Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/472

 466

NOTES AND QUERIES. ' [12 s. n. DEC. 9, me.

former catalogues are, as Mr. Fleay has <>l>s -i-\vd. a better authority than Moseley. But there is no ground for supposing that either Winstanley or Wood was indebted to former catalogues ; and so far as Anthony a Wood Is concerned, his own words seem to negative any such supposition. As his is the fullest and most accurate of these early biographical notices of Peele, it will be well to see exactly what he says :

"....His comedies and tragedies were often acted with great applause, and did endure reading vitli due commendation many years after their Author's death. Those that I have seen are only these folloictng,

The famous Chronicle of K. Ed. I.~\ Lo n( j

sirnamed Edic. Longshank. >, ~ Q o *

Life of Llewellin of Wales. ) *

The sinking of Q. Elinor at

Char ing-cross, and of her rising

again at Potters-Hith, now named

Queen-Hith, Lond. 1593 qu

The love of K. David and fair

Bathsheba, with the Tragedy of

Absalom &c. Lond. 1599 qu.

Alphonsus Emperor of Germany, Trag. Besides these Plays he hath several Poems extant, as that entit. The Honour of the Garter, vide Athmolean, p. 30.

A farewell to Sir Joh. Norrys and Sir Fr. Drake, Lond. in qu. and some remnants of Pastoral Poetry in a collection entit. England's Helicon ; but such I have not seen, nor his book of Jests or Clinches. ..."

' Athenae Oxonienses,' 1721 ed. vol. i. 300.

Here Wood makes the definite statement that ' Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany,' was one of the tragedies of Peele that he had seen presumably, in MS. with the dramatist's name attached, since he does not (as in the case of the other plays seen by him) specify the place and date of publication, nor is there any reason to believe that a printed edition other than Moseley's edition of 1654 (with Chapman's name on the title-page) existed in Wood's time. All the other works enumerated in his list are properly assigned to Peele, and in the absence of some better evidence to the contrary than that of Moseley (clearly not a disinterested witness) we are not justified in assuming that he was mistaken with regard to ' Alphonsus.' That its attribution to Peeje was due to mere con- jecture on any one's part is most unlikely. Its superficial characteristics are rather those that one would associate with Marlowe or Kyd in preference to Peele. But when its language is examined and compared with Peele's acknowledged works, we shall find conclusive evidence and that of a kind which cannot be supposed to have attracted the attention of any seventeenth-century writer or compiler of catalogues that it is his.

Mr. Fleay accepts Peele's authorship of ' Alphonsus", Emperor of Germany,' because it was attributed to him by Wood and Winstanley, and is " palpably " of his period. These circumstances are at least sufficient to warrant us in preferring Peele's title to Chapman's. If, in addition, we find that the author's vocabulary resembles Peel' and that the text of the play shows numerous connexions of one sort or another with his acknowledged work, there can be no valid reason for doubting his authorship.

Up to the present the only critic who has dealt with the internal indications of Peel< '> hand in this play is Mr. J. M. Robertson, to whose chapter on ' Peele's Unsigned Work ' in ' Did Shakespeare write " Titus Androni- cus " ? ' I here acknowledge my indebtedness for a few of the points noted in the following examination of its text. To take first its vocabulary, Mr. Robertson gives a list of eighteen of Peele's " favourite or special " words met with in ' Alphonsus.' These are : Ate, doom, emperess, gratulate, hugy, manly, massacre, policy, progeny, sacred, sacrifice, solemnized, successively, suspect (noun), triumph and triumphing, underbear, wreak (noun), and zodiac. Now, without exagger- ating the significance of this list, it may without hesitation be stated that it raises a strong presumption of Peele's authorship. It is not that the words are peculiar to Peele. There are a few that are rarely to be met with outside Peele's works such, for in- stance, as " wreak " used as a substantive and are for that reason important, while others are used fairly frequently by some of his contemporaries. But even these les-^ uncommon words may afford equally valu- able evidence either from the frequency with which, or the manner in which, they are used. It is not necessary to deal with this list of Mr. Robertson's in detail, but the word " sacred " is deserving of particular notice because it occurs no fewer than ten times in ' Alphonsus.' In one instance the author in a fashion, it may be remarked, character- istic of Peele actually uses it twice in the space of four lines. This is in the speech in which Alphonsus simulates grief at the death of the Bishop of Mentz :

Over thy tomb shall hang a sacred lamp, Which till the day of doom shall ever burn, Yea after-ages shall speak of thy renown, And go a pilgrimage to thy sacred tomb.

Act IV. p. 260.

In Peele's acknowledged works " sacred " appears, according to Mr. Robertson, at least thirty times. At any rate, I have found it five times in ' The Arraignment of