Antonio’s Revenge: “John Marston”
Every Man Out of his Humor: “Ben. Johnson”
Fair Maid of the West: “Thomas Haywood”
An Humorous Day’s Mirth: “George Chapman”
A Mad World My Masters: “Thomas Middleton”
The Noble Soldier: “Sam. Rowly”
Of these we should particularly note The Noble Soldier. Samuel Rowley was not a well-known playwright, and his name surely drew few patrons to Archer’s shop. Archer’s aim, again, apparently was to report authors accurately.
More tellingly, Archer for the first time correctly identifies six authors of early plays for whom no information appears on the title pages of the extant quartos:
Campaspe: “John Lilly”
Endymion: “John Lilly”
A Game at Chess: “Thomas Middleton”
Michaelmas Term: “Thomas Middleton”
The Spanish Tragedy: “Tho. Kyte”
Titus Andronicus: “Will. Shakespeare”
A good deal on this list is instructive here. First, Archer is impressively acquainted with what plays actually were written by Middleton. No prior surviving published source names Middleton as the author of A Game at Chess, written in 1624 and for which I have made a slight exception to our usual focus on earlier plays. Little prior external evidence of any kind connects Middleton with Michaelmas Term. Rogers and Ley, often a source for Archer, actually name George Chapman as that play’s author. And, as noted earlier, both quartos of A Mad World My Masters offer as the author only the initials “T.M.” Thus, whatever source of information Archer used regarding Middleton’s authorship of plays, that source was very well informed.
Similarly, with the exception of Titus Andronicus, Archer’s information about the other authors on this list is striking. Lyly is not, I believe, named as the author of either Campaspe or Endymion by any prior surviving published source. Apart from Archer’s list, his authorship of the two plays is supported only by reasonable inferences from external evidence and by internal stylistic evidence. Kyd is identified as the author of The Spanish Tragedy only incidentally and casually by Heywood in the course of An Apology for Actors. Archer probably did not read Apology for Actors in such fine detail as to get his information there. Nor was this any lucky guesswork by Archer or his sources, as the names of neither Lyly nor Kyd could have been picked for the purpose of drawing patrons to Archer’s shop.
Two author attributions on Archer’s list might seem to be errors, but may not be. The list attributes the play “Guise” to John Webster. We might think that the play was Marlowe’s Massacre at Paris. But in fact Webster did write a play “Guise,” as he tells us in his dedication to The Devil’s Law Case. Webster’s play is now lost, as is the quarto edition which Archer presumably was describing. The list attributes the “Iron age, both parts” to Thomas Dekker. The plays presumably were Heywood’s. But Dekker may well have had a hand in them. Much of Heywood’s second part, for example, concerns Agamemnon’s ill-greeted return and Orestes’s subsequent revenge. Dekker and Chettle wrote a play on the same subject, as we know from Henslowe’s Diary.
Now, some actual errors do appear on Archer’s list that cannot be assigned either to Rogers and Ley or to extant quarto title pages. All of those errors may, however, be accounted for based on reasons that do not account for attribution of Revenger’s Tragedy to Tourneur. Three errors in the list seem to result not from errors in Archer’s manuscript, but from mistakes by the print compositor in reading the manuscript. Both Peele’s Arraignment of Paris and Middleton’s A Trick to Catch the Old One are attributed to Shakespeare because the compositor’s eye skipped Archer’s intended alignment of the title and author columns. Archer apparently intended to attribute not Arraignment of Paris, but Arden of Feversham, to Shakespeare, a different sort of error discussed next. The compositor apparently misread the manuscript “Thomas Dekker” as “Thomas Barker” in the attribution of Old Fortunatus.
Several errors on the list arose because either Archer or his sources misinterpreted information reported on the title pages of the quarto prints. Both Thomas Lord Cromwell and The Puritan are misattributed to Shakespeare presumably because their title pages state that the plays are “Written by W.S.” Archer meant to attribute Arden of Feversham to Shakespeare presumably because the title pages reports that the play’s two ruffians are “Blacke-Will and Shakebag.” An opposite error occurs in one of two attributions of Love’s Labor’s Lost. In one entry Archer correctly identifies the play as Shakespeare’s, as do the 1598 and 1631 quartos. But the 1598 quarto’s title page makes it clear that there was an earlier, now lost, edition, which is being “corrected and augmented.” That now lost edition apparently reported only the author’s initials “W.S.” In a second entry for Love’s Labor’s Lost Archer has the author as “Will. Sampson.”
Other information on quarto title pages may have led to similar results. Archer’s list attributes The Merry Devil of Edmonton to Shakespeare presumably because all six quarto editions report that the play was performed by the King’s Company, Shakespeare’s own. Mucedorus is similarly attributed to Shakespeare presumably because all of the many editions from 1610 onward state that the play was performed by the same company. The list attributes The Maid’s Metamorphosis to Lyly, although it probably was not written by him, presumably because the title page reports that it was first performed by the Paul’s Children, as were almost all the plays that undoubtedly were written by Lyly. The play’s title, in addition, resembles that of Lyly’s undoubted Love’s Metamorphosis. Likewise, the similarity of its title to Jonson’s known work also presumably underlay attribution of Every Woman in her Humor to Ben Jonson.