University of Virginia Library

Some Folger Academic Drama Manuscripts
by
R. H. Bowers

The following notes are designed to provide students of the Jacobean drama with fuller information than has hither-to been available about the fair copies of the academic plays contained in two seventeenth-century manuscript miscellanies housed in the Folger Shakespeare Library and catalogued as MS. J.a.1 and MS. J.a.2 respectively. Hence this article may be taken to supplement the standard enumerative bibliography on the Oxford and Cambridge academic drama in CBEL I, 654-663, wherein no recording of these Folger plays was made. However, with a few exceptions, they were listed by title alone in Alfred Harbage's Annals of English Drama: 975-1700 (1940). A number of these plays, cast in the typical academic modes easiest for young persons to write—allegory and satire—are still unpublished; several of them, as I have indicated below, merit publication, if not on the basis of intrinsic literary excellence then at least on the merit of their cultural interest.[1]

I
Folger MS. J.a.1

An early seventeenth-century manuscript collection of poems, plays, and prose tracts in different hands on different paper, originally separate items but bound in one volume in the eighteenth century. Paper, 200 ff. (20 x 15 cm.), xviii century calf. The volume contains the bookplate of a Marquess of Cholmondeley, presumably the second, George Horatio (1792-1870), and hence once formed a part of the library at Cholmondeley Castle, near Nantwich, Cheshire. This manuscript was not described by Seymour De Ricci when he catalogued the Folger holdings (Census of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the United States and Canada [1935], I,ii), since the volume in question

was obtained by the Folger Library in 1933 from Maggs (Cat. 569, item 204).

(fol. 1r-v blank: all folios unaccounted for below are blank)

• (1) fol. 2r-5r
• A fair copy of a Latin polemical poem entitled Pro Supplici Evangelicorum Ministrorum in Anglia . . . Authore A.M. (A bookdealer's or former owner's pencil notation identifies the author as Andrew McBille, and suggests a date of c 1604, without giving any evidence for the attribution).
• (2) fol. 7r-17v
• A fair copy of thirty-four Latin epigrams on theological and anti-papist topics e.g. No. 30: De Lupa Lustri Vaticam. Initial dedication to Iacobo, Fidei Defensori. The copy appears to be in the same hand as the previous item; and is probably by the same author.
• (3) Boot and Spurre fol. 19r-23r
• An anonymous prose dialogue or entertainment in English wherein characters such as Spurre, Slipper, Pumpe, Shoe, and Boote appear at an unspecified country inn. Boote and Shoe, claiming to be seasoned travellers, discourse of Mandeville, Ulysses, Coryat (whose Crudities first appeared in 1611 and hence set a terminus ab quo for the piece), Drake and Cavendish; see R. R. Cawley, The Voyagers and Elizabethan Drama (1938), for similar allusions. Interpolated are repartees of a scatological nature between Pumpe and Shootie, page to Shoe; as well as numerous word-plays on the shoemaker's trade. A useful discussion of the genre is contained in James H. Hanford, "The Debate Element in the Elizabethan Drama," in Kittredge Anniversary Papers (1913), pp. 445-456. This work has apparently not been printed.
• (4) Risus Anglicanus fol. 24r-44v c 1616-1620
• This anonymous Latin comedy (or "daemonopoiia," to borrow Samuel Harsnet's coinage for devils' doings in A Declaration of egregious Popish Impostures . . . of 1604 [STC 12881], sig. V3r) of a fictitious, semi-historical nature, relates the alleged tribulations and failures at Rome of the leading Jesuit publicists to counteract the, to them, dangerous implications of the Oath of Allegiance of 1606 (as a result of the Gunpowder Plot crisis of 1605), and the important theoretical justifications thereof put forth by James I. This controversy, addressed to the crowned heads of Europe, fomented a savage duel between the rival doctrines of the divine right of kings and the divine right of the papacy, raged from 1606 until 1620, produced scores of acrid pamphlets and weighty tomes on both sides, and engaged the talented pens of the leading Catholic controversalists of the day : Suárez, Coquaeus, Pacenius, Becan, Scioppius, Eudaemon, and the most talented of this whole group, Bellarmine, all of whom appear as characters in this play (Bellarmine as Matthaeus Tortus, the pseudonym he

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  employed in a tract of 1608). There is a full account of this controversy in the introduction to Charles H. McIlwain's edition of The Political Works of James I (1918), written from the point of view of a political scientist; supplementing McIlwain regarding the editorial aid which James recruited is an important article by David H. Willson, "James I and his Literary Assistants," Huntington Library Quarterly, VIII (1944-45), 35-58. A general account may be found in Etheldred L. Taunton, The History of the Jesuits in England: 1580-1773 (1901). Because of the satirical and sarcastic tone of the play, and the representation of Pope Paul V as in league with Lucifer, we must assume that the anonymous author was a loyal Anglican or Puritan.

