FOREIGN /> 4^ 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 B E bm 103 
 
 JOHN WEBSTER: THE PERIODS OF HIS WORK AS DETER- 
 
 MINED BY HIS RELATIONS TO THE DRAMA OF HIS DAY 
 
 = ( FIRST CHAPTER ONLY) = 
 
 Inaugural-Dissertation 
 
 zur 
 
 Erlangung der Doktorwuerde 
 
 vorgelegt der 
 
 Philosqphischen Fakultaet der Kgl. Universitaet 
 zu Muenchen 
 
 ELMER EDGAR STOLE 
 
 y 
 
 Alfred Mudge & Son, Inc., 24 Franklin Street, Boston, MaisachusetU 
 1905 
 
WORKS OFTEN CITED. 
 
 Arber, Edward. A Transcript of the vStationers' Register, 5 vols., I^ondon, 1875-94. 
 Bartlett, J. A. A New and Complete Concordance to Shakspere, I^ondon, 1894. 
 Beaumont and Fletcher. Works, ed. by Darley, 2 vols., lyondon, no date. 
 Chapman, George. Works, ed. by R. H. Shepherd, vol. Plays, I^ondon, 1889. 
 Chettle, Henry. Patient Grissel, ed. by G. Hiibsch, Erlangren, 1893. 
 
 Hoffman, ed. by R. Ackerman, Bambergr, 1894. 
 Cunliffe, J. W. Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy, I/indon, 1893. 
 Dekker, Thomas. Dramatic Works, 4 vols., lyOndon, 1873. 
 
 Plays, Mermaid Ed.,* lyondon, 1894. 
 Dodsley, Robert. Old English Plays, 4th ed., edited by W. C. Hazlitt, 15 vols., 
 
 lyOndon, 1874. 
 Eckhardt, Eduard. Die lyUstige Person im Alteren Engl. Drama, Berlin, 1902. 
 Fleay, F. G. Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, 2 vols., lyOndon, 1891. 
 
 History of the Stage, 1 vol., I^ondon, 1890. 
 Gardiner, S. R. History of England from 1603 to 1642, 10 vols., lyondon, 1884. 
 Gnoli, Domenico. Vittoria Accoramboni, Firenze, 1890.* 
 Halliwell, James H. Dictionary of Old English Plays, lyondon, 1860. 
 Henslowe, Philip. Diary, ed. by J. P. Collier, I/jndon, 1845. 
 
 ed. by Walter Greg, Part I, Text, lyOndon, 1904.^ 
 Heywood, Thomas. Works, 6 vols., lyOndon, 1874. 
 
 Plays,® Mermaid Ed., lyOndon, 1888. 
 ISAMBERT, Taillandier, et Decrusy. Rccucil G6n6ral des Anciennes lyois Fran- 
 daises, 29 tomes, Paris, 1829. 
 JONSON, Ben. Works, ed. by Gifford, I,ondon, no date. 
 KiESOW, Karl. Die Verschiedenen Bearbeitungen der Novelle von der Herzogin v. 
 
 Amalfi, Anglia Bd. 17, 198-258. 
 KoEPPEL, Emil. Quellenstudien zu.den Dramen Jonson's, Marston's, Beaumont's 
 und Fletcher's, Erlangen, 1895. 
 
 Quellenstudien zu den Dramen Chapman's, Massinger's, und Ford's, Strass- 
 burg, 1897. 
 Kyd, Thomas. Works, ed. by Fred. Boas, Oxford, 1901. 
 lyANGBAiNE, GERARD. lyivcs of English Dramatick Poets, lyondon, 1691. 
 Marlowe, Christopher. Plays, Mermaid Ed., lyondon, 1887. 
 
 Works, ed. by A. H. Bullen, 3 vols., I/)ndon, 1885.^ 
 Massinger AND FoRD. Works, ed. by Coleridge, lyOndon, no date. 
 Marston, John. Works, ed. by A. H. Bullen, 3 vols., lyondou, 1887. 
 
 ^ Other works used are cited in full in the notes. 
 
 ' Used for all plays contained in it : Hon. IVh., Shoemaker, Fortunatus, Edmonton. 
 
 ' Cited ordinarily as " l<'leay," with vol. number. 
 
 * But really of 1867. 
 
 * This ed. is used vmless there is statement to the contrary. 
 
 * Used for Lucrece. 
 
 ' Used when line-numbers are cited. 
 
Martin, Henri, Histoire de France, 16 tomes, Paris, 1844 and 1858. 
 
 MEINERS, Martin. Metrische Untersuchungen iiber John Webster, Halle, 1893. 
 
 Meyer, Edward. Machiavelli and the English Drama, Weimar, 1897. 
 
 MiCHAUD ET PoujouLAT. Collection de M^moires, 32 tomes, Paris, 1837. 
 
 MiDDLETON, Thomas. Works, 8 vols., ed. by A. H. Bullen, lyondon, 1885.^ 
 
 Painter, William. Palace of Pleasure, ed. by Jacobs, 3 vols., I/)ndon, 1890. 
 
 Sampson, Martin. Webster's White Devil and Duchess of Malfy, Boston, 1904.' 
 
 Senecae Tragoediae. Recens. et emend. Fridericus L,eo, Berolini, 1879. 
 
 Shakspere, William. Works, Globe Ed., L,ondon, 1900. 
 
 Shakespeare's IvIbrary, 2nd ed., ed. by W. C. Hazlitt, 6 vols., lyondon, 1875.' 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip. Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, phot, reprint of 1590 Q., ed. 
 
 by H. O. vSommer, lyondon, 1891. 
 Small, R. A. Stage-Quarrel of Jonson and the vSo-called Poetasters, Breslau, 1899. 
 Thorndike, a. H. Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere, Worcester, 
 Mass., 1901. 
 
 Hamlet and Elizabethan Revenge Plays, Pub. Mod. I,ang:, Ass., New Series, 
 vol. X, no. 2, 1902. 
 TouRNEUR, Cyril. Plays, Mermaid Ed., I^ondon, 1888.* 
 
 Plays and Poems, ed. by Collins, lyOndon, 1878. 
 Ward, A. W. History of English Dramatic lyiterature, 3 vols., lyOndon. 1899. 
 WEBSTER. John. Works, ed. by W. C. Hazlitt, 4 vols., lyondon, 1897.^ 
 
 The Duchess of Malfi, Temple Ed., ed. by C. Vaughan, London, 1900. 
 
 See Sampson, above. 
 
 * Used instead of Dekker for /Soaring: Girl. 
 
 ' This presents the only good texts, but it appeared too late to be used for the 
 citations. 
 
 * \3seAiox Contention, True Tragedieof Yorke, True Tragedieof Rich. Ill, Trouble- 
 some Raigne, etc. 
 
 * Used for the plays. 
 
 i Cited as " Works," or " Haz." 
 
 10 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Chronology, and the Authorship of Doubtful 
 Plays. 
 
 IN order to understand the development of John Webster's art, it is 
 necessary to undertake a rather extensive investigation of the dates 
 of the composition of his plays, and, further, of the authenticity of 
 some of the doubtful ones. Of the eleven plays still preserved to bear 
 his name, two were first published long after Webster and his theatres 
 were silent ; and none bears the date of the acting. Of three of these, 
 the authorship has been called in question. One of them, the Cure 
 for a Cuckold^ I shall seek to prove Webster's own ; two, the Thracian 
 IVonder and The^Weakest Goeth to the Wall, spurious. 
 
 I. LOST PLAYS. 
 
 Of the first plays of Webster, we have the dates and nothing more. 
 These are derived from entries in Henslowe's Diary. The first is as 
 follows : 
 
 lycnt vnto wm Jube the 3 of novmbr 1601 to bye stamell cllath for a clocke * for the 
 Webster 
 firwisse the some of iij". P. 149. 
 
 This Collier took ^ to be the drama Webster mentions in the 
 dedicatory letter to Sir Thomas Finch, prefixed to his Devil's Law- 
 Case : 
 
 Some of my other works, as The IVhite Devil, The Duchess of Malfi, Guise, and 
 others, you have formerly seen : I present this humbly to kiss your hands and to 
 find your allowance : nor do I much doubt it, knowing the greatest of the Caesars 
 have cheerfully entertained less poems than this * ; etc. 
 
 Such a connection as Collier supposes is in itself suspicious. Why 
 should Webster mention the Guise with pride, in company with his 
 masterpieces, if it be so early a play as to precede work so crude and 
 colorless as his in partnership with Dekker or his Induction to the 
 Malcontent? or if the " Gwisse " be only a recast of Marlowe's 
 
 ^ This is evidently cloak, for the next entry (p. 150) is to " bye fuschen and lynynge 
 for the clockes for the raasaker of f ranee." 
 • Footnote to Henslowe (Coll.), pp. 202-3. 
 ' Works, vol. Ill, p. 5. 
 
 11 
 
Massacre at Paris (as Collier also suggests) ? ^ But the main objec- 
 tion is in the entry itself. " Webster,^ ^ Collier says, "is interlined, 
 perhaps in a different hand " ; but Mr, G. F. Warner says it \s forged. 
 Even on ' ' internal evidence ' ' the entry is highly suspicious : why, as 
 Mr. Fleay suggests, should the name of the author be added to an 
 entry that has to do with the buying of properties ? But it is spurious : 
 "there can be no doubt whatever," says Mr. Warner, "that the 
 name was not written by the same hand as the rest of the entry ; and 
 it is equally evident that it is a spurious modern addition."^ Now it 
 is not cited by Dyce among the other entries in Henslowe at p. v of 
 his introduction to the edition of 1830 : it therefore did not then exist. 
 
 The "Gwisse," then, is nothing but Marlowe's Massacre at Paris, 
 entered eight times ^ in Henslowe, and indifferently as "gves, " 
 "Gwies, " "gwisse," "gwesse, " "masaker," "massaker," " masa- 
 cer, " " masacar, ' ' — not Webster's Guise. When this last was written 
 no one knows ; but it is not improbable, as we shall yet see, that Webster 
 in his words to Finch was writing carefully and chronologically, and 
 that, as in his mention of them Malfi rightly follows the White Devil^ 
 the Guise rightly follows Malfi, and belongs to the period 1617-22. 
 
 Of the remaining lost plays, I have only to record a series of entries*: 
 
 lyCnt vnto the company the 22 of maij 1602 to geue vnto antoney monday & mihell 
 drayton webester & the Rest in eameste of a Boocke called sesers ffalle the some 
 of v". P. 166. 
 
 lycnt unto Thomas downton the 29 of maye 1602 to paye Thomas dickers drayton 
 mydellton & webester & mondaye in fulle paymente for therplaye called too shapes,"" 
 the some of iij". P. 167. 
 
 I^ent unto Thomas hewode & John webster the 2 of novmbr 1602 in eameste of a 
 playe called cryssmas comes bute once ayeare the some of iij".® P. 184. 
 
 One more dramatic work, a lost one, completes the list. In Sir 
 Henry Herbert's office-book there is an entry under date of September, 
 1624: 
 
 A new Tragedy, called, A Late Murther of the Sonn upon the Mother: Written by 
 Forde, and Webster.'' 
 
 * Henslowe (Coll. ed.), p. 202, note. 
 
 ' G. F. Warner, Catalogue of Mss. and Muniments of Alleyn^s College of God's 
 Gift at Dulwich, London, 1881, pp. 161-2. Cf. Greg's Henslowe, pp. xlii-iii. 
 
 * See the Index to Henslowe (Coll. ed.). But I give Greg's readings, pp. 15, 17, 72, 
 149, 150, 153, etc., twice with " of France " following, never " at Paris." 
 
 * Given in Haz., but I take them directly from Henslowe. 
 
 * Coll. reads ' too harpes.' 
 
 " There are also two entries recording payments to Dekker and to Chettle on the 
 same play, the 23rd and the 26th of November, p. 185. 
 
 'See George Chalmers's Supplemental APology for Believers in the ShaksPeare- 
 Papers, I/)ndon, 1799, pp. 218-19. 
 
 12 
 
II. THE MALCONTENT. 
 
 In 1604 Marston's Malcontent ^sls first published. It appeared in 
 two editions by the same publisher; the first entirely by Marston,. 
 the second "augmented by Marston, with additions played by the 
 King's Majesties Servants, written by John Webster." The play 
 was registered July 5th, 1604. It was in this same year that Web- 
 ster's part was contributed. Reasons why are involved with the 
 question how much he contributed, both of which matters were best 
 relegated to Chapter II. 
 
 Three plays, all first printed in 1607, bear also Dekker's name, — 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt, Westward Ho, and Northward Ho. They are 
 Dekker's, as we shall see in Chapter II, in substance, style, and spirit ; 
 and nothing in them would suggest that they are also Webster's. But 
 three title-pages of first editions are too strong to be lightly confuted, 
 even on evidence of a positive character ; and such is wanting. 
 
 III. SIR THOMAS WYATT. 
 
 Wyatt is the earliest, certainly, of the three. The style is more 
 primitive (though of course Elizabethan tragedy can not be profitably 
 compared with comedy in this respect, being far more conventional- 
 ized and conservative); and there is earlier external evidence, that 
 is, in Henslowe : 
 
 L,ent vnto thomas hewode the 21 of octobr 1602 to paye vnto mr deckers chettell 
 sraythe webester & hewode in fulle payment of ther playe of ladye Jane the some of 
 v» x«. P. 183. 
 
 lycnt vnto John ducke the 27 of octobr 1602 to geue vnto thomas deckers in eameste 
 of the 2 pt of lyady Jane the some of v'. P. 184. 
 
