Some few of the personal particulars, here omitted, Nash supplies in the course of this play. [In 1676 a pamphlet was printed, purporting falsely to be] “A pleasant History of the Life and death of Will Summers; how he came first to be known at court, and by what means he got to be King Henry the Eighth’s ‘Jester.’” It was reprinted by Harding in 1794, with an engraving from an old portrait, supposed to be Will Summer; but if it be authentic, it does not at all support Armin’s description of him, that he was “lean and hollow-eyed.”  Many of the jests are copied from the French and Italian; and [almost all] of them have been assigned also to Scoggin and Tarlton.  One or two of these are introduced into S. Rowley’s “When you see me you know me,” a historical comedy, first printed in 1605, in which Will Summer plays a prominent part.

[18] Hor.  Lib. i.  Epist. 16, I, 62.

[19] Dick Huntley was, perhaps, the book-holder or prompter who is subsequently mentioned, and whom Will Summer, in the licence of his character, calls by his name.  Perhaps his “cousin Ned” was another of the actors.  Harry Baker is spoken of in the scene, where Vertumnus is despatched for Christmas and Backwinter.

[20] [The tract here referred to is Robert Copland’s poem, called “Jyl of Breyntford’s Testament.”  See Hazlitt’s “Handbook,” p. 122.] Julian of Brentford, or, as she is here called, Gyllian of Braynford, seems to have been an old woman who had the reputation of possessing supernatural power.  In Henslowe’s MSS., a play by Thomas Downton and Samuel Ridley, called “Friar Fox and Gillian of Brentford,” is mentioned under date of February 1598-9, but it was acted, as appears by the same authority, as early as 5th January 1592.  She is noticed in “Westward Hoe!” 1607, where Clare says:  “O Master Linstock, ’tis no walking will serve my turn:  have me to bed, good, sweet Mistress Honeysuckle.  I doubt that old hag Gillian of Braineford has bewitched me.”  Sig.  G 4.

Julian of Brentford’s will had been spoken of before by Nash in his epistle “to the Gentlemen Students of both Universities,” prefixed to Greene’s “Menaphoii,” in 1589.  “But so farre discrepant is the idle vsage of our unexperienced and illiterated Punies from this prescription, that a tale of Joane a Brainfords Will, and the vnlucky frumenty, will be as soone entertained into their Libraries as the best Poeme that euer Tasso eternisht.”

[21] Camden, in his “Annals of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth,” thus speaks of the ravages of the plague in 1592-3, “For this whole year the sickness raged violently in London, Saturn passing through the extreme parts of Cancer and the head of Leo, as it did in the year 1563; in so much, that when the year came about, there died of the sickness and other diseases in the city and suburbs, 17,890 persons, besides William Roe, Mayor, and three Aldermen; so that Bartholomew Fair was not kept, and Michaelmas term was held at St Alban’s, twenty miles from London.”