 ' See Holinshed, I. 564. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 1 85 
 
 princess, Artesia, who lavishes the allurements of her 
 beauty and her genius for intrigue with equal sublety 
 on the weak and infatuated king and on the romantic 
 and virtuous prince, his brother. Artesia is undoubt- 
 edly borrowed from the Rowen or Rowena of the old 
 chroniclers, and the hint of her wickedness is contained 
 in Rowen's poisoning of her step-son Vertumerus. ' 
 But Rowley transferred the episode which Middleton 
 had used to bring about the death of Vortigern to 
 Aurelius and made his Artesia a Judith who inveigled 
 and slew her people's enemy for her people's sake. 
 Moreover, Middleton, after the taste of a later time, 
 degraded his Roxena to a mere adventuress, brazen, 
 lustful and full of guile, untrue alike to friend and foe, 
 a creature of the type of Tamora, Queen of the Goths, 
 in Titus Andronicus, without the dignity of passion that 
 imparts a lurid majesty to that terrible figure. Berlin 
 succeeds The Mayor in point of sequence of time, tak- 
 ing up the march of events from the death of Hengist. 
 The plays, however, have no relation one to the other 
 and must have been written independently. The story 
 of Vortigern forms likewise the subject of an anony- 
 mous contemporary Latin tragedy, whether of earlier 
 or later date it seems impossible to ascertain. This 
 tragedy, which remains in manuscript in the British 
 Museum,^ is entitled Fatum Vortigerni Seu miserabilis 
 
 ■ Historia, Regum Britanniae, VI. 14. 
 
 * MS. Lansdcrwne yz^. This play has recently been described in 
 Die lateinischen Universitaets-Dramen Englands, Shakespeare Jahrbuch, 
 XXXIV. 38. 
 
1 86 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 vita et exitus Vortigerni regis Britanniae vna complectens 
 aduentum Saxonum siue Anglorum in Britanniam. It 
 follows, like most of its class, the Senecan traditions. 
 The comedy of the underplot which gives The Mayor 
 its title is of course wanting and there is no such de- 
 parture from " history " as that which makes Roxena 
 here known as Ronixa, the paramour of Horsa. An 
 enquiry into the relations of the three plays might be 
 worth the trouble. 
 
 The treasures of ancient British mythical lore thus 
 again disclosed to the drama in King Leir and the ad- 
 ventures of Merlin, several plays from the same gen- 
 eral sources followed. Between July, 1598, and 
 March of the following year, five plays, the titles of 
 which suggest such an origin, are recorded by Hens- 
 lowe. These are The Conquest of Brute, with the first 
 finding of the Bath, by John Day, rewritten in two 
 parts shortly after ; The Life and Death of King Arthur, 
 by Richard Hathway, to which it is not impossible 
 that Justice Shallow refers in reminiscence of his mad- 
 cap days at Clement's Inn in the words : " I was then 
 Sir Dagonet in Arthurs Show." ^ The others are : 
 Midmutius Donwallow, by William Rankins ; Conan 
 Prince of Cornwall, by Dekker and Drayton ; and 
 Brute Greenshield, the author not named. It may be 
 worthy of note in passing that Dunwallow was a 
 famous law-giver, restorer of London and father of 
 'See Henslowe, s. v. and 2 Henry IV., III. 2, 300. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 1 8/ 
 
 Brennus, the English conqueror of Rome, according to 
 the old story. Brute Greenshield was the " sixt ruler " 
 of Britain -and famous for his attempt to conquer 
 France.^ A little later than this Haughton contrived to 
 get Henslowe to accept a play on Ferrex and Porrex, 
 the relation of which to Sackville and Norton's play 
 Gorbodiic (or Ferrex and Porrex, as it was called in the 
 second and authorized edition), must remain to us 
 unknown.^ 
 
 As to the immediate sources of these chronicle 
 plays founded on British myth, it is unlikely that pop- 
 ular playwrights would seek far afield for material. 
 Such sources as the Historia Britonum of Nennius and 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britannice 
 must have been as unknown to them as they are to 
 the casual reader to-day. Of the popular chronicles 
 of the time Grafton's Chronicle at Large, Holinshed, 
 and Stow in his Annales, treat of the early mythical 
 period of British history. Holinshed enters into the 
 fullest detail. He was, as is well known, the favorite 
 quarry of Shakespeare and other dramatists for later 
 English history. Locrine, Leir and the stoiy of Ely- 
 dure, in Nobody and Somebody, are certainly founded 
 on Holinshed. Gorboduc was written too early to have 
 laid under contribution this popular source and with 
 The Misfortunes of Arthur, as shown recently,' and the 
 
 •See Holinshed, I. 451 and 445. 
 
 2 Henslowe, p. 166. 
 
 3 See the ed. of The Misfortunes, by H. C. Grumbine, Litterarhis- 
 torische Forschungen, XIV. 17. 
 
l88 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Latin Fatutn Vortigerni, not improbably, is referable 
 directly to Geoffrey's Historia. In The Mayor of 
 Queenborough, although the material is handled with 
 freedom and the intervention of an older play may be 
 assumed, the circumstance that " Raynulph Higden, 
 Monk of Chester," performs the function of chorus 
 and a recollection that John de Trevisa's translation 
 of Higden's Polychronicon in 1482 is still described as 
 the least rare of Caxton's publications identifies this 
 history as the likely original on which the older play 
 revised by Middleton was founded. The story of Vor- 
 tigern is told at some length in the Polychronicon, but 
 when the careful old chronicler reaches "the Merlin- 
 stuff," he balks : "Furthermore, what is i-seide of the 
 ponde of the tweie dragouns, white and rede, of 
 Vortigernus his buldynge, of Merlyn his fantastik 
 getynge, and of his prophecie that is so derk, is con- 
 teyned in the Brittishe book, and I wolde putte it to 
 this stone gif I trowed that it be i-holpe by sothenesse."^ 
 In Merlin, despite the general fidelity with which the 
 "historical" part of the story is told, we must look 
 beyond the chronicles, but to which of the innumerable 
 " lives and prophecies " of the redoubtable wizard would 
 be a matter difficult, if not impossible, to decide. A 
 popular book of the kind was A Lytel Tretys of the 
 Byrth and Prophecyes of Merlin first issued by Wynkyn 
 
 ^ Polychronicon, Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and 
 Ireland, V. 279. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 1 89 
 
 de Worde in 1510 and two or three times thereafter 
 during the century.^ That the playwright treated the 
 old legend with inventive freedom is patent in the 
 degradation of Merlin's mother from the daughter of 
 the king of Demetia to Joan Go-too-t, whose brother 
 is a country clown, and in the dramatic scene in which 
 the magician defends his wretched, cowering mother 
 from the proffered violence of his father, the devil, and 
 defies his supernatural power. Lastly in The Vali- 
 ent Welshman we leave the earlier mythical history for 
 legend which has grown up about an actual historical 
 personage. Although the author refers in his prefa- 
 tory words to Tacitus, the Caractacus of that historian 
 and of Dio Cassius, who especially related the cam- 
 paigns of Ostorius against " this patriot chief, the first 
 of our national heroes," ^ is not Caradoc the Great 
 King of Cambria of Armin's play. And yet the es- 
 sential lines in the two pictures are much alike. In 
 Holinshed's Chronicle of Scotland, the story of Caradoc 
 is treated at some length,^ and we meet with at least 
 one of the other characters of the play, the chieftain's 
 sister, Voada. But a different turn is given to her ad- 
 ventures as to the particulars of his. With the pos- 
 sibility of the intervention of some original Welsh 
 
 ' On. the versions of the Merlin story during this period see Dr. W. 
 E. Mead's Outlines of the Legend of Merlin, Early English Text 
 Society's Publications, 1899. 
 
 2 Merivale, History of the Romans under the Empire, VI. 34. 
 
 3 See Book V. in which Caradoc is treated as king of Scotland. 
 
190 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 source admitted, we must allow much here, as above, 
 to the inventiveness of the playwright. 
 
 After 1600 we meet with no play which lays under 
 contribution the sources of ancient mythical British 
 lore until we reach Shakespeare's two great tragedies, 
 King Lear and Macbeth, and the tragi-comedy, Cym- 
 beline, all of which were acted for the first time after 
 the death of Queen Elizabeth and within the first de- 
 cade of the century. Here, as everywhere, Shake- 
 speare was no innovator, but followed in royal progress 
 in the footsteps of success. During the years that had 
 elapsed since the performance of Henry V. a. change 
 had come over the English temper and direct appeals 
 to the spirit of nationality were less likely to inspire 
 immediate and popular response. Besides this, other 
 forms of drama had succeeded to the estimation once 
 enjoyed by the Chronicle Play. Shakespeare's use of 
 the material of ancient British history in King Lear 
 and _ Macbeth is far removed from the spirit which 
 animated his earlier histories, above which they tower 
 alike for the greater universality of their appeal and 
 in their more consummate art in conception and exe- 
 cution. These great tragedies are inspired by a pure 
 artistic spirit, which, working on the accumulated ex- 
 perience of years, the precious outcome of the comedies 
 and the earlier tragedies, gives to them a place which 
 it is impossible to overestimate among the priceless 
 works of the poet's maturity. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY IQI 
 
 The outward history of King Lear is illustrative, in 
 one particular, of the marketable value which every- 
 thing to which the name of Shakespeare was attached 
 commanded in his own day. The registry in 1605 of 
 the old play on Leir as a tragedy, although it ends 
 happily and was subsequently published as a comedy, 
 is a sufficient proof of the recent performance and 
 popularity of a new play — and that a tragedy — on 
 the story of Lear and his daughters. To these con- 
 ditions of character and date Shakespeare's History 
 of King Lear absolutely corresponds, and such a re- 
 publication of an old play upon the revived popularity 
 of an old theme is among the commonest proceedings 
 of the time. Although no copy has ever been found 
 to make assurance doubly sure, we may assume that 
 the entry in the Stationers' Register of May, 1594, of 
 The moste famous Chronicle history e of Leire Kinge of 
 England and his Three Daughters refers to the earlier 
 play which we have in the edition of 1605, bearing 
 the similar title, The True Chronicle History of King 
 Leir. It is the registry of this latter edition which 
 is entered and assigned as The Tragical Chronicle His- 
 tory of Kiiige Leir. The emphasis of the actual entry 
 of the first quarto of Shakespeare's King Lear in 1607 
 is significant : " a booke called. Master William Shake- 
 speare his ' history e of Kinge Lear ' as yt was played 
 before the kinges maiestie at Whitehall vppon Sainct 
 Stephens night at Christmas Last by his maiesties ser- 
 
192 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 vantes playinge vsually at the 'Globe' on the Banksyde." ^ 
 There was to be no mistake about this King Lear. 
 Moreover two quartos in the same year by the same 
 publisher are a sufficient attestation of the popularity 
 by which the piratical printer of the old play was en- 
 deavoring to profit. The Jacobean printer was not 
 more scrupulous of trifles where the selling of a book 
 was concerned than some of his successors in the trade. 
 Indeed there could be no other reason for the anony- 
 mous publication of the old play eleven years after 
 its first appearance. 
 
 The relation of King Lear to the older play with 
 the position which the latter holds in the evolution of 
 its species has already been indicated. The source of 
 the subordinate story of Gloucester in the episode of 
 the Paphlagonian king and his sons in Sidney's 
 Arcadia was long since pointed out. Turns of phrase 
 have been found in The Mirour for Magistrates and in 
 Camden's Remaines, while the softened form of the 
 riame Cordelia has been referred to The Faery Queene. 
 The phraseology of witchcraft and the allusions thereto 
 of Edgar in his feigned madness have been traced to 
 a contemporary pamphlet by Dr. Harsnet entitled A 
 Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures ; although 
 the genuine madness of Lear and the babbled wisdom 
 of the Fool remain sourceless and forever undiscover- 
 able. Nowhere does the futility of mere scholarship 
 
 1 Arber's Transcript of the Stationers' Register, II. 648 and III. 366. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 1 93 
 
 disclose such hopelessness as in a discussion of 
 Shakespearean sources. In the words of one whose 
 own deep learning is only equalled by the absolute 
 sanity with which he recognizes the just limitations of 
 all human research : " But what false impressions are 
 conveyed in the phrases which we have to use to express 
 the process whereby Shakespeare converted the stocks 
 and stones of the old dramas and chronicles into 
 living, breathing men and women ! We say he 
 ' drew his original ' from this source, or he ' found his 
 materials ' in that source. But how much did he 
 ' draw,' or what did he ' find ' ? Granting that he drew 
 from Holinshed, or from the old comedy, or whence 
 you please, where did he find Lear's madness, or the 
 pudder of the elements, or the inspired babblings of 
 the Fool ? Of whatsoever makes his tragedies sub- 
 lime and heaven-high above all other human compo- 
 sitions, — of that we find never a trace. . . . When, 
 after reading one of his tragedies, we turn to what we 
 are pleased to call ' the original of his plot,' I am re- 
 minded of those glittering gems, of which Heine speaks, 
 that we see at night in lovely gardens, and think must 
 have been left there by kings' children at play, but when 
 we look for these jewels by day we see only wretched 
 little worms which crawl painfully away, and which the 
 foot forbears to crush only out of strange pity." * 
 The general impression which the reader — and far 
 
 'Dr. Fumess, King Lear, Variorum ed., p. 383. 
 14 
 
194 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 more the auditor — oiKing Lear takes away with him is 
 that "of a broad and vigorously painted canvas, definite 
 in outline to harshness, structurally logical to the point 
 of severity, in tone high, and displaying violent contrasts 
 of color, yet withal coiasummate in its art and above 
 stricture in its completeness. Lear has been said to 
 lie between Hamlet, which is slow in the development 
 of the action, and the faster tempo of Macbeth. " Lear 
 combines length with rapidity, — like the hurricane and 
 the whirlpool, absorbing while it advances." ' The 
 action of King Lear is not only speedy, it is direct 
 and unswerving. In few of his plays has Shakespeare 
 so unerringly relieved his story of all superfluities and 
 knit together the entire structure in a unity so com- 
 pact and so vital. As Coleridge remarked of the ex- 
 position of the theme of filial impiety in Goneril and 
 Regan : " Not a sentiment, not an image, which can 
 give pleasure on its own account, is admitted ; when- 
 ever those creatures are introduced, and they are 
 brought forward as little as possible, pure horror 
 reigns throughout." ^ There was but one feature of 
 feminine depravity to add to these monsters and that 
 Shakespeare contrived to introduce in the passion 
 which the base born Edmund inspires in both, a pas- 
 sion which arises from likeness of character and from 
 that craving for sympathetic relations with others for 
 
 • Works of S. T. Coleridge, ed. Shedd, 1884, IV. 133. 
 2 Ibid. , p. 140. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 1 95 
 
 which human nature yearns even when most loath- 
 somely perverted. In this the dramatist heightened 
 at one stroke the unscrupulous ambition of Edmund 
 and the depravity of the sisters, contrived in their 
 mutual jealousy a motive for their taking off, and 
 united the two plots of the play. That Edmund 
 should be made the instigator of the murder of Cor- 
 delia, while Edgar, his abused brother, becomes indi- 
 rectly her avenger is a further example of this inter- 
 weaving of the two plots. 
 
 The harshness of outline and contrast of color which 
 have been remarked on above are exemplified not only 
 in the two sisters painted as they are in monotone, 
 but in the much criticised brutality of the plucking 
 out of Gloucester's eyes and in the piteous manner of 
 Cordelia's related death, who, princess though she was, 
 it will be remembered, was hanged in prison by the 
 hand of a hired murderer. Kent has been described 
 as a character of unmixed virtue, and he indeed stands 
 out conspicuous in his honest loyalty and forgetful- 
 ness of self Edgar is at times too conscious of his 
 own sufferings ; and even Cordelia seems not without 
 the fault of pride in her judgment of her sisters and 
 wanting in forbearance in her unwillingness — not in- 
 ability — ^to humor what she must have known was 
 after all no more than the whim of her aged and petu- 
 lant father.* It is the unconscious recognition of all 
 
 ' King Lear, I. I, especially lines 99-103. 
 
196 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 this, perhaps, that tempers our feeling of horror at Cor- 
 delia's pitiable death and makes it endurable ; precisely 
 as we feel that there is something to be said in ex- 
 tenuation of Edmund's crimes against his father, when 
 we recall that father's brutal jest as to Edmund's base 
 birth, uttered in his presence, and the circumstance 
 that in his boyhood, Edmund had been bred abroad a 
 stranger.^ 
 
 On his visit to Oxford in 1605, King James was 
 addressed at St. John's gate by three youths costumed 
 as Sibyls (tres quasi Sibyllae), who alluded in fitting 
 Latinity to "the weird sisters" and their prophecies 
 concerning the immortal line of kings sprung from 
 the loins of Banquo, thane of Lochaber. The Sibyls 
 seem in this instance likewise to have typified the 
 three kingdoms and in these roles extended in the 
 succeeding lines a welcome to the king. The speech 
 contains no more than a passing allusion to a familiar 
 tradition appropriately employed, and it is neither a 
 source, as was once conjectured, nor a suggestion of 
 anything in Shakespeare.^ On the basis of a random 
 allusion of Kemp's in 1600 and the entry of a " ballad 
 oi Macdobeth" in 1596, an earlier play on the subject 
 has been by some surmised.^ Another indication of 
 an earlier play of possibly similar content is to be 
 
 ^Ibid., I. I, 7-23, and line 30; this view was first broached by 
 Coleridge. 
 
 ^Macbeth, Variorum ed., p. 377, where this subject is discussed. 
 'Kemp's Nine Dales Wonder, ed. Dyce, Camden Society, p. 21. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 1 97 
 
 found in Henslowe's mention of a drama entitled 
 Malcolm King of Scots in the year 1602. Be all this 
 as it may, Shakespeare founded his Tragedie of Macbeth 
 on Holinshed's Chronicles of Scotland, not only using 
 the material which he found there relative to Duncan 
 and Macbeth, but transferring to his characters Hol- 
 inshed's chronicles of King Duffe and Donwald and 
 other matters.^ The earliest performance of Macbeth 
 is placed by the majority of critics subsequent to King 
 Lear and about 1606. 
 
 In Macbeth, which Hallam preferred to all Shake- 
 speare's tragedies, we have the greatest height to which 
 English epic drama attained. Romeo and Juliet is lyr- 
 ical, and the current of its action is hurried or checked 
 with the alternate promptings of passionate love and 
 passionate hate. Hamlet is speculative, its action 
 swirling slowly about in eddies or purling with a seem- 
 ing quiet where the secret streams are working most 
 deeply. In Macbeth all is action, though here, too, 
 the specific story, while losing none of its concrete- 
 ness, has attained, through the exercise of consummate 
 art, a universal significance. Less weighted with de- 
 tail and underplot than Lear, and likewise less violent, 
 though in no respect less dynamic in its power, Mac- 
 beth combines with the deepest soundings of the depths 
 of human temptation and crime a winged speed of ac- 
 tion and an undeviating directness of purpose incom- 
 
 ' See Holinshed, as above, V. 233-235 and 252-278. 
 
1 98 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 parable among tragedies. I am loath to refer an effect 
 so consummate to the accidental cutting down of a 
 longer play for acting in the provinces as some would 
 have us suppose,^ or to believe, despite some acknowl- 
 edged flaws, that the haphazard interpolations of an 
 able, but certainly inferior playwright, such as Middle- 
 ton, could miraculously weld themselves with Shake- 
 speare's work to produce a whole so organic.^ Indeed, 
 the mingling together in Macbeth of the material world 
 with the supernatural is not the least of the many won- 
 ders of this great tragedy. Nor outside of that sable 
 troop of the Eumenides of ^schylus, foul-visaged and 
 horrible in their dogged perturbed sleep as they lie on the 
 temple's steps awaiting the coming of Orestes, shall we 
 find creatures of the supernatural at once so grim, so 
 awe-inspiring and of such dignity as are the weird sis- 
 ters. Our very uncertainty as to the precise character 
 of their intermeddling in the affairs of men fills us with 
 a deeper awe, for we know not whether they may be 
 no more than the embodiment in prophetic form of 
 Macbeth's innate human depravity or supernatural 
 compelling forces making for evil, fated at times to 
 drive even an innocent man to destruction and perdi- 
 tion. The power of this sublime, tragedy, as of much 
 
 ' The opinion of Mr. Fleay. See his Life of Shakespeare, p. 238. 
 
 'For this view, which has obtained some consent, see Clark and 
 Wright's ed. of Macbeth, in the Clarendon Press Series, by whom it is 
 held that Middleton interpolated much of this play after Shakespeare's 
 death. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 1 99 
 
 else in Shakespeare, lies in this subtle suggestiveness, 
 a quality by means of which questions are raised and 
 doubts started, the answers to which — if we are to find 
 answers — must, to a certain degree, remain subjective. 
 To one Macbeth is "a man of sanguine nervous tem- 
 perament, of large capacity and ready susceptibility," 
 into the slack- water of whose nature, so to speak, a 
 contact with the supernatural may set the current 
 towards good or evil/ To another Macbeth is a 
 moral coward, so intense in his egotism that he can 
 never be touched by the slightest compunction of 
 conscience for the suffering or the wrong which he 
 has inflicted on others, although vulnerable to the de- 
 gree of irritability when the thought of failure, of pub- 
 he odium and consequent retribution crosses his mind.^ 
 So, too, as to Lady Macbeth — almost the most won- 
 derful creation among the women of Shakespeare — 
 was she a woman of heroic mould and of masculine 
 aspect, as we take Clytemnestra to have been? Or 
 was there in Lady Macbeth a contrast in reverse, as 
 between her lord's stalwart limbs and lily-livered heart ? 
 May this clear-brained, tenacious contriver of mid- 
 night murder have been a woman of slender frame, 
 and even of delicate beauty, the more violently to con- 
 trast that iron will and resolute repression of remorse 
 which in the end brought down mind and body in uni- 
 
 iBucknill, The Mad Folk of Shakespeare, 1867, p. 7. 
 'Wbateley, Remarks on Some Characters of Shakespere, ed. 1839, 
 P- 79- 
 
200 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 versal wreck ? In a work of ordinary art, if our un- 
 derstanding is once complete, there is little room for 
 difference of opinion. That men shoul^i differ as to 
 the character of Macbeth is asimuch'lio be expected 
 as that men should differ in their estimates of Oliver 
 Cromwell or Robespierre. Except that these latter 
 estimates might be obscured by some circumstances 
 extraneous to a simple judgment of personal character 
 and conduct in life, in all a given estimate must depend 
 not only on the object seen, but on the perception, the 
 understanding, the training and the natural bias of the 
 beholder. In this power to awaken, so to say, the res- 
 onance of divers capacities and to stir by one ground 
 note very different strings Shakespeare stands alone. 
 
 Mr. Fleay is of the opinion that an earlier version 
 of Cymbeline than that which we now possess followed 
 closely on Macbeth and that our present form of the 
 play was not only rewritten by Shakespeare but also 
 retouched by another hand after Shakespeare's retire- 
 ment from the stage.^ All this, however, is matter of 
 pure surmise, and there is nothing to show that Cym- 
 beline was acted prior to 1609 or 16 10, the years 
 which have been assigned to Forman's contemporary 
 description of the play.^ In Cymbeline Shakespeare 
 returned to Holinshed, but only for the canvas of his 
 work. The picture which he has painted into the 
 
 ' Life of Shakespeare, p. 246. 
 
 ' Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, 1875-6, p. 417. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 20I 
 
 foreground is one of wifely fidelity and of kin reunited 
 after separation : themes to which he recurs again and 
 again. Save for two or three scenes in the fifth act 
 in which we breathe for a moment the old martial 
 spirit of the Chronicle History, this beautiful play be- 
 longs to a very different class. In no drama of an 
 age which delighted to ring interminable change upon 
 the everlasting theme of man and woman, has the 
 conjugal relation been so exquisitely drawn and, de- 
 spite a lapse from purer ideals in a wager inconceiv- 
 able in the England or perhaps in the Europe of to- 
 day, withal so glorified. 
 
 Although a show of adherence to actual historical 
 material might claim for Fletcher's fine Tragedie of 
 Bonduca another place, the romantic spirit which rules 
 this play and the freedom of its inventiveness remove 
 it alike from the exclusive category of the historical 
 drama and from those productions the sources of 
 which are wholly in the Latin classics. Indeed it has 
 been affirmed that Fletcher's immediate source was 
 neither the Annales of Tacitus nor the history of Dio 
 Cassius, but that universal quarry Holinshed.^ It is 
 impossible to follow the same authority in his belief 
 that Bonduca owes suggestions in plot and character 
 to the earlier play, described above. The Valiant 
 Welshman. Both plays treat of the British hero 
 
 ' See an article on this play by B. Leonliardt, in Englische Studim, 
 XIII. 36-63. 
 
202 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE FLAY 
 
 Caractacus ; and his traditional prowess, generosity 
 and magnanimity are seduously preserved in both. 
 But Bonduca is confined to the deeds of Caractacus 
 against the Romans, to which it unites unhistorically 
 the story of the fate of Boadicea and her daughters ; 
 while The Valiant Welshman gives the life of Carac- 
 tacus and his kin in so full a detail as to suggest some 
 hitherto undiscovered Welsh origin. There is really 
 no similarity in these two productions for which com- 
 mon sources will not account. On the other hand, the 
 connection of Bonduca in subject and treatment with 
 the later romantic treatment of themes from Roman 
 history, such as Fletcher's own Valentinian or The 
 False One, is obvious. 
 
 Bonduca is the work of a consummate dramatist. 
 Not a possibility in the presentation of character or 
 the development of situation is lost from the love-lorn 
 young officer, Junius, and his merry, cynical friend, 
 Petilius, to the unfortunate commander, Pcenius, hero- 
 ically meeting with self-imposed death the disgrace 
 which his touchy pride has brought upon him ; from 
 the weak and cruel but heroic Bonduca and the two 
 shrilled-voiced furies, her daughters, to the high- 
 minded hero, Caratach, his courteous recognition of 
 a true man's obligations even to his foes, his generous 
 admiration for their military prowess and his touching 
 solicitude for his young charge, the pretty boy prince, 
 Hengo. No production could better exemplify the 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 2O3 
 
 advance which the English drama had made in tech- 
 nique and finish in the generation which had elapsed 
 since the heyday of the Chronicle Play. In the old 
 drama there was a feeling that everything must be 
 told. The Valiant Welshman deals with the doings of 
 four British kings, three queens, and many princes and 
 Roman generals ; it introduces bards, enchanters, the 
 Roman goddess, Fortuna, and wanders from Wales to 
 Scotland, ending before the emperor Claudius at 
 Rome. In Bonduca all surplusage is ruthlessly cut out, 
 the interest is concentrated by the union of two well- 
 known stories, and place and time are unified so that 
 the entire action is developed in Britain in one neigh- 
 borhood and within a reasonably short period.' 
 Again, for the representation of character the old 
 drama depended on the events of the story. Caradoc 
 is generous because he spares the emperor when he 
 holds him at his mercy ; he is the morally uncon- 
 quered hero because he refuses melodramatically to 
 kneel at Caesar's behest.'' In Fletcher's play, on the 
 other hand, character is constantly suggested by in- 
 vented detail and the total effect thus prepared and 
 strengthened. Such details are Caratach's opening 
 
 'Leonhardt (p. 49) finds the suggestion of this combination in Hol- 
 inshed, V. 62, where Voada, the sister of Caratach, is made the wife 
 of Arviragus, king of Britain. Elsewhere (I. 495) Holinshed de- 
 scribes Voadicia or Boadicea as the wife of Arviragus. Warner in his 
 Albions England identifies Bonduca with Vaoda. See ed. 1602, p. 82. 
 
 2 The Valiant Welshman, II. 3 and V. 5. 
 
204 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 rebuke to Bonduca for her unseemly joy at the re- 
 pulse and misfortunes of her foes, by which the shal- 
 lowness and lack of generosity in the queen's nature 
 and the magnanimity of Caratach are equally dis- 
 played.* Such too is the touching fondness of Cara- 
 tach for his nephew, Hengo, and the fine scene in 
 which Petilius relentlessly plays on the remorse of 
 Poenius for his lost honor in withholding the aid of 
 his legion when it was demanded by the general Sue- 
 tonius : both equally the pure invention of the drama- 
 tist.^ Lastly an enormous advance has been made in 
 the difficult stage problem, the scenic representation 
 of war. Instead of the old single encounters, " alarms 
 and excursions," we observe from a point of vantage 
 with Suetonius, Poenius or the British queen the prog- 
 ress of the day, and hear the commands for the draw- 
 ing up of the legions or the movement of a chariot 
 charge. In place of exaggerated prowess, ill repre- 
 sented 
 
 With three rusty swords 
 And helpe of some foot-and-halfe-foote words, 
 
 we have a scene at once congruous and effective. In- 
 adequate realism has given place to a full recognition 
 of the power and possibilities of suggestion. 
 