 That the title should here be Lady Jane is not surprising : that is Hens- 
 lowe' s way. Marlowe's Massacre at Paris, as we have seen, Henslowe 
 calls indiscriminately "Gwisse" and "Massacre of France," and he 
 calls the Spanish Tragedy ' ' Jeronymo " ^ ; hence it is not at all sur- 
 prising, especially when we remember that, as a rule, these English 
 historical plays were named after the king or queen at the centre of the 
 action (cf. Shakspere's Henries and Richards), that Henslowe should 
 name the play after the occupant of the throne rather than after the par- 
 tisan, and principal character, Wyatt. As to a Second Part, it is diflScult 
 to conceive of it unless it be in the present play, which contains Jane's 
 and her husband's death, and the "coronation of Queen Mary, and 
 the coming in of King Philip"; and Dyce's conjecture ^ that Wyatt 
 
 See Boas. Kyd's Works, Oxford, 1901, p. xli. 
 See Dyce's Webster, ed. 1857, p. xii. 
 
 13 
 
is composed of fragfinents from the two parts may be correct. Yet 
 the play is over small to be a consolidation of two parts, and the 
 coronation and the * ' coming in of King Philip ' ' appear only on the 
 title-page, not in the text itself ; and loose and fragmentary as the 
 structure is, it is not more so than that of plenty of chronicle-histo- 
 ries. So it is quite as possible that we have here the First Part alone. ^ 
 
 IV. THE CITIZEN PLAYS. 
 
 The next play in point of time is Westward Ho, registered to print 
 March 2nd, 1605. Its probable backward limit is the taking of Ostend, 
 September 24th, 1604 ^i 
 
 How long- will you hold out, think you ? not so long as Ostend. IV. //., I, 1, v. 71. 
 
 The book of the siege of Ostend, writ by one that dropped in the action, will 
 never sell so well as a report of the siege between this grave, this wicked elder and 
 thyself: an impression of you two would away in a May morning. IV, 2. 
 
 The interest of the English in the siege, as history shows, ^ was 
 great, and contemporary allusions in the dramatists are numerous.* 
 This first allusion proves that the play was acted at least after the 
 length of the siege of Ostend had become proverbial ; and it would 
 fit better, of course, — as insinuating that she could not hold out 
 forever — after Ostend had been taken. The second would seem to 
 indicate the author's own observation, and that the 'book' was out, 
 and the siege over.^ 
 
 * Mr. Fleay (I, p. 130 ; II, 269) is of the opinion (without argument) that JVyatt 
 was put together from fragments at a date considerably later than 1602. He makes 
 the simple statement, as if the play itself indicated it: " Queen Anne had been 
 crowned, James had come in, and the Cobham plot had been discovered in the mean- 
 while." — Of all this, there is no shred of evidence. 
 
 ' Mr. Fleay (II, pp. 269-70) settles the very month and day of D.'s and W.'s parts. 
 A story is told in III, 3 (Just. I '11 tell thee. The term lying at Winchester in 
 Henry the Third's days, etc.) , and Mr. Fleay infers that the date of this part was 
 summer, and the summer of 1603 ! He adds : " In Northward Ho we are told that 
 Westward Ho was acted ' before Christmas,' but it was only just before." Mr. Fleay 
 does not give a reference to the passage, but it is certainly N. H., I, 2, p. 186 : " and 
 for those poor wenches that before Christmas fled westward with bag and baggage." 
 It has no possible reference to IV. H., but is one of many references to ridding the 
 city proper of harlots. The citizens' wives in W. Ff. were not poor wenches, nor did 
 they flee with bag and baggage: they went on a lark. And "westward'' by no 
 means equals " westward ho f' 
 » Gardiner, Hist, of Eng. 1603-1642, vol. I, pp. 102, 214. 
 
 * Toumeur's Ath. Tr. : Chapman, etc. 
 
 * I am loath to give up what at first seemed to settle the date of W. H. definitely, 
 and at the same time shed an interesting light on Dekker's journalistic methods of 
 work, — a coincidence between the name of the Italian merchant Justiniano in the 
 play, and the Venetian ambassador "Justiniano" (Ital. Giustiniano and Venet. 
 
 14 
 
The date of Northward Ho is somewhat involved with the dates of 
 the two other citizen comedies — Weshuard Ho, and Jonson, Chap- 
 man, and Marston's Eastward Ho. What was the order of these 
 plays? Westward Ho, Eastward Ho, Northward Ho, answers Mr. 
 Fleay, and, I think, rightly. Westward Ho, the pioneer, was written 
 by Dekker and Webster for the Children of Paul's ' ; Eastward Ho 
 was written by Jonson and the rest, in friendly, interloping rivalry, for 
 the Children of her Majesty's Revels at Blackfriars ^ ; and Northward 
 Ho was the Paul's •* rejoinder. For Eastward Ho contains in its pro- 
 logue a reference to Westward Ho, not only so precise in character as 
 not to be mistaken, but also so frankly laudatory as evidently to chal- 
 lenge for itself a similar success * ; and Northward Ho, unmentioned 
 
 Giustinian) mentioned by Mr. Pory in a letter to .Sir Robert Cotton. Jan., 1605 
 {Court and Times of James /, I^ndon. 1848. I. 44). He tells of the splendor of the 
 presentation of him to the king by the outgoing ambassador, Molino. But the 
 date 1605 is Old Style, actually is 1606 (a date which Calendar of State Papers, 
 Venetian, vol. X. art. 544, confirms). Giustiniano was not appointed till Mar. 18, 1605, 
 and did not reach I/)ndon till Jan.. 1606. (Cf. Borazzi e Berchet. Ven.. 1863, Ser. IV, 
 Inghil. p. 3 f). Yet it seems as if there must be more than chance to explain this 
 coincidence and another, — the name of the character Candido in a drama of this 
 very year {H. W., 1604) . A Signor Candido is spoken of by John Chamberlain in a let- 
 ter dated Mar. 25, 1612 and again, April, 1612. to Sir Dudley Carleton <^ibid., pp. 164-6). 
 He seems to be, like Carleton, in Venice, to have to do with the Bishop of Ely, 
 and to have written a panegyric on James I. This Candido may have been Vincent 
 Marine Candido, 1573-1637 (Biog. G^n.); — but I make no further progress. Yet 
 there may have been some way for the poet of the Roaring Girl (Moll Cutpurse, a 
 character of the day. see Bullen's Middleton. IV, p. 4) , of Ravaillac {If This be not a 
 Good Play) , to learn of these names ; and Justiniano may not have been the name 
 of the character at the first performance. 
 
 ^ That IV. H. was from the first written for Paul's — not an acquisition shortly 
 before publication in 1607 — is proved by the registration at the Stationers', Mar. 2, 
 1604: " presented by the children of Paul's." 
 
 « Title-page of 1605 Q. ' Title-page. 
 
 * Noted first by Dyce : 
 
 " Not out of envy, for there's no effect 
 Where there's no cause ; nor out of imitation, 
 For we have evermore been imitated ; 
 Nor out of our contention to do better 
 Than that which is opposed to ours in title. 
 For that was good ; and better cannot be : 
 And for the title, if it seem affected, 
 "We might as well have called it, " God you good even " : 
 Only that eastward westwards still exceeds, 
 Honor the sun's fair rising, not his setting. 
 Nor is our title utterly enforced. 
 As by the points we touch at you shall see. 
 Bear with our willing pains, if dull or witty. 
 We only dedicate it to the city. " 
 
 15 
 
in the prologue, contains a satire on Chapman, who was probably the 
 main author of Eastward Ho. With this, such dates as are at hand 
 agree. Westward Ho was registered, as we have seen, March 2nd, 
 1605 ; Eastward Ho was registered at the Stationers' September 4th, 
 and the authors of it, who were arrested for satire of the Scotch, 
 found themselves in prison at least after May, 1605 ^ ; and Northward 
 Ho was not registered till August 6th, 1607. 
 
 Northward Ho is, then, the last in the series. In my opinion, it is 
 so late as to fall within the year 1606.^ It contains (IV 4,) a passage ^ 
 remarkably similar to Marston's Fawn, borrowed, I think, from it : 
 
 Bell. But what say you to such young gentlemen as they are? 
 
 Bawd. Foh! they, as soon as they come to their lands, get up to L,ondon, and 
 like squibs that run upon lines, they keep up a spitting of fire and cracking till they 
 ha' spent all; and when my squib is out what says his punk? foh, he stinks! 
 
 N.H., p. 242. 
 
 Herod. . . . What, more fire-works, sir? 
 
 Page. There be squibs, sir ; which squibs, running upon lines, like some of our 
 gaudy gallants, sir, keep a smother, sir, with flishing and flashing, and, in the end, 
 sir, they do, sir — 
 
 Nym. What, sir? 
 
 Page. Stink, sir. Fawn, I, 2, 20 f. 
 
 The basis of these two unedifying passages is possibly, as with so 
 many Elizabethan jokes and diatribes, a popular saying ; but there is 
 no question, nevertheless, that in phrasing the one passage is indebted 
 to the other.* Which is the original? Certainly, if coherence and 
 continuity of texture are signs of originality (and patchwork of bor- 
 rowing), it is Marston's. Only in his is the real force of the figure to 
 be felt : it is broken and obscured by the ' ' spent all ' ' in Dekker and 
 Webster. The style of his passage, moreover, is thoroughly his own, — 
 the delight in disgusting images, the " smartness " of expression, the 
 
 * As is proved by Jonson's celebrated letter, dated 1605 (Gifford's Jonson, Mem., 
 pp. 40-41). This letter, as Fleay notes, must be subsequent to May 4th, for Cecil was 
 then first created Earl of Salisbury. — That the letter refers to E. H., and is written 
 on occasion of imprisonment for it, no one should doubt; yet Gifford, Bullen, and 
 Fleay all think this a .subsequent imprisonment. There is no space to go into the 
 matter here ; but the only good reason ever offered — J.'s failure to mention Mars. — 
 is absolutely confuted by Jonson's and Chap.'s letters, discovered by Mr. B. Dobell, 
 and pub. in Athenaeum, March 30th, 1901. In these complaints to the King, lyord 
 Chamberlain, and others, neither of the authors mentions M.; and Chap, expressly 
 says (to the King), that their offence consists "but in two clawses and both of 
 them not our owne." Marston's, then, who had escaped. 
 
 ' Mr. Fleay (II, 270) dates the play 1605. c. Feb. Yet he holds it the last of the 
 plays ! 
 
 ' Pointed out in Bullen's Marston, Vol. II, p. 121. 
 
 * The figure occurs, in other form, phrasing, and application, elsewhere in Dekker, 
 as H. IV., p. 219. 
 
 16 
 
real force in both rhetorical structure and figure.^ Yet these same 
 qualities, lacking generally in Webster and Dekker, are perceptible 
 even in the corresponding passage of their play. Now Marston's play 
 was registered March 12, 1606, and published in two editions the same 
 year, while Northward Ho was not registered till 1607. When, then, 
 we consider, further, that Marston according to Anthony Wood's 
 account ' was in great renown in 1606 for his wit and ingenuity,' and 
 that Webster himself in his next succeeding work has two quotations 
 from this very play, ^ it seems pretty probable that Webster and 
 Dekker, in order to piece out the rather skimble-skamble stuff of 
 the crazy bawd's speeches, had stolen this impudent saying from 
 Marston . 
 
 The Fawn first appeared on the boards after January, 1606. It 
 contains a reference to the execution of Sir Edward Digby and his 
 fellows, January 30th, 1606.^ That the play appeared in print so soon 
 thereafter is only in keeping with what we know of its popularity : 
 two editions appeared that same year, one of them pirated, and in the 
 other the author himself declares, that " it cannot avoid publishing." 
 If, then, the Fawn is to be dated after January, 1606, Northward Ho 
 
 ^ It is unprofitable to quote examples, but any one who will read more of the Fawn 
 or D. C or the Erich tho passages in Sofihon., will find plenty. In the Fawn itself: 
 II, 1, 39-42 ; 1, 94-97 ; 1, 78-81 ; IV, 1, 545-7 ; I, 2, 221 f. Cf. Male, V. 1, 34, where ' stink- 
 ard ' is used as synonymous with the sort of man Marston here describes. 
 
 ''Fawn, IV, 1, 106, and IV. D., p. 15 ; Fa7vn, IV, I, 328, and IV . D., p. 22 (this dubious) . 
 
 ^ Fawn, IV, 1, 309f : " Nay, heed me, a woman that will thrust in crowds, — a lady, 
 that, being- with child, ventures the hope of her womb, — nay, gives two crowns for 
 a room to behold a goodly man three parts alive quartered, his privities hackled off. 
 his belly lanched up." — Mr. Bullen {in loc.) says it refers to Digby, and cites Stow, 
 ed. 1631, p. 882, which runs thus : " The next Thursday [Jan. 30th] Sir Edward Digby. 
 Robert Winter, Graunt, and Bates were drawn, hanged, and quartered at the West 
 End of Saint Paul's Church. . . . Friday, the last of January, in the Parliament Yard 
 at Westminster were executed as the former, Thomas Winter, Rookewood, Keyes, and 
 Fawkes . . . their quarters were placed over I/)ndon gates, and their heads upon 
 the Bridge." We must confess that we are dealing here only with probabilities; 
 executions — hanging and quartering — were not then uncommon. Mr. Fleay. 
 indeed, holds a brief for that of Watson and Clarke, at Winchester. Nov., 1604 {sic 
 always, though Gardiner, Diet. Nat. Bios., and Stow himself, pp. 829-31, say 1603), 
 not only in the case of the Fawn but also of Michaelmas Terni (reg. May, 1607) and 
 Isle of Gulls (see below). But the point in the Fawn and in Michaelmas is, that 
 women came to see; that, so great was the crowd, they paid two crowns a room ; 
 that it was in London, and all the audience knew of it, and understood without more 
 words. It is impossible to think that it should have been the execution at Winchester 
 (66 miles away, whither at that day few lyondoners would have gone for the show, 
 certainly few women) of two obscure offenders; rather than that in the heart of 
 lyondon itself, of the reckless devils who startled Eng. from shore to shore. If 
 ever women went, or if ever rooms round Paul's or Parliament Yard sold high, it was 
 at the execution of the Gunpowder Plotters. 
 
