prose. The blank verse is that of the nineties, rather than that of the early eighties. There is nothing to show who were the actors, but it is not unlikely that, after the plays in Paul's were dissolved, Lyly tried his hand in a new manner for a new company. Feuillerat, 232, 580, suggests that Elizabeth may have taken the satire of women amiss and that the 'overthwartes' of Lyly's fortunes of which he complained in Jan. 1595 may have been the result. He puts the date, therefore, in 1593-4.
Doubtful Work
Lyly has been suggested as the author of Maid's Metamorphosis and A Warning for Fair Women (cf. ch. xxiv) and of several anonymous entertainments and fragments of entertainments (ibid., and supra, s.vv. Cecil, Clifford, Lee).
LEWIS MACHIN (fl. c. 1608).
Nothing is known of Machin's personality. He is probably the L. M. who contributed 'eglogs' to the Mirrha (1607) of the King's Revels actor William Barksted (q.v.). A Richard Machin was an actor in Germany, 1600-6. There is no traceable connexion between either Richard or Lewis and Henry Machyn the diarist.
Machin collaborated with Gervase Markham in The Dumb Knight (q.v.).
The anonymous Every Woman in Her Humour and Fair Maid of the Exchange have also been ascribed to him (cf. ch. xxiv).
GERVASE MARKHAM (c. 1568-1637).
There were two Gervase Markhams, as to both of whom full details are given in C.R. Markham, Markham Memorials (1913). The dramatist was probably the third son of Robert Markham of Cotham, Notts., a soldier and noted horseman, whose later life was devoted to an industrious output of books, verses, romance, translations, and treatises on horsemanship, farming, and sport. He was, said Jonson to Drummond in 1619, 'not of the number of the faithfull, i.e. Poets, and but a base fellow' (Laing, 11). Fleay, ii. 58, suggested, on the basis of certain phrases in his Tragedy of Sir Richard Grenville (1595), which has a dedication, amongst others, to the Earl of Southampton, that he might be the 'rival poet' of Shakespeare's Sonnets. The other Gervase Markham was of Sedgebrook and later of Dunham, Notts., and is not known to have been a writer. C. W. Wallace thinks he has found a third in an 'adventurer' whose wagers with actors and others on the success of an intended walk to Berwick in 1618 led to a suit in the Court of Requests (Jahrbuch, xlvi. 345). But as he, like Markham of Cotham, had served in Ireland, the two may conceivably be identical, although the adventurer had a large family, and it is not known that Markham of Cotham had any. Markham of Dunham, who had also served in Ireland, had but two bastards. Conceivably Markham wrote for the Admiral's in 1596-7 (cf. vol. ii, p. 145). Beyond the period dealt with, he collaborated with William Sampson in Herod and Antipater (1622) acted by the Revels company at the Red Bull.
