)
Malone Society, Publications of the.
Malone Society, Publications of the.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v05
iv, chap.
XVI, and ibid.
bibl. p. 529.
? Torture seems to have been regarded as a practice to which resort should not be
had in ordinary cases; but it was not altogether out of use.
## p. 377 (#401) ############################################
Witchcraft. Moral Standard
377
There cannot, of course, be any sort of pretence that rational views
on the subject of witchcraft and magic obtained in the reign
of Elizabeth, or that the queen herself (who consulted Dee about
Alençon's condition) was more enlightened on this head than other
English men or women. Of the dramatists, it may be roughly
stated that in not a single one of them can be found any suggestion
of a disbelief in the thing itself, even where a fraudulent use of it
is exposed or derided'. On offenders against religious law and
social morality, a variety of formal penalties—in part symbolic,
in part simply degrading—were inflicted, which alike suggest a
desire on the part of the state or society to improve' the
opportunities afforded it; even before the ascendancy of puritan-
ism, there were always practical moralists clamouring for a severer
system of retribution. Yet, at the same time, a great laxity is
observable in enforcing the penalties denounced by the law upon
proved wantonness of life; and it is impossible to escape the
impression that there existed a general consensus, from which even
the clergy only slowly came to express clear dissent, that some
allowance should be made to laymen in the matter of the sins they
were 'inclined to. The whole significance of the licence of the
Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, which, in some respects, reflected
the licence of the age, cannot be fully understood, unless this fact
be borne in mind.
The darker side of the social condition of England in the
Elizabethan age should not be overlooked by those who dwell upon
the high aspirations and great achievements which have cast an
enduring halo round it in the eyes of national historians and their
readers. Nothing can be said here as to the defects--only too
palpable, but not by any means to be construed as evidence of
mere incuria-in the provision made for the protection of the
1 The whole question of the treatment in the Elizabethan age of the superstition of
witchcraft has been left aside as too wide for discussion here. For an account of the
origin of this superstition see ante, vol. II, chap. v; and cf. the note on the Witch-
controversy, with a bibliography of it, in vol. 10, pp. 534–5 (bibliography to chap. XVI).
The present writer has given a summary of the subject, illustrated by references to
those Elizabethan and Jacobean dramas which reflect the sentiments of the age in
reference to it, in his introduction to Marlowe's Dr Faustus (4th ed. ), pp. xlix-lü.
As to Dee, see The Private Diary of Dr John Dee, ed. Halliwell[-Phillipps), J. O. ,
Camden Soc. Publ. , 1842. Though it was abroad that Dee's associate Kelly came to
grief, alchemists ran some risk in England. In The Alchemist, act iv, 8c. 1, Dol Common
warns Sir Epicure Mammon that he
may come to end
The remnant of his days in a loth'd prison
for merely speaking of the philosopher's stone.
## p. 378 (#402) ############################################
378. Political and Social Aspects of the Age
public health against the dangers to which it was exposed, more
especially in London, from the incursions of the plague, and, in
a lesser degree, from those of other diseases? If, however, we
confine ourselves to the moral sphere, the impression left by
an open-eyed survey of the ordinary relations and conditions
of life in this age is one of a dominating violence and turbulence;
and this impression is confirmed by a study of the drama of
which those relations and conditions largely make up the material.
At the same time, this passionate unrest, and the impetus with
which, in the midst of it, the age pressed on to the performance of
its great tasks, explain, in some measure, how they were accom-
plished. The high spirit-often high in death as it had been in
life—which the renascence and reformation ages had infused into
their men and women, of all classes and beliefs, no doubt imparted
something of recklessness to martyrdom as well as of ruthlessness
in the infliction of suffering. But the final cause of this high
spirit was the belief in things worth living for and worth dying
for—a belief which lies at the root of mighty actions, and without
which no nation has ever been great, and no dramatic hero heroic.