 17 
 
(if it be certain that this play draws the passage from the Fawn) must 
 come still later. 
 
 To reinforce this long and rather too slender thread of argument, 
 let me join to it another. Day's Isle of Gulls, printed in 1606, con- 
 tains, as Mr. Fleay^ observes, a reference to all three of our plays, in 
 a passage, which, since it deals with the author and his literary iden- 
 tity, cannot possibly be interpreted according to the primary ^ meaning 
 of the phrases. It would say, this author is not any of those popular 
 comic poets you already know : — 
 
 Prol. A meere stranger, sir ? 
 
 3. A stranger! the better welcome : conies hee East- ward, West- ward, or North- 
 ward hoe ? 
 
 Prol. None of the three waies, I assure you. 
 
 1. Prethe where is he ? 
 
 Prol. Not on his knees in a corner . . . but close in his studie writing hard to get 
 him a handsome suite against Sommer. 
 
 This induction was written, very certainly, for the first perform- 
 ance of the play ; for it speaks anxiously of the reception of it, and 
 of the identity, the trying position, and the needs of the author. 
 The play must have been first performed, therefore, after the series of 
 our three plays Westward Ho, Eastward Ho, and Northward Ho^ 
 which starts at the close of 1604, and yet enough before "Sommer " 
 to give pathos to the author's needs. The dilemma is, whether the 
 summer be that of 1605, or that of publication, 1606.^ The quotation 
 from the Faivn, considered above, should turn the balance in favor of 
 the latter. 
 
 V. THE WHITE DEVIIv. 
 
 The next play is the White Devil. It was printed without register- 
 ing in 1612, and not again till 1631. To the date of the acting there 
 are many clews.* One is the reference to Barnaby Rich's Neiv 
 Description of Ireland,^ 1610, long ago pointed out by Reed but 
 hitherto ignored as a means of settling the date : 
 
 An Irish gamester that will play himself naked and then wage all downwards at 
 hazard, is not more venturous. W. D., p. 16. 
 
 ^ Biog. Chr., I, 105. 
 
 ' Haz., I, p. 65 : " Eastward Ho and Westward Ho were cries of the Thames Water- 
 men," etc. 
 
 ' That the/s/^ of Gulls should be thought to contain an allusion to an execution 
 (that is, in the quibble of the Induction on " quarter ourselves " ), whether Watson 
 and Clarke's or any other, is absurd. 
 
 * The earliest and most certain are the echoes from L«ar. See Chap. III. Lear was 
 acted on St. Stephen's Day, 1606, and first printed in 1608. 
 
 • A new description of Ireland wherein is described the disposition whereunio they 
 are inclined. Printed for T. Adams, lyondon, 1610. 
 
 18 
 
There is there a certain brotherhood, called by the name of Karrowes, and these 
 be common gamesters, that do only exercise playing at cards, and they will play 
 away their mantels and their shirts from their backs and when they have got 
 nothing left them they will trusse themselves in straw. This is the life they lead, 
 and from this they will not be reclaimed. New Description, p. 38. 
 
 Another passage, in Brachiano's angry words to Vittoria : 
 
 What ! dost weep ? 
 Procure but ten of thy dissembling trade, 
 Ye 'd furnish all the Irish funerals 
 With howling past wild Irish 
 
 may have been suggested by the description, at p. 12 in the same 
 book, of the demeanor of Irish women at funerals. ^ At all events, 
 this book was registered April 10th, 1610. 
 
 Another clew is an echo from the Atheist's Tragedy (registered 
 September 14th, 1611) to be found in the celebrated trial-scene: 
 
 Monticelso : Away with her, 
 
 Take her hence. 
 
 Vittoria. A rape ! a rape ! 
 Mont. How ? 
 
 Vit. Yes. you have ravish 'd justice ; 
 
 Forc'd her to do your pleasure. W. D., p. 65. 
 
 Sebastian. A rape, a rape, a rape ! 
 
 Belforest.^ How now ! 
 
 D'Amville. What's that? 
 
 Sebas. Why what is 't but a rape to force a wench, etc. Ath . Tr., p. 263. 
 
 In both cases it is an abrupt cry, unexpected and startling, against 
 unjust force ; in both cases, a tropical expression that has to be 
 explained by the speaker. It is very likely, then, that the one was 
 imitated from the other. That one was Webster's ; for, if borrowed 
 through print, Tourneur's was the earlier ; and if through public 
 rendering, Tourneur's was by far the more prominent and notice- 
 able. The utterance in Webster is without consequence, and is 
 not again alluded to ; that in Tourneur, on the other hand, is the 
 cause of the breach between Sebastian and his father, etc., and is 
 alluded to explicitly twice afterwards. ^ Now the Atheist's Tragedy 
 comes later, at least, than King Lear, and dates in all probability not 
 long before its publication. ^ 
 
 But the most significant evidence is that of the preface and the 
 postscript.* Here Webster's mood is evidently like Jonson's in his 
 
 * Neither of these passages could have been suggested by Rich's Short Survey of 
 Ireland. 1609 (reg. 1609). 
 
 » III, 2, p. 293, and II, 3, p. 273. 
 
 ' In 1611. vSee App. I for the date of this play. 
 
 * See Works, II, p. 143. 
 
 19 
 
prefaces (though more from neglect than from antagonism), and like 
 Jonson he publishes to right himself. He defends himself for taking 
 so much time to write the play, — a rather pointless thing to do if it 
 were already long before this on the stage ; and he alludes to the first 
 performance, twice over, in both preface and postscript, as if it was 
 fresh in his memory. The first time, he assails the "auditory," and 
 the second, he praises and thanks the actors, one of them especially 
 and by name. This he would hardly have done, or cared to do, long 
 after the performance. For why open an old wound? Why recall 
 his own or others' forgotten vexations? Let me quote from the 
 preface and postscript themselves : 
 
 In publishing this Tragedy. I doe but challenge to myselfe that liberty which 
 other men have tane before mee ; not that I aflfect praise by it, for, nos haec nouinius 
 esse nihil, onely, since it was acted in so dull a time of Winter, presented in so open 
 and blacke a theater, that it wanted (that which is the onely grace and setting-out 
 of a tragedy) a full and understanding Auditory ; and since that time I haue noted, 
 most of the people that come to that play-house resemble those ignorant asses (who, 
 visiting stationers' shoppes, their use is not to inquire for good books, but new 
 books), I present it to the generall view with this confidence : 
 
 Nee rhoncos metues maligniorum. 
 Nee scombris tunicas dabis molestas. 
 
 If it be objected this is no true drammaticke poem, I shall easily confesse it, non 
 potes in nugas dicere plura meas, ipse ego quam dixi ; willingly, and not ignorantly, 
 in this kind haue I faulted : For should a man present to such an auditory, the most 
 sententious tragedy that euer was written, obseruing all the critticall lawes as heigh th 
 of stile, and grauity of person, inrich it with the sententious chorus, and, asitwere, 
 lifen Death, in the passionate and waighty Nuntius: yet after all this diuine rapture, 
 O dura messorum Ilia, the breath that comes from the uncapable multitude is able 
 to poison it . . . 
 
 To tho.se who report I was a long time in finishing this tragedy, I confesse I do 
 not write with a goose-quill winged with two feathers ; and if they will neede make 
 it my fault, I must answer them with that of Euripides . . . 
 
 Detraction is the swome friend to ignorance : for mine owne part, I haue euer 
 truly cherisht my good opinion of other mens worthy labours, especially of that full 
 and haightned stile of maister CHAPMAN, the labor'd and understanding workes 
 of maister Johnson, the no lesse worthy composures of the both worthily excellent 
 maister Beaumont and maister Fletcher; and lastly (without wrong last to be 
 named), the right happy and copious industry of m. Shake-speare, m. Decker, 
 and m. Heywood, wishing what I write may be read by their light : protesting that, 
 in the strength of mine owne judgment, I know them so worthy, that though I rest 
 silent in my own worke, yet to most of theirs I dare (without flattery) fix that of 
 Martial, 
 
 — non norunt Haec monumenta mori. Works, II, pp. 6-8. 
 
 For the action of the Play, 'twas generally well, and I dare affirm, with the joint- 
 testimony of some of their own quality (for the true imitation of life, without striv- 
 ing to make nature a monster) the best that ever became them : whereof as I make 
 a general acknowledgment, so in particular I must remember the well approved 
 industry of my friend Master Perkins, and confess the worth of his action did crown 
 both the beginning and end. lb., p. 143. 
 
 20 
 
The nettled spirit and the circumstantiality of these passages seem 
 me to prove they are not long after the event. Details of phrasing 
 confirm this ; for there is evidence that before setting at this his first 
 preface Webster looked round for models. He took, piecemeal, the 
 seventeen-word Ivatin passage above from Dekker's preface — Ad 
 Detractorem — to Satiromastix , ^ the final * * non norunt haec ' ' from 
 Dekker's preface to his KnighVs Conjuring,"^ and several phrases and 
 ideas from Jonson's prefaces to Sejanus (1605) and to Catiline (1611). 
 This last correspondence — 
 
 . . . 1 cra.v& leave to stand near your light, and by that to be read. Posterity msiy 
 pay your benefit the honour and thanks, when it shall know that you dare, in these 
 jig-given times, to countenance a legitimate Poem? — 
 
 might, indeed, be explained away, were it not for the indubitable 
 imitation of the other prefaces, namely, Dekker's, and Jonson's to 
 Sejanus."^ 
 
 Finally, at the close of the Epistle Dedicatorie to If this be not a 
 Good Play, addressed in this same year of 1612 "to my loving and 
 loved friends and fellowes, the Queenes Maiesties seruants, ' ' Dekker 
 says : 
 
 I wish a Faire and Fortunate Day to your Next New-Play for the Makers-sake and 
 your Owne, because such Braue Triumphes of Poesie, and Elaborate Industry, which 
 my Worthy Friends Muse hath there set forth, deserue a Theater full of very Muses 
 themselues to be Spectators. To that Faire Day I wish &Full, Free and Knowing 
 Auditor, etc. Works, Vol. Ill, p. 262. 
 
 This play must be the White Devil. Fleay, who first noticed the 
 passage (I, p. 134), says the Devil's Law-Case ; but that play was 
 certainly not written (as I show below) till 1621-3. Anyway, it would 
 not fit. Dekker is interested, it would seem, in a maiden effort. That 
 the White Devil is ; and, besides, a "brave Triumph of Poesie," and 
 brought forth by "elaborate Industry," and played, as the title-page 
 of the 1612 Quarto informs us, by the Queen's Servants. Moreover, 
 the fact that Dekker and Webster, after the preceding years of part- 
 nership, were now, in 1612, after several changes of company, both 
 writing for the Queen's Men, would argue a great and lasting friend- 
 
 ^ Non potes in Nugas dicere plura meas, 
 Ipse ego quam dixi. — Qui se rairantur, in illos 
 Virus habe : nos haec nouimus esse nihil. 
 
 ' A KnighV s Conjuring (1607?); it is the same, word for word, and, as with W., 
 closes the pref . 
 
 * Prefatory letter to Pembroke. 
 
 * The paragraph beginning " If it be objected," etc., for instance, is fairly a plagi- 
 arism of the second paragraph of Jonson's address " To the Reader," prefixed to 
 Sejanus. 
 
 21 
 
ship between master and pupil. With this, Webster's mention of him 
 by name in the preface is in perfect accord ; and I am even inclined to 
 think the Latin line appended to Francisco's speech, at the end of the 
 third act of the White Devil (after even the couplet, observe), due, 
 like the seventeen-word Latin motto from Satiromastix and the ' ' non 
 norunt " from A Knight's Conjuring, to their friendly and intimate 
 relations, and borrowed from the title-page of this very play of 
 Dekker's.^ However that be, it must be the White Devil that 
 Dekker's Kpistle Dedicatorie means. ^ 
 
 The allusions in the White Devil to Barnaby Rich, to the Atheist's 
 Tragedy, and to Jonson's Catiline, and the nettled tone of Webster 
 in his preface, all point, then, to a date shortly preceding its publica- 
 tion, not earlier at any rate than 1611 ; and Dekker's solicitous words 
 in his Epistle Dedicatorie, still more precisely, to the beginning of 
 1612.^^ 
 
 VI. THE DUCHESS OF MALFI. 
 
 The Duchess of Malfi was first printed in 1623.^ It must have been 
 on the stage, as Dyce pointed out, long before, — at least as early as 
 March 16th, 1619, the date of the death of Richard Burbage, who 
 appears in the actors' list of the first edition. Further back than this 
 both Fleay and Dyce^ have tried to thrust the date, but without success. 
 
 Mr. C. Vaughan, however, in his edition of the play, has offered, 
 *' with great diffidence," a suggestion which leads, in my opinion, to 
 a definite fixing of the date : 
 
 In the opening speeches there is plainly a historical allusion ; and probably to 
 contemporary events . . . the reference may be to the assassination of Concini, 
 Mar^chal d'Ancre, by order of the youngr king, lyouis XIII. Concini was bitterly 
 
 * Flectere si nequeo Superos, Acheronta movebo. In W. it has little connection 
 with the context: in D. it fits his title, — If this be not a good Hay, the Diuell is 
 in it. 
 