 Later employment for dramatic purposes of Roman 
 doings in Britain or of British myth is rare. Of un- 
 
 ^ Bonduca, I. I. 
 
 iJbid., II. 3 III. 5 ; V. 3 and IV. 3. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 20$ 
 
 certain date and subject is a play called St. George for 
 England by William Smith, the manuscript of which 
 was destroyed by Warburton's servant. Smith flour- 
 ished in the reign of King James and was the author 
 of a play entitled The Hector of Germany, which is still 
 extant. He is mentioned by both Langbaine and 
 Baker, and there is no reason for confusing him with 
 either Wentworth Smith or with his namesake, the 
 author of Chloris, or for doubting his existence as has 
 been done.' Of equally uncertain date and character 
 is The History of Mador, King of Britain, attributed 
 without reason in the Stationers' Register, 1660, to 
 Francis Beaumont. This production also has perished. 
 In the year 1633 was published Fvitnvs Troes, The 
 True Troianes, Being a Story of the Britaines valour at 
 the Romanes first invasion. This play, which is de- 
 scribed as " publicly represented by the gentlemen 
 students of Magdalene College in Oxford," is the work 
 of Dr. Jasper Fisher. It is an academic experiment 
 in Chronicle History harking back to Seneca, but af- 
 fected by more popular English models as well. Thus 
 a chorus of Druids closes each act and the Induction 
 is conducted by Mercury, Brennus and Camillus. On 
 the other hand the negotiation and encounters of Cae- 
 sar and the Britons are lightened by a love intrigue 
 
 1 See Langbaine, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, 1691, 
 488 ; Biographia Dramatica, ed. 1812, I. 677 ; and Fleay, 
 Biographical Chronicle, II. 251. 
 
206 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 and the foolery of a cowardly clown, Rollano. Fuimus 
 Troes is well written and with an evident effort after 
 poetic effect ; but it is rhetorical and essentially un- 
 dramatic. Fisher is solicitous as to his authorities, 
 and carefully notes, as became an academic author, 
 his debts to Livy, Caesar and Geoffrey. The latter's 
 Historia is his chief source. In 1635 a play entitled 
 Stonehenge by John Speed, a son of the antiquarian 
 of that name, was performed, also at Oxford. The 
 title suggests that it may have belonged to the class 
 of chronicle plays, but it is described by Wood and 
 others as a pastoral drama.^ In the following year a 
 tragi-comedy in two parts entitled Arviragus and Phi- 
 licia by Lodowick Carlell was acted at the Cockpit 
 and before King Charles at Whitehall and Hampton 
 Court. Carlell is described by Langbaine as "an 
 ancient courtier, being gentleman of the bows to King 
 Charles the First." ^ Unfortunately, whatever pleas- 
 ing visions may be conjured up by the name of Arvi- 
 ragus, the long-lost brother of Imogen, the husband 
 of Boadicea and a valiant champion against the Roman 
 invasions of Britain, they are doomed to disappointment 
 when we learn that this Arviragus is prince of Pick- 
 land, a prisoner in a Saxon camp, and that the Gui- 
 derius of the play is not his brother, whilst their 
 adventures, in which an heroic Danish princess largely 
 
 ^Athena Oxonienses, ed. 1815, II. 660. 
 2 Langbaine, p. 45. 
 
THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLE PLAY 207 
 
 figures, are of the pseudo-heroic type which filled the 
 prose romances of that day and belong to the dramatic 
 forebears of the Restoration Heroic Drama.^ Shir- 
 ley's dramatic curiosity, too, St. Patrick for Ireland, 
 which was performed in Dublin about 1638, does 
 not belong here. This strange production conforms 
 to the Chronicle Play solely in its foundation on popu- 
 lar legend and tradition ; its real interest is religious, 
 and it belongs with such other late plays as The Virgin 
 Martyr and Appius and Virginia in that interesting 
 group of romantic dramas into which a religious motif 
 has been infused. 
 
 ' There is an allusion by name to Arviragus in Juvenal, Satire IV. , 
 127, by which it appears at least that this British chieftain was an ac- 
 tual person. 
 
VIII 
 
 THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 We have traced the growth of the earlier Chronicle 
 Play to its culmination as tragedy in Marlowe's Ed- 
 ward II., in Shakespeare's plays on the two kings 
 Richard, and to its glorification above its species in 
 King Lear and Macbeth. We have seen how Shake- 
 speare too reverted to the older type of the Chronicle 
 in which comedy and tragedy existed side by side, 
 realized in the trilogy of Henry TV. and Henry V. 
 possibilities hitherto unthought ; and how dramatists 
 of the class of Heywood and Dekker continued the 
 practice of the earlier variety of the historical play 
 affected somewhat by the restraining artistic principles 
 of Shakespeare but straying more commonly into 
 derivative species of folk-lore and pseudo-history. It 
 remains for us to consider the biographical chronicle 
 and the allied plays, the theme of which is travel and 
 adventure, and then to trace to its end the main strand 
 of the epical Chronicle History. Although a bio- 
 graphical character belongs to many of the earlier 
 chronicle histories and this class of plays in its few 
 typical specimens falls within the last ten years of the 
 sixteenth century, it has been deferred to this place 
 
 208 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 2O9 
 
 because of its affiliations to that interesting group of 
 plays which owe their existence to the reawakened in- 
 terest in the more immediate historical past which that 
 momentous event, the death of Queen Elizabeth, 
 revived. 
 
 In the biographical chronicle the story centers in 
 the career of a single personage. In the remarkable 
 rise of Thomas Cromwell from the son of a Putney 
 blacksmith to all but the highest place in the realm 
 or in the vicissitudes of an adventurer and soldier of 
 fortune such as Sir Thomas Stukeley, the interest 
 excited is personal ; and the incidents of the lives 
 of these worthies throw into shadow the sketches of 
 historical and political events in the midst of which 
 they move. The tragic is the more usual kind. In 
 its highest tragic form the biographical chronicle at 
 times rises above personal details and makes the pas- 
 sion in its individual representation and not the man 
 its real theme. Macbeth is an excellent illustration of 
 this ; for here we have mythical history treated bio- 
 graphically. The presentation of the passion of the 
 protagonist at all times holds the center of the canvas. 
 But the biographical comedy of an historical or sup- 
 posedly historical personage is by no means unknown, 
 especially as a device to relieve the matter of a serious 
 plot. Thus in Heywood's If You Know Not Me, 
 what purport to be the private affairs of Sir Thomas 
 Gresham are set forth as well as his founding of the 
 
 IS 
 
2IO THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Royal Exchange, and his life is used as a foil to the 
 political doings of the late queen. The Pinner of 
 Wakefield, already considered above, is a good ex- 
 ample of the biographical drama wholly and consist- 
 ently given over to comedy. The reader will recall 
 several instances of such comedies and tragedies 
 among the plays mentioned in the foregoing pages if 
 we are to apply the term generically. These ex- 
 amples need not receive further attention as we are 
 now spedficall}' concerned with those dramas in which 
 the story is told primsirily for the hero's sake and 
 neither for the historical events in which he may 
 chance to have figured nor for the artistic possibilities 
 of the theme. 
 
 Three plays especially fulfil these conditions. They 
 are Sir Tlunnas More, The Ltfe and Death of Lord 
 Cromwell and Tlu Famous History of Captcdn Thomas 
 Stukeley. All remain, despite surmises, the works of 
 unknown authors ; and all were staged during the 
 height of the popularity of the Chronicle Play. Sir 
 Thomas More exists in a single manuscript written and 
 apparently revised by several hands.* This manu- 
 script is of great interest because it is the official copy 
 submitted by the actors to Edward Tilney, the then 
 Master of the Revels, in his capacity of censor, and 
 because it contains his notes and deletions. Dyce 
 dated Sir Tliomas More at about 1 590 ; Mr. Fleay as 
 
 • MS. Harkian 7368 in the British Museum ; reprinted by Dyce in 
 1844. 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 211 
 
 late as 1 595.^ Simpson finds in the scenes which con- 
 cern the famous "ill May day" of 15 17, a reference 
 to the disturbances of l 586, and quotes from a letter 
 in which Recorder Fleetwood wrote to Burghley : 
 " My lord Maior and myselfe . . . dyd examyne cer- 
 taine apprentices for conspiring an insurrection in this 
 cittie against the Frenche and Dutche ... all things 
 as like unto Yll May Daye, as could be devised in all 
 manner of cyrcumstances, mutatis mutandis." ^ Other 
 allusions seem to support the earlier date. The play 
 was certainly performed by the Chamberlain's com- 
 pany, as Simpson pointed out, and it is not impossible 
 that it was revised in 1595 owing to renewed troubles 
 of Londoners with foreigners at that date.^ 
 
 Sir Thomas More is strictly a biographical play, for 
 every scene is directly employed to illustrate the life 
 and character of the hero. The story follows the 
 career of the great lay chancellor from his shrievalty 
 • to his execution, although it skillfully evades the ac- 
 tual cause of his fall and makes him rather the passive 
 sacrifice of an ill-starred fate than the victim of a wan- 
 tonly tyrannic sovereign. More's love of the common 
 folk, his faithfulness to promises made even to the hum- 
 blest, his encouragement of the drama set forth in the 
 
 ^See Dyce's Introduction and Fleay, Biographical Chronicle, II. 
 
 3J2- 
 
 ^ Notes and Queries, Series IV., Vol. VIII., i ; and Wright,0<«« 
 Elizabeth and her Times, II. 308. 
 
 * Notes and Queries, as above, VIII., i. 
 
212 
 
 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 included interlude in which the chancellor himself acts 
 an extemporaneous part, his association with Erasmus 
 and the Earl of Surrey, the simple beauty of his family 
 life and his cheerful fortitude at the approach of un- 
 merited death — all are included in this interesting play. 
 The grave jocularity of speech which distinguished 
 Sir Thomas is well preserved in a series of episodes 
 and situations which are borrowed direct from Halle's 
 Chronicle and Roper's familiar Life, and several anec- 
 dotes of the witty Lord Chancellor are bodily conveyed 
 into the plaj'. A shaggy-haired " ruffian," Faukner, 
 has raised a disturbance in the street and is brought 
 before Sir Thomas as a "principall broacher of the 
 broile." 
 
 Moore. 
 Fauke. 
 Moore. 
 
 Fauke. 
 
 Moore. 
 
 How long have you wome this haire ? 
 
 I have worne this haire ever since I was borne. 
 
 You know thats not my question, but how 
 
 long 
 Hath this shagg fleece hung dangling on thy 
 
 head? 
 How long, my lord ! why, sometimes thus 
 
 long, sometimes lowere, as the Fates and 
 
 humors please. 
 So quick, sir, with me, ha ? I see, good fellow. 
 Thou lovest plaine dealing. Sirra, tell me 
 
 now. 
 When were you last at barbars ? How longe 
 
 time 
 Have you vppon your head woorne this 
 
 shagg haire ? 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 213 
 
 Fauke. My lord, Jack Faukner tells noe -iEsops 
 fables : troth, I was not at barbars this 
 three yeires ; I have not byn cutt nor will 
 not be cutt, vppon a foolish vow, which as 
 the Destanies shall derect, I am swome to 
 keepe. 
 Moore. When comes this vow out ? 
 Fauke. Why, when the humors are purgd, not theis 
 
 three years. 
 Moore. Vowes are recorded in the court of Heaven, 
 For they are holly acts. Young man, I 
 
 charge thee 
 And doe advise thee, start not from that vow : 
 And, for I will be sure thou shalt not shreve. 
 Besides, because it is an odious sight 
 To see a man thus hairie, thou shalt lie 
 In Newgate till thy vow and thy three years 
 Be full expired. — Away with him ! ^ 
 
 Although this play is rambling in construction, a 
 certain unity is preserved by reason of the uniform 
 prominence given to the figure of Sir Thomas. Parts 
 are clearly devised and by no means badly written. 
 The exposition in which French and Spanish insolence 
 to citizens of London is represented, is so active and 
 vigorous and pictured with so strong a contemporary 
 allusiveness that the stylus of the censor wrote on the 
 margin : " Leave out . . . the insurrection and the 
 cause thereof," and bade the players relate Sir 
 
 '^ Sir Thomas More, Shakespeare Society's Publications, 1844, p. 
 45. This anecdote is related of Cromwell by Foxe, Book of Martyrs, 
 ed. 1641, II. S12. 
 
214 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Thomas's "good service done . . . upon a mutiny 
 against the Lombards, only by a short report and not 
 otherwise at your own perils." These perils the 
 actors seem not to have hesitated to brave, as several 
 scenes remain to attest. One of them contains Sir 
 Thomas's sagacious speech to the rebels whose shout 
 has been for the immediate banishment of all foreigners, 
 "which can not choose but much advantage the poor 
 handicrafts of the city." Sir Thomas replies : 
 
 Graunt them remoued, and graunt that this your noyce 
 Hath chidd downe all the maiestie of Ingland ; 
 Ymagin that you see the wretched straingers. 
 Their babyes at their backes and their poor lugage, 
 Plodding tooth ports and costes for transportacion, 
 And that you sytt as kinges in your desyres, 
 Aucthoryty quyte sylenct by your braule. 
 And you in ruff of your opynions clothd ; 
 What had yo.u gott ? I'le tell you : you had taught 
 How insolence and strong hand shoold prevayle. 
 How ordere shoold be quelld ; and by this patterne 
 Not on of you shoold lyve an aged man, 
 For other ruffians, as their fancies wrought, 
 With sealf same hand, sealf reasons and sealf right, 
 Woold shark on you, and men lyke ravenous fishes 
 Woold feed on on another. ^ 
 
 Although he acknowledged that no shadow of con- 
 temporary evidence can be found for such a supposi- 
 tion, the ingenious Richard Simpson was of opinion 
 
 ' Sir Thomas More, p. 27. 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 21 5 
 
 that the two passages quoted above — the one in the 
 quality of humor, the other in its "imagery and mor- 
 ality" — are "alike Shakespearean . . . and quite un- 
 like the poetry of Greene, Marlowe, Lodge or Robert 
 Wilson." * Simpson did not hesitate to advance boldly 
 to the inference that the longer revisions, which include 
 these passages are not only of Shakespeare's author- 
 ship, but probably in his own handwriting, a theory 
 which has obtained no support save from the late Mr. 
 James Spedding, whose suggestion that the manuscript 
 of these scenes be reproduced in facsimile, and thus 
 studied, has never been carried out.^ Be the merits of 
 this theory what they may, it may be remarked that 
 the hendecasyllabic character of the verse of the speech 
 of Sir Thomas is very unlike the versification of Shake- 
 speare's earlier period. 
 
 The History of the Life and Death of Thomas, Lord 
 Cromwell, first registered in 1602 and dated by Ulrici 
 1592, is a typical example of its species and a produc- 
 tion of merit. In the title of the earliest extant edition, 
 that of 161 3, occur the words "written by W. S." 
 The play was reprinted in the third folio of Shakespeare. 
 Wherefore Schlegel not only declared his belief that 
 Shakespeare was undoubtedly its author, but gibbeted 
 his own critical acumen forever by afBrming it "to 
 
 '^ Notes and Queries, Series IV., Vol. VIII., 2. 
 
 ^ IHd.,'Vo\. X., 227. The passages in question are from the 
 entrance of More on p. 22 to the bottom of p. 29, and from the be- 
 ginning of the scene on p. 39 to the top of p. 53- 
 
2l6 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 belong, in my judgment, to his maturest and most 
 excellent works." ' Sounder opinion differs as to 
 whether these initials were intended to deceive the un- 
 wary purchaser or stood in all innocence for no more 
 than Wentworth Smith, an obscure playwright of 
 whom we know only from Henslowe.'' Be this as it 
 may, the play is of early date. Although unusually 
 free from allusions of a contemporary kind, the fre- 
 quency of rime, the mannerism by which a character 
 often speaks of himself in the third person, and the 
 non-appearance of King Henry among the dramatis 
 persona, all point to this. As to source, this play 
 is founded almost wholly on the account of the early 
 life of Cromwell contained in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, 
 an account which the historian, the late John Richard 
 Green, characterized as " a mass of fable." Even the 
 episodes concerning the relations of Cromwell and the 
 Italian merchant Ferabosco, which have been referred 
 to one of the novelle of Bandello, might have been 
 found in Foxe detailed with equal minutiae.^ The 
 play, too, partakes to a degree of the Protestant zeal 
 which animates Foxe's extraordinary work. In it 
 Cromwell had been called " a mighty wall and de- 
 fense of the Church." In the play, on Gardiner's 
 
 ^ Dramaturgische Vorlesungen, ed. Leipzig, 1846, II. 308. 
 
 2 This is the opinion of the most recent editor of Cromwell, Mr. T. 
 Evan Jacob. Old English Dramas, 1889, p. 166. 
 
 ' See Cromwell, III. i and cf. Bandello, Novelle, Milan, 1560, II. 
 140 and Foxe, ed. 1641, II. 498-501 and 508-513. 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 21/ 
 
 telling Cromwell that he had "no colour" for his 
 seizure of the Abbey lands, the latter replies : 
 
 Yes, the abolishing of Antichrist, 
 
 And of his Popish order from our Realm : 
 
 I am no enemy to Religion, 
 
 But what is done, it is for England's good.^ 
 
 With the intervention of the years in which Queen 
 Mary had exacted bloody reprisals for the sufferings 
 of those who were faithful to Rome in her father's 
 time the religious and political tone of England had 
 changed. It was now possible for the grandchildren 
 of the very men who had trembled under Henry's 
 ruthless Machiavelian instrument of tyranny to believe 
 Thomas Cromwell the ideal of martyred gentleness 
 and plain dealing. In The Life and Death Cromwell 
 stands for the glorification, the very apotheosis of citi- 
 zen virtue. It is Cromwell's honorable thrift and ca- 
 pacity in trade, his temperance, piety and staunch 
 Protestantism which are dwelt on and extolled. He 
 befriends the broken debtor and outwits the wrong- 
 doer. He is mindful of others' favors to him, forget- 
 ful of his own. When humble intimates of his youth 
 claim the notice of his lordship, he acknowledges them 
 with gracious candor and bestows largesses on them, 
 and he kneels in his chancellor's robes to receive the 
 blessing of his aged blacksmith father. Except this 
 last, which seems an invention of the dramatist, all is 
 
 ' CrQmvjell, IV. 2 ; and cf. Foxe, as above,, p. 503. 
 
2l8 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 a vivid replica of Foxe's picture. In the play, how- 
 ever, poHtics are treated with greater circumspection. 
 King Henry is felt, as in Sir Thomas More, as an un- 
 seen but inexorable power whose relations to his 
 victims, though not at all clear, are above scrutiny, 
 much less criticism. Even Tilney must have approved 
 an utterance at once so patriotic and so modest as this 
 which Cromwell applied to Wolsey's enquiry respect- 
 ing his opinion of foreign lands : 
 
 My Lord, no Court with England may compare, 
 Neither for State nor civil government : 
 Lust dwells in France, in Italy, and Spain, 
 From the poor pesant, to the Princes train, 
 In Germany, and Holland, Riot serves, 
 And he that most can drink,' most he deserves : 
 England I praise not : for I here was born, 
 But that she laugheth the others unto scorn. ' 
 
 The fall of Cromwell is referred by this unveracious 
 historian wholly to the jealous personal enmity of 
 Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, who hates his enemy 
 for his "dove-like looks," and subornes two witnesses 
 to swear to his treason, absolving them for their crime, 
 after a favorite Protestant gibe, before it has been 
 committed. In the end the king, won by Cromwell's 
 reported fortitude and by the memory of his many 
 virtues, sends a pardon, but unhappily the axe has 
 already fallen on the neck of this bourgeois anticipation 
 of the impeccable perfections of Sir Charles Grandison. 
 
 ' Cromwell, III. 3. 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 2I9 
 
 In one of the choruses of Cromwell, which are in- 
 tercalated after the manner of this class of plays to 
 eke out the broken continuity of the action, the auditors 
 are naively besought to 
 
 Pardon if we omit all Wolsey's life, 
 
 Because our play depends on Cromwells death.' 
 
 It was several years before the great Cardinal became 
 the subject of a play. Henslowe's book contains 
 several mentions of two plays on Wolsey, the earliest 
 of which bears date June, i6oi.^ This play was called 
 The Life of Cardinal Wolsey and was the production 
 of Chettle and Samuel Rowley. It was staged at an 
 unusual cost as Henslowe's several entries of pay- 
 ments " for tynsell and taffeney and lynynge and other 
 thinges" go to show, and was so great a success that 
 in the following August Chettle was recalled and set 
 to work with Drayton and Munday on " a hurry order " 
 to produce another play on the same subject. This 
 was called The Rising (i. e.. Rise) of Cardinal Wolsey 
 and probably dealt with the events which led up to the 
 beginning of Chettle's and Rowley's play. Both of 
 these productions have perished, though it is not im- 
 possible that in Rowley's When You See Me, You 
 Know Me, or the Famous Chronicle History of Henry 
 Vni. we may have some of the material of these 
 plays in a later revised form. 
 
 • Cromwell, IV. I. 
 
 ^Henslowe, pp. 189, 203; 221-222.] 
 
220 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 It is not difficult to make out a list of some length 
 of non-extant plays from the titles of which a bio- 
 graphical character may be reasonably inferred. They 
 fall almost without exception within the last decade of 
 Elizabeth's reign and vary in subject from the celebra- 
 tion of the deeds of warriors such as John of Gaunt 
 and his "conquest of Spain" to political adventurers 
 like Martin Swart, a foreign leader in the revolt of 
 Simnel against Henry VIL; from personages such as 
 Owen Tudor and the Duke of Buckingham who fell 
 victim to Richard III., to Alice Pierce, the mistress of 
 Edward III., and Belin Dun described as "the first 
 thief that was ever hanged in England." Of these 
 plays, that on John of Gaunt was registered in 1594; 
 the others appear by name in Henslowe's Dairy within 
 the years 1593—1597. That several of these plays 
 were histories rather than biographies is likely. But 
 that a strong biographical and local interest attached 
 to others seems equally unquestionable. Drayton's 
 William Longbeard is doubtless the hero which 
 Lodge describes in his pamphlet of the same title as 
 " the most famous and witty English traitor, born in 
 the city of London," the leader of the London cru- 
 sade in 1 190, and of a city riot — a man whose temper 
 and attitude are indicated by the fact that he wore his 
 beard untrimmed in scorn of the Normans who were 
 shaven. An even more certain local interest must 
 have attached to the play on Whittington, whose ad- 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 221 
 
 ventures in Morocco and rise to be Mayor of London 
 could not but have appealed to a city audience.^ The 
 subject, too, of Haughton's Six Yeomen of the West, 
 mentioned two or three times by Henslowe during 
 1 60 1, is known to us from a later extant edition of 
 Thomas of Reading or the Six Worthy Yeomen of the 
 West, a prose tale by Thomas Deloney.^ A second 
 part, in which Hathway and Smith assisted, was called 
 The Six Clothiers of the West. The story relates the 
 adventures of six notable cloth merchants of Western 
 England, chiefly on their journeys up to London. The 
 scene is laid in the reign of Henry I., who appears 
 as a character. The adventures range from farce of 
 amorous intrigue to the grewsome tragedy of Thomas 
 Cole,t he chief clothier, who meets his death, like 
 Barabas in The Jew of Malta, by a fall through a trap 
 into a boiling caldron. 
 
 In The Famous History of the Life' and Death of 
 Captain Thomas Stukeley, with His Marriage to Alder- 
 man Curteis' Daughter, and Valiant Ending of His Life 
 at the Battle of Alcazar we have a dramatized version 
 of the career of one of the most daring and successful 
 of Elizabethan adventurers. Born of the restless 
 Devonshire stock that gave Raleigh, Drake and Gil- 
 
 ' The History of Richard Whittington, of his lows birthe, his great 
 fortune, as yt was flaied by the Prynces Servants was licensed in 1605. 
 Hazlitt, Handbook to Literature, p. 654. 
 
 2 Reprinted from a later edition in Thorns, Early English Prose 
 Romances, ed. 1858, I. 57- 
 
222 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 bert to the service of the queen, Stukeley began life as 
 a soldier of fortune and political spy and intriguer in 
 irregular vacillation between the courts of England 
 and France. Under disguise of a project to plant a 
 kingdom in Florida, Stukeley became a buccaneer. 
 But failing to return a profit adequate to the main- 
 tenance of the favor of Queen Elizabeth, who was not 
 improbably his fellow adventurer, he went over to the 
 services of Spain and the Roman Church and engaged 
 in the systematic fomenting of rebellion against his 
 former mistress in Ireland. Renegade, braggart and 
 egregious liar that he was, Stukeley contrived to im- 
 pose upon the courts of Madrid and Rome and to 
 maintain for years the port and following of an earl 
 under the pompous style of Duke of Ireland, a title of 
 his own invention though he contrived to have it in- 
 sured by a papal grant. Though Stukeley's promised 
 ventures against Ireland were always deferred, he 
 served in several continental campaigns and always 
 with distinguished bravery. He met at last an heroic 
 death in fighting against the Moors. Such a hero was 
 precisely the one to allure the active EUzabethan 
 imagination ; and Stukeley's impudence, his magnifi- 
 cence and his valor, obscuring his less dazzling traits, 
 became theme for pamphlet, ballad and drama. He 
 appears as a character in Peele's Battle of Alcazar and 
 Henslowe affords repeated mentions of a play which 
 he calls " Stewtly," from 1596 onward. It seems alto- 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 223 
 
 gether reasonable to identify this play with the one 
 under discussion, and this notwithstanding the adverse 
 opinion of Simpson who edited the play of Stukeley 
 and collected much material about the man.^ This 
 play exhibits less unity than either Cromwell or Sir 
 Thomas More. The scene shifts from London to Ire- 
 land and from Madrid and Lisbon to Morocco ; and 
 except for the hero, the entire dramatis personae 
 change with each act. This is in the plan and calls 
 for no comment in itself Unfortunately, save for the 
 first act, the state in which this play has come down 
 to us is hopelessly confused and corrupt. It seems 
 reasonable to believe that we have here an extreme 
 case of borrowing, patching and interpolation, for it is 
 certain that fragments of at least one earlier play. The 
 Battle of Alcazar, mentioned above, appear in the 
 text. We need not, however, follow Simpson in the 
 gratuitous invention of a lost play called Antonio, or 
 Fleay in his confident assignment of authorship to 
 Dekker and Peele.^ The author or mender of Stukeley 
 took great liberties with his subject. The first and 
 best act tells of Stukeley's suit to the daughter of 
 Alderman Curteis. Although this marriage actually 
 did take place, the story is wrought as to detail out of 
 the whole cloth. Here Stukeley is made to conform 
 to the type of the young spendthrift of the day and we 
 
 1 The School of Shakspere, I., pp. 139, 140; and 154 ff. 
 * Ibid., p. 141, and Biographical Chronicle, I. 127. 
 
224 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 are treated to a clear dramatic sketch of a determined 
 and infatuated girl, overcoming the reluctance of her 
 prudent father to yield a consent to her marriage 
 with a gallant whom he distrusts but can learn little 
 about. Married and his wife's dowery and jewels in 
 his hands, the Stukeley of the play in a capital scene 
 which neither Dekker nor Middleton might have dis- 
 dained, pays his cringing creditors, equips a com- 
 pany of soldiers for the service of his sovereign and 
 declares to his weeping bride : 
 
 It is not chambering, 
 Now I have beauty to be dallying with, 
 Nor pampering of myself with belly-cheer 
 Now I have got a little worldly pelf, 
 That is the end or levels of my thought. 
 I must have honour ; honour is the thing 
 Stukley doth thirst for, and to climb the mount 
 Where she is seated, gold shall be my footstool.^ 
 
 It is this note which, harped on throughout the play, 
 transforms a traitor and a renegade into the popular 
 embodiment of that insolent and untamed spirit which 
 in worthier careers defied Spain and circled the globe. 
 The dramatized biography of travel and adventure, 
 with which Stukeley allies itself on one side, is for the 
 most part a development of later times, although spo- 
 radic examples of plays depicting the adventures of 
 Englishmen on the high seas and in foreign lands are 
 scattered throughout the period of the popularity of the 
 
 » The School of Shakspere, I. 1 86. 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 22$ 
 
 Chronicle Play. The earliest specimen of a drama of 
 this class is apparently The Blacksmith's Daughter, 
 "containing the trechery of Turks, the honourable 
 bountye of a noble mind, the striuing of vertue in dis- 
 tresse." This production, which is now lost, is men- 
 tioned by Stephen Gosson in his School of Abuse, 
 1579, and seems alone in its kind in these first days 
 of the Elizabethan drama.' Two non-extant plays, 
 certainly of this class, were Sir John Mandeville, re- 
 corded by Henslowe in 1592, and The Siege of Dun- 
 kirk, with Allyn the Pirate, 1603.^ A typical play is 
 preserved in the shapeless and hastily constructed per- 
 formance. The Travailes of The three English Brothers, 
 which may have been written as early as the year 1 607, 
 the patchwork of Day, Wilkins and William Rowley. 
 This play details the adventures of Thomas, Anthony 
 and Robert Shirley, a species of tripartite hero, in 
 Persia, Russia and Italy, and, as might be expected, is 
 more concerned in the search after novelty than in any 
 attempt to adhere to biographical fact.' About the 
 year 1609 popular interest was excited by several rob- 
 beries on the high seas of a peculiarly daring nature. 
 The stage at once responded with several plays in 
 which piracy figures. Such is the ranting and melo- 
 dramatic biography of two notorious pirates, Ward 
 
 '■Publications of the Shakespeare Society, 1841, p. 30. 
 