It is impossible to close even this scanty notice of some of the
social characteristics of the Elizabethan age without a more
special reference to its women. For, in the history of western
civilisation (not to venture on applying the remark still more
widely), it is generally the women whose code of manners and of
morals determines the standard of these in any given period of
national life. No doubt, the women of the Elizabethan and
,
Jacobean age, as they appear before us in contemporary drama,
are, primarily, the creatures of the imagination of the dramatists ;
yet it would be idle to ignore the twofold fact, that the presentment
of the women of this period on the stage largely reproduces
actual types, and that the way in which dramatists looked upon
women, their position in life, and their relations to men, was the
way of the world, and the way of the age. Queen Elizabeth was
not the only highly educated English woman of her family or
times; but, though the type, of which the continental renascence
produced many illustrious examples, is never wanting in the society
of the Tudor and Stewart times, it is comparatively rare and
can hardly be said to be a frequent characteristic of their women.
The fashions of intellectual, and mainly literary, refinement which
passed over court and society, from that of Euphuism to that of
1 Concerning this subject, as affecting the history of the drama and stage, see
post, chi ps. x and xiv of vol. vi.
1
## p. 379 (#403) ############################################
Women of the Elizabethan Age 379
.
6
>
Platonic love, were fashions only, to be followed for a season and
then discarded. Far more striking as a distinctive feature is the
virility which many women of the age shared with the great queen-
the high courage, the readiness for action, the indomitable spirit
which no persecution can abate and which the fear of death itself
cannot quench. This quality of fortitude the women of the age
shared with the men, as Portia shared it with Brutus, and to this
they bore testimony with the same readiness on many occasions
and in many places besides the scaffold and the stake. The
German traveller Paul Hentzner, describing England as a sort of
woman's paradise, says of English women that they are as it were
men? '; and, just as we hear that ladies were willing to undergo
with their husbands the toils and exertions of country life (as they
afterwards came to join in its sports), so there was a noble dis-
tinctiveness in the readiness of Elizabethan women to take
their part in the duties and the responsibilities of life at large,
and to defy cavil and criticism in the consciousness of their own
strength and steadfastness. There is not, as has been suggested, an
element of mannishness in the Venetian Portia, or a touch of the
virago in Beatrice: they are women born to play their part in life
and society, and to stand forth amongst its leaders. But here, also, ,
we are in the presence of exceptional personalities, though the
conception remains constant in the English drama, as it did in
English life, to the days of the civil war and beyond.
As to the women of everyday life, there can be no reason for
doubting a close correspondence between many of their character-
istic features in life and on the stage. Their emptiness and
shallowness, due, in part at least, to a defective education which
cared only for imparting a few superficial accomplishments, their
inordinate love of dress and all manner of finery, their hankering
for open admiration and search for it in the open fashion of earlier
times, sitting at their doors during the greater part of the day? ,
or, from the closing years of the reign onwards, under shelter of
the masks which had become the fashion at public places—all
these, and a hundred more, are follies and levities in which
observation and satire have found constant materials for comment
and censure. The looseness and licence of the age form a feature
of its life and character well enough known to students, and were
by no means, as is sometimes supposed, derived altogether, or
perhaps even mainly, from the example of court or town. But a
comparison, from this point of view, between different periods,
1 Cited by Marcks, E. , u. 8. p. 94.
Stubbes's Anatomie of Abuses, p. 87.
## p. 380 (#404) ############################################
380 Political and Social Aspects of the Age
whether or not adjacent to each other, is a hazardous process, and,
in any case, is remote from the purpose of the present chapter.
The dramatic poets discussed in the present volume and in its
successor, at times, preferred to reproduce in their plays what
they found in the scene of life around them; at times, they were
fain to dwell on those aspects of society and its experiences which
seemed most likely to serve as occasions for exciting the emotions
of pity or of horror. The Elizabethan and Jacobean drama would
have been unable, even if it had been willing, to detach itself
altogether from the conditions of things in which it necessarily
found much of its material, and to which it could not but, in many
ways, assimilate the remainder. Neither, again, were its repro-
ductions of manners always correct, nor were the 'problems' of
its actions always those with which the experience of the age was
familiar. But, as a whole, and though it only gradually developed,
and in some respects varied, the methods and processes by which
it worked, this drama remained true to its purposes as an art; and,
in the sphere where its creative power was most signally asserted-
in the invention and delineation of character-its range was un-
surpassed. In many respects, the conditions of the age might
have seemed unfavourable to the production of the most beautiful,
as they are the most enduring, examples of female excellence.