  The action starts in Rome with a conclave between Ignatius Loyola, Lucifer, and Pope Paul V who complains that England is causing his domain the most trouble: "Omnem simul paraturum nobis excussit Anglia"; and a version of the Breve of September, 1608, against James I forbidding Catholics to take the Oath of Allegiance is given. This initial dramatic situation is reminiscent of the fictitious diabolic league entered into by Pope Alexander VI described in Barnabe Barnes' play The Devil's Charter of 1607 (ed. McKerrow, 1902), a play probably written to take advantage of the excitement in London about the Gunpowder Plot too. For a discussion of devils on the Elizabethan stage, see Robert H. West, The Invisible World (1939).

  The first three acts of Risus Anglicanus describe the resolves of the Jesuit publicists to counter the propaganda of James I, aided and abetted by their diabolic familiars, the daemunculi. In II, ii, Bellarmine (Tortus) announces that: "libellum scilicet ego hodie paro cum Torti nomine" [i.e., Responsio Matthaei Torti . . . ad librum inscriptum Triplici nodo triplex cuneus, Romae, 1608]. In III, i, Eudaemon chides Becanus and Scioppius for being drunk. In III, v, Coquaeus offers to out-do the work of the moderate French Dominican, Nicholas Coeffeteau, whose Responce à l'advertissement addressé par . . . Jacques Ier à tous les princes et potentats de la chrestienté had appeared at Rouen in 1610:

  De Episcopatu scilicet
  Breui vacaturo, quem frustra Coeffetoeus sperat sibi,
  Quemque Ego facilè mihi indipiscar praemio,
  Anglorum Regi si scripto obsistam obviam: id monuit.
  
  By act IV, the fortunes of the Jesuit writers have suddenly waned (there is no clear chronology in the play); hence Ignatius tells Lucifer that the main concern is sustaining the morale of the now dashed writers: "Nunc itaque scriptores isti ne animus despondeant,/ Frustrationem qui repere cum infortunio,/ Ea primum cura est" (IV,iv). The daemunculi are now dispirited because they are convinced that they have none left to inspire; one of their number, Delerium, announces that : "Hominem neminem habemus uterque quem ductemus" (IV,v). In V, iv, the historical fact of the burning of Suárez's De Defensione Fidei Catholicae adversus Anglicanae

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  Sectae Errores (Coimbra, 1613) by the Parlement of Paris in 1614 because of its implied attack on regal supremacy, is stated. His efforts foiled, the fictitious Suárez contemplates returning to the academic calm of his teaching post at the University of Coimbra in Portugal.

  By now Ignatius is thoroughly depressed and concedes (with an echo of the proverbial: sero sapiunt Phryges): "Phryges sumus, sero sapimus magno tandem edocti malo" (V,v). Finally the English Jesuit, Thomas Fitzherbert, (for whose career, see DNB), is introduced speaking English, too ignorant to comprehend Latin, along with Robert Parsons (who is called manes parsoniani in the play since Parsons had died at Rome in 1610). The alleged failure of Fitzherbert's contribution to the controversy: An adioynder to the supplement of Father Robert Persons discussion of M. Doctor Barlowes Ansvvere (St. Omer, 1613: Folger, STC 11022) is mentioned and discussed; and the play ends with the apprehensive Fitzherbert being led off to a solemn examination by his superiors.

  The play lacks a secure sense of dramatic structure, and the dialogue is often wooden, but it surely deserves to be published because of its great historical interest. Despite "poetic license" and a somewhat fantastic introduction of devils, the text shows the author to be well versed in the great European logomachia of his day as he tries valiantly to produce satire of importance. A contemporary English audience would have relished the play's content: some anonymous doggerel verses of c 1620 reflect a general sentiment: "To play at bopeepe our Catholiques striue/ Who late with the deuill a Bargaine did driue . . ." (Folger MS.4760, fol. 1r).

• (5) fol. 45r-46r
• A fair copy of the Latin funeral eulogy of Sir Thomas White (d. 12 Feb., 1566/7), founder of St. John's College, Oxford, attributed by the DNB to Edmund Campion (1540-1581), the Jesuit martyr, who proceeded B. A. at St. John's in 1561. The title runs as follows: Funebris Oratio in Obitum Thomae White/ Militis Praetoris quondam Londinensis/ Fundatoris Collegii Di Ioannis/ Praecursoris Oxoniensi, habita per/ Edmundum Campianum in/ Artibus Magistrorum Eiusdem Collegii/ Alumnum.
• (6) fol. 47r-63r dated in MS. 20 Nov., 1605
• A fair copy of an English prose treatise on dreams, by the physician Richard Haydocke of New College, Oxford, who proceeded B. A. on 16 Jan., 1592. The title runs: Oneirologia: or A briefe discourse of the nature of Dreames . . .
• (7) fol. 71r-81r dated in MS. 1617
• A fair copy of an English prose tract, attributed in the MS. in a different hand to Dr. Willet (presumably Andrew Willett, the controversial divine, rector of Barley; see DNB). The title runs: Reasons and motiues to induce/ the Spiritualitye and Temporaltie of/ this Kingdome to graunt vnto/ the Kinges most excellent Ma:tie/ a large Subsidie and Contribution.

