some degree, how many plays were written for and produced by a single company from 1597 to 1603. As we know, that besides the Lord Chamberlain's servants, of whom Shakespeare was one, there were various other bodies of performers, who, perhaps, brought out plays with equal rapidity, a notion may be formed of the vast number of dramatic productions that have been lost. It is capable of proof, that some of the more popular poets in the pay of Henslowe, and whose names are frequently registered by him in his Diary, were also engaged by other companies to write plays for them. Regarding those other companies we have no information beyond that which is furnished by a comparatively few printed productions; and if the chief manager of the Globe and Blackfriars theatres kept an account book at all similar to that of Henslowe, it will be apparent, from the Diary of the latter, of what a source of information we are deprived by its loss. Henslowe's MS. is by far the most curious existing record connected with the stage.

It was in the hands of Malone for several years, and he made numerous quotations from it, which are printed as Additions' to his History of the Stage. It is fortunate that he thus put them in a permanent shape, for not a few are now missing in the original : it is obvious that in its passage from hand to hand, while in Malone's charge, it underwent melancholy mutilations, and the autographs of many of the old dramatic poets with whom Henslowe was connected,

and other interesting parts of the volume, have been cut away*. I am happy to add, however, that the Master and Wardens of Dulwich College are now fully sensible of the worth of this authentic relic, and that it is not likely to be deprived hereafter of such information as it yet contains.

I have several times carefully gone over the whole of the remnant of this singular record, and I am thus enabled to state, that in the quotations Malone fur

*The MS. itself affords abundant evidence of this nefarious conduct, by whomever it may have been committed. Not very long since I bought at an auction a volume of old plays, in the centre of which, and used as an index to keep a place, I found what I have no doubt once formed part of Henslowe's Diary. It is an original entry by Edward Alleyn, the husband of the step-daughter of Henslowe, of the engagement of a performer (probably an inferior hireling who never reached eminence, as we hear of him no where else) of the name of William Kendall, at ten shillings a-week in London and five shillings a-week in the country. It runs precisely as follows :

" Md yt this 8th of December, 1597, my father, philyp hinshlow, 'hiered as A Covenaunt servant willyam Kendall for ij years after The 'statute of winchester with ij single penc A[nd] to geve hym for his sayd servis everi week of his playing in london xs and in ye Cuntrie

vs: for the wch he covenaunts for the space of those ij years To be redye att all Tymes to play in the howse of the sayd philyp and in " no other during the sayd Terme.

Vertines my felf Go voriter of Crib Alloy

nished from it, he committed various errors and omissions, some of which have been pointed out in preceding parts of this work. It is not my intention to insert here the information thus supplied relative to our old drama and dramatists, as such a course would occasion useless repetition of what has already been noticed; but I shall take this opportunity of correcting some prominent mistakes, and of adding points that escaped Malone's observation. I shall advert to them with reference to the different authors to which the entries in Henslowe's Diary apply.

Henry Chettle was concerned in writing The Famous Wars of Henry the First and the Prince of Wales, as well as Michael Drayton and Thomas Dekker, to whom Malone assigns it. This fact appears by an entry of money received by Chettle, on account of his joint authorship, which is subscribed

The ascertained date is March, 1598; and by a different item it appears, that when the play was read before the company, at the Sun in New Fish-street,' Henslowe lent them five shillings to be spent in refreshments. It was not an unusual practice to treat the actors on such occasions, and in one instance Henslowe put down no less than thirty shillings towards the reckoning. The Famous Wars of Henry the First was doubtless a different play to Harey the firste, Life and

Death, entered as performed on the 26th of May, 1597, which Malone misread as Harry the fifthe, and, as has been before remarked, was puzzled by his own misreading*. Malone omitted all notice of Chettle's Woman's Tragedy, under date of June, 1598, and for which five shillings were paid to a painter for a picture,' perhaps some portrait introduced into it. Troy's Revenge, by Chettle, Malone calls Æneas' Revenge, and couples it with The Tragedy of Polypheme, with which it had no connection. The payment of twenty shillings to Chettle for Polefemos is separately entered. He also joined with Henry Porter, in an historical play, called The Spencers, in March, 1598; but Malone deprives Chettle of his share. When Malone tells us that the second part of Thomas Strowde' was most likely the second part of The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, by John Day and Chettle, he is probably wrong, as there is a distinct entry by Henslowe of the second part of The Blind Beggar.' Chettle was concerned, in August, 1601, in 'mending' the play of Friar Rush, or the Proud Woman of Antwerp, and received ten shillings for his improvements. The Jane Shore, assigned to Chettle and Day in January, 1601-2, was only a revival of an older play, as Henslowe then gave forty shillings to those poets, in order that the booke of Shoare' might be now newly written for the Earl of Worcester's players.' It appears by an entry of £3, to buy a coat and other things' for Will Sommers, that Thomas Downton, or Dowton, was the actor

* Malone's Shakespeare by Boswell, iii. 307.

of the fool in the second part of Cardinal Wolsey,' by Chettle. In September, 1602, Chettle was engaged upon a play, called Mortimer, which Malone does not mention.

Chettle was not the sole author concerned in the historical play of Cardinal Wolsey, under date of 12th August, 1601, although Malone gives it to him alone: he had three coadjutors, viz., Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, and Wentworth Smith. At this time Munday must have been a poet of considerable experience, and in 1598 he had been called by Francis Meres the best plotter: ' he perhaps was skilful in sketching out the course and progress of the scenes, which were afterwards undertaken by different dramatists. That he was concerned in Cardinal Wolsey, we have under his own hand, as he signs, as follows, a receipt for money on account of it:

Anthony Mundy

Malone, without hesitation, gives to Munday the play called by Henslowe The Widow's Charm, which he supposed to be The Puritan, or the Widow of Watling Street, under a different title: the only entry regarding it runs thus, which, in fact, merely ascertains the Christian name of the writer:- Unto Antony, the poyete [poet] in earnest of a comody called the Widowes Charme, 10s.' Antony Wadeson was also a writer for Henslowe's company, and he may have been the person here intended.