speak truth," a dramatic Camden or Ray, who quotes Latin withal, and is as marked in his "humour" as Coomes and Franke's Boy, and Mall and Mrs. Barnes in theirs. Place in the History of Comedy. It would, therefore, be of no small importance to determine whether this Pleasant History is Henslowe's Comodey of Umers of May 11, 1597; for if it be, this play of characteristics precedes Every Man in his Humour, and disputes the "place peculiar to itself in our dramatic literature" which most critics have assigned to that masterpiece of Ben Jonson. But even if it be not the play of May 11, 1597, our drama was certainly written before December 22, 1598, probably by May 30 of that year; and consequently to Porter, as an influential associate of Chapman and Jonson, must be given something of the credit of blazing the path toward the comedy of characteristic. The fun of the play has at once a Chaucerian shrewdness and a something of the careless guffaw of W. Wager. Its realism throws back to Mak, and Johan, Tom Tyler and Gammer Gurton. As a comedy of unadulterated native flavour, breathing rural life and manners and the modern spirit, constructed with knowledge of the stage, and without affectation or constraint, it has no foregoing analogue except perhaps The Pinner of Wakefield. No play preceding or contemporary yields an easier conversational prose, not even the Merry Wives. We must not close this study without remarking certain resemblances to Shakespeare. In the matter of situations and language traces of the Romeo and Juliet of 1592, and the Midsummer-Night's Dream of 1594-1595, appear. The fanciful reader might, indeed, suspect something like a good-natured burlesque of the balcony scene in the conversation between Frank and Mall "at her window "; perhaps even of the motif of Shakespeare's tragedy, in the loves of the children of the inimical wives of Abington: "How, sir? your wife!" says Mrs. Barnes to Francis: "Wouldst thou my daughter have? Ile rather have her married to her grave." Even so had spoken Lady Capulet. And Romeo seems to be muttering in his sleep through Philip's soliloquy : — "The skie . . . Is in three houres become an Ethiope She will not have one of those pearlèd starres To blab her sable metamorphosis." If anything further were needed to illustrate Philip's taste in plays, it would be furnished by the hazy reminiscence of "the imperial votaress" and "the nun, for aye . . . in shady cloister mewed.” Indeed, if Porter did not have in mind the quadrilateral wanderings of the Midsummer-Night's Dream when Frank and Mall missed the way to Carfax, I am much surprised. That Dick Coomes, when he stood between his mistress and the angel to be tempted, was not thinking of Gobbo, is, of course, possible, but it is not possible that Dick Coomes's creator was not familiar with the Merchant of Venice. There is also, as I have already implied, a quality in Dick's sword-and-buckler voice that rings contemporaneous with the Henry IV., Pts. I. and II. To trace a connection between the well-known lines of Hamlet in 1602 and Porter's "How loathsome is this beast man's shape to me This mould of reason so unreasonable (1597-98), would, I fear, be fanciful. The resemblance, faint as it is, may be due to mere coincidence or to derivation from a com mon source. Previous Editions and the Present Text. Two editions of this play were published in 1599: one for Joseph Hunt and William Ferbrand; the other for Ferbrand alone (in same place of business). From the variations in spelling and text which characterize the Ferbrand quarto and are evidently intended for improvements, and from the fact that Ferbrand was still alone when, in 1600, he published another play, Look About You, I conclude that the edition printed during the period of partnership was the earlier of the two. It will be indicated in the notes to the present text as Q1. Of QI a copy is to be found in the British Museum (162. d. 55). Öf Q2, published by Ferbrand alone, there are two copies in the Bodleian, one formerly owned by Malone, the other by Douce. Q2 furnishes the more careful text. That it was made, however, not from manuscript, but from Q1, is evidenced by the retention of occasional printers' errors and oddities characteristic of the earlier edition. Dyce, in his edition (Dy.) for the Percy Society, 1841, followed I, with occasional readings from Q2 and silent emendations. This edition, with modernized spelling, is included in Hazlitt's Dodsley, Vol. VII. (H.). Mr. Havelock Ellis's edition of the play (E.), with acts, scenes, and modernized spelling, for the Mermaid Series (Nero and Other Plays, 1888), appears to be based upon H. The present text is that of Q 2 (Bodl. Malone 184), with such substitutes from Q1 as are indicated in the footnotes. CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY. THE PLEASANT the two angry women With the humorous mirth of Dicke Coomes and Nicholas Prouerbes, two Seruingmen. As it was lately playde by the right Honorable the Earle of Nottingham, Lord high Admirall his feruants By Henry Porter Gent. VIGNETTE Imprinted at London for William Ferbrand, and are to be folde at his shop at the corner of Colman streete neere Loathbury. |