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• (8) Iter Boreale fol. 84r-92r
• A fair copy of the Latin travel poem, modeled on Horace's trip to Brundisism (Sat., I, v), written c 1584 by Richard Eedes (1555-1604), of Christ's Church, Oxford, B.A. 1574, later Dean of Worcester. Other copies exist in British Museum Add. MS. 30352; Rawlinson Ms. B 223.
• (9) Secundum iter Boreale fol. 94r-100v
• A fair copy of the English travel poem Iter Boreale, of the same genre as the previous item, by Richard Corbet (1582-1635). For modern edition, see The Poetical Works of Richard Corbet, ed. J. A. W. Bennett & H. R. Trevor-Roper (1955), pp. 31-49.
• (10) A Christmas Messe fol. 105r-115v dated in MS 1619
• An anonymous English verse entertainment of some 600 lines. The action concerns the insatiable hunger of Belly ("My gutts within my bulke doe rumble"), which is temporarily excruciating since King Beef and King Brawn, along with their respective cohorts, are struggling for precedence and have eluded the province (and cleaver) of Cook for the time being. Finally Cook puts an abrupt stop to their wrangling, takes them in charge, and proudly promises to prepare the best Christmas feast ever for Belly. Interspersed are dialogues between Trencher and Tablecloth; Bread and Salt; Vinegar, Pepper and Mustard. Cf. Thomas Flatman, "A Character of a Belly-God," in Poems & Songs (4th ed., London, 1686, pp. 152-156). This play, while slight, is amusing and hence could bear publication.
• (11) Heteroclitanomalonomia fol. 119r-133r dated in MS 1613
  
• An anonymous English verse adaptation of the Latin prose tract Bellum Grammaticale by the Italian humanist Andrea Guarna, which was first printed at Cremona in 1511 and went through some 103 editions between 1511 and 1739 in Europe. It was translated into English prose in 1569 by W. Hayward (rptd in Lord Somers' Tracts, 2nd ed., London 1809, I, 523-554; for references to the Bellum Grammaticale in England, see CHEL VI, 482-483); made into a Latin play by Leonard Hutton c 1583 that was not printed until 1635 (see W.W. Greg, A Bibliography of the English printed drama to the Restoration [1951], II, 945, No. L-13; synopsis in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, XXXIV [1898], 273-275; comment in F.S. Boas, University Drama in the Tudor Age [1914], pp. 256-267).

  The Folger play differs considerably from Hutton's while retaining the central theme of explaining linguistic irregularities as stemming from the faction and rivalry of the two powerful kings in the realm of Syntax: Noun (Poeta) and Verb (Amo) with their respective followers, both of whom are attempting to control Oratio (rhetoric). It should not be amiss to note that while Guarna was primarily concerned, as a good humanist schoolmaster, with devising a fable or "talking picture" as a pedagogical means of teaching students Latin, he was also involved in accounting for the influence of the dynamic or spoken aspect of language on the static or written:

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  the current quarrel in American university circles between the descriptive linguist and the prescriptive grammarian continues another aspect of the age-old problem of what and how to teach the young. The structure of the Folger play derives ultimately from the Psychomachia and hence is similar to other English allegorical plays of the period such as Lingua, Pathomachia, Technogamia, and Microcosmus: see H. K. Russell, "Tudor and Stuart Dramatizations of Natural and Moral Philosophy," Studies in Philology, XXXI (1934), 1-15. Some differences between Hutton's play and the Folger play run as follows: the Folger play starts with Priscian holding his traditionally battered head and bewailing the riot in the kingdom: Hutton's play starts with a long speech by Poeta's parasite Ille; the arbiters who terminate the broil and dole out justice are Lily, Priscian, and Thomas Robinson (the Dean of Durham, fl. 1520-1561, who added the section on heteroclites to Lily's Latin Grammar): while Hutton's arbiters are Linacre, Lily, Priscian, and Despanterius (the Belgian grammarian).

