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Tancred and Gismund. 1566 (?)
Written with Rod. Staff[ord], Hen[ry] No[el], G. Al. and Chr[istopher] Hat[ton].
[MSS.] (a) Lansdowne MS. 786, f. 1, 'Gismond of Salern in Loue'.
(b) Brit. Mus. Hargrave MS. 205, f. 9, 'The Tragedie of Gismond of Salerne'.
[Both MSS. have three sonnets 'of the Quenes maydes', and Prologue and Epilogue.]
(c) A fragment, now unknown, formerly belonging to Milton's father-in-law, Richard Powell.
1591. The Tragedie of Tancred and Gismund. Compiled by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple, and by them presented before her Maiestie. Newly reuiued and polished according to the decorum of these daies. By R. W. Thomas Scarlet, sold by R. Robinson. [Epistles to Lady Mary Peter and Lady Anne Gray, signed 'Robert Wilmot'; to R. W. signed 'Guil. Webbe' and dated 'Pyrgo in Essex August the eighth 1591'; to the Inner and Middle Temple and other Readers, signed 'R. Wilmot'; two Sonnets (2 and 3 of MSS.); Arguments; Prologue; Epilogue signed 'R. W.'; Introductiones (dumb-shows). Some copies are dated 1592.]
Editions in Dodsley^{1-4} (1744-1874) and by J. S. Farmer (1912, S. F. T.) from 1591, and by A. Brandl (1898, Q. W. D.) and J. W. Cunliffe (1912, E. E. C. T.) and J. S. Farmer (S. F. T.) from MS.—Dissertations: J. W. Cunliffe, Gismond of Salerne (1906, M. L. A. xxi. 435); A. Klein, The Decorum of These Days (1918, M. L. A. xxxiii. 244).
The MSS. represent the play as originally produced, probably, from an allusion in one of the sonnets, at Greenwich. The print represents a later revision by Wilmot, involving much re-writing and the insertion of new scenes and the dumb-shows. Webbe's epistle is an encouragement to Wilmot to publish his 'waste papers', and refers to Tancred as 'framed' by the Inner Temple, and to Wilmot as 'disrobing him of his antique curiosity and adorning him with the approved guise of our stateliest English terms'. Wilmot's own Epistle to the Readers apologizes for the indecorum of publishing a play, excuses it by the example of Beza's Abraham and Buchanan's Jephthes, and refers to 'the love that hath been these twenty-four years betwixt' himself and Gismund. This seems to date the original production in 1567. But I find no evidence that Elizabeth was at Greenwich in 1567. Shrovetide 1566 seems the nearest date at which a play is likely to have been given there. Wilmot was clearly not the sole author of the original play; to Act I he affixes 'Exegit Rod. Staff.'; to Act II, 'Per Hen. No.'; to Act III, 'G. Al.'; to Act IV, 'Composuit Chr. Hat.'; to the Epilogue, 'R. W.' Probably Act V, which has no indication of authorship, was also his own.
W. H. Cooke, Students Admitted to the Inner Temple, 1547-1660 (1878), gives the admission of Christopher Hatton in 1559-60, but Wilmot is not traceable in the list; nor are Hen. No., G. Al., or Rod. Staff. But the first may be Elizabeth's Gentleman Pensioner,
