George PeeleRezensionen

The once was a Roman named Titus
Who thought that his cause was righteous,
But he brought in the Goths,
Then the deaths came in swaths;
I guess that’s one way to end this bloody crisis
(Of a play, that is)

Did we write a bullshit limerick in response to Shakespeare’s alleged first tragedy? Yes, yes we did. The tale of Titus Andronicus is so full of seemingly pointless violence and brutality that it’s almost impossible to treat it as a play with any sort or moral compass or seriousness, and instead we must accept that we’re here to see a bunch of people wreak vengeance on eachother from start to finish in a never ending cycle of (military) might doesn’t make right. Unlike Shakespeare’s other Roman plays, Titus isn’t based on any historical account, and the character depth that comes to define the Bard’s more mature work hasn’t yet been developed, so what we’re left with is a play that relies on a pastiche of myths, moments of violence, and a barely developed political schema to drive the narration. I’m sure Elizabethan audiences were as entranced by this shellac as modern day viewers of staged wrestling are (same vapid entertainment for the masses), but damn, William, this is some ridiculous tripe!½

3 stars for the play, 4 stars for the edition. Jonathan Bate is a brilliant scholar, however I'd refrain from giving this edition 5 stars - in spite of his fascinating discussions of methods of staging - because I do think that Bate has a bit of a bias here, seeing the play's issues and textual cruces as largely deliberate, and I don't think this finding is born out by modern scholarship.

I hated this book. It was pompous and wooden and incredibly cruel, so I was bored and disgusted at the same time. I didn't enjoy this experience at all and I don't recommend this play.

The Arden Shakespeare collection, in my view the greatest single, most available resource for deep understanding of the text and themes of Shakespeare's plays, here presents one of Shakespeare's most difficult plays, and probably one of his earliest. There is, in fact, considerable debate about how much of the play actually is by Shakespeare's hand, but setting that aside, it's a play rather short on true dramatic action, in the academic sense, though a great deal happens in it. It reads primarily as a simple tale of insult, response, injury, and revenge. What makes it difficult, beyond the fact that it largely just pits one side against another and lets them have at each other without enormous nuance of ideas, is that it is virtually undeniably Shakespeare's most violent work, with hands and arms and tongues lopped off onstage and people baked into pies and eaten. I find Shakespeare's poetry, even his earliest and perhaps weakest, nonetheless enthralling, and Titus Andronicus contains its share. There is a fine and detailed analysis of the play and its place in history, as well as notes on production history and theme. Far from Shakespeare's best, it is still a powerful piece of theatre.

Shakespeare's earliest, starkest, bloodiest tragedy, Titus Andronicus is among a handful of nearly everyone's least favorite Shakespeare plays - mainly for the unmitigated violence, racism, and misogyny that fills it. The body count is staggering - perhaps 14 corpses in all - along with multiple dismemberings, decapitations, and gang rape. The theatrical spectacle is amazing and virtually unmatched in all of the First Folio.

Julie Taymor, noted interpreter of Shakespeare for the stage and screen, says Titus is about what makes great, noble people turn violent. In that respect it has more in common with the most famous classical Greek tragedies than with most of Shakespeare’s plays. It is in the verbal style of Seneca – oratorical declamation – or of Shakespeare’s early contemporaries Kyd and Marlowe, using what Ben Jonson referred to as their “mighty line” – not naturalistic but heightened speech.

The play is set at the time of the late Roman Empire. Unlike in Yeats’ “Second Coming,” in Shakespeare’s play of apocalyptic horrors both the best and “the worst are full of passionate intensity.” At breakneck pace we are subjected to a series of catastrophic errors by the most powerful and respected man in Rome, the conquering general Titus. 1) Ignoring a mother’s pleas for mercy, he has the son of his conquered opponent Tamora killed, dismembered and sacrificed; 2) declining to rule Rome himself, he selects the wrong candidate, Saturninus, to be emperor; 3) disregarding a prior claim by the emperor’s brother Bassianus, he agrees to wed his daughter Lavinia to the emperor; 4) accusing his own son of treason for supporting Lavinia, he kills son Mutius; 5) believing her deceitful peacemaking, he expects friendship and gratitude from Tamora even as she plots the demise of his entire family. And that’s all in the first scene. By the play’s end, only three Andronici (two men and a boy, and virtually no other named characters) are left alive – all the result of unchecked villainy combined with blind adherence to principles of honor.

