tory verses, and of Webster's dedicatory letter, as well as, and more forcibly than, the avowal of the title-page,1 go to show that this edition of the play is as Webster would have had it. It must, therefore, be fairly near the original version (1613); containing most of that, with whatever of subsequent additions or changes Webster supposed improvements. And we cannot doubt that practically all of the play, as we have it, is by Webster.

1"The perfect and exact Copy, with divers things printed, that the length of the play would not bear in presentment."

APPENDIX H.-"A MONUMENTAL COLUMN"

Date.

The question of the date of A Monumental Column is discussed in Appendix G in connection with The Duchess of Malfi. It must have been written within some six months after November 1612; probably about March 1613.

Sources.

There is, of course, no special source for a poem like this. It repeats the usual thoughts in elegies of its kind; and borrows largely in expressions and in general style from Donne; also from Sidney, Chapman, and Ben Jonson.

APPENDIX I.-"THE DEVIL'S LAW-CASE"

Date.

The Devil's Law-Case was published in 1623. There is little evidence to decide the date of its writing.

(1) There is a reference (IV. 2) to an affray in the East Indies:

"How! go to the East Indies! and so many Hollanders gone to fetch sauce for their pickled herrings! Some have been peppered there too lately."

This almost certainly refers to a Dutch attack in August 1619 on some English ships engaged in loading pepper. News seems to have taken from nine to fifteen months to travel between England and the East Indies. London might learn, then, of this pepper business any time in the latter half of 1620. The word "lately," and still more the comparative unimportance and transience of the event, suggest that the form of the play in which this sentence occurred was being acted towards the end of 1620 or in the first half of 1621. If that form was the only form, we cannot tell; and we have no right to assume it. The whole of the reference to the East Indies is comprised in a few sentences in this one place. It is entirely unnecessary to the plot, and it could easily have been inserted at a moment's notice.

(2) It is said that the chief idea in the play, Leonora's attempt to bastardise her son by confessing a long-past adultery that as a matter of fact never took place, resembles stories in the pseudo-Marlovian Lust's Dominion, The Spanish Curate, by Fletcher and Massinger, and The Fair Maid of the Inn, by Massinger and another. The Fair Maid of the Inn was probably not written before 1624. The Spanish Curate was written between March and October 1622. It is only just possible that The Devil's Law-Case can have been written after it.1 Gerardo the Unfortunate Spaniard, an English translation from the Spanish, which appeared in March 1622 and was the source of The Spanish Curate, may also have suggested this part of The Devil's Law-Case. But resemblances are tricky things. This one, closely examined, turns out to depend largely on having the confession of a past misdemeanour at a public trial. And to bring in a public trial is exactly the thing that would independently occur to the mind of a dramatist of circa 1620, if he imagined or heard of the rest of the story. The only resemblance that really may mean anything is to Lust's Dominion, where a widow has a grudge against her son, because of a man she is in love with. So, to defame him and deprive him of the inheritance, she invents, with details, and publicly confesses, a story which makes him a bastard. The motives and feelings of the characters in this play correspond far more than in those others, to The Devil's Law-Case situation. It is true Lust's Dominion is an 1 V. Stoll, p. 32.

old play of 1590. But it may have been revived and revised many times. Perhaps it "suggested" the idea of The Devil's Law-Case-in any of the million ways, direct and indirect, in which, in real life, ideas are suggested. But the truth is that, unless a very certain source is known, the search for the suggestion of so unexotic an idea as this becomes rather foolish. A halfremembered story, a friend's anecdote, an inspirationanything may be responsible for any proportion of it. It may be useful to trace John Keats' hippocrene; not his porridge.

(3)1 The title-page says that the play was "approvedly well acted by Her Majesty's Servants." This company, which also performed The White Devil, was called by this name until March 1619, when Queen Anne died. It appears to have gone gradually to pieces after that. Thomas Heywood, for instance, seems to have left it by 1622. In July 1622, it was reconstructed, with children as well as adults, as "The Players of the Revels." It probably broke up in the next year. The point is, under what name did it go between 1619 and 1622? Under the old one of "Her Majesty's Servants," thinks Dr. Stoll. Mr. Murray, the latest investigator of the history of the Dramatic Companies, says it was called by the name of "The Red Bull," its theatre. What evidence there is seems to indicate this. The corresponding (or same) company on tour was generally known as "The late Queen Anne's

1 For this paragraph v. English Dramatic Companies, 1558-1642, by John Tucker Murray: esp. vol. i. pp. 193-200.