Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 1.djvu/273

 10* S. I. MARCH 19, 1901.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

221

LONDON, SATURDAY, MARCH 10, 190!,.

CONTENTS. -No. 12.

NOTES : Shadwell's ' Bury Fair,' 221 William of Wyke- bam, 222 Jonson's ' Alchemist,' 223 Foreign English- Henry Cole Nicholas Harpsfleld John Harpstield, 224 The Last of the War Bow Names of our English Kings J. R. Green on Freeman "Go for "Last Peer of France "Fulture" First Steam Railway Train, 225.

QUERIES : Townshend Pedigrees Luke King, Deputy Muster Master Mrs. Lane and Peter Pindar Catskin Earls Boer War of 1881 Game of State Powell of Birkenhead Northall, Shropshire Rodney's Second Wife Franco-German War, 226 Speakers of the Irish House of Commons Leper Hymn- Writer " A frog he would a-wooing go" "There was a man" Chelsea Physic Garden "Kick the bucket " Robina Crom- well -Dr. Samuel Hinds Charles V. on Languages- Bishop Sanderson Oprower Samuel Shelley, 227 Leap Year Field-names, Brightwalton, Berks "Flowers the alphabet of angels " Dickens Queries Periodicals for Women "Mustlar": "Muskyll." 228.

REPLIES : -Tideswell and Tideslow, 228 The Wreck of the Wager Football on Shrove Tuesday, 230 Rue and Tuscan Pawnbrokers, 231 Charles the Bold " Paimage and tollage " " Cockshut time "' Recommended to Mercy' Epitaph on Sir John Seymour " Son confort et Hesse " "Silly Billy," 232 Salep February 30 Earl of Egremont, 233 Sir Christopher Parkins Army of Lincoln "The eternal feminine," 234 "Drug in the market "- " He who knows not," &c. Curious Christian Names, 235 French Miniature Painter Browning's Text " Morale " "Auncell," 237 Mess Dress: Sergeants' Sashes Japa- nese Names, 238.

NOTES ON BOOKS : Waller's HobbesTs 'Leviathan' 'Great Masters 'Lucas's 'Works of Charles and Mary Lamb ' Coleridge'^ ' Works of .Byron ' Booksellers' Cata- logues.

Notices to Correspondents.

SHADWELL'S 'BURY FAIR.' IN this play, produced in 1689, Act I. scene i., Oldwit is made to say :

" I myself, simple as I stand here, was a wit in the last age : I was created Ben Jonson's son, in the Apollo. I knew Fletcher, my friend Fletcher, and his maid Joan. Well, I shall never forget him ; I have supped with him at his house on the Bank- side : he loved a fat loin of pork of all things in the world. And Joan his maid had her beer-glass of sack ; and we all kissed her, i' faith, and were as merry as passed."

As Thomas Shad well was born about 1640 he may well have heard much concerning Jonson, who died three, and John Fletcher, fifteen, years before his birth ; and in the above quotation we get, perhaps, the Christian name of the "wench" who, according to John Aubrey (i. 96, ed. Clark), was associated with the great Twin Brethren, Beaumont and Fletcher, in that wonderful household "on the Banke Side." Surely the Bankside "not far from the Play-house " was the Bohemia with a sea-coast we wot of, and Father Thames did duty as understudy for Neptune ! Francis Beaumont is, indeed, not mentioned in the above extract, but he had died in 1616 the year of Shakespeare's death where- upon Joan may have remained with the surviving partner.

Wildish rejoins, "This was enough to make any man a wit," and the elder man continues, " Pooh ! this was nothing. I was a critic at Blackfriars ; but at Cambridge, none so great as I with Jack Cleveland. But Tom Randol(ph) and I were hand and glove : Tom was a brave fellow ; the most natural poet ! "

John Cleveland, the Cavalier poet, had entered Christ's College in 1627, and was Fellow of St. John's 1634-45 ; Thomas Ran- dolph, poet and dramatist, went up from Westminster to Trinity 1623, and in 1632 left Cambridge for London. Randolph, who was classed by his contemporaries among " the most pregnant wits of the age," died within three months of his thirtieth birthday : "his haire, according to Aubrey, was of a very light flaxen, almost white. It was flaggy, as by his picture before his booke appeares. He was of a pale, ill complexion and pock-pitten."

Again, in Act II. scene i., in an altercation with his wife, Lady Fantast, Oldwit says : "Shall I, who was Jack Fletcher's friend, Ben Jonson's son, and afterwards an intimate crony of Jack Cleaveland and Torn Randolph, have k'ept company with wits, and been accounted a wit these fifty years, live to be deposed by you?"

And again :

" I, that was a Judge at Blackfriars, writ before Fletcher's Works and Cartwright's, taught even Taylor and the best of them to speak ? "

The first collected edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays appeared in 1647 ; the plays and poems of William Cartwright in 1651. The latter died in 1643, aged thirty-two, student of Christ Church, where he is buried. The Taylor mentioned above is, no doubt, the actor Joseph Taylor, of the Globe and Blackfriars Theatres. He is mentioned in the list prefixed to the First Folio Shake- speareasoneof thetwenty-six principal actors, playing possibly, among other parts, Hamlet and lago. He acted also in the plays of Shadwell's favourite dramatist Ben Jonson, and in those of Beaumont and Fletcher.

Dryden, in his defence of the Epilogue to his great ten -act play 'The Conquest of Granada,' derides, in his majestic way, the species of would-be wits of which Oldwit is a notable specimen. The comedies of the Restoration excel those of the last age ; "and this will be denied by none, but some few old fellows who value themselves on their acquaintance with the Black Friars ; who, because they saw their plays, would pretend a right to judge ours. The memory of these grave gentlemen is their only plea for being wits. They can tell a story of Ben Jonson, and, perhaps, have had fancy enough to give a supper in the Apollo, that they might be called his sons ; and, because they were drawn in to be laughed at in those times, they think themselves now sufficiently entitled to laugh at ours. Learning I