Volume Xi Part 1 (1/2)

A Select Collection of Old English Plays.

VOL 11.

by W. Carew Hazlitt.

A WOMAN IS A WEATHERc.o.c.k.

_EDITION._

_A Woman is a Weather-c.o.c.ke. A New Comedy. As it was acted before the King in White-Hall. And diuers times Priuately at the White-Friers, by the Children of her Maiesties Reuels. Written by Nat: Field._ Si natura negat, faciat indagnatio [sic] versum.

_Printed at London, for Iohn Budge, and are to be sold at the great South doore of Paules, and at Brittaines Bursse._ 1612.

4.

The old copy is very carelessly printed, and nearly all the corruptions and mistakes were retained in the former edition (1828).

[MR COLLIER'S PREFACE.]

Considering the celebrity that Nathaniel Field has acquired in consequence of his connection with Ma.s.singer in writing ”The Fatal Dowry,” it is singular that the two plays in which he was unaided by any contemporary dramatist should not yet have been reprinted, if only to a.s.sist the formation of a judgment as to the probable degree of Ma.s.singer's obligation. ”A Woman is a Weatherc.o.c.k” and its sequel, ”Amends for Ladies,” are the productions of no ordinary poet. In comic scenes Field excels Ma.s.singer, who was not remarkable for his success in this department of the drama; and in those of a serious character he may be frequently placed on a footing of equality.[1]

Reed was of opinion that Field the actor was not the same person who joined Ma.s.singer in ”The Fatal Dowry,” and who wrote the two plays above mentioned; but the discovery of Henslowe's MSS. shows that they were intimately connected in authors.h.i.+p and misfortune. The joint letter of Nathaniel Field, Rob. Daborne, and Philip Ma.s.singer to Henslowe, soliciting a small loan to relieve them from temporary imprisonment, has been so often republished (see Malone's Shakespeare, by Boswell, iii.

337) that it is unnecessary to repeat it here.[2] Field, who penned the whole body of the letter, speaks in it of himself, both as an author and as an actor. It is without date, and Malone conjectured that it was written between 1612 and 1615. But from the Dedication to ”A Woman is a Weatherc.o.c.k,” we should conclude that in 1612 Field was not distressed for money. He there tells ”any woman that hath been no weatherc.o.c.k” that he ”cared not for forty s.h.i.+llings,” the sum then usually given by the person to whom the play was inscribed. This a.s.sertion, perhaps, was only a vain boast, while the fact might be, either that he could not get anybody to patronise ”so fameless a pen,” or that, although he might not just at that moment be in want of ”forty s.h.i.+llings,” he might stand in need of it very soon afterwards, according to the customary irregular mode of living of persons of his pursuits and profession.

It might be inferred from a pa.s.sage in the address ”to the Reader,” that ”A Woman is a Weatherc.o.c.k”[3] was written some time before it was printed; and from the dedication of the same play, we learn that Field's ”Amends for Ladies,” if not then also finished, was fully contemplated by the author under that t.i.tle. An allusion to the Gunpowder Treason of 1605 is made in the first act of ”A Woman is a Weatherc.o.c.k;” but it could not have been produced so early.

Nathaniel Field was originally one of the Children of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel. Malone tells us that he played in ”Cynthia's Revels” in 1601; but we have it on the authority of Ben Jonson himself, in the folio of 1616, that that ”comical satire” was acted in 1600. In 1601 Field performed in ”The Poetaster,” and in 1608 he appeared in ”Epicaene,”

which purports to have been represented by the ”Children of her Majesty's Revels,” for so those of Queen Elizabeth's Chapel were then called. In 1600 Field was, perhaps, one of the younger children, for in 1609 all the names of the company but his own were changed, many no doubt having outgrown their situations. He was, therefore, evidently a very young man when he published his ”Woman is a Weatherc.o.c.k” in 1612.

Only one edition of it is known, but ”Amends for Ladies” was twice published by the same stationer, viz., in 1618 and 1639. Mr Gifford conjectured very reasonably that Field had a.s.sisted Ma.s.singer in writing ”The Fatal Dowry” before 1623.[4] He belonged to the Blackfriars company, and Fleckno speaks of him as a performer of great distinction.[5] According to the portrait in Dulwich College, he had rather a feminine look, and early in his career undertook female parts, which he afterwards abandoned, and obtained much celebrity as the hero of Chapman's ”Bussy d'Ambois,” originally brought out in 1607. In a prologue to the edition of 1641, Field is spoken of as the player ”whose action _first_ did give it name.” It has also been supposed that he was dead in 1641, because in the same prologue, it is a.s.serted ”Field is gone,” but the expression is equivocal. The probability seems to be that he quitted the profession early, and in the address to ”A Woman is a Weatherc.o.c.k,” he gives a hint that he will only be heard of in it ”for a year or two, and no more.”[6]

”Amends for Ladies” will be found, on the whole, a superior performance to ”A Woman is a Weatherc.o.c.k,” and if the order of merit only had been consulted, it ought to have been first reprinted in this collection.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Mr Gifford, with that zeal for the author under his hands which always distinguished him (and without a single reference to Field's una.s.sisted comedies which, in fact, have remained unnoticed by everybody), attributes to Field, in ”The Fatal Dowry,” all that he thinks unworthy his notion of Ma.s.singer. We are to recollect, however, that Field continued one of the Children of the Revels as late as 1609, and that when ”A Woman is a Weatherc.o.c.k” was printed in 1612, he must have been scarcely of age.

[2] Two other letters from Field to Henslowe are printed for the first time in Malone's Shakespeare, by Boswell, xxi. 395 and 404. One is subscribed ”Your loving and obedient son,” and the other ”Your loving son,” and both request advances of money; the first on a play, in the writing of which Field was engaged with Robert Daborne, and the second, in consequence of Field having been ”taken on an execution of 30.” They have no dates, but others with which they are found are in 1613.