The Tragedye of Solyman and Perseda is an enigmatic play. Appearing first in an undated, anonymous, and rather untidy quarto that gives no hint of playing company or initial performance contexts, the play closely follows a single primary source and yet is innovative and experimental. Before a recent flurry of interest in its dramatization of Christian-Islamic conflict it was largely neglected by nineteenth- and twentieth-century directors and scholars, with no recorded performances and only a small number of editions since that first quarto, which probably dates to late 1592 or early 1593.

Although its title page offers scant information in most other respects, the colophon of the first quarto does indicate that it had been printed by Edward Allde for Edward White and was to be sold from his shop ‘at the little North doore of Paules Church, at the signe of the Gun’. The play, then titled Salamon and Perceda, had been entered into the Stationers’ Register to Edward White on 20 November 1592, and was licenced for publication by John Aylmer, the Bishop of London. The same partnership of Allde and White subsequently produced a second quarto – now Solimon and Perseda – that was dated to 1599, the second issue of which was stamped on the title page as ‘Newly corrected and amended’. Here are the first potential connections to Thomas Kyd: his celebrated play The Spanish Tragedy had been entered into the Stationers’ Register not long before, on 6 October 1592, and a similarly undated quarto of that play printed by Edward Allde and published by Edward White appeared around the same time. Another play associated with Kyd, Arden of Faversham, was also entered earlier in the same year to White (on 3 April 1592) and was published that year by the same partnership of the two Edwards. This may suggest a selling off of manuscripts by Kyd to White (who would produce second editions of all three) at this point and, as Lukas Erne notes, although ‘it is impossible to recover what events or processes’ led to the near simultaneous appearance in print of these three plays, it is nonetheless ‘intriguing’.

The bishop of Durham’s certificate, containing the archbishop’s mandate and the royal writ

[294v] Reverendissimo in Christo patri et domino Domino Thomae, permissione divina Eboracensi archiepiscopo, Angliae primati et apostolicae sedis legato, eius ve commissario seu commissariis uni vel pluribus quibuscunque in hac parte deputatis vel deputandis, vester praehumilis oboedientiae filius Hugo Snell, decretorum doctor, reverendi in Christo patris et domini Domini Iohannis, Dei gratia Dunelmensis episcopi in remotis agentis, vicarius in spiritualibus generalis oboedientiam et reverentiam debitas tanto patri cum honore. Literas reverendissimas dicto venerabili patri Dunelmensi episcopo seu nobis vice sua nuper directas quarto decimo die mensis Ianuarii anno Domini instanti [14 January 1487] cum ea qua decuit reverentia sub tenore qui sequitur recepimus exequendas:

Thomas, [permissione divina Eboracensis archiepiscopus, Angliae primas et apostolicae sedis legatus,] venerabili fratri nostro Iohanni, Dei gratia Dunelmensi episcopo, suffraganeo nostro, eiusve vicario in spiritualibus generali, salutem et fraternam in Domino caritatem. Breve regium sub magno sigillo domini regis nobis transmissum nuper recepimus sub eo qui sequitur tenore verborum:

In the immediate aftermath of Edward's death on 6 July, the navy found itself in what could have been the front line. This was because the King had attempted to decree that his successor should not be his Catholic half-sister Mary, who was the heir both by statute and by their father's will, but rather his Protestant cousin the former Lady Jane Grey, now married to Northumberland's youngest son. Jane apparently had the support of the Council, and was duly proclaimed. Mary made her way to Kenninghall in Norfolk, which was in the heart of her own estates, and in turn proclaimed her right. By 13 July the Council believed that she was in flight for the Low Countries and sent a squadron of half a dozen ships to intercept her [II.1]. Mary, however, had no such intention. Not only was she the lawful heir, she was also the popular choice. First at Kenninghall and then at Framlingham in Suffolk her supporters rallied to her and she soon had a formidable force, led by her committed servants. Meanwhile the naval operation had been frustrated by bad weather; five of the ships sheltered in the Orwell, while the sixth, Greyhound, ended up at Lowestoft [II.2]. There the captain, Gilbert Grice, was arrested, but Mary's Council duly accepted his submission on the 17th, and he was continued in command of his ship [II.3]. Perhaps inspired by Grice's example, or perhaps solicited by Sir Henry Jerningham on Mary's behalf, the other ships followed suit, and some of their guns were transported to the Queen's camp at Framlingham. As a temporary measure, the six ships under the Queen's control were, on 19 July, put under the charge of an experienced shipman, Sir Richard Cavendish. On the 25th he was superseded by William Tirrell, appointed as Vice-Admiral [II.4]. The Lord Admiral, Lord Clinton, made his peace with the new regime, though his actual submission is not recorded. The rapprochement was brief because in November he was dismissed in favour of Lord William Howard [II.5–7]. Then William Winter, the Surveyor, was suspected of involvement in Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion of January 1554, which was provoked by the Queen's intended marriage.

