Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/380

 in the miming of the Queen, one would take it, did the Q_{1} stand alone, to have been, like its substitute, a theatre and not a Court epilogue. In F_{1}, however, we get successively (a) a shortened version of the later epilogue, (b) the dialogue with the Grex, followed by 'The End', and (c) a version of the original epilogue, altered so as to make it less of a direct address and headed 'Which, in the presentation before Queen E. was thus varyed'. It seems to me a little difficult to believe that the play was given at Court before it had been 'practised' in public performances, and I conclude that, having suppressed the address to a mimic Elizabeth at the Globe, Jonson revived it in a slightly altered form when he took the play to Court at Christmas. As to the date of production, Fleay, i. 361, excels himself in the suggestion that 'the mention of "spring" and the allusion to the company's new "patent" for the Globe in the epilogue' fix it to c. April 1599. Even if this were the original epilogue, it alludes to a coming and not a present spring, and might have been written at any time in the winter, either before or after the New Year. Obviously, too, there can be no allusion to an Elizabethan patent for the Globe, which never existed. I do not agree with Small, 21, that the Globe was not opened until early in 1600, nor do I think that any inference can be drawn from the not very clear notes of dramatic time in iii and  ii. At first sight it seems natural to suppose that the phrase 'would I had one of Kempes shooes to throw after you' ( v) was written later than at any rate the planning of the famous morris to Norwich, which lasted from 11 Feb. to 11 March 1600 and at the end of which Kempe hung his shoes in Norwich Guildhall. Certainly it cannot refer, as Fleay thinks, merely to Kempe's leaving the Chamberlain's men. Conceivably it might be an interpolation of later date than the original production. Creizenach, 303, however, points out that in 1599 Thomas Platter saw a comedy in which a servant took off his shoe and threw it at his master, and suggests that this was a bit of common-form stage clownery, in which case the Norwich dance would not be concerned. The performance described by Platter was in September or October, and apparently at the Curtain (cf. ch. xvi, introd.). Kempe may quite well have been playing then at the Curtain with a fresh company after the Chamberlain's moved to the Globe. Perhaps the episode had already found a place in Phillips's Jig of the Slippers, printed in 1595 and now lost (cf. ch. xviii). If 1600 is the date of E. M. O., the Court performance may have been that of 3 February, or perhaps more probably may have fallen in the following winter, which would explain the divergence between Q_{1} and F_{1} as to the epilogues. But it must be remembered that the F_{1} date is 1599, and that most, if not quite all, of the F_{1} dates follow Circumcision style, although Jonson may not have adopted this style as early as 1600. On the whole, I think that the balance of probability is distinctly in favour of 1599. If so, the production must have been fairly late in that year, as there is a hit ( i) at the Histriomastix of the same autumn. The play has been hunted through and through for personalities, most of which are effectively refuted by Small. Most of the characters are types rather