THE LAWS OF CANDY

TEXT.-The basis of the text is FI; all changes introduced either in F2 or in later editions have been recorded, if they are of the slightest importance, together with many which obviously are not. The orthography and punctuation are mainly Dyce's, and the latter does not exactly represent either the original text or modern usage; I have restored ye where he substituted you, and occasionally reverted to the seventeenth-century forms of some other words. The stage-directions are practically those of F1 throughout; the few necessary additions and corrections have been placed in square brackets.

DATE AND AUTHORSHIP.-There is little external evidence as to the date of the play. It is not mentioned in Sir Henry Herbert's Office-Book, the entries in which begin in May 1622, upon the appointment as Master of the Revels of Sir John Ashley, to whom Herbert acted as deputy, and record the licensing of all the plays in the Beaumont and Fletcher Folios from that date onwards. On the other hand, the list of actors given in F2, which belongs to the King's men, includes Joseph Taylor, and does not include Richard Burbage. Taylor was a member of Prince Charles' company when they performed Middleton's Mask of Heroes in January 1619, and joined the King's men probably on the death of Burbage on March 13, and certainly before March 19 in the same year (Hist. MSS., iv. 299). It would seem, therefore, that The Laws of Candy must have been on the stage between March 1619 and May 1622; but it is not certain that its actor-list belongs to the original production, and some critics have assigned it to an earlier date. I will briefly set out the views that have been expressed, both upon this point and upon the cognate one of authorship. Dyce said that the play "has been generally considered (but whether justly or not I cannot pretend to determine) as a joint production of Beaumont and Fletcher." If Beaumont had a share in it, it must of course have been written before his death on March 6, 1616. Mr. Fleay has found some difficulty in maintaining consistency on the subject. In 1874 (New Sh. Soc. Trans., 1874, 53) he could not trace either Beaumont or Fletcher's work in the play, and omitted it from his list. But when he reprinted the same paper in his Shakespeare Manual (1876), 152, he dated it after 1621, and assigned it to Fletcher and Massinger. In 1886 (Englische Studien, ix. 23) he gave a very small share to Fletcher, and the rest in undetermined shares to Massinger and Field, with the provisional date 1618-19. In his paper of 1889 on Field (Englische Studien, xiii. 28) he made no reference to the play. In 1891 (Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, i. 209) he gives the plot, on the strength of a resemblance to The Unnatural Combat, to Massinger, together with most of the writing, but finds traces of Fletcher in ii. 1, iii. 3, v. I, and especially iv. I, and believes that he revised it for the stage. He indicates the evidence for a date of composition between March 1619 and May 1622, and prefers 1619, because he believes that in 1621 Fletcher and Massinger were writing "separately, not as coadjutors," and thinks that the 'comet or "blazing star" of 1618 'probably suggested passages in ii. 1.'

I suppose he refers to ii. 1, 356—8—

"An exhalation I profess to adore

Beyond a fixed star; 'tis more illustrious,
As everything raised out of smoke is so."

But the natural sense of exhalation' is 'meteor.' There are, however, a simile from 'blazing stars' in i. 2, 215 and a reference to 'blazing comets' in iii. 2, 92, and no doubt the comet of 1618 made a sensation. It is mentioned in Howes' continuation of Stowe's Annals, and Arber, iii. 638-640, records three contemporary pamphlets about it. This, or another blazing star,' appears from a letter of John Chamberlain's (Bird, Court and Times of James the First, ii. 8) to have been observed as early as April 1617. On the other hand, there was also a comet (Halley's) in 1607, and 1 Henry VI., i. 1, 2 may stand as a reminder that after all comets had been a commonplace of Elizabethan literature.

Mr. Macaulay, in 1883 (Francis Beaumont, 100), thought it difficult to find in the play a single characteristic of Beaumont. Mr. Boyle suggested in 1884 (Englische Studien, vii. 75) that The Laws of Candy with The Noble Gentleman and The Faithful Friends, "although exhibiting a metrical style somewhat similar to Beaumont's," belong to a later period, and are all by a single author, who was neither Fletcher, Beaumont, nor Massinger, and might be Shirley. Later (Englische Studien, xviii. 294) he withdrew this suggestion, on the ground that Shirley came to London not earlier than the end of 1624. Mr. Bullen, in 1889 (D.N.B. s.v. Fletcher), thought that the play is “largely by Massinger," and that "Fletcher's hand can hardly be traced." Mr. Oliphant, in 1891 (Englische Studien, xv. 333), believed it to have been written by Beaumont and Fletcher as early as 1604-5, but never produced in its original form, and to have been revised for the stage by Massinger about 1620. At this early date he supposed that Beaumont and Fletcher "worked together on many scenes, as was not customary with them later on." The following table represents Mr. Oliphant's detailed analysis of the play.

