On 10 August 1599, Philip Henslowe lent forty shillings to William Borne (or Bird) of the Lord Admiral’s Men to pay Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker ‘in earnest of their book which they be a-writing called Page of Plymouth’. On 2 September 1599, Henslowe noted a further loan of six pounds to pay these writers in full ‘for a book called The Lamentable Tragedy of Page of Plymouth’. A further entry on 12 September, recording a loan to the company of ten pounds ‘to buy women’s gowns for Page of Plymouth’, suggests that preparations for the performance of this play were now under way (Life Records, 19–20).

Page of Plymouth was a domestic tragedy based on real-life events. The story of Ulalia Page and George Strangwidge, hanged together in March 1591 in Barnstable, Devonshire, for conspiring to murder Ulalia’s husband, had already given rise to a number of ballads often attributed to Thomas Deloney (Deloney, 1912, 482–5, 504–5, 599). The extended title of one of these ballads succinctly conveys the tale: ‘The lamentation of Master Page’s wife of Plymouth, who being forced to wed him, consented to his murder, for the love of Master George Strangwidge, for which they suffered death at Barnstable in Devonshire’.

Jonson and Thomas Dekker (?1572–1632) were soon to collaborate again on another project for the Lord Admiral’s Men, Robert II, King of the Scots (see 1.232). By 1601 the two men had evidently fallen out, as the satirical exchanges of Poetaster and Satiromastix make clear. Their relationship deteriorated further during their collaboration on the entertainment to mark James’s progress to Westminster in March 1604 (see King’s Ent., Introduction). In conversation with William Drummond in 1618–19, Jonson characterized Dekker as a rogue (Informations, 36 and n.).

(See also JONSON’S LOST PLAYS)