month, March, 1600, there is note in Henslowe's Diary of payment for "The Seven Wise Masters," written by Chettle, Dekker, Haughton, and Day. Here was partnership work upon seven plays within one year. None of them remain.

William
Haughton.

William Haughton, first mentioned in Henslowe's Diary as "young Horton" in November, 1597, may possibly be the person of that name who, being M.A. of Oxford, was incorporated as M.A. of Cambridge in 1604. The only play of his that has survived, "English-Men for my Money: or, a Woman will have her Will," was a lively comedy, first produced in 1598, but not printed until the year of Shakespeare's death. The date of Haughton's death is not known. There is no record of the plays by him, save entries by Henslowe of names of his lost plays written between 1597 and 1602. One is "The Poor Man's Paradise;" others are "The Tragedy of Merry" and "Cox of Collumpton," both written in partnership with Day. Haughton worked also with Chettle and Dekker upon "Patient Grissel"; with Day and Dekker on "The Spanish Moor's Tragedy"; with Day, Chettle, and Dekker on the "The Seven Wise Masters." Other work of his was on a new version of "Ferrex and Porrex ;" and he wrote pieces of his own called "The English Fugitives," "The Devil and his Dam," "Judas," and "Robin Hood's Pennyworths." Haughton joined Peter Pett in " Strange News out of Poland.' Peter Pett was author of a verse pamphlet in 1599, "Times Iourney to seeke his Daughter Truth: and Truth's Letter to Fame of England's Excellencie." William Haughton joined with Day in the Second and Third Parts of "The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green," ""The Six Yeomen of the West," "The Proud Woman of Antwerp and Friar Rush," and the Second Part of "Tom Dough." With Day and Wentworth Smith, Haughton wrote also "The Conquest of the West

Indies"; with Richard Hathway and Wentworth Smith he wrote, in two parts, "The Six Clothiers"; and he was writing a play called "Cartwright" when last heard of in September, 1602.

John Day.

John Day is described on the title-page of his "Parliament of Bees as sometime student of Caius College in Cambridge. He was first mentioned by Henslowe in 1598, when he was at work with Chettle on a play called "The Conquest of Brute, with the first finding of the Bath." Before the end of the reign of Elizabeth, John Day was part-author of twenty-one plays, and whole author of one play called "The Bristol Tragedy." The only one of these plays that remains to us is "The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green," published as Day's in 1659, but written by him in partnership with Chettle. John Day continued to write in the next reign. He is to be distinguished from Angell Day, son of Thomas Day, a parish clerk. Angell Day was apprenticed to a stationer for twelve years from Christmas, 1563, and may have been born, therefore, in 1551. He published, perhaps in 1585, an undated pamphlet describing "Wonderful Strange Sights seen in the Heavens over the Citie of London and other places"; also in 1586 a complete letter-writer called "The English Secretorie," and in 1587 "Daphnis and Chloe. Excellently describing the weight of affection, the simplicitie of loue, the purport of honest meaning, the resolution of reason and disposition of Fate," etc. Angell Day wrote also a small poem, in six-lined stanzas of common verse, upon the life and death of Sir Philip Sidney.

Angell Day.

Richard

Richard Hathway, another of the dramatists, working more frequently together than alone, who supplied Philip Henslowe with plays, may have been of the Warwickshire family to which also belonged Shakespeare's wife. He appears in Henslowe's Diary

Hathway.

as having a part in fourteen plays between 1598 and 1602, his collaborators being Henry Chettle once, Thomas Dekker once, William Haughton twice, Michael Drayton twice, Anthony Munday three times, John Day five times, Wentworth Smith five times, Robert Wilson once, and William Rankins twice. One only of these plays is extant, “The First Part of the True and Honourable Historie of the Life of Sir John Old-castle, the good Lord Cobham." This was the joint work of Hathway, Drayton, Munday, and Robert Wilson, who received on the sixteenth of October, 1599, ten pounds for the first part and in earnest of a second part. The piece, produced at the beginning of November, 1599, was so successful that Henslowe presented to each of the four authors half-a-crown. This piece followed closely on the production of Shakespeare's "King Henry IV.," and was in further correction of that misuse of Oldcastle's name by the author of "The Famous Victories of Henry V." which had misled Shakespeare into adoption of the name of Oldcastle; afterwards altered by him into Falstaff, with the direct note that "Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man." "The First Part of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle" was published in 1600, with Shakespeare's name upon the title page; but a copy of this edition has been found from which the name of Shakespeare was omitted. The error, therefore, was corrected at the time, no doubt at Shakespeare's wish, by cancelling the title-page.

