POVERTY. A new Interlude of Impacyente Poverte, newlye Impreynted, M.V.L.X., B.L. John Kynge, London [1560], 4^o.--c. 34. i. 26. The title-page is enclosed in a woodcut border bearing the initials T. R. in which the Museum catalogue has made a slight blunder in copying from the title-page, which may be consulted on page 311. _Impatient Poverty_, as already stated, is mentioned in the old play of _Sir_ _Thomas More_, itself only extant in a somewhat mutilated manuscript. The passage is as follows: _Moore._ I prethee, tell me, what playes have ye? _Player._ Diuers, my lord; _The Cradle of Securitie_, _Hit Nayle o' th' Head_, _Impacient Povertie_, _The_ _Play of Foure Pees_, _Diues and Lazarus_, _Lustie_ _Juuentus_, and _The Mariage of Witt and Wisedome_.--Shakes. Soc. ed., 55-56. The copy now happily recovered shows the play to have been "newly" printed in 1560 by John King, who was in business at the Sign of the Swan in St. Paul's Churchyard from 1555 to 1561. There is no entry in the Stationers' Register for the year 1560 or earlier. The British Museum copy is a tolerably well-printed black-letter quarto of its kind; it is also in excellent preservation. A reduced facsimile of the title-page is given on page 311, but unfortunately the paper used in these volumes is not altogether suitable for illustrative work. The old copy is, however, announced among _The Tudor Drama_ _Facsimile Texts_, and will shortly be available in collotype. The collation is A to Eii in 4s (18 leaves). The first sheet (A) has no signature, but the others are regular in notation. _Impatient_ (= intolerable, unendurable) _Poverty_ is by an unknown author, but a very shrewd attribution might even now be made were not the time, as yet, hardly ripe for scientific deductions. The materials are not at hand for anything like a systematic study of pre-Shakespearean dramatic effort and achievement; and the study of isolated plays can, at best, lead to imperfect and perhaps erroneous conclusions. Unquestionably, however, the Tudor drama deserves to be studied, as Shakespeare is now-a-days studied: as a whole, and not piecemeal. But--alack and alack!--where is the accessible material for such an inquiry? Still, if at present we do not know the author's name, we can nevertheless learn something of him from his play. He was evidently a sedate man, serious to a degree, with apparently deep-seated religious principles: note the long-sustained exhortations and the general tone of the play. It is also noteworthy that, for the period, the bawdry is "cut" to the lowest limit. There are no women's parts, and the Vice is a watered-down specimen of his class. There is little internal evidence to enable one to form an idea of the date of