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(xii, xiii) 1, 2 Sir John Oldcastle.

With Drayton (q.v.), Hathaway, and Munday, Oct.-Dec. 1599.

(xiv) 2 Henry Richmond.

Nov. 1599, apparently with others, as shown by Robert Shaw's order for payment (Greg, Henslowe Papers, 49), on which a scenario of one act is endorsed. (xv) Owen Tudor.

With Drayton, Hathaway, and Munday, Jan. 1600; but apparently not finished.

(xvi) 1 Fair Constance of Rome.

June 1600. The Diary gives the payments as made to Dekker, Drayton, Hathaway, and Munday, but a letter of 14 June from

Robert Shaw (Greg, Henslowe Papers, 55) indicates that Wilson had a fifth share. ANTHONY WINGFIELD (c. 1550-1615). Possible author of the academic Pedantius (cf. App. K). NATHANIEL WOODES (?). A minister of Norwich, only known as author of the following play.

The Conflict of Conscience > 1581

1581. An excellent new Commedie Intituled: The Conflict of Conscience. Contayninge, A most lamentable example, of the dolefull desperation of a miserable worldlinge, termed, by the name of Philologus, who forsooke the trueth of God's Gospel, for feare of the losse of lyfe, & worldly goods. Compiled, by Nathaniell Woodes, Minister, in Norwich. Richard Bradocke. [Prologue.]

Editions by J. P. Collier (1851, Five Old Plays), in Dodsley^4, vi. 29 (1874), and by J. S. Farmer (1911, T. F. T.).

The characters are allegorical, typical and personal and arranged for six actors 'most convenient for such as be disposed either to shew this Comedie in private houses or otherwise'. Philologus is Francis Spiera, a pervert to Rome about the middle of the sixteenth century. The play is strongly Protestant, and is probably much earlier than 1581. It is divided into a prologue and acts and scenes. Act VI is practically an epilogue.


HENRY WOTTON (1568-1639).

Izaak Walton (Reliquiae Wottonianae, 1651) tells us that, while a student at Queen's College, Oxford, in 1586, Wotton 'was by the chief of that College, persuasively enjoined to write a play for their private use;—it was the Tragedy of Tancredo—which was so interwoven with sentences, and for the method and exact personating those humours, passions, and dispositions, which he proposed to represent, so performed, that the gravest of that society declared, he had, in a slight employment, given an early and a solid testimony of his future abilities'.