Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/241

 " Sir Thomas More" 235 "More" is the later of the two; and (d) the date, December 1596, on the MS of "John a Kent" is not in the handwriting of the author and is not necessarily the date of the composition of the play. This great authority thinks that the period of time elapsing between the writing of the two plays may have been two or three years, and sees "no reason why the year 1592 or 1593 should not still be accepted as approximately the date of the MS" of "More," "John a Kent" thus being assigned "approximately to the year 1590." It is only in regard to this conclusion that I venture to differ from him. It seems to me almost certain that the date on the "John a Kent" MS stands for one or other of three things the date of its receipt from Mundy, the date of its purchase, or the date of its production. (Were it the date of composition, it would be in Mundy's own hand.) The purchase date is much more prob- able than either of the others; but it may not be the date of purchase by the company accepting it, but that of its sale to some individual to whom it was disposed of when it had become stale and was no longer required for acting purposes. As it and "More," however, are shown by Sir Edward Thompson to have been bound together and to have been thrown together "into the damp limbo where they were to lie forgotten," they are likely to have been disposed of at the same time, and, were that the case, "More" as well as "John a Kent" would in all probability have been dated. I believe then this date of Decem- ber 1596 to be that of the purchase of "John a Kent" from its author Mundy by the company which was to perform it. If, as Sir Edward Thompson thinks, "More" was written in 1592 or 1593, and was stowed away, in company with "John a Kent," at some date subsequent to December 1596, we have to believe that the company kept it on hand for at least three or four years after the verdict of Sir Edmund Tyllney had put its production out of the question. That seems to me altogether unlikely. For these reasons therefore I take 1596 to be the year when "John a Kent" was written; and, accepting Sir Edward Thomp- son's judgment that a space of two or three years separated the writing of the two MSS, we are brought to 1598-9 as the date of "More," which, it is to be noted, is precisely the date I have set down for it on entirely different grounds. E. H. C. OLIPHANT. Melbourne, Australia.