quarto printed by Creede in roman type of a size approximating to modern pica (20 ll. = 84 mm.). Of this four copies are known to survive. That in the British Museum wants the leaf A 4, which has been supplied in very inaccurate modern reprint. Fortunately the leaf is present in the Dyce copy at South Kensington, though in this H 1 is defective (a corner being supplied in not quite accurate facsimile) and sheet K is wrongly perfected. Another copy, formerly at Bridgewater House, is now in the possession of Mr. Henry E. Huntington; while a fourth is in a collected volume once in the possession of Charles II, which formed lot 8258 in the Huth Sale (25 June 1920). All four want the first leaf, which was presumably blank, except perhaps for a signature. It has not been possible to use more than the first two copies mentioned in preparing the present reprint.

The title-page bears the name of Robert Greene as author, together with a motto used by him in other works, which suggests that the manuscript may have been in some manner prepared for press before his death in 1592. Three passages from the play are quoted, rather inaccurately, in England’s Parnassus, 1600, above Greene’s name. The title-page also states that the play had been ‘sundrie times publikely plaide’, without, however, mentioning any company.

The plot is entirely unhistorical, and P. A. Daniel and W. Creizenach independently traced its source to the first novel of the third day of the Ecatommiti of Giraldi Cintio, a story in which, however, the identity of the characters is quite different. Whether Greene was also acquainted with Cintio’s play Arrenopia, based on the same story, is not known.

List of Doubtful and Irregular Readings.

The play, evidently printed from a much altered and probably illegible manuscript, abounds in errors of every description. The following list is confined to such readings as are to some extent doubtful in the original and to a few literal misprints which might otherwise perhaps be thought due to the reprint. No irregularities recorded by previous editors are included. No variations of any importance have been found between the two copies collated.