[140] _I pray you, hold the book well_, was doubtless addressed to the prompter, or as he is called in the following passage, from the Induction to Ben Jonson's "Cynthia's Revels," 1601, the _book-holder_: one of the children of Queen Elizabeth's chapel is speaking of the poet. "We are not so officiously befriended by him as to have his presence in the 'tiring house to _prompt_ us aloud, stampe at the _booke-holder_, sweare for our properties, curse the poor tire-man, raile the musicke out of tune, and sweat for every veniall trespasse we commit, as some author would." [141] [Old copy, _cares_. The word _murmuring_ is, by an apparent error, repeated in the 4to from the preceding line.] [142] [Old copy, _ears_.] [143] Ready. [144] This line fixes the date when "Summer's Last Will and Testament" was performed very exactly--viz., during Michaelmas Term, 1593; for Camden informs us in his "Annals," that in consequence of the plague, Michaelmas Term, instead of being held in London, as usual, was held at St Albans. [145] "Deus, Deus, ille, Menalca! Sis bonus o felixque tuis." --Virgil "Ecl." v. 64. [146] These words, which are clearly a stage direction, and which show how mere a child delivered the Epilogue, in the old copy are made part of the text. [147] Malone originally supposed the plays to be by Heywood, and so treated them. In the last edit. of Shakespeare by Boswell (iii. 99) the mistake is allowed to remain, and in a note also "The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington" is quoted as Heywood's production. [148] Ritson, in his "Robin Hood," I. li. et seq., gives some quotations from them, as by Munday and Chettle. [149] Mr Gifford fell into an error (Ben Jonson, vi. 320) in stating that "The Case is Altered" "should have stood at the head of Jonson's works, had chronology only been consulted." In the "Life of Ben Jonson," he refers to Henslowe's papers to prove that "Every Man in his Humour" was written in 1596, and in "The Case is Altered," Ben Jonson expressly quotes Meres' "Palladia Tamia," which was not published until 1598. Nash's "Lenten Stuff," affords evidence that "the witty play of 'The Case is Altered'" was popular in 1599. [150] On the title-page of his translation of "Palmerin of England," the third part of which bears date in 1602, he is called "one of the Messengers of her Majesty's Chamber;" but how, and at what date he obtained this "small court appointment," we are without information. Perhaps it was given to him as a reward for his services in 1582.