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The Authorship of A Warning for Fair Women
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
A Warning for Fair Women was published anonymously in 1599, with the statement on the title-page that it had been “lately diuerse times acted by the right Honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his Seruants.” The attribution of the play by Edward Phillips to John Lyly is too absurd for serious consideration. Almost as absurd is Collier's attribution of the play to Shakespeare. Fleay suggested Thomas Lodge, though not without hesitation, for he adds the warning: “I cannot state too emphatically that any attribution of this play to Lodge is conjectural, and founded less on positive evidence than on the method of exhaustion.” The “method” referred to is thus explained: “The other writers for the Chamberlain's men at this time were Shakespeare and Jonson. Objectors to my hypothesis of Lodge's authorship may adopt one of these, or (the usual resource) imagine some unknown playwright not elsewhere heard of.” But Lodge was probably not engaged in play-writing at this time; so that according to Fleay's “method” we should be forced to choose between Shakespeare and Jonson.
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References
page 594 note 1 Theatrum Poetarum (1675), p. 113. Phillip's attributions of anonymous plays were usually due to his misunderstanding of certain early catalogues of plays. Winstanley, in The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687), p. 98, blindly repeats, as was his custom, the attribution of Phillips. The attribution was again repeated by Wood, Athenœ Oxonienses, 1691 (ed. Bliss, 1813, i, p. 676). Bond, in his edition of Lyly, does not discuss the attribution; apparently he regarded it as unworthy of notice.
page 594 note 2 Hist. Eng. Dram. Poet., iii, pp. 52–4; ii, p. 441. Collier, however, felt sure of his attribution. Of one scene he says: “Aut Shakespeare, aut diabolus.”
page 594 note 3 Biog. Chron. Eng. Drama, ii, pp. 54–5. Cf. also his Chron. Hist. of the Life and Work of Wm. Shah., pp. 35, 136, 297.
page 595 note 1 Schelling, in his Elizabethan Drama, i, p. 346, says: “This play-has been attributed, solely on internal evidence, to Lodge,” by M. E. N. Fraser, in an unpublished thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1898. I have sought in vain for the “internal evidence” here referred to: Qy. for “internal” Schelling meant to say “external,” i. e., Fleay's argument.
page 595 note 2 The School of Shakespeare, ii, p. 211.
page 595 note 3 A Brief Discourse of the Late Murther of Master George Saunders, London, 1573.
page 597 note 1 Here, and throughout this paper, the numerals refer to the acts and lines in Richard Simpson's edition of A Warning, in The School of Shakespeare, 1878, vol. ii. The numerals after the plays of Hey-wood refer to the volumes and pages in Pearson's reprint of Hey-wood, 6 vols., 1874; those after H. M. C., to the pages in Hazlitt's Dodsley, vol. ix; those after Captives, to the pages in Bullen's Old Plays, vol. iv.
page 602 note 1 The play was slightly touched up by Richard Brome for a revival. For Brome's small share in the play, see C. E. Andrews, in Mod. Lang. Notes, June, 1913, vol. XXVIII, p. 163.
page 603 note 1 It is noticeably absent in Shakespeare.
page 603 note 2 See, for example, the concluding scenes in the life of Jane Shore (K. Ed. IV.), or the repentant scenes in A Woman Killed with Kindness.
page 603 note 3 See my article, “Thomas Heywood and How a Man may Choose a Good Wife from a Bad,” in Englische Studien, xlv, p. 43.
page 604 note 1 Cf. also:
You are a souldier, and a gentleman.
And should speak all truth. —F. M. W. (ii, p. 408).
page 606 note 1 Cf. also Heywood, iv, p. 67; iv, p. 68.
page 606 note 2 Shakespeare's vague reference in Hamlet, ii, ii may be a recollection of one of the anecdotes in A Warning.
page 606 note 3 Shakespeare Society Publications, 1841, p. 59.
page 607 note 1 I. e., King's Lynne.
page 607 note 2 Ibid., pp. 57–8.
page 613 note 1 Cf. Warning, ii, 98: “Oh sable night.”
page 616 note 1 Cf. I will not wrong her for a thousand pound.—Warning, i, 211.
page 616 note 2 Cf. also i, 67; ii, 127, 140, 146, 273, 324, 357, 364, 383; v, 192; etc.
page 620 note 1 Likewise, on page 183, he exclaims: “Oh unconstant World!”