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The Dumb Knight. 1607-8
S. R. 1608, Oct. 6 (Buck). 'A playe of the Dumbe Knight.' John Bache (Arber, iii. 392). 1610. Nov. 19. Transfer from Bache to Robert Wilson (Arber, iii. 449). 1608. The dumbe Knight. A pleasant Comedy, acted sundry times by the children of his Maiesties Reuels. Written by Iaruis Markham. N. Okes for J. Bache. [Epistle to Reader, signed 'Lewes Machin'. There were two reissues of 1608 with altered t.ps. Both omit the ascription to Markham. One has 'A historicall comedy'; the other omits the description.] 1633. A. M. for William Sheares.
Editions in Dodsley^{1-4} (1744-1875) and by W. Scott (1810, A. B. D. ii).—Dissertation: J. Q. Adams, Every Woman in Her Humour and The Dumb Knight (1913, M. P. x. 413).
The Epistle says that 'Rumour . . . hath made strange constructions on this Dumb Knight', and that 'having a partner in the wrong whose worth hath been often approved . . . I now in his absence make this apology, both for him and me'. Presumably these 'constructions' led to the withdrawal of Markham's name from the title-page. Fleay, ii. 58, assigned him the satirical comedy of the underplot, but Adams points out that Markham's books reveal no humour, and that the badly linked underplot was probably inserted by Machin. It borrows passages from the anonymous unprinted Every Woman in Her Humour (q.v.). The production of a King's Revels play is not likely to be before 1607, but Herz, 102, thinks that an earlier version underlies the Vom König in Cypern of Jacob Ayrer, who died 1605. A later German version also exists, and was perhaps the Philole und Mariana played at Nuremberg in 1613.
CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE (1564-93).
Marlowe, whose name was also spelt Marley and Marlin, was the son of John and Catherine Marlowe of Canterbury. He was born 6 Feb. 1564. John Marlowe was a shoemaker and subsequently became parish clerk of St. Mary's. He entered the King's School, Canterbury, in 1579 and in March 1581 matriculated with a pension on Abp. Parker's foundation at Corpus Christi or Benet's College, Cambridge. He took his B.A. in 1584 and his M.A. in 1587. In this year he probably began his literary career in London, with Tamburlaine. A ballad, printed by Collier, which represents him as a player and breaking his leg in a lewd scene on the stage of the Curtain, is now discredited. There are satirical allusions to him in the preface to the Perimedes (S. R. 29 March 1588) and in the Menaphon (23 Aug. 1589) of Robert Greene, but it is very doubtful whether, as usually assumed, Nashe had him especially in mind when he criticized certain tragic poets of the day in his epistle to the latter pamphlet (cf. App. C, No. xlii). On 1 Oct. 1588 'Christofer Marley, of London, gentleman,' had to give bail to appear at the next Middlesex Sessions. The exact nature of the charge is unknown;