 ' The antecedent probability is great. If D. and W. were still friendly, as their 
 changes together from Paul's to the Queen's, Web.'s W. D. preface, and the borrow- 
 ings indicate, in whose work should the kindly disposed D. be more interested than 
 in the first unaided effort of his old prot6g6? And who more likely than D. to have 
 seen the text before the acting ? 
 
 'Fleay says " the cold winter of 1607-8," on the strength of the remark in the 
 Preface, and of a connection he discovers between the jousting French ambassador 
 of the play and M. Goterant, who tilted the 24th of March, 1607. 
 
 * It is not in the S. R. 
 
 "Dyce sets the date at a venture c. 1616. Fleay (II, 273) says Dyce is " utterly 
 wrong: the date of production was c. 1612, when the White Devil, with the praise 
 of the King's men's poets, was published." — What Mr. Fleay means — Mr. Ward 
 says he does not know what Mr. Fleay means — is the praise Webster bestows upon 
 the King's Men's poets, Shak., Beau., and Flet., etc., in the preface. Now Malfi, we 
 know, was acted by the King's Men — that is the basis of Mr. Fleay 's inference. 
 
 22 
 
hated ; and his murder was skillfully represented as an act of justice agrainst a pub- 
 lic enemy and a traitor. I,uines, who advised the king in the matter and succeeded 
 to the power of Concini, made a parade of calling the old councillors of Henry IV 
 back to court. . . . If the suggestion be well founded — but it is offered with great 
 diffidence — we should be able to fix the date of the play more closely, to 1617-18. 
 
 Temple Ed. oi Malfi, p. 146. 
 
 This conjecture let me try to base and establish. First of all, con- 
 sider in the text of the first edition, ^ instead of the very uncertain 
 one of Hazlitt, the two speeches in question : 
 
 Delia: How doe you like the French court? 
 
 Ant: I admire it, 
 
 In seeking to reduce both State and People 
 
 To a fix'd Order, there iuditious King 
 
 Begins at home : Quits first his Royall Pallace 
 
 Of flattring Sicophants of dissolute, 
 
 And infamous persons which he sweetly termes 
 
 His Master's Master-peece (the worke of Heauen) 
 
 Considring duely, that a Princes Court 
 
 Is like a common Fountaine, whence should flow, 
 
 Pure siluer-droppes in generall : But if 't chance 
 
 Some curs'd example poyson't neere the head, 
 
 " Death, and diseases through the whole land spread. 
 
 And what is 't makes this blessed gouernment. 
 
 But a most prouident Councell, who dare freely 
 
 Informe him the corruption of the times? 
 
 Though some oth' Court hold it presumption 
 
 To instruct Princes what they ought to doe, 
 
 It is a noble duety to informe them 
 
 What they ought to foresee. Malfi, I, 1, first speeches. 
 
 There is one clumsy, obscure passage, but it means, no doubt, that 
 the work of cleansing the palace was not his work but that of God 
 through him. 
 
 In order to explain the political allusion of the above passage, we 
 have, I suppose, to accept one of four alternatives : the allusion might 
 have been taken from the source of the play itself, Painter's novel ; or 
 it might be an addition of Webster's own, historically in keeping with 
 the story ; or a mere product of the fancy, put in for filling ; or an 
 allusion to contemporary affairs. As for the first. Painter contains 
 nothing of this, except the allusion, several times, to Antonio's having 
 been in France ; there is no mention of a F'rench king and court. ^ 
 As to the second, that Webster should have had in mind the French 
 court of Antonio's day, whether that of Lewis XII or Francis I, is 
 out of the question : Webster generally, as the instances of the 
 
 ^ Brit. Mus. Q. 
 
 * There are indeed two bare mentions of King L,ewis [XIl] (Painter, vol. Ill, 
 pp. 4 and 8) by name : " In the time of King l^wis XII," " returned to King l^wis." 
 
 23 
 
DeviVs Lazv-Case or Appius and Virginia show, does not stickle for 
 chronologj', and indeed in this very play, by his truly Elizabethan 
 handling, has got Bandello's chronology into such a state that it would 
 be impossible to allude intelligibly, without mentioning them by 
 name, to anj^ king or court of France historically in keeping. ^ Had 
 he meant such, moreover, he must certainly have named them for the 
 audience' sake. As for the third alternative, that it is a purely fan- 
 ciful and random statement is highly improbable, unlike Webster and 
 his time. True, there are plays of the pastoral or romantic type 
 which deal with kings, courts, and people in a land of nowhere, — 
 not in France, though, but in Pannonia, Dacia, Africa, or Sicilia ; — 
 but always in full, as the scene of the very improbable action, not, as 
 here, in a passing allusion, directed away from the scene of action. 
 Passing allusions when without definite names or dates (that is, jokes, 
 satirical remarks, political judgments, etc.) prove, even in Roman 
 plays, almost always to be anachronistic, to be directed toward con- 
 temporary affairs. For, by the Elizabethan dramaturgy characters, 
 even ideas, language, customs, and civilization, were generally con- 
 ceived and represented, not with a historic sense, but — be the time or 
 scene of action never so far removed — really as coeval, Elizabethan ; 
 hence, the insertion of allusions to contemporary affairs and events 
 did not jar. King Lear,"^ Othello, Romeo and Juliet, Heywood's 
 Rape of Lucrece, Webster's Appius and Virginia, ancient stories 
 though they be, contain such : others would not have been under- 
 stood. And in the case of Malfi (we take up the last alternative) an 
 allusion to the French king and court, standing at the very beginning 
 of the play, with nothing in the shape of title, scene of action, or pre- 
 ceding time-references to make the audience think otherwise, could 
 not, if it fit at all, mean to the audience, or be intended to mean to 
 it, anything else than the contemporary French king and court. 
 
 Does it fit? L/Ct me repeat the story of the D'Ancre affair in brief, 
 and then consider Webster's words in detail. Mary de' Medici, as 
 queen regent since the assassination of her consort Henry IV, in 
 
 * It must, according to Bandello, have been King I^ewis's court (see footnote, 
 p. 23) that Antonio saw. Yet in III, 3, 8 I^annoy is spoken of as having taken " the 
 French king prisoner," which must have been Francis I at Pa via. As Kiesow says 
 (pp. 243-4) . the date of action has been brought down a decade. Moreover, on p. 160, 
 in his reference to Gaston de Foix's recovery of Naples in 1501, W., through a care- 
 less treatment of his original, as Sampson (p. 386) observes, is making him take a 
 city at 12 years old. 
 
 ' The " late eclipses " in Lear, I, 2, 112 ; " hands not hearts " in Othello, III, 4, 46 ; 
 the earthquake in R. (2f J., I, 3, 23 ; countless ones in Lncrece : and some in Corbulo's 
 and the lector's talk — such as "prayer book." "lawyers and term time," "the 
 suburbs," the oath Appius took as knight, etc., —in A.(Sf V. 
 
 24 
 
1610, had, through her own incapacity and by the baneful influence 
 of the rapacious, tyrannical Concini and his wife, speedily brought 
 France back into a state of anarchy and misery. The nobles were 
 indignant and disaffected, and the people heavily burdened and in 
 want. The young king, Lewis XIII, moreover, chafed at the conde- 
 scension and insolence of the Concini, and at the insignificance of 
 his position ; and, incited by his friends, he resolved to assert himself. 
 When all was ready, on the morning of April 14th. 1617, ' a certain 
 captain of the guard, Baron de Vitri, arrested Concini as he was enter- 
 ing the Ivouvre; and, as the official report averred, on a show of 
 resistance, shot him dead. Immediately, a demonstration was made 
 by the King's friends, a proclamation issued announcing the King's 
 assumption of power into his own hands, and a Council summoned of 
 his father's ministers. The Concini faction was either arrested, or 
 expelled from office and the city ; the Queen Mother herself, relegated 
 to Blois. Now the Council sat daily ; virtuous, sober proclamations 
 were issued; and an Assembly of Notables was called to Rouen, to 
 accomplish what the States-general under Concini had utterly failed 
 to do. Bver5rwhere in Paris and through France the news of the event 
 was heard with joy, and young Lewis was hailed by his people as the 
 
 Just.- 
 
 /« seeking to reduce both State, and People 
 To a fix 'rf Order, there iuditious King 
 Begins at home : Quits first his Royal I Pal lace 
 Of flattring Sicophants, etc. 
 
 This is what Louis did : such was the state of his realm. The last 
 States-general rife with dissension and fruitless in outcome, ^ a people 
 everywhere clamorous, an insurrection raging in the south, and a 
 palace swarming with 'sicophants,' 'dissolute, ' ' infamous ' Italians and 
 Spaniards, — such a spectacle meant neither to French nor to English 
 eyes a ' fix' d order.' And one of the first steps Lewis took to better 
 it was to purge the palace, — to imprison Barbin, Mangot,* La Place, 
 Oquincourt, Nardy, Concini 's wife and some of his confidants^, and 
 
 ' Brockh us, 14th ed., art. Ancre; Martin says (ed. 1844). vol. XII, p. 345. the 24th, 
 and Btog. GSn. (ed. 1855), the same. Brock, must be right, for the first entry in the 
 S. R. (see below, p. 29, note) is on the 17th. 
 
 * Martin, ed. 1858, tome XI, pp. 118-19. Bazin. France sous Louis XIII, Paris, 1840, 
 *. II. p. 2 f. There is nothing ambiguous in the attitude of all France. " Chacun 
 vantait le coup d'essai de lyouis." 
 
 ^ Gardiner, II. p. 315; Martin, ed. 1858, XI, 86; and Louis's own words in his 
 Declaration qui convoque ^ Rouen une assembl6e de Notables. Isambert et Decrusy, 
 Recueil G6n6ral, t. XVI, p. 108 f : "n'avaient produit autre fruit sinon que les remon- 
 strances, plaints, et dol^ances." * Martin, ed. 1858, tome XI, pp. 117-18' 
 
 " Relation Exacte de Tout ce qui s^est PassS d. la Mort du Mareschal D' Ancre in 
 Michaud et Poujoulat, S4rie II, t. V, p. 464. Martin says Mangot was distiiui only. 
 
 25 
 
to have proclaimed that evening, at the sound of the trumpet, that all 
 those in the service of Concini should leave the city on pain of death. 
 The Spanish Ambassador he directed to refrain from acting further as 
 'major-domo to the reigning queen,' ^ The Queen herself, one of 
 the worst of the crew, he kept, after the loss of her greatest sicophant^ 
 under surveillance, and shortly relegated to Blois. ^ And in one of his 
 first proclamations he made known ' that he had besought the queen, 
 his lady and mother, to grant that he himself from now on take in 
 hand the manage of the state, in order that he might rescue it from 
 the straits to which the evil counsels she had followed had reduced it. ' ^ 
 
 Which he sweetly termes 
 His Master'' s Master- peece {the worke of Heaueti) . 
 
 The source of this notion of Webster's is, I think, the French King's 
 Letter to the Parliament of Rouan, in 1617 * : 
 
 A disseigne which they so wrought and effected, that hitherto Wee carried bu^ 
 onely the bare Name of, and title of a King : . . . Which God of his infinite bountie 
 giving Us the grace at last to discerne, and pointing out unto Us as it were with his 
 omnipotent finger, the imminent perill that hung over our person and State, 
 through such an insatiable and irregular ambition ; Wee gave testimonie at length 
 of our apprehension at this point, . . . yet were Wee enforced in all our exterior 
 actions, to disguise and cover that, which inwardly in heart Wee determined and 
 resolved upon, while it might please the same our good God to open us a fit way, and 
 convenient opportunity to apply thereunto some prevalent remedy. . . . Moved I say, 
 by these just and most weightie considerations and by the heavenly instinct, that God 
 upon this occasion put into our heart : Wee resolved to secure Our self of the person 
 of the said Marshall D'Ancre, giving express charge to Sieur de Vitry, Captaine of 
 Our Guards, to apprehend and arrest him within Our Castle of the lyouvre. The 
 which Our pleasure hee intending to put into execution, the said Marshall (who 
 according to his accustomed manner had many followers about him) himself with 
 some others of his company made offer to resist : whereupon certain bullets, etc. " 
 
 ^ Relation Exacte, p. 470. 
 
 ' See her despicable conduct in Martin above. And see Martin, ed. 1844(1 quote this 
 because ed. 1858 has since become inaccessible to me), XII, 345, note, where account 
 is taken of the popular opinion of illicit relations between her and Concini. In fact, 
 there is quite enough in the fame of the queen and her minions in that day, both in 
 France and in England, to warrant W.'s phrases, "dissolute and infamous persons," 
 " curs 't example." 
 
 ' Martin, ed. 1858, t. XI, p. 119, " les mauvais conseils dont elle s'etait servie." 
 
 * In the Brit. Mus., marked 8050, bbb. 56, Reg. Apr. 23rd, 1617, — a proof of the 
 popular interest in Eng. — The italics in this passage are mine. 
 
 ' The interpretation thus offered for "Which . . . Heauen " above — that the 
 cleansing of the palace, etc., was God's work through him — seems to me the more 
 certain as I consider other interpretations. Vaughan, who did not take his own 
 suggestion seriously, thinks the antecedent of which to be Pallace! And Sampson 
 (p. 385) : " possibly ' order,' but probably ' persons,' i. e., man, being the chief work 
 of the creator." That is, this king, whoever he be, " sweetly termes " these " infa- 
 mous persons " he is chasing away, his Master's Masterpieces! The neatness with 
 
 26 
 
And what is 7 makes this blessed gouernmeni, 
 But a most prouident Councell, who dare freely 
 Informe him the corruption of the times ? 
 
