Abstract
Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (Part One, c. 1587; Part Two, c. 1587–88) had a pervasive influence on the early modern stage and in particular on those plays grouped under the flexible generic label “Turk plays.” This influence has been discussed at length, and discussion frequently focuses upon core texts, including early examples, such as Thomas Kyd’s Soliman and Perseda (1592), Robert Greene’s Selimus (1594) and Alphonsus, King of Aragon (1599), George Peele’s The Battle of Alcazar (1594), and later examples such as William Shakespeare’s Othello (c.1602–3), Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turn’d Turk (1612), and Philip Massinger’s The Renegado (1623).1 In this essay, however, I discuss the anonymous play The Tragical History, Admirable Atchievments and various events of Guy earl of Warwick and Thomas Heywood’s The Four Prentices of London. These two plays can also be situated within the parameters of “Turk plays” but have received much less critical attention in this context. Part of the reason for this neglect is that the dates and performance histories for both plays are sketchy or nonexistent. The dates of publication for both plays are not contemporaneous with the dates for their initial performances in the theater: while The Tragical History was published in 1661 and The Four Prentices in 1615, critics have suggested that both plays are Elizabethan and were written for performance during the 1590s.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Richard Levin, “The Contemporary Perception of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine,” Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England 1 (1984): 51–70
Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999
Daniel J. Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2003
For a discussion of Tamburlaine’s influence, see, for example, Richard Levin, “The Contemporary Perception of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine,” Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England 1 (1984): 51–70 and Peter Berek, “Tamburlaine’s Weak Sons: Imitation as Interpretation Before 1593,” Renaissance Drama 13 (1982): 55–82. For a recent discussion of the complexities of representing “the Turk” on the early modern stage, see Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), Daniel J. Vitkus, Turning Turk: English Theater and the Multicultural Mediterranean, 1570–1630 (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2003), Jonathan Burton, Traffic and Turning: Islam and English Drama, 1579–1624 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005), Mark Hutchings, “The ‘Turk Phenomenon’ and the Repertory of the late Elizabethan Playhouse,” Early Modern Literary Studies 16 (2007), 10.1–39, and Brinda Charry, “Turk Plays (1540–1660),” The Literary Encyclopedia, http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=1738, accessed August 25, 2007.
Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937
See Helen Cooper, “Did Shakespeare Play the Clown?,” TLS 5116 (April 20, 2001), 26–7, John Peachman, “Links Between Mucedorus and The Tragical History, Admirable Atchievments and Various Events of Guy Earl of Warwick” Notes and Queries 53 (2006): 464–7, and Helen Cooper, “Guy of Warwick, Upstart Crows and Mounting Sparrows,” in Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: New Directions in Biography, eds. Takashi Kozuka and J. R. Mulryne (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 119–38. For the date of The Four Prentices, see Samuel C. Chew, The Crescent and the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), 97–8, and Thomas Heywood’s The Four Prentices of London: A Critical Old Spelling Edition, ed. Mary Ann Weber Gasior (New York: Garland Publishers, 1980), vii–xv.
Matthew Dimmock, New Turks: Dramatizing Islam and the Ottomans in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 164.
Ronald S. Crane, “The Vogue of Guy of Warwick from the Close of the Middle Ages to the Romantic Revival” PMLA 30 (1915): 125–94.
Algernon Charles Swinburne, Age of Shakespeare (London: Chatto and Windus, 1908), 222–3.
Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004
Helen Cooper, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and Benedict S. Robinson, Islam and Early Modern Literature: The Politics of Romance from Spenser to Milton (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
See, for example, Velma Bourgeois Richmond, The Legend of Guy of Warwick (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996).
See Richmond, The Legend of Guy of Warwick, and Douglas Gray, “Guy of Warwick (supp. fl. c. 930),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11797, accessed January 6, 2009.
Samuel Rowlands, The Famous History of Guy Earl of Warwick (London, 1625), sig. M1.
Roslyn L. Knutson, “Marlowe Reruns: Repertorial Commerce and Marlowe’s Plays in Revival,” in Marlowe’s Empery: Expanding His Critical Contexts, eds. Sara Munson Deats, and Robert A. Logan (London: Associated University Presses, 2002), 25–42.
Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great Parts One & Two, ed. J. S. Cunningham (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 2.7.18–29. All further quotations from the play will be taken from this edition, and references will be given in the text.
Richard Hillman, “‘Not Amurath an Amurath Succeeds’: Playing Doubles in Shakespeare’s Henriad,” English Literary Renaissance 21 (1991): 161–89.
William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 2, ed. A. R. Humphreys (Walton-on-Thames: Nelson and Sons, 1966), 5.2.47–9.
Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews and Shamela, eds. Douglas Brooks-Davies and Martin C. Battestin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
See Daniel Vitkus, Introduction, Three Turk Plays from Early Modern England: Selimus, A Christian Turned Turk and The Renegado, ed. Daniel Vitkus (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 9.
Richard Lloyd, A Brief discourse of… The Nine Worthies (London, 1584), sig. G1v.
Thomas Heywood’s The Four Prentices of London: A Critical Old Spelling Edition, ed. Mary Ann Weber Gasior (New York: Garland Publishing, 1980), 2.
R. A. Foakes (ed.), Henslowe’s Diary, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Garland Publishing, 2002), 17, 22–5, 28, 31.
S. Mendyk, “Carew, Richard (1555–1620),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4635, accessed August 20, 2009.
A. C. Hamilton, The Spenser Encyclopedia (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1990), 678–80.
Roslyn L. Knutson, Playing Companies and Commerce in Shakespeare’s Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 57–9.
See Mark Thornton Burnett, “Marlovian Imitation and Interpretation in Heywood’s The Four Prentices of London,” Cahiers Élisabéthains 32 (1987): 75–8.
Annabel Patterson, “Back by Popular Demand: The Two Versions of Henry V,” Renaissance Drama 19 (1988), 29–62
See for example, Annabel Patterson, “Back by Popular Demand: The Two Versions of Henry V,” Renaissance Drama 19 (1988), 29–62, and James Shapiro, “Revisiting Tamburlaine: Henry V as Shakespeare’s Belated Armada Play,” Criticism 31 (1989): 351–66.
William Shakespeare, The Life of King Henry the Fifth, in The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 5th ed., ed. David Bevington (New York: Longman, 2004), 5.0.25–32. All further quotations from the play will be taken from this edition, and reference will be given in the text.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2011 Bernadette Andrea and Linda McJannet
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Connolly, A.F. (2011). Guy of Warwick, Godfrey of Bouillon, and Elizabethan Repertory. In: Andrea, B., McJannet, L. (eds) Early Modern England and Islamic Worlds. Early Modern Cultural Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119826_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230119826_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29667-5
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-11982-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)