commendatory verses by Beaumont, found at the beginning of F_{1}, were probably written.
1616. Epicoene, Or The silent Woman. A Comœdie. Acted in the yeere 1609. By the Children of her Maiesties Revells. The Author B. I. W. Stansby. [Part of F_{1}. Epistle to Sir Francis Stuart, signed 'Ben. Ionson'; Two Prologues, the second 'Occasion'd by some persons impertinent exception'; after text: 'This Comœdie was first acted, in the yeere 1609. By the Children of her Maiesties Revells. The principall Comœdians were, Nat. Field, Will. Barksted, Gil. Carie, Will. Pen, Hug. Attawel, Ric. Allin, Ioh. Smith, Ioh. Blaney. With the allowance of the Master of Revells.'] 1620. William Stansby, sold by John Browne.
Editions in O. E. D. (1830, iii) and by A. Henry (1906, Yale Studies, xxxi) and C. M. Gayley (1913, R. E. C. ii).
The first prologue speaks of the play as fit for 'your men, and daughters of white-Friars', and at Whitefriars the play was probably produced by the Revels children, either at the end of 1609, or, if Jonson's chronology permits, early in 1610. Jonson told Drummond (Laing, 41) that, 'When his play of a Silent Woman was first acted, ther was found verses after on the stage against him, concluding that that play was well named the Silent Woman, ther was never one man to say Plaudite to it'. Fleay, i. 374, suggests an equation between Sir John Daw and Sir John Harington. In I. i. 86 Clerimont says of Lady Haughty, the President of the Collegiates, 'A poxe of her autumnall face, her peec'd beautie'. I hope that this was not, as suggested by H. J. C. Grierson, Poems of Donne, ii. 63, a hit at Lady Danvers, on whom Donne wrote (Elegy ix):
No Spring, nor Summer Beauty hath such grace,
As I have seen in one Autumnall face.
In any case, I do not suppose that these are the passages which led to the 'exception' necessitating the second prologue. This ends with the lines:
If any, yet, will (with particular slight
Of application) wrest what he doth write;
And that he meant or him, or her, will say:
They make a libell, which he made a play.
Jonson evidently refers to the same matter in the Epistle, where he says: 'There is not a line, or syllable in it changed from the simplicity of the first copy. And, when you shall consider, through the certaine hatred of some, how much a mans innocency may bee indanger'd by an vn-certaine accusation; you will, I doubt not, so beginne to hate the iniquitie of such natures, as I shall loue the contumely done me, whose end was so honorable, as to be wip'd off by your sentence.' I think the explanation is to be found in a dispatch of the Venetian ambassador on 8 Feb. 1610 (V. P. xi. 427), who reports that Lady Arabella Stuart 'complains that in a certain comedy the playwright introduced an allusion to her person and the part played by the Prince