  The title of the Folger play may be construed as "the baneful effects of the irregular parts of speech." A useful check-list of the early editions of Lily's Grammar may be found in the introduction to Vincent J. Flynn's edition for the Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints series (1945). Heteroclitanomalonomia strikes me as a poorly written play which would hardly repay the effort of transcription and editing; but it is certainly a typical academic product, and schoolmasters' shop-talk.

• (12) Periander fol. 134r-157v
• A later fair copy of the verse tragedy in English by John Sansbury (or Sandsbury; see DNB) which was acted at St. John's College, Oxford, at a Christmas entertainment in 1607. This play was edited in 1923 for The Malone Society by F. S. Boas as a section of The Christmas Prince volume; on pp. xvi-xviii, Boas provided a synopsis of this tragedy of a tyrant of Corinth who rashly slew his innocent wife Melissa on false accusations. Alfred Harbage's comparison of the Folger copy to Boas's edition appeared in Modern Language Notes, L (1935), 501-505, and may be supplemented as follows: the Folger copy may be based on St. John's MS a.52 (the basis of the Boas text) since it silently incorporates the marginal emendation (in another hand) of discourse for this course (Boas l. 8635); also it contains numerous substantive variants such as dare not for cannot (Boas, l. 8911), locks his gates for lost his gates (Boas, l. 8908), which may be regarded as justifiable textual "improvements."
• (13) fol. 161r-165v
• A fair copy of an unsigned English prose tract entitled on fol. 162r: Especiall Notes concerning her Ma:ties Nauie and Sea-seruice . . . (which suggests a composition date prior to 1603). An alternate and misleading title, inserted in another hand on fol. 161r, runs as follows: A Tract Concerninge the shippinge of England. For similar tracts urging reform in the administration

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  of the British navy, see Conyers Read, Bibliography of British History, Tudor Period, 1485-1603 (1933), No. 2517.
• (14) Christmas his Showe fol. 169r-174r dated 1615 in MS.
• A fair copy of a masque by Ben Jonson, which is considerably earlier than the version which first appeared in the 1640 Folio under the title of Christmas his Masque. See Ben Jonson, ed. Herford & Simpson (1925-1952), VII, 433-434, for full discussion.
• (15) fol. 175r-182v dated in MS. 1611
• A fair copy in mixed secretary and Italian script of Sir Walter Raleigh's English prose tract: A Discourse touching a Marriage betweene Prince Henry of England and a Daughter of Savoye. See The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh (1829), VIII, 236-252. For discussion, see E. C. Wilson, Prince Henry & English Literature (1946), pp. 55, 97 ff.
• (16 a) Conviviam Philosophicum fol. 183r-v
• A Latin text of the well-known "Mitre" poem proposing a festive London gathering of court wits of John Donne's circle, c September, 1611; and celebrating in particular Thomas Coryate (1564?-1615), the privileged buffoon of the court of James I. The title runs as follows: Conviviam Philosophicum tentum in clauso terminj Michaelis in crastino festi S. Egidij in campis authore— Doctore Rodolpho Colfabio Enaeacensi. As in a roman á clef, celebrities such as Christopher Brooke appear under thinly veiled pseudonyms as "torrens"; all of these names except that of the author (whose pseudonym is still unkeyed: see F. B. Williams Jr., "Renaissance Names in Masquerade," PMLA, LXIX [1954], 318) were unkeyed by Andrew Clark in his edition of this poem in his standard edition of John Aubrey's Brief Lives (1898), II, 50-53. The Folger copy has some substantive variants from Clark's text: e.g., on l.35, F reads pererrabit; Clark reads peragrabit. Clark's text was reprinted in 1937 as part of the Hoskyns canon by Miss Louise B. Osborn in her dissertation John Hoskyns, 1566-1638 (Yale Studies in English, LXXXVII, 1937, pp. 196-199; 288-291), on the slender basis of one manuscript ascription. For a careful study of the poem, see I. A. Shapiro, "The 'Mermaid Club'," MLR, XLV (1950), 6-17.
• (16 b) fol. 184r-v
• A somewhat expanded English version of the preceding poem, attributed to John Reynolds, Fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1600, by Andrew Clark (ed. cit.) II, 53, but unsigned in the Folger copy.
• (17) fol. 185r-v
• A short Latin gazetteer of Italian cities entitled: Vrbium Italicarum Descriptio Thomas Edwardi Angli (e.g.,: Padua. Extollit Paduam Iuris studium et medicina). There were several Oxford men named Thomas Edwards in the opening decades of the 17th century who might have compiled this listing, such as the one who obtained his B. A. at Exeter in 1616.

