the other de Incendio Troiae cum Priami calamitate: so Doctor Leg hath penned two famous tragedies, y^e one of Richard the 3, the other of The destruction of Ierusalem'.
Richardus Tertius. March 1580 [MSS.] Cambridge Univ. Libr. MS. M^m iv. 40, 'Thome Legge legum doctoris Collegij Caiogonevilensis in Academia Cantabrigiensi magistri ac Rectoris Richardus tertius Tragedia trivespera habita Collegij divi Johannis Evangeliste Comitiis Bacchelaureorum Anno Domini 1579 Tragedia in tres acciones diuisa.' [Argumentum to each Actio; Epilogue.] Emmanuel, Cambridge, MS. 1. 3. 19, with date '1579' and actor-list. Clare, Cambridge, MS. Kk, 3, 12, with date '1579'. Caius, Cambridge, MS. 62, 'tragoedia trium vesperum habita in collegio Divi Johannis Evangelistae, Comitiis Bacchalaureorum Anno 1573.' Bodl. Tanner MS. 306, including first Actio only, with actor-list and note, 'Acted in St. John's Hall before the Earle of Essex', to which has been apparently added later, '17 March, 1582'. Bodl. MS. 29448, dated [Greek: a, ph, p, g] (= 1583). Harl. MS. 6926, a transcript by Henry Lacy, dated 1586. Harl. MS. 2412, a transcript dated 1588. Hatton MS. (cf. Hist. MSS. i. 32). Editions by B. Field (1844, Sh. Soc.) and W. C. Hazlitt (1875, Sh. L. ii. 1).—Dissertation: G. B. Churchill, Richard III bis Shakespeare (1897, 1900). The names in the actor-lists, which agree, confirm those MSS. which date a production in March 1580 (Boas, 394), and as Essex left Cambridge in 1581, the date in the Tanner MS., in so far as it relates to a performance before him, is probably an error. It does not seem so clear to me that the Caius MS. may not point to an earlier production in 1573. And it is quite possible that there may have been revivals in some or all of the later years named in the MSS. The reputation of the play is indicated, not only by the notice of it by Meres (vide supra), but also by allusions in Harington's Apologie of Poetrie (1591); cf. App. C, No. xlv) and Nashe's Have With You to Saffron Walden (1596, Works, iii. 13). It may even, directly or indirectly, have influenced Richard III. The argument to the first Actio is headed 'Chapman, Argumentum primae actionis', but it seems difficult to connect George Chapman with the play.
Lost Play
The Destruction of Jerusalem
Meres calls this tragedy 'famous'. Fuller, Worthies (1662), ii. 156, says that 'Having at last refined it to the purity of the publique standard, some Plageary filched it from him, just as it was to be acted'. Apparently it was in English and was printed, as it appears
