Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/378

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Jonson for the Chapel, that the Chamberlain's published the Q in revenge, and that Jonson tried to stay it. Here he is followed by Castelain. But Q_{1} is a good edition and there is no sign whatever that it had not Jonson's authority, and as the entry in S. R. covers other Chamberlain's plays, it is pretty clear that the company caused the 'staying'. St. Mark's Day did not, as Fleay thought, fall on a Friday in 1601, and if it had, the dating is unchanged from Q_{1} and the references to a queen may, as Simpson suggests, be due to Jonson's conscientious desire to preserve consistency with the original date of 1598. Nor is the play likely to have passed to the Chapel, since the King's men played it before James on 2 Feb. 1605 (cf. App. B). This revival would be the natural time for a revision, and in fact seems to me on the whole the most likely date, in spite of two trifling bits of evidence which would fit in rather better a year later. These are references to the siege of Strigonium or Graan (1595) as ten years since (III. i. 103), and to a present by the Turkey company to the Grand Signior (I. ii. 78), which was perhaps the gift worth £5,000 sent about Christmas 1605

(S. P. D. Jac. I, xv. 3; xvii. 35; xx. 27). No doubt also the revision of oaths in Jacobean plays is usually taken as due to the Act against Abuses of Players (1606), although it is conceivable that the personal taste of James may have required a similar revision of plays selected for Court performance at an earlier date. Or this particular bit of revision, which was done for other plays before F_{1}, may be of later date than the rest. Simpson is in favour, largely on literary grounds, for a revision in 1612, in preparation for F_{1}. The Prologue, which is not in Q, probably belongs to the revision, or at any rate to a revival later than 1598, since it criticizes not only 'Yorke, and Lancasters long jarres', but also plays in which 'Chorus wafts you ore the seas', as in Henry V (1599). These allusions would not come so well in 1612; on the other hand, Simpson's date would enable us to suppose that the play in which the public 'grac'd monsters' was the Tempest (cf. the similar jibe in Bartholomew Fair). The character Matheo or Mathew represents a young gull of literary tendencies, and is made to spout passages from, or imitations of, Daniel's verses. Perhaps this implies some indirect criticism of Daniel, but it can hardly be regarded as a personal attack upon him.

Every Man Out of his Humour. 1599

S. R. 1600, April 8 (Harsnett). 'A Comicall Satyre of euery man out of his humour.'. William Holme (Arber, iii. 159).

1638, April 28. Transfer by Smethwicke to Bishop (Arber, iv. 417).

Q_{1}, 1600. The Comicall Satyre of Every Man Out Of His Humor. As it was first composed by the Author B. I. Containing more than hath been Publickely Spoken or Acted. With the seuerall Character of euery Person. For William Holme. [Names and description of Characters; Publisher's note, 'It was not neere his thoughts that hath publisht this, either to traduce the Authour; or to make vulgar