Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/231

 12 8. V. SEPT., 1919.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

225

LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1919

CONTENTS. No. 96.

NOTES : Cyril Tourneur : ' The Revenger's Tragedy ' : The Second Maiden's Tragedy.' 225 Pyrgo Park and Old Bow Bridge, 229 -Swift and Mrs. Oldfield, 230 Diirer : Wilibald Pirkheinaer Gunnersbury : Buislip, 231 The Puritan and his Cat" Man proposes, God disposes " Sir Richard Phillips Mrs. Susan Cromwell, 232 Mrs. Grundy Roger de Gloucester in Domesday ' "Topping" : " Top-hole " Sundial Motto in Savoy- Francis Place, Political Economist, 333-Official Peace Rejoicings, 334.

QUERIES :- Emerson's ' English Traits 'Wordsworth: The Excursion,' 234 Richard Challoner Dennis the Hangman Oldfield " When you die of old age," 235 David M. Main Lucien Bonaparte Feast of the Assumption Mary Clarke of New York Marylebone Burial Grounds Wooden Pegs : Screws R. Griffith Maule Martin Newton. R.A. Crusaders' Names, 236 G. Dyer ' Valhalla " " Buffaloes " J. Wilson Dr. Stocks Cornwall : Unwritten Book Caractacus Simplon Tunnel Richenda Louisa spelt Leweezer Old Watch- and Clock-makersWelsh Pupils of Wilson, R. A., 237 Standard " Old Lady of Threadneedle Street " Capt. B. Grant Twining-Haynes Marriage Shield of Flanders Moat Island Edward the Confessor's Crown " Episcopus Recreensis "Elephant : Oliphant Col. Barnard Birth and Earth Place-names St. John Baptist Heads Poems Wanted, 238 Authors of Quota- tions Wanted, 239.

REPLIES : Yeoman of the Mouth, 239 Byron's 'Don Juan,' 240 William Hoorde Etchings by T. Parker- Exeter Cathedral Epitaph Joseph Knibb, Clockmaker, 241 Church of England Marriage Service-Sir Peter Denis, 242 Devonian Priests executed " Abdolla " Ambassador, 243 Miss Helen Maria Williams Manor Records, 244 ' Trilby ' R. S. Surtees Jenner Family- Grim or Grime Somerset Incumbents, 245 Exchange of Souls in Fiction East Anglian Characters Hervey or Hervet Bird-scaring Songs Philip Westcott, 246 Heredity: Long Hair Mrs. Anne Button Cowan St. Alkelda, 247' The Village Blacksmith ' " Argyles " Rev. Thomas Hugo, 248 Turner Family Seven Kings- Society for Preserving Memorials of the Dead Robert- son, 249 Dickens's Topographical Slips Metal Mortars Inscriptions in St. John's, Waterloo Road The Houghton Meeting Portraits on Gravestones "Pro pelle cutem " " Apochromatic "Col. Colquhoun Grant, 250.

NOTES ON BOOKS : ' History of the Worshipful Com- pany of Glaziers in the City of London' Milton : Areopagitica.'

Booksellers' Catalogues. Notices to Correspondents.

CYRIL TOURNEUR:

'THE REVENGER'S TRAGEDY':


 * THE SECOND MAIDEN'S TRAGEDY.

THE only Elizabethan, drama that bears on its title-page the name of Cyril Tourneur is ' The Atheist's Tragedy, or The Honest Man's Revenge,' printed, "as in divers places it hath been acted," in 1611. Al- though Tourneur is also usually credited with the authorship of ' The Revenger's Tragedy,' published anonymously iu 1607 and again in 1608, there has been an increasing tendency to regard his title to this play as doubtful since Fleay questioned

it some thirty years ago. Prof. F. E. Schelling remarks that, though consensus of opinion assigns it to Tourneur, neither in style nor in characterization does ' The Revenger's Tragedy ' resemble * The Atheist's Tragedy,' " above which the former rises as far aesthetically for the living realism of its effects, its mastery of horror, and its passages of poetic power as it falls below the well-defined moral intent of the earlier play " (' Elizabethan Drama,' vol. i. p. 568). Prof. Thorndike (' Webster and Tourneur,' Ameri- can Book Company, 1912, p. 337) observes that Tourneur' s authorship of the anonymous play is " accepted rather than certain." Another recent critic, Mr. E. H. C. Oliphant, emphatically rejects its attribution to Tourneur :

" I cannot," he says, " conceive of the two plays as being by the one author. To accept Tourneur as the writer of ' The Revenger's Tragedy ' we have to suppose that he alone of the Elizabethan dramatists did not develop but absolutely revolu- tionized his manner of writing...! know of no one among the named writers of the time to whom I would attribute it, unless it be to Middleton, to whose verse alone the swing of the verse of ' The Revenger's Tragedy' makes some,approximation... I prefer, however, to consider ' The Revenger's Tragedy ' as the greatest work of its period of that prolific writer ' Anon.,' and look upon the establish- ment of the identity of the author as one of the chief problems to be tackled by students of Eliza- bethan drama." ' Problems of Authorship in Eliza- bethan Dramatic Literature,' Modern Philology, 1911, vol. yiii. pp. 427-8.

The doubts concerning Tourneur' s claim to ' The Revenger's Tragedy ' are chiefly due to the unlikeness of its metrical system to that of ' The Atheist's Tragedy,'' and as they have found their way into most of the recent discussions of Tourneur's work, I determined to make an effort to set them at rest. In this I venture to think that I have been successful, having discovered sufficient internal evidence to justify the traditional ascription of ' The Revenger's Tragedy ' to the author of vinced myself, and hope to convince the reader, that Tourneur was the author of another anonymous tragedy of this period which closely resembles ' The Revenger's Tragedy ' both in plot and technique. This tragedy is that usually known as ' The Second Maiden's Tragedy,' a title given to it by Sir George Buc because the MS. sub- mitted to him for licensing had " no name inscribed." "This Second Maiden's Tragedy (for it hath no name inscribed)," runs the licence, " may, with the reformations, bee acted publicly. 31 October, 1611, G. Buc." It is printed in Hazlitt's ' Dodsley ' (vol. x.),
 * The Atheist's Tragedy.' I have also con-