JOHN DYMMOCKE (c. 1601).
Possibly the translator of Pastor Fido (cf. ch. xxiv).
RICHARD EDES (1555-1604).
Edes, or Eedes, entered Christ Church, Oxford, from Westminster in 1571, took his B.A. in 1574, his M.A. in 1578, and was University Proctor in 1583. He took orders, became Chaplain to the Queen, and was appointed Canon of Christ Church in 1586 and Dean of Worcester in 1597. Some of his verse, both in English and Latin, has survived, and Meres includes him in 1598 amongst 'our best for Tragedie'. The Epilogue, in Latin prose, of a play called Caesar Interfectus, which was both written and spoken by him, is given by F. Peck in A Collection of Curious Historical Pieces, appended to his Memoirs of Cromwell (1740), and by Boas, 163, from Bodl. MS. Top. Oxon. e. 5, f. 359. A later hand has added the date 1582, from which Boas infers that Caesar Interfectus, of which Edes was probably the author, was one of three tragedies recorded in the Christ Church accounts for Feb.-March 1582. Edes appears to have written or contributed to Sir Henry Lee's (q.v.) Woodstock Entertainment of 1592.
RICHARD EDWARDES (c. 1523-1566).
Edwardes was a Somersetshire man. He entered Corpus Christi College, Oxford, on 11 May 1540, and became Senior Student of Christ Church in 1547. Before the end of Edward's reign he was seeking his fortune at Court and had a fee or annuity of £6 13s. 4d. (Stopes, Hunnis, 147). He must not be identified with the George Edwardes of Chapel lists, c. 1553 (ibid. 23; Shakespeare's Environment, 238; Rimbault, x), but was of the Chapel by 1 Jan. 1557 (Nichols, Eliz. i. xxxv; Illustrations, App. 14), when he made a New Year's gift of 'certeigne verses', and was confirmed in office by an Elizabethan patent of 27 May 1560. He succeeded Bower as Master of the Children, receiving his patent of appointment on 27 Oct. 1561 and a commission to take up children on 4 Dec. 1561 (Wallace, i. 106; ii. 65; cf. ch. xii). Barnabe Googe in his Eglogs, Epytaphes and Sonettes (15 March 1563) puts his 'doyngs' above those of Plautus and Terence. In addition to plays at Court, he took his boys on 2 Feb. 1565 and 2 Feb. 1566 to Lincoln's Inn (cf. ch. vii), of which he had become a member on 25 Nov. 1564 (L. I. Admission Register, i. 72). He appeared at Court as a 'post' on behalf of the challengers for a tilt in Nov. 1565 (cf. ch. iv). In 1566 he helped in the entertainment of Elizabeth at Oxford, and on Oct. 31 of that year he died. His reputation as poet and dramatist is testified to in verses by Barnabe Googe, George Turberville, Thomas Twine, and others and proved enduring. The author [Richard Puttenham?] of The Arte of English Poesie (1589) couples him with the Earl of Oxford as deserving the highest price for comedy and enterlude, and Francis Meres in his Palladis Tamia (1598) includes him amongst those 'best for comedy'. Several of his poems are in The Paradise of Dainty Devices (1576). Warton, iv. 218, says that William Collins (the poet) had a volume of prose stories printed in 1570, 'sett forth by maister Richard Edwardes mayster of her
