Maiden's Holiday, The

Christopher Marlowe and John Day (>1593)

Historical Records

Stationers’ Register

Entered in the Stationers’ Register by Moseley on 8 Apr. 1654 as “A comedie called The Maidens Holiday by Christopher Marlow & John Day” for “vj^d” (S. R. II, 445).

Warburton’s List

“The Mayden Holaday by Chris. Marlowe” appears as the 13th play noted by John Warburton (1682-1759) in his list of the unprinted MS plays formerly in his collection until destroyed by Warburton’s cook (Greg, "The Bakings of Betsy" 231). See the full list from British Library Lansdowne MS. 807 here.

Theatrical Provenance

Unknown. In his introduction to Marlowe’s works, Alexander Dyce grapples with how these two playwrights may have been involved in the writing of the comedy: “In matters of authorship the Stationers’ Books are not always to be trusted; and that Marlowe and Day should have written in conjunction is rendered highly improbable by the fact, that we find no notice of Day as a dramatist earlier than 1599. Still, there is a possibility that Marlowe may have so far mistaken his own powers as to attempt a comedy, that he may have left it unfinished at his death, and that Day may have completed it” (Dyce, “Introduction” lvii). Bullen thought that Day had most likely added to the play in a subsequent revival: “If the comedy was written by Marlowe and Day, then we must suppose that Day completed a sketch that had been left by Marlowe, or that he revised the play on the occasion of a revival” (lxxxiii).

Probable Genre(s)

Comedy (Harbage)

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

Unknown.

References to the Play

None known, except the historical records above.

Critical Commentary

Bakeless, operating on the assumption that some of the plays written by Marlowe must have been lost, was receptive to the idea of Marlowe having written The Maiden’s Holiday (1.276). He finds it interesting as it "provides the only suggestion that Marlowe ever wrote comedy, and it records the only play in which there is external evidence of collaboration, except Dido." He qualifies this statement with the acknowledgement that "Since, however, Day is not known as a dramatist prior to 1599, six years after Marlowe's death, he may have completed an unfinished script or brought an old play of Marlowe's up to date" (2.277).

Schelling, by contrast, saw as little reason to suppose Marlowe’s co-authorship of The Maiden’s Holiday as he saw for Marlowe’s supposed authorship of The Taming of a Shrew: “A bookseller’s ascription, in 1654, of The Maiden’s Holiday (one of the Warburton manuscripts) to Marlowe and Day must be regarded as equally preposterous” (234n).

Lisa Hopkins is similarly cynical about Marlowe’s possible involvement: “in 1764 David Erskine Baker in his Companion to the Playhouse declared that Marlowe and Day co-authored The Maiden’s Holiday. However, nothing further is known of this and, whatever The Maiden’s Holiday was, there seems no reason to suppose that Marlowe had any connection with it” (45).

For What It's Worth

Dyce suggested that “there is a possibility . . . that we possess a fragment of The Maiden’s Holiday in that pastoral “Dialogue” attributed to “Kitt Marlowe”, which was recently discovered among the Alleyn Papers” (Dyce, “Introduction” lvii). The fragmentary dialogue is available to view at Internet Archive.

Bakeless notes that "the Dialogue in Verse which Collier claimed to have found among the Alleyn Papers at Dulwich College ... [is] almost certainly not Marlowe's and were probably never part of an ordinary play for the professional stage" (2.277).

Works Cited

Bakeless, John. The Tragical History of Christopher Marlowe. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1942.

Bullen, Arthur Henry, ed. The Works of Christopher Marlowe. Vol. 1. London, 1885. Print.

Dyce, Alexander. The Works of Christopher Marlowe with notes and some account of his life and writings. London, 1850. Print. Internet Archive

Greg, W. W. “The Bakings of Betsy.” The Library, 3rd series. 7.11 (1911): 225-259. Print.

Hopkins, Lisa. Christopher Marlowe, Renaissance Dramatist. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2008. Print.

Schelling, Felix Emmanuel. Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642: A History of the Drama in England from the Accession of Queen Elizabeth to the Closing of the Theaters. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 1908. Print. Internet Archive

Site created and maintained by David McInnis, University of Melbourne; updated, 08 November 2009.