Northward Ho

Northward Ho (or Ho!, or Hoe) is an early Jacobean era stage play, a satire and city comedy written by Thomas Dekker and John Webster, and first published in 1607. Northward Ho was a response to Eastward Ho (1605) by Ben Jonson, George Chapman, and John Marston, which in its turn was a response to Westward Ho (c. 1604), an earlier play by Dekker and Webster. Taken together, the three dramas form a trilogy of "directional plays" that show the state of satirical and social drama in the first decade of the 17th century.

Northward Ho could not have been staged prior to Eastward Ho, which was in existence by September 1605. John Day's play The Isle of Gulls, onstage in February 1606, refers to all three of the directional plays. This suggests that the last of them, Northward Ho, must have been performed during the last half of 1605.

Northward Ho was entered into the Stationers' Register on 6 August 1607, and was published later that year in quarto by the printer George Eld. The title page of the first edition identifies the two authors, as well as the playing company that staged the work, the Children of Paul's — the same troupe that performed Westward Ho.

Scholars agree that Dekker is the predominant partner in the authorship of Northward Ho as in Westward Ho, while Webster in the minority contributor; yet as with the earlier play, scholars disagree on the proportions of the two authors' shares. Peter Murray's argument, that Webster wrote about 40% of each play, is the high-end estimate; other commentators give him less. Webster's hand has been perceived most often in Act I and in Act III, scene i.

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