 •Henslowe, pp. 21 and 231. 
 
 •BuUen, The [Vorks of John Day, 1881, II. 93. 
 
 16 
 
226 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 and Dansiker, entitled A Christian turn'd Turke, which 
 was written by Robert Daborne, the least of Eliza- 
 bethan playwrights.^ Such, too, is the graceful adap- 
 tation of this popular interest of the moment to roman- 
 tic drama. Fortune by Land and Sea, the joint work of 
 Heywood and William Rowley, and the two parts of 
 Heywood's breezy and wholesome Fair Maid of the 
 West, in which we breathe the very air of Elizabethan 
 Plymouth and consort with corsairs and sea-rovers on 
 shipboard and in strange lands. The plays on piracy 
 fall between 1609 and 16 12. The Travailes of The 
 three English Brothers and A Christian turn'd Turke are 
 dramatized directly and slavishly from contemporary 
 pamphlets.^ These plays are of the very stuff of 
 which the corresponding variety of modern journalism 
 is made, and they performed for their day precisely the 
 same function. Heywood's dramas are of a higher 
 order. The nature of a play entitled A Tragedy of 
 the Plantation of Virginia, which was licensed in 1623 
 on condition that the profaneness be left out, must 
 remain matter for divination. 
 
 The old English spirit burst out anew in the vigor- 
 ous and well-written underplot of Dicke of Devonshire, 
 a dramatic version of a pamphlet entitled Three to One. 
 Being an English-Spanish Combat performed by a 
 Western Gentleman of Tavistock in Devonshire, with 
 
 ' Reprinted in Anglia, XX. 188. 
 
 'See Dr. Swaen's Introduction, ibid., p. 151, and The Works of 
 Day, as above. 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 227 
 
 an English quarterstaff against three Spaniards with 
 rapiers and poniards at Sherris in Spain. The 
 homely narrator and actor of this exploit is one Rich- 
 ard Peeke, who describes his fingers as " fitter for the 
 pike than the pen" ; and the play, in the parts which 
 concern him, has preserved much of his soldierly frank- 
 ness. It would be a pleasure to agree with Mr. Bul- 
 len in adding this fresh bit of effective realism to the 
 many laurels of Heywood ; but there seems to be no 
 sufficient reason to accept either this or the several 
 other surmises as to its authorship.' The author, 
 whoever he was, retained a lively recollection of the 
 old and mortal quarrel with Spain and could scarcely 
 have been a young man at the time of writing the 
 play. These lines breathe the very spirit of 1588 and 
 must have sounded strange in the first years of the 
 reign of the second Stuart. 
 
 Spaines anger never blew hott coales indeed 
 
 Till in Queene Elizabeths Raigne when (may I call 
 
 him so) 
 That glory of his Country and Spaynes terror, 
 That wonder of the land and the Seas minyon, 
 Drake of eternall memory, harrowed th' Indyes. 
 
 'See BuUen, Old English Plays, II. I, where the play is reprinted, 
 and Arbor's English Garner, I. 621, for the pamphlet. Ward, Dra- 
 matic Literature, II. S83n., mentions a paper on Dick of Devonshire, 
 by Mr. D. P. Alford, printed in the Transactions of the Devonshire 
 Association, 1892. 
 
228 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Yes, when his Hands 
 Nombre de Dios, Cartagena, Hispaniola, 
 With Cuba and the rest of those faire Sisters, 
 The mermaydes of those Seas, whose golden strings 
 Give him his sweetest musicke, when they by Drake 
 And his brave Ginges were ravishd ; when these red 
 
 apples 
 Were gather' d and brought hither to be payrd-r- 
 Then the Castilian Lyon began to roare. 
 
 The very name of Drake 
 Was a Bugbear to fright Children ; TMurses still' d 
 Their little Spanish Nynnyes when they cryde 
 " Hush ! the Drake comes." ' 
 
 Let us now return to the main thread of our sub- 
 ject, the epical Chronicle Play, and consider the tem- 
 porary revival of popular interest in the scenic repre- 
 sentation of English history of which the death of 
 Queen Elizabeth was the immediate cause. Mention 
 has already been made of The Famous History of Sir 
 Thomas Wyatt with the Coronation of Queen Mary 
 and the coming in of King Philip by Thomas Dekker 
 and John Webster, first printed in 1607. The com- 
 monly received identification of this play with the two 
 parts of Lady Jane Grey mentioned by Henslowe in 
 the autumn of 1602 may be accepted,^ although it 
 seems preferable in view of the general coherence of 
 the existing version to describe it as a condensation 
 
 • Dick of Devonshire, I. 2. 
 'Henslowe, pp. 242, 243. 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 229 
 
 or revision rather than as a " cobbled " or a " muti- 
 lated abridgment" of the earlier plays. ^ We may 
 also admit the possibility of Mr. Fleay's identification 
 of Sir Thomas Wyatt with The Overthrow of the Rebels 
 for which Henslowe was buying properties in Novem- 
 ber of the same year.^ In subject this "history" 
 comprises Northumberland's conspiracy to pocket the 
 kingdom for himself by inducing the dying King 
 Edward to disinherit his two sisters and settle the suc- 
 cession on the Lady Jane Grey to whom Northumber- 
 land had married one of his sons ; the rise of the 
 popular tide of loyalty to the Princess Mary; the 
 negotiations for her hand carried on by Philip of Spain 
 and the consequent rebellion of Wyatt and the Kent- 
 ishmen with their overthrow. Sir Thomas Wyatt is 
 singularly colorless in its political and religious allu- 
 sions, although an antithesis between Wyatt as the 
 exponent of the liberal Protestant spirit and Gardiner, 
 Bishop of Winchester, his foil, is not unhappily sug- 
 gested. The side on which the popular sympathy of 
 the Elizabethan audience was sure to be enlisted is 
 plain enough in the following passage. The royal 
 counsel has just received Philip's offer of marriage 
 made to Queen Mary, and Bishop Winchester declares : 
 
 We haue cause 
 To thanke our God, that such a mightie Prince 
 
 ' See Fleay, Biographical Chronicle, II. 269, and Ward, Dramatic 
 Literature, II. 468. 
 
 ' Henslowe, p. 244, and Fleay as above. 
 
230 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 As Philip is, Sonne to the Emperor, 
 
 Heire to wealthy Spaine, and many spacious 
 
 Kingdomes will vouchsafe — 
 
 Wta. Vouchsafe ! my Lord of Winchester ! pray, what ? 
 
 Win. To grace our mightie Soveraigne with his honour- 
 able Title. 
 
 Wia. To marrie with our Queene : mean you not so ? 
 
 Win. I doe, what then ? 
 
 Wiat. O God ! is shee a beggar, a forsaken Maide, 
 
 That she hath neede of grace from forraine princes ? 
 By Gods dear mother, O, God pardon sweare I, 
 Me thinkes she is a faire and louely Prince, 
 Her onely beautie (were she of meane birth) 
 Able to make the greatest Potentate. 
 I the great Emperor of the mightie Cham, 
 That hath more Nations vnder his Commaund, 
 Then Spanish Philip's like to inherrit townes, 
 To come and lay his Scepter at her feet. 
 And to intreate her to vouchsafe the grace 
 To take him and his Kingdome to her mercy. ^ 
 
 The subject of this play was a delicate one ; for 
 Mary, "the Popish persecutor," had been none the 
 less an anointed sovereign of England. Wyatt's rising 
 was popularly believed to have been an attempt to an- 
 ticipate by a few years the coming Protestant rule of 
 Queen Elizabeth. But in his failure Wyatt became 
 indistinguishable from other traitors to the crown. It 
 may be suspected that the furthur exposition of this 
 contrast between the new and the old regime as repre- 
 
 ^ Sir Thomas Wyatt, Dekker's Dramatic Works, 1873, III. 106. 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 23 1 
 
 sented in the persons of Wyatt and Gardiner was one 
 of the chief omissions of the revised version of this 
 play. The touching story of Lady Jane and her lover 
 husband, the innocent victims of an ambition not their 
 own, is by no means inadequately told ; though it, like 
 other parts of the play, seems to have suffered by ex- 
 cision. Notwithstanding its merits The Famous His- 
 tory must be pronounced much below the standard of 
 the better work of either of its authors. 
 
 From many contemporary allusions it appears that 
 in November, 1602, the Swan, which was one of the 
 larger theaters on the Bankside, was engaged for the 
 presentation of a very curious production of an histor- 
 ical cast. This was entitled Englands Joy, and is usu- 
 ally described as a species of political pageant or dumb 
 show detailing more or less allegorically the chief 
 events of Elizabeth's reign. ^ The books and plays of 
 the time are full of ironical allusions to it,^ and the 
 projector of it, one Richard Vennar, went ever after by 
 the nick-name, Englands Joy. Vennar, who appears 
 to have been a grave person, resented this mockery 
 and wrote, in 16 14, An Apology, dedicated to "the 
 same pur-bhnde Multitude, who feede with spec- 
 tacles to make their meate seeme bigger."' It does 
 
 ' Collier, Dramatic Literature, III. 32I. Ward does not mention 
 this production. 
 
 *See Jonson's Masque of Augures, folio, 1640, II. 83; and The 
 Goblins, Suckling's Works, ed. 1892, II. 51. 
 
 ' Collier, Bibliographical Account of the Rarest Books, IV. 193 ; 
 and the same editor' s reprint of An Apology in his Illustrations of Old 
 English Literature, 1866, III. No. 4. 
 
232 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 not seem that Englands Joy was ever presented. 
 Whether with intent to defraud or from fear on dis- 
 covering that he had attempted more than he could 
 carry out, Vennar tried to get away from • London, 
 after having collected considerable earnest-money on 
 the score of his project. He was caught, however, 
 and brought before the Lord Chief Justice, who, a 
 contemporary letter informs us, "wold make noth- 
 ing of yt but a jest and merriment."' Day doubt- 
 less expressed the prevalent opinion as to Vennar 
 when he made one of his characters say : " He drew 
 more Connies \i. e., fools] in a purse-nette than euer 
 were taken at any draught about London." ^ A curious 
 relic of this dramatic venture is preserved in a broad- 
 side on which is printed a synopsis of the plot. This 
 was apparently intended for the use of the auditors 
 much as a synoptic programme might be used to-day. 
 According to this broadside eight scenes were to have 
 followed each other representing among other things, 
 the early disunion of England and Scotland, the en- 
 mity of Spain, the machinations of the Jesuits, the de- 
 feat of the Armada and the recent victories of Lord 
 Mountjoy in Ireland. The strong allegorical bias of 
 the production is patent throughout. At her corona^ 
 
 1 BihHographical Account, as above, p. 193, where this letter is 
 quoted entire. 
 
 * The Works of John Day, ed. Bullen, II. 56. See also the allu- 
 sion of Taylor the Water Poet in his Cast over the Water to William 
 Fenner, Spenser Society's reprint of Taylor's folio of 1630, II. 155. 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 233 
 
 tion Elizabeth is represented, " Her throne attended 
 with Peace, Plenty and Civill Policy : a sacred prelate 
 standing at her right hand, betokening the serenity of 
 the Gospell "; whilst at the conclusion we have a com- 
 plete reversion back to the old religious drama in 
 Elizabeth's apotheosis, an event herein anticipated by 
 some four months. After being crowned with an im- 
 perial crown garnished with the sun, moon and stars, 
 she is " taken up into Heaven ; when presently ap- 
 pears a [throng] of blessed soules ; and beneath under 
 the stage, set forth with strange fire-works, divers 
 blacke and damned soules, wonderfully described in 
 their several torments." ' *^ 
 
 On the twenty -fourth of March, 1603, Queen Eliza- 
 beth died. Her powers of body and mind had been 
 failing for many months and the brilliant court, the 
 stately progresses and princely entertainments had 
 long since become recollections of the past. The men 
 who had stood at her side and made her reign mem- 
 orable had fallen away one by one, and a new gener- 
 ation of subjects was growing up, ununited to their 
 queen by the common interests and the common fears 
 which had stirred their fathers and eagerly expectant 
 of the new reign at hand. None the less when expec- 
 tation became certainty a natural revulsion of feeling 
 ensued and the thoughts of men reverted to the days 
 
 ' This broadside is reprinted in The Harleian Miscellany, ed. 1813, 
 X. 198. 
 
234 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 when England had lowered the pride of Spain and 
 Elizabeth had stood for the ideal of English national 
 spirit and progress, material prosperity and the triumph 
 of the Protestant faith. In the literature which fol- 
 lowed on the death of the queen the drama holds an 
 interesting place, although the plays which this event 
 directly inspired are few and of slender literary merit. 
 In 185 1 Collier reprinted two plays by Thomas 
 Heywood under the general title If You Know not 
 Me, You Know No Bodie. The first part has the sub- 
 title, or The troubles of Queene Elizabeth, the second, 
 the added words : " With the building of the Roy all Ex- 
 change and the famous Victory of Queen Elizabeth : 
 Anno 1^83." The original dates of publication were 
 1605 and the year following, and the popularity of 
 both plays was such that five subsequent editions of 
 the first part appeared and three of the second, the 
 last bearing date 1633.^ Despite all these reprintings 
 the first play is fragmentary if not corrupt. It was 
 printed (according to a prologue which the author 
 wrote for its revival at the Cockpit at a date unknown) 
 from a stolen stenographic report. And the assur- 
 ance of this prologue that "the Author now to vindi- 
 cate that wrong hath tooke the paines, upright upon its 
 feete to teach it walke" does not seem to have been 
 fulfilled.* The second part is in better condition and 
 
 'For these and other particulars see Collier's ed. for the Shake- 
 speare Society, Introduction. 
 
 ' This prologue was printed by Heywood in his Pleasant Dialogves 
 and Dramma's, 1637. 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 235 
 
 has probably come down to us substantially as it was 
 presented. Both plays appear to be founded on a 
 pamphlet of Heywood's later published as Englands 
 Elizabeth, 1631. 
 
 The first part of If You Know Not Me opens at the 
 period in the reign of Queen Mary at which the play 
 of Sir Thomas Wyatt ends. Wyatt and Lady Jane 
 Grey have suffered execution, and Mary, sure of her 
 crown, is preparing to meet Prince Philip who is re- 
 ported " safely arrived and landed at Southampton." 
 From this point onward the one consistent theme is 
 the persecution to which the Princess Elizabeth was 
 subjected by the jealousy of her sister and the inces- 
 sant machinations of Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester ; 
 her trials, imprisonments and the petty hardships to 
 which she was exposed at the hands of overzealous 
 servants of the queen. Mary is thrown as much as 
 possible into the background' and her religious perse- 
 cutions are not so much as mentioned. Elizabeth's 
 maidenly demeanor, her virtue, her steadfastness in 
 refusing to plead guilty before Winchester and thus 
 submit to the false charges of unloyalty, the sorrow of 
 her household, the affection which she inspired in 
 common folk and in the very guard set to watch her 
 prison — these are the themes which are expanded and 
 illustrated in a series of dramatized anecdotes, eked out 
 by dumb shows depicting matter such as the departure 
 of Philip, and Mary's consequent despair, the funeral 
 
236 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 of Winchester and the coronation of Elizabeth. The 
 following brief scene is one of the series of little sketches 
 which joined together go to make up this loosely knit 
 play. It serves in its place as one of several like de- 
 vices by which Heywood produces what we should 
 call the historical atmosphere. 
 
 Enter the Englishman and Spaniard. 
 
 Spa. The wall, the wall. 
 
 Eng. Sblood. Spaniard, you get no wall here, vnless you 
 would haue your head and the wall knockt 
 together. 
 
 Spa. Signor Cavalero Danglatero, I must haue the wall. 
 
 Eng. I doe protest, hadst thou not enforst it, I had not 
 regarded it ; but since you will needs haue the 
 wall, He take the pains to thrust yOu into the 
 kennel. 
 
 Spa. Oh, base Cavalero, my sword and poynard, well- 
 tried in Toledo, shall giue thee the imbrocado. 
 
 Eng. Marry, and welcome, sir. Come on. 
 
 They fight : he hurts the Spaniard. 
 
 Spa. Holo, Hole ! Thou hast given me the canvissado. 
 Eng. Come, sir ; will you any more ? 
 Spa. Signor Cavalero, look behind thee. A blade of 
 Toledo is drawne against thee. 
 He lookes backe : he \Jhe Spaniard'\ kills him. ' 
 
 At this moment Philip of Spain enters and, horri- 
 fied at the baseness of the deed, protests that the great 
 
 ' / If You Know Not Me, Heywood' s Dramatic Works, ed. 1874, 
 I. 224. 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 23/ 
 
 Turk's empire shall not redeem his cowardly follower 
 from a felon's death ; and he forthwith orders him to 
 execution. Indeed throughout the play Philip is rep- 
 resented in a remarkably favorable light, as a just and 
 courteous gentleman, zealous to bring about a recon- 
 ciliation of the royal sisters and in the end successful. 
 The second part of If You Know Not Me is made 
 up of a comedy of London merchant life and a few 
 sketchy and unsatisfactory historical scenes "; the pro- 
 portion of the two elements is four-fifths comedy and 
 one-fifth " history." The actual hero of this play is 
 Sir Thomas Gresham, who it will be remembered was 
 glorified at a much earlier date in the Latin play, 
 Byrsa Basilica. In the English play Gresham figures 
 not only in his capacity of a typical London merchant 
 but in his famous role of founder of the Royal Ex- 
 change. Indeed this renowned structure, of which 
 the Elizabethans were never weary of boasting, rises- 
 before the mind's eye in the play from its foundations 
 to the grasshopper, the sign of the Greshams, which 
 adorned the pinnacle. This drama is an excellent, if 
 somewhat rambhng, specimen of its class; and is of 
 peculiar interest for the reason that it stands between 
 the biographical drama on the one hand and the com- 
 edies of London life with their pictures of purely ficti- 
 tious events on the other, and in this respect belongs 
 with the earlier merchant scenes of Cromwell and the 
 first act of Sir Thomas Stukeley. The historical parts 
 
238 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 oi 2 If You Know Not Me sketch in outline Parry's 
 attempt on the queen's life, the deliberations of the 
 Duke of Medina and his council before the sailing of 
 the Spanish fleet, the queen's review of her troops at' 
 Tilbury and a purely epic account — and that a very bald 
 one — of the defeat of the Armada. The play ends 
 with the royal reception of Sir Francis Drake, and Sir 
 Martin Frobisher who present their captured Spanish 
 standards to the queen and talk very prosily about 
 their victory. With due allowance for an imperfect text 
 in the first part, not obscuring, however, the readiness of 
 diction and cleverness of dramatic device which is found 
 even in the inferior work of Heywood, the historical 
 parts of these dramas might have been written in 
 1590. In view of the possibilities of the subject and 
 the abilities of such a dramatist as Heywood is at 
 his best, it is impossible not to deplore the throwing 
 away of so unusual an opportunity. 
 
 The Whore of Babylon by Thomas Dekker was 
 printed in 1607. I'^ regard to it Mr. Fleay has done 
 much theorizing. He places its performance late in 
 1605 because of an allusion to the Isle of Gulls which he 
 says can apply only to Day's drama of that title. He 
 imagines an earlier version in Elizabeth's reign because 
 of the allusion to Mary Queen of Scots and the am- 
 biguity of its involved reference to Essex, and he 
 "thinks" Truths Supplication to Candlelight, one of 
 the non-extant plays mentioned by Henslowe, its 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 239 
 
 original title. To cap all he even finds allusions to it 
 in contemporary uses in Puritan cant of the phrase con- 
 stituting the title.' In none of these surmises does it 
 seem possible to follow Mr. Fleay. Dekker's play was 
 doubtless acted soon after the two parts of If You Know 
 Not Me and in emulation of that play. Hey wood's plays 
 had been acted by the Queen's players ; Dekker's was 
 performed by the Prince's servants. Instead of pursuing 
 the rudely direct method of Heywood and buoying the 
 historical matter with comedy, Dekker chose allegory 
 and served his history with a dressing of mysticism 
 that added little to its palatableness. Dekker's play 
 is constructed out of popular current notions concern- 
 ing Elizabeth's struggles in diplomacy and warfare 
 with Spain, allegorically expressed under the guise of 
 an imagined attack of the empress of Babylon and her 
 creature cardinals and kings on Titania, the fairy queen. 
 The mission of the Jesuits to England is represented in 
 Campeius, a thin disguise for Edmund Campion ; and 
 several scenes detail the plots against the queen's life by 
 Dr. Lopez and Parry, on whose person to the scandal of 
 all Christians a plenary indulgence for his attempted 
 crime was alleged to have been found. Even the 
 practice of witchcraft against the queen's health by 
 means of the maltreatment of a waxen image is care- 
 fully detailed, and a species of satirical comedy is de- 
 veloped in the sayings of Plain Dealing who, on 
 
 ' Biographical Chronicle, I. 132. 
 
240 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 leaving the court of Babylon, comes to reside per- 
 manently in England and is bidden by the queen to 
 live with his kinsman, Truth. The indebtedness of 
 the main allegory of this play to Spenser's famous 
 epic m obvious. There is, however, something so un- 
 utterably preposterous to our present way of thinking 
 in the cloaking of Burghley and Leicester under the 
 names Fideli and Parthenophil, and in King Philip and 
 Henry VIII. as Satyrane and Oberon, that we find it 
 difficult to conceive of the possible satisfaction which 
 such a production may have afforded men to whom 
 the allegory of The Faery Queene had a living signifi- 
 cance. Dekker was not without his difficulties. The 
 great horse of the Spenserian allegory had a pace be- 
 yond his menage. At times his steed deserts him and 
 he stands a sorry figure among his grotesque puppets 
 who in taking on the outward habiliments of fairies 
 have forfeited the slightest resemblance to men. The 
 cant phrase of extreme Puritanism which gives to this 
 play its forbidding title is indicative of the violent polit- 
 ical and religious bias which it exhibits throughout, a 
 bias which doubtless represents faithfully enough the 
 popular contemporary attitude of the lower classes of 
 Englishmen towards Spain and towards Rome. The 
 nature of Dekker's allegory will be sufficiently indi- 
 cated in the following passage, which like many others 
 in this extraordinary production is far from ill written. 
 The change of allusion from Mary of Scotland to 
 
THE BIOGRAPHICAL CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 241 
 
 Essex (indicated in the change of the gender of the 
 pronoun used to denote the embodiment of Eliza- 
 beth's enemies in one person) is characteristic of the 
 devious methods of Elizabethan allegory. Fideli 
 offers Titania a paper : 
 
 Titan. What comes this paper for ? 
 
 Fid. Your hand. 
 Titan. The cause ? 
 
 Fidel. The Moone that from your beames did borrow 
 light, 
 Hath from her siluer bow shot pitchy clowds 
 T'ecclipse your brightnes: heauen tooke your 
 
 part, 
 And her surpriz'd ; A jurie of bright starres, 
 Have her vnworthy found to shine agen : 
 Your Fairies therefore on their knees intreat, 
 Shee may be puld out from the firmament, 
 Where shee was plac'd to glitter. 
 Titan. Must we then 
 
 Strike those whom we have lou'd? albeit the 
 
 children. 
 Whom we have nourisht at our princely breast, 
 Set daggers to it, we could be content 
 To chide, not beat them, (might we vse our 
 
 will) 
 Our hand was made to saue, but not to kill. 
 Flor. You must not (cause hee's noble) spare his blood. 
 Titan. We should not, for hee's noble that is good.' 
 
 • The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, ed. 1873, II. 246. 
 
IX 
 
 PLAYS ON HENRY VIII. AND LATER 
 HISTORICAL DRAMAS 
 
 In the discussion of the biographical chronicle above 
 we met with four plays which treated of historical 
 events of the reign of King Henry VIII. Two of 
 these are extant and are concerned with the lives of 
 Sir Thomas More and Thomas Lord Cromwell. Be- 
 tween them and the two non-extant plays of Cardinal 
 Wolsey in 1601 a decade had elapsed. In 1605 a 
 play was printed with the following title : When You 
 See Me You Know- Me. Or the famous Chronicle His- 
 torie of King Henrie the Eight, With the Birth and ver- 
 tuous Life of Edward Prince of Wales . . . by Sam- 
 veil Rowley servant to the Prince. This play enjoyed 
 great popularity, if we may judge by the four editions 
 that appeared up to 1632. This title suggests Hey- 
 wood's If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody ; and 
 the parallel becomes complete when we learn that 
 both plays were published by the same publisher and 
 that the title-page of each is ornamented with a wood- 
 cut portrait of the sovereign whose reign it concerns. 
 The play of Henry probably preceded that of Eliza- 
 beth, as the former was registered in February, 1605, 
 the two parts of If You Know Not Me, in the following 
 
 242 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 243 
 
 July and September. Rowley's play was doubtless in 
 existence some years before it appeared in print, al- 
 though no entry which can be identified with it appears 
 among Henslowe's disbursements for the Admiral's 
 men, the company that became the Prince of Wales' 
 upon the accession of King James. 
 
 When You See Me You Know Me fulfills all the con- 
 ditions of a typical chronicle play. In subject it com- 
 prises events of the reign of King Henry from the 
 period just prior to the birth of Prince Edward to the 
 visit of the German Emperor to the English Court. 
 It includes the death of the Queen Jane Seymour, the 
 education of the prince, the plot of Bonner and Gardi- 
 ner against Queen Katharine Parr with its failure, and 
 an escapade by night of King Henry in the city of 
 London in which he beats a notorious bravo at broad- 
 sword practice and is lodged in prison by the watch 
 until his courtiers seek him out. A less important 
 role is assigned to Cardinal Wolsey than might be 
 expected when we recall that in order to introduce him 
 at all Rowley was compelled to lengthen his life some 
 fifteen years. The central figures of the play are King 
 Henry and Will Summers, the famous court fool, and 
 both are represented with great fidelity to the coarser 
 outlines of contemporary tradition. Henry's court is 
 pictured to us as it might have been seen by menials 
 from below stairs. Rowley's hand is heavy but his 
 stroke is vigorous and his realism, though startling at 
 
244 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 times, is tempered by a natural flow of homely humor. 
 We may agree with Professor Ward when he says 
 that "The author succeeds to perfection in depicting 
 King Henry's Court as a bear-garden, where high 
 policy, religious controversy, births, deaths, marriages, 
 and the unsavory witticisms of Will Summers freely 
 jostle one another ; and a full justification is thus fur- 
 nished of the uncomplimentary combination of epithets 
 by which the Prologue to Shakspere's Henry VIII. 
 seems to characterize Samuel Rowley's play." ^ While 
 Rowley might have found most of his material in 
 Holinshed, his vivid and circumstantial pictures of 
 everyday life in the king's antechamber, the small 
 talk of attendants and the impertinences of the fools 
 suggest some additional source at present unknown. 
 Anecdotes of Summers are found scattered through 
 the lighter literature of the time, but most of these ap- 
 parent sources date from a time subsequent to the 
 play. Popular tradition as to Bluff King Harry must 
 have remained strong throughout the century and it is 
 doubtless to such unwritten sources that we owe much 
 in this case. The daily and domestic life of princes 
 had a charm to the lowly subject in those days as in 
 ours. A scene of this play which represents King 
 Henry in one of his periodical fits of rage has a quality 
 so realistic that it is difficult to escape the conviction 
 that it must have been measurably true to life. 
 
 ^Dramatic Literature, II. 549. 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 245 
 
 Wolsey has presumed to enter the royal presence 
 after the King had charged his courtiers that no one 
 disturb him. The courtiers fall back as they hear 
 their angry lord approaching with the crestfallen in- 
 truder who is being roundly abused for his temerity. 
 Will Summers and Patch, the Cardinal's fool, cower 
 in a distant corner, perhaps have crept behind the 
 arras with which the stage, as the presence-chamber, 
 was hung. Will whispers to his trembling fellow : " Lie 
 close, cousin Patch ! " To which the latter replies : 
 "I'll not come near him, cousin; he's almost killed me 
 with his countenance." The king demanding that the 
 presence-chamber be cleared, Brandon, one of his at- 
 tendants, in passing out whispers to Summers : 
 
 Now Will, or never ! Make the king but smile. 
 And with thy mirthful toys allay his spleen 
 
 And by mine honour, I'll reward thee well. 
 
