^."^ °^o^ -K \4 ^^ %, tl^^WJ 0? / ,/ NOTICE. The Memorial- Introduction will find its more appropriate place in the rather in Vol. as — est present volume than L, originally intended id ^ to keep the volumes of about equal extent. Consequently, in the new set of title-pages for the five instead of four vols., such is the arrangement.— This slip (like that in Vol. I.) to be removed by the binder. A. B. G. «^ ^^l*. —. ^ THE HUTH LIBRARY, THE NON-DRAMATIC WORKS OF THOMAS DEKKER. VOL. V. MEMORIAL-INTRODUCTION. FOURE BIRDES OF NOAH'S ARKE. I'ATIENT GRISSILL. 1603— 1613. APPENDIX. GLOSSARIAL INDEX. * ** * \ \ •^ Happy is that state of his Takes the world as it is, Lose he honours, friendship, wealth, Lose he liberty or health, Lose he all that earth can give, live Having nought whereon to ; So prepared, a mind's in him, He's resolved to sink or swim. Richard Brathwaite. ELIZABETHAN- JAC OB EAl^ Verse and Prose LAR G E LY TroTTV the. Zilrffjry of A> BY THE FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY ~ 9^ OF THB UNIVERSITY Cbe ©utf) lititarp. THE NON-DRAMATIC WORKS THOMAS DEKKER. IN FIVE VOLUMES. rOR THE FIRST TIME COLLECTED AND EDITED, WITH NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, ETC., 'BY THE REV. B. ALEXANDER GROSART, D.D., LL.p. (Edin.), F.S.A. (Scot.), St. Geof-ge's, Blackburn, Lancashire. VOL. V. MEMORIAL-INTRODUCTION. FOURE BIRDES OF NOAH'S ARKE. 1613. PATIENT GRISSILL. 1603. APPENDIX. GLOSSARIAL INDEX. PRINTED FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY< 1886. 50 Copies.\ 7(^ 3^^//- J'rinied I'y Hazell, Watson, &= Vtney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. CONTENTS. Memorial-Introduction ix FOURE BiRDES OF NOAH'S ARKE .... I Patient Grissill 109 Appendix 233 Glo.ssarial-Index . 241 Expect no strange or puzzling meat, nor pie Built by confusion or adultery Of forced nature ; no mysterious dish Requiring an interpreter, no fish Found out by modem luxury : Our coarse board Press'd with no spoils of elements, doth afford Meat, like our hunger, without art, each mess Thus differing from it only, that 'tis less. William Cartwright. MEMORIAL-INTRODUCTION. More than ordinarily tantalizing and disappointing has been the outcome of prolonged and earnest search in all likely sources and by all likely helpers for light on the long-dimmed story of THOMAS Dekker. It is no new experience to such a Worker as myself in Elizabethan-Jacobean literary-biographical fields. None the less is it trying to find one who demon- strably was in many men's mouths, and was notice- ably and continuously a popular Writer, so utterly overlooked by those from whom loving memories might have been counted on : e.g., associated inti- mately as he was with the Playwrights of his period, from Ben Jonson to Massinger and FoRD, and George Wilkins, it seems inexplicable that not one of all their superabundant productions yields a single distinct personal reference. I have used the word 'tantalizing,' and I justify it thus. In the Humphrey Dyson collection of Lord Mayor and similar 'Entertainments' (in the British Museum: C 33, e. 7, 17), a fine exemplar " of Dekker's Troia-Noua-Triumphans, or London Triumphing," is preserved, and nearly opposite 'Thomas Dekker' in the title-page is written by a contemporary who must have known him— 'marchant tailor.' D. V. b X MEMORIAL-INTRODUCTION. " " This sent me—full of Pleasures of Hope —first of all to the Rev. C. J. Robinson's big and matterful " tomes, yclept A Register of the Scholars admitted into the Merchant Taylors' School from A.D. 1562 to 1876. Compiled from Authentic Sources and Edited with Biographical Notices" (2 vols. 8vo, 1882-83). Alas, alas! in none of its many forms does the name of 'Dekker' generally, or of 'Thomas Dekker' specifically, occur from beginning to ending. ' ' So with (so-called) Histories of the once-famous Guild or Livery. Nowhere does 'Dekker' emerge in them. Then, when my good friend the Rev. C. J. Robinson, M.A., of West Hackney {ut supra), with his usual kindness proceeded to the offices of the " Merchant Taylors," all that he elicited was that an apprentice of what may have been intended for the name ' Dekker,' had been enrolled as from some Northamptonshire village. This again sent me off to every probable or possible Parish-register repre- sentative of the as ill-spelled village meant ; and, has invariably been my experience, prompt and pleasant answers were returned. But in none—though the Registers went back beyond the dates involved—did ' ' the name of Dekker in any form appear. Those who have had anything to do with such investigations ' ' will not deem tantalizing too strong a word to express my sense of failure. I shall indulge the " " Pleasures of Imagination that some day the bit of new revealed fact that he was a * marchant tailor' will lead to further information. I fear the Muni- " " ments and Registers of Merchant Taylors have is not been well cared for ; for it notorious that it was from outside sources, not their own, that they MEMORIAL-INTRODUCTION. xi were (recently) enabled to enrol the proud name of Edmund Spenser as one of their School 'boys.' As entry into the Livery was then not honorary, as now, I canuot help thinking that our Thomas Dekker * must have inherited his right of being a marchant tailor,' and so that the Records ought to have shown Dekker's as belonging to it. Thomas Dekker himself invariably spelled his as ' in name Dekker,' e.g.