Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 2.djvu/69

 ii s. VIIL JULY 26, 1913.) NOTES AND QUERIES.

63

THE DATE OF WEBSTER'S APPIUS AND VIRGINIA.'

(See 11 S. vii. 401, 422, 466.)

Ix the articles I have already contributed to ' X. & Q.' I have sought to prove that Webster's ' Appius and Virginia,' in the form in which it was published in 1654. was written after 1630, this opinion being based partly upon the occurrence, in the text of the play, of certain words for the use of which I have found no authority of an earlier date, and partly on phrases or passages for which parallels are to be found in plays not printed until after that date. In every instance, except one (where I have indicated, certain resemblances between Web- ster's play and Rowley's ' A New Wonder : A Woman never Vext '), Heywood was the author of the work in which the word or parallel passage occurred, and I accordingly suggested that Webster borrowed from Heywood. I also suggested the possibility of a date after 1635 on the strength of the occurrence in Heywood 's ' Hierarchic of the Blessed Angels,' published in that year, of certain uncommon words, and of a refer- ence to the theory of Empedocles that the blood was the seat of the soul, which are also to be found in the play. This suggestion of the possible indebtedness of the play to t ho ' Hierarchie ' I subsequently withdrew, or rather modified, by stating that if Webster alone was responsible for the play in the form in which it has reached IH. I believed such indebtedness to be impossible because there was strong evidence that Webster died before the ' Hierarchie ' was written.

The appearance in the text of ' Appius and Virginia ' of post- 1630 words and phrases necessarily implies that if Webster was the sole author of the play in the form in which it was printed, he must have been alive after 1630, and it therefore becomes necessary to consider whether there is any valid reason for assuming that he died before that year. The latest year in which we have any direct evidence of his existence is 1624. when 'Monuments of Honour.' the " book " of the Lord Mayor's pageant, " invented and written by John Webster, Merchant-Taylor," was published. In 1624 also, in September, Ford and Webster's lost tragedy ' A late Murther of the Son upon the Mother ' was licensed for publica- tion.

How long after 1624 did Webster survive T It has been assumed by Fleay, Sir Sidney Lee, and others that he died in the following year. The grounds for this assumption are merely these : that he ceased publishing in 1624, and that the will of a " cloth-worker " of the same name, dated 6 Aug., 1625, was proved on 7 Oct. of that year. Dr. E. E. Stoll ('-John Webster,' 1905, pp. 41-3) has, I think, effectually disposed of the attempt to identify the dramatist with this cloth- worker. Dealing first with the w r ill itself, Dr. Stoll draws attention to the fact that the testator has made his mark, instead of signing his name, and that three of the four witnesses to the will w r ere also marks- men. The inference is that the testator and the three attesting witnesses were illiterate persons. There is, of course, a possibility that the execution of the will in this manner may have been due, not to illiteracy, but to physical weakness. Even if this explanation be accepted, it seems scarcely likely that the dramatist, who was evidently on close terms of friendship with- many of the literary men of his day, should, at the close of his career, have been aban- doned to the society of illiterates. And the dramatist's description of himself on the title-page of ' Monuments of Honour ' as " Merchant -Taylor " by no means implies that he was a " cloth-worker." ' Monu- ments of Honour ' was a pageant written specially for the " Right Worthy and Wor- shipfull Fraternity of the Eminent Merchant Taylors," and produced at their expense. In the dedication to John Gore, the new Lord Mayor, also one of the fraternity, Webster speaks of himself as " one born free of your Company." The designation " Mer- chant-Taylor " on the title-page is doubt- less inserted, in compliment to the Com- pany for which the pageant is written,. and there is, as Dr. Stoll remarks, no more reason for assuming that our John Webster was by trade a tailor, or cloth- worker, than that Sir John Hawkwood or any other of the worthies (including eight of the Kings of England) mentioned in the pageant as having been " free of " the same " worshipful Company," were tailors. It may, therefore, be confidently asserted that the dramatist was not John Webster, the cloth-worker who died in 1625, and, apart from this will, there is no reason for presuming that his death occurred before 1630.

There is, however, evidence that Webster died before the end of 1634. This evidence, which seems to me conclusive, is the