xviii Editor's Preface 



in Shirley's plays ; and occasionally we find actual repetitions 

 word for word. But apart from these strong proofs, it would 

 be plain from internal evidence that the present piece is a 

 domestic comedy of Shirley's, written in close imitation of 

 Ben Jonson. All the characters are old acquaintances. 

 Sir Richard Huntlove, who longs to be among his own tenants, 

 and eat his own beef in the country ; his lady who loves the 

 pleasures of the town, balls in the Strand, and masques ; 

 Device, the fantastic gallant, — these are well known figures 

 in Shirley's plays. No other playwright of that day could 

 have given us such exquisite poetry as we find in Captain 

 Underwit. The briskness, too, and cleverness of the dialogue 

 closely recall Shirley ; but it must be owned that there are 

 few plays of Shirley's written with such freedom, not to say 

 grossness.' 



Now this anoymous play which Mr. Bullen, on internal 

 evidence only, attributes to Shirley, is Newcastle's Country 

 Captain. There are a few verbal differences between the 

 version printed in 1649 and that printed in 1883, but that is 

 all. Mr. Bullen's remarks on the style are very just, and it 

 seems clear that much of the play was the work of Shirley. 

 Some of the verses interspersed are undoubtedly Newcastle's, 

 he wrote many passages, and doubtless conceived the plan of 

 the play, but to fit it for the stage he had to call in the aid of 

 an expert dramatist, and owed more to his assistant than he 

 owned. As we shall see two other dramatists subsequently 

 collaborated with him in a similar fashion. 



Newcastle's relations with Davenant have already been 

 mentioned. It is very likely that the poet owed his post in 

 Newcastle's army to the recommendation of the Queen rather 

 than to the merits of his verse 1 . It is somewhat remarkable 

 that Davenant makes no mention of the Duke in his poems, 

 and that, with the exception of a brief poem on the marriage 

 of one of the Duke's daughters, there is no trace of this connec- 

 tion in his works. Dryden, who also shared the favours of 

 Newcastle, takes the opportunity, in his florid dedication of 

 The Mock Astrologer to the Duke, to refer to his kindnesses to 

 former poets. ' The manes of Jonson and Davenant seem to 

 require from me, that those favours which you placed on them, 

 and which they wanted opportunity to own in public, yet 



1 Letters of Queen Henrietta Maria, ed. Green, p. 134. 



