384
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io* s. in. MAY 20, iocs.
Prize.' (I may add here that I did not make
(from the latter play a selection of a passage
.particularly favourable to my case, but de
termined on the passage I would take before
I looked at it, resolving to select for com
parison the scene containing the allusion to
<Ostend as being most certainly of about the
required date.) In the * Stukeley ' scene
the second line of Old Stukeley's seconc
speech, the second and fourth of the speed
following the second line of Old Stukeley's lasl
speech before his son's entry, and the first
line of Stukeley's third speech are samples oi
f.he difficulty I refer to. The last two ol
these I have scanned thus :
But ail old hilt of a broken sword to set his light in Zounds ! he 's been taking an in vent' ry of my house- hold stuff.
There are places, too, where I have not counted as anapaests feet that would be so if the words printed were sounded fully, but where ordinary contractions were supposed to be used. One of Old Stukeley's lines, e g., I have read :
iBut all's for th' bar ; yet I 'd meant to have my sow.
With so much premised, I may now come to the results of my examination on this score also. There are far more big slurs in the 'Stukeley ' scene than in the scene from
- The Woman's Prize,' where there is only one,
the percentage being in the former 7, and In the latter 2. If we add to these the lines an which anapaests occur, the percentage goes up to 41 in the one case, and 34 in the other. Here again we have an extraordinary re- semblance. But, above and beyond all, the manner, the language, the "go," and the tone of the two scenes speak eloquently (to >me, at least) of identity of authorship.
It may be added that no other scene of c Stukeley ' can be mistaken for the work of .Fletcher, or gives evidence of being by the writer of Act I. sc. iii.
That the play has not come down to us in "its original form is certain. For the first three acts the story proceeds steadily without hitch
or break, save that we have the first scene
of the second act in duplicate. The first act > is devoted to Stukeley's doings in England, the second to his adventures in Ireland, the third to his exploits in Spain. Then the
play goes to pieces. For the first time a Chorus appears, and speaks of Stukeley as having been " by the Pope created, as you 've
hheard, Marquess of Ireland." But, if the play was presented as printed, the audience had heard nothing of the sort, for Stukeley's
-adventures in Rome find no place in the
drama as we have it. It looks then as if
Simpson was right in his surmise that the
fourth act of the play dealt with Stukeley's
achievements in the centre of the Papal
power, and the fifth with his deeds in Africa.
This is rendered the more likely by a con-
sideration of the respective lengths of the
various acts. The first occupies rather more
than 32 pp., the second (exclusive of the
alternative first scene) 17* pp., and the third
slightly more than 38 pp., while the re-
mainder of the play (exclusive of the Chorus)
occupies just over 17 pp. I hold, then, that
the play has come down to us minus the
fourth act, and that the whole of the African
scenes form the fifth act. In this fourth act
was shown a meeting between Vernon and
Stukeley (alluded to in the closing scene of
the play) ; and the audience was given a hint
of Vernon's intention of enlisting under the
banner of Sebastian. As it is, his appearance
at the finish comes as a surprise. It is not
to be supposed that the Chorus takes the
place of the fourtli act : its purpose is to
connect the lost fourth act with the fifth act,
because probably it was found that the play
was running to too great a length. It may
have been originally written in this form, or
the Chorus may have been substituted for
two or three scenes that originally showed
what is therein told. The fifth act is a
tangle. Stukeley, the all-in-all of the first
three acts, becomes a subordinate personage.
One scene is devoted to the fate of Prince
Antonio, and then the Chorus appears again
and tells the spectators that three kings
have lost their lives, whereas only two kings
bad been shown as dead, the death of the
third being described in the scene succeeding
the Chorus. The spectators are asked to
suppose the lapse of some time, spent by
Prince Antonio in captivity, and the Chorus
- oncludes with the words :
Sit now, and see unto our story's end All those mishaps that this poor prince attend. The "poor prince" is never mentioned again, and the supposition of no great lapse of time is required. All that is shown is the triumph of the Moorish prince and the death of Stukeley and Vernon. This chorus seems -o be, as Simpson surmised, a fragment from a play on the subject of Antonio, and he may be right in assuming that the last scene of Act III. (which he treats as a fragment doing duty for the fourth act) is from the same play, as must be also the scene showing the Capture of the prince. This chorus should not have been printed as part of the play. That it is at least misplaced is shown by the act that the next scene is ushered in thus
