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XVII. The Trial of Chivalry, A Chettle Play

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Fred L. Jones
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Extract

Shortly after completing my study of Henry Chettle I chanced to read the anonymous Trial of Chivalry, printed in 1605 by Simon Stafford for Nathaniel Butter, as having “bin lately acted by the right Honourable the Earle of Darby his servants,” and before I had half finished the play I became convinced that of the two dramatists concerned in its composition the chief was Chettle. This conclusion I reached quite independently, for I used the Tudor Facsimile reproduction of the quarto of 1605 and was unaware that Bullen in the introduction to his reprint had remarked: “If I were obliged to make a guess at the authorship, I would name Chettle or Munday, or both.” Nor had I observed that Fleay also had suggested Chettle as one of the authors of this play.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , June 1926 , pp. 304 - 324
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1926

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References

1 Henry Chettle: A Study of his Life and Works, Cornell dissertation, 1925.

2 Old English Plays, ed A. H. Bullen, III. Bullen at the same time put forward the suggestion that The Trial of Chivalry was identical with Love Parts Friendship, by Chettle and Smith in 1602. This identification, however, is impossible inasmuch as The Trial is a much earlier play and belonged to the Earl of Derby's company, whereas Love Parts belonged to the Admiral's Men at the Rose.

3 J. G. Fleay, Biographical Chronical of the English Drama, II, 318-9.

4 I have noted several bad errors in Bullen's reprint; in one case a whole line is omitted and a speech given to the wrong person, which makes the passage senseless (see III. iii, p. 318, lines 1-6).

5 The Death, IV. i, pp. 178-9.

6 The only other occurrence I know of is in Part II of Hey wood's Edward IV, and it is not impossible that Chettle had a hand in that play.

7 Bullen, Old English Plays, III.

8 It might be well to note, though, that Playnsey is not very humorous, and Skink has no greater villain to serve; but they nevertheless preserve the essential characteristics of the type under discussion.

9 Hoffmann, III. i. 237-8.

10 The Trial, III. i, p. 306.

11 Hoffmann, III. ii. 41-2.

12 F. E. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, I, 413.

13 Notes and Queries, 12 S, XII (Apr. 28, 1923), p. 324.

14 The Tudor Drama, pp. 341-2

15 Fleay, Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, II, 318-9.

16 Greg, Henslowe's Diary, II, 187.