Yet the legend of good women which a historic record of
Shakespeare's age might unfold would not be a nameless tale.
And, together with the sunniest and sweetest, the very noblest
of all feminine types—that of sovereign purity and that of self-
sacrificing love will not be sought for in vain in the Elizabethan
and Jacobean drama ; and he would err who should look for them
only on the Shakespearean heights.
## p. 381 (#405) ############################################
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
VOLS. V AND VI
It may be well, withont attempting to do over again part of a task
admirably accomplished by Schelling, F. E. , in the Bibliographical Essay con-
tained in vol. 11 of his Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642, Boston and New York,
1908, to point out that the bibliographies to the several chapters of the present
volume and its successor repeatedly refer to certain works which more or
less cover the whole of the period in question. These works will ordinarily
be cited in the separate bibliographies by the abbreviations added in italics to
the titles in the following lists.
I. COLLECTIONS OF PLAYS.
(This does not include series of volumes of which each contains the plays,
or a selection from the plays, of a single author. )
Amyot, T. and others. A Supplement to Dodsley's Old English Plays.
4 vols. 1853. (Amyot's Suppl. to Dodsley. )
Bang, W. Materialien zur Kunde des älteren englischen'Dramas. Louvain,
1902, eto. (In progress. ) (Bang's Materialien. )
Brandl, A. Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare.
Vol. Lxxx of Quellen u. Forschungen zur Sprach- u. Culturgesch. d.
German. Völker. Strassburg, 1898. (Brandl's Quellen. )
Bullen, A. H. A Collection of Old English Plays. 4 vols. 1882-5. (Bullen's
Old English Plays. )
Old English Plays. New Series 3 vols. 1887-90. (Bullen's Old
English Plays, N. S. )
Child, F. J. Four Old Plays. Cambridge, Mass. , 1848. (Four Old Plays. )
Collier, J. P. Five Old Plays illustrative of the early Progress of the
English Drama: The Conflict of Conscience; The Three Triumphs of
Love and Fortune; The Three Ladies of London; The Three Lords and
the Three Ladies of London; A Knack to Know a Knave. Ed. for the
Roxburghe Club. 1851. (Five Old Plays. )
Dilke, (Sir) C. W. Old English Plays; being a selection from the early
dramatic writers. 6 vols. 1814-5. (Dilke's 0. E. P. )
Dodsley's Old English Plays. Ed. Hazlitt, W. C. 15 vols. 1874-6. (Hazlitt's
Dodsley. )
Earlier editions:
A Select Collection of Old Plays. [Ed. by R, D. ) 12 vols. 1744.
(Dodslev (1744). )
:
## p. 382 (#406) ############################################
382
Bibliography
A Select Collection of Old Plays. [By R. D. ) Ed. Reed, I. 12 vols.
1780. (Reed's Dodsley. )
A Select Collection of Old Plays. [By R. D. ) New ed. with additional
notes and corrections by the late Isaac Reed, Octavius Gilchrist
and the editor [John Payne Collier). 12 vols. 1825-7. (Collier's
Dodsley. )
Early English Drama Society, Publications of the. Ed. Farmer, J. S. 1906 f.
(E. E. D. Publ. )
Gayley, C. M. Representative English Comedies. With introductory essays,
notes &c. by various writers, under the editorship of C. M. Gayley. 3 vols.
New York, 1903 ff. (Gayley's R. E. C. )
Hawkins, T. The Origin of the English Drama. 3 vols. Oxford, 1773.
(Origin of E. D.
)
Malone Society, Publications of the. 1906, etc. (Malone S. Publ. )
Manly, J. M. Specimens of Pre-Shaksperean Drama. With an intro-
duction, notes and glossary. Vols. I and 11. Boston, 1897-8. New ed.
1900-3. (Manly's Specimens. )
Old English Drama. 3 vols. 1830. (Old E. D. )
Scott, (Sir) Walter. Ancient British Drama. 3 vols. 1810. (Ancient B. D. )
Modern British Drama. 5 vols. 1811. (Modern B. D. )
Simpson, R. The School of Shakspere. 2 vols. 1878. (Simpson. )
Six Old Plays on which Shakespeare founded his Measure for Measure.
