Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 62.djvu/130

Wilson, Mercatore. Many expressions in these scenes adumbrate the language of Shylock and Antonio in the ‘Merchant of Venice,’ and there can be no doubt that Shakespeare was familiar with Wilson's portrayal of the Jew Gerontus (, Life of Shakespeare). The clown of the piece is called Simplicity, and that rôle may have been undertaken by the author.

In 1590 there was published in continuation of ‘The Three Ladies’ a piece entitled ‘The Pleasant and Stately Morall of the three Lordes and three Ladies of London. With the great Joy and Pompe, Solemnized at their Mariages, commically interlaced with much honest Mirth, for pleasure and recreation, among many Morall observations, and other important matters of due Regard. By R. W., London’ (printed by R. Jhones), 1590 (black letter, 4to, with an engraving on the title). The volume was licensed for the press on 31 July 1590. A copy is in the Malone Collection in the Bodleian Library. The prologue is spoken by the City of London; the same three ladies as in the preceding pieces are wooed by three series of gallants, entitled respectively Lords of London (Policy, Pomp, and Pleasure), Lords of Spain (Pride, Ambition, and Tyranny), and Lords of Lincoln (Desire, Delight, and Devotion). Simplicity again figures as the clown. A tribute is incidentally paid by the author to the merits of the actor Tarlton.

The ‘Three Ladies’ and the ‘Three Lords and Three Ladies’ were reprinted by Mr. J. P. Collier in a volume entitled ‘Five Old Plays’ issued by the Roxburghe Club in 1851. They reappeared in Dodsley's ‘Collection of Old English Plays’ (ed. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1874, vi. 244–502).

Wilson also wrote an interlude or morality which was licensed for the press to Cuthbert Burby on 7 June 1594, and was published in that year (being printed by John Danter) under the title of ‘The Coblers Prophesie. Written by Robert Wilson, gent.’ Most of the characters are allegorical, and include personifications of Contempt, Newfangledness, Folly, and the like, but many of the gods and goddesses of classical mythology also figure in the dramatis personæ. Copies of this rare quarto are in the libraries of the British Museum, the Bodleian, Bridgwater House, and the Pepysian Collection at Magdalene College, Cambridge. John Payne Collier described a copy in which a few lines had been supplied in manuscript by George Chapman (Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. ii. 422). A similar production, licensed for the press to Thomas Creede on 13 May 1594, and published anonymously next year under the title of ‘The Pedlers Prophesy,’ may on internal evidence be attributed to Wilson. Copies are in the British Museum and Bodleian libraries.

Mr. Fleay, for reasons that are not convincing, assigns to Wilson the play of ‘Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester; with the love of William the Conqueror,’ of which the first known impression appeared in 1631. The piece was in existence before 1591, when it was denounced by Robert Greene, in his ‘Farewell to Folly,’ for reflecting on himself (cf., School of Shakspere, vol. ii.).

There is little doubt that Wilson the actor and playwright was identical with ‘Robert Wilson, yoman (a player),’ who was buried at St. Giles's, Cripplegate, on 20 Nov. 1600.

Another author:Robert Wilson (1579-1610) (1579–1610), one of the hack-writers regularly employed by the theatrical manager Henslowe from 1598 to 1600, was probably the comedian's son, and was baptised at St. Botolph's Church, Bishopsgate, on 22 Sept. 1579. The ‘Wilson’ mentioned by Meres among the ‘best’ writers of comedy of the day figures in Meres's list in close conjunction with Chettle, Hathaway, Munday, and others of Henslowe's hack-writers. The reference was doubtless suggested by the dramatic work done by the younger Wilson in Henslowe's service. Only one of the pieces in which Robert Wilson, Henslowe's drudge, had a hand survives, and that—‘The First Part of Sir John Oldcastle’—has no resemblance in style to the moral interludes that are assignable to the comic actor. The first and second parts of ‘Sir John Oldcastle’ were completed for Henslowe on 16 Oct. 1599 by Wilson in collaboration with Drayton, Hathaway, and Munday. It was suggested by the puritan protest raised against Shakespeare's plays of ‘Henry IV,’ in which the character Falstaff originally bore the appellation of Sir John Oldcastle. The first part—an historical drama—is alone extant. It was published in two editions by T[homas] P[avier] in 1600, and was impudently described on the title-page of one edition as the work of Shakespeare. ‘Catiline's Conspiracy,’ which Wilson and Chettle prepared for Henslowe in August 1599, may be based on the earlier effort by the elder Robert Wilson, of which Lodge makes mention. In many other productions the younger man's collaborators were Chettle, Dekker, and Drayton; but his contributions seem to have been the smallest of the four.