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• (18) Gigantomachia, or Work for Jupiter fol. 186r-200r
• An anonymous English verse play of some 600 lines wherein Bounce-bigge, leader of the giants, challenges Jupiter and the gods who have dethroned Saturn on the charge of alleged cannibalism, and have disposed power in a triumvirate of Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto. The giants, whose ranks include such fantastic personages as Huge-high, Rumble, the giantess Rouncival, Thunderthwart, Bumcracke, and their allies, the Hills, after rejecting with noisy indignation an offer of peace and amity, are dispersed with fatality by Thunder the terrible agent of Jupiter. The giant Thumpapace alludes to Lily's Latin Grammar on fol. 198r: "Come Rounciuall, we're lag, but weel' not hammer / Wee'le chuse those hills, that lie besides the Grammer / Heteroclits that are in mappe of Lillie." A cancellans pasted on fol. 199r in what appears to be the same hand, provides a dozen lines or so in which the giants are killed outright by Thunder.

The theme of a battle between the giants and the gods was a Renaissance favorite: see De Witt T. Starnes and E. W. Talbert, Classical Myth and Legend in Renaissance Dictionaries (1955), pp. 74-75; for a fused Christian-pagan interpretation of gigantes, see Alexander Ross, Mel Heliconium, 1642, s.v. The term gigantomachia was used in 1659 to describe the late struggle between Charles I and the Scots: Gigantomachia hvivs saecvli, sive, De rebellione scotia contra regem carolum . . . Londini, 1659 (Library of Congress, 942.06 / P 42 n); see also Wing G-698. A genuine mock-heroic, Scarron's Typhon, ou la Gigantomachia (1644), was translated anonymously into English in 1665; see Albert H. West, L'influence Française dans la poésie burlesque en Angleterre entre 1600 et 1700 (Paris, 1931, pp. 45-52). There is but slight resemblance between the Folger play and Thomas Heywood's The Golden Age (c 1610), which is mainly concerned with the philandering of Jupiter.

II
Folger MS. J.a.2

An early seventeenth-century miscellany of manuscript poems, plays, and prose tracts on the same paper throughout in several hands. Paper, 88 ff. (20 x 15 cm.), bound in original calf. Five leaves at the end, on the stubs of which writing is visible, have been cut out; likewise an initial flyleaf (conjugate with fol. A4) has been cut out. The name Fra: Corbet is inscribed on the extant flyleaf, perhaps indicating the original compiler, or a later owner. A Fra: Corbet matriculated as pensioner at St. John's College, Cambridge, in the Easter term of 1619 (John Venn & J. A. Venn, The Book of Matriculations and Degrees [1913], p. 176). This manuscript was not catalogued by De Ricci (loc. cit.), since the volume in question was obtained by the Folger Library in 1933 from Maggs (Cat. 572, item 266).

• (1) fol. 1r-2r
• A fair copy of an anonymous English contemptus mundi poem of 102 ll., entitled: A Conflicte between death & youth. The poem, which has an

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  abrupt or imperfect ending, is cast in debate form; the incipit, spoken as a complaint by Youth, reads: "O spightfull death presumtious in thy wage/"
• (2) fol. 2v
• An astrological figure on the lower half of the page indicating the influence of the planets on the different hours of the day, with an anonymous short comment in English, beginning: The Planet of wch the day is named always ruleth the first howre . . .
• (3) Melanthe fol. 3r-24v MS. copy after 1615
• This Latin pastoral play was written by Samuel Brooke of Trinity College, Cambridge, and acted before James I on 10 March 16 14/5. It was printed the following year (Greg, No. L-7). The play was carefully edited by J. S. G. Bolton for the Yale Studies in English, LXXIX (1928), from an exemplar of the 1615 edition then in possession of Professor Tucker Brooke. Bolton was in error in stating on p. 10 that "There are no manuscript copies of this play, the single printed edition having sufficiently supplanted them"; but the Folger MS. copy appears to have no independent textual value since it follows the same tradition as the Folger exemplar of the 1615 (STC 17800) text, with numerous accidental variants such as the spelling and placing of the vernacular interjections in I,iii (Bolton's ll. 49-72). On fol. 3r, the Folger MS. has a dramatis personae and cast of Trinity actors which tallies with the actors listed by Bolton (pp. 202-205, from British Museum Add. MS. 6211, p. 33, and the list in G. C. Moore Smith, College Plays, p. 78, from an insertion in the Bodleian copy of the 1615 printed text). The Folger MS. (fol. 3v) also confirms Bolton's dating of the play (p.10), as 10 March 1614/5.
• (4) Ruff, Band, and Cuff fol. 25r-25v
• This fair copy of the well known Jacobean dramatic dialogue follows more closely the second printed edition of 1615 (Folger exemplar of STC 1356) than the text printed by Park for the Harleian Miscellany X (1813), 200-203, from an unidentified copy (Park's text was rptd by C. Hindley in The Old Book Collector's Miscellany [1871], II). For instance, Cuff's last speech in Park starts: Then go before me to the next town] Folger Q: Then goe before to the next Tauern] Folger MS.: Then goe before me to the next Tauerne. Ruff, Band, and Cuff is a companion piece to the academic Work for Cutlers (1615), likewise printed by Park and Hindley in their anthologies cited above; and to the anonymous dialogue Wine, Beere, Ale, and Tobacco, printed in 1629 and 1630 (STC 11541-11542), and reprinted by J.O. Halliwell in The Literature of the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Century (1851), pp. 175-204.
• (5) Cancer fol. 26r-47r
• An anonymous Latin comedy adapted from the Italian comedy Il Granchio by Leonardo Salviati (Florence, 1566; 2nd ed. 1606; M. de Soleinne, Bibliothèque

