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following notes which I have collected since the publication of The Elizabethan Stage are perhaps worth putting upon record. For leave to print the transcripts from the Hatfield MSS. in Nos. ii. and iii. I am indebted to the courtesy of the Marquess of Salisbury and his librarian, Mr. W. Stanhope-Lovell.

Writing from France, when he was English ambassador, to Sir William Cecil on April 10, 1565, Sir Thomas Smith says (R.O. Foreign Papers, lxxvii. f. 144; cf. Calendar, vii. 330):

In the absence of Cecil’s letter, I cannot locate this early play on a theme afterwards used by Marston. Conceivably it may have been the Gray’s Inn play at court on March 5 or 6, 1565 (Elizabethan Stage, i. 161; iv. 82, 143). It was in English and had a dialogue of goddesses on marriage, but this may have been an epilogue. The Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, had been in temporary disfavour, on a suspicion of encouraging a tract in favour of a Protestant settlement of the succession. No royal visit to Gorhambury in connexion with his reconciliation is upon record. The French ambassador was Paul de Foix.

I called attention to the following letter (Cecil MS. 36, 60; cf. Calendar of Hatfield MSS. v. 487) in Elizabethan Stage, ii. 194: Sir, findinge that you wer not convenientlie to be at London to morrow night I am bold to send to knowe whether Teusdaie [9 Dec.]