Wine, Beere, 



II. Date and Authorship 



The ascription of Wine, Beere, and Ale, on the title page of the 

 first edition, to Gallobelgicus and Mercurius Brittanicus conveys no 

 trustworthy information regarding either its authorship or its source. 

 The names are obviously mere humorous adaptations of the pseu- 

 donyms used by the publishers of two contemporary news books; 

 Mercurius Brittanicus being the first English newspaper, started by 

 Thomas Archer in 1625, and Mercurius Gallobelgicus, a Latin review 

 of continental affairs, which had been issued at half yearly intervals 

 from Cologne since 1594 and which circulated widely in England as 

 well as abroad. That the play is no translation from the Dutch but 

 an original product of English wit is clear enough from the text itself, 

 with its abundance of purely English allusions and its incessant rattle 

 of English puns.^ 



But while these names afford no clew to the authorship of the play, 

 they are of some slight assistance in determining its date. The first 

 niunber of Mercurius Brittanicus was issued February 23, 1624-25; 

 the last extant number is dated February 8, 1625-26, but the periodical 

 probably continued to run until the end of the year. The title page 

 of Wine, Beere, and Ale must, therefore, have been composed not 

 earlier than 1625, for, although the pseudonym Mercurius Brittanicus 

 had been used as early as 1605 by Joseph Hall in his Mundus Alter et 

 Idem, the association of the name in the present instance with Gallo- 

 belgicus makes it apparent that Archer's corranto is here alluded to. 

 Unfortunately, this establishes no date for the dialogue itself, since 

 the title page may well have been written when the play was prepared 

 for publication, in or before the year 1629. In the second edition the 

 pseudonyms were dropped.^ 



A date not earlier than 1615 is established by the fact that Worke 

 for Cutlers and Exchange Ware at Second Hand, which, as I have 



^ The character of Sugar as an attendant on Wine would have had no point outside of England . 

 See note to line 5. John Taylor's Drinke and Welcome, which has some affinities with the present 

 dialogue, likewise alleges the authority of a Dutch original. (London 1637 ; reprinted Ashbee, Occasion- 

 al Facsimile Reprints, no. 17.) Dutch, in the latter instance at least, means German, and it is doubt- 

 less the German fondness for the malt liquors that accounts in both cases for the ascription. Dr. Har- 

 old De Wolf Fuller, who has been so kind as to look up the matter, informs me that he has been unable 

 to find any evidence for a Dutch original of Wine, Beere, and Ale, 



' See ]. B. Williams, A Ei^lory of English Journalism to the Founding of the Gazette. 1908, p. 26. 



