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as having a part in fourteen plays between 1598 and 1602, his collaborators being Henry Chettle once, Thomas Dekker once, William Haughton twice, Michael Drayton twice, Anthony Munday three times, John Day five times, Wentworth Smith five times, Robert Wilson once, and William Rankins twice. One only of these plays is extant, “The First Part of the True and Honourable Historie of the Life of Sir John Old-castle, the good Lord Cobham." This was the joint work of Hathway, Drayton, Munday, and Robert Wilson, who received on the sixteenth of October, 1599, ten pounds for the first part and in earnest of a second part. The piece, produced at the beginning of November, 1599, was so successful that Henslowe presented to each of the four authors half-a-crown. This piece followed closely on the production of Shakespeare's "King Henry IV.," and was in further correction of that misuse of Oldcastle's name by the author of "The Famous Victories of Henry V." which had misled Shakespeare into adoption of the name of Oldcastle; afterwards altered by him into Falstaff, with the direct note that "Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." "The First Part of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle" was published in 1600, with Shakespeare's name upon the title page; but a copy of this edition has been found from which the name of Shakespeare was omitted. The error, therefore, was corrected at the time, no doubt at Shakespeare's wish, by cancelling the title-page.

There is further illustration of desire to wipe away the stain upon the name of Sir John Oldcastle in an

John Weever.

early work by John Weever, who was a poet in his youth, but won distinction in the next reign as an antiquary. Weever was born in Lancashire, and was admitted in 1594 at Queen's College, Cambridge, as he said in the beginning of lines written. for his epitaph, "Lancashire gave me birth, And Cambridge education." In 1601 John Weever published a little book

called the "Mirror of Martyrs, or the life and death of that thrice valiant Capitaine and godly Martyre Sir John Oldcastle, knight, Lord Cobham." In the dedication to William Couell, B.D., it is said that "this poem

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two years agoe was made fit for the Print." written just after Spenser's death, about the time when Shakespeare was revoking the use of Oldcastle's name in "King Henry IV." and substituting Falstaff." Reference was to changes of opinion that had brought such a name. into contempt when Weever wrote the lines near the beginning of this poem, which have been quoted as indication of the date of Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar."

"The manie headed multitude were drawne

By Brutus' speech that Cæsar was ambitious:
When eloquent Mark Antonie had showne

His vertues, who but Brutus then was vicious?
Man's memorie, with new, forgets the old,
One tale is good until another's told."

In such stanzas of common verse, Weever represents Oldcastle as telling his story, in the manner of the tragedies. of the "Mirror for Magistrates," with much biographical detail, due to the poet's interest in early history, and with digressions. That Lord Cobham built a bridge over the Medway at Rochester, and built also the chancel of Trinity Church at Rochester, gives Weever occasion for a long digression on Rochester and the Medway, with a reference to Spenser's Marriage of the Thames and Medway":

"But how he courted, how himselfe he carri'd,

And how the fauour of this Nimph he wonne,

And with what pompe Thames was to Medway marri'd
Sweet Spenser shewes (O grief that Spenser's gone!)
With whose life heauens a while enricht us more,
That by his death we might be euer pore."

Another digression is in condemnation of the world, with a stanza to enforce each of these adjectives :- The

earth is earthly, foolish, crooked, wily, testy, wondrous, doting, old. The ghost of Sir John Oldcastle tells how in time of his youthful excesses he had an allegorical dream, from which he awoke,

"Then sigh'd, slipt downe, and 'twixt the sheets and pillow

I nuzzled in, joined knees and chin together.

He tells of his part in the wars under Henry IV., and of

“Percie, so cald because he pierst the eie

Of the Scots king and set Northumberr free."

He puns also on his own name when preparing escape from the Tower.

"Now to release my body from the Tower

(How might the Tower include so old a Castle ?)

When escaped, he goes by way of Lancashire, and here young Weever, Lancashire born, remembers kindly his own. county,

"Where beauty, virtue, love, wit, and the graces,

Sit all in triumph on the women's faces."

The story is told of the good knight's capture and burning. alive in a cage on a high gallows, with reference once more to the wrong handling of his name:

"My virtue's fame is like my body's death,

Kindled with a blast and burnt out with a breath.

