acting at the Fortune: this is confirmed by such allusions as when the Nurse says of Lelia's favour to Sophos,

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Sir, you may see that Fortune is your friend."

Old Gripe will consequently be Henslow (or Alleyn) the manager.

Before proceeding further in the identification of these characters, it will be necessary to ascertain the date of the play. Now, whether I am right or not in my interpretation of the plot, some of the allusions are certain, and fix a limit of date before which the play could not have been written. Old Fortunatus was written in 1595, published in 1600; The Shoemaker's Holiday, in which the character of the "Dutch cobbler" occurs, was produced in 1600; the Poetaster was acted in 1601, printed in 1602; Robin Goodfellow was written in 1602; the Gentleman Usher was printed in 1606, probably written in 1602; and the additions to the Malcontent as acted by the King's company were published in 1604 and acted probably in 1603; for in the Introduction there is distinct allusion to the reproduction of Feronymo by the Admiral's company in 1601-2. I fix the date of Wily Beguiled then in 1602-3; for as it treats of the engagement of Marston by the Admiral's or Prince's company, it must have been anterior to the production of his Malcontent by the King's; and it must have been subsequent to the dates of the plays just mentioned that were produced in 1602. The most likely date is the establishment of the Prince's company in 1603. Jonson, who is ridiculed in the play, finally left the Admiral's company in the latter part of 1602, and his Sejanus was produced at the King's in 1603.

Now we can explain the underplot. As old Plodall must be the manager of the Globe company (Burbage), his tenants will be the occupiers of the Blackfriars theatre-viz. the Children of the Chapel who rented that theatre of him till 1601-2: they were then turned out, and the house afterwards let at a higher rent, probably to the Children of the Revels. But this is just the story of the play. Old Cricket (the manager of the Chapel Children) is turned out by old Plodall, and Will Cricket marries Gripe's nurse's daughter. This I take to mean that on the dissolution of the company of the Children of the Chapel, Will is engaged by the Children of Paul's (Peg Pudding). This latter company's manager may well be called the Nurse. Chapman, Dekker, Webster, Marston, Middleton, all

tried their prentice hands at it, and sometimes simultaneously at the Admiral's before finally settling down to other companies. I do not, however, find Will Cricket himself so easy to identify : the most likely person is John Lyly: he wrote for the Chapel Children and for the Paul's Children in 1600-1; he is (I think unquestionably) called "Willy" by Spenser; and in the play we have "I Peg Pudding promise thee, William Cricket, that I'll hold thee for mine own sweet lilly." Again, Cricket's dancing is praised, and in Lyly's Maid's Metamorphosis Cricket is one of the fairies who come in dancing. Names of characters in their works can be more often taken to indicate authors in these plays, and especially in this one, than any other means of identification.

On the whole, then, the general meaning of the play is clear. It is a celebration of the good luck of the Fortune company in getting Marston to write the Malcontent for them; a high eulogy on Dekker, who had just returned from the wars (on the stage) against the mighty potentate Ben Jonson : a general abuse of the Globe company, its manager and its writers, especially Jonson and Lodge; an exposure of the knavery of Lodge (real or pretended), and of the bullying propensities of Jonson and his hireling Chettle: a caricature of the style and plot of Lodge's Looking Glass and other plays. (Note by the way that Chettle died in May 1603, which confirms our limit of date.) Under the guise of a love story nearly every dramatist of importance at that time is either introduced as a character or alluded to in the dialogue. To this, however, there is one important exception. There is no mention of William Shakespeare. But if he is not mentioned, the whole play is almost a continuous parody of his writings. Old Capulet is the model on which Gripe has been pourtrayed. The Nurse is closely imitated from the Nurse of Juliet. In the 15th scene there is a dialogue between Lelia and Sophos taken from that between Lorenzo and Jessica in The Merchant of Venice, Act. v. Sc. i. and Gripe's grief for the loss of his daughter and his money is imitated from Shylock's. There are also less strongly marked allusions to other plays, but not to any that I can trace published later than 1600. I have found in plays of this nature that Shakespeare is very seldom Chettle assisted Jonson in two plays, Hot Anger soon Cold, and Robert II. King of Scotland.

introduced on the stage; only his plays, and not he himself, are generally alluded to. I believe the reason of this to be that he scarcely ever, if at all, alluded to others, or introduced them as personages in his own plays.

In several plays of this satirical description produced by the Admiral's company, or in early years by Lord Strange's, a recognised system of allegorical language was used. Thus a servant often meant an actor; a marriageable young lady indicated a theatrical company; the father of the said lady represented the company's manager; her suitors were poets who were seeking engagements to write for the company; brothers were other poets already in connection with the theatre; marriage was the agreement or hiring of the poet to produce plays; and so on. The converse however is not always true. These engagements and characters are not always represented by the same symbols: for instance, a poet is not always a suitor or brother-he is sometimes a cobbler; an actor is occasionally a juggler instead of a servant ; and the like. It may be worth while to explain the term cobbler," as an instance of the mode in which this symbolical language arose. One name, or rather synonym, for a mender of old shoes was "translator;" the same word "translator is also used for an adapter or patcher, or piratical reproducer of other men's plays: hence "cobbler" easily suggests this latter character and is used for it.

