Editions by E. Fritsche (1862), K. Warnke and E. Proescholdt (1886), W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.), and A. F. Lange (1914, R. E. C. iii). Henslowe advanced £3 'to bye a boocke called the gentle Craft of Thomas Dickers' on 15 July 1599. Probably the hiatus in the Diary conceals other payments for the play, and there is nothing in the form of the entry to justify the suspicions of Fleay, i. 124, that it was not new and was not by Dekker himself. Moreover, the source was a prose tract of The Gentle Craft by T. D[eloney], published in 1598. The Admiral's were at Court on 1 Jan. 1600, but not on 1 Jan. 1601. A writer signing himself Dramaticus, in Sh. Soc. Papers, iv. 110, describes a copy in which a contemporary hand has written the names 'T. Dekker, R. Wilson' at the end of the Epistle, together with the names of the actors in the margin of the text. A few of these are not otherwise traceable in the Admiral's. Fleay and Greg (Henslowe, ii. 203) unite in condemning this communication as an obvious forgery; but I rather wish they had given their reasons.
Patient Grissell. 1600
With Chettle and Haughton. S. R. 1600, March 28. 'The Plaie of Patient Grissell.' Cuthbert Burby (Arber, iii. 158). 1603. The Pleasant Comodie of Patient Grissill. As it hath beene sundrie times lately plaid by the right honorable the Earle of Nottingham (Lord high Admirall) his seruants. For Henry Rocket.
Editions by J. P. Collier (1841, Sh. Soc.), A. B. Grosart (1886, Dekker, v. 109), G. Hübsch (1893, Erlanger Beiträge, xv), J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.).—Dissertations by A. E. H. Swaen in E. S. xxii. 451, Fr. v. Westenholz, Die Griseldis-Sage in der Literaturgeschichte (1888).
Henslowe paid £10 10s. to Dekker, Chettle, and Haughton for the play between 16 Oct. and 29 Dec. 1599, also £1 for Grissell's gown on 26 Jan. 1600 and £2 'to staye the printing' on 18 March 1600. The text refers to 'wonders of 1599' (l. 2220) and to 'this yeare' as 'leap yeare' (l. 157). The production was doubtless c. Feb.-March 1600. Fleay, i. 271, attempts to divide the work amongst the three contributors; cf. Hunt, 60. I see nothing to commend the theory of W. Bang (E. S. xxviii. 208) that the play was written by Chettle c. 1590-4 and revised with Dekker, Haughton, and Jonson. No doubt the dandy's duel, in which clothes alone suffer, of Emulo-Sir Owen resembles that of Brisk-Luculento in Every Man Out of his Humour, but this may be due to a common origin in fact (cf. Fleay, i. 361; Penniman, War, 70; Small, 43). Fleay, followed by Penniman, identifies Emulo with Samuel Daniel, but Small, 42, 184, satisfactorily disposes of this suggestion. There seems no reason to regard Patient Grissell as part of the Poetomachia. A 'Comoedia von der Crysella' is in the German repertory of 1626; the theme had, however, already been dealt with in a play of Griseldis by Hans Sachs (Herz, 66, 78).