Comedy of Errors. The Taming of the Shrew. King John. King
Henry IV and King Henry V. King Lear. 2 vols. 1779. (Six Old
Plays. )
Tudor Facsimile Texts. Old Plays and other Printed and MS. Rarities.
Ed. Farmer, J. S. 43 vols. 1907, etc. [In progress. ] (Tudor Fac-
simile Texts. )
Lamb, Charles. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets. Ed. Gollancz, I.
2 vols. 1908. (Lamb's Specimens. )
II. LISTS OF PLAYS AND DRAMATISTS.
Stationers' Company, Register of the, 1554-1560. Transcript by Arber, E.
5 vols. 1875–94. [Indispensable for all independent research. ] (Sta-
tioners' register. )
Henslowe's Diary. Ed. Greg, W. W. Part 1: Text. Part 11: Commentary.
1904. [The standard edition of the book. ] (Henslowe's Diary. )
Vol. I.
Baker, D. E. Biographia Dramatica; or, A Companion to the Playhouse. . . .
Originally compiled, to the year 1764, by David Erskine Baker. Con-
tinued thence, to 1782, by Isaac Reed, and brought down to the end of
November, 1811. . . by Stephen Jones. 3 vols. 1812. (Biographia
Dramatica. )
Davenport-Adams, W. A Dictionary of the Drama.
1904.
(Davenport-Adams. )
Fleay, F. G. A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, 1559–1642.
2 vols. 1891. (Fleay's English Drama. )
A Chronicle History of the London Stage. 1890. [This earlier work
contains lists of performances and authors. ] (Fleay's Chronicle of
Stage. )
(Genest, J. ) Some Account of the English Stage, from the Restoration in
1660 to 1830. 10 vols. Bath, 1832. (Genest. )
## p. 383 (#407) ############################################
General Bibliography
383
Greg, W. W. A List of English Plays written before 1643 and printed
before 1700. Bibliographical Society. 1900. (Greg's List of Plays. )
A List of Masques, Pageants, &c. , supplementary to A List of English
Plays. Bibliographical Society. 1902. (Greg's List of Masques. )
Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O. A Dictionary of Old English Plays. Being a
revision of Baker's Biographia Dramatica. 1860. (Halliwell's Dict. )
Hazlitt, W. C. Handbook to the Popular and Dramatic Literature of Great
Britain, with Supplements. 1867-90. (Hazlitt's Handbook. )
Langbaine, G. An Account of English Dramatic Poets. 1691. (Lang-
baine. ) Revised by Gildon, C. 1699.
Lowe, R. W. A Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature.
1887. (Lowe. )
In addition to the above, the Catalogue of Printed Books in the British
Museum Library will of course be consulted, together with the following
catalogues of special collections :
Capell's Shakespeariana. Catalogue of the Books presented by Edward
Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge. Compiled by
Greg, W. W. Cambridge, 1903.
Chatsworth. A Catalogue of the Library at Chatsworth. With preface by
Lacaita, Sir J. P. ) 4 vols. (Privately printed. ) 1879.
Dyce-Forster Collection. A Catalogue of the Printed Books and Manuscripts
bequeathed by the Rev. Alexander Dyce and John Forster. 2 vols. 1879.
III. HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA.
Collier, J. P. History of English Dramatic Poetry. New ed. 3 vols. 1879.
(Largely superseded, especially in its earlier and in its concluding
portions, but still to some extent indispensable. ] (Collier. )
Jusserand, J. J. Le Théâtre en Angleterre jusqu'aux prédécesseurs im-
médiats de Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Paris, 1881. (Jusserand's Th. en A. )
Schelling, F. E. Elizabethan Drama. 2 vols. Boston and New York, 1908.
[Invaluable. ] (Schelling's Elizabethan Drama. )
Ward, A. W. History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of
Queen Anne. 2nd ed. 3 vols. 1899. (Ward. )
For F. G. Fleay's works, which possess an enduring critical as well as
historical value, notwithstanding the excessive amount of conjecture contained
in them, see under sec. II above.
