Warner thinks the hand 'quite early seventeenth century'. The corrections in the same hand are such as rather to suggest an original composition, but may also be those of an expert copyist. Miss Daw thinks that the date of composition was in the seventeenth century,
and that the play represents ideas belonging to (a) the Anabaptists and (b) the Family of Love, both of which were then active. She even suggests the possible authorship of the controversialist Edmond Jessop. Personally, I find it difficult to assign to the seventeenth century a moral written precisely in the vein of the middle of the sixteenth century, even to the notes (2, 69, 103) of action 'in place' (cf. ch. xix), and a phrase (76),
Why stare ye at me thus I wene ye be come to se a play,
closely parallel to Wit and Wisdom, 12, which is probably pre-Elizabethan. The Jacobean activity of Anabaptism and Familism only revived movements which had been familiar in England from Edwardian times, were particularly vigorous in 1575, and had apparently died down during the last decade of Elizabeth's reign; cf. for Anabaptists C. Burrage, The Early English Dissenters (1912), and for Familists s.v. Middleton, Family of Love. The Maid's Metamorphosis. 1600
S. R. 1600, July 24 (Hartwell). 'Two plaies or thinges thone called the maides metamorphosis thother gyve a man luck and throw him into the Sea.' Richard Oliffe (Arber, iii. 168). 1600. The Maydes Metamorphosis. As it hath beene sundrie times Acted by the Children of Powles. Thomas Creede for Richard Olive. [Prologue.] Editions by A. H. Bullen (1882, O. E. P. i), R. W. Bond (1902, Lyly, iii. 341), and J. S. Farmer (1912, T. F. T.). Archer's play list of 1656 (Greg, Masques, lxxxvi) started an ascription to Lyly, which was probably suggested by the similarity of name to Love's Metamorphosis. Daniel, with Lyly as reviser, is substituted by Fleay, ii. 324; Day by Gosse and Bullen; Day, with Lyly as reviser, by Bond. A limit of date is given by the reopening of Paul's in 1599, and IV. i. 157 points to the 'leape yeare' 1600. Fleay thinks that the play was performed at Anne Russell's wedding on 16 June 1600 (cf. ch. V), but, though 'three or foure Muses' dance at the end of the play, there is no indication of a mask, while the accounts of the wedding say nothing of a play. The Marriage of Wit and Science > 1570
S. R. 1569-70. 'A play intituled the maryage of Wytt and Scyence.' Thomas Marsh (Arber, i. 399). N.D. A new and Pleasant enterlude intituled the mariage of Witte and Science. Thomas Marsh.
Editions in Dodsley^4 (1874, ii) and by J. S. Farmer (1909, T. F. T.). An allegorical moral, indebted to John Redford's Wit and Science