 On his first appearance, immediately after the murder, the King 
 cried, Lou6 soit Dieu, me voyla Roy: qu'on m'aille querir les vieux 
 serviteurs du feu Roy mon pere, et anciens conseillers de mon conseil 
 d'Bstat, C'est par le conseil de ceux-la que je me veux gouverner 
 desormais.^ He was as good as his word . Villeroi, Jeannin, du Vair, 
 de Silleri and his son were summoned ; the Concini faction, except 
 Richelieu, were expelled ; and the Council sat daily. -^ The King met 
 wdth them, and is recorded as having given judicious and worthy 
 opinions.^ When appealed to by his subjects about important meas- 
 ures, he constantly deferred all promises till he should have delib- 
 erated with his council.* And on the 4th of October, 1617, he issued 
 an edict '" convoking an Assembly of Notables at Rouen, of 59 mem- 
 bers only, — not a States-general but a "council," rather, — 'a body 
 selected and small enough,' according to his words, 'to be wieldy and 
 practical, which should consider the reformation of the abuses which 
 are to be found in all the orders of the realm' : and he solemnly 
 adjures them all, by the authority God has given him over them, que 
 sans autres respect ni consideration quelquonque, crainte ou d^sir de 
 plaire ou complaire a personne, ils nous donnent en toutes franchise 
 et sincerite les conseils qu'ils jugeront en leurs consciences les plus 
 salutaires et convenables. As for English reports, in A True Recital 
 of Those Things That Have Been Done in the Court of France since 
 the Death of Marshall D'Ancre, London, 1617,^ the King is reported 
 as saying, * ' that he would give order to his Councill that the abuses 
 that had crept into his affairs should be remedied by good advice and 
 counsell.'"^ And in A True Relation of the Deserved Death of the 
 Marquis d'Ancre, etc., 1617,* a full account, quite similar to the 
 French, is given of the summoning of the Council and of the recall 
 of Villeroi. 
 
 The allusion fits, then, — fits as well as the vague language addressed 
 to an audience which understands, and describing in a few lines, not 
 events, but mere sober effects and conditions, would permit. Now it 
 
 which K. lycwis XIII's words fit the passage when we construe it as, to make sense, 
 it must be construed — which referring to the clause " Quits . . . persons " — is to 
 my mind cogent argument that W. here had them in mind. 
 ^ Relation Exacte, Mich, et Pou., V, p. 458. 
 
 * Relation Exacte, pp. 466, 467, 469, 470, 471, 472 : often two or three times a day. 
 ' Relation Exacte, pp. 466, 467. * Registered May 8th. 
 
 * Relation Exacte, pp. 462 a, 462 b. ' Pp. 11, 12. ' 
 
 * In Isambert et Decrusy. t. XVI, p. 108 f. * P. 14. Brit. Mus. copy. 
 
 27 
 
could fit no other possible king or court of France, and no other period 
 than shortly after April, 1617. Before that, as far back as the death 
 of Henry IV, in 1610, there was no king in power, and no state of 
 affairs an Englishman would " admire." And by a year after April, 
 1617, it would have been evident that Lewis XIII had only fallen into 
 the hands of another set of minions.^ But within the year the court 
 and king of France would seem, especially so far away as in England, 
 as Webster describes them. Lewis was beginning with such promise : 
 he had put an end to the rebellion in the south, and had made peace 
 between Savoy and Spain ^; himself freed from Spanish control, he 
 was now busied with measures of justice, and schemes of legislation 
 and improvement ; he bore as yet the title of the Just. The allusion 
 can be to no other than him. 
 
 But did England feel like France ? What warrant for our finding 
 admiration of Lewis in Webster is there in what we know of the Eng- 
 lish attitude ? ' ' The cry of exultation which was raised in France, ' ' 
 says Mr. Gardiner, '^ ' ' was echoed in all Protestant lands. The Queen- 
 Mother had always been regarded as the chief supporter of the Spanish 
 party. Even James was carried away by the tide, and for once found 
 himself giving expression to opinions in complete accordance with 
 those of Win wood and Raleigh. . . . James wrote to congratulate the 
 young sovereign of France." And the interest of the people is 
 attested by the activity of the press. A dozen or more of pamphlets 
 relating to the affair, bearing the date of 1617, are still preserved in 
 the British Museum^; and there are seven entries of books in the 
 Stationers' Register, from the 17th of April to the 3rd of June, 1617, 
 three of which :are of books not to be identified with any of those pre- 
 
 ^ After the abrupt dissolution of the Assembl^e at Rouen, in the spring and sum- 
 mer of 1618, when the duplicity, tyranny, and rapacity of lyUynescame to light, and 
 the king broke his promises (Martin, ed. 1844, XII, 364-7). Whereas (XII, 353, 359) 
 " I^e gouvemement de I,ouis XIII avait tout propice au d^but "; " les premiers temps 
 du gouvemement . . . furent cependant assez prosp^res." 
 
 "" Signed at Pavia, Oct. 9th, 1617. Bazin, Louis XIII, t. II, p. 37. Cf. Martin, ed. 1844. 
 XII, p. 359, where the good effect, at home and abroad, of I,ewis's conduct in this 
 connection is discussed. ' Gardiner, III, p. 109. 
 
 * Ten bound together, marked 8050. bbb. 56. Besides those already cited: 
 1. The True Relation of the Deserved Death of that Base and Insolent Tryant, The 
 Marquis d'Ancre, the most unworthie Marshall of France, etc. 2. Oration made unto 
 ike French King by Deputies of the National Synode of the Reformed Church. 3. Last 
 IVill and Testament of the Marquis, etc. 4. Arraignmetit of Marquis, etc. 5. Fitneral 
 Obsequies and Buriall of the Marquis, etc. 6. The Ghost of the Marquisse D'Ancre 
 . . . and Mosequin a deluding spirit by whome her husband was misled. Another, of 
 the same date, is The Tears of the Marshall D'Ancre's Wife, shed for the death of her 
 husband. — This " True Relation " (the first entered in S. R., see below) gives a very 
 circumstantial account of all events, including the purging of the palace. 
 
 28 
 
served. The entries themselves indicate the keenest popular interest, 
 for the first of them are entered only three or four days after the 
 event itself ; and the titles betray naively the animus of the writers 
 and of their public.^ Even the stage responded, for, on June 22nd 
 1617, the Privy Council wrote to Sir George Buc, Master of the Revels, 
 * ' to have special care that an enterlude concerning the late Marquis 
 D'Ancre should not be performed." ^ 
 
 The evidence, then, is pretty conclusive that Malfi alludes to Lewis 
 XIII, at a time not long after the assassination of Concini ; and itself, 
 therefore, falls within the year 1617, after April. To this let me add, 
 however, yet one argument.^ Orazio Busino, chaplain to Pietro 
 Contarini, Venetian Ambassador, left among his manuscripts, now 
 preserved in the Librarj^ of St. Mark,* one entitled Anglipotrida, a 
 miscellaneous collection of notes on his experiences in England. In 
 the ' second appendix ' there is this : 
 
 Prendouo giuoco gli Inglesi della nostra religrione come di cosa detestabile, et 
 snperstitiosa, ne mai rappresentano qualsivogrlia attione pubblica, sia pura Tragisati- 
 ricomica, che non inserischino dentro uitij, et scelleragini di q'lche religrioso catol- 
 ico, facendone risate, et molti scherni, con lor gusto, et ramarico de' buoni, fu 
 appunto veduto dai nostri, in una Commedia introdur' un frate franciscano, astuto, et 
 ripieno di varie inipiet^, cosi d'avaritia come di libidine ; et il tutto poi riusci in una 
 Tragedia, facendoli mozzar la vista in scena. Un altra volta rappresentarono la 
 grandezza d'un card.'* con li habiti formali, et proprij molti belli, et ricchi, con la 
 sua Corte, facendo in scena erger un Altare, dove finse di far orat.°*, ordinando una 
 processione ; et poi lo ridussero in pubblico con una Meretrice in seno. Dimostrd di 
 ■dar il Velleno ad una sua sorella, per interesse d'honore; et d'andar in oltre alia 
 guerra, con depponer prima I'habito cardinalitio sopra I'altare col mezzo de' suoi 
 Cappell."' con gravity, et finalm."'" si fece cingere la spada, metterlaserpa,* con tan to 
 garbo, che niente piu ; et tutto ci6 fanno in sprezzo, delle grandezze ecclesiast.'** vili- 
 pese, et odiate a morte in q'sto Regno. Di L,ondra a' 7 feb.**" 1618. 
 
 ^ The first entries are actually Apr. 17th, A True Relation of the Death of the 
 Marquis D'Ancre, and Apr. 23rd. The first, on the third day after, indicates a 
 journalistic enterprise almost unbelievable of that day. The entries and pamphlets 
 all of one accord approve the deed. 
 
 "^ Fleay, Hist. Stage, p. 309. Mr. Fleay adds, "no doubt Thierry and Theodorety 
 There is much doubt, though. Cf. Thomdike's Influence of B. (2f F. on Shak. , p. 75 f. 
 And I w^ould add to his arguments that the name de Vitri occurs as that of a 
 character in Chap.'s Trag. of Byron, pub. 1608; and that the Conspiracy of Byron , 
 pub. at the same time, contains an astrologer and astrology, as do others of Chap.'s 
 plays. 
 
 ' A writer in the Quarterly Rev. for 1859, in his review of a translation of Busino's 
 journals and despatches hy Rawdon Brown (" not published " then, and so far as I 
 can discover at the Brit. Mus. still not pub.) , adds in a note that Busino describes a 
 play in 1618 that must be Malfi. Ward repeats this, HI, p. 59. 
 
 * CI. VII. Cod. M. C. XXII. 
 
 * Serpa it is, very distinctly written. No suitable meaning is to be found in any 
 ■dictionary that has come to my notice. Nor have Venetians whom I have asked 
 been able to explain it. It must mean sciarPa, which is the Italian for scarf, mili- 
 
 29 
 
Busino does not say he himself saw the play ; and if he did, it is 
 not likely that he understood much of it. The movements on the 
 stage are what impressed him and what he describes. With this in 
 mind, nothing could seem to fit Busino's description better than Malfi. 
 In Act II, sc. 4, Webster's Cardinal appears with his mistress Julia 
 alone, ^ and very likely with her in his lap : and in Act III, sc. 4, he 
 goes through all the ceremony of laying aside ecclesiastical vest- 
 ments, with the assistance of * churchmen, ' and of accoutring himself 
 with ' sword,' shield, and spurs. His making show of giving poison 
 to his sister in the interest of her honor (if it means that) might be 
 the banishment of the duchess in dumb-show, in the same scene, ^ as 
 it appeared to an Italian spectator ; and the erection of the altar and 
 the prayer might easily be some of the * ' business ' ' introduced in one 
 of several scenes in the play, as at the beginning of Act II, sc. 2, he 
 himself reappearing immediatelj' after with Julia in his lap. True, 
 the evidence is not conclusive ; though Malfi fits the description far 
 better than any other known play, the real play may not have come 
 down to us. But the date of that play, at any rate, harmonizes admir- 
 ably with that which we had already attained for Malfi — the latter 
 half of the year 1617.^ 
 
 VII. THE DEVIL'S LAW-CASE. 
 
 The DeviVs Law- Case was published in 1623, again without register- 
 ing at the Stationers'. Fleay "* comes at the date 1610 by adding 
 Romelio's 38 years of age to the year of his birth ^ (the year after 
 Lepanto, i. e., 1572) ; and by drawing conclusions to the same effect 
 from the waiting-woman's asseverations — though she is lying! — as 
 to her remembering two great frosts, three great plagues, and the 
 
 tary scarf. This in the Venetian dialect takes the form siarpa or sierPa. See 
 ^Boerio, Dtz. del dialetto Venez., Venezia, 1856. This meaning suits the text admir- 
 ably. It was suggested by Dr. Hartmann. 
 
 * Also in V, 2. 
 
 * This and the investiture, observe, are linked together in Busino's account. 
 
 ' The date of this account (see above) is Feb. 7, 1618. Busino says (see above) un 
 ultra volta, as if some time ago. The embassy started, according to his Relazione 
 del Viaggio, Sept. 2nd, 1617 ; and his first letter from London he dates Oct. 8th, 1617. — 
 The work of Mr. Sampson on the dates of the plays W. D. and Mai. seems rather 
 fruitless, particularly in view of his conclusion that the date of the publishing of 
 IV. D. (1612) may be the date of the composition of Mai., and his doubt whether 
 Mai. may not have preceded W. D. / (xliv) . And think of settling the date of 
 JV. D. by allusions to Ariosto so uncertain as on p. 187 (cf. xl), or by an allusion 
 to Verton's mulberry-planting, in 1609, which amounts to the word silkworm (pp. 188 
 and xl) ! 
 
 * Btog. Chr., II, 272-3. * D. L. C. IV, 2 (not II, 4. as Fleay says) , pp. 87, 93, 95 
 
 30 
 
taking of Calais. As if the date of the action had to be coincident 
 with that of the first performance ; or as if Webster's audiences, or he 
 himself, sat and counted up time-references ! 
 
 More to the point is the allusion, found by Dyce, to the Massacre of 
 Amboyna, Feb., 1623 ^: 
 
 Sec. Surg. How? go to the East Indies! and so many Hollanders gone to fetch 
 sauce for their pickled herrings ! some have been peppered there too lately. 
 
