The B.M. copy of 1602 (C. 34, b. 53) has the note 'Written by Ioshua Cooke' in ink on the title-page. Presumably the author of Greene's Tu Quoque (q.v.) is meant, with which Swaen, xiii, declares that the play shows 'absolutely no similarity or point of agreement'. Fleay, i. 289, suggested an ascription to Heywood on the ground of parallelisms with The Wise Woman of Hogsdon, and this case is elaborately and plausibly argued by Swaen and Adams. The date must be before Worcester's begin to appear in Henslowe's diary, 17 Aug. 1602. Fleay's attempt to twist its mentions of a certain 'Thomas' in the text (l. 790) into references to Heywood himself and Thomas Blackwood, the actor, is mere childishness. Impatient Poverty (?)
S. R. 1560, June 10. '. . . nyce wanton; impaciens poverte . . .' John King (Arber, i. 128).
1560. A Newe Interlude of Impacyente pouerte newlye Imprynted. John King. [B.M. C. 34, i. 26, from Irish sale of 1906 (cf. Jahrbuch, xliii. 310). Engraved t.p.; on tablet at foot 'T. R.' Thomas Petit's mark after colophon. The t.p. has also 'Foure men may well and easelye playe thys Interlude', with an arrangement of the parts.]
N.D. An new enterlude of Impacient pouerte newly Imprynted. [In Mostyn sale (1919). The t.p. has three woodcut figures. There is no imprint, but as the woodcuts are also found in W. Copland's print of Youth and as King's copy of Lusty Juventus also passed to Copland (1548-69), he was probably the printer.]
S. R. 1582, Jan. 15. Transfer from Sampson Awdeley to John Charlwood (Arber, ii. 405).
Editions by J. S. Farmer (1907, T. F. T.) and R. B. McKerrow (1911, Materialien, xxxiii).
The play has come to light since the issue of The Mediaeval Stage, and I therefore include it here, although it is pre-Elizabethan. The characters are Peace, Envy, Impatient Poverty (afterwards Prosperity), Conscience, Abundance, Misrule, 'Collhasarde', and a Summoner. The drama is a moral, non-controversial, and not even necessarily Protestant in tone. It sets out the mutability of the world and the defects of poverty and prosperity. The scene is a 'place', and there are allusions to Newgate and Tyburn. If the T. R. of the title-page is the same whose name is at the end of Nice Wanton, the play is probably not later than the reign of Edward VI; but the Summoner and allusions to penance and courts spiritual suggest an even earlier date. The final address to the 'Soueraynes' contains the following stanza:
Let vs pray al to that lorde of great magnificence
To send amonge vs peace rest and vnyte
And Jesu preserue our soueraigne Quene of preclare preeminence
With al her noble consanguynyte
And to sende them grace so the yssue to obtayne
After them to rule this most chrysten realme.