And in this idle age who's once forgotten,

Oblivion dims the brightness of his glory :

Envy is ripe before his bones be rotten,

And overthrows the truth of virtue's story."

Robert Wilson, the actor, who had part in the writing of the play of "Sir John Oldcastle," and who was selected to be one of the queen's company of players in 1583,

Robert

is known also as writer of one play, "The Cob- Wilson. bler's Prophecy," printed in 1594 as only his.

The author was the actor of the whimsical part of Ralph

the Cobbler, to whom the heathen Gods gave power of prophecy, and who thereby warned the Duke of Boeotia that, unless he could turn out of his dominions Contempt and Lust, the parents of Ruina, introduce reforms, and teach his subjects to agree and hold together, the whole State would come to ruin. Such a theme was thoroughly Elizabethan.

William

Rankins.

It was in the earlier part of 1601 that William Rankins shared in the writing of three plays, "Hannibal and Scipio," an unnamed play introducing Scogan and Skelton, and "The Conquest of Spain by John of Gaunt." In each play he wrote with the same partner Richard Hathway-drawn, perhaps, for a few months, by friendship and by want of money to a way of work he had condemned. He had published, in 1587, a pamphlet of twenty-five leaves called "A Mirour of Monsters wherein is plainly described the Manifold vices and spotted enormities that are caused by the infectious sight of Playes, with the description of the subtile slights of Sathan, making them his instruments. Compiled by Wil. Rankins. Magna spes est inferni." This was followed in 1588 by a pamphlet of sixteen leaves called "The English Ape, the Italian Imitation, the Footesteppers of France." In 1598, when there was much writing of satires, Rankins joined the company of satirists with "Seauen Satyres Applyed to the weeke, including the world's ridiculous follyes. True felicity described in the Phoenix. Maulgre. Wherevnto is annexed the wandring Satyre."

Thomas

Dekker.

We return to Thomas Dekker. Probably he was the person of that name, entered as "gentleman" and "yeoman,” of whom the parish registers of St. Giles, Cripplegate, record that he had a daughter Anne christened on the twenty-seventh of October, 1594; a daughter Elizabeth buried in 1598; and a daughter Anne christened in 1602. The poet's marriage before 1594 is inferred from these records. A Thomas Dekker, who may

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"The

have been the poet's father, was buried in 1594 in the parish of Saint Saviour's, Southwark; some years afterwards his widow was living near the Globe Theatre in Maid Lane, Southwark. Two plays are extant that were written by Dekker in the last years of Elizabeth's reign, before he took part with John Marston in the writing of "Satiromastix." These are "The Shoemaker's Holiday,” and “The Comedy of Old Fortunatus." There followed, in 1603, "The Comedie of Patient Grissil." "The Shoemaker's Holiday" was first printed in 1600, and reprinted Shoemaker's in 1610, 1618, and 1631. The title to its first Holiday." edition, printed by Valentine Sims, was "The Shomakers Holiday, or The Gentle Craft. With the humorous life of Simon Eyre, shoomaker, and Lord Maior of London. As it was acted before the Queenes most excellent Maiestie on New-yeares day at night last, by the right honourable the Earle of Notingham, Lord high Admirall of England, his seruants." This is a light-hearted comedy that Ben Jonson could only have thought well of; for it is brimful of honest mirth, and paints a blunt and jolly shoemaker with a true dramatic humour that lifts Dekker far above the tribe of poetasters. Dekker's next play, "Old Fortunatus"-half-play, half-fairy masque-had, moreover, an elevation of purpose that Ben Jonson would be among the first to recognise. Some of the lost plays, hastily scrambled together by several hands, may have been open enough to adverse criticism; but the pure, light-hearted fun of "The Shoemaker's Holiday," and the wisdom Dekker joined to mirth in the showing of the victory of Virtue over Fortune in "Old Fortunatus," have salt in them that has kept those plays fresh until to-day. Thomas Dekker, after Elizabeth's death, worked on for more than thirty years. We shall meet with him again in James's reign, and find more cause to like his work.

"Old For

tunatus.

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