In 1566, Edwards attended the Queen in her visit to Oxford, where he composed a play called “Palamen and Arcite,” which was acted before Her Majesty in Christ Church Hall.
Stow, in his “Chronicle,” mentions the name of the play, and adds that “it had such tragical success as was very lamentable; for at that time, by the fall of a wall and a paire of staires & great prese (press) of the multitude, three men were slain.” “At night” (Sept. 2[2]), writes Anthony Wood, “the Queen heard the first part of an English play, named Palamon & Arcyte, made by M. Richard Edwards, a gentleman of her Chapel, acted with very great applause, in Christ Church Hall, at the beginning of which play, there was, by part of the stage which fell, three persons slain, besides five that were hurt. Afterwards the actors performed their parts so well, that the Queen laughed heartily thereat, and gave the author of the play great thanks for his pains” (quoted by Collier, “Annals of the Stage,” i., 191). “Her Majesty also presented eight guineas to one of the young performers who gave her peculiar satisfaction. It is fair to add, in behalf of good Queen Bess, that from Peshall’s ‘History of the University,’ it would seem that the Queen was not present on the occasion of the accident.” He died on the 31st October in the same year, according to Hawkins; and in Turbervile’s Poems, printed in 1567, are two elegiac compositions on his decease, one by Turbervile himself, the other by Thomas Twine, the translator of Virgil.[3]
“Edwards,” writes Collier,[4] “enjoyed a very high reputation as a dramatic poet, but he seems to have owed much of it to the then comparative novelty of his undertakings.” Thomas Twine, in an epitaph upon his death, calls him--
“The flower of our realm And Phœnix of our age,”
and specifically mentions two of his plays, “Damon and Pythias” and “Palamon and Arcyte,” adding, however, that he had written more equally fit for the ears of princes--
“Thy tender Tunes and Rimes Wherein thou woont’st to play, Eche princely Dame of Court and Towne, Shall beare in minde alway. Thy Damon and his Friend, Arcyte and Palemon, With moe full fit for princes’ eares, Though thou from earth art gone, Shall still remain in fame,” &c.