Cutting Dick

Thomas Heywood (additions by) (1602)

Historical Records

Payments to Playwrights (Henslowe's Diary)

F. 116 (Greg, I.181)

pd vnto Thomas hewode the 20 of septmber	}
for the new a dicyons of cuttyngdicke some of	} xxs

Theatrical Provenance

Heywood was writing for both the Admiral's men and Worcester's men in the fall of 1602. The additions to "Cutting Dick" were done for Worcester's men, who were currently at the Rose. Herbert Berry located Worcester's men at the Boar's Head playhouse "late in the summer or early in the autumn of 1601" (51). He called the company "a strong one formed by the union of the earl of Worcester's and the ear of Oxford's men" and suggested that the repertory contained "among other things, the melodramatic work of Heywood" (51). If the capture and execution of Cutting Dick prompted a playwright to make a play of his criminal career (see Carleton's letter to Chamberlain, below, for news of the capture), the text was probably under construction in the spring of 1602.

Probable Genre(s)

Harbage labeled "Cutting Dick" a "Topical play" (71); obviously, it was also a crime drama. Just how topical Cutting Dick was in 1602 is evident in a letter from Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain dated 29 December 1601. In that letter (calendared in State Papers, Domestic, document reference SP 12/283 f.140), Carlton tells Chamberlain that "Evans, known as Cutting Dick, a notable robber in Wiltshire, is taken, and like to be hanged" (CCLXXXIII, 136).

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

The story of "Cutting Dick" must have relied to a large extent on the career of the criminal who carried that nickname, but sources identified to date only hint at his escapades.

References to the Play

There are no known references to the play, but a number of references to the criminal, Cutting Dick. In addition to Carleton's report to Chamberlain (above), an item in the Acts of the Privy Council for 16 November 1601 addresses "A band of notorious thieves" in regard to numerous robberies reported by a Mr. Bridges in a letter to Sir John Poines and William Chester. The council authorizes the pursuit of these criminals, one of whom is listed as "Cutting Dicke alias Richard Cooke or Dicke Cooke" (Vol. XVII, [254]. Document Ref.: PC 2/26 f.463). The apparent alias here ("Cooke") instead of Carleton's "Evans," invites consideration of any sobriquet with "Cutting" or with "Dick."

Other references to Cutting Dick are literary. One cluster, roughly contemporary with the play, includes a couple of allusions in later plays by Heywood:

• William Kempe, Kemps nine daies wonder, 1600 (Dyce, 14)

... And now a man is but a pricke;

A boy, arm'd with a poating stick,

Will dare to challenge Cutting Dicke."

(sig. C2^v)

• Samuel Rowlands, Humors Antique Faces, 1605 (imprinted for Henry Rockett)

In the poem, "Proteus," Rowlands mocks a Protean fellow who belongs to upper society but prefers "the rascal sorte" (l. 8); when slumming, he affects "a right grand Captaine of the damned crewes" whose manner is "Mad, melancholy, drunke and variable" (ll. 14, 16). Some of that manner invites the allusion to a real rogue, Cutting Dick:

Hat without band like cutting Dicke he go'es,

Renowned for his new iuuented oaths.

(ll. 17-18, sig. D3^v)

• Thomas Freeman, Rubbe and a Great Cast. Epigrams," 1614 (sold at the Tigers Head)

in Epigram 24, In Swaggerum, Freeman recalls the familiar archetype of the miles glorious, or cowardly braggart. Echoing Prince Hal's mocking of Hotspur, Freeman scoffs that he could praise "good sir Swagger" by recounting "How many thou hast killed in thy days," but he suspects that those supposed dead "are living yet" (ll. 11-12). Freeman's allusion to Cutting Dick is in a Falstaffian context:

If I shall term thee the Innes onely huckster,

The Taverns tyrant, like some cutting Dicke,

To call the Oastler rogue, beknaue the Tapster, ...

Thou wouldst haue bin reuenged, but for feare. ...

Swagger thou maist, and swear as thou art wont,

Thou wilt not fight, I am assured on't.

Thomas Harman (2)
Palmieri
Work for Cuttlers, 1615 (ed. Sieveking, 42, 62)
George Wither, Abuses Stript and Whipt, 1613: Of Inconstancy: " ... Which tricke sometimes wan renounce to cutting Dick, But some may tell ..."
Thomas Freeman, Rub and a Great cast, 1614, pt. ii, no. 24: "... the Taverns tyrant, like some cutting Dicke ..." (epigram 24, 2kb)
The Wise Woman of Hogsdon (Pearson, v.297)
The Fair Maid of the West, pt. 1 (Pearson, ii. 291)

Another cluster illustrates the longevity of Cutting Dick's fame:

Scaffold confession of Richard Hannam, 1656
Vercingetorixa, 1663: "... when Friend saw Youth as fully bent/ As Cutting Dick when's money's spent/ That stands at corner of Hyde Park..."
Poor Robin. 1667. An Almanack after a New Fashion." Cutting Dick is listed as one of the sinners; ? feast day of October 8th (Sig. B6r)
1692, Confidence Corrected, error detected, and truth defended ..." Philalethes Pasiphilus.: " ... it greatly reflects upon the Wisdom of any that shall venture to use it. For tho Hind, Hannam, Cutting Dick, and the Golden Farmer were all Villains; yet who doubts but ...."

Critical Commentary

Katherine Lee Bates, A woman Killed with Kindness and the Fair Maid of the West, 1917
Arthur Melville Clark, Thomas Heywood, Playwright and Miscellanist (1931, 1958, 1967); Clark includes the London Prodigal (Q1605) among the references to Cutting Dick, but the line is not so specific. In 2.2, a couple of

For What It's Worth

Possibly relevant to the ubiquity of "Cutting" and/or "Dicke" are the following:

Earlier than Heywood's additions:

1595, Feb 17: jig, "Cuttinge George, and his hosts being a Jigge"

Roughly Contemporary with Heywood's additions:
London Prodigal, ii.2

Much later than Heywood's additions:

24 May 1632, ballad, "Roaring Dick of Dover," by R. C. (Pepys's Ballads, i. 434)

Works Cited

Acts of the Privy Council of England: 1601-1604. 32 vols. Edited by J. R. Dasent. London: HSMO, 1890-1907.

Berry, Herbert. The Boar's Head Playhouse. Illustrations by C. Walter Hodges. Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1986.

Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1601-1603. Edited by Mary Anne Everett Green. Vol. 6. London: HMSO, 1870

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Kempe, William. Kemps Nine Daies Wonder. 1600.

Site created and maintained by Roslyn L. Knutson, Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas at Little Rock; updated 4 March 2015.