from his original text, which the boy actors had shortened. He puts this original text in 1600, because of the allusion in one of the insertions (I. iii. 20) to a 'horn growing in the woman's forehead twelve years since'. This horn was described in a pamphlet of 1588. I do not share his view that 'twelve' must be a precise and not a round number. Sly says in the induction:
'This play hath beaten all your gallants out of the feathers: Blackfriars
hath almost spoiled Blackfriars for feathers.'
It is clear therefore that the original actors were the Blackfriars boys,
and there is nothing else to suggest a connexion between Marston and
these boys during Elizabeth's reign. Small, 115, points out a reference
to the Scots in V. iii. 24 which should be Jacobean. I think that
this is Marston's first play for the Queen's Revels after the formation
of the syndicate early in 1604, and that the revision followed later in
the same year. It is not necessary to assume that the play was literally
'lost' or that Marston was not privy to the adoption of it by the
King's. Importance is attached to the date by parallels to certain
plays of Shakespeare, where Stoll thinks that Shakespeare was the
borrower. I do not see how it can be so. The epilogue speaks of the
author's 'reformed Muse' and pays a compliment to 'another's
happier Muse' and forthcoming 'Thalia', perhaps Jonson's Volpone.
The Fawn. 1604 < > 6
S. R. 1606, March 12. 'A playe called the ffaune provided that he shall not put the same in prynte before he gett alowed lawfull aucthoritie.' William Cotton (Arber, iii. 316).
1606. Parasitaster, Or The Fawne, As it hath bene diuers times presented at the blacke Friars, by the Children of the Queenes Maiesties Reuels. Written by Iohn Marston. T. P. for W. C. [Epistle to the Equal Reader, signed 'Jo. Marston', Prologue, and Epilogue.]
1606. . . . and since at Paules. . . . And now corrected of many faults, which by reason of the Author's absence were let slip in the first edition. T. P. for W. C. [A further Epistle to the Reader states that the writer has 'perused this copy' and is about to 'present . . . to you' the tragedy of Sophonisba.]
Modern edition by C. W. Dilke (1814, O. E. P. ii).
As a Queen's Revels play, this must date from 1604 or 1605; presumably it was transferred to Paul's by Edward Kirkham, when he took charge of them for the Christmas of 1605-6. Small, 116, refutes Aronstein's suggested allusion to Jonson's Volpone of 1605 or 1606. Bolte, Danziger Theater, 177, prints from a seventeenth-century Dantzig MS. a German play, Tiberius von Ferrara und Annabella von Mömpelgart, which is in part derived from The Fawn (Herz, 99). If, as the titles suggest, the performances of Annabella, eines Hertzogen Tochter von Ferrara at Nördlingen in 1604, of Annabella, eines Markgraffen Tochter von Montferrat at Rothenburg in 1604, and of Herzog von Ferrara at Dresden in 1626 (Herz, 65, 66), indicate intermediate links, The Fawn cannot be later than 1604. Yet I find it impossible