Early in his career Shakespeare discovered the powerful attraction of articulate, scheming villains. In Tamora and Aaron he created two of the best, and ironically they are also two of the best parents in the play, in their unflagging loyalty to their children. The play’s final irony is that Rome is saved only by an invasion of barbarians.

Not Shakespeare's finest hour, Titus Andronicus is a stodgy and tasteless piece of drama so variable in quality that scholars struggle to place it chronologically in Shakespeare's artistic development, and many come to believe it was a collaborative effort with other playwrights, or perhaps not even written by Shakespeare at all. So over-the-top and ham-fisted is the play that the critic Harold Bloom was able to make a reasonably sound argument that Shakespeare intended it as a Mel Brooks-style spoof.

On the face of it, it's a crowd-pleaser: an orgiastic revenge story with scheming and torture and blood-lusting soliloquies. However, unlike, say, the later Macbeth, there's no real art, finesse or plot to give the violence some structure, and the result is a grimy stew of gore and bile. Its revenge arc is simplistic and unreflective, and yet simultaneously hard to understand. Much of the drama is resolved in abrupt stage actions [x stabs y, y falls] than in the ingenious confluence of plot, theme and lyricism for which the Bard was to win eternal renown. Titus Andronicus is Shakespeare's video nasty; a footnote in the finest career.

این نمایشنامه ۱۰ تا مرگ داره... سه تا دست بریده و یک زبان بریده... و به این ترتیب اولین نمایشنامه شکسپیر خشن‌ترین نمایشنامه‌ش لقب می‌گیره... البته نمایشنامه‌ی تیتوس اندرونیکوس به اندازه‌ی بقیه نمایشنامه‌های معروف شکسپیر پر از ماجرا و با ریتم بالاست.

My godfathers, this is bloody! The cast count at the end is barely a fraction of the beginning. I can imagine actors eyeing up how far they survive rather than a measure of how many lines they get.
Titus Andronicus returns to Rome with the Queen of the Goths and her sons as prisoners. He has lost 21 sons in the 10 years at the wars, and his first act is the sacrifice the Queen's eldest son to the gods and honour his own dead. It doesn't really get a lot better from there on in.
I listened to this and it was actually really easy to follow because the characters have a habit of announcing themselves by name, so that it's usually pretty clear who our of this predominantly male cast was speaking. The subject matter is so very grim that I can't imagine that this is easy to watch (I barely coped with seeing the King Lear eye scene, this would have been worse). Difficult to rate, it's so terribly violent that it almost becomes cartoonish. I suggest some of the others as better plays and more enjoyable subject matter.

Jaw-dropping. Unrelentingly violent. It's basically the slasher/tragedy counterpart to Comedy of Errors, where Shakespeare decides on the one thing he's doing and then just really packs it in there over and over again. I do see how someone could get enjoyment out of this on a first, surprised, read, and I did.... kind of. But mostly I didn't. The fact that my favorite scene was when Quintus fell in the hole shows you I'd rather have the slapstick of A&C.

My secret favorite Shakespeare play! You can really see the clear inspiration from "The Spanish Tragedie" as Shakespeare adapted the plays and the ideas into "Hamlet."

Harold Bloom wanted to see Titus Andronicus performed as a comedy; it's easy to imagine Shakespeare as a 16th-Century Tarantino with this play, fanboying out with classical tragedy rather than schlock films.

