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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
From Langbaine's time it has been usual to consider the play How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad as drawn directly from Cinthio's Hecatommithi, book III, novel 5. But Riche had translated this novel and made it the sixth history of his Farewell to Military Profession some years before the drama appeared, and, as Riche's translation was no doubt easily accessible, the author of the play is more likely to have used his version than the Italian. It would be hard to decide which is the immediate source, however, for the double reason that Riche usually follows his original almost phrase by phrase, occasionally enlarging a compressed Italian expression into what amounts to an explanation or illustration of the original, and that, where the author of How a Man May Choose has followed his source closely, he is so far from copying the language that his phrasing may as well be his own translation as his adaptation of Riche's. But the slight evidence is all in favor of his borrowing from Riche. For instance, where Cinthio reads, “Aselgia … indusse un suo drudo a riuelare a 
di Agata, che il marito auelenata l'hauena,” we find in Riche:
“Wherefore she reveiled his speeches unto a ribalde of hers, such a one as supplied her want of that which Gonsales alone, nor ten suche as he were able to satisfie her withall, and induced hym to appeache hym for that facte. … This companion accused Gonsales upon his owne wordes unto the freendes of Agatha,” etc.
page 711 note 1 Koeppel, Studien zur Geschichte der italienischen Novelle, pp. 48, 49. Koeppel (p. 98) also considers the story in Greene's Penelope's Web called “Penelope's Tale” an adaptation of this same story of Cintino. Greene's Never too Late and the verse tale How a Marchande dyd hys Wyfe Betray (Hazlitt, Early Popular Poetry, vol. i) likewise deal with the ungrateful courtesan who has been preferred to the patient wife, but neither is closely related to the Cinthio story with its addition of the sleeping-potion motive. How a Marchande dyd hys Wyfe Betray was apparently better known under the title A Pennyworth of Wit. In the story of similar title, A Groatsworth of Wit, and in various other pamphlets published as Greene's at the time of his death and purporting to be autobiographical, the treacherous courtesan is frequently treated. On the ground that it may be closely related to The Bristowe Merchant, the lost play of Ford and Dekker, Prof. Bang has recently reprinted in his first volume of John Fordes dramatische Werke Dekker's Penny-wise, Pound-foolish (1631), the first part of which is based on How a Marchande dyd hys Wyfe Betray, with hints perhaps from Greene's Never too Late.
page 712 note 1 Hecatommithi, Venice, 1608, p. 303.
page 712 note 2 Farewell to Military Profession, Shakespeare Society, p. 172.
page 712 note 3 Pilia-Borsa of The Jew of Malta, for example, is very similar to Brabo and may have contributed something to the character, all the more as the story of how the servant of the Jew fell in love at first sight with the courtesan, who desired solely to fleece him, of how he spent money upon her and betrayed his master for her, confessing the murders of his master and himself, and of how he was brought immediately before the judges by the courtesan and her man (iii, 1; iv, 4; v, 1), has some minor points similar to How a Man May Choose and not found in Riche. But the earliest known edition of The Jew of Malta is that of Heywood in 1633, and an acceptance of Fleay's conjecture that Heywood about 1632 added to “the scenes with Bellamira and Pilia Borza” would render it probable that these incidents in The Jew of Malta owe something to How a Man May Choose.
page 713 note 1 Vol. i, pp. 331, 332.
page 714 note 1 Among the many additions to Riche's story, one scene of the play is somewhat similar to the kindred How a Marchande dyd hys Wyfe Betray. After the courtesan of How a Man May Choose, learning that Young Arthur is a criminal, casts him off and seeks his arrest, he meets his neglected wife as he flees from justice, and she proves solicitous for his welfare and safety. In the story, the merchant, in order to test the loyalty of the courtesan on whom he has lavished his wealth to the neglect of his wife, pretends to have lost his property and to be a fugitive from justice. The courtesan drives him from her door, but his wife receives him with joy and is willing to shield him from punishment.
page 716 note 1 Farewell Mil. Prof., p. 170.
page 716 note 2 Hazlitt's Dodsley, vol. ix, p. 71.
page 717 note 1 Farewell Mil. Prof., p. 173.
page 717 note 2 Hazlitt's Dodsley, vol. ix, p. 94.
page 717 note 3 Cf. Damon and Pithias, Comedy of Errors, and Case is Altered, for the rescue from death, and Much Ado for the revival motive. Greene's James IV with its theme of the faithful wife who is supposedly slain at the instigation of the King, her husband, in order to leave him free in the pursuit of a new love, and who returns in time to rescue her husband from the vengeance of her father is especially interesting as a forerunner of How a Man May Choose.
page 718 note 1 Elizabethan Drama, vol. i, p. 334.
page 718 note 2 Quellen-Studien zu den Dramen Ben Jonson's, John Marston's, und Beaumont u. Fletcher's, pp. 28, 29.
