EXPLANATORY NOTES It has been the aim of this edition to include all valuable material in previous editions; where the earlier notes have proved inaccurate or inadequate, they have been corrected or expanded. Notes signed W are from Whalley, G from Gifford, and Wh from Wheatley. References to the plays of Jonson and Shakespeare do not give the name of the author, and employ familiar abbreviations. References to the text of Every Man In are to act, scene, and line of this edition; other citations to Jonson are to the CunninghamGifford edition of 1875, act, scene, and page. Abbreviated references and the editions of works to which allusions are made may be found in the Bibliography. Q and F always designate the quarto of 1601 and the folio of 1616 respectively. QUARTO TITLE-PAGE acted by the right Honorable the Lord Chamberlaine his seruants. The Lord Chamberlain's Company was the survival of that which was originally formed by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and which, in 1574, was the first to receive the royal license. In 1588, Leicester died, and, not long afterward., the leading actors of the company became members of the company of Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange. The new company effected made some kind of amalgamation with the remains of the Admiral's men, and included the name of Edward Alleyn himself. In 1594, Lord Strange, who had become Earl of Derby the previous year, died, and the company passed under the protection of Henry Carey, Lord Hudson, then Lord Chamberlain, to be thenceforth known as the Chamberlain's Servants. In the June of 1594, they played a short time with the Admiral's men at the playhouse at Newington Butts; but in the same month, the Admiral's men, with Alleyn at their head, resumed an in dependent existence. In 1595 or 1596, the company was at the Theater. The first Lord Hunsdon died in 1596, and the company descended to his son George Carey, second Lord, who, in 1597 himself became Lord Chamberlain. In July, 1597, the Theater was shut up, and the company possibly played at the Curtain, before moving, in 1599, into the newly erected Globe. In May, 1603, the company received a patent, as the King's Men, a title which they retained till the suppression in 1642. Hereafter they were members of the royal household, with the rank of grooms of the chambers, which the Queen's Company had held before them. They were allowed to play at their usual house, the Globe, and within any other city, university, town, or borough. In 1608, they occupied the Blackfriars playhouse, and continued to use both houses till all the playhouses were closed by the ordinance of 1642.-See Camb. Hist. of Eng. Lit. 6. 277-8. Wheatley notes that while Jonson uses the pronoun his for the possessive case here and in other places, as for instance in Sejanus His Fall, he calls it a 'monstrous syntax' in his English Grammar (Wks. 9. 275). Cf. Trench, English Past and Present, pp. 238 ff. Iohnson. The question of the correct spelling of Jonson's name has provoked considerable discussion. Gifford (Introd. to Every Man In, p. 2) says of the quarto version of this play: 'There is not the least probability of its having been given to the press by Jonson, whose name is misspelt in the title page.' Wheatley (ed. of Every Man In, p. 118) says: 'Jonson himself invariably so spelt his name (i. e. Jonson), but others usually wrote it as Johnson.' Nicholson (Antiquary 2. 55-57) presents evidence to prove that Jonson first wrote himself Johnson, and later Jonson. He points out that Every Man In, 1601, Cynthia's Revels, 1601, and The Poetaster, 1602-all published under Jonson's supervisionspell his name Ben Johnson. The first publication in which Ben spelt himself Jonson or rather Jonsonius was his "Part of the king's... Entertainment through... London... the 15th of Marche, 1603 [4]." It was published with a Latin title-page, and therefore commenced B. Jonsonii, and |