XXIV
ANONYMOUS WORK
[Here I bring together, giving them the same treatment as the
individual works in ch. xxiii, pieces of which the authorship, as regards
the whole or a large part, is unknown or conjectural. They are
grouped as (A) Plays, (B) Masks, (C) Receptions and Entertainments.
It has been convenient, for the sake of classification, to include in
the third group a few which might alternatively have been brought
into ch. xxiii under the name of a part-author or describer.]
A. PLAYS
An Alarum for London > 1600
S. R. 1600, May 27. 'Allarum to London' is included in a memorandum of 'my lord chamberlens menns plaies Entred' and noted as entered on this day to J. Roberts (Arber, iii. 37). 1600, May 29. 'The Allarum to London, provided that yt be not printed without further Aucthoritie.' John Roberts (Arber, iii. 161). 1602. A Larum for London, or The Siedge of Antwerpe. With the ventrous actes and valorous deeds of the lame Soldier. As it hath been playde by the right Honorable the Lord Charberlaine his Seruants. For William Ferbrand. [Prologue and Epilogue.] Editions by R. Simpson (1872), J. S. Farmer (1912, T.F.T.), and W. W. Greg (1913, M.S.R.). The play has been ascribed to Shakespeare by Collier, to Shakespeare and Marston by Simpson, and to Lodge by Fleay, Shakespeare, 291, but no serious case has been made out for any of these claims. Bullen, Marlowe, 1, lxxiv, says that Collier had a copy with doggerel rhymes on the t.p. including the line,
Our famous Marloe had in this a hand,
which Bullen calls 'a very ridiculous piece of forgery'. Albion Knight > 1566
S. R. 1565-6. 'A play intituled a merye playe bothe pytthy and pleasaunt of Albyon knyghte.' Thomas Colwell (Arber, i. 295).
Fragment in Devonshire collection.
[The t.p. is lost, but the seventeenth-century play lists (Greg, Masques, xlvii) include an interlude called Albion. A fragment on Temperance and Humility, conjecturally assigned by Collier, i. 284, to the same play, is of earlier printing by thirty years or so (M. S. C. i. 243).]