 Left alone with the angry king who is now seated, 
 Will turns to look for his fellow. Patch : 
 
 Will. Where art thou, cousin? Alas, poor fool, he's 
 
 crept under the table : up, cousin, fear nothing, 
 
 the storm's past, I warrant thee. 
 Patch. [Sticking out his head cautiously .^ Is the king 
 
 gone, cousin? 
 Will. No, no, yonder he sits : we are all friends now, 
 
 the lords are gone to dinner, and thou and I 
 
 must wait at the king's table. 
 
246 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Patch. Not I, by'r lady, I would not wait upon such a 
 lord for all the livings in the land : I thought he 
 would have killed my lord cardinal, he looked 
 so terribly. 
 Will. Foh, he did but jest with him. 
 
 After some whispered argument and assurance Will, 
 who is not quite so certain as his words would imply, 
 persuades poor Patch to become his cat's paw and ap- 
 proach the king to " frighten " him. We can imagine 
 the unhappy fool, half trembling, half impudent, slip- 
 ping up to the side of the frowning monarch and fal- 
 tering : 
 
 Patch. Bo ! 
 
 King. Mother of God, what's that ? 
 Patch. Bo ! 
 King. Out ass, and tumble at my feet. 
 
 For thus I'll spurn thee up and down the house. 
 Patch. Help, cousin, help. 
 Will. No cousin, now he's conjuring; I dare not come 
 
 near him. 
 King. Who set this natural here to trouble me ? 
 
 Enter Compton. 
 
 Who's that stands laughing there ? The fool ! Ha, 
 ha! Where's Compton? Mother o'God, I 
 have found his drift : 'tis the craftiest old villain 
 in Christendom. Mark, good Sir William, be- 
 cause the fool durst not come near himself, see- 
 ing our anger, he sent this silly ass, that we 
 might wreak our royal spleen on him, whilst he 
 stands laughing to behold the jest : by th' blessed 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 247 
 
 Lady, Compton, I'll not leave the fool to gain 
 a million, he contents me so. Come hither. 
 Will. 
 Will. I'd know whether ye have done knocking first : 
 my cousin Patch looks pitifully. Ye had best 
 be friends with us, I can tell you: we'll scare 
 you out of your skin else. 
 King. Alas, poor Patch : hold, sirrah, there's an angel 
 to buy you points. 
 But wherefore came ye ? 
 
 Will. To make thee leave thy melancholy and turn 
 merry man again : thou hast made all the court 
 in such a pitiful case as passes [understanding] . 
 The lords has attended here this four days and 
 none dares speak to thee, but thou art ready to 
 chop off their heads for't : and now I, seeing 
 what a fretting fury thou continuedst in, and 
 every one said 'twould kill thee if thou kepst 
 it, pulled e'en up my heart and vowed to loose 
 my head, but I'd make thee leave it. 
 
 King. Well, William, I am beholding to ye. Ye shall 
 
 have a new coat and cap for this. 
 Will. Nay, then I shall have two new coats and caps, 
 for Charles Brandon promised me one before 
 to perform this enterprise. 
 
 King. He shall keep his word, Will. Go call him in. 
 Call in the lords, tell them our spleen is calmed.* 
 
 The relation of this play of Rowley's to the Shake- 
 spearean play on Henry VIII. is a subject attended with 
 
 ' When You See Me You Know Me, ed, by the late Professor Elze, 
 Dessau, 1874, p. 20. 
 
248 THE ENGUSH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 some doubt It seems beyond question that the pro- 
 logue of Henry VIII. refers to When You See Me You 
 
 Knonv Me in the words : 
 
 Onely they 
 
 That come to heare a Merry, Bawdy Play, 
 A noyse of Targets : Or to see a Fellow 
 In a long Motley Coate, guarded with Yellow, 
 Will be deceyu'd. 
 
 The "no3^e of Targets" is the king's fray with 
 Black Will, the " long Motley Coate " is Summers' 
 customary dress as fool. It is not unlikely that the 
 allusion of the epilogue of Henry VIII. to the dis- 
 appointment of the auditors in not hearing the dty 
 abused may refer to Summers' witticism in which 
 he appears before the king dressed for a journey, 
 and asked where he is going, replies to London 
 for the latest news of the happenings at court' So 
 specific a reference could be significant only in rela- 
 tion to a play at that time holding the boards for the 
 first time or in revi\'al. We must then either suppose 
 that Shakespeare's play dates earlier by some years 
 than is usually admitted, or regard these allusions as 
 applicable to a revival of IVfien You See Me about 
 1612 or 1613. There is nothing to oppose either 
 supposition. It is of course not impossible that the 
 revival of Rowley's play was due, as was frequently 
 the case, to the staging of Henry VIII. at this date ; 
 
 > ^rid. , pp. 29 and 8. 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 249 
 
 in which case the prologue with its reiteration of the 
 words, true and truth, as applied to the story, is a re- 
 joinder to the challenge of Rowley's title : When You 
 See Me You Know Me} It remains none the less re- 
 markable that Shakespeare, whose latest chronicle play, 
 if we except this, was staged in 1599, should have re- 
 turned at the very end of his career to the writing of 
 a species of drama now completely out of the popular 
 fashion ; just as it is noteworthy that he should have 
 contributed no play (again if we except the present 
 one) to the group which responded to the popular re- 
 vival of interest in the lately deceased queen. There 
 is an obvious temptation to suppose that an earlier 
 version of Henry VIII., linking on to the series of 
 plays treating the reigns of Henry and Elizabeth, may 
 have been written by Shakespeare ; and to surmise 
 that this version was intended to be an immediate 
 corrective and reproof of what must have seemed to 
 a lover of the dignity and majesty of royalty like 
 Shakespeare an unworthy misrepresentation of history 
 on the part of Rowley.^ 
 
 Be all this as it may, it is certain that The Famous 
 History of the .Life of King Henry the Eight, as we 
 have it in the folio of 1623, when it was printed for 
 
 ' See the Prologue to Htnry VIII. 
 
 'See Elze's 3xi\Ae Zu Heinrick VIII. in the Shakespeare Jahrbuch, 
 IX. SS, for an opinion that this play was written in 1603, but set aside 
 because of Elizabeth's death and revived on the performance of 
 Rowley's When You See Me after revision by Fletcher. 
 
250 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 the first time, dates 161 2 or 16 13. Three witnesses 
 attest the burning of the Globe theatre in June of the 
 latter year, during the performance of a play " repre- 
 senting some principal pieces of the reign of Henry 
 the Eight, which was set forth with many extraordi- 
 nary circumstances of pomp and majesty." And one 
 of them, Sir Henry Wotton, called the play a new one 
 and gave it the title All is True} Notwithstanding a 
 contemporary allusion to a fool in this play — which 
 may well have been used of such characters in general 
 or in confusion with Rowley's Will Summers — the 
 theater, the company and the date all point to this as 
 the play of Shakespeare's folio. ^ The prologue, as we 
 have already seen, suggests the alternative title, which 
 may have been given the play at a first production or 
 on a revival in reference to Rowley's title, although, 
 having served its temporary purpose, it was afterwards 
 suppressed on publication in the folio. 
 
 Henry VIII. has been criticised for its want of unity 
 and design. It has been especially objected that " the 
 greater part of the fifth act, in which the interest ought 
 to be gathered to a head, is occupied with matters in 
 which we have not been prepared to take any interest 
 by what went before, and on which no interest is re- 
 flected by what comes after." ^ Judged apart from 
 
 ^ ReliquiiB Wottoniana, 1675, pp. 425-426. 
 
 ^For this allusion and an adverse opinion as to its reference to 
 Shakespeare's play, see Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of 
 Shakespeare, ed. 1881, p. 187. 
 
 'The opinion of W. Hertzberg, quoted by Professor Dowden, 
 Shakspere Primer, p. 154. 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 25I 
 
 the circumstances of its age and the character of the 
 class of dramas to which it belongs, the justice of 
 these strictures is not to be denied. But to the Eng- 
 lishman of the day the great events of the reign of 
 Henry were the great events of this play : the divorce 
 of Queen Katharine, the fall of Wolsey, the separa- 
 tion from Rome, the rise of Cranmer and Protestant- 
 ism, the coronation of Queen Anne BuUen and the 
 birth of Elizabeth. The pathos of the situation of 
 Queen Katharine had made a deep impression on 
 England which even the hated faith and nationality of 
 that unhappy wife could not materially impair. But 
 Anne Bullen was less remembered as Katharine's suc- 
 cessful rival and the cause of her sorrows than as the 
 mother of the queen that had made England glorious. 
 A conviction of the innocence of Anne must have 
 been a canon of the historical faith of every Eliza- 
 bethan Protestant ; for thus alone could he refute the 
 calumnies of Rome. In such a view of the unity of 
 the subject, the rise of Cranmer becomes as important 
 a topic as the fall of Wolsey, and no more fitting 
 close for the drama could be conceived than the 
 christening of that infant who was destined to fulfill the 
 promise of Protestantism and national greatness. But 
 even granting all this, there still remains about this 
 play an inequality which caused Dr. Johnson to ob- 
 serve that " the genius of Shakespeare comes in and 
 goes out with Katharine " ; while in the very same 
 
252 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 year that Johnson wrote this, attention was called to 
 the peculiar character of the blank verse of this play 
 which differs materially in parts from that of Shake- 
 speare.' In this verse there is a tendency to insert an 
 extra syllable after the accent, not only at the end of 
 the line but before a pause within it. Besides this, 
 there is a more frequent pause at the conclusion of a 
 line than was usual in Shakespeare's later verse. 
 These qualities with some minor ones which need not 
 delay us here, are the recognized " notes " of the ver- 
 sification of John Fletcher, and from their marked 
 peculiarity and persistence in his works and their ab- 
 sence in the work of other dramatists afford a sound 
 criterion of authorship. In short it is now generally, 
 though by no means universally, accepted that Henry 
 VIII. is the joint production of Shakespeare and 
 Fletcher with perhaps the aid of Massinger.^ It is 
 surmised that either Fletcher revised and rewrote in 
 part an existing and completed play of Shakespeare's, 
 or that he finished one which Shakespeare had already 
 planned and written in part. When we recall that 
 Shakespeare retired to Stratford on his well-earned 
 competency about 1611, and that Fletcher's career as 
 
 ' General Observations on Shakespeare^ s plays. Works of Johnson. 
 American ed., 1825, I. 379, and Roderick, Remarks on Shakespeare, 
 Edwards, Canons of Criticism, ed. 1758, p. 225. 
 
 2 See a risumi of this subject in Dowden, Shakspere — his Mind and 
 Art, p. 414, and Mr. Sidney Lee's Life of Shakespeare, p. 262. Boyle 
 was of opinion that our present version " contains only fragments of the 
 original play by Shakespeare." Englische Stttdien, X. 393. 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 253 
 
 a dramatic writer could scarcely have begun much 
 before 1607, it becomes more likely that Fletcher 
 dusted with dross the gold of Shakespeare than that 
 Shakespeare gilded Fletcher's less noble metal. 
 
 The famous passage put into the mouth of the fallen 
 Cardinal and beginning : " Farewell ? A long farewell, 
 to all my Greatnesse " is certainly of Fletcher's com- 
 position/ As Professor Dowden says : " When one 
 has perceived this, one perceives also that it was an 
 error ever to suppose it written in Shakspere's man- 
 ner." ^ Indeed the interests of the master-dramatist, as 
 the evening of life drew down upon him, were not in 
 the warfare of faction, the succession of princes or the 
 pomp and pageantry of fading greatness. We may 
 agree with the eminent critic just quoted that to Shake- 
 speare the one absorbing interest of this story of 
 Henry's reign was " the presence of a noble sufferer, — 
 one who was grievously wronged, and who by a plain 
 loyalty to what is faithful and true, by a disinterested- 
 ness of soul, and enduring magnanimity, passes out of 
 all passion and personal resentment into the reality of 
 things, in which much indeed of pain remains, but no 
 ignoble wrath or shallow bitterness of heart." ' 
 
 Henry VIII. is the latest play that can possibly be 
 
 referred to the original impulse which produced the 
 
 Chronicle History. As we advance in the days of King 
 
 ^ Henry VIII., III. 2, 351-372. 
 
 2 Shakspere Primer, p. 156. 
 
 ' Shakspere — his Mind and Art, p. 414. 
 
254 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 James the drama which treats of English history be- 
 comes rarer and rarer and the few plays that were 
 written on such themes fall under the romantic spell 
 or revert back to classical and - Senecan imitations. 
 We may pass two Latin plays, the titles of which sug- 
 gest their general kinship to the historical drama. 
 Alvredus sive Alfredus by William Drury was acted 
 three times by students of the English college at Douay 
 in the year 1619. Drury was Professor of Poetry and 
 Rhetoric there and his play, which with a comedy en- 
 titled Mors was published in the next year, treats of 
 the life of King Alfred and his deliverance of his 
 people. Sanctus Edwardus Confessor is described by 
 Halliwell-Phillipps as "an academic play on the story 
 of Edward the Confessor most probably represented 
 before King James at one of the Universities." ' We 
 may also omit further mention of the lost Tragedy of 
 Richard the Third or the English Prophet, the work of 
 Samuel Rowley and licensed for the Palgrave's players 
 in July, 1623; and touch with mere notice another 
 lost play, The History of Henry I., by Robert Daven- 
 port, which was licensed for the King's Company in 
 the following year. This latter play has been identi- 
 fied with Henry I. and Henry II., registered as the 
 work of Shakespeare and Davenport in 1653, though 
 apparently never brought to the press. ^ In this same 
 
 ^Dictionary of Plays, i860, p. 219. This play is extant among the 
 Hcber MSS., Bibliotheca Heberiana, 1834-36, XI. 113. 
 'Bullen, Old English Plays, New Series, III. xi. 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 255 
 
 years 1624, Sir Henry Herbert licensed for the Pal- 
 grave's company an inferior chronicle play entitled 
 The Life of the Duchess of Suffolk by Thomas Drue. 
 In granting his license Herbert noted that this play 
 was "full of dangerous matter" and that it "was much 
 reformed by me : I had two pounds for my pains." ' 
 The Duchess of Suffolk has not been reprinted since its 
 appearance in 163 1. Langbaine attributed it incor- 
 rectly to Heywood but referred its sources correctly 
 enough to Foxe's Book of Martyrs and Clarke's Mar- 
 tyrology} The Duchess of Suffolk in its strong Protes- 
 tant bias, its crudity of form and construction, and its 
 general conformity with the earlier Chronicle Play offers 
 an interesting example of something often repeated in 
 the history of literature : namely, the indirect or mediate 
 effect which a literary movement of the past may ex- 
 ert on writers far removed from actual contact with it. 
 Of Drue little is known except that he was associated 
 in the writing of at least one play, The Woman's Mis- 
 take, with Davenport. Drue lays the plot of his chron- 
 icle play in the days of Queen Mary. Lady Suffolk, 
 like the Duchess of Malfi, has married one of her 
 servants, and for this and for her faith is deprived of 
 her household and hunted into exile by Bishop Bon- 
 ner who is absurdly represented as personally aiding 
 his creatures in their search for the fugitives. Some 
 
 1 Quoted by Collier, Dramatic Poetry, I. 446. 
 ^ Laingbaine, as above, p. 262. 
 
2S6 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 comedy is furnished by a tyler who inadvertently helps 
 Dr. Sands to escape a hue and cry, and by a servant 
 of the Duchess, named Fox, who devises clumsy tricks, 
 such as a feigned funeral, in his mistress's behoof. 
 Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer and Erasmus are lugged in 
 though nothing to the plot, the first three for their 
 martyrdom, Erasmus to afford the author an oppor- 
 tunity to air his Latinity, such as it is. With Fletcher 
 drawing to the close of a brilliant career and Shirley 
 just beginning his, with plays like The Changeling of 
 Middleton and Rowley, and Massinger's Bondman and 
 The Great Duke of Florence holding the stage, such a 
 production as The Duchess of Suffolk is almost incon- 
 ceivable. Except for a little pathos, picked out by 
 Charles Lamb with the unerring instinct for true 
 literature that was his and quoted in his Specimens of 
 English Dramatic Poets^ and the increased ease in 
 versification which the veriest poetaster could scarcely 
 have escaped acquiring in an age of such metrical 
 facility, this play exhibits no advance on the rudest 
 specimens of the biographical chronicle. Considering 
 all this. Collier's conjecture that this play was rewrit- 
 ten on a play of Haughton's called The English Fu- 
 gitives mentioned by Henslowe under date of April, 
 1600, seems not unreasonable.'' 
 Although not printed until 1655, Mr. Bullen, the 
 
 lEd. 1893,11.247. 
 
 2 See Collier's note, Henslowe, p. 168. 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 2 57 
 
 editor of this poet's dramatic works, refers the writing 
 of Robert Davenport's one extant historical drama, 
 King John and Matilda, to the year 1624.^ Of Daven- 
 port, who was a writer of other poetry as well as of 
 dramas, we know next to nothing. A paper in that 
 excellent old garner of criticism The Retrospective Re- 
 view ]\xst\y appraised this play as early as 1821 ; and 
 Charles Lamb included a passage from it in his Spe- 
 cimens and discovered "much passion and poetry in 
 it." " Though observed without discerning its extent 
 by Genest,* it is not generally known that Davenport 
 owes his theme almost wholly to the last four acts of 
 Munday's and Chettle's The Death of Robert Earl of 
 Huntington. From this source Davenport borrowed 
 not only this latter story but also the underplot of the 
 cruel torture by a brutal jailor of Lady Bruce and her 
 young son and their agonizing deaths by starvation. 
 Davenport has retained the distinguishing traits of 
 most of the personages of the older play. This is 
 especially true of Matilda's father, Fitzwater, "this 
 mad, merry, feeling, insensible-seeming lord," as Lamb 
 calls him, and the scheming, pitiless and sensual 
 John whom only the^honesty of Fitzwater and the 
 steadfastness of his heroic daughter dare withstand. 
 But Davenport has developed the characters of The 
 Death as he developed the plot to a degree of excel- 
 
 ' Old Engliih Plays, New Series, Vol. III. 
 
 ^Specimens, as above, II. 244. 
 
 ' Some Account of the English Stage since i6bo, ed. 1832, X. 72 
 
 18 
 
258 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 lence far beyond the attainment of Munday and Chettle. 
 This is especially, discernible in the definition of out- 
 line which the latter dramatist gives to the intrigues 
 of John, his treatment of the scene in which Matilda 
 appears as a nun with the abbess on the walls of the 
 Abbey of Dunmowe and his suppression of the gross 
 temptations of Matilda by the abbess and a monk, 
 "two damned spirits in religious weeds." The Death 
 too offers little more than a hint of the terrible details 
 of Brand's cruelty to Lady Bruce and her son, of 
 which Mr. Bullen very justly remarks : " It is hardly 
 fair for a playwright to work on our feelings in this 
 ruthless manner." ^ 
 
 King John and Matilda is a tragedy of genuine 
 merit and exemplifies in its treatment the long step 
 which had been taken by Shakespeare, Fletcher and 
 others from the use of drama to illustrate a succession 
 of historical events to the employment of historical 
 material for the dramatic delineation of human passion. 
 Despite the subtile portraiture of the most ignoble of 
 English kings, the touching story of Prince Arthur 
 and the lyricism of the grief of Constance, Shake- 
 speare's King John is a typical chronicle play. The 
 subject-matter concerns the piiblic life of that king, his 
 relation to France, to Rome and to his rebellious 
 barons at home ; the sequence of events is chronolog- 
 ical. What little unity there is centers in the royal 
 
 'Bullen, Old English Plays, New Series, III., p. x. 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 259 
 
 malefactor and in his loyal attendant, " Cordelions 
 Base Sonne," whose humorous, honest, and clear-sighted 
 view of the wrongs and intricacies about him serves 
 the twofold function of comedy and chorus, and 
 affords at once a contrast to the somber tone of the 
 rest of the play and a normal standard by which to 
 judge among the contending parties. The epic quality 
 of the Chronicle Drama, already so often adverted to, 
 is characteristic of this play of Shakespeare to a re- 
 markable degree. There is substantially no action in 
 the second act in which the French and English 
 armies meet before the walls of Angiers and bandy 
 taunts, negotiate and parley, while, during the long 
 conversations of other parts of the play, the action 
 halts or is narrated rather than presented on the stage. 
 In King John and Matilda all this is changed. It is 
 the character of John as a man, not as a king, which 
 is the central theme ; his unlawful pursuit of the stead- 
 fast and resourceful Matilda. Davenport does not lose 
 sight of the fact that his protagonist is a king and he 
 presents us with vividness, though only in the back- 
 ground, that portion of the reign of John in which was 
 concentrated England's deepest degradation : the re- 
 moval of the papal interdict and John's acceptance of 
 his crown at the hands of Cardinal Pandulph as vassal 
 of Rome. In a word, though dealing with historical 
 material, this play is primarily concerned with the por- 
 trayal of passion. Without raising any question of 
 
26o THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 comparative literary or poetical excellence — a matter 
 which does not concern us here — Davenport's tragedy 
 is far less epical than Shakespeare's and must be pro- 
 nounced unhesitatingly more dramatic. 
 
 After the accession of King Charles plays founded 
 on English history became more and more rare. 
 With a drama almost evenly divided between romantic 
 tragi-comedy and the several grades of the comedy 
 of manners there was no place for productions so dif- 
 ferent in their appeal. A few scattered titles of plays 
 no longer extant may be enumerated. These are 
 Duke Humphrey, The History of King Stephen and 
 The History of Mador King of Britain. All are entries 
 made for H. Mosley in 1660. The first two are therein 
 ascribed to Shakespeare, the last, with all but equal 
 absurdity, to Beaumont. "A play called Salisbury 
 Plain" is also mentioned as entered on the Stationers' 
 Register in 1653 and is described as a comedy by Halli- 
 well-Phillipps.* It will be remembered that the Gemot 
 of Salisbury Plain in 1086 was that at which the 
 Saxon chiefs finally took the oath of allegiance to 
 William the Conqueror. All of these plays are dated 
 roughly by Mr. Fleay as " Tempore Charles I. " ^ 
 The. last two entries of Sir Henry Herbert's register of 
 licenses record two plays by a playwright named John 
 Kirke, from whose pen only one drama, The Seven 
 Champions of Christendon, has come down to us. 
 
 ' Dictionary of Plays, 2ig. 
 ^Biographical Chronicle, 11. 335, 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 26 1 
 
 The entry was made in June, 1642, and relates that 
 one of the plays was entitled The Irish Rebellion. This 
 was acted about 1623. The other, Herbert reports : 
 " I burnt for the ribaldry and offence that was in it." 
 The long succession of the English Chronicle 
 Drama comes to an end with John Ford's interesting 
 and successful effort to revive this kind of play, The 
 Chronicle Historie of Per kin' War beck, acted at the Phoe- 
 nix about 1633. This wholly admirable drama was 
 first printed in 1634. The date of its earliest per- 
 formance is unknown, but it was doubtless not long 
 prior to this. In his prologue Ford expresses the 
 general attitude of his day towards this all but for- 
 gotten species of drama : 
 
 Studyes haue, of this Nature, been of late 
 So out of fashion, so vnfollow'd ; that 
 It is become more lustice, to reviue 
 The antick foUyes of the Times, than striue 
 To countenance wise Industrie. 
 
 He blames contemporary drama not so much for 
 "want of art" as for "want of truth," and animad- 
 verting to another tendency of his time, declares that 
 
 Hee shew's a Historie, couch' t in a Play : 
 
 A Historie of noble mention, knowne, 
 
 Famous, and true : most noble, 'cause our owne : 
 
 Not forg'd from Italie, from Fraunce, from Spaine, 
 
 But Chronicled at Home ; as rich a strayne 
 
 Of braue Attempts, as ever fertile Rage 
 
 In Action, could beget to grace the Stage. 
 
262 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Although Ford with this ideal of truth before him has 
 followed his acknowledged authority, Bacon's Life cf 
 Henry VII., with fidelity/ he has thoroughly ap- 
 preciated the dramatic possibilities of his subject and 
 contrived a play of consummate constructive excellence 
 clothed in effective characterization and written with 
 grace and uniform artistic restraint. The impostor, 
 Perkin, is drawn with genuine skill. His very un- 
 reality, of which Professor Ward complains,^ is a 
 necessary element of the dramatist's problem, which 
 demanded that he produce in the spectator the same 
 doubt as to the truth of the pretentions of Warbeck 
 which rendered explainable his temporary success. 
 Hence, though followed by a paltry retinue of some 
 half dozen broken tradesmen who cut a sorry figure 
 at the court of Edinburgh, the reputed Duke of York 
 is of handsome person, engaging and courtly bearing 
 and manners whereby he wins the chivalrous Kling 
 James to his cause and gains and holds to the end the 
 love of James's beautiful and high-spirited kinswoman, 
 Katharine Gordon, On the other hand neither Par- 
 kin's virtues nor his graces impose on the keen-sighted 
 but honorable old Earl of Huntley, and at the turning 
 point of the play, it is Perkin's humane but " effemi- 
 nately dolent" expostulation against the Scottish king's 
 order to devastate England, which opens that mon- 
 
 ' Cf. Gehler, Vas Verhaeltnis von Fords Perkin Warbeck zu Bacons 
 Henry VII., 1895. 
 
 '^ Dramatic Literature, III.'85. 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 263 
 
 arch's eyes to the real nature of the man whose cause 
 he has espoused.' In the end the tragic fortitude of 
 Perkin, who accepts death rather than acknowledge 
 himself an impostor, is artfully contrived to leave us 
 alike unconvinced of his genuine royalty and yet 
 compassionate of an imposture which from inveteracy 
 has become a delusion. Warbeck with his petty fol- 
 lowing is brought guarded before King Henry who, 
 curiously regarding the defeated claimant jjjy his 
 
 throne, addresses their captor : 
 
 Dawbney, 
 We obserue no wonder; I behold ('tis true) 
 An ornament of nature, fine and pollisht, 
 A handsome youth indeede, but not admire him. 
 How came he to thy hands ? 
 
 Dawb. Gracious Lord, 
 
 They voluntarily resign' d themselues 
 Without compulsion. 
 K. H. So? 'twas very well ; 
 
 T'was very very well — ^tume now thine eyes 
 (Young man) vpon thy selfe, and hy past ac- 
 tions. 
 ^Miat revells in combustion through our King- 
 dome, 
 A frenzie of aspiring youth hath daunc'd. 
 Till wanting breath, thy feete of pride haue slipt 
 To breake thy necke. 
 Warb. But not my heart ; my heart 
 
 Will mount, till every drop of bloud be frozen 
 By deaths perpetuail Winter : If the Sunne 
 > Perkin Warbeck, III. 4. 
 
264 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Of Maiestie be darkened, let the Sunne 
 Of Life be hid from mee, in an eclipse 
 Lasting and vniversall. 
 
 And Warbeck continues, reminding the king of his 
 own small following when he landed at Milford Haven. 
 Dawbney breaks in : 
 
 Whither speeds his boldnesse ? 
 Checke his rude tongue (great Sir ! ) 
 K. H. O let him range : 
 
 The player's on the stage still, 'tis his part ; 
 A' does but act. 
 
 The lesson prompted, and well conn'd, was 
 
 moulded 
 Into familiar Dialogue, oft rehearsed. 
 Till learnt by heart, 'tis now, receiv'd for 
 
 truth. 
 
 Sirra, shift 
 Your anticke Pageantrie, and now appeare 
 In your owne nature, or y'oule taste the daunger 
 Of fooling out of season. 
 Warb. I expect 
 
 No lesse, than what severitie calls lustice, 
 And Politicians safetie ; let such begge, 
 As feed on almes : but if there can be mercie 
 In a protested enemie, then may it 
 Descend to these poor creatures, whose en- 
 gagements 
 To th' bettering of their fortunes, haue in- 
 cur' d 
 A losse of all ; to them, if any charitie 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 26$ 
 
 Flowe from some noble Orator, in death 
 I owe the fee if thankfulnesse. 
 K. H. So braue ! ' 
 
 In the words of Henry whose prudence and far- 
 reaching diplomacy are set forth in this play with less 
 shadow and suspicion than Bacon suggests : 
 
 The custom, sure, of being styled a King 
 Hath fasten' d in his thought that he is such. 
 
 Altogether, it cannot but be regretted that the de- 
 mands of an age which from long surfeit of delicacies 
 had come only to regard spiced meats and a flavor 
 somewhat high, should have seduced so strong and 
 fundamentally healthful a genius as that of John Ford 
 from the historical drama in which he was fitted to 
 occupy a place beside Marlowe and Shakespeare. 
 
 In 1637 a play called The Valiant Scot was printed 
 as " by J. W. Gent." The dedication to the Marquess 
 of Hamilton was signed "by the Publisher and Pro- 
 moter of the Copy to the Press, Mr. William Bowyer."^ 
 '• The subject of the play,'' says Ward, " is the career 
 and catastrophe of Sir William Wallace, dealt with in 
 the artless fashion of a Chronicle History, but with 
 the addition of a romantic effect or two suggested by 
 later theatrical reminiscence^." ' According to an epi- 
 tome of its contents given by Genest it follows closely 
 the Scottish tradition of the life of Wallace and ap- 
 
 -^Ibid^V. 2. 
 