Duckworth's ship, Orion (74) was retained at Spithead for two months once the French Revolutionary War began, when Duckworth had nothing to do but a series of administrative tasks, impeded fairly effectively by Admiralty bureaucratic procedures [2, 4–9]. He was a notable mentor to young midshipmen, including the future Admiral William Parker, the nephew of Earl St Vincent [1, 3]. He knew the ship was destined for foreign service, but not until March was the destination clear, with the formal notification from the Admiralty and Admiral Gardner [10, 12]. Once at sea, however, all communication, at least in written form, ceased.

In the Leeward Islands, Admiral Gardner, having failed in an attack on Martinique [14–16], was soon sending Duckworth on independent missions, none of them at first very notable [17, 18], but at the end of July he was sent to assist the Jamaica convoy past the French colony of St Domingue, and then on to a delicate diplomatic mission to Virginia [19]. A fairly ludicrous internal dispute between two of his officers was composed by Duckworth by the simple expedient of isolating the disputants until they had cooled down and had considered the consequences [20–22].

The Admiralty's pernickety behaviour and the nonsensical sensitivity of the officers are both indications that the Navy as a whole was not yet free of the more relaxed procedures of peacetime – though the officers’ behaviour persisted throughout the war, particularly among the senior ranks.

The detachment to Virginia missed the Jamaica convoy he had been told to watch for. He made a good impression as he approached Norfolk, Virginia, by the capture of the French privateer Sans Culotte [23]. Duckworth rapidly established cordial relations with the British consul in Norfolk, John Hamilton, and his presence was evidently regarded with interest and approval by the local gentleman – the capture of the privateer probably helped here [24–32]. He carefully avoided, by sensible research, becoming involved in fighting another French privateer which was not only in American waters but actually in the harbour, despite being urged by the consul to seize it [25], but he carefully gathered information about the French naval presence in American ports, noting that the discipline of the ships was particularly bad [26, 27]. His earlier experience in American waters as a lieutenant was clearly valuable in his estimation of the value of information.

So here's how it went. I’m walking into Harvard Yard on a summer's day, as a rather plump, entirely bald male is walking towards me. I do not recognize him. I cannot, however, help noticing that the person coming towards me exhibits, in very low level and understated form, signs of having recognized me. There is, I intuit, something in his eye movement that expresses greeting. This is always a troubling social predicament. One is caught in a dilemma we have all experienced: either one will be thought rude, if one does not respond to the manifested signs of recognition; or, if one does respond, one runs the risk of being thought slow-witted, on discovering, to one's acute embarrassment, that one had misread those tiny, ambiguous signs of possible recognition – the minuscule eye movements of a complete stranger had not meant “hello” after all.

“After all” is in fact an exaggeration in such circumstances, since encounters of this kind happen in real time, as two creatures approach each other, both walking at brisk pace, from a distance of only two or three yards. With only a couple of seconds available, one's judgment goes into overdrive, but mine wasn't coming up with a decision in time. The apparent stranger, however, released me from this mini-agony.

The dénouement: as we are about to pass beyond each other, the apparent stranger breaks out into a broad smile. Suddenly there is no ambiguity: within a millisecond I stop observing and start recognizing: this is my friend John, who has been absent from campus for many months undergoing chemotherapy.

John had been trim, with plenty of hair, when last I saw him, just before he went in for treatment. “John!” I exclaimed as we warmly shook hands and enjoyed our mutual relief, not to say joy. John was perhaps happy to be back in the land of the living, but I was much more than happy: that sudden flash of my friend's smile transformed everything in an instant – it transformed one quick moment of embarrassment into blissful cognitive certainty; and it transformed months of uncertainty about the fate of my friend into the joy that here he was, fully alive and present. Not least, it transformed observation into recognition.

In the mid-1960s, writer John Berger and photographer Jean Mohr profiled John Sassall, general practitioner in the Forest of Dean, photographing and documenting his everyday practice. The passage above describes the difficulty of providing an accurate medical prognosis to a terminally ill patient. Medical prognosis has always been, at best, an inexact science. There are also a multitude of ethical considerations to take into account when providing a prognosis. If someone is told ‘you have six months to live’ is that likely to make them give up hope and lose the will to carry on, dying sooner? Or will it make them more likely to live their last months to the full, cherishing every last moment? What if you instruct them to make a will, and dealing with the reality of their demise kills them sooner than you predicted? But what if they don't make a will and die, leaving their next of kin to have to sort things out? Is it ever acceptable to lie to a patient, even if you think it is for their own benefit?

These considerations and anxieties around sickness and death are not a consequence of the modern age and biomedicine. Late medieval Europe was intimately concerned with preparing for death. And, despite the difficulties surrounding accurate prediction, medical prognosis was a major branch of medieval medicine, and was one of the physician's main tools in a medical culture where treatment was often ineffective, surgery a dangerous last resort and diagnosis difficult.2 With the rise of university medicine and the emergence of the educated physician in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, learned medicine became a commercial enterprise, and a physician's ability to prognosticate successfully demonstrated his skill and secured his status.