Exec.  Is it well don mine Heeres?

1 Lord.  Somewhat too much; you have strooke his fingers, too, But we forgive your haste.  Draw in the body; And Captaines, we discharge your Companies.

Vand.  Make cleere the Court.—­Vaine glory, thou art gon!  And thus must all build on Ambition.

2 Lord.  Farwell, great hart; full low thy strength now lyes:  He that would purge ambition this way dies.

Exeunt.

INTRODUCTION TO CAPTAIN UNDERWIT.

This anonymous Comedy is printed, for the first time, from Harl.  MS. 7,650,—­a small quarto of eighty-nine leaves.  I have followed Halliwell (Dictionary of Old Plays) in adopting the title, Captain Underwit.  There is no title-page to the MS.

An editor with plenty of leisure on his hands would find ample opportunities in Captain Underwit for discursive comment.  Sometimes I have been obliged to pass over odd phrases and out-of-the-way allusions without a line of explanation; but in the index at the end of the fourth volume I hope to settle some difficulties that at present are left standing.

The date of the play I take to be circ. 1640 or 1642.  In I. 1 there is a mention of the “league at Barwick and the late expeditions,” where the reference can only be to Charles I.’s march into Scotland in the spring of 1639, and to the so-called Pacification of Berwick.  Again, in III. 3, there is an allusion to the Newmarket Cup.  Historians of the Turf say that Newmarket races date from 1640; but this statement is incorrect, for in Shirley’s Hyde Park (V. 1),—­a play licensed in 1632 and printed in 1637,—­mention is made of a certain “Bay Tarrall that won the Cup at Newmarket.”  We find also an allusion to the “great ship” (III. 3), which was built in 1637.  Of Mr. Adson’s “new ayres” (IV. 1) I know very little.  He brought out in 1621 a volume of “Courtly Masquing Ayres,” but published nothing later,—­although, of course, he may have continued writing long afterwards.  Hawkins and Mr. Chappell are altogether silent about Adson’s achievements.

Gerard Langbaine tells us that Shirley left at his death some plays in manuscript:  I have little doubt, or rather no doubt at all, that Captain Underwit is one of them.  In the notes I have pointed out several parallelisms to passages in Shirley’s plays; and occasionally we find actual repetitions, word for word.  But apart from these strong proofs, it would be plain from internal evidence that the present piece is a domestic comedy of Shirley’s, written in close imitation of Ben Jonson.  All the characters are old acquaintances.  Sir Richard Huntlove, who longs to be among his own tenants and eat his own beef in the country; his lady, who loves the pleasures of the town, balls in the Strand, and masques; Device, the fantastic gallant,—­these are well-known figures in Shirley’s plays.  No other playwright of that day could have given us such exquisite poetry as we find in Captain Underwit.  The briskness, too, and cleverness of the dialogue closely recall Shirley; but it must be owned that there are few plays of Shirley’s written with such freedom, not to say grossness.