much in want of money; but, if we may take his word for it, such does not seem to have been the case in 1612, when he printed his play, "Woman is a Weathercock." It was usual at that date for authors to procure sums for dedications; but Field, instead of inscribing it to any individual, who might have rewarded him for the distinction, addressed it “to any Woman that hath been no Weathercock," and boastingly asserted that he did so, "because forty shillings I care not for." Whatever might be his circumstances in 1612, he had good reason, in 1613 and 1614, to care for even a smaller sum than forty shillings; and we need not doubt that his thoughtlessness and extravagance kept him poor, in spite of the income he was able to earn as an actor, besides the additions he could make to it as an author. When "Woman is a Weathercock" was printed, it was preceded by commendatory verses by Chapman, who had been bound to Field for his excellent and popular performance of "Bussy d'Ambois" and other plays, and who affectionately terms him "his loved son." It was common at that period for elder poets to allow younger men to address them as "father:" such was the poetical relationship between Ben Jonson, Thomas Randolph, and James Howell; and Field even writes to old Henslowe (who was certainly no poet) as his father, and subscribes two out of his three existing epistles "your loving son."

Although "Woman is a Weathercock" was Field's earliest play, it was not his earliest production. Fletcher's "Faithful Shepherdess" was brought out not later than 1610, and printed without date some years afterwards: it was preceded by four copies of commendatory verses, the first in order, and not the last in merit, being six stanzas by Field. They are subscribed only N. F. in the earliest quarto, (a trifling particular with which the Rev. Mr. Dyce does not appear to have been acquainted) but when they were reprinted, "Nat. Field" is found appended to them. There can be no doubt that he 1 Works of Beaumont and Fletcher, ii., p. 7.

was on the most intimate and friendly terms with the dramatic poets of his day; and it may be conjectured, that it was soon after he had displayed his own capabilities as a writer of plays that he joined Massinger in the composition of "The Fatal Dowry." Gifford, as has been remarked, "with that zeal for the author under his hands that always distinguished him, ," would undervalue Field's contributions to this play, and attribute to him all the parts he considered inferior to Massinger; but the two pieces which have come down to us, in which Field was unassisted, show that he was possessed of no small skill as a dramatist, and of no ordinary powers as a poet.

"Amends for Ladies" is even superior to "Woman is a Weathercock," to which it may be said to form a kind of sequel; but it is not our business here to enter into any criticism upon them, to compare them with each other, or with contemporaneous productions for the stage. "Amends for Ladies," in which the writer endeavoured to compensate for the satirical attack upon the female sex in his earlier play, was, as we have already stated, not published until 1618, but that it was in being, and had probably been acted, before 1612, we have the author's own evidence, in the preliminary matter to his "Woman is a Weathercock," where he tells “ "any Woman that hath been no Weathercock" that, "if she have been constant, and be so, all I will expect from her for my pains is, that she will continue so but till my next play be printed, wherein she shall see what amends I have made to her and all the sex." There is an authority which may throw back the composition of "Amends for Ladies" to 1609 or 1610, and

1 See note to the introduction to "Woman is a Weathercock," printed with four other dramas in a supplementary volume to "Dodsley's Old Plays," in 1829. One of the four other dramas is Field's "Amends for Ladies." As every reader is thus enabled to judge of their merits, it has not been thought necessary to swell our volume by any detailed examination of them.

consequently "Woman is a Weathercock" to even an earlier date.1 We allude to a passage in Anthony Stafford's "Admonition to a discontented Romanist," in his "Niobe dissolved into a Nilus," 1611, 12mo., where he says, in apparent allusion to the title of Field's second play, "No, no, sir: I will never write an Amends for Women, till I see women amended."