 'Langbaine, p. 523. 
 
 ^ Dramatic Literature, III. 1 59. 
 
266 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 pears to have been, as acted, a play of considerable 
 bustle and vivacity.' Although possibly beyond the 
 range of our period this long tale of the English 
 Chronicle Drama may be concluded with the mention 
 of Colas Furie or Lyrenda' s Mlserie, by one Henry 
 Birkhead, printed in 1645. This extraordinary hodge- 
 podge of bombast and bathos is an attempt to place 
 the contemporary events of the Irish rebellion of 1641 
 on the stage under the thin disguise of feigned 
 names. The play is preceded by much dedicatory 
 nonsense by unknown writers, the friends of the author, 
 in which he is compared to Jonson and Shakespeare. 
 Birkhead is innocent of the most rudimentary concep- 
 tion of verse and is content to dole out ten syllables 
 to each line, come what may. The songs — for Birk- 
 head even attempts to sing — are beyond the fondest 
 brayings of Bottom in the period of his transformation. 
 Indeed this unlucky dramatist furnishes us his own 
 inglorious epitaph in the words of one of his char- 
 acters : " Here's needless fustian." On thq border of 
 our period, if not beyond it, is the anonymous blend- 
 ing of the two parts of Henry IV. into one play and 
 a production entitled Edmund Ironside : the English 
 King or a trew chronicle History called War hath 
 made all Friends. The former was first printed for 
 the Shakespeare Society in 1845 ; the latter remains 
 in manuscript in the British Museum.^ Halliwell- 
 
 ^Genest, as above, X. 107. 
 ^Egerion MS. 1994. 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 267 
 
 Phillipps states that it was written about 1647;^ an 
 Mr. Bullen curtly dismisses it with the words : 
 " tedious business." ^ Neither of these productions 
 need detain us. 
 
 The representation of the popular drama on the 
 Elizabethan stage is a subject worthy of careful atten- 
 tion. A word as to certain salient characteristics of 
 the Chronicle Play as acted, however, must here suf- 
 fice. The construction of the Elizabethan stage was 
 utilized by the historical drama to the full. The stage 
 of the period provided after its original, the inn yard, 
 a balcony which was raised some few feet above the 
 general stage. In the chronicle plays this balcony 
 commonly represented the walls of a besieged city. 
 Parley was held from it, scaling-ladders raised against 
 it, the routed enemy leaped from it, as did Prince 
 Arthur in his attempted escape. In i Henry VI. this 
 balcony represents one of the turrets of inspection 
 which the besieging English had reared against Or- 
 leans ; and Salisbury is felain in it by a cannon-shot 
 from the stage, which in this instance is taken to be 
 the rampart of the beleaguered town. The balcony 
 was also employed to indicate an inner room or the 
 dais. Thus, in Richard HI., when the citizens are 
 brought in to behold the Duke of Gloucester's godliness 
 and reluctance to take the cares of state upon him, Rich- 
 
 ' Dictionary of Plays, p. 82. 
 2 Old English Plays, II. 420. 
 
268 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 ard is represented .as entering " aloft, betweene two 
 Bishops." Under the balcony were two doors which 
 were variously used. The stage, though devoid of what 
 we now call scenes, was hung with arras or hangings 
 spread on wooden frames. It was behind such an 
 arras that Falstaff was discovered by Prince Henry 
 "asleep, and snorting like a Horse." The use of a 
 hanging as a means of changing scene is to be found 
 in Sir Thomas More where an arras is " drawne " after 
 the first scene, which is evidently that of a street, 
 " and behinde it (as in sessions) sit the L. Maior, . . 
 the prisoner at the barre." Properties were simple. 
 The state of the Chancellor in this same play is indi- 
 cated by " a table, being couered with a greene carpet, 
 a state cushion on it and the Pursse and Mace lying 
 thereon." A scaffold with ascending ladder or stairs 
 ordinarily appears in scenes representing executions. 
 The cottage of George a Greene is mentioned in the 
 play of that title and a castle in John a Kent ; while 
 in the last-named play it is directed that a spirit rise 
 from under the stage, whither the witches of Macbeth 
 may have disappeared, and that another spirit come 
 " out of a tree, if possible it may be." The difficulty 
 of representing warfare, tumult and masses of people 
 on the stage was recognized not only by the play- 
 wrights but by their critics and satirists as well. 
 This difficulty was met in part by noise and bustle, by 
 the rattle of arms, the clash of swords, the beating of 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 269 
 
 drums and blowing of trumpets. Even ordnance and 
 chambers — ^the contemporary terms for cannon — were 
 frequently discharged to increase the verisimilitude of 
 victory or battle. A memorable example of the dan- 
 ger of this practice is mentioned above in the burning 
 of the Globe theater in 1613. On that occasion a 
 wadding used in charging a cannon on the stage ignited 
 the thatched roof, and the building which was wholly 
 of wood was speedily in ruins. Although in the rep- 
 resentation of battle we commonly have " enter the 
 two kings with their powers at severall doors " or 
 "march over bravelie first the English Hoste," the 
 device in action was to center interest in the single en- 
 counter, in which these plays abound, and by " beat- 
 ing in " and reentry to signify a varied and running 
 fight. Sometimes the aid of tableaux was invoked to 
 represent scenes of war : " Enter two battailes strongly 
 fighting" ; or we have " alarmes and excursions," in 
 which the activity of the entrances and exits doubtless 
 made up for the small number of the actors engaged. 
 Effects of sound, "alarm afarre off," "a sound of 
 battle as afarre" are also common stage directions. 
 
 The Elizabethan " dumb shew " was seldom a sta- 
 tionary tableau. It usually partook more or less of 
 the nature of a pantomime. The action might be 
 allegorically illustrated as in the well-known dumb 
 shows of Gorboduc. A show of this kind in The Mis- 
 fortunes of Arthur introduces nymphs with sheaves, 
 
270 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 olive branches and cornucopia to represent Peace, and 
 one "with black, long shagged haire downe to his 
 shoulders appairled with an Irish Jacket and shirt, 
 hauing an Irish dagger by his side and a dart in his 
 hand " to signify " Reuenge and Furie." Not infre- 
 quently the show was so devised as to carry on the 
 action. Thus in i If You Knaiv Not Me such a show 
 enters, attended by six torches, and representing the 
 court of Philip and Mary. The king and queen 
 " conferre, he takes leaue, and exit. Nobles bring 
 him to the door and returne ; she falls in a swound ; 
 they comfort her." In The Death of Robert Earl of 
 Huntington there are many elaborate shows of this 
 kind, in one of which the story of King John and his 
 nephew is thus told in pantomime. John is repre- 
 sented seated on his throne, "enter Constance, leading 
 young Arthur : both offer to take the crown, but with 
 his foot he [John] overturneth them ; to them cometh 
 Insurrection . . . and leads the child again to the chair ; 
 but he only layeth his hand on his sword, and with his 
 foot overthroweth the child, whom they take up as 
 dead ; and. Insurrection flying, they mournfully bear in 
 the body.'' In later times when the splendid scenic 
 devices of the masque reacted on the popular stage, 
 some of these shows were extremely elaborate and 
 sumptuous. The shows of Henry VIH. are indicated 
 at length in the stage directions and are reported to 
 have been of great magnificence and cost. Indeed it 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 2/1 
 
 would not be difficult to establish the existence of a 
 series of fashions in these particulars from the alle- 
 gorical dumb show, the employment of ghost and 
 dream, the use of the play within the play, to the 
 later tableaux pantomime. But the subject concerns 
 the drama at large rather than the Chronicle Play. 
 
 It requires an effort of mind to conceive Munday's 
 Sherwood Forest, although he is continually prating 
 about it. In As You Like It we breathe without any 
 effort the free air of the Forest of Arden. That fair 
 Temple Garden wherein was plucked the red and the 
 white rose which divided England against herself and 
 sent thousands of her sons to untimely graves ; that 
 other garden in which the queen of Richard II. over- 
 heard the gardener's shrewd homily on state-craft, 
 couched in vegetable terms ; the " mole-hill " on which 
 pious Henry sat and bewailed in impotent grief the 
 woes- of his unhappy country while nature smiled 
 around him — how are these things the better for the 
 scene-painter's art ? Locrine begins with thunder and 
 the entrance of Ate ; and the birth of Merlin is heralded 
 by the appearance of Lucina and the three Fates, 
 which a scenic fitting unknown to the Elizabethan 
 stage might enhance and which stage carpentry might 
 improve. But could painter's art make more real the 
 enchanted moonlit copses and thyme-scented glades of 
 the wood near Athens, or more veritable " the mire and 
 puddle '' of the dungeon-sink which the piteous words 
 
272 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 of King Edward carry to the mind's eye ? Such art 
 can dispense with carpentry. The best Elizabethan 
 plays lost little in the contemporary paucity and pov- 
 erty of scenic device. 
 
 In the foregoing pages we have traced the origin, 
 development and decline of the English Chronicle 
 Play. We found in the play of St. George a link 
 which seemed to connect the national drama with the 
 miracle plays and saints' plays, while Kinge Johan 
 offered a corresponding point of contact with the 
 political morality to which it is allied from its polemical 
 intent and use of abstract figures, despite its concern 
 with alleged historical personages and events. The 
 national spirit first glimmered in the dramatized bal- 
 lads of Robin Hood, in the few but unmistakable 
 pageants in which historical personages are represented 
 and in the imitated action of the Hock Tuesday Play 
 which was commemorative of an actual historical 
 occurrence. 
 
 That the earliest English tragedy, Gorboduc, should 
 have drawn on a subject derived from Enghsh mytho- 
 logical lore is a circumstance to which an undue sig- 
 nificance may be readily attached. That famous play 
 with its direct follower. The Misfortunes of Arthur, 
 and the Latin Richardus Tertius are purely Senecan 
 dramas, which departing from the usual classical sub- 
 jects of their type have strayed into English fields. 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 2/3 
 
 But the choice of such subjects, however accidental, 
 had great effect on what was to come. Locrine, 
 though hardly a successful combination of Senecan 
 dignity and terror with popular comedy and horse- 
 play, is none the less the link between the Senecan 
 ideal and that of the early popular stage. It is, how- 
 ever, in productions such as The Famous Victories of 
 King Henry the Fift, and The Troublesome Raigne of 
 John that we find the first 'genuine chronicle plays 
 and their vogue at the moment when Elizabeth by the 
 irrevocable step of the trial and execution of Mary 
 Queen of Scots had placed herself at the head of a 
 united nation in open defiance to the power of Spain 
 and of Rome, is as interesting as it is significant. 
 From this point on the Chronicle Play held the stage 
 against the romantic drama, the comedy of manners 
 and the older tragedy of Senecan or classic type, 
 never once losing its hold on the popular imagination 
 until King James was firmly seated on his throne and 
 new and changed ideals had succeeded to those of the 
 earlier reign. The main stock of the Chronicle Play 
 which reached its height in Shakespeare's trilogy of 
 Henry IV. and V. continued from first to last to dis- 
 play an epic quality, to mingle serious political events 
 with the relieving comedy of daily life and to straggle 
 in a mere succession of scenes devoid for the most part 
 of abstract unity. It strayed into regions of folk-lore 
 and pseudo-history and after an interval returned to 
 
 19 
 
274 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 mythological themes. It indulged, with a large class 
 of plays not based on English subjects, in disguises 
 and in the supernatural and, in rare instances, reverted 
 to the satirical and to the didactic. But out of this 
 confusion was developed the superior unity of the bio- 
 graphical chronicle and a tragic type of high artistic 
 quality which passed beyond the local and national 
 limitations of plays like Edward II. and Richard III. 
 and became in Lear and Macbeth a world drama of 
 universal appeal. The final absorption of the histor- 
 ical drama was romantic : the absorption of all other 
 species of the serious drama of the age. In the ro- 
 mantic drama the trend is ever towards greater novelty 
 of subject and greater novelty of treatment ; and this 
 it was which led the historical drama away from Eng- 
 lish topics to those of strange countries in which the 
 fancy might wander and the playwright might feel 
 himself untrammeled by the narrowing claims of con- 
 sistency. 
 
 These pages have been written in vain if they have 
 not made patent the intensely English nature of the 
 Chronicle Play. To say that the Chronicle Play 
 would have developed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth 
 as it did, despite the classics of the universities and the 
 Italian culture of the court would be to say too much. 
 And yet it is significant that with few exceptions these 
 plays were written to supply a popular demand of the 
 moment and won their success on the boards of the 
 
LATER HISTORICAL DRAMAS 275 
 
 public theaters. A chronicle play from the hand of 
 John Lyly is inconceivable. In the hands of Jonson, if 
 we may judge from the fragment of Mortimer his Fall, 
 it would have been transformed into a classical tragedy 
 like his Cataline, as in Fletcher's hands it was actually 
 transformed into the romantic tragi-comedy, Bonduca. 
 That Shakespeare should have been the most success- 
 ful writer of chronicle plays was in the nature of 
 things, because he was the truest realist of his age. 
 That competitors like Heywood and Samuel Rowley 
 should at times in the opinion of their contemporaries 
 have rivalled his popularity is explainable by the 
 homely truth of their representations of the life about 
 them. On the other hand it is the ideal element in 
 the chronicle histories of Shakespeare, it is their sheer 
 poetry, which has preserved them a perennial joy to 
 us. Merely realistic art has ever within it the element 
 of decay. The comments of the archaeologist must 
 be invoked to embalm what otherwise would fall away 
 into indistinguishable dust. And when the archaeolo- 
 gist has done his work he has but preserved a corpse. 
 Not so is it with the art which the poet has touched. 
 The ideal has entered into it, and in so doing has im- 
 bued it with the indestructibility of spirit. This is 
 why we read the chronicle plays of Munday and 
 Dekker with an interest and curiosity which rises to 
 real pleasure in many of the scenes of Greene and 
 Heywood. This is why, if we except a solitary play 
 of Ford and of Marlowe, we find enduring delight in 
 the chronicle plays of Shakespeare alone. 
 
TABLE OF EXTANT PLAYS IN SUBJECT WHOLLY 
 OR PARTLY FROM ENGLISH HISTORY. 
 
 Jialics denote Latin Play:, all of which save Byrsa Basilica are Sene- 
 can. The King of Scots is non-extant, but is included because of its his- 
 tor-ical position. Marginal figures denote approximate dates of acting. 
 
 
 Historical Mo- 
 
 Histories and Senecan 
 
 
 ralities. 
 
 Biographies. Derivatives. 
 
 1538 
 
 Kynge Johan. 
 
 
 1562 
 
 
 Gorboduc. 
 
 1566 
 
 Albyon Knight. 
 
 
 1567 
 
 
 (King of Scots). 
 
 1570 
 
 
 Byrsa Basilica. 
 
 IS79 
 
 
 Richardus Teriiui 
 
 1580 
 
 
 Victories of Henry V. 
 
 1586 
 
 
 Ritardus Tertius. 
 
 (( 
 
 
 Locrine. 
 
 Pseudo-History and 
 FoLK-LoRE. 
 1587 Jack Straw. Misfortunes of Arthur. 
 
 1589 James IV. I, 2 Raigne of John. , 
 
 " Fair Em. 
 " George a Greene. 
 
 1590 
 
 
 
 I, 2 Contention. 
 
 (( 
 
 (< 
 
 
 
 Edward I. 
 Edward II. 
 Edward III. 
 Sir Thomas More. 
 
 ii. 
 
 
 
 I Henry VI. 
 
 1591 
 
 Friar Bacon. 
 
 True Tragedy of Richard III. 
 
 (C 
 
 
 
 Woodstock. 
 
 1592 
 
 
 
 2, 3 Henry VI. 
 
 Mythical Histories. 
 
 1592 
 
 
 
 Nobody and Somebody. 
 Cromwell. Knack to Know. 
 
 1 593 
 
 
 
 Richard III. 
 
 1594 
 
 
 
 Richard II. 
 
 " 
 
 John a 
 
 Kent. 
 
 I, 2 Edward IV. King Leir. 
 
 276 
 
TABLE OF EXTANT PLAYS. 
 
 27; 
 
 Pseudo-Histories and Histouies 
 
 Mythical 
 
 
 FOLK-LoRE. AND BIOGRAPHIES. 
 
 Histories. 
 
 159s 
 
 King John. 
 
 Valiant Welshman. 
 
 1596 
 
 Old Fortunatus. Stukeley. 
 
 Mayor of Queenborough. 
 
 IS97 
 
 I, 2 Henry IV. 
 
 Birth of Merlin. 
 
 1598 
 
 I, 2 Huntington. Oldcastle. 
 
 
 1599 
 
 Henry V. 
 Look About You. 
 Shoemakers' Holiday. 
 
 ' 
 
 1600 
 
 Blind Beggar of Bednal. 
 
 Faium Vortigerni. 
 
 i6oi 
 
 Satiromastix. 
 
 
 1602 
 
 Mortimer (Senecan] 
 
 \- 
 
 " 
 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt. 
 
 
 1604 
 
 When You See Me. 
 
 
 " 
 
 Lovesick King. 1 , 2 If You Know Not Me. 
 
 " 
 
 Maid of Bristow. Whore of Babylon. 
 
 
 1605 
 
 
 King Lear. 
 
 1606 
 
 Battle of Hexham. 
 
 Travels 
 AND Adventure. 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 1607 
 
 Travels of Three Brothers. 
 
 
 1609 
 
 P'ortune by Land and Sea. 
 
 Cymbeliue. 
 
 1610 
 
 Christian Turned Turk. 
 
 
 l6l2 
 
 Maid of the West. 
 
 
 I6I3 
 
 Henry VIII. 
 
 
 I6I6 
 
 
 Bonduca. 
 
 I6I9 
 
 Sad Shepherd (Folk-Lore). 
 
 Alfredus. 
 
 1620 
 
 Warwick (Folk-Lore). 
 
 Sanctus Edwardus. 
 
 ' ' Senile and Astrea ( German) . 
 
 1624 Duchess of Suffolk. 
 " John and Matilda. 
 
 1625 Dick of Devonshire. 
 
 1633 Royal King. Perkin Warbeck. 
 
 1 636 Alphonsus of Germany. 
 " Arviragus and Philicia. 
 
 1637 Valiant Scot. 
 
 1644 Henry IV. 
 
 1645 Cola's Fury. 
 1647 Edmund Ironside. 
 
 Fuimus Troes. 
 
A LIST OF PLAYS ON ENGLISH HISTOR- 
 ICAL SUBJECTS. 
 
 Non-extant plays are printed in Italics. The first date is that of 
 probable acting ; the second that of earliest publication. L. stands for 
 Latin ; If. , for Henslowe' s Dairy ; .S. jR., for the Register of the Sta- 
 tioners' Company ; Sh. for Shakespeare. 
 
 Albyon Knight, 1566. Sh. Soc. Papers, 1844. 
 
 Alucius, A History of, 157.9. Revels' Accounts, Sh. Soc. 
 
 1842. 154. 
 Alice Pierce, 1597, H. 105. 
 All is True, 1613. Henry VIII. See Reliquiae Wottonianae, 
 
 1675. 
 Allyn the Pirate, 1603. See The Siege of Dunkirk. 
 Alphonsus of Germany, 1636? Chapman? 1654; ed. Elze, 
 
 1867. 
 Aluredus sive Alfredus, L. 1619, Drury, 1620. 
 Arthur, The Life and Death of King, 1598, Hathway. H. 
 
 122. 
 Arthur, The Misfortunes of, 1587, Hughes and others, 1587. 
 
 Ed. Grumbine, Litt. Forschungen, XIV. 
 Arviragus and Philicia, 1636, Carlell, 1639. GenestX. 
 
 Battle of Alcazar, The, 1589, Peele, 1594. Bullen's Peele, 
 1888. 
 
 Battle of Hexham, The, i6o6? Barnes, MS. extant in 1807. 
 
 Beauchamps, The Bold, 1 599, Heywood ? See Dyce, Beau- 
 mont and Fletcher, I. 274. 
 
 Bear a, Brain, 1599, H. 155. 
 
 Beggar, i Blind,, of Bednal Green, 1600, Day, Chettle, 1659; 
 Bullen's Day, 1881. 
 
 Beggar, 2 Blind, of Bednal Green, 1601, Day, Haughton. 
 H. 180. 
 
 278 
 
LIST OF HISTORICAL PLAYS 2/9 
 
 Beggar, j Blind, of Bednal Green, 1601, Day, Haughton. 
 
 H. 188. 
 Belin Dun, 1594, S. R. 1594. See Chronicle of Henry I. 
 Birth of Merlin, The, 1597, William Rowley, 1662; ed. 
 
 Warnke and Proeschoeldt, 1887. 
 Blacksmith's Daughter, The, 1579. Gosson, School of Abuse. 
 Bonduca, 1616, Fletcher. Folio 1647. 
 Brute, The Conquest of , 1598, Chettle, Day. H. 131. 
 Brute Greenshield, 1598. H. 147. 
 Buckingham, 1593- H. 31. 
 Byrsa Basilica, L. 1570, Rickets. Tanner MS. 207. See Sh. 
 
 Jahrbuch XXXIV. 
 
 Canute, 1597. H. 91. 
 
 Caradoc the Great, The Chronicle History of. See The Vali- 
 ant Welshman. 
 
 Chester Tragedy. See Randall Earl of Chester. 
 
 Child hath lost his Father, The. See The Birth of Merlin. 
 
 Chinon of England, The History of, 1596. H. 62. S. R. 
 1596. 
 
 Christian Turned Turk, A, 1610. Daborne, 1612. Anglia 
 XX. 
 
 Cola's Fury, Birkhead, 1645 ; 1646. 
 
 Conan Prince of Cornwall, 1598^ Dekker, Drayton. H. 136. 
 
 Conquest of Portugal, The. See The Life of the Humorous 
 Earl of Gloucester. 
 
 Conquest of Spain, The. See fohn of Gaunt. 
 
 Contention, i. The first part of the, betwixt York and Lan- 
 caster, 1590. Quarto, 1594; facsimile, 1889. 
 
 Contention, 2. The True Tragedy, with the Whole, between 
 Lancaster and York, 1590. Quarto, 1595 ; facsimile, 1891. 
 
 Cromwell, The Life and Death of Lord, 1592. Ed. 1602; 
 "Written by W. S." Sh. Folio, 1663-64. Ed. Jacob, 1889. 
 
 Cutwell. See The Irish Knight. 
 
 Cymbeline, The Tragedy of, 1609, Sh. Folio, 1623. 
 
 Dick of Devonshire, 1625. BuUen, Old EngUsh Plays, H. 
 
28o THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Edmund Ironside, 1647, Egerton MS. 1994. 
 
 Edward I., The Famous Chronicle of King, 1590, Peele, 1593. 
 Bullen's Peele, 1888. 
 
 Edward I. See Longshanks. 
 
 Edward II., The Troublesome Reign of, 1590, Marlowe, 1594. 
 
 Edward III., The Reign of King, 1590 ; 1596. Temple Dram- 
 atists, 1897. 
 
 Edward IV., 1 King, 1594, Heywood, 1600. Ed. 1874, I. 
 
 Edward IV., 2 King, 1594, Heywood, 1600. See Part i. 
 
 Edwardus Confessor, Sanctus, L. 1620. Heber MS. 1091, 
 Bibliotheca Heberiana XI. 
 
 Elizabeth, The Troubles of Queen. See i If You Know Not Me. 
 
 Elizabeth, The Victory of Queen. See 2 If You Know Not Me. 
 
 Elydure, The Chronicle History of. See Nobody and Some- 
 body. 
 
 England's Joy, 1602, Vennar. Harl. Miscellany, ed. 181 3. X. 
 
 English Fugitives, The, 1600, Haughton. H. 168. See the 
 Duchess of Suffolk. 
 
 English Prophet, The. See Richard III. 
 
 Fair Em the Miller's Daughter of Manchester, 1589. Wilson ? 
 
 1631. Ed. Warnke and Proeschoeldt, 1883. 
 Fair Maid of Bristow, The, 1604 ; 1605. Ed. Quinn, 1902. 
 Fair Maid of the West, The, i, 2, 161 2, Heywood, 1631. 
 
 Ed. 1874, III. 
 Fatum Vortigerni, L. 1 590-1605, MS. Lansdowne 723. Sh. 
 
 Jahrbuch XXXIV. 
 Ferrex and Porrex. See Gorboduc. 
 Ferrex and Porrex, 1599, Haughton. H. 166. 
 Fortune by Land and Sea, 1609, Heywood and W. Rowley, 
 
 1655. Ed. 1874, VI. 
 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 1 591, Greene, 1594, Grosart's 
 
 Greene, XIII. 
 Fuimus Troes, 1625, Fisher, 1633. Dodsley XII. 
 
 Gentle Craft, The. See The Shoemakers' Holiday. 
 George a Greene, A Comedy of, 1589, Greene, 1599, Grosart's 
 Greene, XIV. 
 
LIST OF HISTORICAL PLAYS 281 
 
 Gloucester, The Life of the Humorous Earl of , Wadeson. H. 
 
 183. 
 Godwin and his Three Sons, Earl, 1598, Drayton, Dekker, 
 
 Chettle, Wilson. H. 121. 
 Godwin, The Second Part of , 1598, Drayton, Dekker, Chettle, 
 
 Wilson. H. 123. 
 Gorboduc, 1562, Sackville, Norton, 1565, Ed. L. Toulmin 
 
 Smith, 1883. 
 Guy Earl of Warwick, The Life and Death of, S. R. 1620, 
 
 Day, Dekker, 1661. 
 
 Hardicanute, 1597. H. 91. 
 
 liarford. The Earl of , 1602. H. 226. 
 
 Harry of Cornwall, 1592. H. 2r. 
 
 Hengist King of Kent, 1597. H. 89. Earlier title of the 
 
 Mayor of Queenborough. 
 Henry I., The Famous Chronicle of. S. R. 1597 ; H. 35, 88. 
 Henry I., The History of . Licensed 1624, Davenport. 
 Henry I. and Henry H. S. R. 1653. "Shakespeare and 
 
 Davenport." Warburton MS. 
 Henry I. and the Prince of Wales, The Famous Wars of, 
 
 1598. Drayton, Dekker, Chettle. H. 120. 
 Henry IV., i The History of, 1597. Sh. 1598. 
 Henry IV., 2 The Second Part of, 1598. Sh., 1600. 
 Henry IV., MS., 1644; Sh. Soc. 1845. 
 Henry V., 1595. H. 61. 
 
 Henry V., The Chronicle History of, 1599. Sh., 1600. 
 Henry V., The Famous Victories of, 1580, Tarlton? 1598. 
 
 Facsimile Reprint, 1887. 
 Henry VI., The First Part of, 1590, Greene, Peele, Marlowe, 
 
 Sh. Folio 1623. 
 Henry VI , The Second Part of, 1591-92, Revision by Sh. 
 
 Folio 1623. 
 Henry VI., The Third Part of, 1591-92. Revision by Sh. 
 
 Folio 1623. 
 Henry Richmond, The Second Part of , 1599. H. 159. 
 Henry VIII., The Famous Chronicle History of. See When 
 
 You See Me. 
 
282 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Henry VIII., The Famous History of the Life of King, 1612- 
 
 13. Sh. and Fletcher. Folio, 1623. 
 Humphrey, Duke, S. R. 1660. 
 Huntington, i The Downfall of Robert Earl of, 1598. Mun- 
 
 day, Chettle, 1601. Dodsley VIII. 
 Huntington, 2 The Death of Robert Earl of, 1598. Munday, 
 
 Chettle, 1 60 1. Dodsley VIII. 
 
 If You Know Not Me, i. 1604, Heywood, 1605. Sh. Soc. 
 
 1851. 
 If You Know Not Me, 2. 1604, Heywood, 1606. Sh. Soc. 
 
 1851. 
 Irish Knight, The, 1577. Revels' Accounts, 114. Sh. Soc. 
 
 1842. 
 Irish Rebellion, The, 1642. Kirke. 
 
 Jack Straw, The Life and Death of, 1587. Dodsley V. 
 Jack Straw and Wat Tyler, The Life and Death of, S. R. 
 
 1638, Kirke. See Genest, X. 
 James IV. The Scottish History of, 1589, Greene, 1598. Ed. 
 
 Grosart, XIII. 
 Jane Grey, i Lady, 1602, Dekker, Heywood, Smith, Webster. 
 
 H. 242. Earlier' version of Sir Thomas Wyatt. 
 Jane Grey, 2 Lady, 1602, Dekker. H. 243. 
 John, I The Troublesome Reign of, 1588; 1591, facsimile, 
 
 1888. 
 John, 2 The Troublesome Reign of, 1588-89. See Part i. 
 John, The Life and Death of King, 1595. Sh. Folio, 1623. 
 John a Kent and John a Cumber, 1594, Munday. Sh. Soc. 
 