 D.L.C.D.m. 
 Yet the connection is impossible, for it is now known, as Mr. Fleay^ 
 points out, that the news of the massacre did not reach England until 
 May, 1624. But Dyce's scent was, as usual, true; he rightly recog- 
 nized an allusion to contemporary affairs, and he could have verified 
 it, had he only turned back a little, to the earlier troubles between the 
 English and Dutch in the East Indies. Such verification is to be 
 found, I think, in Gardiner : 
 
 In August [1619] the ' Star ' arrived from England bringing news of the opening 
 of negotiations in I,ondon. As no treaty had been signed at the date of its depart- 
 ure, the Dutch seized the vessel, and despatched six ships to Sumatra to look out for 
 English traders. On the coast they found four of the Company's vessels busily 
 engaged in lading pepper. The captain of one of these, the 'Bear,' had met Sir 
 Thomas Roe at the Cape on his return from India. It happened that a new Dutch 
 admiral also had been there on his outward voyage, with whom Roe had opened 
 communications, which had ended in an agreement that hostilities should be sus- 
 pended till the result of the negotiations in lyondon could be known. In the sudden- 
 ness of the attack this agreement was either not produced, or was disregarded. One 
 of the English ships, the ' Dragon,' was forced to surrender, after a combat of an 
 hour's duration, and the other three were too much encilmbered with their lading 
 even to attempt a defence. The prisoners were treated with the greatest inhumanity, 
 and many of the wounded died from exposure to the rain upon the open deck. 
 Amongst the prizes on board, the Dutch sailors found a handsome knife, which had 
 been sent out as a present from the King to the native sovereign of Acheen. They 
 carried it about the deck in uproarious procession, shouting out at the top of their 
 voices, " Thou hast lost thy dagger, Jemmy." A few days later two other English 
 vessels were taken at Patani, and the captain of one of them was killed. 
 
 Vol. Ill, pp. 180-1. 
 
 This, you see, was no insignificant event ; it must have excited 
 public interest ; and the pun on " pepper "^ would have been, then as 
 now, inevitable. Now the news of Amboyna reached England, as we 
 have seen, after a year and three months ; that of the treaty signed 
 June 2nd, 1619, reached the East Indies on March 8th of the following 
 year*: so, allowing the same interval, we may reckon the backward 
 limit of the DeviV s Law-Case to be the end of 1620. 
 
 * Dyce says wrongly, 1622. * Biog. Chr., II, 272 : cf. Gardiner, vol. V. p. 242. 
 
 ' That the verb " pepper " was then commonly thus u.sed is proved by / Hen. IV, 
 II, 4, 212 ; V. 3, 37 ; R.(2f J., Ill, 1. 102 ; Hoff., 1. 1473 ; Mass. Virg. Mart., p. 18 ; Hum. 
 Lieut., p. 238 ; etc. * Gardiner, Vol. III. p. 181. 
 
 • 31 
 
Should the date be rather thrust on, however, nearer the forward 
 limit ? Such a question is to be raised in connection with the possible 
 indebtedness of the Devil's Law-Case to the Spanish Curate, ^ or to 
 the Fair Maid of the Inn. The last is entirely to be excluded from 
 consideration by reason of explicit mention of the Massacre of 
 Amboyna,^ and its having been licensed (though written, of course, 
 earlier)'^ only in 1626.'^ And as for the Spanish Curate and the 
 DeviVs Law-Case, they may very well have been produced independ- 
 ently, deriving the law-case story, their only point of contact, the one 
 only from Gerardo, and the other from the old play, Lusfs Dominion ; 
 or the DeviVs Law-Case itself may have influenced the Spanish 
 Curate. ^ However that be, it is to be considered improbable that the 
 DeviVs Law-Case followed the Spanish Curate, by reason of two con- 
 siderations : first, the lack of any reference to Dutch or East India 
 troubles in the Spanish Curate, and the presence of so pointed a refer- 
 ence — " lately " — in the DeviVs Law-Case ; second, the nature of the 
 vicissitudes of the Queen's Men. As to the latter point, Webster's 
 play, according to the title-page, was ' * approvedly well Acted by her 
 Majesties Servants." Now Queen Anne died in March, 1619, and there 
 were no real Queen's Servants again till the time of Henrietta, June, 
 1625.^ Still hanging together, however, on the 8th of July, 1622, they 
 obtained a Privy Seal for a new company to be called the ' ' Children 
 of the Revels."^ In the meantime they had continued to act at the 
 Red BulP ; but under what name? Under the old one of Queen's 
 Servants, of course, until they received the patent for the new one. ^ 
 It must have been before that, therefore, that they acted the DeviVs 
 Law-Case. ^^ The date of the play must be from the end of 1620 to 
 July, 1622. 
 
 * I,ic. by Herbert, Oct. 24. 1622 (Fleay, Hist., p. 301). 
 ' B. & F.. Works, II, p. 374. 
 
 ^ Herbert says expressly, "by Fletcher": so, before his death, Aug. 1625. And 
 after Amboyna : so after May, 1624. 
 
 * In Herbert's Office Book,— Jan. 22nd, 1626. 
 
 * /. e., Gerardo the Unfortunate Spaniard, translated by Leonard Digges (lyondon, 
 1622) , the general source of the .S"^. Cur. For a discussion of this whole matter see 
 below, Chap. IV. 
 
 * Fleay's Hist., p. 321. '' Though a men's company, Fleay 's Hist., p. 270. 
 
 * Fleay's Hist., p. 272. I know no other authority, yet Fleay must be right. The 
 D. L. C, as we have seen, must be considerably later than Mar. 2nd, 1619, and yet it 
 was acted by " Her Majesties Servants." 
 
 ® Mr. Fleay seems of the opinion that at Queen Anne's death the Company went 
 on playing without any name. Of the acting of Z). L. C. he says, simply, " and 
 therefore before 1619." Mr. Sidney I^ee repeats this {Diet. Nat. Bios., art. IVebster). 
 
 *" The company may, of course, have kept the old name popularly, even after the 
 Privy Seal : but not likely, after an official designation was at hand, on the title- 
 
 32 
 
VIII. APPIUS AND VIRGINIA. 
 
 Appius and Virginia was first published, so far as is known, in 
 1654. An Appius and Virginia stands last in a list of their own 
 plays, drawn up in August, 1639, by William Beeston, governor of the 
 Cockpit Company ^ ; and as the only other Appius and Virginia 
 known is antiquated, dull, and childish, a specimen not possibly to be 
 played by a royal company in the day of Massinger and Shirley, this 
 must be Webster's. ^ No other precise data are at hand. But the 
 play is not mentioned in the preface to the Z^^Z'//'^ Zazez-Gz^^/ and 
 that it was written after that, after 1623, appears from the evidence 
 (to be produced later) -^ that it is indebted to Shakspere, especially to 
 his Roman plays, and in so precise and circumstantial a manner as to 
 indicate the use of the First Folio. A nearer forward limit than that 
 of Beeston 's list is unattainable, for the date of Webster's death is 
 unknown.^ We must content ourselves, therefore, with the date 
 1623-39.^ 
 
 IX. A CURE FOR A CUCKOLD. 
 
 Webster and Rowley's Cure for a Cuckold was first published in 
 1661. It contains an allusion, long recognized, to Middleton and 
 Rowley's Fair Quarrel : 
 
 Pett. . . . and there falls in league with a wench. 
 
 Comp. A Tweak or Bronstrops : I learned that name in a play. C. C, IV, 1, p. 64, 
 
 Ush. What is my sister, centaur? 
 
 CoVs Tr. I say thy sister is a bronstrops. 
 
 Ush. A bronstrops? 
 
 Chough. Tutor, tutor, — tell me the English of that ; what is a bronstrops, pray ? 
 
 CoVs Tr. A bronstrops is in English a hippocrene. F. Q., IV, 1, 105-112. 
 
 page, especially, I think, as that of the " Queen of Bohemia's players" (/. e., lyady 
 Elizabeth's, so-called after she became such in Nov. 1619) would have made it rather 
 convenient to give up a designation which long had had no meaning, was confusing, 
 and now had no justification. In any case, the Queen's Men existed, even under the 
 new name, only till July or Aug., 1623 (Fleay, Hist., 299, 301),— the absolute forward 
 limit, then, for our play. 
 
 ^ Given in Fleay's Hist. vStage, p. 357; preserved in the I/ard Chamberlain's office. 
 
 * Appius and Virginia, Tragi-Conifdy , by R. B., 4to, 1576. — Halliwell (p. 21) 
 thinks it is the old play. 
 
 ' See below, Chap. IV, Sect. III. 
 
 * See below, pp. 41-43. 
 
 ■ Mr. Fleay's work on Webster is, I suppose, on his lowest level. Qi A.& K he 
 says: "From its allusion, at the end, to Lucrece [Heywood's play of 1608], would 
 seem to date c. 1609. It was undoubtedly a play acted by Queen Anne's men, and 
 passed with the White Devil to Queen Henrietta's." This allusion to Hey. amounts 
 to the name " I,ucretia " ; and there is not a tittle of evidence to show that the play 
 was acted by Queen Anne's. 
 
 33 
 
As the Fair Quarrel first appeared in print in 1617, this may be 
 considered a fairly certain backward limit. But there is a nearer. 
 The plot of Webster's portion is in part derived, as we shall yet prove, ^ 
 from Massinger's Parliament of Love. This play was licensed for the 
 Cockpit on Nov. 3rd, 1624. The only forward limit, however, of the 
 Cure for a Cuckold 0.^ oi Appius and Virginia, is the date of Web- 
 ster's death, whatever that may be. 
 
 X. THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE DOUBTFUL PI.AYS. 
 
 It remains to consider the authenticity of three plays — the Cure for 
 a Cuckold, the Thracian Wonder, and The Weakest Goeth to the Wall. 
 
 The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, registered and published in 1600, is 
 easily disposed of. Neither title-page nor stationers' entry mentions 
 the author. The play itself shows not the slightest trace of Webster's 
 hand, and it was first attributed to him (by Edward Phillips, a 
 nephew of Milton) so late as 1675.^ "A great mistake," says the 
 judicious Langbaine. ^ 
 
 The Cure for a Cuckold and the Thracian Wonder must be consid- 
 ered, so far as external evidence is concerned, together. Both were 
 first published by Francis Kirkman in 1661. Both, evidently, were 
 sent to press at about the same time, for the title-pages, with the ex- 
 ception of bare title, are, both in phrase and typography, exactly 
 alike.* Both bear the names of John Webster and William Rowley. 
 Both have been challenged b}^ most critics of the century ; and hardly 
 any one supported the authenticity of either till Mr. Gosse asserted 
 the artistic worth of the main-plot of the Cure for a Cuckold, and, on 
 that basis, its authenticity.^ 
 
 ^ See below, Chap. IV. Sect. I. 
 
 ' Phillips's Theairum Poetarum, 1675, pp. 116-17, where he assigns to him also the 
 Noble Stranger, New Trick to Cheat the Devil, and Woman will have her Will 
 (the second probably by association with D. L. C). — Hazlitt wrongly states (vol. 
 I, p. xx) that the attribution rests on the authority of Winstanley, in 1687. 
 
 ^ P. 510. He says it of Phillips, in regard not only to the JVeakest but also the 
 Noble Stranger, New Trick to Cheat the Devil, and Woman will have her Will. 
 
 ■* A Cure for a Cuckold A Pleasant Comedy As it hath been several times Acted with 
 great Applause. Written by John Webster and William Rowley. Placere Cupio. 
 London. Printed by Tho. Johnson, and are to be sold by Francis Kirkman, at his 
 Shop at the Sign of John Fletchers Head, over against the Angel-Inne, on the Back 
 side of St. Clements, without Temple Bar 1661. — The Thracian Wonder. A Comical 
 History, — and the rest identical. See the reproductions of the original title-pages 
 in Haz., vol. IV, pp. 1 and 115. There is no deviation except at London. 
 
 " For Gosse, see below ; Ward in his History, Symonds it), introd. to Mer. Webster, 
 lyCe in Diet. Nat. Biog., art. Webster, who hesitatingly follow Gosse; Bullen in 
 Middleton, footnote to F. Q., IV, 1, 105, 112 ; Fleay. For Dyce, see below, p. 37. 
 
 34 
 
The attribution, for which Kirkman is responsible, is, indeed, late. 
 But it is unjustifiable to hold, with Fleay and others, that consequently 
 it is worthless^ (for a late attribution by the first publisher is a very 
 different matter from a late attribution by a mere uncritical critic such 
 as Phillips); or that, if it can be proved wrong in regard to one of the 
 plays, it must therefore be wrong in regard to the other. There could 
 be no fraud intended, as there might be in the case of more popular 
 names, such as Shakspere ^ or Fletcher ; and there must be some rea- 
 son other than fraud or caprice for associating with the name of Rowley 
 — not Middleton's, Fletcher's, Ford's, Massinger's, or Dekker's^ — 
 but Webster's. Very likely, Kirkman had the manuscripts in his hands, 
 and one of the two, at least, avouched this unprecedented partnership. 
 For that he had some basis of fact to go on, is proved by what Mr. 
 Fleay and everyone concede — Rowley's unmistakable touch in the 
 Cure for a Cuckold."^ 
 
 How did Webster's name get associated with Rowley's? The same 
 story as that of the Thracian Wonder, as Collier has pointed out, 
 
 ^ Fleay, II, 273. 
 
 * As is actually the case with the Birth of Merlin, pub. by Kirkman in 1662, and 
 attributed to Shak. and Rowley. 
 
 ' With Middleton's, of course, in many plays ; with Fletcher's in the Maid in the 
 Mill (Herbert's office book, Chalmers's Supp. Apol., ed. 1799, p. 215) ; with Dekker's 
 and Ford's in Edmonton; with Massinger's in the The Old Law. 
 