Baker, H. Barton.
bibl. p. 529.
? Torture seems to have been regarded as a practice to which resort should not be
had in ordinary cases; but it was not altogether out of use.
## p. 377 (#401) ############################################
Witchcraft. Moral Standard
377
There cannot, of course, be any sort of pretence that rational views
on the subject of witchcraft and magic obtained in the reign
of Elizabeth, or that the queen herself (who consulted Dee about
Alençon's condition) was more enlightened on this head than other
English men or women. Of the dramatists, it may be roughly
stated that in not a single one of them can be found any suggestion
of a disbelief in the thing itself, even where a fraudulent use of it
is exposed or derided'. On offenders against religious law and
social morality, a variety of formal penalties—in part symbolic,
in part simply degrading—were inflicted, which alike suggest a
desire on the part of the state or society to improve' the
opportunities afforded it; even before the ascendancy of puritan-
ism, there were always practical moralists clamouring for a severer
system of retribution. Yet, at the same time, a great laxity is
observable in enforcing the penalties denounced by the law upon
proved wantonness of life; and it is impossible to escape the
impression that there existed a general consensus, from which even
the clergy only slowly came to express clear dissent, that some
allowance should be made to laymen in the matter of the sins they
were 'inclined to. The whole significance of the licence of the
Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, which, in some respects, reflected
the licence of the age, cannot be fully understood, unless this fact
be borne in mind.
The darker side of the social condition of England in the
Elizabethan age should not be overlooked by those who dwell upon
the high aspirations and great achievements which have cast an
enduring halo round it in the eyes of national historians and their
readers. Nothing can be said here as to the defects--only too
palpable, but not by any means to be construed as evidence of
mere incuria-in the provision made for the protection of the
1 The whole question of the treatment in the Elizabethan age of the superstition of
witchcraft has been left aside as too wide for discussion here. For an account of the
origin of this superstition see ante, vol. II, chap. v; and cf. the note on the Witch-
controversy, with a bibliography of it, in vol. 10, pp. 534–5 (bibliography to chap. XVI).
The present writer has given a summary of the subject, illustrated by references to
those Elizabethan and Jacobean dramas which reflect the sentiments of the age in
reference to it, in his introduction to Marlowe's Dr Faustus (4th ed. ), pp. xlix-lü.
As to Dee, see The Private Diary of Dr John Dee, ed. Halliwell[-Phillipps), J. O. ,
Camden Soc. Publ. , 1842. Though it was abroad that Dee's associate Kelly came to
grief, alchemists ran some risk in England. In The Alchemist, act iv, 8c. 1, Dol Common
warns Sir Epicure Mammon that he
may come to end
The remnant of his days in a loth'd prison
for merely speaking of the philosopher's stone.
## p. 378 (#402) ############################################
378. Political and Social Aspects of the Age
public health against the dangers to which it was exposed, more
especially in London, from the incursions of the plague, and, in
a lesser degree, from those of other diseases? If, however, we
confine ourselves to the moral sphere, the impression left by
an open-eyed survey of the ordinary relations and conditions
of life in this age is one of a dominating violence and turbulence;
and this impression is confirmed by a study of the drama of
which those relations and conditions largely make up the material.
At the same time, this passionate unrest, and the impetus with
which, in the midst of it, the age pressed on to the performance of
its great tasks, explain, in some measure, how they were accom-
plished. The high spirit-often high in death as it had been in
life—which the renascence and reformation ages had infused into
their men and women, of all classes and beliefs, no doubt imparted
something of recklessness to martyrdom as well as of ruthlessness
in the infliction of suffering. But the final cause of this high
spirit was the belief in things worth living for and worth dying
for—a belief which lies at the root of mighty actions, and without
which no nation has ever been great, and no dramatic hero heroic.