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  Dramatique, Paris, 1844, No. 4276; brief comment in Ireno Sanesi, La Commedia, Milan, 1954, I, 352-353. The Italian comedy, laid in Florence, tells how one Fortunio, who is ardently in love with Clarice (who never appears!), is denied her hand by her wealthy bourgeois step-father Vanni, in whose house the complicated action takes place. Fortunio consequently enlists the aid of his counsellor Granchio, her nurse Balia, and others, to join his beloved, at night, by forcing an entry into Vanni's house. Meanwhile a cowardly thief called Carpigna, aware of the stratagem, tries to take advantage of the situation and ply his trade, but he is apprehended almost immediately. Eventually, prodded by his steward Tofano, Vanni forgives the young lovers (Fortunio has turned out to be his long-lost son), and agrees to their union. They had inadvertently locked themselves in a vestibule, which necessitated the summoning of a locksmith called Magnano. (As Balia proclaimed [III, v]: "La Clarice s' è chiusa con Fortunio / Disauedamente nella camera / Della saracinesca, della quale / Solamente il padrone tien la chiaue.") This slight story provides occasion for a good deal of humor, especially in the saucy street-talk of the page-boy Fanticchio in his exchanges with the timid, sentimental nurse Balia: e.g. "Moccicone! Boccellone! Maccherone! Mestolone! che cose stempiate!"

  The Latin play Cancer was printed in 1648 along with the anonymous Cambridge academic Latin plays Paria, Loiola, and Stoicus Vapulans (see G.C. Moore Smith, College Plays performed in the University of Cambridge [1923], p. 99; Greg No. L-21). The printed text has a variant epilogue; and numerous minor differences. The play itself augments the text of the Italian original considerably, adding new characters such as the widow Ursilia and the monk Albertus that clutter the scene and retard the action. Also the anonymous author has little sense of colloquial speech, so needed in comedy: the easy Italian speech, natural, concrete, and evocative, say, of the cowardly thief Carpigna: "S'io veggo vn'ombra, io tremo / Com' vna foglia . . ." becomes in adaptation the abstract or "eloquent": "Mirum aedipol nos sumus genus hominum, quibus / Timor et audacia, suspitia et confidentia, semper comites" (III,iv). The author of Cancer evidently knew his Plautus: characteristic plautine terms of abuse such as furcifer, crux, verbero, appear; but he has not gone to the plautine school of colloquial speech with profit as did many renaissance writers (see Carl von Reinhardstoettner, Plautus: Spätere Bearbeitungen plautinisher Lustspiele, Leipzig, 1886), who understood that the vitality of comedy resides in immediate appeal to local and topical responses, which is one reason, no doubt, why it has always been so difficult to translate comedy with any degree of success.

  An interesting feature of the Folger MS. is the actor-list, written in darker ink by a contemporary hand after the dramatis personae, of the Trinity College, Cambridge, men who gave a performance of this play, the date of which, unfortunately, was not recorded. As indicated below a number of these men also acted in the plays of Samuel Brooke, whose Adelphe was produced in 1612, and whose Scyros in 1613 (see item No. 3