 * Fleay, II, p. 99 ; Ward ; Seccombe in the Diet. Nat. Bios., " Rowley "; etc. That 
 is, R. is the author of the under-plot, the story of Compass, his wife, her child, and 
 Frankford. This is altogether apart from the main-plot, not only in subject and 
 style, but also in structure; Frankford's being a brother-in-law of Woodruff is the 
 only link between the two. Mr. Edmund Gosse, the first critic to take a stand for 
 Webster's authorship of the main-plot, separated it from the under-plot — a very 
 simple business of subtraction, — and in his edition of the main-plot, which 
 he calls Love's Graduate (Oxford, 1885), takes honor to himself for his discovery. 
 The discovery amounts to Mr. Gosse's oracular reassertion of Kirkman's title- 
 page. 
 
 R.'s authorship of the under-plot is indicated by the tweak and bronstrops passage 
 quoted from his previous play, and by the style in every scene. The extreme, yet 
 laughable, absurdity of Compass's attitude to his "son," of his persisting in spite 
 of all the evidence to the contrary, which he has intellectually accepted, in calling 
 himself " father " (IV, 3, p. 77, " when the father is beyond sea as this was"), is 
 paralleled by the Clown in the Birth of Merlin, who can't get over the wonder of it 
 that his sister should be got with child and he not know of it (II, 1, 1. 35 f); or 
 (though here with a harder, more cynical touch) by Gnotho, who comes " crowdinjr 
 on afore " with a band of fiddlers, leading his old wife to her grave, and his new- 
 chosen bride to the wedding, and, when the duke plainly tells him the law that the 
 superannuated should die is now abolished, cries in eager hurry, " I '11 talk further 
 with your grace when I come back from church : in the meantime you know what 
 to do with the old woman." Of the same stripe are Compass's reasonings before 
 the lawyers (IV, 1). 
 
 35 
 
appeared in 1617/ with the title, ""The most pleasant and delightful 
 Historie of Curan, Prince of Danske, and the Fayre Princesse Argen- 
 tile. Daughter and Heyre of Adelbright, sometime King of Northum- 
 berland. This was by one William Webster. Now Kirkman, knowing 
 the story, — for Kirkman, as his advertisements, or addresses to the 
 reader, ^ and his catalogxie of Elizabethan plays ^ prove, was a reading 
 man, — might have confused the names of William Webster and John 
 Webster, or put for the unknown the known as a guess. But this is 
 not likely, it seems to me, unless the manuscript of the only other play 
 of John Webster's he ever published, the Cure for a Cuckold^ which 
 he was publishing, too, as the title-pages show, at this very time, had 
 already John Webster's name attached. 
 
 And how, on the other hand, did Rowley's * name get on the title- 
 page of the Thracian Wonder, which shows not one trace of his hand ? 
 This play is already assigned to one author — Webster, — and a second, 
 in a matter of guessing, would be superfluous. Rowley's name, we 
 may rest assured, Kirkman never would have thought of adding to 
 Webster's on the title-page of the Thracian Wonder, were it not 
 already connected with Webster's in the only possible instance of 
 such connection, — his manuscript of the Cure for a Cuckold. 
 
 On either hand, then, external evidence intimates that Kirkman 
 was neither cheating nor blindly guessing — that he erred in the case 
 of the Thracian Wonder only through the influence of authority in 
 the case of the Cure for a Cuckold. Internal evidence confirms this. 
 The Thracian Wonder shows not the slightest trace of either Rowley's 
 or Webster's hand : neither ever wrote in the pastoral-idyllic style ; 
 neither ever wrote anything soft and foolish and vulgarly absurd. 
 The ogre of a king belching out destruction in his court, and among 
 the shepherds' cotes meek as any lamb ; telling the Sicilian ambas- 
 
 ^ See Haz., IV, pp. 117-18. Collier and Dyce rest content, however, merely with the 
 theory of the confusion of Wm. with John Webster, and with the assertion that the 
 T. IV. contains no trace of W.'s hand. 
 
 * vSee, for instance, that to the Cure for a Cuckold in Haz. Web. 
 
 ^ True and perfect and exact Catalogue of all the the Comedies, Tragedies, and 
 Tragi-comedies , etc., that were ever yet Printed and Published till this present year 1671 
 (Brit. Mus.). 
 
 * Fleay thinks the association of W.'s with R.'s name prima facie evidence of error ; 
 " They never worked together." (II, 99.) What that amounts to is, there are no 
 other title-pages bearing their names ! To my mind, on the contrary, the association 
 of Webster's name with Rowley's is presumptive evidence in favor of itself. In the 
 first place, Webster's name could not have got there through being mistaken for any 
 of those names otherwise associated with Rowley, — Middleton, Ford, Massinger, 
 etc., — for the play bears no sign of their hand. In the second, there is no other 
 Rowley-Webster play from which this play could be named by analogy. Were 
 there any other, I should be suspicious. 
 
 36 
 
sador on one page he * * will lash his king with iron rods, ' ' and on the 
 next surrendering to him " in palmer's weeds " ^; the silly, love-sick 
 shepherds scampering hither and thither and up trees ; the chorus 
 hlabbing, and Time entering with his hour-glass to *' bar " it ^; and, 
 above all, the very foolish battle wherein the Sicilian prince, injured 
 husband of the ogre-king's daughter, has a mind to fight him at the 
 head of his shepherds, but very suddenly and unreasonably joins with 
 him against his own father of Sicily, yet, in the midst of the fray, 
 leaving his indignant son behind as general, wheels over to the other 
 side, and, after many skirmishes, in which his love-lorn, raving 
 shepherds get the best of him, ends the conflict with a hand-to-hand 
 fight with his son, — when lo, father, son, grandfather, grandson, 
 husband, and wife rush all to a sudden recognition, none the worse for 
 the wear ! Such a ' ' Wonder ' ' as this is in a vein foreign to our 
 authors. And the style is equally so. Men come in and fall down 
 dead with the plague : 
 
 Sec. Lord. Mercy, he 's dead ! 
 
 Sophos. Bless me ! I fear I have taken the infection. 
 
 is this a time for music ? 
 And so it is indeed, for every one 
 Is ready to kick up his heels. [ Within. Oh ! oh ! oh ! ] 
 
 T. W., II, 1. p. 137-9. 
 Hail to those sweet eyes, 
 That shine celestial w^onder ; 
 From thence do flames arise, 
 Bum my poor heart asunder ; 
 Now it fries. T. IV., 11,4. 
 
 Surely, whether on behalf of Webster or of Rowley, there is no reason 
 to accept the Thracian Wonder. '^ 
 
 It is quite otherwise vdth the Cure for a Cuckold. Dyce long ago 
 suggested that Webster's hand might be traced in it*; but of evi- 
 dence on the subject there has hitherto been none. Yet, viewed in 
 the light of a study of Webster's development and of his relation to 
 his sources, internal evidence declares as decisively for Webster's 
 authorship in the main-plot as for Rowley's in the under-plot. The 
 Cure for a Cuckold is really not more unlike Webster's other work 
 than Appius and Virginia, which passes unchallenged. The diffi- 
 culty of critics hitherto lies in a preconceived, vague, romantic notion 
 
 ^ III, 1, p. 160, and III. 2, p. 163. 
 =* I, 3, p. 136. 
 
 ' As Fleay, Dyce, Collier, etc., agree. Mr. Fleay (II, 332) has a very ingrenious 
 theory, not proved by his evidence, that the play is Heywood's. 
 * Dyce's Webster, 1857. vol. I, p. xv. 
 
 37 
 
of Webster's character and style, derived merely from the White 
 Devil and Malfi. But nothing is truer than that the Elizabethan 
 dramatists were Protean, enormously susceptible, and that at different 
 periods they followed different tendencies, different fashions. That is 
 what Webster did in Malfi and the White Devil, — wrote, as we shall 
 see, in the style of a school, — and his whole character is no more to 
 be found in these two sombre tragedies than Shakspere's in Titus 
 Andronicus and Richard III, or in the Tempest and Winter^ s Tale, 
 Now in the Cure for a Cuckold he borrowed his plot almost bodily, as 
 we shall yet see, from Massinger's Parliament of Love. The pre- 
 sumption, thereby arising, that he should borrow, besides, something 
 of the style and manner, a careful examination confirms ; and not onlj'- 
 this play, but the DeviVs Law-Case and Appius and Virgifiia as well, 
 show traces of the master influence of the day in which they took 
 form — the influence of Massinger and Fletcher. Like Shakspere, 
 like Chapman, Webster followed in their day of honor the lead of 
 more forward and fashionable, though not more knowing, masters. ^ 
 Yet we need not seem to beg the question — we need not, in order 
 to prove the Cure for a Cuckold Webster's, seem to some to rob him 
 of his integrity and make him out a different man. His hand and 
 touch are here, even those of the Malfi Webster. \,et me bring for- 
 ward only a few parallels of phrasing to prove this : 
 
 1. Four times — in the White Devil, the DeviVs Law-Case, and 
 twice in the Cure for a Cuckold — Webster makes a woman cry out 
 at the news of her lover's death (brought, moreover, in three cases 
 by the would-be slayer himself). 
 
 Oh, I am lost forever ! ^ 
 
 2. On this same occasion, in both the DeviVs Law-Case and the 
 Cure for a Cuckold, she cries to the would-be slayer, 
 
 O, you have struck him dead through my heart ! ^ 
 
 3. In both the Cure for a Cuckold and the DeviVs Law-Case, the two 
 young men who are about to fight a duel, speak of wearing a ''privy 
 
 * Shak. : see Thomdike's Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher. Web. : see the 
 chapters on C. C. and D. L. C. Chap. : see App. II. 
 
 ' C. C, IV. 2, p. 69, Clare : III. 3. p. 54, Annabel ; W. D., V. 1, p. 112, Vittoria (here, 
 however, Brachiano is only dying) ; D. L. C, II, 3, p. 46, l^eonora. 
 
 ' C. C, IV, 2, p. 69, Clare to I,essingham : D. L. C, III, 3, p. 68, " You have given 
 him the wound you speak of quite through your mother's heart." — In D. L. C, 
 indeed, this speech is uttered not at the same time as " O I am lost," etc., but at 
 the second announcement of Contarino's death, from the mouth of her son, his 
 would-be slayer. — The phrase itself is copied, like so many others in Web., from the 
 Arcadia. See below. Chap. Ill, Sect. I, and Notes and Queries, Oct. 15, 1904, p. 304. 
 
 38 
 
coat^ ' ' — what one in the one play calls his * ' heart, ' ' and one in the 
 other ^ the "justice of his cause." In both cases it is an immaterial, 
 and yet striking, coincidence of phrase and thought, such as would be 
 brought forth only by the same mind under the same circumstances. 
 
 4. Compare Clare in this play — 
 
 I am every way lost, and no means to raise me 
 But blest repentance ! C.C.. IV, 2, p. 72. 
 
 — and Cornelia to Flamineo, in the White Devil — 
 
 To tell how thou shouldst spend the time to come 
 
 W. D., IV, 5, p. 209. 
 
 — where the same phrase takes exactly the same position and accent 
 in the metre, a slight matter no imitator would copy. 
 
 5. The peculiar curse in the Cure for a Cuckold, 
 
 And may my friend's blood, whom you loved so dearly, 
 
 Forever lie imposthumed in your breast, 
 
 And i' th' end choke you ! C.C, IV, 2, p, 72. 
 
 and in the White Devil, 
 
 Die with those pills in your most cursed maw, 
 
 Should bring you health ! or while you sit o' th' bench, 
 
 I,et your own spittle choke you ! W. D., Ill, 2, p. 65. 
 
 6. In A Cure for a Cuckold: 
 In Malfi 
 
 You have ta'en a mass of lead from off my heart 
 Forever would have sunk it in despair. IV, 2, p. 70. 
 
 And thou hast ta'en that massy sheet of lead 
 That hid thy husband's bones, and folded it 
 About my heart. Ill, 2, pp. 209-10. 
 
 7. In ^ Cure for a Cuckold: 
 
 You are to sleep with a sweet bed-fellow 
 
 Would knit the brow at that. IV, 2, p. 74. 
 
 In the White Devil: 
 
 why, the saints in heaven 
 Will knit their brows at that. II. p. 38. 
 
 In both cases the expression is used alike figuratively ; and in the 
 same place in the metre and the sentence. 
 
 8. In ^ Cure for a Cuckold there is a couplet which recalls one 
 that appears in both Malfi, and the White Devil (see note at the end 
 
 of Chapter II) : 
 
 And it were sin 
 Not in our agre to show what we have bin. I, 1, p. 16. 
 
 , ^ D.L. C, II, 1, pp. 39, 40; C. C. III. 1, pp. 47. 
 
 39 
 
There are yet other parallel passages, but let them pass. Of these 
 quoted, nos. 1, 2, and 3 coincide in wording, dramatic situation, and 
 character ; others, as nos. 4 and 8, merely in the expression ; but most 
 of them, being colorless and insignificant in themselves, and resem- 
 bling each other far more in form than in substance, are, like the 
 drawing of ears or little toes in a painter or sculptor, no more the 
 points another would think of copying than he himself of changing. 
 
 Another test we might apply to the Cure for a Cuckold is the use of 
 the exclamation ha! ^ especially as comprehending a whole speech. 
 This is of extraordinary frequency in Webster. ^ It appears in the 
 White Devil 13 times, 6 of them being whole speeches ; in Malfi 10 
 times, 2 of them whole speeches ; in the Law-Case 9 times, 4 of them 
 whole speeches ; in Appius and Virginia twice ; in the main plot of 
 the Cure for a Cuckold! times, 2 of them whole speeches. In view 
 of the slight extent of Webster's part of the Cure for a Cuckold as 
 compared with that of the other plays, and of the frigidity and academic 
 character of the Roman play, Appius and Virginia, the statistics for 
 the different plays keep remarkably even, and the Cure for a Cuckold 
 seems only to take its place with the others. 
 