It is impossible to close even this scanty notice of some of the
social characteristics of the Elizabethan age without a more
special reference to its women. For, in the history of western
civilisation (not to venture on applying the remark still more
widely), it is generally the women whose code of manners and of
morals determines the standard of these in any given period of
national life. No doubt, the women of the Elizabethan and
,
Jacobean age, as they appear before us in contemporary drama,
are, primarily, the creatures of the imagination of the dramatists ;
yet it would be idle to ignore the twofold fact, that the presentment
of the women of this period on the stage largely reproduces
actual types, and that the way in which dramatists looked upon
women, their position in life, and their relations to men, was the
way of the world, and the way of the age. Queen Elizabeth was
not the only highly educated English woman of her family or
times; but, though the type, of which the continental renascence
produced many illustrious examples, is never wanting in the society
of the Tudor and Stewart times, it is comparatively rare and
can hardly be said to be a frequent characteristic of their women.
The fashions of intellectual, and mainly literary, refinement which
passed over court and society, from that of Euphuism to that of
1 Concerning this subject, as affecting the history of the drama and stage, see
post, chi ps. x and xiv of vol. vi.
1
## p. 379 (#403) ############################################
Women of the Elizabethan Age 379
.
6
>
Platonic love, were fashions only, to be followed for a season and
then discarded. Far more striking as a distinctive feature is the
virility which many women of the age shared with the great queen-
the high courage, the readiness for action, the indomitable spirit
which no persecution can abate and which the fear of death itself
cannot quench. This quality of fortitude the women of the age
shared with the men, as Portia shared it with Brutus, and to this
they bore testimony with the same readiness on many occasions
and in many places besides the scaffold and the stake. The
German traveller Paul Hentzner, describing England as a sort of
woman's paradise, says of English women that they are as it were
men? '; and, just as we hear that ladies were willing to undergo
with their husbands the toils and exertions of country life (as they
afterwards came to join in its sports), so there was a noble dis-
tinctiveness in the readiness of Elizabethan women to take
their part in the duties and the responsibilities of life at large,
and to defy cavil and criticism in the consciousness of their own
strength and steadfastness. There is not, as has been suggested, an
element of mannishness in the Venetian Portia, or a touch of the
virago in Beatrice: they are women born to play their part in life
and society, and to stand forth amongst its leaders. But here, also, ,
we are in the presence of exceptional personalities, though the
conception remains constant in the English drama, as it did in
English life, to the days of the civil war and beyond.
As to the women of everyday life, there can be no reason for
doubting a close correspondence between many of their character-
istic features in life and on the stage. Their emptiness and
shallowness, due, in part at least, to a defective education which
cared only for imparting a few superficial accomplishments, their
inordinate love of dress and all manner of finery, their hankering
for open admiration and search for it in the open fashion of earlier
times, sitting at their doors during the greater part of the day? ,
or, from the closing years of the reign onwards, under shelter of
the masks which had become the fashion at public places—all
these, and a hundred more, are follies and levities in which
observation and satire have found constant materials for comment
and censure. The looseness and licence of the age form a feature
of its life and character well enough known to students, and were
by no means, as is sometimes supposed, derived altogether, or
perhaps even mainly, from the example of court or town. But a
comparison, from this point of view, between different periods,
1 Cited by Marcks, E. , u. 8. p. 94.
Stubbes's Anatomie of Abuses, p. 87.
## p. 380 (#404) ############################################
380 Political and Social Aspects of the Age
whether or not adjacent to each other, is a hazardous process, and,
in any case, is remote from the purpose of the present chapter.
The dramatic poets discussed in the present volume and in its
successor, at times, preferred to reproduce in their plays what
they found in the scene of life around them; at times, they were
fain to dwell on those aspects of society and its experiences which
seemed most likely to serve as occasions for exciting the emotions
of pity or of horror. The Elizabethan and Jacobean drama would
have been unable, even if it had been willing, to detach itself
altogether from the conditions of things in which it necessarily
found much of its material, and to which it could not but, in many
ways, assimilate the remainder. Neither, again, were its repro-
ductions of manners always correct, nor were the 'problems' of
its actions always those with which the experience of the age was
familiar. But, as a whole, and though it only gradually developed,
and in some respects varied, the methods and processes by which
it worked, this drama remained true to its purposes as an art; and,
in the sphere where its creative power was most signally asserted-
in the invention and delineation of character-its range was un-
surpassed. In many respects, the conditions of the age might
have seemed unfavourable to the production of the most beautiful,
as they are the most enduring, examples of female excellence.
