Chetwood's assertion of a 1599 print is negligible. The Queen of
Bohemia's men revived the play at Court on 6 Jan. 1625 (Variorum, iii. 228). AQUILA CRUSO (c. 1610). Author of the academic Euribates Pseudomagus (cf. App. K). ROBERT DABORNE (?-1628). Daborne claimed to be of 'generous' descent, and it has been conjectured that he belonged to a family at Guildford, Surrey. Nothing is known of him until he appears with Rosseter and others as a patentee for the Queen's Revels in 1610. Presumably he wrote for this company, and when they amalgamated with the Lady Elizabeth's in 1613 came into relations with Henslowe, who acted as paymaster for the combination. The Dulwich collection contains between thirty and forty letters, bonds, and receipts bearing upon these relations. A few are undated; the rest extend from 17 April 1613 to 4 July 1615. Most of them were printed by Malone (Variorum, iii. 336), Collier (Alleyn Papers, 56), and Swaen (Anglia, xx. 155), and all, with a stray fragment from Egerton MS. 2623, f. 24, are in Greg, Henslowe Papers, 65, 126. There and in Henslowe, ii. 141, Dr. Greg attempts an arrangement of them and of the plays to which they relate, which seems to me substantially sound. They show Daborne, during the twelve months from April 1613, to which they mainly belong, writing regularly for the Lady Elizabeth's, but prepared at any moment to sell a play to the King's if he can get a better bargain. Lawsuits and general poverty made him constantly desirous of obtaining small advances from Henslowe, and on one occasion he was in the Clink. In the course of the year he was at work on at least five plays (vide infra), alone or in co-operation now with Tourneur, now with Field, Massinger, and Fletcher. Modern conjectures have assigned him some share in plays of the Beaumont and Fletcher series which there is no external evidence to connect with his name. However this may be, it is clear that, unless his activity in 1613-14 was abnormal, he must have written much of which we know nothing. He is still traceable in connexion with the stage up to 1616, giving a joint bond with Massinger in Aug. 1615, receiving an acquittance of debts through his wife Francisce from Henslowe on his death-bed in Jan. 1616 (Henslowe, ii. 20), and witnessing the agreement between Alleyn and Meade and Prince Charles's men on the following 20 March. But he must have taken orders by 1618, when he published a sermon, and he became Chancellor of Waterford in 1619, Prebendary of Lismore in 1620, and Dean of Lismore in 1621. On 23 March 1628 he 'died amphibious by the ministry' according to The Time Poets (Choice Drollery, 1656, sig. B).
Collection
1898-9. A. E. H. Swaen in Anglia, xx. 153; xxi. 373.
Dissertation: R. Boyle, D.'s Share in the Beaumont and Fletcher Plays (1899, E. S. xxvi. 352).
