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
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
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
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.
- (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
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.
- (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.
