to exclaim “Would I had one of Kemp’s shoes to throw after you!”viii:1 and again in his Epigrams:—

So also William Rowley in the prefatory Address to a very rare tract called A Search for Money, &c., 1609, 4to.:—“Yee haue beene either eare or eye-witnesses or both to many madde voiages made of late yeares, both by sea and land, as the trauell to Rome with the returne in certaine daies, the wild morrise to Norrige,” &c. And Brathwait in Remains after Death, &c. 1618, 12mo. has the following lines:—

  Towards the end of a Nine daies wonder, Kemp announces his intention of setting out shortly on a “great journey;”ix:1 but as no record of this second feat has come down to us, we may conclude that it was never accomplished.ix:2

  The date of his death has not been determined. Malone, in the uncertainty on this point, could only adduce the following passage of Dekker’s Guls Horne-booke, 1609, from which, he says, “it may be presumed”ix:3 that Kemp was then deceased: “Tush, tush, Tarleton, Kemp, nor Singer, nor all the litter of fooles that now come drawling behinde them, neuer plaid the Clownes more naturally then the arrantest Sot of you all.”ix:4 George Chalmers, however, discovered an entry in the burial register of St. Saviour’s, Southwark—“1603, November 2d William Kempe, a man;”ix:5 and since the name of Kemp does not occur in the license granted by King James, 19th May, 1603, to the Lord Chamberlain’s Company (who in consequence of that instrument were afterwards denominated his Majesty’s Servants) there is great probability that the said entry relates to the comedian, and that he had been carried off by the plague of that year.

Two scenes of two early dramas, which exhibit Kemp in propria persona, must necessarily form a portion of the present essay. The Retvrne from Pernassvs: Or The Scourge of Simony. Publiquely acted by the Students in Saint Johns Colledge in Cambridge, 1606,x:1 4to. furnishes the first extract: