As befits the paucity of their known literary productions, the authors
of these poems have in common chiefly their anonymity, or a degree of
obscurity approaching it. The authors of =Philos and Licia= and of H.
A's =The Scourge= are unknown. Though the authors of the other poems are
known, little is known about them. The mystery of the authorship of
=The Scourge= was compounded in the nineteenth century by its incorrect
attribution to one Henry Austin. Grosart, for example, argued that the
H. A. on the title page and on the address "To the Reader" of the 1614
impression, and the A. H. on the corresponding pages of the 1620
impression, =STC= 970, was the Austin denounced by Thomas Heywood for
stealing his translations of Ovid's =Ars Amatoria= and =De Remedio
Amoris=. Arthur Melville Clark, in correcting this error, pointed out
that these stolen translations of Ovid should not be confused with =The
Scourge=, an original poetic composition based on Book X of a quite
different work by Ovid, =The Metamorphoses=. Clark concluded that "H. A.
or A. H. was probably the editor, not the author, although he may have
made certain corrections and additions, as the title-page of the
second edition states."[7]
However, H. A.--not A. H.--was almost certainly the author of =The
Scourge=, as evidenced, among other details, by the title page of the
1613 =Scourge=,[8] unknown to Clark, which unequivocally states:
"Written by =H. A.=" As to the initials H. A. appended to the address
"To the Reader" of the 1614 impression and the A. H. on the title and
address pages of the 1620 impression, they were probably printer's
errors, arising in the 1614 impression from the printer's careless
assumption that the address "To the Reader" was the work of the author
rather than the bookseller, and in the impression of 1620 from a
simple typographical metathesis of the letters H and A.[9]
The authorship of the remaining five poems, together with such
relevant facts of the authors' lives as are known, is as follows.
=Pyramus and Thisbe= is by one Dunstan Gale (fl. 1596), about whom
nothing else is known. =Dom Diego and Ginevra= has long been attributed
to Richard Lynche (fl. 1601), otherwise chiefly known for his =Diella=,
a conventional sonnet sequence accompanying =Dom Diego=, and for his
translation of Cartari's =Le Imagini=, Englished as =The Fountaine of
Ancient Fiction= (1599). =Mirrha= and =Hiren= are by William Barksted (fl.
1611), "one of the servants of his Majesties Revels," as the title
page of =Hiren= proclaims. Barksted is believed to have completed =The
Insatiate Countess= after Marston's withdrawal from the stage in 1608
or 1609. This play, bearing Barksted's name in one issue of the 1631
edition, contains a number of lines and phrases identical with lines
and phrases in =Mirrha= and =Hiren=.[10]
=Amos and Laura= has been attributed, probably correctly, to Samuel
Page (1574-1630),[11] who is mentioned by Meres as "most passionate
among us to bewaile and bemoane the perplexities of Love,"[12] and by
his fellow-Oxonian Anthony a Wood as long-time Vicar of Deptford.[13]
Although a few additional facts are known about these authors, none
seems to contribute to an understanding of the poems reprinted, and
all may be found under the appropriate authors' names in the =DNB=.