The pornography of violence is writ large in this early play by Shakespeare. It was considered too shocking for a Victorian Audience, but was a success in 1592 when it hit the Elizabethan stage. Recent modern revivals have also succeeded which may say more about the 21st century than Shakespeare and the Elizabethans. The amount of violence in the play is listed in the wikipedia article. I lost count of the incidents way before the end:

The play is saturated with violence from its opening scene, and violence touches virtually every character; Alarbus is burned alive and has his arms chopped off; Titus stabs his own son to death; Bassianus is murdered and thrown into a pit; Lavinia is brutally raped and has her hands cut off and her tongue cut out; Martius and Quintus are decapitated; a nurse and a midwife are stabbed to death by Aaron; an innocent clown is executed for no apparent reason; Titus kills Chiron and Demetrius and cooks them in a pie, which he then feeds to their mother. Then, in the final scene, in the space of a few lines, Titus kills in succession Lavinia and Tamora, and is then immediately killed by Saturninus, who is in turn immediately killed by Lucius. Aaron is then buried up to his neck and left to starve to death in the open air and Tamora's body is thrown to the wild beasts outside the city. As S. Clark Hulse points out, "it has 14 killings, 9 of them on stage, 6 severed members, 1 rape (or 2 or 3 depending on how you count), 1 live burial, 1 case of insanity, and 1 of cannibalism – an average of 5.2 atrocities per act, or one for every 97 lines

This run down does not reveal the whole picture however, because it is Shakespeare's depiction of his characters seeming to revel in the violence that is most shocking for audiences and readers of the play. This is Marcus coming across his sister Lavinia in a forest who has just been raped by two Goths and has had her hands cut off and her tongue cut out:

Why dost not speak to me?
Alas, a crimson river of warm blood,
Like to a bubbling fountain stirr'd with wind,
Doth rise and fall between thy rosed lips,
Coming and going with thy honey breath.
But sure some Tereus hath deflowered thee,
And, lest thou shouldst detect him, cut thy tongue.
Ah, now thou turn'st away thy face for shame!
And notwithstanding all this loss of blood-
As from a conduit with three issuing spouts-
Yet do thy cheeks look red as Titan's face
Blushing to be encount'red with a cloud.

This is what happens to Aaron at the end of the play:

Set him breast-deep in earth, and famish him;
There let him stand and rave and cry for food.
If any one relieves or pities him,
For the offence he dies. This is our doom.
Some stay to see him fast'ned in the earth.

We only have to wait until line 130 for the first violent act: Lucius has demanded that one of the prisoners be sacrificed to appease the Roman dead and selects the eldest son of the conquered queen Tamora. She pleads with Titus Andronicus for mercy; the first of the characters kneeling in supplication. Her plea is dismissed out of hand and Lucius gives the order:

Away with him, and make a fire straight;
And with our swords, upon a pile of wood,
Let's hew his limbs till they be clean consum'd.

This is the murder that starts the chain of the murder and revenge cycle.

The play is set in Roman times where it could be argued that there was violence and spectacle enough to warrant this graphic rendition. With the amount of action that takes place it is a wonder that Shakespeare can tell a coherent story, but he does and significantly his character have no time to develop, the only soliloquy's are by the arch villain Aaron. It is a story of power and vengeance. Titus Andronicus has returned to Rome from a ten year campaign against the barbarian goths. His return coincides with the election of a new Roman emperor. Saturninus claims the throne as the eldest son of the dead emperor, but his brother Bassianus also lays claim: the people favour Titus, but he declines saying he is too old and too weary and supports Saturninus. Lavinia is chosen by Saturninus as empress to unite the two families, but Bassianus seizes her claiming they are already married. Saturninus therefore turns to Tamora who has already sworn vengeance against Titus and his family. Aaron the Moor and lover of Tamora plots to destabilise the regime and instigates two of Tamora's sons to rape and disfigure Lavinia and kill Bassianus. War breaks out between the families as each murder leads to more bloodshed. It can only end when most of the principal characters are dead, but their is no moral to this story, the violence continues to the end of the play and the audience is left with the impression that violence is endemic.

