Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/244

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

possible collaborators or revisers. The stationer speaks of a single 'author', meaning Fletcher, but says he was 'not acquainted with him'. And the critics at least agree in finding both Beaumont and Fletcher, pretty well throughout.

The Captain. 1609 < > 12

1647. The Captain. [Part of F_{1}. Prologue and Epilogue.]

1679. The Captain. A Comedy. [Part of F_{2}.]?|or the one at para end?] 'The principal Actors were, Richard Burbadge, Henry Condel, William Ostler, Alexander Cooke.']

The play was given by the King's at Court during 1612-13, and presumably falls between that date and the admission of Ostler to the company in 1609. The 1679 print, by a confusion, gives the scene as 'Venice, Spain', but this hardly justifies the suggestion of Fleay, i. 195, that we have a version of Fletcher's work altered for the Court by Barnes. He had formerly conjectured collaboration between Fletcher and Jonson (E. S. ix. 18). The prologue speaks of 'the author'; Fleay thinks that the mention of 'twelve pence' as the price of a seat indicates a revival. Several critics find Massinger; Oliphant finds Rowley; and Boyle and Oliphant find Beaumont, as did Macaulay, 196, in 1883, but apparently not in 1910 (C. H. vi. 137).

Two Noble Kinsmen. 1613

S. R. 1634, April 8 (Herbert). 'A Tragicomedy called the two noble kinsmen by John Fletcher and William Shakespeare.' John Waterson (Arber, iv. 316).

1634. The Two Noble Kinsmen: Presented at the Black-friers by the Kings Maiesties servants, with great applause: Written by the memorable Worthies of their time; Mr. John Fletcher, and Mr. William Shakspeare. Gent. Tho. Cotes for Iohn Waterson. [Prologue and Epilogue.]

1679. [Part of F_{2} of Beaumont and Fletcher.]

Editions by W. W. Skeat (1875), H. Littledale (1876-85, N. S. S.), C. H. Herford (1897, T. D.), J. S. Farmer (1910, T. F. T.), and with Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, Sh. Apocrypha, and sometimes Works of Shakespeare.—Dissertations: W. Spalding, A Letter on Sh.'s Authorship of T. N. K. (1833; 1876, N. S. S.); S. Hickson, The Shares of Sh. and F. in T. N. K. (1847, Westminster Review, xlvii. 59; 1874, N. S. S. Trans. 25*, with additions by F. G. Fleay and F. J. Furnivall); N. Delius, Die angebliche Autorschaft des T. N. K. (1878, Jahrbuch, xiii. 16); R. Boyle, Sh. und die beiden edlen Vettern (1881, E. S. iv. 34), On Massinger and T. N. K. (1882, N. S. S. Trans. 371); T. Bierfreund, Palamon og Arcite (1891); E. H. C. Oliphant (1892, E. S. xv. 323); B. Leuschner, Über das Verhältniss von T. N. K.zu Chaucer's Knightes Tale (1903, Halle diss.); O. Petersen, The T. N. K. (1914, Anglia, xxxviii. 213); H. D. Sykes, The T. N. K. (1916, M. L. R. xi. 136); A. H. Cruickshank, Massinger and T. N. K. (1922).

The date of T. N. K. is fairly well fixed to 1613 by its adaptation of