There is further illustration of desire to wipe away the stain upon the name of Sir John Oldcastle in an

John Weever.

early work by John Weever, who was a poet in his youth, but won distinction in the next reign as an antiquary. Weever was born in Lancashire, and was admitted in 1594 at Queen's College, Cambridge, as he said in the beginning of lines written for his epitaph, "Lancashire gave me birth, And Cambridge education." In 1601 John Weever published a little book

called the "Mirror of Martyrs, or the life and death of that thrice valiant Capitaine and godly Martyre Sir Iohn Oldcastle, knight, Lord Cobham." In the dedication to William Couell, B.D., it is said that "this poem

some It was

two yeares agoe was made fit for the Print." written just after Spenser's death, about the time when. Shakespeare was revoking the use of Oldcastle's name in "King Henry IV." and substituting "Falstaff." Reference was to changes of opinion that had brought such a name into contempt when Weever wrote the lines near the beginning of this poem, which have been quoted as indication of the date of Shakespeare's "Julius Cæsar."

"The manie headed multitude were drawne

By Brutus' speech that Cæsar was ambitious:
When eloquent Mark Antonie had showne

His vertues, who but Brutus then was vicious?
Man's memorie, with new, forgets the old,
One tale is good until another's told."

In such stanzas of common verse, Weever represents Oldcastle as telling his story, in the manner of the tragedies of the "Mirror for Magistrates," with much biographical detail, due to the poet's interest in early history, and with digressions. That Lord Cobham built a bridge over the Medway at Rochester, and built also the chancel of Trinity Church at Rochester, gives Weever occasion for a long digression on Rochester and the Medway, with a reference to Spenser's "Marriage of the Thames and Medway":

"But how he courted, how himselfe he carri'd,

And how the fauour of this Nimph he wonne,

And with what pompe Thames was to Medway marri'd
Sweet Spenser shewes (O grief that Spenser's gone!)

With whose life heauens a while enricht us more,

That by his death we might be euer pore.

Another digression is in condemnation of the world, with a stanza to enforce each of these adjectives: - The

earth is earthly, foolish, crooked, wily, testy, wondrous, doting, old. The ghost of Sir John Oldcastle tells how in time of his youthful excesses he had an allegorical dream, from which he awoke,

"Then sigh'd, slipt downe, and 'twixt the sheets and pillow

I nuzzled in, joined knees and chin together."

He tells of his part in the wars under Henry IV., and of "Percie, so cald because he pierst the eie

Of the Scots king and set Northumberr free."

He puns also on his own name when preparing escape from the Tower.

"Now to release my body from the Tower

(How might the Tower include so old a Castle?)

When escaped, he goes by way of Lancashire, and here young Weever, Lancashire born, remembers kindly his own. county,

"Where beauty, virtue, love, wit, and the graces,

Sit all in triumph on the women's faces."

The story is told of the good knight's capture and burning alive in a cage on a high gallows, with reference once more to the wrong handling of his name :

66

My virtue's fame is like my body's death,

Kindled with a blast and burnt out with a breath.
And in this idle age who's once forgotten,
Oblivion dims the brightness of his glory :

Envy is ripe before his bones be rotten,

And overthrows the truth of virtue's story."

Robert Wilson, the actor, who had part in the writing of the play of "Sir John Oldcastle," and who was selected to be one of the queen's company of players in 1583, is known also as writer of one play, "The Cobbler's Prophecy," printed in 1594 as only his. The author was the actor of the whimsical part of Ralph

Robert
Wilson.