Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Patient Grissel is a play by Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle, and William Haughton. It was mentioned in Henslowe's diary in the entry for December 1599. It was first printed in 1603.
The plot is a variant of the medieval tale of patient Griselda, as told in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
The play contains Dekker's poem "Golden Slumbers" (which was adapted by Paul McCartney for the song of the same name on The Beatles' Abbey Road album):
The well-known story, first told by Boccaccio, then by Petrarca, afterwards by Chaucer, and which has since become proverbial. Tom Warton, writing about 1770, says, “I need not mention that it is to this day represented in England, on a stage of the lowest species, and of the highest antiquity: I mean at a puppet show” (“Hist. of English Poetry,” sect. xv.). — B.
Patient Grissel
A variant of “Patient Griselda”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patient_Griselda
The version Pepys saw as a puppet-play 30 August 1667 was based on this text:
http://books.google.com/books?id=obr8-fbLyUIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Patient+Grissill&source=bl&ots=