Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 1.djvu/90

NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 B. i. JAN. 29.1910. away!" "begone, begone!" "O, he's dead, he's dead" (I. i.); "But that he has an eye, an eye, an eye" (II. ii.); "So, gone, gone, gone" (II. iv.); "Heart, heart, heart, heart!" (IV. v.); "See, see, see, see!" "play that amain, amain, amain" (V. v.).

"Hellhound" is one of his most frequently used, and most distinctive, terms of abuse. We find it twice in this play:

I'll fight thee, damned hellhound. V. i. Hear me then, hellhound. V. v.

Another is "damnation," here twice applied to Eleazar:

Damnation, vanish from me! V. iii. Worse than damnation! fiend, monster of men! V. v.

For this last exclamation compare Part II. of ' The Honest Whore,' III. i. : Worse than damnation ! a wild kerne, a frog, A dog whom I'll scarce spurn.

It does not follow that all the scenes showing traces of Dekker' s work are entirely his. It is clear that many of them are not. The part of the play written by Dekker alone is the whole of Act I., Act II. i. ii., Act III. ii. (to the entry of the fairies), iii., and iv., Act V. v. and vi. The brief vision of Oberon and the fairies at the end of III. ii. is certainly Day's. Even the -critics who doubt or deny Dekker' s colla- boration admit that it may be Day's, and it- is in the same riming lines of four measures as the Oberon scenes at the end of ' The Parliament of Bees.' The differentiation of Day's and Haughton's work in the remain- ing scenes is a more speculative matter. A comparison of the riming octosyllabic lines in the Crab and Cole scenes (II. iii. and iv.) with Shorthose's similar riming speeches in ' Grim, the Collier of Croydon,' and of the prose in III. v. with the prose of the same play, seems to justify the attribution of these scenes to Haughton. Dekker' s was evidently the controlling hand through- out, for there are many touches suggestive of his revision of his collaborators' work. Subject to this reservation, I would allot Act II. iii.-vi., III. v. and vi. to Haughton; Act III. i., end of ii., and Act IV. to Day. Act V. i.-iv. contains, I think, mixed work of Day and Dekker.

It cannot be said that Dekker' s literary reputation is likely to gain anything by the establishment of his substantial responsi- bility for 'Lust's Dominion.' But the proof of its identity with ' The Spanish Moor's Tragedy ' is interesting as revealing his only extant contribution to the full- blooded Marlovian type of tragedy.

H. DTJGDALE" SYKES.

ALLEN AND FERRERS. A FEW weeks ago I came across a curious little suggestion in family history which may be of interest to those of your readers who are genealogists. In a MS. in the Heralds' College quoted by Maddison (' Lines Pedigrees,' i. 9) occurs the following " note " attached to a pedigree of the family of Alleyne of Grantham and Skillington, Lines:

" This Richard Allen [ob. Sept. 6, 1559] declared on his death-bed to George Allen his brother and Henry Allen his nephew [his son John having predeceased him, 1557] that their ancestors were lords of Chartley Park, for that one of their ancestors did kill his Barbar by chance medley and did thereupon flee to Ireland, whereby 1 e escaped the attainture and punishment, and there lived unknown many yeares ; so lost the same lands which the Lord Ferrers lately fcad rnd enjoyed ; and this Richard was the first that lived in Grantham and revealed the same as he had understood from his Father and Grandfather, with tears, bewailing y e chance. Of this, I, Yorke Herald, was credibly informed this 29 January, 1578."

Contrary to what one might expect, York Herald (William Dethick) on bearing this narrative was to a certain extent impressed by it. At the same time, after the manner of his age, an attempt at verification would probably seem to him useless or unnecessary.

The tale itself seems just one of those vague legends of past greatness and riches (" if every one had his rights") which, &s much to-day as ever, serve to impress, embarrass, or amuse, as the case may be, those to whom they are confided. Now for the related facts.

According to the Visitation pedigree, the first of the Alleyne line is " George Allen of Chartley, Staffs." He therefore apparently is the fugitive of York Herald's note. He is represented as the father of Richard Allen, " the first that lived in Grantham "; and this Richard had, according to the pedigree, two wives, viz., 1. . . ., a daughter of John Sheldon of Bewley ; 2, Isabel, daughter cf who survived her husband, he dying Sept. 6, 1559.

It would, one supposes, be either John or Richard " Allen," grandsons of the above, who supplied York Herald with the in- formation which he has thought proper to hand down to posterity. John, the elder son of a (i.) John, son of the above Richard (which John i. died in the latter' s lifetime, 1557), was Alderman of Grantham in 1594 ; Richard's will was proved in 1616, being dated May 28 of that year ; so that both were alive in January, 1578, at which time the Herald was " credibly informed " of the family tradition.