^ the Dulwich (genuine) letters and his own etc. it is title-pages, ; but met with con- temporaneously in almost as many forms as Shake- ' speare's own. Thus, I have come upon Decker,' ' ' Deckers (Vol. IV. p. 177), 'Dickers,' 'Dicker,' ' ' ' ' ' Dycker,' Dycar,' Deker,' Dekkers,' Deckar' (title ' ' of Gul's Horne-Booke '), Dekkar,' and the like. His hxx^^-place was certainly London. Hitherto this has rested alone on an incidental reference in his ' ' " Seuen Deadly Sinnes of London — O thou beaw- tifullest of daughter two vnited Monarchies ! from thy womb receaued I my being, frd thy brests my nourishment'' (Vol. H. p. 13). I am glad to be able to confirm this with a second overlooked reference in his * for ' — *' Rod Runawayes O London ! (thou Mother of my Life, Nurse of my being) a hard- hearted Sonne might I be counted, if here I should not dissolue all into teares, to heare thee powring " forth thy passionate condolements (Vol. IV. p. 285). His \nx^-date remains unknown, and can only be approximately arrived at. In the epistle-dedicatory ' of his English Villainies Seuen Severall Times Prest to Death' of 1637—being the altered form of his ' Belman ' books—he thus addresses the Middlesex " of the Peace : I Justices preach without a Pulpit : xii MEMORIAL-INTRODUCTION. this is no Sermon, but an Epistle Dedicatory, which dedicates these discourses, and my three score yeares ' devotedly yours in my best service." Three score ' yeares,' and fewer, were then reckoned old age/ So that it is not in disagreement therewith to find him in his (now lost) 'Warres, Warres, Warres,' of 1628, * describing himself, even nine years earlier, as an old ' man : — " . my heart danceth sprightly when I see {Old as I am) our English gallantry." Following up these, in his Dedication of his Tragi- comedy 'Match Me in London' (1631) to Lodowick " Carlell, he with touch of pathos says : I haue beene a Priest in Apollo's Temple, many yeares, my voyce is decaying with my Age, yet yours being cleare and aboue mine, shall much honour mee, if you but listen " ' to my old Tunes (Pearson's Dramatic Works,' iv. 133). Going back sixty years (literally) from 1637 (as above) gives us 1577 as his birth-year. But in " " my judgment his three score yeares were intended to designate the period during which he had been " " " " devotedly in the service of his native city London. Hence, as he was married before 1594, and was a well-known dramatist in 1597, I feel disposed to assign his birth-year to not later than 1565, and more probably considerably earlier. All this is necessarily conjectural. As with Spenser's way of putting his London birth and education, I am disposed " to understand by the words my brests of nourish- ment" and "nurse of my being" that young Dekker went to school in the Metropolis, and there grew up into his teens. That School may or may not have MEMORIAL-INTRODUCTION. xiii " been Merchant Taylor's." As his name does not occur in either Wood's or Cooper's 'Athenae,' it would appear that he had not the advantage of a University training either at Oxford or Cambridge. It may be assumed that if he had done so there would have been some allusion in some golden phrase to his Alma Mater. There are traces of scholarly culture in his most hasty productions, wherever and however he obtained it. I have noticed that Dekker was married before 1594. This we gather from Mr. J. Payne Collier's register-entries in his 'Memoirs of Actors' (xvi-xvii). ' ' He assigns Southwark as his birth-place because his father died in that great parish in 1594, "leaving a widow of whom we hear in 1596." He himself " lived in St. Giles', Cripplegate, where some of his children were baptized." These entries occur in the St. Giles' register : — " Christened. Dorcas, daughter of Thomas Dycker, gent., 27 Oct., 1594. „ Anne, daughter of Thonxas Decker, yeoman, 24 Oct., 1602." * ' Further, a daughter Elizabeth was buried on 29th November, 1598, and on 19th April preceding he buried a son Thomas at St, Botolph's Bishopsgate.