NOTES.

NOTES.

THOMAS NORTON (1532-1584).

THOMAS SACKVILLE, LORD BUCKHURST (1536-1608).

FERREX AND PORREX: a tragedy set forth without I. addition or alteration, but altogether as the same was showed on the stage before the Queen's Majesty about nine years past, viz., the 18th day of January 1561-2, by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple; 8vo, about 1570. This is the only genuine text of what may be styled the first regular English tragedy: the play had been printed in 1565, without authority, under the title of the Tragedy of Gorboduc, and this edition was republished in 1590.

the

Lamb's Extract was unfortunately derived from the 1590 text; hence such errors as the following:- page 1, line 7: 'grave' for 'grow'; 3, 10: wounds' for 'wound'; 4, 4: 'the' for 'thy'; 4, 16: there charge' for and charge'; 4, 37: this heav'ns' for heaven's'; &c. Further, 1, 10-11 wrongly transposed in old eds; 3, 28: 'when with a braid'; Lamb, 'wherewith abraid,' glossing'abraid' by 'awakened, raised up'; there is, however, no authority for the reading; 'braid'=' a sudden movement, a start.'

Gorboduc's 'stiff and cumbersome style' proceeds, in great part, from its Senecan form; the same applies to its sententious 'morality.' It has the defects of its qualities. Translations of Seneca's tragedies preceded this first academic experiment at original drama. The best examples in English of this form of drama, viz., Daniel's Philotas and Cleopatra, and Kyd's translation of Garnier's Cornelia, are not represented in the 'Specimens'; the three succeeding extracts are from plays on the same ancient model.

'TANCRED AND GISMUND,' probably the first II. English tragedy on an Italian plot, was acted before the Court by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple in

T

the year 1568; the play was the work of no less than' five members of the Inn. It was published in 1591, 'newly revised and polished according to the decorum of these daies,' by Robert Wilmot, one of the original authors. The version of 1568 is still extant in MS.* Lamb's Extract from the fifth act represents Wilmot's best effort; the fifth act had been his originally; he has practically rewritten it, and, departing from the Horatian precept, has added the death-scene of Gismund and her father. The unrhyming of the old version in the more rhetorical scenes is noteworthy: cp. e.g. page 6, l. 4-19, with the following in the 1568 version:

'Now, now, alas, come is that hour accurst
That I poor wight so long have looked for.
Now hath my father filled his eager thirst
With guiltless blood which he desired so sore.
This pierced heart it is mine earl's, I know.
My father's words do prove the same too well.
This bloody cup his doleful death doth show,
This message doth the same too plainly tell.
Certes unto so noble a heart could not
A fitter hearse be 'lotted than of gold.
Discreetly therefore hath my father wrought
That thus hath sent it me for to behold.'

P. 6, 30 ah pleasant harborough'; i.e. harbour, shelter, refuge'; merely the old spelling of 'harbour.' Lamb's harbourer' is misleading. 6, 40 lusteth,' old eds. hasteth.'

In Lamb's MS. the following passage is quoted from Wilmot's dedicatory letter to the Right Worshipful and Virtuous Ladies, the Lady Mary Peter and the Lady Anne Gray':

'And now for that weary winter is come upon us, which bringeth with him drooping days and tedious nights, if it be true, that the motions of our minds follow the temperature of the air wherein we live, then I think the perusing of some mournful matter, tending to the view of a notable example, will refresh your wits in a gloomy day, and ease your weariness of the louring night, which, if it please you, may serve ye also for a solemn revel against this festival time, for Gismund's bloody shadow, with a little cost, may be entreated in her self-life person to speak to ye.'

*An edition, by the editor of these volumes, is in preparation for the Tudor Library '(Nutt).

Fulke GREVILLE, LORD BROOKE (1554-1628).

Neither ALAHAM nor MUSTAPHA was ever acted; III.-IV. they were published in the folio edition of Brooke's Poems, 1633. A fragmentary 4to of 'Mustapha' appeared as early as 1609, probably unauthorised. In his Life of Sidney,' Brooke states his reasons for writing these tragedies.

P. 11, 8: 'clouds,' old eds. 'cloud'; 15, 32: old eds.
'to my heart didst give;' 19, 28: sereness'; read
serenes;' serene'a blight, or unwholesome air,' cp.
'Some serene blast me, or dire lightning strike
This my offending face.'-B. JONS. Fox. ii. 6.
Cotgrave explains, Fr. serain, from which it is derived,
as the mildew or harmefull dew of some summer
evenings.'

P. 20, 12, inserted in this edition; 27, 4, inserted.
P. 28, 34: to me,' old eds. 'unto me.'

P. 29, 5: 'In this writer's estimate of his own mind,' &c.; in the 'Life of Sidney,' alluded to above, Brooke writes:- For my own part, I found my creeping genius more fixed upon the images of life than the images of wit.'

JOHN LILY (c. 1553-1606).

SAPHO AND PHAO, acted 1582, by the Chapel chil- V.-VI. dren, and publicly by the Paul's boys at Blackfriars ; printed, 1584.

LOVE'S METAMORPHOSIS, probably acted at Court by the children of Paul's in 1588-9; printed in 1601.

The Courtly Drama of Euphuism was wholly unrepresented in the 'Specimens' of 1808; the Garrick Extracts, though fairly typical, do Lily scant justice. Lamb does not seem to have lighted on Blount's famous edition (1632) of Lily's Six Court Comedies, or assuredly the play of Endimion' would have afforded him at least one scene. To Edward Blount we owe the Songs omitted in the earlier 4tos, so that Lamb had no idea of Lily's tuneful lyre:

'Lily, a goldfinch in a twisted cage,

Fed by some gay great lady's pettish page,

Till short sweet songs gush like short spring showers.'

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564-1593).

TAMBURLAINE (I. and II.), acted probably in VII.-X. 1587; printed 1590, 1592, 1605-6. Lamb's comments