GRAD UndergraduateTM PR 2482 •R4 1904 BUUR "What things have we seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they came And had resolved to live a fool the rest Master Francis Beaumont to Ben Jonson. N Henslowe's Diary, among the curious items which Alleyn's fellow manager in the Fortune and other theatres set down concerning his transactions in the plays of the time, the name of a certain" Mr. Dickers," will be found under date 8th of January, 1597. In this way, the adventure of Thomas Dekker into the precarious field of dramatic authorship is first recorded for us. The entry refers to some twenty shillings "lent unto Thomas Dowton " to buy a book of Dekker's, no doubt the MS. of some play written by him, the name of which, however, is not given. A week later, a second entry notes again a disbursement, this time of four pounds, also for a book of his "called Fayeton" (Phaeton), possibly a further part of the same work. The third entry referring to him is ominous: "Lent unto the companey, the 4 of febreary 1598, to disecharge Mr. Dicker owt of the cownter in the powltrey, the some of fortie shilling I saye dd to Thomas Dowton. In the sorry indication of these three entries showing first the promising emergence of the your playwright, and then immediately the coming d disaster upon him, and his being lodged for debt in the Counter in the Poultry," we have at once the key to Dekker's career. Dekker, perhaps the most original and most striking figure among the lesser known men of that brilliant array which follows Marlowe, is at the same time one of the most unfortunate in his life and its artistic outcome, judged by the standard of his own genius It was as if Fortune, to take a figure from his own play, having first presented him with the gift which, as a poet of the time, he most desired,—the playwright's great opportunity, then turned upon him, and said,— "But now go dwell with cares, and quickly die." If, however, he lived with cares, he laughed at them, and he was too strong to let them kill him outright. But, nevertheless, there they were: they never perhaps quite upset that undaunted good-humour of his, but they defeated him as an artist, they allied themselves insidiously with his own natural weaknesses to defeat the consumma. tion of a really great poetic faculty. Dekker, however, is one of those authors whose personal effect tends to outgo the purely artistic one. He has the rare gift of putting heart into |