Shakespeare was following a tradition of earlier successes in the theatre: Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy and Christopher Marlowe's the Jew of Malta were both revenge tragedy's, but Shakespeare took this theme and ran with it further into the darkness and darkness is the overall impression that I got from this play. The BBC production starring Trevor Peacock as Titus stays true to the text and there is no light at all in the 2 and a half hours playing time. It does show how well the play can be made to work. An evening in the theatre with this play cannot fail to depress the viewer. No thoughts of better times ahead, no optimism, just blackness piled on blackness. Perhaps it was a play of its time with the theatres on the verge of being closed due to the plague. It does not make for cheerful viewing during the covid 19 epidemic. It is a powerful unrelenting play and I can understand why it might be well thought of by some, but for me at this moment in time I could quite cheerfully pass it by 4 stars, but 5 stars for the BBC film.

H1.31.4

Oh my goodness, I am *traumatised*

Titus Andronicus'u okudum. Tragedyaları çok severim, oyunlarda kan ve entrika hoşuma gider ama bu oyundaki şiddet miktarı benim sınırlarımı bile aştı. Tüylerim ürperek okudum oyunu.

Bu oyun aynı zamanda Shakespeare'in en kanlı oyunu olması lazım. Shakespeare zamanında çok sevilen bu oyun daha sonra sahnelenme zorluğundan dolayı popülaritesini kaybetmiş. Oyun bire bir sahneye taşınmak istense izleyicilerin midesi kaldırmaz ama sansüre uğratılırsa da oyunun etkileyiciliği ortadan kalkacaktır, oyun böyle bir paradoksa girdiği için çok az sahnelenmiş.

Kitap çeviri ve editörlük açısından da muhteşemdi. Shakespeare kitaplarında çevirmen olarak Özdemir Nutku adını görünce, çeviri açısından hiçbir endişem olmuyor.

A play, a comedy written in the early 1590's, probably for the court of Queen Elizabeth, but would also have worked on the popular London outdoor theatres. Peele was a playwright who from the evidence available was able to dip into the melting pot of previous drama and come up with something that would provide entertainment across the social spectrum. In the Old Wive's tale he probably felt secure enough in his abilities to distance himself from the classics of antiquity and produce a play that works well enough on it's own terms. Previously in his earlier 'The Arraignment of Paris' he had used a mixture of gods from antiquity and the well worn trope of shepherds from pastoral settings. In the Old Wives Tale he is content to find his inspiration from the English folk-lore tradition and with his use of a play within a play able to combine people attached to Queen Elizabeth's court with village people, there is not a god or a shepherd in site.

The play was printed in 1595 describing itself as a "pleasant conceited comedy" but the version we have today is unusually short when compared to other plays from this era and that together with some obvious misalignments in the text points to this as being a cut down version of Peel's original play. However what we have is still something quite original for the time it was written. A fast moving comedy romance that seems to be an amalgam of at least four different stories that come together more or less in a light hearted fantasy.

The play features a play within a play with the old woman Madge passing the night away by telling a "Winter's Tale" to a couple of servants to a courtier who have become lost in the woods. There are in fact three servants Antic, Frolic and Fantastic who become lost and are found by a village blacksmith (Clunch) who takes them home out of pity for their situation. Madge his wife is left to entertain two of them while Clunch shares the only bed with Antic. Madge starts to spin her tale which comes to life and they all witness the tale acted out in front of them. Two brothers of a Princess are searching for their sister who has been kidnapped by the magician Sacrapant. Meanwhile the Spaniard Huanebango is looking for adventure as a knight errant and he teams up with Corebus, a clown. Eumanides another knight errant is also looking to do good and they all meet up with Erestus who is labouring under a spell cast by Sacrapant and speaks in riddles that foretell the future. Eumanides comes across Wiggen who is arguing with some church officials who are charging too much money to bury his friend Jack, Eumanides gives nearly all of his money for the burial and is rewarded by the ghost of Jack who helps him in his quest. Two daughters of the poor man Lampriscus are looking for husbands and they are assisted by the "heads in the stream". A Friar puts in appearance, Harvest Men appear at intervals to sing and play and the Spaniard Huanebango is mocked, for being a braggart, but really because he is Spanish and a Catholic.

