When the Rev. T.F. Dibdin asserted ("Typographical Antiquities," ii. 9.) that "in the Drama there is no single work yet found, which bears the name of Winken de Worde as the printer of it," he committed one of those singular over-sights of which very learned men have before been sometimes guilty. "Hickscorner," perhaps the most ancient printed dramatic piece in our language, and well-known to those who are at all acquainted with the history of our stage, was from his press, and his colophon is at its conclusion: "Enprynted by me Wynkyn de Worde." Mr Dibdin, in opposition to his own statement, inserts it among the works of that early professor of the typographic art.

The subsequent dramatic production is also from the types of Wynkyn de
Worde, but it was not discovered in the Library of Trinity College,
Dublin, until after the appearance of the second volume of Mr Dibdin's
new edition of Ames.[183]

[Yet a copy was in the "Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica," 1815, and in 1817 the piece was reprinted for the Roxburghe Club].

"Hickscorner" is without date, but "The World and the Child" was printed in July 1522. Only one other copy of it is known, and it is here republished from a faithful transcript of the original.[184] As a specimen of our ancient moralities, it is of an earlier date, and in several respects more curious, than almost any other piece in the present collection. From a line in the epilogue, it might be inferred that it was performed before the king and his Court.