Date
In the Introduction to his play Bartholomew Fair (1614), Ben Jonson alludes to The Spanish Tragedy as being "five and twenty or thirty years" old. If taken literally, this would yield a date range of 1584–89 — a range that agrees with what else is known about the play. Some critics, noting that the play makes no reference to the Spanish Armada of 1588, have argued for a date of 1587 as the most likely single year; others have varied that date a year or so, either way. Philip Edwards, in his Revels edition of the play, entertains a date range of 1582–92, but favours a date c. 1590.
Read more about this topic: The Spanish Tragedy
Famous quotes containing the word date:
“Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives—from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango—with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to- date scripts for actors on the tourists’ stage.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Until I was twenty-five, I had no development at all. From my twenty-fifth year I date my life. Three weeks have scarcely passed, at any time between then and now, that I have not unfolded within myself. But I feel that I am now come to the inmost leaf of the bulb, and that shortly the flower must fall to the mould.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)