A good end'. It is possible, therefore, that Ford either wrote or revised the play of 'A badd beginininge makes a good endinge', which was performed by the King's men at Court during 1612-13 (cf. App. B).
One may suspect the London Merchant to be a mistake for the Bristow Merchant of Ford and Dekker (q.v.) in 1624. The offer of the title in K. B. P. ind. 11 hardly proves that there was really a play of The London Merchant. Ford's Honor Triumphant: or The Peeres Challenge, by Armes defensible at Tilt, Turney, and Barriers (1606; ed. Sh. Soc. 1843) is a thesis motived by the jousts in honour of Christian of Denmark (cf. ch. iv). It has an Epistle to the Countesses of Pembroke and Montgomery, and contains four arguments in defence of amorous propositions addressed respectively to the Duke of Lennox and the Earls of Arundel, Pembroke, and Montgomery. EDWARD FORSETT (c. 1553-c. 1630). A political writer (D. N. B.) and probable author of the academic Pedantius (cf. App. K). ABRAHAM FRAUNCE (c. 1558-1633 <). Fraunce was a native of Shrewsbury, and passed from the school of that place, where he obtained the friendship of Philip Sidney, to St. John's, Cambridge, in 1576. He took his B.A. in 1580, played in Legge's academic Richardus Tertius and in Hymenaeus (Boas, 394), which he may conceivably have written (cf. App. K), became Fellow of the college in 1581, and took his M.A. in 1583. He became a Gray's Inn man, dedicated various treatises on logic and experiments in English hexameters to members of the Sidney and Herbert families during 1583-92, and appears to have obtained through their influence some office under the Presidency of Wales. He dropped almost entirely out of letters, but seems to have been still alive in 1633.
Latin Play
Victoria. 1580 < > 3
[MS.] In possession of Lord De L'Isle and Dudley at Penshurst, headed 'Victoria'. [Lines 'Philippo Sidneio', signed 'Abrahamus Fransus'. Prologue.] Edition by G. C. Moore Smith (1906, Materialien, xiv). The play is an adaptation of Il Fedele (1575) by Luigi Pasqualigo, which is also the foundation of the anonymous Two Italian Gentlemen (q.v.). As Sidney was knighted on 13 Jan. 1583, the play was probably written, perhaps for performance at St. John's, Cambridge, before that date and after Fraunce took his B.A. in 1580.
Translation
Phillis and Amyntas. 1591
S. R. 1591, Feb. 9 (Bp. of London). 'A book intituled The Countesse of Pembrookes Ivye churche, and Emanuel.' William Ponsonby (Arber, ii. 575).
