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Thomas Randolph and The Drinking Academy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2021

Cyrus L. Day
Cyrus L. Day*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

The purpose of the present paper is to demonstrate on the basis of internal evidence that the anonymous play, The Drinking Academy, or Ike Cheaters' Holiday, which was recently printed for the first time, is in all probability the work of Thomas Randolph. As has long been known, much genuine material was omitted by Randolph's literary executors in the first and subsequent editions of his collected works. At least one lost play is known to us by title, and modern scholars—Hazlitt, Parry, and more recently Professor Moore Smith—have had notable success in recovering authentic poems and fragments from Randolph's pen. Under these circumstances there is nothing essentially unreasonable in proposing, even at this late date, to claim for Randolph a play whose authorship has hitherto been wholly unknown.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , September 1928 , pp. 800 - 809
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1928

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References

page 800 note 1 Ed. Hyder E. Rollins, PULA, XXXIX (1924), 837-871, from the anonymous MS formerly in the possession of the lste Mr. W. A. White, now in the Huntington Library.

page 800 note 2 1638, 1640, 1643, 1652, 1664, 1668 (twice)—J. J. Parry, The Poems and Amynlas of Thomas Randolph, 1917, pp. 39-40.

page 800 note 3 “On June 29, 1660, ”The ProdigaU Scholar, a Comedy by Tho. Randall' was registered with the Stationers' Company by Humphrey Moseley, but nothing further is known of it“ Ibid., p. 42.

page 800 note 4 Palastre, 148. Cf. also Thomas Randolph, 1927, Prof. Moore Smith's admirable Warton Lecture before the British Academy.

page 801 note 5 Randolph's Works, ed. Hazlitt, 1875, I, 219.

page 801 note 6 Ibid., I,189.

page 801 note 7 Ibid, I, 210.

page 801 note 8 Line numbers refer to Prof. Rollins' ed.

page 802 note 9 Unless otherwise noted, volume and page numbers refer to Hazlitt's ed.

page 802 note 10 Hermus, the suggestion of F. P. Magoun, Jr., for Harmus, PMLA, XLII (1927), 679S., is supported by the fact that Randolph “ftHons Pactolus in juxtaposition with another river (Tagus), I, 367, and II, 524,538,539,571, and 630.

page 802 note 11 Hazlitt (II, 519) has ladies in this line instead of Indies as in the early eddition.

page 804 note 12 In the convenation between Mercurial end Cerion (II, 477-479), this jest is eleborated at great length.

page 805 note 13 For a discussion of Randolph's characteristic use of the words orb and shool (Drinking Academy, 305 and 549), see Moore Smith, Re, of Eng. Studies, I (1925), 320-3.

page 806 note 14 Horace, Epistles, II, i, 180.

page 806 note 15 Prof. Rollins has kindly celled my attention to the following instances in The Drinking Academy itself of borrowing from Jonson. The ballad sung by Bidstand (III, ii) appears also in Jonson's Masque of Augurs (1622), where it consists of ten stanzas. Bidstand sings 1-5 and 8. The name Bidstand itself occurs in Everyman out of Us Humour (TV, iv), ss does also the name Whiffe (II, ii). The Latin line “Et rauco strepuerunt comua cantu” (I, iii) is apparently taken from Epicoene (IV, i); and finally the plot of Act V was suggested by Act IV, Scene i, of The Staple of News, 1626, modem reckoning, where Pecunia complains of her ill-treatment at the hands of the elder Pennyboy.

page 807 note 16 It was by no means uncommon, as a matter of fact, for Randolph to make use more than once of a particularly happy phrase or line. Cf. Moore Smith, op. cil., I, 309-10, and the following:

The Musts' Looking Glass (I, 258):

I have such strange varieties of colours,

Such shifts of shapes, blue Proteus sure begot me

On a cameleon.

The Jealous Lovers (I, 162):

I do not think but Proteus, sir, begot you

On a chameleon.

page 807 note 17 Two of Randolph's signatures are reproduced in facsimile beneath the portrait, Hazlitt's ed., 1875, voL I.

page 807 note 18 Addit MS. 37,425.

page 807 note 19 W. W. Greg, quoted by Moore Smith, op. cit., I 320.

page 808 note 20 Lines 165, 542, 525, 598, 849.

page 808 note 21 See above, footnote 15.

page 808 note 22 Moore Smith, Thomas Randolph, 1927, p. 8.

page 808 note 23 Ibid., p. 11.

page 808 note 24 See above, footnote 3. M. W. Black, Richard Bralhvait: An Account of His Life and Works, 1928, p. 83, suggest* that The ProditaU Scholar may have been a translation of Comdianum Dotium.