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Doubtful Entertainment

For the ascription to Peele of a Theobalds entertainment in 1591, see s.v. Cecil.

JOHN PENRUDDOCK (c. 1588).

The Master 'Penroodocke', who was one of the directors for the Misfortunes of Arthur of Thomas Hughes (q.v.) in 1588, was presumably John Penruddock, one of the readers of Gray's Inn in 1590, and the John who was admitted to the inn in 1562 (J. Foster, Admissions to Gray's Inn).

WILLIAM PERCY (1575-1648).

Percy was third son of Henry Percy, eighth Earl of Northumberland, and educated at Gloucester Hall, Oxford. He was a friend of Barnabe Barnes, and himself published Sonnets to the Fairest Coelia (1594). His life is obscure, but in 1638 he was living in Oxford and 'drinking nothing but ale' (Strafford Letters, ii. 166), and here he died in 1648.

PLAYS

[MS.] Autograph formerly in collection of the Duke of Devonshire, with t.p. 'Comædyes and Pastoralls By W. P. Esq.  Exscriptum Anno Salutis 1647'. [Contains, in addition to the two plays printed in 1824, the following:

Arabia Sitiens, or A Dream of a Dry Year (1601). The Aphrodysial, or Sea Feast (1602). Cupid's Sacrifice, or a Country's Tragedy in Vacuniam (1602). Necromantes, or The Two Supposed Heads (1602).]

[Edition] 1824. The Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants or The Bearing down the Inne. A Comædye. The Faery Pastorall, or Forrest of Elves. By W. P. Esq. (Roxburghe Club). [Preface by [Joseph] H[aslewood].]—Dissertations: C. Grabau, ''Zur englischen Bühne um 1600 (1902, Jahrbuch, xxxviii. 230); V. Albright, P.'s Plays as Proof of the Elizabethan Stage (1913, M. P. xi. 237); G. F. Reynolds, W. P. and his Plays (1914, M. P.'' xii. 241).

Percy's authorship appears to be fixed by a correspondence between an epigram in the MS. to Charles Fitzgeffrey with one ''Ad Gulielmum Percium in Fitzgeoffridi Affaniae'' (1601), sig. D 2. 6.

The Cuck-Queanes and Cuckolds Errants is dated 1601 and ''The Faery Pastorall'' 1603. The other plays are unprinted and practically unknown, although Reynolds gives some account of The Aphrodysial. There are elaborate stage-directions, which contain several references to Paul's, for which the plays, whether in fact acted or not, were evidently intended, as is shown by an author's note appended to the manuscript (cf. ch. xii, s.v. Paul's).

I feel some doubt as to the original date of these plays. It seems to me just conceivable that they were originally produced by the Paul's boys before 1590, and revised by Percy after 1599 in hopes of a revival. Some of the s.ds. are descriptive in the past tense (cf.