John Taylor, William Fennor, Swan, Hope, audience, An Apology, Englands Joy

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surrounding the 1602 performance has obvious pertinence to Taylor’s accusations against Fennor. Vennar was reputed to have failed to reimburse his audience the sum of one shilling each, after being arrested for debt during the delivery of his prologue at the Swan, just as Fennor supposedly cozened his audience by failing to show up at the Hope.

It is unlikely that Fennor and Vennar were fraternising when Taylor wrote his first attack upon Fennor since Vennar was out of London during the first part of that year, and this explains why Taylor did not exploit Fennor’s association with this ignominious character earlier. In the later part of the year, while imprisoned in Wood Street Compter, Vennar enlisted Fennor’s help to make copies of his autobiography, An Apology, which recounts among other episodes in his life, the debacle at the Swan. ²⁷¹ Fennor has, so Taylor claims, been involved in a performance of Englands Ioy earlier in 1615, when he acted so badly “that euery Man/ Did iudge it worse then that was done at Swan” (sig. Bv^v). He has also claimed some of Vennar’s dedicatory works as his own, thus cozening the old cony catcher out of the takings:

This matter came from out a learned braine:
And poor old Vennor, that plaine dealing man,
Who acted Englands Ioy first at the Swan,
Paid eight crowns for the writing of these things, [...]
Which money backe he neuer yet recieu'd
So the deceiuer is by thee deceiu’d. (sig. Ciii^r)

No wonder Fennor failed to muster up a further invective, since his association with Vennor depleted considerably the rhetorical arsenal he had left at his disposal and effectively sealed his defeat.

²⁷¹ Berry (2001), pp.263-5.

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