Page:The Elizabethan stage (Volume 3).pdf/414

 xxix, 183); G. O. Fleischer, Bemerkungen über Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy (1896). Kyd's authorship of the play is recorded by Heywood, Apology, 45 (cf. App. C, No. lvii). The only direct evidence as to the date is Ben Jonson's statement in the Induction to Bartholomew Fair (1614), 'He that will swear Ieronimo or Andronicus are the best plays yet, shall pass unexcepted at here as a man whose judgment shows it is constant, and hath stood still these five and twenty or thirty years'. This yields 1584-9. Boas, xxx, argues for 1585-7; W. Bang in Englische Studien, xxviii. 229, for 1589. The grounds for a decision are slight, but the latter date seems to me the more plausible in the absence of any clear allusion to the play in Nashe's (q.v.) Menaphon epistle of that year. Strange's men revived Jeronymo on 14 March 1592 and played it sixteen times between that date and 22 Jan. 1593. I agree with Greg (Henslowe, ii. 150, 153) that by Jeronymo Henslowe meant The Spanish Tragedy, and that the performances of it are distinguishable from those which the company was concurrently giving of a related piece called Don Horatio or 'the comedy of Jeronimo', which is probably not to be identified with the extant anonymous 1 Jeronimo (q.v.). On 7 Jan. 1597 the play was revived by the Admiral's and given twelve times between that date and 19 July. Another performance, jointly with Pembroke's, took place on 11 Oct. Finally, on 25 Sept. 1601 and 22 June 1602, Henslowe made payments to Jonson, on behalf of the Admiral's, for 'adicyons' to the play. At first sight, it would seem natural to suppose that these 'adicyons' are the passages ( v. 46-133; ii. 65-129; xii^a. 1-157; iv. 168-217) which appear for the first time in the print of 1602. But many critics have found it difficult to see Jonson's hand in these, notably Castelain, 886, who would assign them to Webster. And as Henslowe marked the play as 'n. e.' in 1597, it is probable that there was some substantial revision at that date. There is a confirmation of this view in Jonson's own mention of 'the old Hieronimo (as it was first acted)' in the induction to Cynthia's Revels (1600). Perhaps the 1597 revival motived Jonson's quotation of the play by the mouth of Matheo in E. M. I. iv, and in Satiromastix, 1522, Dekker suggests that Jonson himself 'took'st mad Ieronimoes part, to get service among the Mimickes'. Lines from the play are also recited by the page in Poetaster,  iv. 231. In the Induction, 84, to Marston's Malcontent (1604) Condell explains the appropriation of that play by the King's from the Chapel with this retort, 'Why not Malevole in folio with us, as well as Jeronimo in decimo sexto with them'. Perhaps 1 Jeronimo is meant; in view of the stage-history of The Spanish Tragedy, as disclosed by Henslowe's diary, the King's could hardly have laid claim to it. The play was carried by English actors to Germany (Boas, xcix; Creizenach, xxxiii; Herz, 66, 76), and a German adaptation by Jacob Ayrer is printed by Boas, 348, and with others in German and Dutch, in R. Schönwerth, Die niederländischen und deutschen Bear-*