Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 2.djvu/491

 1'J S. II. DEC. 16, 1916.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

485-

la ' Anglorum Ferise,' 11. 275-6 :

. . . .nor shall it me become To dive into the depth of his device.

3. ' Alphonsus,' Act III. p. 245 :

The king of Bohem. . . . Hath from my knife's point suck'd his deadly bane.

' Edward I.,' xxv. 112 :

Tin- wanton baits that made me suck my bane.

4. ' Alphonsus,' Act V. p. 268 :

. . . .we will perform our oaths With just effusion of their guilty bloods.

' Edward I.,' v. 156 : T 'avoid the fusion of our guilty blood.

5. ' Alphonsus,' Act V. p. 278 : Hath Alexander done this damned deed ?

' Edward I.,' xxv. 130 : If once I dream'd upon this damned deed.

These parallels are at least valuable as showing that the phraseology of the author of ' Alphonsus ' is just such as we find in Peele's acknowledged works.

In Act IV. of ' Alphonsus ' there is a line for which a parallel of a different kind may be cited. The Emperor here speaks of the poison which he pretends has been ad- ministered to him as a " mineral not to be digested,"

Which burning eats, and eating burns my heart.

P. 257.

A line of similar structure will be found in ' The Battle of Alcazar,' IV. ii. 8 : We come to fight, and fighting vow to die.

In Act I. the Empress Isabella, appealing to the electors to make peace between her husband and her brother, Prince Richard, begs them to excuse her tears : Bear with my interrupted speeches, lords, Tears stop my voice. P. 207

In just such a fashion does the Queen- Mother in ' Edward I.' ask indulgence for her inability to restrain her emotion at the return of Edward and his soldiers from their expedition to the Holy Land : Bear with your mother, whose abundant love With tears of joy salutes your sweet return.

i. 50-51.

In Act III., immediately after the murder of the Palatine, Alphonsus, addressing the electors, exclaims :

. . . .suddenly a griping at my heart Forbids my tongue his wonted course of speech.

P. 248.

We have just noted " Tears stop my voice " in an earlier part of the play, and later on (p. 260) we have " Grief stops my voice." In like manner, in the last scene of ' Edward I.,' Queen Elinor exclaims : Shame and remorse doth stop my course of speech-

xxv. 56.

I have so far confined myself to the com- parison of passages drawn from this play and from the plays and poems of which Peele's. authorship is acknowledged. But there are several other plays in which there are strong reasons to suspect that he was concerned, amongst them the three parts of ' Henry VI.,' ' Titus Andronicus,' ' Locrine,' and ' Se- limus.' In regard to all these the most probable supposition is that Peele was associated with one or more collaborators, or- that his work has been revised by others.

There are, however, two dramatic pieces never yet published among Peele's works, of which I am convinced that he was sole author. These are ' The Troublesome Reign of King John ' a chronicle-play in two parts,., first printed in 1591, upon which Shakespeare founded his ' King John ' and ' The Life and Death of Jack Straw,' published two years later. There are clear marks of the presence of the same hand in both parts of ' The Troublesome Reign,' and the uni- formity of style points to their being the work of a single author. It should be men- tioned that Peele's claim to ' Jack Straw ' has already been strongly supported by Mr. J. M. Robertson, and more particularly by the late Mr. H. C. Hart in his introduction to the " Arden " edition of ' King Henry VI.,' Part II. I hope on some future occasion to deal fully with the evidence with regard to both these plays, but for the present must content myself with noting certain con- nexions between them and ' Alphonsus.'

At the close of Act I. of ' Alphonsus,^ Alexander de Toledo, the Emperor's page,, thus laments the death of his father : Dead, ay me dead, ay me my life is dead, Strangely this night bereft of breath and sense, And I, poor I, am comforted in nothing, But that the Emperor laments with me.

Note the " I, poor I," which we meet with-

again in Peele's ' Arraignment of Paris '

(CEnone's lament at the faithlessness of

Paris, Act III. sc. i.) :

. . . .would these eyes of mine had never seen

His 'ticing curled hair, his front of ivory,

Then had not I, poor I, been unhappy.

and in ' The Troublesome Reign,' Part II. :

Grief upon grief, yet none so great a grief

To end this life, and thereby rid my grief.

Was ever so infortunate

The right idea of a cursed man,

As I, poor I, a triumph for despight ?

' Six Old Plays,' 1779, vol. ii. p. 304. It will be observed that the triple repeti- tion of " grief " in the first line of this passage is paralleled by the triple repetition, of " dead in that quoted from ' Alphonsus.*