Professor Ward, in 1899 (English Dramatic Literature, ii. 723), is "indisposed to go much further than Dyce, who regards the question of its authorship as undecided," but finds neither in theme nor style "any continuous resemblance to what we know as habitual to Fletcher." Finally, Professor Thorndike, in 1901 (The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakespere, 93), is content to accept Mr. Fleay's date of about 1619 without discussing the

question of authorship. I do not propose to enter further into this welter of critical opinion than by disclaiming any confidence in the methods by which it is achieved. On the whole, 1619 seems a reasonable date.

ARGUMENT.-There are two laws peculiar to Candia or Crete. By the first it is the privilege of a victorious army to choose one of its leaders for the honour of a triumph; by the other the crime of ingratitude is punished with death, unless the party wronged chooses to waive the penalty. After a war against Venice, a triumph is claimed both by Cassilane the general, and his son Antinous. The soldiers choose Antinous. Cassilane curses his son, and having spent his substance in the service of the state, retires from the court to live in poverty with his daughter Annophil. Antinous is looked upon and loved by the haughty Princess Erota, aunt to the reigning Prince of Candy, who herself is wooed by Philander, Prince of Cyprus, and the Venetian Gonzalo. Gonzalo is an intriguer, who plots to make himself despot both of Candy and Venice. He has got Cassilane into his power by lending him money, and now contrives that Cassilane, the more to impoverish him, shall be made to play host to Fernando, Prince of Venice, a prisoner of war. Meanwhile Antinous, consumed by despair at his father's curse, repulses Erota's love. Gonzalo tells his plots against Candy, though not those against Venice, to Fernando, who, having fallen in love with Annophil, imparts them to her, and she to her brother Antinous. Antinous agrees to wed Erota, on condition that she shall free Cassilane from Gonzalo's power. This she does, and further contrives a trap for the treacherous Venetian. Pretending to listen to his advances, she induces him to put his scheme on paper, and denounces him to the Senate and the Venetian ambassador. The proceedings are interrupted by Cassilane, who, mistaking the purport of the financial aid given him by Antinous and Erota, accuses his son of ingratitude. Erota, in her turn, accuses Cassilane, Antinous accuses Erota, and finally Annophil accuses the Senate, who had left Cassilane to a poverty-stricken old age. Explanations follow and reconciliations. Fernando marries Annophil; but Erota will not after all have Antinous, who once scorned her, and rewards the faithful Philander. Gonzalo is arrested, and the play ends happily.

SOURCE OF THE PLOT.-The political theme is taken from Giraldi Cinthio's Hecatom mithi (1566), x. 9. The following is Weber's summary, as revised by by Dyce. The city of Pisa being besieged by the Florentines with various success, the senate, in order to stimulate the warriors to exertion, proclaimed that the captain who most distinguished himself on an appointed day should be rewarded with a golden hauberk, and a statue erected to his memory. It happened that the two warriors who did the most glorious deeds of arms were a father and his son, both captains, the former of knights, the latter of light horse. The senate deliberated long, but being unable to decide who had best deserved the promised rewards, the son declared himself contented if his father would choose either the statue or the hauberk, and leave whichever he rejected to him. But the father declared that he would part with neither, boasted of his long and brilliant services, and upbraided the senators, as well as his son, with ingratitude. The senators wished to pacify him, and said, that any honour which his son obtained was equally to the credit of himself, who had produced and educated such a warrior. But the father refused to hearken to their advice, and openly calumniated his son in court. The latter then offered to forego his share of the prize; but the soldiers of his squadron insisted that he should demand it, and even revenge the insult he had received; nor could his arguments, full of filial piety, appease them. On the other hand, the soldiers of his father's squadron, boasting of their superior rank, refused to listen to

any propositions, and threatened to go over to the enemy if both the prizes were not assigned to the father. The senators then proposed to decide the matter by lot; stipulating that if the father's name were drawn he should have both the prizes, but if the son's, that the father should be content with the more honourable reward of the statue, and relinguish the hauberk to his son. After some resistance from the squadron of knights, the proposal was accepted; and the son's name being drawn, the hauberk was assigned to him, which he willingly gave up to his father in token of reconciliation. A fresh attack was then made on the Florentines, in which the father lost both his arms, but was fully avenged by his son upon the enemy.—The rest of the novel has nothing in common with the play.

No source has been found for the rest of the plot, but E. Köppel, QuellenStudien zu den Dramen Ben Jonson's, John Marston's, und Beaumont and Fletcher's (1895), 73, suggests a resemblance between the wooing of the disdainful Antinous by Erota to that of Rosalind by the shepherdess Phoebe in As You Like it.