published Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit, he was apparently in the service of Lord Delawarr, and by 1580 in that of Burghley's son-in-law, Edward, Earl of Oxford. It is a pleasing conjecture that he may have been the author of 'the two prose books played at the Belsavage, where you shall find never a word without wit, never a line without pith, never a letter placed in vain', thus praised in The Schoole of Abuse (1579) of his fellow euphuist, Stephen Gosson. He incurred the enmity of Gabriel Harvey by suggesting to Oxford that he was aimed at in the Speculum Tuscanismi of Harvey's Three Letters (1580). In 1582 he had himself incurred Oxford's displeasure, but the trouble was surmounted, and about 1584 he held leases in the Blackfriars (cf. ch. xvii), one at least of which he obtained through Oxford, for the purposes of a theatrical speculation, in the course of which he took to Court a company which bore Oxford's name, but was probably made up of boys from the Chapel and St. Paul's choirs. Presumably the speculation failed, for in June 1584 Lyly, who on 22 Nov. 1583 had married Beatrice Browne of Mexborough, Yorks., was in prison for debt, whence he was probably relieved by a gift from Oxford, in reward for his service, of a rent-charge which he sold for £250. His connexion with the stage was not, however, over, for he continued to write for the Paul's boys until they stopped playing about 1591. Harvey calls Lyly the 'Vicemaster of Paules and the Foolemaster of the Theatre'. From this it has been inferred that he held an ushership at the Paul's choir school. But 'vice' is a common synonym for 'fool' and 'vicemaster', like 'foolemaster', probably only means 'playwright'. Nothing written by Lyly for the Theater in particular or for any adult stage is known to exist, but he seems to have taken part with Nashe in the retorts of orthodoxy during 1589 and 1590 to the Martin Marprelate pamphleteers, probably writing the tract called Pappe with a Hatchett (1589), and he may have been responsible for some of the plays which certainly formed an element in that retort. Lyly's ambitions were in the direction of courtly rather than of academic preferment. He seems to have had some promise of favour from Elizabeth about 1585 and to have been more definitely 'entertained her servant' as Esquire of the Body, probably 'extraordinary', in or about 1588, with a hint to 'aim his courses at the Revels', doubtless at the reversion of the Mastership, then held by Edmund Tilney. Mr. R. W. Bond bases many conjectures about Lyly's career on a theory that he actually held the post of Clerk Comptroller in the Revels Office, but the known history of the post (cf. ch. iii) makes this impossible. From 1596 he is found living in the parish of St. Bartholomew the Less. He seems to have ceased writing plays for some while in 1590, and may be the 'pleasant Willy' spoken of as 'dead of late' and sitting 'in idle Cell' in Spenser's Tears of the Muses (1591), although it is possible that Tarlton (q.v.) is intended. But The Woman in the Moon at least is of later date, and it is possible that both the Chapel and the Paul's boys were again acting his old plays by the end of the century. In 1595 he was lamenting the overthrow of his fortunes, and by about 1597 the reversion of the Mastership of the Revels had