From his portrait, and from other circumstances, we may judge that he was what the ladies, in the time of Wycherley and later, would have called "a pretty fellow ;" and he was probably a considerable favourite with the fair sex. In a MS. in the Ashmolean Museum, and in other common-place books of the reign of James I. and Charles I., we meet with the following punning epigram, which evidently relates to some undue familiarity between Field and a lady, who is there called "the Lady May," but respecting whom we have no farther information it is entitled as if Field had been the writer of the lines, but they contradict the supposition.

FIELD, THE PLAYER, ON HIS MISTRESS, THE LADY MAY.

It is the fair and merry month of May,

That clothes the Field in all his rich array,
Adorning him with colours better dyed
Than any king can wear, or any bride.

But May is almost spent, the Field grows dun
With too much gazing on that May's hot sun;

And if mild Zephirus, with gentle wind,

Vouchsafe not his calm breath, and the clouds kind

Distil their honey-drops, his heat to 'lay,

Poor Field will burn e'en in the midst of May.

John Taylor, the water-poet, has inserted a joke in his "Wit and Mirth," printed without date, but about 1620, in

1 In his address "to the Reader," before his "Woman is a Weathercock," Field uses this expression-"I send you a comedy here as good as I could then make," as if it had been written some time before.

which Field is made a party, and in which he is represented as riding through the streets of London: it runs thus -"Master Field, the player, riding up Fleet-street a great pace, a gentleman called to him, and asked him what play was played that day? He (being angry to be stayed on so frivolous a demand) answered, that he might see what play was to be played upon every post. "I cry you mercy (said the gentleman); I took you for a post, you rode so fast." This quiblet," as Taylor calls it, and which he was perhaps the first to publish, afterwards ran the gauntlet of various jestbooks: it was stolen, among others, by the collector of " Hugh Peters' Jests," and finally made its appearance in "Westminster Quibbles," printed late in the seventeenth century, where it is attributed to an actor of the name of Wallop. It did not cease to be repeated, until the practice of exposing playbills on posts became generally discontinued.

66

We have shown that Field was probably in full feather, and not in want of money, when he published his "Woman is a Weathercock," in 1612; and it seems likely, from an expression in the address "to the reader" before the same play, that at that date he did not contemplate remaining long on the stage "if (he observes) thou hast anything to say to me, thou knowest where to hear of me for a year or two, and no more, I assure thee." We may speculate that his indiscretion, and his inability to obtain a subsistence independently of the stage, induced him to continue upon it; and accordingly we have seen him attaching himself to Henslowe and Meade at Paris Garden, when it was made convertible into a playhouse about 1614, and we may presume that he was the leader of their company at least until 1617, when his agreement with them would expire.

Field having played with Burbadge in several of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, in which he was an original performer, that is to say, had no predecessor in the parts he undertook, we may be sure that he had firmly attached himself to the King' players

some time before 1619, which is the earliest date at which his name occurs in any extant patent. Burbadge was just dead at the time it was granted; but, as we have noticed in his memoir, (p. 47) his name was nevertheless accidentally included in the enumeration of the royal actors. We give

it

the complete list, in order that the position Field occupies in may be clearly seen it was by no means prominent, and he is postponed even to Tooley and Underwood, the former of whom never arrived at any considerable distinction, while the latter had been one of Field's contemporaries nineteen years before, in the performance of "Cynthia's Revels:"

All these, and more, are found at the commencement of the folio of Shakespeare's works in 1623: of five we have already inserted in our volume such particulars as are known, and of the rest we shall have occasion to speak hereafter, so that we need not now pause to criticize any of them, or to enter into conjectures why some are placed later in the enumeration than would seem due to their rank. One of these is unquestionably Field, who perhaps lost some ground in the profession during the three years he was under Henslowe, when he was disputing with the old manager, and when he was evidently struggling against poverty, perhaps occasioned by his own. extravagance and irregularity.

From the registers of St. Anne and St. Andrew, Blackfriars (which Malone and Chalmers never consulted, although a parish where it is natural to suppose some of our early actors would reside), we learn that Field must have been married before 1619, because he had a daughter baptized on