Fleay, 60, thinks that the play contains attacks on the Paul's boys in return for satire of Edwardes as Ralph Roister in Ulpian Fulwell's
Like Will to Like (q.v.).
Lost Play
Palamon and Arcite. 1566
This play was acted in two parts on 2 and 4 Sept. 1566, before Elizabeth in the Hall of Christ Church, Oxford (cf. ch. iv). The first night was made memorable by the fall of part of the staircase wall, by which three persons were killed. The Queen was sorry, but the play went on. She gave Edwardes great thanks for his pains. The play was in English. Several contemporary writers assign it to Edwardes, and Nicholas Robinson adds that he and other Christ Church men translated it out of Latin, and that he remained two months in Oxford working at it. Bereblock gives a long analysis of the action, which shows that, even if there is no error as to the intervening Latin version,
the original source was clearly Chaucer's Knight's Tale. W. Y. Durand, Journ. Germ. Phil. iv. 356, argues that Edwardes's play was not a source of Two Noble Kinsmen, on the ground of the divergence between that and Bereblock's summary. There is no evidence of any edition of the play, although Plummer, xxi, says that it 'has been several times printed'.
Doubtful Plays
Fleay, ii. 295, assigns to Edwardes Godly Queen Hester, a play of which he had only seen a few lines, and which W. W. Greg, in his edition in Materialien, v, has shown with great probability to date from about 1525-9. His hand has also been sought in R. B.'s Apius and Virginia and in Misogonus (cf. ch. xxiv).
ELIZABETH (1533-1603).
H. H. E. Craster (E. H. R. xxix. 722) includes in a list of Elizabeth's English translations a chorus from Act II of the pseudo-Senecan Hercules Oetaeus, extant in Bodl. MS. e Museo, 55, f. 48, and printed in H. Walpole, Royal and Noble Authors (ed. Park, 1806), i. 102. It probably dates later than 1561. But he can find no evidence for a Latin version of a play of Euripides referred to by Walpole, i. 85.
RICHARD FARRANT (?-1580).
Farrant's career as Master of the Children of Windsor and Deputy Master of the Children of the Chapel and founder of the first Blackfriars theatre has been described in chh. xii and xvii. It is not improbable that he wrote plays for the boys, and W. J. Lawrence, The Earliest Private Theatre Play (T. L. S., 11 Aug. 1921), thinks that one of these was Wars of Cyrus (cf. ch. xxiv), probably based on W. Barker's translation (1567) of Xenophon's Cyropaedia, and that the song of Panthea ascribed to Farrant in a Christ Church manuscript (cf. vol. ii, p. 63) has dropped out from the extant text of this. Farrant's song, 'O Jove from stately throne', mentioning Altages,
