which is subjoined in a note1, is entirely new in the history of the Stage, and it shows how it happened that the Children of the Revels 'occasionally performed' at Blackfriars, a point which Malone was unable to explain.

On the 7th May, the day on which James I arrived at the Charter-house, a Proclamation bears date, against Monopolies, the extortions of Lawyers, etc., and which, very unexpectedly, contains, at its close, an order in the following form, against dramatic representations and certain games on Sunday: wė transcribe the following from the printed original.

'We found it in the Chapter-house, Westminster.

'James, by the grace of God, etc. To all Maiors, Sheriffs, Justices of Peace, Bailiffs, Constables, and to all other our officers, mynisters and loving subjects to whom these presents shall come, greeting. Whereas the Queene, our deerest wife, hath for her pleasure & recreation, when she shall thinke it fitt to have any Playes or shewes, appointed her servants, Edward Kirkham, Alexander Hawkins, Thomas Kendall, and Robert Payne to provide & bring up a convenient nomber of children, who shalbe called Children of her Revells. Know ye, that we have appointed and authorized, and by these presents doe authorize and appoint the said Edward Kirkham, Alexander Hawkins, Thomas Kendall, and Robert Payne from tyme to tyme to provide, keep, and bring up a convenient nomber of Children, and them to practise and exercise in the quallitie of playing, by the name of Children of the Revells to the Queene within the Blackfryers in our Cittie of London, or in any other convenient place where they shall thinck fitt for that purpose. Wherefore we will and commaund you, and every of you, to whom it shall apperteyne, to permitt her said servants to keepe a convenient nomber of children by the name of the Children of her Revells, and them to exercise in the quallitie of playing according to her pleasure. Provided always, that no such Playes or Shewes shall be presented before the said Queene our wife by the said children, or by them any where publickly acted, but by the approbation and allowance of Samuel Daniell, whom her pleasure is to appoint for that purpose. And these our letters patents shalbe your sufficient warrant in this behalf. In witness whereof, etc. Given under our signet at our honor of Hampton Courte, the thirtieth day of January in the first yere of our raigne, etc. Ex. per Lake.'

'And for that we are informed that there hath beene heretofore great neglect in this kingdome of keeping the Sabbath-day: For better observing of the same, and avoyding all impious prophanation, we do straightly charge and commaund, that no Beare-bayting, Bulbayting, Enterludes, common Playes, or other like disordered or unlawful Exercises, or Pastimes, be frequented, kept, or used at any time hereafter upon the Sabbath-day.

'Given at our Court at Theobalds, the 7 day of May, in the first yeare of our Reigne.'

The appointment of Daniel to be, as it were, Master of the Queen's Revels, may serve, perhaps, to solve the doubt that has hung over his nomination as Poet Laureate, a situation which Malone supposes him voluntarily to have filled. The selection of these four masters (of whom nothing further is known) may also account for the new constitution of the company of the Children of the Revels, upon which Gifford observes, when speaking of Epicone, which was acted by them in 16091. Of course, this comedy must have gone through the hands of Daniel, for his allowance, before it was represented; and at the date when it was brought out we have the evidence of the author himself, in his folio of 1616, that the following were among the members of the company 'provided and kept' by Kirkham, Hawkins, Kendall and Payne - Nat. Field, Gil. Carie, Hug. Attawel, Joh. Smith, Will. Barksted, Will. Pen, Ric. Allin, and Joh. Blaney'.2

1 Malone (Shakespeare by Boswell, iii, 61) says, that several of Ben Jonson's comedies were acted by the children of the Revels in the earlier part of King James's reign; but this is an oversight, from his confounding the plays by Ben Jonson performed by the children of the Chapel in the reign of Elizabeth, with the only piece by him represented by the children of the Queen's Revels in the reign of James I, viz., Epicæne.

2 When the children of the Chapel performed Ben Jonson's Poetaster in 1601, 'the principal comedians were, Nat. Field, Sal. Pavy, Tho. Day, Joh. Underwood, Will. Ostler, Tho. Marton.' Thus we see that Field

How long the children of the Queen's Revels continued occasionally to perform at Blackfriars, we have no distinct evidence; but, on the title-page of Ben Jonson's Case is Altered, printed in 16091, they are called 'the children of Blackfriars'; so that up to that year they still had the use of that playhouse. The King's players certainly performed at the Blackfriars in the winter, when the Globe was shut; and, perhaps, the children of the Queen's Revels acted in it during the summer, when it was unoccupied by the King's players. The children of the Queen's Revels, not long afterwards, seem to have played at the Whitefriars Theatre.2

was, probably, the only performer retained by the new masters, when they remodelled the company as the children of the Queen's Revels. Salathiel Pavy is supposed to have died before James came to the throne; Gifford conjectures in 1601. Ben Jonson's Works, viii, 230. In Davies's Scourge of Folly (1611) W. Ostler is called 'the King of Actors'. 1 We may take this opportunity of correcting an error by Gifford, when he states, that 'had chronology only been consulted, The Case is Altered should have stood at the head of Jonson's works.' He has himself shewn (Memoirs, xxv and xl) that Every Man in his Humour was written in 1596, and it was unquestionably acted in 1598 by the Lord Chamberlain's servants. It is quite as clear, and Gifford adduces the evidence upon the point, (Ben Jonson's Works, vi, 327) and relies upon it, that The Case is Altered was not written until after Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia, printed in 1598, had called Anthony Munday 'the best plotter'. Ben Jonson's ridicule of Munday depends upon this expression.

