1635. Bellum Grammaticale sive Nominum Verborumque discordia civilis Tragico-Comoedia. Summo cum applausu olim apud Oxonienses in Scaenam producta et nunc in omnium illorum qui ad Grammaticam animos appellant oblectamentum edita. B. A. and T. Fawcet, impensis Joh. Spenceri.
Editions of 1658, 1698, 1718, 1726, 1729, and in J. Bolte (1908, Andrea Guarnas B. G. und seine Nachahmungen, 106).
A performance was given before Elizabeth at Ch. Ch., Oxford, on 24 Sept. 1592, with a prologue and epilogue by Gager, which are printed with his Meleager. But the play was not new, for Sir John Harington, who records the 1592 performance in his Metamorphosis of Ajax (1596), 127, had already named 'the Oxford Bellum Grammaticale' as 'full of harmeles myrth' in his Apologie of Poetrie (1591). The 'Master Spense' of the S. R. entry may be a confusion with the publisher's name. Wood, Ath. Oxon. ii. 533, was told by Richard Gardiner of Ch. Ch. that the author was Leonard Hutten, who took his B.A. from Ch. Ch. in 1578, and his M.A. in 1582. He was known as a dramatist by 26 Sept. 1583, when Gager wrote of him (Boas, 256),
Seu scribenda siet Comoedia, seu sit agenda,
Primum Huttone potes sumere iure locum.
The source was the Latin prose narrative Bellum Grammaticale (1511) of Andrea Guarna. Ralph Radclif (c. 1538) seems to have also treated the theme, but not necessarily in dramatic form (Mediaeval Stage, ii. 197).
Britanniae Primitiae, sive S. Albanus Protomartyr (c. 1600).
Bodl. Rawl. Poet. MS. 215. The Bodleian Catalogue dates the MS. c. 1600. The play, described in Jahrbuch, xlvii. 75, is a fragment only, probably written in some Jesuit seminary on the Continent, but with an English interest. There seems to be nothing specifically English in the theme of Sanguis Sanguinem sive Constans Fratricida Tragoedia, which is in the same MS.
Caesar Interfectus (c. March 1582). Epilogue of a play by Richard Edes (q.v.) at Ch. Ch., Oxford.
Dido (12 June 1583). By W. Gager (q.v.).
Euribates Pseudomagus. Camb. Emmanuel MS. 3. 1. 17. 'Authore M^r Cruso Caii Colle: Cantabr.'
Aquila Cruso entered Gonville and Caius in 1610.
Fatum Vortigerni. Lansd. MS. 723, f. 1. 'Fatum Vortigerni seu miserabilis vita et exitus Vortigerni regis Britanniae vna complectens aduentum Saxonum siue Anglorum in Britanniam.'
Keller puts the play at the end of the sixteenth century, and thinks it influenced by Richard III.
