Robin Hood seems to me to be of a literary origin similar to that of the contemporary 'morals'.
Towards the end of the period a new element is introduced with Lyly and Peele, who, like Edwardes before them, were not divines but secular scholars, and presumably desired a permanent life for their literary achievements. The publication of Lyly's plays for Paul's carries us on into the period 1586-1616, and the vaunting of their performance before the Queen is soon followed by that of other plays, beginning with The Troublesome Reign of John, as publicly acted in the City of London. During 1586-1616 two hundred and thirty-seven plays in all were published or at least entered on the Stationers' Register, in addition to thirteen printed elsewhere than in London. Of many of these, and of some of those earlier published, there were one or more reprints. It is not until the last year of the period that the first example of a collective edition of the plays of any author makes its appearance. This is The Workes of Benjamin Jonson, which is moreover in folio, whereas the prints of individual plays were almost invariably in quarto.[1] A second volume of Jonson's Works was begun in 1631 and completed in 1640. Shakespeare's plays had to wait until 1623 for collective treatment, Lyly's until 1632, Marston's until 1633, and Beaumont and Fletcher's until 1647 and 1679, although a partial collection of Shakespearian plays in quarto has been shown to have been contemplated and abandoned in 1619.[2] Of the two hundred and thirty-seven plays proposed for publication two hundred and fourteen are extant. Twenty-three are only known by entries in the Stationers' Register, and as plays were not always entered, it is conceivable that one or two may have been published, and have passed into oblivion. Of the two hundred and fourteen extant plays, six are translations from the Latin, Italian, or French, and seven may reasonably be suspected of being merely closet plays, intended for the eye of the reader alone. The other two hundred and one may be taken to have undergone the test
- [Footnote: the seventeenth century. Of course there are moral elements in other
plays, such as Histriomastix, especially in dumb-shows and inductions.]
- ↑ There is little evidence as to the price at which prints were sold; what there is points to 6d. for a quarto. A 'testerne' is given in the epistle as the price of Troilus and Cressida, and in Middleton, Mayor of Quinborough, v. i, come thieves who 'only take the name of country comedians to abuse simple people with a printed play or two, which they bought at Canterbury for sixpence'. The statement that the First Folio cost £1 only rests on Steevens's report of a manuscript note in a copy not now known; cf. McKerrow in Sh. England, ii. 229.
- ↑ Cf. ch. xxiii, s.v. Shakespeare.
