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All Fools. 1604 (?) 1605. Al Fooles A Comedy, Presented at the Black Fryers, And lately before his Maiestie. Written by George Chapman. For Thomas Thorpe. [Prologue and Epilogue. The copies show many textual variations.] Editions in Dodsley^{2, 3} (1780-1827) and by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. ii) and T. M. Parrott (1907, B. L.).—Dissertation: M. Stier, C.'s All Fools mit Berücksichtigung seiner Quellen (1904, Halle diss.). The Court performance was on 1 Jan. 1605 (cf. App. B), and the play was therefore probably on the Blackfriars stage in 1604. There is a reminiscence of Ophelia's flowers in II. i. 232, and the prologue seems to criticize the Poetomachia.
Who can show cause why th' ancient comic vein Of Eupolis and Cratinus (now reviv'd Subject to personal application) Should be exploded by some bitter spleens.
But in Jan.-July 1599 Henslowe paid Chapman £8 10s. on behalf of the Admiral's for The World Runs on Wheels. The last entry is for 'his boocke called the world Rones a whelles & now all foolles but the foolle'. This seems to me, more clearly than to Greg (Henslowe, ii. 203), to indicate a single play and a changed title. I am less certain, however, that he is right in adopting the view of Fleay, i. 59, that it was an earlier version of the Blackfriars play. It may be so, and the date of 'the seventeenth of November, fifteen hundred and so forth' used for a deed in IV. i. 331 lends some confirmation. But the change of company raises a doubt, and there is no 'fool' in All Fools. An alternative conjecture is that the Admiral's reverted to the original title for their play, leaving a modification of the amended one available for Chapman in 1604. Collier (Dodsley^3) printed a dedicatory sonnet to Sir Thomas Walsingham. This exists only in a single copy, in which it has been printed on an inserted leaf. T. J. Wise (Ath. 1908, i. 788) and Parrott, ii. 726, show clearly that it is a forgery.
Monsieur D'Olive. 1604
[MS.] See infra.
1606. Monsieur D'Olive. A Comedie, as it was sundrie times acted by her Majesties children at the Blacke-Friers. By George Chapman. T. C. for William Holmes.
Edition by C. W. Dilke (1814, O. E. P. iii).
The title-page suggests a Revels rather than a Chapel play, and Fleay, i. 59, Stoll, and Parrott all arrive at 1604 for the date, which is rendered probable by allusions to the Jacobean knights (I. i. 263; IV. ii. 77), to the calling in of monopolies (I. i. 284), to the preparation of costly embassies (IV. ii. 114), and perhaps to the royal dislike of tobacco (II. ii. 164). There is a reminiscence of Hamlet, III. ii. 393, in II. ii. 91:
our great men
Like to a mass of clouds that now seem like
An elephant, and straightways like an ox,
And then a mouse.
On the inadequate ground that woman's 'will' is mentioned in II. i. 89,