2 Nathaniel Field's Woman is a Weathercock, perhaps, his Amends for Ladies, Marston's (or Barkstead's) Insatiate Countess, and several others, might be mentioned as having been performed at the Whitefriars Theatre prior to 1612. Woman is a Weathercock was printed in 1612; Amends for Ladies, which is its sequel, not until 1618; but there is a piece of evidence, never yet adduced, to show that both must have been written and acted anterior to 1611, an earlier date than has yet been assigned to either of them. In the 'Admonition to a discontented Romanist', at the end of Anthony Stafford's Niobe dissolved into a Nilus, 1611, occurs this sentence, clearly referring to the title of Field's second play :—'No, no, Sir: I will never write an Amends for Women 'till I see women amended.'

1

Very soon after Daniel's appointment, probably before the termination of 1604, a play was produced and acted by the children of the Revels, which occasioned some trouble to the three authors of it-Marston, Jonson and Chapman-although we do not discover any circumstance to show that Daniel shared their suffering or disgrace:-We allude to Eastward Ho! printed more than once in 1605. Some passages in this piece, as it was performed, reflected on the Scotch;1 ånd Gifford informs us that they 'gave offence to Sir James Murray, who represented it in so strong a light to the King, that orders were given to arrest the authors. It does not appear that Jonson had any considerable share in the composition of this piece; but as he was undoubtedly privy to the writing of it, and "an accessory before the fact", he justly considered himself as equally implicated with the rest'. The same acute biographer adds, that Jonson 'stood in such favour, that he

2

'Some of the copies of Eastward Ho! in 1605 are without the following passage, and hence it has been supposed that it was one of those which gave offence, and that it was omitted afterwards: what others were repeated in the performance we have no means of knowing; but nothing that was printed seems to warrant any severity of proceeding against the authors. Seagul (act iii, scene 1) thus speaks of Virginia:'And then you shall live freely there without serjeants, or courtiers, or lawyers, or intelligencers; only a few industrious Scots, perhaps, who indeed are dispersed over the face of the whole earth. But as for them, there are no greater friends to Englishmen and England, when they are out on't, in the world than they are: and for my part I would a hundred thousand of them were there, for we are all one countrymen now, you know, and we should find ten times more comfort of them there than we do here.' The part of the dialogue in act iv, scene I, which relates to 'thirty pound knights', and to the manner in which knighthood was bestowed in the beginning of the reign of James I, would seem much more objectionable, and likely to produce imprisonment, did we not know that knighthood was often afterwards made a subject of ridicule by many dramatists with impunity.

2 Memoirs of Ben Jonson: Works, 1, lxxiv.

was not molested; but this did not satisfy him, and he, therefore, with a high sense of honour, voluntarily accompanied his two friends to prison, determined to share their fate.' The facts connected with this transaction, we have upon the authority of Ben Jonson himself, who mentioned them in his conversation with Drummond of Hawthornden: we there find it noticed, that a report had prevailed that the three poets would be punished by cutting off their ears; but they were released, and Ben Jonson's mother, (who, as Gifford observes, must have been a high-spirited woman), at an entertainment given on their deliverance, at which Camden, Selden and others were present, drank to her son, and shewed him a paper which she designed, if the sentence had taken effect, to have mixed with his drink, and it was strong and lusty poison: to shew that she was no 'churl, she designed to have first drank of it herself'. It has been said, that Marston, Jonson and Chapman were set at liberty at the intercession of Camden and Selden: it may be so, but we are without proof of the fact.

In the winter of 1604, the King's players, who must have then been performing at Blackfriars, also appear to have at least run the risk of exciting the displeasure of the Court, by acting a play on the subject of the conspiracy of Earl Gowry, an event then of recent occurrence. In a letter of John Chamberlain to Sir R. Winwood, dated 18th of December 1604, the circumstance is noticed in these terms: 'The tragedy of Gowry, with all action and actors, hath been twice represented by the King's players, with exceeding concourse of all sorts of people; but whether the matter or manner be not well handled, or that it be thought unfit that Princes should be played on the stage in their life-time, I hear that some great counsellors are much displeased with it, and so it is thought it shall be forbidden.' Whether it was,