 1851. 
 John and Matilda, King, 1624, Davenport, 1655. BuUen's 
 
 Old Plays, n. s., I. 
 John of Gaunt, The Conquest of Spain by. 1601. Hathway, 
 
 Rankins. H. 185. S. R. 1594. 
 
 King of Scots, The Tragedy of the, 1567. Harl. MS. 146. 
 Knack to Know a Knave, A, 1 592 ; 1 594. Dodsley VI. 
 
LIST OF HISTORICAL PLAYS 283 
 
 Koeniges Sohn aufs Engelandt, Eine Comoedia von eines, 
 1620; 1630. Cohn, Sh. in Germany, cviii. 
 
 Lear, Master William Shakespeare, his History of King, 1605 ; 
 1608. 
 
 Leir, The Tragical Chronicle History of King, S. R., 1605. 
 See the True Chronicle History of King Leir. 
 
 Leir, The True Chronicle History of King, 1594 ; 1605. Haz- 
 litt's Sh. Library, Part II., Vol. II. 
 
 Locrine, The Tragedy of, 1586, Peele, 1595. Tyrrell, Doubt- 
 ful Plays of Sh., n. d. 
 
 Longshanks, 1595. H. 55. S. R. 1600. 
 
 Look About You, 1599, Wadeson, 1600. Dodsley VII. 
 
 Lovesick King, The, 1604, Brewer, 1655. 
 
 Lud, King, 1594. H. 32. 
 
 Lyrenda's Mysery. See Cola's Fury. 
 
 Macbeth, The Tragedy of, 1606. Sh. Folio 1623. 
 
 Mador, The History of , S. R., 1660. 
 
 Malcolm, King of Scots, 1602. H. 219. 
 
 Mandeville, Sir John, 1592. H. 21. 
 
 Martin Swarte, 1597. H. 89. 
 
 Marshall Osric, 1602. H. 85. 
 
 Mary, The Coronation of Queen, See Sir Thomas Wyatt. 
 
 Mayor of Queenborough, The, 1596, Middleton, 1661. Bul- 
 
 len's Middleton II. 
 More, Sir Thomas, 1590-96. Ed. Dyce, Sh. Soc, 1844. 
 Mortimer His Fall, 1602, Jonson. H. 226. See fragment 
 
 in folio 1640. 
 Mulmutius Dunwallow , 1596, Rankins. H. 135. 
 
 Nobody and Somebody, 1592, [1606.] School of Sh. I. 
 Northern Man, The. See Too Good to be True. 
 
 Oldcastle, i The Life of Sir John, 1598, Munday, Drayton, 
 Wilson, Hathway, 1600. H. 158. Sh. fol. 1663-64. 
 
 Oldcdstle, 2 The Second Part of Sir John, 1599, Drayton. 
 H. 158. 
 
284 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Old Foitunatus, 1596, Dekker, 1600. Ed. 1873, I. 
 Overthrow of the Rebels, The, 1602. H. 244. 
 Owen Tudor, 1600, Hathway, Wilson. H. 163. 
 
 Perkin Warbeck, The Chronicle History of, 1633. Ford, 1634. 
 
 Ed. Pickburn, 1896. 
 Philip of Spain, 1602. H. 225. 
 
 Philip, The Coming of King. See Sir Thomas Wyatt. 
 Piers of Ex ton, Sir, 1598, Wilson, Dekker, Drayton, Chettle. 
 
 H. 121. 
 Piers of Winchester, 1598, Dekker, Drayton, Wilson. H. 129. 
 Pinner of Wakefield, The. See George a Greene. 
 Plantation of Virginia, A Tragedy of the. Licensed 1623. 
 
 Randall, Earl of Chester, 1602, Middleton. H. 227. 
 Richard Cor delion' s Funeral, 1598, Wilson Drayton, Chettle, 
 
 Munday. H. 124. 
 Richard, Duke of York, The True Tragedy of. See 2 Con- 
 tention. 
 Richard the Confessor, 1593. H. 31. Fleay II. 298. 
 Richard II., A Tragedy on. Mentioned by Forman, 161 1. 
 Richard II., A Tragedy of King. See Woodstock. 
 Richard II., The Deposing of, 1601, Sh.'s Richard II. 
 Richard II , The Tragedy of King, 1594, Sh., 1597. 
 Ricardus Tertius, L., 1586, Lacey. MS. See Retrospective 
 
 Rev. XII. 
 Richardus Tertius Tragedia, L., 1579, Legge. Ed. Sh. Soc. , 
 
 1844. 
 Richard III., The Tragedy of, 1593, Sh. 1597. 
 Richard III., The Tragedy of, or the English Prophet, 
 
 Licensed 1623. Samuel Rowley. 
 Richard III., i The True Tragedy of, 1591. Ed. Sh. Soc, 
 
 1844. 
 Richard Crookback, 1602, Jonson. H. 223. 
 Robert II. King of Scots, 1599, Jonson, Dekker, Chettle. H. 
 
 156. 
 
LIST OF HISTORICAL PLAYS 285 
 
 Robin Hood. See Huntington. 
 
 Robin Hood, A Tale of. See The Sad Shepherd. 
 
 Robin Hood, The New Play of. Pr. [1550.] 
 
 Robin Hood and Little John. A Pastoral Comedy of, S. R. 
 
 1594- 
 Robin Hood's Pennyworths, 1600, Haughton. H. 174. 
 Royal Exchange, The Building of the. See If You Know Not 
 
 Me, 2. 
 Royal King and Loyal Subject, 1633, Heywood, 1637. Sh. 
 
 See, 1850. Ed. 1874, VI. 
 
 Sad Shepherd, The, 1619, Jonson. Folio 1640. 
 St. George for England, 1615-1623, William Smith. War- 
 burton MS. 
 St. Patrick for Ireland, 1658, Shirley. 1640. Ed. Dyce, IV. 
 Salisbury Plain, S. R., 1653. 
 Satiromastix, 1601, Dekker, 1602. Ed. 1873, I. 
 Serule and Astrea. See Eine Comoedia von eines Koeniges 
 
 Sohn aufs Engelandt. 
 Shoemakers' Holiday, The, 1599, Dekker, 1600. 
 Shore's Wife, 1599, Chettle, Day. H. 214. 
 Siege of Dunkirk, The, 1602. H. 231. 
 Siege of Edinburgh Castle, The, Davidson, 1573. Andrew 
 
 Melville's Diary. 
 Siege of London, The, 1594. H. 46. 
 Six Clothiers of the West, 1601, Haughton, Hathway, Smith. 
 
 H. 203, 
 Six Yeomen of the West, 1601, Haughton, Day. H. 188. 
 Spencers, The, 1599, Chettle, Porter. H. 146. 
 Stephen, The History of King, S. R., 1660. 
 Stewtley, 1596. See Sir Thomas Stukeley, H. 77. 
 Strowd, Thomas. See 2 and j Blind Beggar of Bednal 
 
 Green. 
 Stukeley, The History of Captain Thomas, 1 596, 1605. School 
 
 of Sh. I. 
 Suffolk, The Life of the Duchess of. Licensed 1624, Drue, 
 
 1631. 
 
286 THE ENGLISH CHRONICLE PLAY 
 
 Too Good to Be True, 1601. Chettle, Hathway, Smith. H. 
 
 204. 
 Travels of the Three English Brothers, The, 1607, Day, Wil- 
 
 kins William Rowley. Bullen's Day, II. 
 
 Untrussing of the Humorous Poet, The, See Satiromastix. 
 Uther Pendragon, 1597. H. 87. 
 
 Valiant Scot, The, J. W., 1637. See Ward, III. 159. 
 
 Valiant Welshman, The, 1595, Armin, 1615. 
 
 Valtiger, 1596, H. 76. See The Mayor of Queenborough. 
 
 Warlamchester, 1594. H. 45. 
 
 Welshman, The, 1595. H. 61. See The Valiant Welshman. 
 Welshman's Prize, The, 1598. H. 276. 
 When You See Me You Know Me, 1604, Samuel Rowley, 
 
 1605 ; Ed. Elze, 1874. 
 Whittington, The History of Richard, S. R., 1605. 
 Whore of Babylon, The, 1604, Dekker, 1607. Ed. 1873, II. 
 William Longbeard, 1599, Drayton'. H. 142. 
 William Longsword, 1599, Drayton, H. 95. 
 William the Conqueror, 1594. H. 31. 
 William the Conqueror, The Love of. See Fair Em. 
 Wise Man of Westchester, The, 1594. H. 45. 
 Wolsey, The Life of Cardinal, i6or, Chettle, S. Rowley. H. 
 
 189. 
 Wolsey, The Rising of Cardinal, 1601, Chettle, Drayton, 
 
 Munday, Smith. H. 198. 
 Woodstock, The Tragedy of Thomas of, 1591, Egerton MS. 
 
 1994. Sh. Jahrbuch XXXV. 
 Wyatt, The Famous History of Sir Thomas, 1602, Dekker, 
 
 Webster, 1607. Ed. Blew, 1876. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 A., R., Gent., 178 
 
 Aberdeen, 6 
 
 Abigail, 72 
 
 Abridgment of English Chronicles, 
 
 102 
 Abridgment of the Chronicles of 
 
 England, 33 
 Academic plays and influence, 2, 
 
 4, 21, 24, 26, 54, 173, 206, 
 
 254, 274 
 Account of the Rarest Books, 231, 
 
 232 
 Achilles, 184 
 
 ACKERMANN, RiCHARD, 1 38 
 Actes and Monuments, see Book 
 
 of Martyrs 
 Admiral's Company, 54, 130, 136, 
 
 160, 165 
 Adventure, plays dealing with 
 
 travel and, 5, 51, 208, 224-228, 
 
 274 
 Aeglamour, 163 
 .(ESCHYLUS, 198 
 Agincourt, battle of, 8, 109, 133, 
 
 139 
 Albanact, 129 
 "Alberte galles," 177 
 Albions England, 37, 76, 203 
 Albyon Knight, 19 
 Alcazar, Battle of, 59, 222, 223 
 Alford, D. p., 227 
 Alfred, 254 
 Alfrida, 18 
 All is True, 250 
 
 Allegory, use of, 240 
 
 Alleyn Edward, 17 
 
 AUyn, the pirate, 225 
 
 Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany, 
 
 171 ; of Arragon, 166 
 Altenglische Theater, 1 68 
 Alvredus sive Alfredus, 254 
 Ambition, 161 
 
 Amends for Ladies, 126, 127 
 Anfaenge des deutschen Theaters, 
 
 170 
 Angiers, 259 
 Anglia, 167, 226 
 Ann a Beame (of Bohemia), 102, 
 
 103, 271 
 Annales, of Tacitus, 201 ; of Eng - 
 
 land, 33, 161, 1S7 ; Rerum, 
 
 109 
 Antonio, 223 
 Apologiefor Poetry, 32 
 Apologie of Poetrie, 22 
 Apology (of Vennar), 231 
 Apology for Actors, 136 
 Appius and Virginia, 207 
 Apprentices, insurrection of, 45 
 Arbasto, 168 
 Arber, Edward (ed. Stationers'' 
 
 Register, etc.), 32, IS9. 165, 
 
 191, 192, 205, 227, 260 
 Arcadia, 162 
 Arcadia, 192 
 Archigallo, 177, 178 
 Arden, Forest of, 271 
 Arden of Fevers ham, vi 
 
 287 
 
288 
 
 [NDEX 
 
 Arenopia, 1 67 
 
 Ariobarzanes, 171 
 
 Aristophanes, 130 
 
 Armada, 39, 45, 47, 56, 232, 238 
 
 Armin, Robert, 136, 178, 181, 
 
 189, 201, 203 
 Arraignment of Paris, 26, 59 
 Arras, use of, on Elizabethan stage, 
 
 268 
 Art, relation of, to life, 67 ; when 
 
 first a dominant feature, 274 
 Art of English Poetry, 1 35 
 Artaxerxes, 171 
 Artesia, 184, 185 
 Arthur, 6, 24, 50, 173; Life 
 
 and Death of King, l85. Mis- 
 fortunes of, 24, S3, 59, 172, 
 
 187, 269, 272; Prince, 258, 
 
 267, 270 
 Arviragus, 203, 206, 207 ; and 
 
 Philicia, 206, 207 
 Astrea, 170 
 Astrophel and Stella, 139 
 As You Like Lt, 271 
 At^, 271 
 
 Athelstan, 137, 170 
 Athenae Oxonienses, 206 
 Athenaum, 40, 99, 167 
 Athens, 163, 271 
 Aurelius, 183-185 
 Authorship of the Second and 
 
 Third Parts of Henry VL. and 
 
 their originals, 64, 84 
 
 Babylon, Empress of, 239 
 Bacon, Sir Francis, 34 ; his Life 
 
 of Henry VII., 262 
 Bailiff of Hexham, 18 
 Baker, G. M., 205 
 Balcony, use of the, 267, 268 
 Baldwin, William, 35 
 
 Bale, John, 16 
 
 Ball, John, 45 
 
 Balladino, Antonio, 1 35 
 
 Ballads, 4-6, 14, 28, 38, 128, 144, 
 146, 152, 156-159, 164, 196, 
 222, 272 ; English and Scottish 
 Popular, 9, II, 144, 157, 160 
 
 Bandello, Matteo, 216 
 
 Bankside, 173, 192 
 
 Banquo, 1 96 
 
 Bapst, Germain, 7 
 
 Barabas, 221 
 
 Bardolph, 124 
 
 Barley, Lady, 158 
 
 Barnes, Barnaby. 76 
 
 Barons, John and his, 258 
 
 Barons Warres, 37, 139 
 
 Basset, Alderman, 145 
 
 Bassingboume, 9 
 
 Bath, Order of the, 147, 186 
 
 Battle of Agincourt, 139 ; Alcamr, 
 59, 222, 223 ; Hexham, 76 
 
 Beaufort, Cardinal, see Winchester 
 
 Beaumont, Francis, 205, 260 
 
 Bell Savage, the, 27 
 
 Berkley, 69 
 
 Bettris Grimes, 156-158 
 
 Biblical themes, 4, 7, 20, 59 
 
 Bibliographical Account of the 
 Rarest Books, 231, 232 
 
 Bibliotheca Heberiana^ 254 
 
 Biographia Dramatica, 205 
 
 Biographical Chronicle of the 
 
 Drama, see Fleay. 
 Biographical elements in the chron- 
 icle play, 20, 23, 30, 31, 34, 39. 
 51, 152, 208-241, 274 
 BiRKHEAD, Henry, 266 
 Birth of Merlin, 181. 183-185, 
 
 188, 189 
 Blackfiiars, 55 
 
INDEX 
 
 289 
 
 Black'Prince, 52, 99, 104 
 
 Blacksmith's Daughter, 225 
 
 Blank verse, 19, 93, 252 
 
 Blenerhasset, Thomas, 35 
 
 Blind Bes^gar of BeJnall Green, 
 76, 137, 164 
 
 B1.UNDEVILL, Randulph de, 164 
 
 BOADICEA, 52, 202, 203, 206 
 
 Bold Beauchamps, 136 
 
 Bolingbroke, 111-115; see also 
 Henry IV. 
 
 Bondura, 202-204 
 
 Bondman, 256 
 
 Bonner, Edmund, Bishop of Lon- 
 don, 243, 255 
 
 Book of Martyrs, 33, 213, 216, 
 217, 255 
 
 Book of Plays, ill 
 
 Border raids of 1318, 65 
 
 Boroughbridge, battle of, 65 
 
 Bosweli.-Stone, W. G., 47 
 
 Bottom, 163, 266 
 
 Bowyer, William, 265 
 
 Boyle, Robert, 252 
 
 Brackenbury, Sir Robert, 146 
 
 Bradford, 154 
 
 Brand, 257, 258 
 
 Brandl, Alois, 19 
 
 Brandon, Charles, 245 
 
 Brennus, 187, 205 
 
 Breviiit Chronitle, 33 
 
 Bkewer, Anthony, 169 
 
 Britons and British myths, 2, 203- 
 207 
 
 British Museum, ix, 98, 185, 266 
 
 British Sidanen, Ballad of , 165 
 
 Broadsides, 232, 233 
 
 Brooke, Chrstopher, 78 
 
 Bruce, Lady, 257, 258 
 
 Brute, 2, 50, 52 ; Gretnshield, 186; 
 Conquest of, 186 
 
 Buccaneering, 222, 225, 226 
 Buckingham, Hknry Stafford, 
 
 2D Duke of, 77, 220 
 Bucknill, J. C, 199 
 Bull, the, 27 
 Bullen, A. H., 60, 225, 227, 254, 
 
 256, 258, 267 
 Bullen, Anne, 251 
 Burghley, Lord, 27, 211, 240 
 Burgundy, Duke of, 144 
 Byrsa Ba.-iliia, 20, 21, 53, 237 
 Byrth an I Prophecyes of Merlin, 
 
 Lytel Tretys of the, 188, 189 
 
 Cade, Jack, 64 
 Cadwallader, Prophesie of, 38 
 CyESAR, Claudius, 180, j8i, 203, 
 
 205 ; Julius, 206 
 Caius, Ur., 130 
 Calais, Castle of, 104 
 Cambridge, 21, 22, 119 
 Camden, Richard, log, 192 
 Camden Society, Publicati ns of 
 
 the, 196 
 Camillus, 205 
 Campeius, 239 
 Campion, Edmund, 34, 239 
 Canons of Criticu7it, 252 
 Canute, 169 
 
 Caractacus, 52, 189, 203 
 Caradoc, 179-18', 189, 203 
 Caratach, 202-204 
 Caricature, 124 
 Caelei l, Lodowick, 206 
 Cartesmunda, 169 
 Cast- is Altered, The, 1 35 
 Cast over the Water to William 
 
 Fenner, 232 
 Castjglic iNE, B., 3 
 Cataline, I42, 275 
 Catalogue of Romances, 161 
 
290 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Catherine, see Katharine 
 Catholic Church, 222, 240, 251, 
 
 258. 273 
 Cavendish, George, 34 
 Caxton, William, 188 
 Celtic myths, see Britons 
 Certaine Devises and Shewes, 24, 
 
 and see Misfortunes of Arthur 
 Chamberlain's company, 136, 
 
 211 
 Chane, Mack, 133 
 Changeling, 256 
 Chapel Children, 40 
 Chapman, Georpe, 171 
 Character, representation of, 73, 
 
 9S, III, IIS, 203 
 Charles I., 135, 206, 227, 260; 
 
 Charles VI., 42 ; Charles VIII., 
 
 7 
 Chaucer, Geffrey, 124 
 Chester, Randall Earl of ( Chester 
 
 Tragedy), 164 
 Chettle, Henry, 76, 77, 136- 
 
 138, 141, IS9, 164, 257 
 Child, F. J., 9, 11, 144, 157, 160 
 Chloris, 140, 205 
 Choric ode, the, 94 
 Choruses, 142, 219 
 Christian tum'd Turke, 226 
 Christmas Play, Lutterworth, 9 
 Christ's Hospital, 26 
 Chronicle plays, their popularity, 
 
 1. 53-SS. 173. 174. 274. 27s ; 
 rise and decay, I, 32, 53-55,134, 
 171, 228, 249, 253, 273; number, 
 
 2. SI-S3. 136-141 ; range of 
 subject, 2, 4, 52, 166-171, 173, 
 1 74 ; characteristics of, v, vii, 
 2, 3, 4, 16, 24, 49, so, 65, 127, 
 128-130, 132, 173, 174, 189, 
 
 259, 272-275 ; relation of the 
 
 universities and court, 2-4, 26, 
 27, 59, 173, 274 ; relation to gen- 
 eral literature, v, 3, 32-40, 139, 
 140, 173, 174; conditions of 
 development, 4, 5, 6, 28, 31, 
 
 32. 56, 173. 174, 190. 192, 193. 
 202, 203, 258, 273-275; im- 
 portance of the comedy element 
 in their development, 4 ( and see 
 Comedy) ; relation to the sacred 
 drama, 4, 6-10, 14, 28, 272 ; 
 balladry and folk-lore, 4 (and 
 see Balladry and Folk-lore) ; 
 relation of early Robin Hood 
 plays, 6, 9-15 ; forerunners, 
 15—29 ; no true example be- 
 fore 1580 exhibiting certain 
 specified typic characteristics, 
 16 ; relation of certain mor- 
 alities, 16-19; importance of 
 Gorboduc, 19, 20, 272 ; Byrsa 
 Basilica the first biographical 
 play, 20 ; civic life as a theme, 
 20-22, 217, 237 ; Richardus 
 Tertius Tragedia, the first 
 on a theme from actual his- 
 tory, 21-23, 272 ; Locrine, the 
 link between the Senecan ideal 
 and the popular stage, 25, 173 ; 
 two groups, historical and 
 legendary, 30 ; influence of 
 awakening national spirit under 
 the Tudors, 31, 39, 56, 273; re- 
 lation of historical literature, 
 32-40, 173, 174; King of Scots, 
 Fam<ms Victories, and other 
 early examples, 40-49, 273 ; re- 
 lation of Marlowe and Shake- 
 speare, 44(andsee these authors); 
 epic type the most popular and 
 lasting, 51; Troublesome Raigru, 
 
INDEX 
 
 291 
 
 and other plays as types, 53, 
 273 ; companies acting them, 
 see companies ; predecessors of 
 Shakespeare, 56-74 ; relation of 
 Greene, Lodge and Peele, see 
 these authors ; King Edward 
 the third a typical example of 
 early form, 60 ; old epic type 
 fruitless artistically, 62 ; artistic 
 motivation from Marlowe and 
 Shakespeare, 63, 190, 192, 193 ; 
 development of tragic type of, 
 63, 74; Edward II., 65-74; 
 evolution and realization of the 
 highest capabilities of the tragic 
 type, 74. 98-114. 190. 208, 
 274 ; the Marlowe-Shakespeare 
 plays, 75-97 ; the Wars of the 
 Roses, 75-78 ; plays on Henry 
 VI., Richard III., John, Rich- 
 ard II., see these titles ; modifi- 
 cations of the type, 134-174 ; 
 relation of Heywood, Chettle, 
 Day, Dekker, Drayton, Hath- 
 way, Haughton, Jonson, Middle- 
 ton, Porter, Rankins, Samuel 
 Rowley, William Rowley, 
 Wentworth Smith, Webster, 
 and Robert Wilson the Elder 
 and Younger, see these authors ; 
 extraneous influences in the later 
 plays, 152 ; Pinner of Wake- 
 field, 152-159 ; Robin Hood 
 plays, 159-164; pseudo-histori-' 
 cal plays, 164-171, 208,273; ^^■ 
 sorption into romantic drama, 
 171, 274; legendary type, 172- 
 207, 274 ; necessity for defining 
 such a class, 172 ; this type, why 
 long lived, 173 ; why not an im- 
 mediate development from Gor- 
 
 boduc and Locrine, 173 ; King 
 Leir and other plays, 174, 187 ; 
 sources of plays founded on 
 myth, 187, 274 ; inventive free- 
 dom displayed, 189 ; Lear and 
 Macbeth, 1 90-200 ; affected by 
 current modes and displaying 
 artistic spirit, 190, 192, 193, 
 202, 203 ; Cyvibeline, 200 ; Bon- 
 duca, 301-204, 275 ; advance on 
 older drama, 203 ; advance in 
 scenic representation, 204 ; later 
 plays of legendary type, 205- 
 207 ; the biographical type, 208- 
 241, 274 ; reversion of Shake- 
 speare to older type, 208 ; earlier 
 type as used by Heywood and 
 Dekker, 208 ; folk-lore and 
 pseudo-history, 208 ; use of 
 travel and adventure, 208, 224- 
 228 ; More, CroTnwell, Stukeley 
 and other plays, 210-224 S "^^ 
 of piratic adventure, 225, 226 ; 
 influence of Elizabeth's death 
 and plays following, 228-241 ; 
 plays connected with Henry 
 VIII., 242-253; survey of 
 later plays, 253-266 ; King 
 John and Matilda and Shake- 
 speare's King John, 258-260; 
 Per kin Warbeck the last, 261- 
 265, 275 ; later plays affiliated 
 to the general type, 265-267 ; 
 manner of representation on the 
 stage, 267-272 ; general sum- 
 mary and comment, 272-275 
 Chronicles in relation to the chron- 
 icle play, 21, 22, 32-34, 38, 
 45. 5°, 78, 80, 81, 83, 108, 109, 
 144-146, 161, 167, 187, 188, 
 212 
 
292 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Chronicles, see Camden, Dunmow, 
 Fabyan, Grafton, Halle, Har- 
 bert, Hardying, Heywood, Hoi- 
 inshed, Matthew of Paris, Mat- 
 thew of Westminster, Mychell, 
 Memorials of Great Britain 
 and Ireland, Stow, Thomas of 
 Walsingham 
 
 Churchill, George B., 21-23, 
 88,91 
 
 Churchyard, Thomas, 36, 39 
 
 Chute, Anthony, 39 
 
 CiNTHiO, GiRALDO, his Hecato- 
 mithi, 167 
 
 Civic life pictured, 20-22, 217, 
 
 237 
 Civile Wars, 37, 76, 139 
 Clarence, George, Duke of, 35, 
 
 83, 89. 90. 107. 144, 147 ; 
 
 Lionel, Duke of, 99 
 Clarendon Press Series, 1 98 
 Clark, W. G., 198 
 Clarke, Samuel, 255 
 Classical sources and influence, 7, 
 
 20, 23, 24, 100, 142, 201, 272, 
 
 274, 275 ; cf. Seneca 
 Closing of the theaters, 5 1 
 Clowns, 68, 123, 128 
 COBHAM, Lord, see Oldcastle 
 Cobler, John, 43 
 Cockpit, the, 206, 234 
 CoHN, Albert, 170, 178 
 Cola's Furie or Lyrenda's Miserie, 
 
 266 
 Coleridge, S. T. , and Works of, 
 
 viii, 194, 196. 
 Collier, J. Payne, 8, 41, 88, 125, 
 
 231, 234 
 Comedy element and its importance, 
 
 4, 122-124, 127, 128, 152, 164, 
 
 165, 168, 174, 208, 209, 210, 
 
 212, 237, 239, 273 ; of manners, 
 28, 53i 260 ; in Greene, 57 ; in 
 Shakespeare, 63, 93, 122-124, 
 127; in Woodstock, 100 ; of 
 disguise, 1 64, 165 
 
 Comical Gallant, 125 
 
 Companies acting the Chronicle 
 Play, 17, 40, 41, 47, 54-56, 88, 
 89, 130, 136, 160, 165, 174^ 
 
 178, 211, 221, 239 
 
 Complaint of Rosamond, 36, 139 
 
 Compton, Sir William, 246, 247 
 
 Conan Prince of Cornwall,l']0, 186 
 
 Conquest of Brute, 186 
 
 Constable of France, 144 
 
 Constance, 47, 258, 270 
 
 Constantius, 182 
 
 Contemporary life, elements drawn 
 from, 5, 20, 27, 28, 39, 102, 
 124, 171, 209, 210, 213, 216, 
 240, 266, 27s 
 
 Cony catcher, 18 
 
 Contentions, i and 2, of Lancaster 
 and York, 57, 58, 63-65, 76, 
 88-91, 143, and see Henry VJ. 
 
 Conversations with Drummond, 162 
 
 Cook, Warburton's, 77, 205 
 
 Cordelia, 174-177 
 
 Cordelia, 175, 191, 192, 195, 196 
 
 Cornwall, Richard of, 171 
 
 Cortegiano, 3 
 
 Court, influence of the, 3, 26, 27, 
 
 59. 274 
 Courtier, 18, 128 
 Coventry, 6, 15, 112 
 Cranmer, Thomas, 251, 256 
 Creizenach, W., 167 
 Cromwell, Thomas, 209, 213, 
 
 216, 217-219, 242; Life and 
 
 Death of Lord, 210, 215-219, 
 
 223, 237 
 
INDEX 
 
 293 
 
 Cross Keys, the, 27 
 
 Crowne Garland of Golden Roses, 
 
 38 
 
 Crusade, London, 220 
 
 Cryticus, 129 
 
 CUNLIFFE, F. S., 24 
 
 Cvirteis, daughter of Alderman, 
 
 221, 223, 224 
 Cymbeline, 5° ' Cymbeline, vii, 
 
 190, 200, 201 
 
 Daborne, Robert, 226 
 
 Dagonet, Sir, 186 
 
 Dan Davy Dyssymulacyon, 17 
 
 Dance, Morris, 14 
 
 Dansiker, 225 
 
 Danif.l, p. a., 167 
 
 Daniel, Samuel, 36, 37, 76, 139 
 
 Darnley, Henry Stuart, Lord, 40 
 
 Davenport, Robert, 254, 257- 
 260 
 
 David, 128; and Bethsahe, 59 
 
 Davy, 133 
 
 Dawbney, 263, 264 
 
 Day, John, 76, 77, 137, 140, 164, 
 165, 186, 225, 238 
 
 Death, 184 
 
 Death of Robert, Earl of Hunting- 
 ton, 160, 161, 271 
 
 Dtiomfiture de Talbot, 7 
 
 Declaration of egregious Popish 
 Impostw es, 192 
 
 Dekker, Thomas, 55, 124, 137, 
 138, 140, 141, 170, 171, i86, 
 208, 223, 224, 228-231, 238- 
 241, 275 ; Dramatic Works of, 
 230, 241 
 
 Deloney, Thomas, 38, 221 
 
 Demetia, King of, 189. 
 