Yet the legend of good women which a historic record of
Shakespeare's age might unfold would not be a nameless tale.
And, together with the sunniest and sweetest, the very noblest
of all feminine types—that of sovereign purity and that of self-
sacrificing love will not be sought for in vain in the Elizabethan
and Jacobean drama ; and he would err who should look for them
only on the Shakespearean heights.
## p. 381 (#405) ############################################
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
VOLS. V AND VI
It may be well, withont attempting to do over again part of a task
admirably accomplished by Schelling, F. E. , in the Bibliographical Essay con-
tained in vol. 11 of his Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642, Boston and New York,
1908, to point out that the bibliographies to the several chapters of the present
volume and its successor repeatedly refer to certain works which more or
less cover the whole of the period in question. These works will ordinarily
be cited in the separate bibliographies by the abbreviations added in italics to
the titles in the following lists.
I. COLLECTIONS OF PLAYS.
(This does not include series of volumes of which each contains the plays,
or a selection from the plays, of a single author. )
Amyot, T. and others. A Supplement to Dodsley's Old English Plays.
4 vols. 1853. (Amyot's Suppl. to Dodsley. )
Bang, W. Materialien zur Kunde des älteren englischen'Dramas. Louvain,
1902, eto. (In progress. ) (Bang's Materialien. )
Brandl, A. Quellen des weltlichen Dramas in England vor Shakespeare.
Vol. Lxxx of Quellen u. Forschungen zur Sprach- u. Culturgesch. d.
German. Völker. Strassburg, 1898. (Brandl's Quellen. )
Bullen, A. H. A Collection of Old English Plays. 4 vols. 1882-5. (Bullen's
Old English Plays. )
Old English Plays. New Series 3 vols. 1887-90. (Bullen's Old
English Plays, N. S. )
Child, F. J. Four Old Plays. Cambridge, Mass. , 1848. (Four Old Plays. )
Collier, J. P. Five Old Plays illustrative of the early Progress of the
English Drama: The Conflict of Conscience; The Three Triumphs of
Love and Fortune; The Three Ladies of London; The Three Lords and
the Three Ladies of London; A Knack to Know a Knave. Ed. for the
Roxburghe Club. 1851. (Five Old Plays. )
Dilke, (Sir) C. W. Old English Plays; being a selection from the early
dramatic writers. 6 vols. 1814-5. (Dilke's 0. E. P. )
Dodsley's Old English Plays. Ed. Hazlitt, W. C. 15 vols. 1874-6. (Hazlitt's
Dodsley. )
Earlier editions:
A Select Collection of Old Plays. [Ed. by R, D. ) 12 vols. 1744.
(Dodslev (1744). )
:
## p. 382 (#406) ############################################
382
Bibliography
A Select Collection of Old Plays. [By R. D. ) Ed. Reed, I. 12 vols.
1780. (Reed's Dodsley. )
A Select Collection of Old Plays. [By R. D. ) New ed. with additional
notes and corrections by the late Isaac Reed, Octavius Gilchrist
and the editor [John Payne Collier). 12 vols. 1825-7. (Collier's
Dodsley. )
Early English Drama Society, Publications of the. Ed. Farmer, J. S. 1906 f.
(E. E. D. Publ. )
Gayley, C. M. Representative English Comedies. With introductory essays,
notes &c. by various writers, under the editorship of C. M. Gayley. 3 vols.
New York, 1903 ff. (Gayley's R. E. C. )
Hawkins, T. The Origin of the English Drama. 3 vols. Oxford, 1773.
(Origin of E. D.
)
Malone Society, Publications of the. 1906, etc. (Malone S. Publ. )
Manly, J. M. Specimens of Pre-Shaksperean Drama. With an intro-
duction, notes and glossary. Vols. I and 11. Boston, 1897-8. New ed.
1900-3. (Manly's Specimens. )
Old English Drama. 3 vols. 1830. (Old E. D. )
Scott, (Sir) Walter. Ancient British Drama. 3 vols. 1810. (Ancient B. D. )
Modern British Drama. 5 vols. 1811. (Modern B. D. )
Simpson, R. The School of Shakspere. 2 vols. 1878. (Simpson. )
Six Old Plays on which Shakespeare founded his Measure for Measure.
