Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 44.djvu/238

 the work, enlarged fourfold, as ‘The Pathewaye to perfectnes in th' accomptes of Debitour and Creditour: in manner of a Dialogue, very pleasaunte and proffitable for Marchauntes and all other that minde to frequente the same: once agayne set forth and very much enlarged,’ London, 16 Aug. 1569. Both editions are in the British Museum.

George was a ‘free scholar’ at Christ's Hospital at all events from 1565 to 1570 (, pp. xiii–xiv). In March 1571 he entered at Broadgates Hall, now Pembroke College, Oxford; but from 1574 to 1579 he was a member of Christ Church, whence he graduated B.A. 1577, and M.A. 1579. Wood states that at the university Peele was esteemed a noted poet, and it is supposed that while at Oxford he wrote his ‘Tale of Troy,’ which he described in the first impression of 1589 as ‘an old poem of mine own.’ During his residence in the university he also translated one of the Euripidean ‘Iphigenias.’ The performance of this tragedy was celebrated in two Latin poems by Dr. William Gager [q. v.] of Christ Church; and in one of these the writer alludes to the social gaieties, together with the academical successes, of Peele's Oxford career.

The gaieties Peele appears to have continued after leaving Oxford for London; for on 19 Sept. 1579 the governors of Christ's Hospital, who had contributed 5l. to his B.A. fees, bound over his father to ‘discharge his house’ before Michaelmas ‘of his son George Peele, and all other his household’ (including apparently a younger son James) ‘which have been chargeable to him’ (court-book entries, ap., p. xv).

Turned out of the precincts of the hospital, Peele seems to have embarked on a career of work and dissipation. He returned to Oxford in June 1583 to aid in the production of Gager's comedy ‘Rivales’ and tragedy ‘Dido.’ He was then married and had acquired some land in his wife's right, but had not otherwise attained respectability. His earliest known play, ‘The Arraignment of Paris,’ was, as Mr. Fleay shows, acted before 1584, and, in all probability, early in 1581. His first pageant bears date 1585.

There seems sufficient proof that he was a successful player as well as a playwright. Fleay (English Drama, ii. 154) concludes that Peele left the lord admiral's company of players and joined the queen's men in 1589 (the document representing him as in that year a sharer in the Blackfriars Theatre is discredited). In the ‘Jests’ (v. infra) he is said to have announced a theatrical performance at Bristol; but he may not have meant to take part in it himself. In a supplementary ‘Jest’ he and John Singer [q. v.], a well-known actor, are said to have ‘ofttimes’ played at Cambridge; but this anecdote dates from the time of Charles I. He doubtless added to his income by addressing for payment literary tributes to private patrons. Verses of his in praise of Thomas Watson appeared in 1582 with that poet's ‘Ekatompathia’ (, ii. 359). The Earl of Northumberland, the ‘Mæcenas’ of the ‘Honour of the Garter,’ seems to have presented him with a fee of 3l.

Peele's wanton mode of life involved him in endless anxieties. He may indeed be held innocent of part, or possibly of the whole, of the discreditable escapades detailed in the ‘Merry conceited Jests of George Peele, sometime a Student in Oxford,’ which was entered in the ‘Stationers' Registers’ in 1605, and of which the earliest known edition appeared in 1607, nine years or more after his death. The only extant copy is in the library of Mr. W. Christie-Miller of Britwell Court, Buckinghamshire. Later editions were issued about 1620, and in 1627, 1657, and 1671. Like other publications of the sort, this is largely a réchauffé of earlier collections of facetiæ (the edition of 1627 is reprinted by Dyce, and by Mr. Bullen, vol. ii.). But suspiciously personal touches occur occasionally. He states that he resided on the Bankside, and describes his voice as ‘more woman than man;’ and mention is made of his wife and of a ten-year-old daughter. One of ‘Peele's Jests’ was dramatised in the comedy of the ‘Puritan, or the Widow of Watling Street,’ 1607, ludicrously misattributed to Shakespeare; the hero, George Pyeboard, is supposed to be Peele (‘peel’ = a baker's board for shoving pies in and out of the oven). Collier and Fleay conjecture that Peele was also portrayed as the ‘humorous George’ of the prologue to ‘Wily Beguiled’ (first known to have been printed in 1606, but probably of much earlier date in its original version).

Robert Greene appealed at the close of his ‘Groatsworth of Wit’ to Peele as one driven, like the writer himself, ‘to extreme shifts’ to avoid a life of vice. In Dekker's tract, ‘A Knight's Conjuring,’ 1607, he is represented as a boon companion of Marlowe and Greene. Peele paid a beautiful tribute to the dead Marlowe in the ‘Honour of the Garter’ (ll. 60–3); and Nash eulogised Peele as ‘the chief supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of poetry, and primus verborum artifex’ (‘Address’ prefixed to Menaphon, 1587). Peele took no prominent part in the many controversies in which his associates were engaged; although in the ‘Old Wives'