 There are still other points of similarity, such as cheap, deceptive 
 tricks with words. 
 
 Less. Then truth is, he 's dangerously wounded. 
 
 Wood. But he 's not dead, I hope? 
 
 Less. No, Sir, not dead : 
 
 Yet sure your daughter may take liberty 
 
 To choose another. 
 
 I told you he was wounded, and 'tis true ; 
 
 He is wounded in his reputation. C. C, V, 1, pp. 86-7. 
 
 Compare with this Appius and Virginia, I, 1, p. 132, where Appius 
 pretends to go into banishment, but winds up in this fashion : 
 
 Banish 'd from all my kindred and my friends ; 
 Yea, banish 'd from myself ; for I accept 
 _ This honorable calling. 
 
 This is a favorite artifice of Webster's. In the White Devil, V, 2, 
 p. 131, Flamineo speaks of his "two case of jewels," which in a 
 moment turn out to be pistols, and Lodovico answers Giovanni's 
 question on whose authority he had committed the massacre, thus : 
 
 L^d. By thine. 
 
 Gio. Mine ! 
 
 Lod. Yes ; thy uncle, which is a part of thee, enjoined us to 't. 
 
 IV. D., V. 2. p. 142. 
 
 » These are the references : IV. D., pp. 33, 35, 57, 61,64, 73. 81, 93, 108, 128, 141, 
 142; Malfi, 177, 190, 190, 211, 232, 241, 249, 267, 273, 276; D. L. C, 25, 59. 62. 62. 65» 
 68, 69. 70, 116 ; C. C. 30,40, 46, 89, 90, 91, 96; A.cSf V., 152, 214. 
 
 40 
 
In Appius arid Virginia Virginius surrenders his daughter "into 
 the court — of all the gods" ^; and in the Devil's Law-Case a.r\d the 
 Cure for a Cuckold this bent of his goes to such lengths as to lose 
 utterly the spectator's confidence and sympathy. See, for instance, 
 Jolenta's letter to Contarino, and Clare's letter (another point of 
 similarity ! ) to Lessingham . ^ 
 
 Another proof is the number of striking parallels in plot between 
 the Cure for a Cuckold and Webster's only other independent comedy, 
 the Devil's Law-Case, at points where it does not follow the Parlia- 
 ment of Love. ^ But enough has been brought forward already, I 
 think, to prove Webster's authorship beyond a cavil. 
 
 If, however, the Cure for a Cuckold h^ made to follow the Parliament 
 of Love, licensed to play November, 1624, some one well-read in Fleay 
 or the Dictionary of National Biography may cry, ' ' But Webster 
 died in 1625." Mr. Fleay says, " He was probably the John Webster, 
 cloth-worker, who made his will the 5th of Aug. 1625, proved 7th 
 Oct.'"^; and Mr. Sidney Lee assents. "^ But, I think, without reason. 
 It was the indefatigable Dyce who first brought forward John Webster, 
 clothworker, and his will of 1625 ; and Dyce consigns it, as the only 
 shred of evidence there is on the death of any John Webster within a 
 remarkable stretch of time, to a foot-note. To this he adds, for com- 
 pleteness' sake, the will of a John Webster, tallow-chandler.*' 
 
 The abstract of the will furnished Mr. Dyce by the Prerogative 
 Office is as follows : 
 
 John Webster, clothworker, of lyondon, made his will on the 5th of August, 1625. 
 He bequeathes to his sister, Jane Cheney, dwelling within seven miles of Norwich 
 10 1., with remainder, if she ^ied, to her children, and if they died, to his sister 
 Elizabeth Pyssing- ; to whom he also left 10 1., with remainder to her children. To 
 his father-in-law, William Hattfield, of Whittington, in Derbyshire, 15 1., and to his 
 four children 4 1. each. To his covisin Peter Webster, of Whittington, in Derbyshire, 
 he gives 10 1., and if he died before it was paid, it was to be given to his brother, who 
 was a protestant, " for I hear that one brother of my cousin Peter is a papist." To 
 William Bradbury, of lyondon, shoemaker, 5 1. To Richard Matthew, his (the tes- 
 tator's) son-in-law, 16 1. He mentions his father-in-l^w, Mr. Thomas Fannan. He 
 gives his counsin Edward Curtice, 1 1. 2 s., etc. He leaves the residue of his prop- 
 erty to his brothers and sisters in law, by his wife ; specially providing that EHza- 
 
 ^ A.(f^ v., IV, 1, p. 201. 
 
 ' D. L. C, V, 2, p. 107 ; cf. Ill, 3, pp. 62, 63 : C. C, I, p. 13 : cf. II, 4. p. 38, as to his 
 being mistaken, and the explanations, pp. 38, 54, 69, 74. — And for other deceptive 
 verbal tricks, p. 47 and pp. 48, 49. 
 
 ' Below, Chap. IV, Sect. I, note at end. 
 
 * Bwg:. Chr., II, 268. 
 
 ' "He seems to have died," etc., Diet. Nat. Bios., art. IVebster. likewise Mr. 
 Gosse, Jacobean Poets, lyondon, 1894, p. 166. 
 
 • Dyce's Web., ed. 1857, p. x. 
 
 41 
 
beth Walker should be one. He constitutes Mr. Robert Aungel, and his cousin, 
 Mr. Francis Ash, citizens, his executors ; and his cousins Courtis and Tayler, 
 overseers of his will, — which was proved by his executors on the 7th of October, 
 1625. 
 
 This document is neither written nor signed b}' the testator ; he 
 and three of the witnesses (his cousin Edward Curtis, the fourth, being 
 the only exception) are fain to make their marks. ^ Now it is incon- 
 ceivable that John Webster, playwright, should not have signed his 
 name unless too weak to hold the pen (which the date of the proving 
 makes unlikely) ; and it is highl}' improbable that with friends like 
 Dekker, Munday, Heywood, Ford, and Rowley ^ still living, he should 
 have been abandoned in his last hours to the society of illiterates, or, 
 with so large an estate on his hands, should have bequeathed it only 
 to distant Protestant relatives and a shoemaker. Our Webster, more- 
 over, was not a clothworker. "Merchant-Taylor" he designates 
 himself on the title-page of the Monuments of Honor, a pageant of 
 ' ' the Right Worthy and Worshipful Fraternity, the Eminent Merchant 
 Taylors, " — a thing (as Dyce and Fleay surely knew) very differ- 
 ent.^ And, even as merchant-tailor, he speaks of himself at this same 
 time, in the dedication to Gore, only as of one '''born free of your 
 company.'"^ He is, therefore, not any of the three John Websters 
 7nade free ^ of the Company in 1571, 1576, and 1617 ^; still less that one 
 
 * I give this on the authority of Mr. Crofts. See below, p. 43, note. 
 
 ''That these last were also his friends, appears from the partnership with Ford, 
 and his verses addressed to Munday and Heywood. 
 
 'It is unlikely that in the will of J. W., clothworker, there should have been 
 any such mistake. However loosely and vaguely such three designations as cloth- 
 worker, merchant-tailor, and draper may be used today, it was otherwise then, 
 when one necessarily understood by each a member of one of the Twelve Great 
 Companies of I^ondon (see list in Ashley's English Econ. Hist., 1893, vol. II, p. 133). 
 
 * See Works, III, p. 232 ; pub. in 1624. 
 
 * This distinction is important. See Toulmin Smith, English Gilds (lyondon, 1870) , 
 p. cxxxii : " the whole household of a Gild-brother belonged to the Gild," etc. 
 
 * Works, I, introd., p. vi. — Possibly, on the other hand, he may have been a son 
 of one of the earlier ones. The due-bill dated July 25th, 1591, wherein John Allein 
 and Edward Alleyn acknowledge their indebtedness to "John Webster, city sen and 
 merchant Tayler of lyondon " in the sum of 15 shillings, is probably the nearest 
 we come by documentary evidence to John Webster the poet. This may be the 
 poet's father, who may have had dealings with actors and so come to get his son 
 into their society. This would harmonize with our poet's being born free of the 
 company. The due-bill is printed in \h^ Alleyn Papers, ed. by Collier (who suggests 
 that this Webster may be the father of the poet), lyondon, 1843, p. 14; and is 
 accounted by Warner in his Catalogue of Dulwich College Mss. as genuine. — If this 
 be so, the poet can not be the ' nephew John Webster, as near to whom as might be ' 
 John Webster, the tallow-chandler, in his will of Feb. 16th, 1628, wishes to be buried ; 
 there could not have been two brothers called John. 
 
 42 
 
assessed 10 shillings on March 15th, 1603 ^; nor, indeed, is he to be 
 reckoned a craftsman at all. The designation on the title-page is 
 perfunctory, in compliment to the company for which he wrote the 
 pageant ; and Webster is no more of a merchant-tailor than any of 
 the other worthies mentioned in this pageant as "free of the com- 
 pany," than that bold soldier of fortune. Sir John Hawkwood, Queen 
 Anne, or the " bad man but good king, Richard the Third." ^ 
 
 We may conclude, therefore, without a shadow of doubt, that Webster 
 is not John Webster, clothworker ; and since there are no more wills 
 of John Websters at Somerset House, -^ from 1621-35, there is, at any 
 rate, no longer a will and probate in the way ^ of Webster's writing 
 the Cure for a Cuckold aiter Nov. 3rd, 1624. 
 
 XI. THE PERIODS OF WEBSTER'S WORK. 
 
 Now, at last, we are in a position to tabulate on a secure basis the 
 development of Webster's art. Three periods, of course (according 
 to the hackneyed and inevitable scheme), are to be discerned : Growiih, 
 Maturity, and Decay, the point of Maturity being marked by the White 
 Devil and Malfi. Another principle, however, is to be preferred, — 
 that of the prevalent influences. According to this latter, his work 
 falls into these periods : 
 
 1. Period of Apprenticeship and Partnership : mainly under the 
 influence of Dekker. 
 
 sesers ffalle 1602 
 
 too shapes 1602 
 
 Sir Thomas Wyatt (Lady Jane) 1602 
 
 cryssmas comes bute once ayeare 1602 
 
 */. <»., toward a pageant for King James. Clode {Memorials of the Merchant 
 Taylors" Company, I/jn., 1875. p. 596). who takes it as a matter of course that this is 
 the poet himself, admits (p. 601, note) that the records do not show that he ever 
 took up the freedom acquired by birth. Clode seems not to know of the Alley n 
 Papers John Webster, who is probably the man assessed. 
 
 ^ Mon. Hon., pp. 238-9. Mischief in this business of the tailor was made by Dyce 
 (blindly followed by Haz.), in quoting wrongly the title-page of the Mon. Hon. 
 He says, ed. 1830, vol. I, p. 11, that there W. describes himself as "John Webster 
 Taylor," although in vol. IV, App., he gives the title-page correctly — " Merchant- 
 Taylor." — from the "copy, perhaps unique, belonging to the Duke of Devonshire." 
 His calling himself " Taylor " is. of course, a different matter. 
 
 ' What facts I have here given concerning the Clothworker's parchment I owe to 
 the services of Mr. T. Robertson W. Crofts. Highgate. He was not allowed by the 
 authorities to copy it or to have it copied ; and after he had furnished me with the 
 above facts, I decided photographing was not necessary. 
 
 * Excepting always the tallow-chandler's. 
 
 43 
 
Induction to the Malcontent ^ bef . July, 1604 
 
 Westward Ho c. September 1604-1605 
 
 Northward Ho Spring 1605-1606 
 
 2. Period of the Revenge Plays : mainly under the influence of 
 Marston. 
 
 The White Devil Winter 1611-1612 
 
 The Duchess of Malfi 1617, after April 
 
 3 . Fletcherian and Academic Period : under the influence not only 
 of Fletcher and Massinger, but of the old-fashioned dramatists, 
 Marlowe, Heywood, and Shakspere. 
 
 The Guise prob. after Malfi and before D. L. C.^ 
 
 The Devil's Law- Case end 1620— July 1622 
 
 Appius and Virginia 1623-1639 
 
 A Cure for a Cuckold after Nov., 1624 
 
 1 'I 
 
 This, as I prove in Chap. II, is all Web. wrote. 
 " See below, Chap. IV, Sect. IV, end. 
 
 LEBENSLAUF. 
 
 Ich wurde am llten Feb., 1874, zu Orrvilie in Ohio, als Sohn des 
 Artztes Stoll, geboren. Ich besuchte Harvard University, und da- 
 selbst promovierte ich im Jahr 1895 zum Baccalaureus Artium und 
 eiu Jahr dauach zum Magister. Dann reiste ich, studierte fiir mich 
 selbst, und musste meiue Gesundheit kraftigen. Von September, 1900, 
 bis Juni, 1902, erteilte ich Unterricht in der Englischen Philologie auf 
 dem Adelphi (-ollege zu Brooklyn. Im Wintersemester desselben 
 Jahres fing ich an, germanische und romauische Philologie an der kgl. 
 Fried. Wil. Univ. zu Berlin zu studieren, und hierauf setzte ich 
 meine Studien an der kgl. Lud. Max. IJ^niv. zu Miinchen fort. 
 
 Auf Harvard Univ. wohnte ich unter anderen den Vorlesungen der 
 Professoren Child, Norton, Hill, Kittredge, Baker, und Gates bei, und 
 zu Berlin und Miinchen denen der Professoren Brandl, Roethe, 
 Siramel, Breymann, Paul, und Schick. 
 
 44 
 
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