Comedy of Errors. The Taming of the Shrew. King John. King
Henry IV and King Henry V. King Lear. 2 vols. 1779. (Six Old
Plays. )
Tudor Facsimile Texts. Old Plays and other Printed and MS. Rarities.
Ed. Farmer, J. S. 43 vols. 1907, etc. [In progress. ] (Tudor Fac-
simile Texts. )
Lamb, Charles. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets. Ed. Gollancz, I.
2 vols. 1908. (Lamb's Specimens. )
II. LISTS OF PLAYS AND DRAMATISTS.
Stationers' Company, Register of the, 1554-1560. Transcript by Arber, E.
5 vols. 1875–94. [Indispensable for all independent research. ] (Sta-
tioners' register. )
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1904. [The standard edition of the book. ] (Henslowe's Diary. )
Vol. I.
Baker, D. E. Biographia Dramatica; or, A Companion to the Playhouse. . . .
Originally compiled, to the year 1764, by David Erskine Baker. Con-
tinued thence, to 1782, by Isaac Reed, and brought down to the end of
November, 1811. . . by Stephen Jones. 3 vols. 1812. (Biographia
Dramatica. )
Davenport-Adams, W. A Dictionary of the Drama.
1904.
(Davenport-Adams. )
Fleay, F. G. A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, 1559–1642.
2 vols. 1891. (Fleay's English Drama. )
A Chronicle History of the London Stage. 1890. [This earlier work
contains lists of performances and authors. ] (Fleay's Chronicle of
Stage. )
(Genest, J. ) Some Account of the English Stage, from the Restoration in
1660 to 1830. 10 vols. Bath, 1832. (Genest. )
## p. 383 (#407) ############################################
General Bibliography
383
Greg, W. W. A List of English Plays written before 1643 and printed
before 1700. Bibliographical Society. 1900. (Greg's List of Plays. )
A List of Masques, Pageants, &c. , supplementary to A List of English
Plays. Bibliographical Society. 1902. (Greg's List of Masques. )
Halliwell-Phillipps, J. O. A Dictionary of Old English Plays. Being a
revision of Baker's Biographia Dramatica. 1860. (Halliwell's Dict. )
Hazlitt, W. C. Handbook to the Popular and Dramatic Literature of Great
Britain, with Supplements. 1867-90. (Hazlitt's Handbook. )
Langbaine, G. An Account of English Dramatic Poets. 1691. (Lang-
baine. ) Revised by Gildon, C. 1699.
Lowe, R. W. A Bibliographical Account of English Theatrical Literature.
1887. (Lowe. )
In addition to the above, the Catalogue of Printed Books in the British
Museum Library will of course be consulted, together with the following
catalogues of special collections :
Capell's Shakespeariana. Catalogue of the Books presented by Edward
Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge. Compiled by
Greg, W. W. Cambridge, 1903.
Chatsworth. A Catalogue of the Library at Chatsworth. With preface by
Lacaita, Sir J. P. ) 4 vols. (Privately printed. ) 1879.
Dyce-Forster Collection. A Catalogue of the Printed Books and Manuscripts
bequeathed by the Rev. Alexander Dyce and John Forster. 2 vols. 1879.
III. HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH DRAMA.
Collier, J. P. History of English Dramatic Poetry. New ed. 3 vols. 1879.
(Largely superseded, especially in its earlier and in its concluding
portions, but still to some extent indispensable. ] (Collier. )
Jusserand, J. J. Le Théâtre en Angleterre jusqu'aux prédécesseurs im-
médiats de Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Paris, 1881. (Jusserand's Th. en A. )
Schelling, F. E. Elizabethan Drama. 2 vols. Boston and New York, 1908.
[Invaluable. ] (Schelling's Elizabethan Drama. )
Ward, A. W. History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of
Queen Anne. 2nd ed. 3 vols. 1899. (Ward. )
For F. G. Fleay's works, which possess an enduring critical as well as
historical value, notwithstanding the excessive amount of conjecture contained
in them, see under sec. II above.
Baker, H. Barton.