 Dennis, John, 125 
 
 Deposing of King Richard II., lo^ 
 
 Derby's Company, 54 
 
 Dericke, 41, 42, 123 
 
 Description of England, 33 
 
 Despenser, Hugh Le, 66, 71 
 
 Devonshire, 221, 226 
 
 Devonshire Association, Transac- 
 tions of the, 227 
 
 Devil, the, 184, 189 
 
 "Dew, Signieur," 42 
 
 Dialogues and Dramma's, Pleas- 
 ant, 234 
 
 Diary, Henslowe's,see Henslowe 
 
 Dicke of Devonshire, 226-228 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 124 
 
 Dictionary of National Biography, 
 
 33 
 Dictionary of Plays, 254, 260, 267 
 Didacticism, i:, 4, 8, II, 20, 24 
 Dio Cassius, 189, 201 
 Disguise, 128, 161, 163-165, 274 
 Diverge Humours, Poems of, 138 
 Divisyon, 19 
 
 DoDsLEY, Robert, 46, 160 
 " Dolls " in 2 Henry IV., in Ed- 
 ward I, and Oldcastle, 129 
 Donald, King, 197 
 Douay, English College at, 254 
 Douglas, Archibald, Earl of, 118; 
 
 Sir James, 128 
 DowDEN, Edward, 250, 252, 253 
 Downjall of Robert, Earl of Hunt- 
 ington, 159-162, 271 
 Drake, Sir Francis, 221, 228, 238 
 Drama, the, in its general rela- 
 tions, v, 2-6, 14, 39, 212 
 Dramatic Literatwe, see Collier 
 Dramatic Literature, History of 
 
 English, see Ward 
 Dramatic Poetry and Annals of, 
 the Stage, History of English, 
 see Collier 
 
294 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Dramatic Poets, An Account of the 
 English, 205, 206, 255, 265 
 
 Dramaturgische Vorlesungen, 216 
 
 Drayton, Michael, 36-38, 76, 
 130, 137, 140, 161, 186, 219, 
 220 ; Introduction to, 139 
 
 Drue, Thomas, 255 
 
 Druids, 205 
 
 Drury, William, 254 
 
 Dublin, 207 
 
 Duchess of Suffolk, Life of the, 255, 
 256 
 
 Dudley, Lord Guilford, 231 
 
 Duffe, King, 197 
 
 Duke Humphrey, 76, 260 
 
 Dumb show, 8, 15, 25, 161, 179, 
 231, 235, 2(>g-2Tt 
 
 Dun, Belin, 220 
 
 Dunbar, William, and Works, 6 
 
 Duncan, 40, 197 
 
 Dunkirk, Siege of, 225 
 
 Dunmowe, 160,258; Chronicle of, 
 161 
 
 Dunstan, 18 
 
 Dyce, Alexander, viii, 196, 210 
 
 Early English Prose Romances, 
 158, 221 ; Text Society, Publi- 
 cations of the, 164, 189 
 
 Early Illustrations of Shakespeare 
 and the English Drama, 182 
 
 Edgar, King, 18, 28 ; in Lear, 
 174, 192, 195 
 
 Edmund, Duke of York, 99 ; 
 Earl of Kent, 69, 71, 72 ; Iron- 
 side, 266 ; in Lear, 194-196 
 
 Edward I., 2, 104, 166; Famous 
 Chronicle History of King, 27, 
 SO, 53, 58, 60, 128, 129, 13s ; 
 Edward II., 66, 68, 69-71, 93, 
 96, 103, 107, 272 ; Troublesome 
 
 raigne and lamentable death of, 
 30, 58, 63, 64-74, 91. 93. 96, 
 98, 102, 103, 107, III, 127, 
 139, 208, 274; Edward III., 
 52, 60-62, 95, 129, 153, 155, 
 158 ; as prince, 72, l65 ; Raigne 
 of King, 60-62 ; EDWARD THE 
 Black Prince, 52, 99, 104; 
 Edward IV., 37, 76, 88, 129, 
 143, 144, 146, 147 ; First and 
 Second Part of King, 77, 83, 
 89, 136, 143-152 ; Edward 
 v., 88, 144, 146-151 ; Edward 
 VI., 229; as prince, 242, 243 ; 
 Edward, Prince, in Alphon- 
 sus of Germany, 171 
 
 Edwards, Thomas, 252 
 
 Egerton MS. i8<)4, 98 ; igg4, 266 
 
 Elfnor, 50, 53, 59, 60 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV., 
 37. 92. 93. 146; Tudor, 1,3, 
 7, 15, 16,19,22,26,31,37, 50, 
 52, 109, no, 125, 136, 190, 
 209, 210, 220, 222, 227-231, 
 233-242, 249, 251, 273, 274; 
 Passage of Quene, 7 ; Progresses 
 of Queen, 7, 16, 46, III 
 
 Elizabethan Literature, History of, 
 67 
 
 Elton, O., 139 
 
 Elze, Karl, 247, 249 
 
 Elydure, 177, 178, 187 
 
 Endimion, 26, 1 29 
 
 Engelische Comedien and Trage- 
 dien, 169 
 
 England and English themes, 
 spirit, setting, etc., vi, 8, 19, 
 
 23. 28. 31. 32, 39. SS. 60. 151. 
 166, 170, 171, 190, 220, 226, 
 232, 234, 24s, 246, 251, 272, 
 274 
 
INDEX 
 
 29s 
 
 Englands Elizabeth, 235 ; Her- 
 oicall Epistles, 38, 76, 139, 161 ; 
 Joy, 231-233 
 
 Englische Studien, 57, 201, 203, 
 252 
 
 Englischen Li/teraturi, Geschichte 
 der, 8 
 
 English, see England 
 
 English and Scottish Popular Bal- 
 lads, 9, II, 144, 157, 160; 
 Dramatic Literature, History of, 
 see Ward ; Dramatic Poetry, 
 etc.. History of, see Collier ; 
 Dramatick Poets, An Account 
 of the, 205 ; Fugitives, 256 ; 
 Gamer, 227 ; Literature Illus- 
 trations of Old, 231 ; Stage Since 
 1660, Some Account of the, 257, 
 265, 266 
 
 Epic elements and form, 122, 123, 
 J39> 143. 151. 208, 273 
 
 Erasmus, 212, 256 
 
 Essex, Earl of, 109, no, 238, 
 241 
 
 Essex, villeins' revolt in, 45 
 
 Essai sur r Histoire du Thidtre,"] 
 
 Ethenwald, Prince, 18 
 
 Euphuism, 121 
 
 Euripides, 26 
 
 Every Man Out of His Humour, 
 
 Eyre, Simon, 130 
 
 Fabyan, Robert, 32, 68 
 
 Faery Queene, 192, 240 
 
 Fair Maid of Bristow, 171 ; of 
 
 the West, 226 
 Faire Em, 53, 168, 169 
 Fairies, 166, 168, 239, 240 
 Falconbridge, Thomas, 51, 144, 
 
 145 
 
 False One, 202 
 
 FalstaiT, Sir John, 41, 43, 117, 
 
 118, 124-127, 129-132 
 Famous Victories of Henry V., 40, 
 
 41,42, 123, 125 
 Farcical elements, 20, 68, 123, 
 
 128, 221, 273 
 Fastolfe, Sir John, 127 
 Fates, the three, 271 
 Fatum Vortigerni, 185, 188 
 Fauconbridge, Lady, 163, 164 
 Faukner, 212, 213 
 Faulkonbridge, Philip, 48 
 Faustus, 68 
 Fawconbridge, Lady, 47, 48 ; 
 
 Philip, 46-49 
 Ferabasco, 216 
 Ferrex and Porrex, 1 87 
 Ferrex, 187 
 
 Fidele and Fortunio, 135 
 Fideli, 240, 241 
 Fireworks, 233 
 
 Field, Nathaniel, 126, 127 
 Fisher, Jasper, 205, 206 
 Fitzwaters, Lord, 158, 160, 257 ; 
 
 Matilda, 138, 158, 160, 161, 
 
 257-259 
 Fleay, F. G., viii, 41, 45, 58, 
 
 63. 77. 88, 99, 141, 145, 162, 
 
 165, 168, 169, 171, 176, 177, 
 
 198, 200, 205, 210, 223, 229, 
 
 238, 239, 260 
 Fleetwood, Recorder, 211 
 Fletcher, Giles, 37, 39 ; John, 
 
 2, 20I-204, 249, 252, 253, 256, 
 
 258 
 Flodden, 166, 167 
 Fluellen, 41, 129, 130, 133 
 Folk-lore, 4-6, 11, 163, 166, 174, 
 
 192, 208, 273, 274 
 Fool (in Lear), 174, 192 
 
296 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Ford, John, vii, 2, 261-265, 275 
 Foreign countries, plays set in, 274 
 " Forest element," the, 162 
 FoRMAN, Simon, hi, 200 
 Fortune, the, 55 
 Fortune by Land and Sea, 226 
 FoxE, John, 33, 213, 216, 217, 
 
 France and the French, 7, 52, 60, 
 
 119, 126, 187, 213, 258, 261 
 Franklins, the, 145 
 Fresh Allusions to Shakspere, 127 
 Fressingfield, Margaret, the fair 
 
 maid of, 2, 129, 130 
 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, 
 
 129, 163, 165, 166 
 Frobisher, Sir Martin, 238 
 FuRNESS, H. H., ix, 175, 193 
 Fuimus Troes, The Trve Troi- 
 
 anes, 205, 206 
 
 Gager, William, 26 
 
 Gairdner, Jamks, 9 
 
 Gallian king, 175 
 
 Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of 
 Winchester, 32, 216-218, 229 
 231. 23s. 236, 243 
 
 Gascoigne, George, 15 
 
 Gascoigne, Justice, 41, 43 
 
 Gaveston, Piers, Earl of Corn- 
 wall, 37, 65-68, 71, 138; 
 Legend of, 1 39 
 
 Gehler, v., 2G2 
 
 Genest, J., 257, 265, 266 
 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 20, 24, 
 29, 173, 188; his Histuria Re- 
 gum Britanniae, 25, 185, 187, 
 206 
 
 George a Greene, 129, 152-159, 
 66, 268; History of , 152, 158, 
 268 
 
 Germany, English plays in, 17S 
 
 Geschi, hte der englischen 'Littera- 
 tur, 8 
 
 Ghost of Richard III., 78 
 
 William Gifford, viii 
 
 Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 221 
 
 Globe Theater, 55, 109, 1 91, 250, 
 269 
 
 Gloster, Robert of, 163, 164 
 
 Gloucester, Earl of (in Lear), 
 174, 192, 193, 196; Humphrey, 
 Duke of, 37, 64, 79, 80, 81, 
 83, 84, 103, 165, and Duke, 
 see Duke Humphrey ; Richard, 
 Duke of, see Richard HI.; 
 Thomas of Woodstock, Duke 
 of, 35, 99-108, 128, and see 
 Woodstock 
 
 Goblins, 231 
 
 Godwin, Earl, 52, 170 ' 
 
 Goneril, 191, 194, 195 
 
 Gonorill, 174 
 
 Gorboduc,v\, 19, 20, 24, 30, 51-S3, 
 58, 59, 172, 173. 187, 269, 272 
 
 GossoN, Stephen, 225 
 
 Grafton, Richard, 32, 33, 75, 
 160, 187^ 
 
 Gray, Sir Thomas, 119 
 
 Gray, Lady, 37, 146 
 
 Gray's Inn, 24 
 
 Great Duke of Florence, 250 
 
 Greek choric ode, 94 
 
 Green, J. R., 216 
 
 Gree^ie, Robert, 2, 14, 30, 47, 
 54, 56, 58, 60, 72, 132, 134, 
 13s. 138, 152-159. 166-168, 
 215, 27s ; Works of, 154-156. 
 166 
 
 Greenshield, Brute, 186 
 
 Gresham, Sir Thomas, 20, ai, 
 237 
 
INDEX 
 
 297 
 
 Grey, Lady Jane, 141, 231 
 Grey, Lady Jane, 136, 141, 228 
 Groats-worth of Wit, 1 34, 1 38 
 Grosart, a. B., 40, 57, 154-156, 
 
 166 
 Grumbine, H. C, 187 
 Guenevora, Queen, 24 
 Guiderius, 206 
 Gulls, Isle of, 238 
 Gurney, 69 
 
 Hal, Prince, see Henry V. 
 
 Hallam, R. H., 197 
 
 Halle, Edward, 14, 22, 32, 47, 
 
 76, 80, 91, 212 
 Halliwell Phillipps, J. O., 63, 
 
 64, 98, 99, 250, 254, 260, 266, 
 
 267 
 Hamlet, 97, 194, 197 
 Hampton Court, 206 
 Harbert, Sir William, 38 
 Hardicanute, 15 
 Hardyng, 22, 32 
 Haringfon, Sir John, 22 
 Harleian MS. 146, 40 ; MS. 7368, 
 
 210; Miscellany, 233 
 Harpool, 132 
 Harrison, William, 33 
 Harsnet, Dr., 192 
 Haslewood, Joseph, 22, 135, 138 
 Hathway, Richard, 130, 140, 
 
 186, 221 
 Haughton, William, 140, 159, 
 
 164, 187, 221, 256 
 Hazlitf, W. C, 175, 221 
 Heber MSS., 254 
 Hector of Germany, 205 
 Heine, Heinrich, 193 
 " Henges," 182 
 Hengist, 52, 182, 185 ; King of 
 
 Kent, 182 
 
 Hengo, 202, 204 
 
 Henry I., 221 ; Famous Wars of, 
 170 ; History of, 254 ; and 
 Henry II., 254; Henry II., 
 
 163, 164, 170; Henry III., 
 166; Henry IV., 41, 95, 114- 
 118, 127, 130, see also Boling- 
 broke; 1, 2 Henry IV.,2<), i,\, 
 42, 48, 63, 95, 114, 121, 131, 
 208, 266, 273 ; Henry V., 7, 
 41-43. 50. 61, 63, 109, no, 
 119-122, 125, 126; as prince, 
 II4-II9 ; in Oldcastle, 13C-I33 ; 
 Famous Victories of, 40-45 ; 
 Life of, 30, 39, 41, 61 63, 109, 
 114, 1 19-130, 190, 208, 273; 
 Henry VI., 6, 52, 57, 60, 64, 
 75, 79. 82-84, 89, 144, 165. 275; 
 ixy I, 3 Contention, 63, 65, 83 ; 
 I, 2, 3 Henry VI, 53, 57, 58, 
 60, 64, 75-92, 95, 98, 102, 103, 
 134, 13s. 267, 271 ; Dissertation 
 on the Three Parts of, 58 ; on 
 the Authorship of, 2 and 3, and 
 their Originals, 64, 84 ; Henry 
 VII., 31. 37. 77. 82, 167, 220, 
 263-265 ; Life of, 262 ; Preser- 
 vation of King, 37 ; Henry 
 VIII., 14, 31, 32, 52 i6i, 216- 
 218, 240,242-253; in When 
 You See M- , 219, 243-249; 
 I'amoiis History of, 244, 247- 
 
 253 
 Henslowe, Philip, 54, 55, 59, 
 
 77. 130. 131. 136, 138, 140, 
 
 141, 144, 145, 152, 159, 160, 
 
 164, 165, 167, 169, 171, 174, 
 177-179, 181-1S3, 186, 187, 
 197, 216, 219, 220, 222, 225, 
 228, 229, 238, 243, 256 
 
 Herbert, Sir Henry, 255, 260 
 
298 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Hereford, Humphi^ey de 
 
 BoHUN, Earl of, 52 
 Heresy in Mirour for Magistrates, 
 
 32 
 Heroic drama, 207 
 Hertzberg, W., 250 
 Hexham, 18 ; Battle of, 76 
 Heywood, Thomas, vii, 2, 21, 38, 
 
 39. 77, 13s. 136, 143. 145-152, 
 171, 177, 208, 226, 227, 234- 
 238, 242, 255, 275 ; Dramatic 
 Works of, 236 
 
 HiGDEN, Ralph, 31, i88 
 HiGGiNS, John, 35 
 History as an element in the 
 drama, 20, 23, 28, 30, 31, 36- 
 
 40, 49-51, 53, 73, 77, 102, 
 164-170, 172, 173, 189, 209, 
 210, 236, 239, 253, 254, 272- 
 275 ; i" general literature, 32- 
 40 ; Elizabethan conception of, 
 50, 172, 173 
 
 History of English Dramatic Lit- 
 erature, etc., see Dramatic fit- 
 erature, etc. 
 
 Hock Tuesday Play, 6, 15, 16, 28, 
 272 
 
 Hoffman, 138, 161 
 
 HoLiNSHED, Ralph, 33, 34, 42, 
 45. 47. 68, 75, 80, 81, 91, 144, 
 145, 160, 184, 187, 189, 193, 
 197, 200, 201, 203, 244 
 
 Hood, Robin, see Robin 
 Hood 
 
 Hooker, J., 34 
 
 Horsa, 187 
 
 Horseplay, 123, 128, 273 
 
 Hotspur, 41, IIS, "6, 1 18 
 
 Hughes, Thomas, 27 
 
 Hundred Years' War, 7 
 
 HuNNis, William, 40 
 
 Huntington, Death of Robert, Ban 
 of, 160-162 ; Downfall of 
 Robert, Earl of, 159-162 ; Die 
 Quellen des Dramas, the Down- 
 fall and Death of 161 
 
 Huntington, Earl of, 158-160, 163 
 
 Huntley, Earl of, 262 
 
 Idea, 139 
 
 Ideal element, 275 
 
 If You Know Not Me You K'now 
 
 Nobody, 2i, 136, 209, 234- 
 
 239. 242, 270 
 Illustrations of Old English 
 
 Literature, 231 
 Illustrations of Shakespeare, etc., 
 
 182 
 Imogen, 61, 206 
 Injury, 19 
 Inner Temple, 46 
 Innocent III., 17 
 Inns of Court, 19, 24, 25, 27, 
 
 54 
 
 Inn yard, the, and the Elizabethan 
 stage, 267 
 
 Insurrection (character), 161, 270; 
 of apprentices, 45 ; against for- 
 eigners, 211 
 
 Interludes, 4, 123, 153 
 
 Iphigenias, the, 26 
 
 Ireland, 66, 167, 222, 223, 232, 
 261, 266 
 
 Ireland, Duke of, 222 
 
 Isabella (wife of Edward II.), 
 
 67. 69, 71-73. 102. 103 
 Isle of Gulls, 238 
 Italy, and Italian influence, v, vi, 
 
 21, 173, 225, 261, 274 
 
 Jack Strawe, Life and Death of, 
 40, 45, 108, HI, 128 
 
INDEX 
 
 299 
 
 Jacob, T. E., 216 
 
 Jacobs, Joseph, 171 
 
 Jahrbuch der d'Utschen Shake- 
 speare-Geselhchaft, see Shake- 
 speare 
 
 James (a Scottish King), 155 ; 
 James I., i, 34.37.38,52, no, 
 196, 205, 254, 273 ; James 
 IV., 56, 167, 262 ; Scottish His- 
 toric of, 30, 53, 56, 72, 166- 
 169 
 
 Jamy, 130, 133 
 
 Jesuits, 232, 239 
 
 Jew of Malta, 221 
 
 Joan Go-too-t, 184, 189; Joan of 
 Arc, 53, 127 
 
 John, King, vii, 17, 47-49, 52, 
 257-259, 270; as prince,i58, 160, 
 163, 164; Kynge Johan, 16, 19, 
 28 ; Troublesome Raigne of, 4a- 
 
 5°. 53. 57. 60, 63, 273; Life 
 
 and Death of, 47, 258, 260; 
 and Matilda, 257-260 ; John, 
 Prince (son of Henry IV.), 
 117; John of Gaunt, 52, iii, 
 220 
 
 John a Kent and John a Cumber, 
 136, 164, 165, 268 
 
 John, Little, 157 
 
 John of Wrotham, Sir, 129, 132, 
 
 133 
 Johnson, Dr. Samuel and Works, 
 
 251, 252 
 Jolly Pinder of Wakefield, 157 
 JoNsoN, Ben, 77, 135, 141, 142, 
 
 162, 163, 170, 231, 266, 275 ; 
 
 Study of, 163 
 Journalism, 226 
 Junius, 202 
 Justice, 19 
 JUVENAL, 207 
 
 Katharine, queen of Henry V. , 
 37, 42; queen of Henry VIII., 
 14, 243, 251 ; Gordon, 262 
 
 Keller, W., 99, 102 
 
 Kemp, Thomas, 17, 196 
 
 Kenilworth, 15 
 
 Kendall, Earl of, 153, 154 
 
 Kent, villeins' revolt in, 45 
 
 Kent, Earl of (in Lear), 177; Ed- 
 mund, Earl of, 69, 71, 72 
 
 ICind-Harts Dreamc, 138 
 
 King Edward I., etc., see Ed- 
 ward I., etc. 
 
 King of S: ots. Tragedy of the, 40, 
 
 155 
 King's Company, 254 
 Kirk, John, 260 
 KiRKMAN, Francis, 183 
 Knack to Know a Knave, 17-19, 28 
 Knack to Know an Honest Man, 
 
 18 
 Kocniges Sohn aufs Engellandi, 
 
 169 
 Koeppel, E. , 171 
 Kritische Schriften, l68, 170, 184 
 Kyd, Thomas, 56, 57 
 Kynge Johan, 16, 19, 28 
 
 Lacey, Henry, 21, 23 
 Lamb, CHARLES,viii, 151, 256, 257 
 Lamuarde, William, iio 
 Lancaster, House of, 7, 64, 75- 
 78, 88, 139, 144, 271 ; Edmund, 
 Earl of, 66 ; John of Gaunt, 
 Duke of, 52, 99, iii, 220 
 Laneham, Robert, 15, 16 
 Langbaine, William, 205, 206, 
 
 255, 265 
 Langtov, Stephen, 17 
 Lansdowne MS. 723, 185 
 LaPoole, 104-108 
 
300 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lateinischen Universitaeis-Dra- 
 men Englands, Die, 185 
 
 Latimer, Hugh, Bishop of Wor- 
 cester, 256 
 
 Latin plays, 20, 23, 26, 53, 77, 91 
 
 Lear, King, 2, 52, 174, 191-193. 
 194 ; Tragedie of, 2, 30, 52. 
 17s. 190-197. 208 
 
 Lee, Jane, 64, 84 
 
 Lee, Sidney, 33, 252 
 
 Legendary themes, 20, 30-32, 35, 
 37, S3. 141. 163, 172-207. 209, 
 239, 268, 272, 274 
 
 Legend of Piers Caveston, ^2,9''"/ 
 Robert Duke of Normandy, 139 
 
 Legge, Thomas, 21-23, 53, 77. 
 91 
 
 Leicester, Earl of, 240 
 
 Leir, King, 174, 175, 177; True 
 Chronicle History of, 30, 57, 
 174-177, 186, 191 
 
 Leire Kinge of England, 191 
 
 Leonhardt, B., 201, 203 
 
 Life, Art and, 67 
 
 Life and Death of Jack Strawe, 
 etc., set Jack Strawe, etc. 
 
 Life of Henry VII., etc., see 
 Henry VII., etc. 
 
 Lightfoot, 107 
 
 Literature, History of Eliza- 
 bethan, 67 ; History of English 
 Dramatic, see Ward ; Hand- 
 book of 221 ; Illustrations of 
 Old, 231 
 
 Litterarhistorische Forschungen, 
 187 
 
 Litteratur, Geschichte der engli- 
 schen, 8 
 
 LiVY. 206 
 
 Llevellyn, 50 
 
 Lochaber, 196 
 
 Locrine, 25, 27, 30, 53, 57, 60, 
 128, 129, 172, 173, 187, 271, 
 
 273, 274 
 Lodge, Thomas, 22, 47, 54, 57, 
 
 58, 60, 139, 176, 21S, 220 
 Lollardry, 127 
 Lombards, the, 214 
 London, 144, 145, 151, 186, 220, 
 
 223. 237 
 "Long shankes," the play of, 
 
 59 
 Look About You, 163, 164 
 Lopez, Dr. Roderigo, 239 
 Lord Cromwell, etc., see Cromwell, 
 
 etc. 
 Lorell, 163 
 Lovell, 147 
 Lovesick King, 169 
 Love' s Labour'' s Lost, 129 
 Lowell, J. R., ix 
 Lud, King, 178 
 Lutterworth Christmas Play, 9 
 Lydgate, Thomas, 31. 34 
 Lyly, John, 26, 56, 59, 167 
 Lynusay, David, 19 
 Lytel Trelys of the Byrth and 
 
 Prophecyes of Merlin, 188 
 
 Macbeth, vii, 2. 40, 96, 197-200, 
 209 ; Tragedy of, 2, 96, 97, 190, 
 194, 196-200, 208, 209, 268, 
 274 ; Lady, 95, 96, 199 
 Macdobeth, 196 
 MacEvans, Hugh, 130 
 Mad Folk of Shakespeare, 199 
 Mador, King of Britain, 205, 
 
 260 
 Madrid, 222, 223 
 Magdalen College, 205 
 Mak the Sheep-Stealer, 4 
 Malcolm, King of Scots, 197 
 
INDEX 
 
 301 
 
 Malfi, Duchess of, 255 
 Malone, Edmund, viii, 58, 179 
 Mandeville, Si" John, 225 
 Manly, J- M., 11, 13 
 Mannering, Sir Nicholas, 153, 154, 
 
 159 
 March, Earl of, see Mortimer 
 Marcaret (queen of Henry VI. ), 
 
 6, 86, 87, 92, 93 ; (queen of 
 
 James IV,), 6 
 Margaret of Fressingfield, 2, 72, 
 
 129, 130 
 Marian, Maid, 157, 158, 163 
 Market folk in tVoodstoci, 128 
 Marlowe, Christopher, 2, 22, 
 
 3°, 44, 47. 48. 53. 54. 57. 58. 
 60, 62, 63, 75, 83, 84, 91, 93- 
 97. 103, 107, III, 112, 134, 
 135, >39, 142, 167, 208, 21S, 
 265, 274, 275 
 
 Marshall Osric, I'll 
 
 Martyrolo^'y, 255 
 
 Mary (Tudor),34, 217,228, 229, 
 230, 23s, 237, 255, 270; Queen 
 OF Scots, 238, 240, 273 
 
 Masque, S4, 179. 270 
 
 Masque of Augures, 231 
 
 Massinger, Philip, 252, 256 
 
 Matilda, 37, and see Eitzwaters, 
 Matilda 
 
 Matrevis, 69 
 
 Matthew of Paris, 33 ; of West- 
 minster, 33 
 
 Maudlin, 163 
 
 'Mayday, il!,' 21 1 
 
 May day games, Robyn Hoode 
 played at, 13 
 
 May, Lord, 162 
 
 Mayor, Lord, 51 
 
 Mayor of Queenborough, 140, 181- 
 183, 185, 186, 1S8 
 
 McLaughlin, E. T,, 72, 73 
 
 Mead, W, E,, 189 
 
 Measure for Me ^sure, 62 
 
 Medina, Duke of, 238 
 
 Melodrama, 168 
 
 Memo7'ials of Great Britain and 
 
 Ireland, 188 
 Men of Gotham, 17 
 Mercury, 205 
 
 Meres, Francis, 135, 138 
 Merivale, Charles, 189 
 Merlin, 173, 184, 185, 188, 189, 
 
 271 ; and see Birth and Byrth 
 
 of Merlin 
 Merrick, Sir Gilley, 108, 109 
 Merry Devil of Edmonton, 1 65 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, 1 25, 1 30 
 Metropolis Coronata, 1 62 
 Middleton, Thomas, 140, 141, 
 
 164, 181, 185, 1S8, 198, 224, 
 
 256 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, 16, 
 
 163, 271 
 Miles gloriosus, 129 ; bet Shake- 
 speare, 129 
 Miracle plays, 272 
 Mirour for Magistrates, 32, 34- 
 
 36, 38. 76, 98, 112-114. 192 
 Misfortunes of Arthur, 24, 53, 59, 
 
 172, 187, 269, 272 
 Modern Language Notes, 182 
 Momford, Lord, 164 
 Moors, 222 
 
 Moralities, 4, 8, 21, 28, 272 
 Mordred, 24 
 More, Sik Thomas, 21, 76, 91, 
 
 144, 212, 215, 242,268; Play 
 
 on, 210-215, 218, 223 ; Life of, 
 
 212 
 Morgan, 179 
 Morion, 179 
 
302 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Morocco, 221, 223 
 
 Morris dance, 14 
 
 Mors, 254 
 
 Morte Dartkur, 31 
 
 Mortimer, Edmund, Earl of 
 
 March, 41 ; Roger, 35, 65 ; 
 
 Roger, Earl of March, 35, 65, 
 
 69, 7«-73. 103. I" 
 Mortimer his Fall, 141, 142, 
 
 27s 
 
 Mortimeriados, see Barons War- 
 res 
 
 " Mortymore," 141 
 
 MosLEY, H., 260 
 
 Moth, 129 
 
 MouNTjOY, Lord, 232 
 
 Mowbray, Thomas, Duke of 
 Norfolk, 108, 126 
 
 Much, 155 
 
 Muenchener Beitraege, 1 71 
 
 Mulmtitius Donwalluw, 1 86 
 
 Mumford, 17 5 
 
 Mummings, 152 
 
 MuNDAY, Anthony, 14, 130, 
 13S-137, IS9. 161, 162, 164, 
 
 165, 219, 257, 258, 271, 275 
 Mychell, J., 33 
 
 Myslire du siige d' Orleans, 7 ; 
 
 MysUre patriotique, 7 
 Mysteries, 4 
 Mysticism in the Whore of Babylon, 
 
 ' 239 
 
 Mythic themes and elements, 20, 
 
 30-32, 3S> 37, S3. 141, 172-207, 
 
 209, 272, 274 
 Nashe, Thomas, 40, 95, 154; 
 
 Works of, 40 
 National spirit in the historical 
 
 drama, 8, 28, 31,32,39.151. 
 
