(c. 1600) and The Second Maiden's Tragedy (1611), and give interesting indications of the manner in which he apprehended his duties.[1] Tilney, in dealing with Sir Thomas More, was perturbed by two features. The play, as submitted to him, began with a dispute between Londoners and certain Lombard aliens, leading up to the riots of 'ill May day' and the reputation won by Sir Thomas More as the restorer of peace. This was still a ticklish subject at the end of the sixteenth century, for there had been comparatively recent disturbances on the alien question, directed against Frenchmen rather than Lombards, and Tilney therefore went carefully through the earlier pages, altering here and there 'Frenchman' or 'straunger' into 'Lombard', and marking for omission or alteration certain passages which might be read as suggestions to the citizens to take matters into their own hands. In the margin of one passage he wrote 'Mend this'. Presumably the effect of these 'reformations' did not satisfy him, for at the beginning of the first scene he has inserted what Dr. Greg calls 'a very conditional licence', but what is in fact a direction for the complete recast of the first part of the play by the omission of the dangerous episodes.[2] Similarly he was pulled up by a later scene in which More's refusal to sign articles sent him by the King seemed to be of bad precedent for subjects, and here he drew a line through a substantial section of the dialogue, and added a note that all must be altered. The Second Maiden's Tragedy is a Jacobean, not an Elizabethan, play, and the censor was Sir George Buck. He, too, is on the look-out for political criticism, and political criticism in 1611 was likely to be criticism of King and Court. The passages, therefore, amended by Buck or at his instigation are a few which speak lightly of courtiers and knights and ladies of high position, and one in particular which seemed to him to dwell with too much point and detail upon the delicate theme of tyrannicide. But this was merely verbal caution. He did not attempt to eliminate tyrannicide
- ↑ The manuscript of The Honest Man's Fortune (1613) has some censorial notes and an allowance at the end of the book by Herbert on the occasion of a revival in 1625. Of later manuscripts, that of Sir John Van Olden Barnevelt (Bullen, O. E. P. ii. 101) has corrections by Herbert, but no allowance, and that of Massinger's Believe As You List (facs. in T. F. T.) is a second draft, prepared to meet criticisms by Herbert, and allowed by him; cf. Gildersleeve, 114, 123.
- ↑ The extent to which Tilney's handiwork is apparent in the text is a matter of great palaeographical difficulty fully studied by Dr. Greg, who takes the view that the insertions and many of the corrections in the manuscript were made before it was submitted to Tilney, and are not an attempt to carry out the revision directed by him. If so, he was very easy-going as regards willingness to peruse a most disorderly text.
