printing of Patient Gresell'. This did not prevent the play being entered on the Stationers' Register on 28 March, but does perhaps explain why the earliest known edition is dated 1603. The unfinished plays of 1599-1600 were The Poor Man's Paradise (Haughton), The Orphans' Tragedy (Chettle),[1] an unnamed Italian tragedy by Day, The Arcadian Virgin (Chettle and Haughton), Owen Tudor (Drayton, Hathway, Munday, and Wilson), Truth's Supplication to Candlelight (Dekker),[2] The Spanish Moor's Tragedy (Day, Dekker, and Haughton),[3] The English Fugitives (Haughton), The Devil and his Dame (Haughton),[4] The Wooing of Death (Chettle), Judas (Haughton),[5] 2 Fair Constance of Rome (Hathway), and an unnamed play by Chettle and Day.[6] Except in so far as Fortunatus was an old play, I find no trace of a revival during 1599-1600, but it may be assumed that some of the productions of the last two years still held the boards.
The year 1600 was another turning-point in the history of the company. Probably at some date between 14 August, when the first entry in a fresh account was made, and 28 October, when Pembroke's men were in occupation of the Rose, they crossed the river, and took up their quarters at Alleyn's recently built Fortune, on the north-west boundary of the City. A more important event still was the return of Alleyn himself to the stage, from which he had been absent for three years. It is suggested in the Privy Council letter of 8 April 1600 to the Middlesex justices in favour of the Fortune project, that this step was determined by the personal wish of the Queen to see the great actor at Court with his fellows again.[7] It is not quite clear on what terms he rejoined the*
- ↑ This was taken up again in 1601, but still not finished. Dr. Greg, however, thinks that it is identical with Day's Italian tragedy, and forms half of Two Lamentable Tragedies (1601), and that Chettle's work in 1601 may have been the effecting of the combination with Thomas Merry.
- ↑ Dr. Greg, following Mr. Fleay, identifies this with Dekker's Whore of Babylon, and as Time is a character in this play, cites the purchase of 'a Robe for tyme' in April 1600 as a proof that it was then performed. Time, however, might also have been a character in The Seven Wise Masters.
- ↑ Possibly finished later and identical with the pseudo-Marlowesque Lust's Dominion.
- ↑ The payment-entry is cancelled. The play may have been finished for another company, and be identical with the extant Grim, the Collier of Croydon, or, The Devil and his Dame.
- ↑ Possibly the basis of Bird and Rowley's Judas of 1601.
- ↑ It seems to me a little arbitrary of Dr. Greg to assume that the 10s. entered as an earnest for this was really a bonus on 1 The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green.
- ↑ Henslowe Papers, 51. I do not think that Dr. Greg recognizes the full significance of this when he suggests (Henslowe, ii. 94) that Alleyn
