This etext was produced by John Price, University College Worcester,
THE NOBLE SPANISH SOLDIER by THOMAS DEKKER
Thomas Dekker is believed to have been born in London around 1572,but nothing is known for certain about his youth. He embarked on acareer as a theatre writer early in his adult life, the first extanttext of his work being 'Old Fortunatus' written around 1596, althoughthere are plays connected with his name which were performed as earlyas 1594. The period from 1596 to 1602 was the most prolific of hiscareer, with 20 plays being attributed to him and an involvement inup to 28 other plays being suggested. It was during this period thathe produced his most famous work, 'The Shoemaker's Holiday, or theGentle Craft', categorised by modern critics as citizen comedy, itreflects his concerns with the daily lives of ordinary Londoners.This play exemplifies his vivid use of language and the interminglingof everyday subjects with the fantastical, embodied in this case bythe rise of a craftsman to Mayor and the involvement of an unnamedbut idealised king in the concluding banquet.
He exhibited a similar vigour in such prose pamphlets as theironically entitled 'The Wonderfull Yeare' (1603), about the plague,'The Belman of London' (1608), about roguery and crime, and 'The GulsHorne-Booke' (1609), a valuable account of behaviour in the Londontheatres.
Dekker was partly responsible for devising the street entertainmentto celebrate the entry of James I into London in 1603 and he managedthe Lord Mayor's pageant in 1612. His fortunes took a turn for theworse shortly after, when between 1613 and 1619 he was imprisoned,probably for debt; this experience may be behind his six prisonscenes first included in the sixth edition (1616) of Sir ThomasOverbury's 'Characters'. He died in 1632 and was buried at St James',Clerkenwell.
Text
The first clear reference to the play is dated as 16 May 1631 when anentry was made in the Stationer's Register, effectively licensingtexts for publication. The entry, made for John Jackman, referred tomanuscripts of two plays by 'Tho: Dekker', these being 'The Wonder ofa Kingdom' and 'a Tragedy called The Noble Spanish Soldier'. Asimilar entry was made on 9 December 1633, this time for NicholasVavasour. The play was printed in a quarto version in 1634, probablyby John Beale, on behalf of Vavasour, who initialled the forewordentitled 'The Printer to The Reader'.
Sources, Authorship and Date
These aspects of the play have attracted more critical attention thanall others combined, reference frequently being made to the followingknown facts:
(1) Although the entries in the Stationer's Register referunambiguously to Dekker as the author, the title page of the Quartostates that the play is written by 'S.R.', the only Jacobeanplaywright with those initials being Samuel Rowley.
(2) It has been observed, initially by nineteenth century scholar A.H. Bullen, that three sections of a play by John Day called 'TheParliament of Bees' are nearly identical to sections of NSS.Furthermore a further five sections correspond closely to parts of'The Wonder of a Kingdom' which as is noted above, was registeredalongside NSS in 1931.
(3) In 1601, theatre manager Philip Henslow made part payment for ananonymous play called 'The Spanish Fig', no text of which survivesunder that name.
(4) In April 1624 a poster appeared in Norwich advertising a