 166, 170, 171, 190, 226, 234, 
 24s. 246, 251, 272, 274 
 
 " Natmre," Poet and the, 151 
 
 Neath, Abbey of, 69 
 
 Nennius, Historia Britonum, 
 
 187 
 Newington Butts, the theater at, 
 
 55. 137 
 
 NiccoLS, Richard, 36 
 
 Nichols, J., 7, 16, 46, iii 
 
 Nimble, 128 
 
 Nine Daies Wonder, 196 
 
 Nobelyte, 17 
 
 Nobody, 178 
 
 Nobody and Somebody, 19, 177, 
 178, 187 
 
 Norfolk, Thomas Mowbray, 
 Duke of, 108, 126 
 
 Norfolkshire, 164 
 
 Normandy, 137 ; Robert, Duke 
 OF, 138, 139 
 
 Normans, 2, 220 
 
 Northumberland, Henry Per- 
 cy, Earl of, 41 ; JOHN DUDLEY, 
 Earl of, 229 
 
 Norton, Thomas, 20, 187 
 
 Notes and Queries, 211, 215 
 
 Nottingham, 11 
 
 Nottinghamshire, 163 
 
 Novelle (of Bandello), 216 
 
 Nym, 124, 129 
 
 Oberon, 240 
 
 Oboram, 166 
 
 Observations on Shakespeare's 
 Plays, General, 252 
 
 Ode, choric, 94 
 
 CEdifus, 24 
 
 Old English Dramas, 216 ; Liter- 
 ature, Illustrations of, 231 ; 
 Plays [B\A\en), 227, 257,258, 
 267 ; Plays (Dodsley), 46, 160 
 
 Old Forlunatus, 137, 163, 170 
 
INDEX 
 
 303 
 
 Oldcastle, Sir John, Lord 
 
 Cobham, 37, 39, 125-127, 133 ; 
 
 Life and Death of, 39, 129-133, 
 
 136, 140, 154 
 Orlando Furioso, 166 
 Orleans, 267 
 Osric, 128 
 OSTORIUS, 189 
 Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 
 
 63, 250; of the Legend of Merlin, 
 
 189 
 Overthrow of the Rebels, 229 
 Owen Tudor, 136 
 Oxford, 26, 196, 205 
 Oxfordihire St. George Play, 9 
 
 Pageant and pageantry, 6, 28, 46, 
 
 231; Pageants, Dissertation on, 
 
 6 
 Painter, William, 61, 171 
 PalcEstra, 91 
 
 Falgrave's company, 254, 255 
 Palace of Pleasure, 61, 171 
 Palladis Tamia, 135, 138 
 Pamphlets, 222, 226 
 Pandulf, Cardinal, 259 
 Paphlagonian King and his sons, 
 
 192 
 Papplewicke, Witch of, 163 
 Parker, Matthew, Archbishop 
 
 of Canterbury, 33 
 Parr, Katharine, 14, 243, 251 
 Parry, William, 238, 239 
 Parsons, Robert, 127 
 Parthenophil, 240 
 Passage of . . . Quene Elizabeth, 7 
 Paston, Sir John, 8, 10 ; Paston 
 
 Letters and papers, 9, 10 
 Pastoral elements and the drama, 
 
 162, 163; Pastoral Influences in 
 
 the English Drama, 162 
 
 Patriotic feeling displayed in the 
 drama, 8, 28, 31, 32, 39, 151, 
 166, 170, 171, 190, 226, 234, 
 245, 246, 251, 272, 274 
 
 Peace, 270 
 
 Peeke, Richard, 227 
 
 Peele, George, 22, 25-27, 54, 
 58, 59, 60, 128, 13s, 222, 223 ; 
 works of, 60 ; James,-25 
 
 Pembroke's Company, 54, 88 
 
 Penniman, J. H., 135 
 
 Percy, Lord and Lady, 41, 115, 
 116, 118 
 
 Percy and Douglas, 32 
 
 Perillus, 177 
 
 Perkin Warbeck, 262-265 ; 
 Chronicle Historie of, 261-265, 
 275 ; Verhaeltnis von Ford's, 
 zu Bacons Henry VIL, 262 
 
 Persia, 225 
 
 Petilius, 202, 204 
 
 Fhalaris, 22 
 
 Philarchus, 18 
 
 Philicia, Z06 
 
 Philip IL, 140, 228-230, 235, 
 236, 240, 270 
 
 Philips, Augustine, 109 
 
 Pickland, 206 
 
 Pierce, Alice, 220 
 
 Pierce Penilesse His Supplication, 
 40 
 
 Piers Plowman, 18 
 
 Piers Plowman, 164 
 
 Finder of Wakefield, Jolly, 157 
 
 Pinner of Wakefield, 14, 129, 132, 
 154, 210 
 
 Piracy, 222, 225, 226 
 
 Pistol, 42, 43, 124, 129 
 
 Plain Dealing, 239 
 
 Plantation of Virginia, 226 
 
 Play within the play, 271 
 
304 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Plymouth, 226 
 
 Pleasant Dia agues and Dramma! s, 
 
 234 
 
 Poems of Diverse Humours, 138 
 
 Poenius, 202, 204 
 
 Poetry, 151, 275 
 
 Poins, Ned, 43, 117 
 
 Political motivation, 19, 240, 273 
 
 Polychronicon, 31, 188 
 
 Pope Innocent III., 17 
 
 Popularity of, and popular themes 
 in, the Chronicle Play, 31, 54, 
 56, 59, 143. 274, 275 
 
 Porrex, 187 
 
 Porter, Henry, 140 
 
 Potter in Robin Hood, the, 13 
 
 Presenter in Valiant Welshman, 179 
 
 Priest, 18 
 
 Prince's Company, 221, 239 
 
 Proescholdt, L., 62 
 
 Properties, stage, 268 
 
 Prophesie of Cadwallader, 38 
 
 Protestantism, 251, 255 
 
 Pseudo-historical themes, 166, 168- 
 170, 174, 189, 208, 274 
 
 Publications of the Shakespeare So- 
 ciety, see Shakespeare Society, 
 and New Shakspere Society 
 
 Puck-hairy, 163 
 
 Puritanism, 239, 240 
 
 Queen's Company, 41, 47, 54, 56, 
 
 88, 99, 239 
 Queen's reception at Aberdeen, 6 
 Quell n des weltlichen dramas in 
 
 England vor Shakespeare, 19 
 Quellen-studien zu den Dramen 
 
 Ben Jonson's, 171 
 Quickly, Mistress, 124 
 
 Ragan, 176 
 
 Raids of 1318 on the border, 66 
 Raigne of King Edward the Third, 
 
 60-62 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 221 
 Ralph Roister Doister, 129 
 Randall, Earl of Chester, 141, 164 
 Rankins, Willam, 140, 186 
 Rarest Books, Bibliographical Ac- 
 count of the, 231, 232 
 Raymundus of Toulouse, 17 
 Readins;, Thomas of, 221 
 Realism, 5, 20, 21, 28, 124, 163, 
 
 170, 243, 275 
 Rebels, Overthrow of the, 229 
 Regan, 191, 194, 19S 
 Remaines, Camden's, 192 
 Remarks on Shakespeare, 252 ; on 
 Some Characters of Shakespeare, 
 199 
 Religious motivation, 28, 207, 240 
 Reliquiae Wottoniance, 250 
 Retrospeciive Review, 257 
 Revenge, tragedy of, 92 
 Rialto. 20 
 
 Richard I., 46, 48, 52, 158. 163, 
 164, 171, 259; as prince, J63, 
 164; Richard II., 52, 96, 9^, 
 99, 101-103, no, 107, 109, 114, 
 118, 128, 271; A Tragedy of 
 King, see Woodstock; Deposing 
 of, 108, 109 ; Tragedy of, 99- 
 108,128; Richard III., 21-23, 
 35. 37. 50. 52, 75. 77. 78, 82, 
 83. 89, 90, 92-97, 141, 142, 
 146, 147, 254, 272 ; Life of 76, 
 144; {^Richardus Tertius), 21, 
 23, 272, [Ricardus Tertius), 21; 
 ( True Tragedy of Richard Duke 
 of York), 64 and see 2 Conten- 
 tion ; True Tragedy of, 57. 
 88-92, 143, 147 ; Tragedy of. 
 
INDEX 
 
 305 
 
 63, 83, 88, 92-98, 107, III, 
 128, 147, 267, 274, 276; His- 
 ing to thi Crown of, },<)•, {^Richard 
 Crookback), 77, 141; Ghost of, 
 78 ; or the English Prophet, 
 TJ, 254 ; up to Shakespeare, 22 
 
 Richard, Duke of York, 147- 
 96 151 ; of Cornwall, 171 
 
 Richmond, Henry, Earl of, 
 see Henry VII. 
 
 Rickets, J., 20 
 
 "Riding against Queen Mar- 
 garet," 6 
 
 RiDi.EY, Nicholas, Bishop of 
 Rochester, 256 
 
 Rising of Cardinal Wolsey, 136, 
 219 
 
 RoBEKT, Duke of Normandy, 37 ; 
 Legend of, 139 ; Robert, II., 
 of Scotland, 141, 170 ; Robert, 
 Earl of Huntington, 14, 136, 
 137, 171, 257, 270 
 
 "Roben hoodes penerthes," 159 
 
 Robin Hood, 6, 9, 15, 28, 128, 
 15s. IS7, 158, 160, 162-164, 
 166, 272 ; and Little John, 159 ; 
 early plays on, 6, 9-15 
 
 Rochester, Bishop of, 132 
 
 Roderick, R., 252 
 
 Rollano, 206 
 
 Roman Catholic Church, 222, 240, 
 251, 258, 273. 
 
 Romantic drama and elements, i, 
 
 S. 32, S3. 54, 157. 158, 171- 
 
 173, 207, 226, 254, 260, 273- 
 
 27s 
 Romances, Catalogue of, 161 ; 
 
 Early English Prose, 221 
 Romans, 202-204, 206 
 Romans Under the Empire, History 
 
 of the, 189 
 21 
 
 Rome, 52, 773, 180, 181, 203, 
 222, 240, 251, 258, 273 
 
 Romeo, 175 ; and Juliet, 197 
 
 Ronixa, 185, i86 
 
 Roper, Edward, 212 
 
 Rosalynde, 1 76 
 
 Rose, the, 55, 165, 179 
 
 Roses, Wars of the, 27, 31, 75-78, 
 142 
 
 Rowen, 185, 186 
 
 Rowley, Samuel, 77 ; William, 
 140, 141, 183-185, 219, 225, 
 226, 242-250, 254, 256, 27s 
 
 Royal Exchange, 210, 234, 237 
 
 Royal Kin^ and Loyal Subject, 171 
 
 Roxena, 185, 186 
 
 RnCKDESCHEL, A., 161 
 
 Russia, 225 
 
 Sackville, Thomas, 20, 27, 35, 
 
 173. 187 
 Sad Shepherd, 162, 163 
 St. Brice, massacre of, 15 
 St. Edward, 6 
 St. George and St. George plays 
 
 and pageants, 6-10, 14, 28, 205, 
 
 272 
 ■SV. George for England, 250 
 St, Patrick for Ireland, 207 
 Saints' plays, 272 ; see also St. 
 
 George, III 
 Saintsbury, George, 67 
 Salisbury, Earl of, 267 ; Lady, 61, 
 
 94 ; Salisbury Plain, 260 
 Sanclus Edwardus Confessor, 254 
 Sands, Dr., 256 
 Sapho and Phao, 129 
 Satire and satiric elements, 17, 
 
 19. 23. 54, 55. 169. 239, 274 
 S'atiromastix, 55, 137, I70> 240 
 Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, 19 
 Saxons, 2, 28, 183, 186, 206 
 
306 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Scarlet, 155, 157 
 
 Scenery and scenic devices, 122, 
 268, 271, 272 y. 
 
 School of Abuse, 225 
 
 SCHLEGEL, F., 215 
 
 School of Sha&sjiere, 168, 178, 
 223 
 
 Scillaes Metamorphosis, S7 
 
 Scotland and the Scotch, 52, 61 
 66, 167, 203, 232 
 
 Scottish Historic of James the 
 fourth, 30, S3, 56, 72, 166-169 
 
 Scroop, 119 
 
 Septenary, use of, 45 
 
 Selimus, 57 
 
 Seneca, influence of, 2, 4, 19, 20, 
 22-25, 27. 28. 30. 53- 54, 90. 
 128, 147, 186, 205, 254, 272, 
 273 ; Influence of, on Eliza- 
 bethan Tragedy, 24. 
 
 Serule, 169. 
 
 Seven Champions of Christendom, 
 260 
 
 Seymour, Jane, 243 
 
 Shafton, Sir Percie, I2i 
 
 Shakespeare, William, impor- 
 tance of the Chronicle Play 
 in the work of, 2 ; Lear of, 
 2, 30, 52, 175, 190-197, 208; 
 Macbeth of, 2, 96, 97, I90, 194, 
 196-200, 208, 209 ; Midsum. 
 mer Nighfs Dream of, 16, 
 163, 172 ; Locrine attributed to, 
 25 ; plays of, as types, 30 ; 
 Henry IV. of, 39, 41, 42, 48, 
 63, 95, '14-119, 121-131, 208, 
 266, 273 ; Henry V. of, 30, 
 39, 41, 61, 63, 109, 114, IIS, 
 119-130, 190, 208, 273; King 
 John of, 47, 258, 2S9 ; elevation 
 of the Chronicle Play by, 53, 60, 
 
 63, 75, 98, 123, 134, "3, 208, 
 2S8, 273 ; Henry VI. of, 53, 57, 
 58, 60, 64, 7S-92, 95, 98, 102, 
 103, 134, 135, 267, 271 ; the 
 company of, 55 ! Edward III, 
 and, 60, 61 ; development of, in 
 the Chronicle Play, 63, 95-97, 
 III, 123, 124; Richard II. of, 
 63, 65, 66, 96, 98, 107-11S, 128, 
 208, 271 ; Richard III. of, 63, 
 83, 88, 92-98, 107, III, 128, 
 147, 267, 274 ; relation of, to 
 Marlowe, 75, 94-97, '", 134, 
 142 ; use of dramatic contrast of 
 character by, 96, 115; Hamlet 
 of, 97, 194, 197 ; use of the epic 
 type of Chronicle Play by, 123, 
 259 ; the Dickens of his age, 
 1 24 ; the Merry Wives of Wind- 
 sor oi, 125, 130; Oldcastle ani, 
 130; Greene and, 134, 138 ; 
 Richard Hathway perhaps a 
 relative of, 140 ; Heywood, a 
 prose, 151 ; As You Like It, 
 1 68 ; Eair Em ascribed to, 
 168 ; Leir a source of the Lear 
 of, 174, 177; Birth of Mc'lin 
 ascribed to, 183, 184 ; Titus 
 Andronicus of, 185 ; Cymbeline 
 of, 190, 200, 201 ; Furness on 
 the sources of, 193 ; Thomas, 
 Lord Cromwell asctihti to, 215 ; 
 seeming comment of, on Row- 
 ley, 244; Henry VII f., 244, 
 247-253 ; and Davenport com- 
 pared, 260 ; Ford and, 265 ; 
 the most successful writer of 
 chronicle plays, 275 ; ideal qual- 
 ity and poetry of the chronicle 
 plays of, 275 
 Shakespeare, Variorum edition of, 
 
INDEX 
 
 307 
 
 193, 196; Early Illustrations of, 
 and the English Drama, 182 ; 
 Fresh Allusions to, 127 ; Shake- 
 speare- Gesellscha/t, Jahrbuch der 
 deutschen, 21, 99, 102, 103, 107, 
 108, 128, 129, 185, 249 ; in Ger- 
 many, 170, 178; Life of, 
 (Fleay) 58, 63, 198, 200 ; ( Hal- 
 liwell-Phillipps) 63, 250; (Lee) 
 252 ; Miles Gloriosus bei, 129 ; 
 Outlines of the Life of, 63, 250 ; 
 Hemarks on, 252 ; Remarks on 
 Some Characters of, 199 ; Jiieh- 
 ard the Third up to, 22, 91 
 
 Shakespeare Society, various pub- 
 lications of, 41, 77, 182, 213, 
 234, 266 
 
 Shakespeare' s dramatische Kunst, 
 25 ; Library, 175, 177 ; Plays, 
 General Observations on, 252 ; 
 Vorschule, 1 84 
 
 Shakspere Society, various publica- 
 tions of the, 64, III, 127, 200 
 
 Shakspere Allusion Books, 138 ! 
 his Mind and Art, 252, 253 ; 
 Primer, 250, 253 ; School of, 
 168, 178, 223 
 
 Shakspere' s Predecessors, 57 
 
 Shallow, Justice, 186 
 
 Sharp, Thomas, 6, 9 
 
 Shaw, Dr., 147 
 
 Shedd, W. G. I., 194 
 
 Sheriff of Nottingham, 11-13 
 
 Sherwood, 160, 162, 271 
 
 Shirley, James, 160, 162 
 
 Shirleys, the, 225 
 
 Shomakers Holiday, 130, 170 
 
 Shore, Jane, 2, 51, 76, 88, 144- 
 147, 151; Matthew, 144-146 
 
 Shores Wife, 39, 77 
 
 SiGlSMUND, Emperor, 7 
 
 Sibyls, 196 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 32, 139, 192 
 Siege of Dunkirk, 225 
 Siege of London, 144 
 SiMNEL, LaMBLRT, 220 
 Simon (the mayor of Queen- 
 borough), 130 ; (the tanner) 
 
 183 
 Simpson, Richard, 168, 178, 211, 
 
 214, 215, 223 
 
 Sir John Oldcastle, 39, 129-133, 
 
 136, 140, IS4 
 Sir Thomas More, 210-215, 218, 
 
 223 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt, 137, 141, 228- 
 
 231. 23s 
 Six Clothiers of the West, 221 
 Six Yeomen of the West, 221 
 Skelton, John, 161 
 Skink, 163, 164 
 Smith, Homer, 162 
 Smith, Wentworth, 140, 205, 
 
 215, 216, 221 
 
 Smith, William, 140, 177, 205 
 Some Account of the English Stage 
 
 since 1660, 257, 265, 266 
 Southampton, Earl of, iio 
 Spain and the Spanish, 213, 220, 
 
 222, 224, 227, 232, 234, 239, 
 
 240, 261, 273 
 Spanish Tragedy, 25 
 Specimens of English Dramatic 
 
 Poets, 151, 256, 257 
 Spedding, James, 215 
 Speed, John, 206 
 Spencer, see Despenser 
 Spenser, Edmund, 66, 139, 192, 
 
 240 
 Spenser Society's Publications, 
 
 139. 232 
 Spirits, raising of, 184 
 
3o8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Stage, structure of the Elizabethan, 
 
 267 ; History of the, 41 ; Some 
 
 Account of the English, since 
 
 1660, 257, 265, 266 
 Stanihurst, Richard, 34 
 Stationers^ Company, Register of 
 
 the, 159, 165, 191, 192, 205 260 
 Stenographic report used, 234 
 Stephen, 52; History of King, 
 
 260 
 "Stewtly," 222 
 Slonehenge, 206 
 Storm in Lear, 1 74 
 Storojenko, J. M., 167 
 Stow, John, 33, 34, 68, 75, 102, 
 
 161, 187 
 Stratford, 252 
 Stroud, Old, 164 
 Strumbo, 27, 128, 129 
 Study of Ben Jonson, 163 
 Stukeley, Captain Thomas, Life 
 
 and Death of, 209, 210, 221- 
 
 224, 237 
 Suckling, Sir John, 231 
 Suetonius, 204 
 Suffolk, Duke of, 64, 86, 87 
 Suffolk, Life of the Duchess of, 
 
 2SS. 256 
 Summers, Will, 243-248, 250 
 Supernatural elements, 163, 165, 
 
 170, 184, 203, 239, 268, 274; 
 
 compare Legendary elements. 
 
 Mythical elements 
 Surrey, Earl of, 212 
 Sussex' Company, 55, 56, 174, 
 
 178 
 SWAEN, A. E. H., 226 
 Swan, 231 
 
 Swart, Martin, 220 
 Swinburne, A.C, 162 
 Symonds, J. A., 57, 162 
 
 Tableaux, 269, 271 
 
 Tacitus, 189, 20I 
 
 Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, 39, 
 
 52, 94, 95, 127 ; Diccomfiture 
 
 de, 7 
 Tale of Troy, 27 
 Tamburlaine, 46, 59, 67, 93 
 Tamora, 185 
 
 Tanner of Tamworth, 51, 129 
 Tarlton, Richard, 27, 42, 56 ; 
 
 Tarlton's Jests, 41 
 Tavistock, 226 
 Taylor, William, 38, 232 
 Tearsheet, Doll, 117, 129 
 Temple Dramatists, 57 
 Temple Garden, 94, 271 
 Ten Brink, Bernhard, 8 
 Tennis balls, gift of, 42 
 Theaters, 51, 54, 55, 137 
 TTiiStre, Essai sur I'Histoire du, 
 
 7 
 Theiais, 20 
 Thersites, 129 
 Theseus, 163 
 Thomas of Reading, 221 
 Thomas of Walsingham, 33 
 Thomas of Woodstock, Duke 
 
 of Gloucester, 35, 98-108 
 Thoms, W. J., 221 
 Three English Brothers, 225, 226 
 Three Conversations, 1 27 
 Three Ladies of London, 138 
 Three to One, 226 
 Thunder in Locrine, 271 
 TiECK, LuDWiG, 168, 170, 183 
 TiLNEY, Edward, 210, 218 
 Titania, 163, 239, 241 
 Titus Adronicus, 185 
 Tragedy, and tragic elements and 
 
 types, etc., 54, 56-74, 92, 100, 
 
 122, 142, 208, 209, 274, 275 
 
INDEX 
 
 309 
 
 Tragedy of Richard III., etc., see 
 
 Richard III. , etc. 
 Tragadiographus, 138 
 Transactions of the Devonshire 
 Association, 227, see Devon- 
 shire Association, etc. 
 Travailes of The Three English 
 Brothers, 225 
 
 Travel and adventure, plays deal- 
 ing with, S, SI, 208, 224-228, 
 274 
 
 Treason, whistling, 128 
 
 Trevisa, John de, 188 
 
 Troublesome Raigne, etc. , see John, 
 Troublesome Raigne of, etc. 
 
 Troia Britanica, 38 
 
 Troy, Tale of, 27 
 
 Trumpart, 128 
 
 True and truth in Prologue to 
 Henry VIII., 249 
 
 Truth's Supplication to Candle- 
 ' light, 238 
 
 Tuck, Friar, 13, l6l 
 
 Tudor dynasty, 75 
 
 Tudor, Owen, 37, 52, 136, 220 ; 
 Owen, 136 
 
 Tumbling verse, 19, 45 
 
 Turks, 225 
 
 Two Angry Women of Abington, 
 140 
 
 Two Maids of Moreclacke, 179 
 
 Tyler, John, 45 
 
 Tyrell, 146, 149-151 
 
 Ulrici, Hermann, 25, 215 
 Union of the . . . families of 
 
 Lancastre and Yorke, 76 
 University and the drama, 2, 4, 21, 
 
 22, 24, 26, S4, 173. 206, 254, 
 
 274 
 Uther Pendragon, 183-185 
 
 Uther Pendragon, 183-185 
 
 Valentinian, 202 
 
 Valiant Scot, 265 ; Welshman, 
 
 136, 178-181, 189, 201-203 
 Vennar, Richard, 231-233 
 Vergil, 34 
 Verhaellnis von Fords Perkin 
 
 Warbeck zu Bacons Henry VII. , 
 
 262 
 Verity, A. W., 66, 67 
 Verse, 19, 45, 49, 93, 128, 266, 
 
 142, 219, 252, 256 
 Vertumerus, 185 
 Vices, 7, 17, 128 
 Villeins, revolt of, 45 
 Virgin Martyr, 207 
 Virtue, 7 
 Voada, 189, 203 
 Voadicia, 203 
 Voltiger, 182 
 Vortigern (Vortiger), 130, 182, 
 
 183-186 
 VowELL, alias of J. Hooker, 34 
 
 W., J., 265 
 
 Wakefield, 153, 154, 157, 158 
 
 Wales, Prince of, 170 
 
 Wales and the Welsh sources, etc., 
 
 52, 189, 202, 203 
 Wallace, Sir William, 265 
 Warbeck Perkin, 262-265 
 Warbeck, Perkin, 262-265 
 Warburton, John, 77, 205 
 Ward, the pirate, 225 
 Ward, A. W., 15, 18, 58, 59, 64, 
 
 162, 177, 227, 229, 231, 244, 
 
 262, 265 
 Ward, H. L. D., 161 
 Warfare, how represented, 268, 
 
 269 
 
3IO 
 
 INDEX 
 
 War of the Theatres, 135 
 Warner, William, 37, 76, 203 
 Warnke, K., 62 
 Warning - Piece to England 
 
 Against Pride and Wickedness, 
 
 60 
 Wars of the' Roses, 27, 31, 75- 
 
 78, 142 
 Warwick, Earl of, 66, 71 
 Webster, John, 137, 140, 141, 
 
 228, 255 
 Weever, John, 39 
 Welsh, see Wales 
 Welshman, Valiant, see Valiant 
 
 Welshman 
 West Chester, Wise Man of, 
 
 16S 
 Whateley, Richard, 199 
 When You See Me You Know Me, 
 
 141, 219, 242-249 
 Whistling treason, 128 
 Whitehall, 191, 206 
 Whittington, Richard, 220 ; 
 
 History of, 221 
 Whore of Babylon, 137, 238 
 WiLKiNS, William, 225 \ 
 
 William I. (the Conqueror), 
 
 52, 168, 260, and see Fair Em ; 
 
 William II. (Rufus), 55, 137, 
 
 170; LONGBEARD, 220 ; LONG- 
 
 SWORD, 139 
 Williams, 133 
 Wilson, Robert (the Elder), 
 
 168 ; the Younger, 77, 130, 137, 
 
 138, 21s 
 
 Winchester, Henry Beaufort, Car- 
 dinal of, 64, 81, 83, 165 
 
 Windsor, 7, 125, 130 ; Merry 
 Wives of, 125, 130 
 
 Wise Man of West Chester, 165 
 
 Witches, 163, 198, 239, 268 (in 
 Macbeth'), 198 
 
 Wolsey, Life of Cardinal, 34, 219; 
 Rising of Cardinal, 219 
 
 Woman Killed with Kindness, 145 
 
 Woman's Mistake, 255 
 
 Wood, Anthony a, 206 
 
 Woodstock, 98-108, and see Rich- 
 ard II. , Tragedy of 
 
 Worcester's Company, 54 
 
 Worde, Wynkyn de, 188 
 
 Works of Greene, etc. , see Greene 
 
 Worthies, nine, 6 
 
 Wotton, Sir Henry, 250 
 
 Wright, Thomas, 211 
 
 Wright, W. A., 198 
 
 Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 137, 141, 
 
 . 213 ; Famous History of, 137, 
 141, 228-231, 23s 
 
 Xeres, 227 
 
 York, True Tragedy of Richard, 
 Duke of, 64, 76 ; Duchess of 
 (mother of Edward IV. and 
 Richard III. ), 93, 146 ; House 
 of, 7. 64, 75-78, 88, 139, 144, 
 271 
 
 Zenocrete, 72 
 
THE 
 
 ENGLISH RELIGIOUS DRAMA. 
 
 BY 
 
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 WELLESLEY COLLEGE. 
 
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