[263] This could hardly be maintained as literally true were we to include the Latin plays of the Universities.  Of these, however, I propose to take merely incidental notice.  In no case do they appear to be of considerable importance, and they are, as a rule, only preserved in MSS. which are often difficult of access.  I may here mention one which reached the distinction of print, and is of a more regularly Italian structure than most.  The title-page reads:  ’Melanthe Fabula pastoralis acta cum Iacobus Magnae Brit.  Franc. & Hiberniae Rex, Cantabrigiam suam nuper inviseret, ibidemq; Musarum, atque eius animi gratia dies quinque Commoraretur.  Egerunt alumni Coll.  San. et Individuae Trinitatis.  Cantabrigiae.  Excudebat Cantrellus Legge.  Mart. 27. 1615.’  The play was acted, according to the invaluable John Chamberlain, on March 10, 1614-5, and appears to have made a very favourable impression.  It belongs to the series of entertainments which included the representation of Albumazar, and was to have included that of Phineas Fletcher’s Sicelides, had the king remained another night.  The author of Melanthe is said to have been ’Mr. Brookes,’ probably the Dr. Samuel Brooke who had produced the already-mentioned translation of Bonarelli’s Filli di Sciro two years before.  See Nichols’ Progresses of James I, iii. p. 55.

[264] Fleay considers the Faithful Shepherdess a joint production of Beaumont and Fletcher.  The only external evidence in favour of this theory is a remark of Jonson’s reported by Drummond:  ’Flesher and Beaumont, ten yeers since, hath [sic] written the Faithfull Shipheardesse, a Tragicomedie, well done.’  Considering that the same authority makes Jonson ascribe the Inner Temple Masque to Fletcher, his statement as to the Faithful Shepherdess cannot be allowed much weight, while I hardly think that the fact of Beaumont having prefixed commendatory verses to Fletcher in the original edition can be set aside as lightly as Fleay appears to think.  He relies chiefly upon internal evidence, but in his Biographical Chronicle, at any rate, does not venture upon a detailed division.  For myself, I can only discover one hand in the play, and that hand Fletcher’s.  Fleay places the date of representation before July, 1608, on account of an outbreak of the plague lasting from then to Nov. 1609, but A. H. Thorndike (The Influence of Beaumont and Fletcher on Shakspere, Worcester, Mass., 1901, p. 14) has shown good reason for believing that dramatic performances were much less interfered with by the plague than Fleay imagined.