Clyomon and Clamydes a critical edition

"Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes (Greg, Bibliography, no. 157) was printed by Thomas Creede in 1599--the same year he printed the second quarto of Romeo and Juliet and Greene's Alphonsus, King of Aragon. Like Creede's other dramatic quartos, Clyomon and Clamydes exhibits the kind of craftsmanship that has given his work the reputation of being "superior to that of many of his contemporaries."2 Creede's experience with dramatic prints was, in fact, considerable. Between 1593, when he opened his shop, and 1617, when he retired or died, he printed no fewer than twenty-seven new plays and twelve reprints. Among these were four others that, like Clyomon and Clamydes, had belonged to the repertory of the Queen's men before their fortunes declined, sometime around 1594. Since the other four plays were entered in the Stationers' Register in 1594, we can assume that Creede probably acquired Clyomon and Clamydes in that year. But before 1599 (and, by inference, 1594) there is no record of the play; and hence, conclusions about its performances, reception, author, and date of composition must rest upon such meager inferences as can be drawn from the text itself. After its publication in 1599, except for occasional mention in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century play-lists, Clyomon and Clamydes received no further attention until after Dyce included it in his edition of Peele's works in 1839. Dyce's modernized edition was followed by Bullen's in 1888, also in a collection of Peele's works even though Bullen doubted Peele's authorship. Subsequently the play was issued in type facsimile by the Malone Society in 1913 and, in the same year, in photographic facsimile in J. S. Farmer's Student Facsimile Texts. The present edition is intended not only to establish the original text insofar as present bibliographical methods make its recovery possible but also to throw some light on one of the three extant plays that illustrate one of the most popular genres of the 1570's and 1580's--the dramatic romance. The play poses three major problems--the nature of the text itself, its date of composition, which is usually placed vaguely in the l570's or '80's, and finally its authorship, which has been attributed variously to George Peele, Richard Edwards, Richard Bower, Thomas Preston, Robert Wilson, and the anonymous author of Common Conditions."--Introduction.