‘He hath a pastoral entitled The May-lord’, noted William Drummond in 1618–19, reporting Jonson’s conversation during his visit to Hawthornden:

His own name is Alken; Ethra, the Countess of Bedford’s; Mogibell, Overbury; the old Countess of Suffolk, an enchantress; other names are given to Somerset’s lady, Pembroke, the Countess of Rutland, Lady Wroth. In his first story, Alken cometh in mending his broken pipe. Contrary to all other pastorals, he bringeth the clowns making mirth and foolish sports. (Informations, 307–12)

Drummond’s account leaves it unclear as to whether The May-lord was a fully dramatised work that had actually been performed, perhaps in the grounds or interior of a great house associated with one or more of the participants, or a text more akin to The Shepherd’s Calendar, intended essentially for reading. The mention of ‘clowns’ suggests an actual performance, with those subordinate roles being taken presumably by professional actors. The phrase ‘his first story’ (on the other hand) seems to imply a non-theatrical work, which is what Sir Walter Greg (1906, 406) took it to be. If The May-lord was indeed written for performance, then the real-life figures mentioned by Drummond might be assumed to have played the roles with which they are here associated: Lucy, Countess of Bedford playing the part of Ethra (Greek εθρα, ‘bright’) and so on. If, however, The May-lord was not designed for performance, these figures might simply have been in some way ‘shadowed’ or ‘personated’ in their fictional counterparts. In that case, they need not have been collectively present, or even aware of the work’s existence, or for that matter, even alive, at the time the pastoral was composed. These alternative possibilities allow for very different conclusions as to the likely date of the work, and its possible character.

To look first at the first of these options: if The May-lord was indeed a work intended for performance, it could feasibly have been presented on May-day (1 May) 1611 as a seasonal entertainment. The ‘May-lord’ was the title traditionally given to the young man who presided over the festivities of May-day, whose reign — like that of his consort, the May-lady or Queen of the May – was of strictly limited duration. Prudence the chambermaid, who is elected ‘sovereign of the sports’ for a single day in Jonson’s later comedy, The New Inn, enjoys similarly restricted powers. The title may also consciously recall that of Sir Philip Sidney’s entertainment, The Lady of May, performed at Wanstead Abbey in Essex (the estate of Sidney’s uncle, the Earl of Leicester) during one or another of two visits by Queen Elizabeth in May 1578 and May 1579. Several of those named in association with The May-lord had strong Sidneian connections: Sir Philip Sidney’s daughter, Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, whom Jonson described as ‘nothing inferior to her father, Sir P. Sidney, in poesy’ (Informations, 159-60); Mary, Lady Wroth, daughter of Philip’s young brother, Robert Sidney, Lord Lisle; and Mary Wroth’s cousin and future lover, William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke. In view of these connections, Michael Brennan in a private exchange wonders if the play might have been performed at Penshurst Place (Robert Sidney’s estate in Kent, celebrated in Forest 2) or Wilton House (Pembroke’s family estate in Salisbury), or even Baynard Castle (Pembroke’s London house, where Robert and Barbara Sidney regularly stayed). As Jonson is now believed to have spent several months at Penshurst during the summer and autumn of 1611 as tutor to Robert Sidney’s son, William (Brennan and Kinnamon, 2003), it is tempting to think that The May-lord might have been written and performed in the early summer of that year at Penshurst, with William himself (or his younger brother Robert) possibly in the title role. In 1611 all of those mentioned in Drummond’s note were in theory available to participate. By the early summer of 1612, Jonson himself was already travelling in France with the young Wat Ralegh, and Elizabeth, Countess of Rutland, and her husband Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland, were both mortally ill.

Attractive though the idea of an actual performance of The May-lord at Penshurst in the summer of 1611 might be, it also presents certain difficulties. For a start, it was uncommon in this period for aristocrats to indulge in amateur theatricals of this kind, involving speaking roles. (Jonson’s masque of The Gypsies Metamorphosed was in this respect something of an innovation.) Furthermore, the supposed participants in this drama were a very unlikely mix. It is bizarre to think of Overbury acting in a such an entertainment at this moment alongside Frances Howard (‘Somerset’s lady’), who was soon to be his murderer, and in the company of Elizabeth Manners, Countess of Rutland, to whom he had recently made unwelcome advances, and indeed of Jonson himself, who at this time regarded Overbury as no longer his friend but his ‘mortal enemy’ (Informations, 159–65, 127). It is equally hard to imagine the formidable Katherine Howard (‘the old Countess of Suffolk’, wife of the Lord Treasurer, and mother to Frances Howard) equably assuming the role of ‘an enchantress’ – i.e., a witch. I. A. Shapiro (1975) argues that such an identification of the Countess with an enchantress, unthinkable in earlier years, would nevertheless have been possible by the summer of 1618, after the Countess’s corrupt financial practices had been brought to the attention of James, who had ordered her to leave the court and London and retire to Audley End. At the time of Jonson’s visit to Hawthornden, both the Countess and her husband were facing charges of ‘extortion, concussion, and oppression, besides bribery and false dealing’ (Chamberlain, Letters, ed. McClure, 1939, 2.207). By this time, too, her daughter’s responsibility for Overbury’s murder had been legally proven (see A Challenge at Tilt, Introduction). The name Mogibell (Greek μογέω, ‘suffering’) might by this time too have been appropriately used of Overbury, in a fuller knowledge of the nature of his painful last months in the Tower.

Though a plausible case might be made for either of these alternative readings of Drummond’s note, the latter seems on balance to be the more probable. The May-lord is likely to have been a work intended not for dramatic performance but for private study. It may have reflected in some way on the recent Overbury scandal and on the decline in the Howard family’s fortunes. It may have been recently completed, or was possibly still in composition, at the time of Jonson’s visit to Hawthornden. Jonson may finally have judged The May-lord unsuitable for publication, but have re-worked certain elements from it in his late unfinished pastoral, The Sad Shepherd. On the relationship between these two works, see the Introduction to this latter work.

(See also JONSON’S LOST PLAYS)