ELIZABETHAN STAGE GLEANINGS
By E. K. CHAMBERS
The 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.
i. A Play of Massinissa and Sophonisba.
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):
I am right glad that my L. Keaper is so well restored to her Maiesties favour, and wish my self to have been at the Tragedie of Masinissa and Sophonisba. Yt was in latyn I suppose or the French Ambassadour was not much the wiser for it.
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.
ii. The Date of Richard I.
I called attention to the following letter (Cecil MS. 36, 60; cf. Calendar of Hatfield MSS. v. 487) in Elizabethan Stage, ii. 194:
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