likely to have planned the old-fashioned structure of Sir Thomas Wyatt-than Dekker. Against Dekker and Webster this certainly holds true; and, in the midst of our uncertainties, the conjecture may be allowed to stand as more persuasive than any alternative. Beyond this, Miss Hunt has not much of value to contribute. She hints a vague approval of Fleay's attribution of scenes 1-9 to Webster, 11-17 to Dekker. But she qualifies this by giving Dekker parts of 7 and 9, and probably 4, and Webster 10. The pathos of the trial-scene (16), she thinks, points to Dekker.

Her judgment is not very trustworthy. It is based on emotional rather than æsthetic groundsshe attributes, I mean, a tender scene to Dekker and a gloomy scene to Webster, because Dekker is a tender, and Webster a gloomy, dramatist.

Welcoming a suggestion of Dr Greg's, she finds the speeches of Wyatt in 6 and 10 very un-Dekkerish, and therefore gives these scenes to Webster. (Mr Pierce, more "scientifically " notices the same thing.) For myself, speaking with all due mistrust of human ability to pick out one author from another in these cases, I thought I too found a different note in these scenes. But if it is not Dekker's, it is as certainly neither the Webster's of 1612 nor the "Webster's" of the fancied Websterian parts of this play. It seems to me far more probably Heywood.1

The whole position is this. Sir Thomas Wyatt consists of the fragments of the first or of both of two 1 Note especially the word "ostend,” p. 194.

plays, one by Chettle, Dekker, Heywood, Smith, and Webster, the other certainly by Dekker, and probably by the others as well. It is issued as by Webster and Dekker-either because they originally had the larger share, or because they did the editing, or because their names were at the moment the more likely to secure a sale, or because they were known as the authors of the play to the publisher. In any case, it was not the custom to put more than two names to a play. On the whole, therefore, one must begin with an a priori probability that most of the play as we have it is by Webster and Dekker, but that some is by Heywood or Smith or Chettle. In addition, the state of the play (the text is very uneven, sometimes fairly good, sometimes terribly mangled), and its history of slashing and patching, make it likely that the different contributions are fairly well mixed together by now. In some places, certainly, a delicate reader will fancy he detects repeated swift changes between more than two styles.1

It is obvious, then, that it is very presumptuous to assign different portions of the play with any completeness to the different authors. Reading the play, with careful attention to style and atmosphere, I have seemed to myself to recognise in the bulk of two scenes and in one or two scattered places (e.g. the opening lines of the play) a voice that may well be that of the younger Webster. Taking, therefore, cautiously a certain amount of positive

1 e.g. the change towards the end of scene 11, at the top of page 196, after Suffolk's entry.

evidence from Dr Stoll and Mr Pierce, and comparing it with my own impression of the play and the general impression of other critics, I suggest the following conclusions as all that we can fairly pretend to be more than amiable dreaming. Webster probably wrote scene 2 and most of scene 16. No doubt he poured indistinguishably forth other parts of this commonplace bit of journalism; but, except one or two lines, it is impossible to pick them out. A good deal of the rest of the play is by Dekker. Heywood's hand is occasionally to be suspected.

APPENDIX D.-" WESTWARD HO" AND

"NORTHWARD HO"

These plays are so closely connected, and evidence about either reacts so much on the other, that it is convenient to consider them together.

Dates.

They can be dated fairly closely.

Westward Ho was registered to print on March 2nd, 1605. It was printed in 1607.

Northward Ho was registered on August 6th, 1607, and printed in that year.

Northward Ho contains an amiable farcical attack on Chapman.1 For this reason and others, it must have been written as an answer to Eastward Ho, which was registered to print September 4th, 1605, and appeared in several editions in that year, and was probably written in 1604, perhaps in 1605.2 Eastward Ho was written, again, more or less in

1 This is fairly conclusively proved by Dr Stoll (pp. 65-69). The only doubtful point is that Bellamont (whom we suppose to mean Chapman) is called "white" and "hoary." Chapman was only fortyseven in 1606. But even in this age, when people live so much more slowly, they are sometimes silver-haired before fifty. And the other evidence is very strong.

V. Eastward Ho, ed. F. E. Shelling. Belles Lettres Series, Introduction.

emulous succession to Westward Ho.1 So we have the order of the plays fairly certain. Dekker and Webster wrote theirs for the Children of Paul's; Eastward Ho was written for the rival company, the children of the Queen's Revels, by Chapman, with the help of Jonson and Marston.

3

Westward Ho, therefore, could have been written any time before March 1605. The probable date of Eastward Ho makes it slightly desirable to put the performance of Westward Ho back, at least, towards the beginning of 1604.5 There are various references; to Kemp's London to Norwich Dance (1600); 2 perhaps to James' Scotch Knights; and to the famous siege of Ostend.4 Ostend was taken in September 1604, and the second quotation, at least, looks as if it was written after that. It may, however, have been written during the last part of the siege. And these references may, of course, not be of the same date as the rest of the play. But it seems fairly safe to date it as 16035 or 1604, with a slight preference for the autumn of 1604.6

Northward Ho, then, must have been written in 1605, 1606, or 1607. In Day's The Isle of Gulls (printed 2 Westward Ho, p. 237.

1 V.

Eastward Ho. Prologue.

3 Westward Ho, pp. 217, 326. 5 The end of 1603, of course.

4 Westward Ho, pp. 210, 235. All the summer the plague was raging.

6 a. Dr Stoll (p. 63) finds in the Earl's discovery (Westward Ho, 233), of a hideous hag in the masked figure he had thought a beautiful woman, a possible reminiscence of Marston's Sophonisba, which may have been on the stage in 1603 or 1604. But the idea is a common enough one in all literatures. And if there is a debt, it might almost as easily be the other way. In any case, the date is not influenced.

b. If the autumn of 1604, then, of course, Eastward Ho must be put on to 1605.