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It would be inconsistent with my plan to give here a detailed examination of more than one play: but on account of their connection with the quarrel between Jonson and Dekker and Marston, of which Wily Beguiled is a sequel, it may be not out of place to mention that Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday and Old Fortunatus also belong to the series of attacks to which Jonson was (as he tells us) subject for three years before he made any retaliation. In the former of these two plays Hans, the Dutch shoemaker, otherwise Sir Rowland Lacy in disguise, is almost certainly Michael Drayton, whose nom de plume was Rowland, who was in the latter years of Queen Elizabeth one of the poets attached to the Admiral's company, for which he and others wrote the play of Sir John Oldcastle to be run in opposition to Shakespeare's Henry IV. Dodger in this same play is Thomas Lodge, and the other characters can also be identified. Dekker distinctly points out to us in Old Fortunatus, that the scene which is laid in Cyprus is intended to treat of theatrical affairs,

and that the dramatis personæ are actors, poets, &c., disguised under fictitious names, by speaking in his own character of "other Cyprists, my poor countrymen." Accordingly, an examination of the play shows us that Fortunatus is Christopher Marlowe : his two sons, Ampedo the good son and Andolucio the bad one, are George Peele and Thomas Lodge: Shaddow the servant is Shakespeare, who in 1595, the date of this play, had not yet printed any of his works, had not probably produced anything greater than his Richard II., and had not corrected his Love's Labour's Lost or Midsummer Night's Dream into their present shape, which no doubt is far superior to that of their earliest production. He was certainly then, if not as Dekker represents him, merely a shadow of his predecessors, yet nothing more than a shadow of what he afterwards was to become.

"No, no ;

I am but shadow of myself.

You are deceived: my substance is not here:

For what you see is but the smallest part
And least proportion of humanity."

I Henry VI.

The "wishing cap," which enables Fortunatus (Marlowe) to transport himself to any place, is the power of imagination; the magic purse, which produces ten pieces whenever the hand is put in it, shows the payments made for the writing a new play, namely ten marks, or 67. 135. 4d. With this clue to the meaning of the play the allusions to Lyly, Falstaff, Lodge, &c., as Endymion, the wandering knight, the French doctor, &c., grow clear, and the double meaning of the whole plot becomes manifest.

These plays then, along with Jonson's Cynthia's Revels and Poetaster, Marston's What You Will, Dekker's Satiromastix, and others that might be used to increase the list, may be taken as fair samples of the satirical and personally abusive comedies of the Elizabethan time. I say samples, because it is plain that the practice of thus assailing individuals on the stage must have been very common for several reasons. In the first place, we have a large number of such plays still in existence. I am prepared to show that between 1589 and 1607 there are still remaining at least a dozen of this personal character. Moreover, we must allow for the transient and ephemeral character

of such productions. Unless they were remarkable for the great ability displayed in them, or were particularly interesting from the nature of the persons attacked, they would be unlikely to survive a very few years. Consequently we have probably now in existence a much smaller proportion of such plays than of those of deeper and more universal interest.

Another reason for believing them abundant is the great anxiety shown by playwrights to defend themselves against the imputation that they ever attack anybody. Prologues, Addresses

to the Reader, statements in the body of the dramas themselves, are continually pressed into the author's service to show that he is free from blame, whatever strange constructions Hydra-headed Envy may put upon his work. Qui s'excuse s'accuse. In every instance of an apology of this kind being prefixed to a play, I have found that careful examination shows that invidious accusations are made against some person or persons in the work itself.

If then we can ascertain from these "Envy-plays" (I call them envy plays because Envy is invariably assigned in their Prologues, &c, as the cause of their production) a series of chronologically arranged facts determining the dates at which authors began or ceased to write for specific theatrical companies, we shall be able to settle many disputed points as to the dates of production of their works, to supply many gaps in their biographies, to throw additional light on their personal characters, to add in some respects to our knowledge of their manners and customs, and above all to ascertain more accurately than from Commendatory Verses or Dedications, the popular estimate that was formed of our greatest men by their contemporaries, and the amount of influence exercised by them.

One little link in this chain I have endeavoured to supply in this chapter. Many more such links I am ready to weld on to it. The one chosen to be here put forth as sample is selected merely because it is the easiest to detach, and being connected with wellknown other links in the Jonson quarrel, is one not difficult to recognise as like to them in structure and purpose. Wily Beguiled is not however, in subject matter, one of the most important of the Envy plays which fact perhaps accounts for its allegory never having been suspected, in spite of its grossly personal character being manifest on the surface in its allusion to Jonson as "Hunks with the big head."

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