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  above). I subjoin tentative identifications of the Trinity men who acted in Cancer after the cast: asterisks are placed before the actors who also took part in one of Brooke's plays (see Bolton's ed. of Melanthe, op. cit., pp. 202-205). Identifications are based on J. & J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses (1922):-
  • (1) Rodericus. senex. Sr Faulcon.
  • (2) Lucilius. Adolescens. Mr Coote.
  • (3) Corbus. seruus. Sr Goolfinch
  • (4) Fortunius. adolescens. Mr Chappell
  • (5) Granchio. Mr Blaxston.
  • (6) Sempronius. senex. Sr Dorington.
  • (7) Fannius. servus. Mr Thopham.
  • (8) Fantichus. puer. Greeke.
  • (9) Balia. nutrix Clariciae. Mr Sleepe.
  • (10) Vrsilia. vidua. Pears.
  • (11) Erminia. virgo. Mr Walpole.
  • (12) Gallus. puer. Mr Rimmington.
  • (13) Albertus. monachus. Mr Coote
  • (14) Carpimus. fur. Mr Hickes.
  • (15) Pyrachmus. faber-fer Sr Wilson.
  • (16) Bargello Sr Filmore.
  • (cum 4 lictoribus)
  • De his fit mentio: Constantia./ Lysa./ Claricia./ Mantianus
  (Both the Sir and Mr. prefixed to the surname in the MS. can indicate dominus or magister, the holder of a M.A. degree, or a fellow-commoner honored for his social status.)
  • (1) * Faucon, Robert. m 1607; Fellow of Trinity, 1612-1621.
  • (2) * Coote, Thomas m 1602, MA 1609; or William Coote m 1608, MA 1612 (this actor probably doubled as Albertus the monk; see No. 13 below).
  • (3) * Goldfinch, Thomas, BA 1610, MA 1614.
  • (4) * Chappell, John. Trinity scholar 1605, BA 1607, MA 1611. See Donald L. Clark, "John Milton and William Chappell," Huntington Library Quarterly, XVIII (1955), 333.
  • (5) Blaxton, Henry. Trinity scholar in 1616.
  • (6) Dorington, Richard. m 1606, MA 1613.
  • (7) Thopham, Anthony. m 1601, MA 1609; Fellow of Trinity, 1609.
  • (8) * Greek, Thomas. m 1609, MA 1616.
  • (9) * Sleepe, Anthony. m 1601, MA 1609; Fellow of Trinity, 1608-1630.
  • (10) * Pearse, Stephen. Trinity scholar, 1611, MA 1616.
  • (11) * Walpole, Robert. m.f.c. 1610. (A John Walpole also m in 1610).
  • (12) * Remington, Robert Barne. m 1610
  • (13) see No. 2 above.
  • (14) Hickes, William. AB 1605; Librarian of Trinity, 1609-1612.

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  • (15) * Wilson. A John Wilson, a George Wilson, a Timothy Wilson, m in 1609, 1608, and 1607 respectively.
  • (16) Filmore. A Robert Filmore m 1604; an Edward Filmore m 1606. (A possible performance date of c 1610-1612 seems likely, negated only by the tentative identification of No. 5 above).
• (6) Preist the Barber fol. 47v-48r
• An anonymous (Cambridge?) dialogue or entertainment, between Preist, a barber and quack doctor, and his "little shaueling" apprentice appropriately named Sweetball (i.e., a pomander worn to ward off infection). N.b., Margaret G. Davies, The Enforcement of English Apprenticeship : 1563-1642 (1956). The barber, who stridently claims to have studied at the Sorbonne "in France," boasts at length of his rare skill in such matters as setting the broken bones of frolicsome undergraduates, curing a woman distended with the "collick" with "neatsfoot oyle," while giving his apprentice careful instructions as to how to provide therapy for future patients. This skit exploits the durable comic figure of the quack doctor, and, by obvious implication, the gulls who patronize him. Sweetball speaks the following epilogue to the audience:
  Yee had a Bason, yett there's no man washt,
  Wee gaue no water least wee should bee dasht:
  Yett water for yor hands wee'le nott denie
  They beeing wett, wee hope you'le clapp them drye.
  
  This piece is reasonably amusing, and could bear publication.
• (7) Gowne, Hood, and Capp fol. 43v-49r
• An anonmous English dialogue or entertainment wherein Capp, who has been off playing football, agrees, with mixed feelings, to serve as moderator in an ensuing debate for precedence between Hood and Gowne. For Cambridge regulations as to proper academic attire, see J. B. Mullinger, The University of Cambridge from the Royal Injunctions of 1535 to the Accession of Charles the First (1884), esp., pp. 389-390. See also John Cleveland, "The Ballad of the Caps," in F. W. Fairholt, Satirical Songs & Poems on Costume, Percy Society Publications, XXVII (1849), 115-121. Capp speaks the following epilogue:
  Our Author bids mee say for's Gowne, and Hood,
  It is the Taylours fault, they are not good
  But howso'ere for feare of wors mishapp
  Hee lowly craues a Pardon wth his Capp.
  