page 719 note 1 For instance, in The Fair Maid the courtesan is not deserted by the first lover as in The Dutch Courtezan, but she dismisses him for a new lover and desires his death because he has insulted her. In The Countess of Celant the first adventure of the courtesan with the two friends, a portion not used by Marston, is similar to this. A single resemblance like this, commonplace and lacking in the support of details, is not sufficient to indicate borrowing. Again, the naturalness of seeking poison from a physician may account for a commonplace resemblance of The Fair Maid to Riche's novel in a detail not found in How a Man May Choose. In both, the husband asks a doctor for poison, confessing that he wishes to poison his wife. The doctor, as his friend, seemingly consents, but, as lover of the wife, thwarts the plan.
page 719 note 2 The Children of the Chapel at Blackfriars, 1597–1603, p. 75, notes 1 and 2.
page 720 note 1 Florio's translation was entered in the Stationers' Register as early as 1599, however, and Marston may have had access to the manuscript.
page 722 note 1 In The Dutch Courtezan the father of the betrothed has another daughter. In The Fair Maid the father has only one daughter, but a stage direction after 1. 53 speaks of his “daughters.” Perhaps this is due to the author's association of his father and daughter with Marston's father and daughters.
page 723 note 1 Prof. Schelling goes astray at this point in telling the story. Cf. Eliz. Drama, vol. i, p. 332.
page 725 note 1 Shakespeare Apocrypha (ed. Brooke), The London Prodigal, iii, 3, 303 f.; v, 1, 315 f.; v, 1, 419. The Fair Maid, ll. 872 f., 571 f., 978. The last of these passages is found in Fair Em. (v, 1, 114), with practically the same wording as in The London Prodigal.
page 725 note 2 Shakespeare Apocrypha, p. xxx, n. 1.
page 727 note 1 As an instance, compare his use of the motive best known from Decameron, iii, 3, that of the employment of the most unlikely person in a woman's circle as her unconscious messenger in a love intrigue. The first use of this I have noticed in the drama is in Twelfth Night (i, 5; ii, 2; iii, 1), where Olivia makes Malvolio her messenger. Middleton employs it in Your Five Gallants (iv, 2) and in The Widow. A similar device occurs in The Family of Love (i, 2) and in The Roaring Girl (iii, 2). The motive was very popular, and has been pointed out in at least The Fawn, The Widow, The Devil is an Ass, and The Witty Fair One. Cf. also Chapman's May Day (ii, 2) and Greene's Planetomachia.
page 727 note 2 History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. ii, p. 502.
page 728 note 1 Works of Middleton, vol. i, Intro., pp. xxi ff.
page 728 note 2 Blurt, Master-Constable, v, 2.
page 729 note 1 Ll. 318 ff. and 569 S. This second passage is one of those cited by Prof. Quinn as paralleled in The London Prodigal. Cf. L. P. v, 1:
“I am no Aethyope, No wanton Cressed, nor a changing Hellen.”
page 729 note 2 V. 2.
page 729 note 3 Ll. 507 f.
page 730 note 1 The influence of the Cinthio-Riche story was hardly confined to the plays treated. At any rate, the central motives of this group are used extensively in the drama. In The Puritan, for example, a man is rescued from the gallows at the last moment by the revival of his supposed victim, who has merely been under the influence of a sleeping potion. Likewise in Beaumont and Fletcher's “Triumph of Love” from Four Plays in One, the same situation occurs in a more complicated form. Indeed, the sleeping potion motive, usually combined, as in our plays, with the rescue of a condemned man at the last moment, is of frequent occurrence. For some additional uses of it, not considered closely enough related to the plays discussed in this paper to call for treatment, see Scherer's edition of Satiromastix, Materialien, 20, p. xi, and G. C. Moore Smith's edition of Hymenaeus, Cambridge, 1908, pp. xii, xiii. Among later plays may be added Sharpham's Fleire, Mason's Muleasses the Turk, The Honest Lawyer, May's Old Couple, The Costly Whore, Rutter's Shepherd's Holiday, Berkeley's Lost Lady, and Cartwright's Siege or Love's Convert. (Cf. Genest's analyses.) The love philtre in Sidney's Arcadia, utilized by Shirley, is a notable parallel. Prof. Stoll, in his John Webster, discusses the relation of the later plays, A Cure for a Cuckold and Parliament of Love, to The Dutch Courtezan. Of the two The Parliament of Love shows the closer relation to our group. The central motive in the resolution of the plays influenced by The Dutch Courtezan, the return or revival of one supposedly killed—usually the quarrel is over an amour and the return is just at the moment to save the life of the condemned opponent, who in most cases has been an intimate friend before the quarrel—was probably as extensively used as any other motive of the group of plays, though here, as in the case of the sleeping potion, I do not mean to imply that there was necessarily any influence exerted by our group. I recall now Webster's The Devil's Law Case, Shirley's Gamester and Wedding, Eider's Twins, Suckling's Goblins, May's Old Couple, and Carliell's Deserving Favorite.
