ANTHONY BREWER (c. 1607). Nothing is known of Brewer beyond his play, unless, as is possible, he is the 'Anth. Brew' who was acting c. 1624 at the Cockpit (cf. F. S. Boas, A Seventeenth Century Theatrical Repertoire in 3 Library for July 1917).
The Lovesick King. c. 1607
S. R. 1655, June 20. 'A booke called The Love-sick King, an English tragicall history with the life & death of Cartis Mundy the faire Nunne of Winchester. Written by Anthony Brewer, gent.' John Sweeting (Eyre, i. 486). 1655. The Love-sick King, An English Tragical History: With The Life and Death of Cartesmunda, the fair Nun of Winchester. Written by Anth. Brewer, Gent. For Robert Pollard, and John Sweeting.
1680. The Perjured Nun.
Editions by W. R. Chetwood (1750, S. C.) and A. E. H. Swaen (1907, Materialien, xviii).—Dissertation: A. E. H. Swaen, The Date of B.'s L. K. (1908, M. L. R. iv. 87). There are small bits of evidence, in the use of Danish names from Hamlet and other Elizabethan plays, and in a jest on 'Mondays vein to poetize' (l. 548), to suggest a date of composition long before that of publication, but a borrowing from The Knight of the Burning Pestle makes it improbable that this can be earlier than 1607. The amount of Newcastle local colour and a special mention of 'those Players of Interludes that dwels at Newcastle' (l. 534) led Fleay, i. 34, to conjecture that it was acted in that town.
Doubtful Plays
Anthony Brewer has been confused with Thomas Brewer, or perhaps with more than one writer of that name, who wrote various works of popular literature, and to whom yet others bearing only the initials T. B. are credited, between 1608 and 1656. Thus The Country Girl, printed as by T. B. in 1647, is ascribed in Kirkman's play-lists of 1661 and 1671 to Antony Brewer, but in Archer's list of 1656 to Thomas. Oliphant (M. P. viii. 422) points out that the scene is in part at Edmonton, and thinks it a revision by Massinger of an early work by Thomas, who published a pamphlet entitled The Life and Death of the Merry Devil of Edmonton in 1608.
ARTHUR BROOKE (ob. 1563).
In 1562 he was admitted to the Inner Temple without fee 'in consideration of certain plays and shows at Christmas last set forth by him' (Inderwick, Inner Temple Records, i. 219). Possibly he refers to one of these plays when he says in the epistle to his Romeus and Juliet (1562), 'I saw the same argument lately set foorth on stage with more commendation then I can looke for: (being there much better set forth then I have or can dooe)'; but if so, he clearly was not himself the author.
