MERCURIUS (?) PATEN (c. 1575).
Gascoigne names a 'M. [Mr.] Paten' as a contributor to the Kenilworth entertainment (cf. ch. xxiv, C.). He might be the Patten described in D. N. B. as rector of Stoke Newington (but not traceable in Hennessy) and author of an anonymous Calendars of Scripture (1575). But I think he is more likely to have been Mercurius, son of William Patten, teller of the exchequer and lord of the manor of Stoke Newington, who matriculated at Trinity, Cambridge, in 1567 and was Blue Mantle pursuivant in 1603 (Hist. of Stoke Newington in Bibl. Top. Brit. ii; Admissions to T. C. C. ii. 70).
GEORGE PEELE (c. 1557-96).
As the son of James Peele, clerk of Christ's Hospital and himself a maker of pageants (vol. i, p. 136; Mediaeval Stage, ii. 166), George entered the grammar school in 1565, proceeded thence to Broadgates Hall, Oxford, in 1571, and became a student of Christ Church in 1574, taking his B.A. in 1577 and his M.A. in 1579. In Sept. 1579 the court of Christ's Hospital required James Peele 'to discharge His howse of his sonne George Peele and all other his howsold which have bene chargable to him'. This perhaps explains why George prolonged his residence at Oxford until 1581. In that year he came to London, and about the same time married. His wife's business affairs brought him back to Oxford in 1583 and in a deposition of 29 March he describes himself as aged 25. During this visit he superintended the performance before Alasco at Christ Church on 11 and 12 June of the Rivales and Dido of William Gager, who bears testimony to Peele's reputation as wit and poet in two sets of Latin verses In Iphigeniam Georgii Peeli Anglicanis versibus redditam (Boas, 166,180). Presumably the rest of his life was spent in London, and its wit and accompanying riot find some record in The Merry Conceited Jests of George Peele (S. R. 14 Dec. 1605: text in Bullen and in Hazlitt, Jest-Books, ii. 261, and Hindley, i), although this is much contaminated with traditional matter from earlier jest books. It provided material for the anonymous play of The Puritan (1607), in which Peele appeared as George Pyeboard. His fame as a dramatist is thus acknowledged in Nashe's epistle to Greene's Menaphon (1589):
'For the last, though not the least of them all, I dare commend him to
all that know him, as the chief supporter of pleasance now living, the
Atlas of poetry, and primus verborum artifex; whose first increase, the
Arraignment of Paris, might plead to your opinions his pregnant dexterity
of wit and manifold variety of invention, wherein (me iudice) he goeth a step
beyond all that write.'
Some have thought that Peele is the
Palin, worthy of great praise,
Albe he envy at my rustic quill,
of Spenser's Colin Clout's Come Home Again (1591). It seems difficult to accept the suggestions of Sarrazin that he was the original both of Falstaff and of Yorick. An allusion in a letter to Edward Alleyn