  This piece is of the same genre as Ruff, Band, and Cuff, mentioned previously; and is considerably duller. It is not worth publishing.
• (8) fol. 50v-79v
• A Latin version of Spenser's Shepherdes Calendar entitled: Kalendarium Pastorale, seu Spenceri Pastor, Romano indutus centenculo. Authorship

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  attributed in the MS. to Magister Batters (i.e., Theodore Bathurst, Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, 1608; see DNB). This Folger copy was apparently not known to Leicester Bradner when he wrote, "The Latin Translations of Spenser's Shepherdes Calendar," MP, XXXIII (1935), 21-26. Bathurst's translation was published posthumously in 1653: for an analysis of this text, see F. R. Johnson, A Critical Bibliography of the Works of Edmund Spenser (1933), pp. 8-10. Sir Egerton Brydges in 1815 reprinted short extracts from the 1653 text in his Censura Literaria, III, 179-193.
• (9) fol. 80r-v
• Latin comments on the quodlibets: Vnum peccatum potest remittj sine altero; Quae fuerunt voluntatis in Christo (Humana an Diuina). MS. marginal attribution of authors (or speakers): Dr. Dauenett, Mr. Brittaine, Bac. Theol.; possibly John Davenaunt, B.D. 1606, and President of Queens' College, Cambridge, from 1614-1621; and Lawrence Bretton, also of Queens', B.D. 1615.
• (10) The Parliament Fart fol. 81r-82r
• The Folger fair copy of this popular anonymous anti-puritan doggerel poem of 68 ll., differs considerably from the text printed in Musarum Deliciae (1655: Wing M-1710), and in the 1662 edition of Rump (see A. R. Case, A Bibliography of English Poetical Miscellanies [1935], No. 128 [c]), a collection of largely anonymous pro-royalist political verse written between 1620-1650. The last 14 lines in the Folger copy are written in a different hand after an excised page (conjugate with fol. 79).
• (11) fol. 82r
• An unsigned anti-French political couplet, with a probable jibe at Pierre Cotton (1564-1626), Jesuit confessor to Henri IV:
  Voulez vou scauoir qui a trouble la France[?]
  La Plume, & la cere, La Cotton, & L'Amore.
  
• (12) fol. 82v-84r
• An anonymous Latin topical outline of a Christian scheme of creation and ordering of the physical and moral universe, entitled Synopsis Physicae Christianae, with such subdivisions as: III, iii,i,2: De øιλανθραiια diuina erga nos.
• (13) fol. 84v-85r dated 1617 in MS.
• A fair copy of fifty charges made against Roger Brierly (1586-1637), presumably when he was curate of Grindleton Chapel, in the parish of Mitton in Craven (see DNB), which served as the basis for his condemnation for lack of orthodoxy by the Bishop of York in 1628 (hence the MS. dating must be in error). E.g., No. 26: That a sanctified minister can preach no errour. The title runs: Certayne erronjous proceedings, gathered from ye mouth of Mr. Brierly, & some of his hearers.

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• (14) fol. 85v
• Latin comments on the quodlibet: Ignorantia non excusat peccatum, attributed in the MS. to Dr. Dauenett (see No. 9 above).
• (15) fol. 86r
• A short Latin theological treatise entitled De Meritis, attributed likewise in the MS. to Dr. Dauenett. There was considerable interest in the various and competing doctrines of divine grace in the seventeenth century; see L. Billot, De Gratia Christi, (Rome, 1928), pp. 224 ff.; J. Schwane, Dogmengeschichte der Neueren Zeit (Freiburg i. B., 1890), pp. 230 ff.
• (16 a) fol. 86v-87r
• A fair copy of Sir Walter Raleigh's last letter to his wife; see The Works of Sir Walter Raleigh (1829), VIII, 648-650.
• (16 b) fol. 87r
• A fair copy of Raleigh's poem: "Euen such is Time wch takes in trust/," which has the following substantive variants from the version printed as No. 40 by Miss Agnes M.C. Latham in her new edition of Raleigh's poems (1951), p. 72: 1.2, L reads our Ioyes; F reads & life; 1.3, L reads And payes vs butt with age and dust:/ F reads And payes vs nought butt, age and dust,/ 1.6, L reads the storye; F reads ye Period. In her discussion of this poem, Miss Latham (p. 154) does not refer to this particular Folger text, although she does mention other Folger texts which she has consulted.
• (17) fol. 87r
• An unsigned Latin epigram which reads as follows:
  Conde iura coquus, quid ni ? condire peritus
  Jura coquus, sed non condere iura coquus.
  Construe: "Draw up laws, cook, why not ? A cook is skilled
  In seasoning sauces, not in drawing up laws."
  
  (Properly, the first instance of coquus should be in the vocative case. Since I hesitate to call this epigram anonymous, I have made a cursory examination of at least a dozen collections of epigrams, such as Wits Recreations of 1640 which contains 902 items, but to date I have failed to establish authorship.)
• (18) fol. 87v dated 1626 in MS.
• An order of Pennance enioyned to Mathew Hodson of Hitchin: & by him to bee perfourmed as followeth . . . Signed by one "Ja. Rolfe," and dated at Whethamsted, 3 August, 1626.
• (19) fol. 88r-v
• Anonymous Latin theological comments and scribblings.

Notes