the 10th Jan. 1578 (as we find by the Additional MSS. in the British Museum, No. 5750), Blagrave sent to Brydeman, the keeper of the Wardrobe, for a piece of 'black and silver stuff.' The following is a literal copy of an original unsigned note from Lord Leicester to Brydeman, dated three days earlier. It was a task of extreme difficulty to decipher it.

'Mr. Brydeman. The q wod have sent unto you her warrant for the delyverye to her officers of her Revells such paralls as shalbe specyfyed in a byll subscrybed with her hand, and bycase it is not yet certenly known or wylbe before the garments be made, what stuffe shall suffyce, I do hartely pray 'you to delyver to them all such stuffe as they shall requyre 'to have of the old store, and when all thies shalbe fornyshed, • I wyll delyver unto you a byll of the partyculars, sygned with her hand, for your discharge, and so I byd you hartely well to 'fare.

• From the Crt. 7 Janij 1578.'

p. 319.

It had been performed before the Queen in 1600.'] Another play, then presented, was doubtless Dekker's Old Fortunatus, which was printed with the date of 1600, as it was plaied this Christmas,' by the Lord Admiral's servants. According to Henslowe's Diary it had been written in 1595.

p. 399.

Line 2, the word in has dropped out.

p. 403.

Heywood's Fair Maid of the West was written before the death of Elizabeth.'] This remark ought to have. been limited to the first part of the play. second part is more uncertain.

The date of the

Vol. II. p. 106,

The Stage-player's Complaint in a pleasant dialogue between Cane of the Fortune and Reed of the Friars.'] I conjectured, before I saw any part of it, that this tract (consisting of only four leaves, without date) was published about 1625; but, Mr. Haslewood, to whom I am indebted for the following extract from it, all that (or perhaps more than, is worth quoting, gives it the date, no doubt correctly) of 1641. The interlocutors are called Light [i.e. Reed] and Quick [i.e. Cane].

'Light. Pish! I can shew thee many infallible reasons to 'the contrary. We are very necessary and commodious to all people: first for strangers, who can desire no better re'creation than to come and see a play: then for citizens to 'feast their wits: then for gallants, who otherwise perhaps would spend their money in drunkenness and lasciviousness, do find a great delight and delectation to see a play: then for the learned, 'it does increase and add wit constructively to wit: then for 'gentlewomen, it teacheth them how to deceive idleness: then for the ignorant, it does augment their knowledge, Pish! a 'thousand more arguments I could add but that I should 'weary your patience too much. Well-in a word we are so needful for the common good, that in some respect it were ' almost a sin to put us down. Therefore let not these frivolous things perplex your vexatious thoughts.

Quick. But it makes me fear, I'll assure you, in these 'times, and I think it would be a very good plot to borrow good store of money and then run away-What think you ' of it?

Light. A good plot, quotha! so you may come to lie in a worser plot for it all the days of your life. S'foot! run away too:. so you may be taken for a young Suckling, and then ' followed presently with a hundred horse.'

The last sentence alludes to the plot of Sir John Suck

ling, Davenant, and Captain Billingley, and to the hundred horse Sir John had raised for the king's service.

p. 11s.

'The latest infraction of the act of suppression occurred at Witney.'] In Whitelocke's Memorials, 633, is, however, the following entry

'Jan. 1655-6. Players taken in Newcastle and whipped for " rogues.'

p. 147.

'In cities and large towns.'] In some places there seems to have been a stage belonging to the town; and in Lodge's and Greene's Looking Glass for London and Engand, 1594, the father of one of the low comic characters is represented as 'keeper of the town stage,' or the stage used by the inhabitants for the representation of plays, either by the townsmen or by actors belonging to the town, who sometimes travelled to adjoining places to perform.

p. 196.

Last line, for Childemas read Candlemas,

p. 261.

Note †, for Bollogne read Boulogne.

p. 366.

'It appears to have formed part of a modern Latin play.'] At all events the author, whoever he might be, seems to have availed himself of one of Lucian's Dialogues.

p. 420.

'The novels, &c., he thus points out, in fact supplied most of the materials for our romantic drama.'] Gosson might have added other collections, including the

comic stories, in prose,' by Richard Edwards, 1570, (mentioned by Warton, H. E. P., iv., 117, edit. 8vo.)

which furnished the induction to the old Taming of a Shrew, Fenton's Tragical Discourses, 1567, and several volumes of the same sort. Sir Geoffrey Fenton was a Privy Councillor in Ireland about the year 1580; and the Duke of Devonshire is in possession of a MS. of various public papers drawn up by Fenton, including, in a different part of the volume, a number of poems, most of them signed by the same individual. I have also an autograph by Fenton of a moral poem in three stanzas, of which the following is a copy. I insert it as a specimen of the talents of an author, who is not mentioned as a verse-maker by Ritson, or by any of our bibliographers.

My silly bark that many years hath run

In sundry seas a weather-beaten course,
And seldom yet could find the way to shun

Those froward gales which blow from ill to worse,
''Tween rocks and sands of late did harbour take,
And there, God knows, a hard escape did make.
'Her broken sails, worn out with many flaws,
'Could scarcely hold the wind that gave her
'And both her sides, made weak with many blows,
'By subtle streams suck'd in her last decay.

way,

• The stem, and all that to her strength did tend,
'Were brought by force unto the storm to bend.
'Oh, subtle state that mortal man lives in;

'Oh, time, so short makes vain that present hope,
"Which feeds our mind a settled life to win,

• Wherein like men we do in darkness grope!
Then, silly bark, that hast these perils past,
• Retire thyself, and strike thy sails at last.

'GEFF. FENTON.'

Fenton, even without this fresh claim, was entitled to a place in Ritson's Bibl. Poet., on account of some poetical

translations in his Tragical Discourses, mentioned vol. i. p. 248. He seems to have been an enemy to theatrical amusements, and in 1574 translated from the French, A Form of Christian Policy, the seventh chapter of which, among other things, insists that players were cast out of the church, and that all dissolute plays ought to be forbidden.'

p. 422.

To the same point we may quote the authority of Sir Philip Sidney.'] Among the numerous tributes by contemporary poets to the memory of Sir Philip Sydney, one, by an author of very considerable celebrity, has hitherto escaped notice :-it is by Thomas Churchyard, and it was published in the form of a pamphlet of only four leaves, under the title of "The Epitaph of Sir Phillip Sidney, Knight, lately Lord Governour of Floshing. Imprinted at London, by George Robinson,' &c., 4to., n. d. At the back of the title are 'Churchyard's arms,' and it is followed by a prose address to Lady Sidney, the widow of Sir Philip, in which the author speaks of the great encouragement at that period given to arts and letters, and mentions that he had been preceded by some other writer, who had treated the subject 'learnedly and sententiously.' A's this is a production of the utmost rarity, I will make a short quotation from it.