It is an Old Wives Tale told and played for its comedy value, it does not need to have a logical plot and in fact what we are left with is a series of sketches that all come together with the defeat of the evil magician Sacrapant. There is no characterisation, but plenty of satire and fantasy, with Peels bubbling text driving it all on in a thoroughly modern way. No moralising, although most of the characters get what they are looking for and the evil magician dies. The play may have been appreciated for it's protestant standpoint that mocks the catholics and there are allusions to other literary figures active at the time, but these would not be easily picked up by the modern reader without the aid of notes. So what we have is a comedy romance that is started by Madge by the immortal words "Once upon a time......" (first recorded use?) and Huanebango boasts to the daughter of Lampriscus (Zantippa) that he will:

True sweetheart, and will royalize thy progeny with my Pedigree:

while earlier Zantippa is not phased by the bodiless heads that appear in the stream:

what am I, then? a woman without a tongue is as a soldier without his weapon: but I'll have my water, and be gone.

Evil Magician, a kidnapped Princesses, a Spanish braggart, a clown, a couple of desperate daughters, the grateful dead (Jack), a mad woman that appears but says nothing, floating heads, a minstrel troupe, knight errants and some officious churchmen all combine to entertain. I enjoyed the version that is free on line from the ElizabethanDrama.org; modern spelling and annotated. 4 stars.

[David and Bethsabe] or to give it its full title:
The love of King David and Fair Bethsabe with the Tragedy of Absolon - George Peele
In the 1590's there are known to be 13 plays produced that were based on events from the Bible, but only two of them have survived. George Peele's David and Bethsabe tells of some of the well known events in the life of king David from the second book of Samuel. The Bible was Peele's only source and although he drew much inspiration from the text of the Bible he truncated many of the events to provide a drama that would be playable on the stage. The text of Peele's play that has come down to us is an uneven affair, with purple patches of poetry and song mixed with some uncomfortable plot and character twists that may be due to missing or corrupted material, but as in many cases of plays from this period we can only read and enjoy what we have in front of us.

After a prologue the play opens with with David sitting on the Palace roof watching Bethsabe bathing over a spring and he hears her singing:

Come, gentle Zephyr, tricked with those perfumes
That erst in Eden sweetened Adam's love,
And stroke my bosom with thy silken fan:
This shade, sun-proof, is yet no proof for thee;
Thy body, smoother than this waveless spring,
And purer than the substance of the same,
Can creep through that his lances cannot pierce:
Thou, and thy sister, soft and sacred Air,
Goddess of life, and governess of health,
Keep every fountain fresh and arbour sweet;
No brazen gate her passage can repulse,
Nor bushly thicket bar thy subtle breath:
Then deck thee with thy loose delightsome robes,
And on thy wings bring delicate perfumes,
To play the wantons with us through the leaves.

Peele's sensuous language conjures up the scene of King David being entranced by the beauty of the woman bathing and he is soon telling himself (and the audience) that "My soul, incensed with a sudden fire.". He discovers that Bethseba is married to one of his fighting men away at the wars and loses no time in arranging/commanding that she should sleep with him. Meanwhile David's son Amnon has lured his half sister Thamar into his bed, where he rapes her and throws her out when he has finished with her. Thamar runs to her brother Absolom who swears revenge on Amnon. A story of love, lust and betrayal takes up the early running in this play, before turning into the story of the revolt of Absolom against his father King David.

The relationship between King David and his son Absolom becomes the centrepiece of the play and the final quarter of it hones in on Davids reaction to the news that Absolom has been killed. The theme of the play has been building towards the question of the divine right of kings and finally David must decide what is more important, his love for his family or the state of Israel, albeit his commanders threatened desertion shapes the decision making and makes the point that the King cannot rule in isolation.

The overall shape of the play is uneven with the dramatic death of Absolom (stabbed while caught by his hair and hanging from tree branches) coming with some quarter of the play still to go. This turns out to be the end of any significant dramatic action, which had been fast moving up to that point. The final speeches which explore the nature of kingship and family are lively enough in themselves but the play seems to have come to a premature end as far as spectacle is concerned, but the dialogue continue with images of love and sensual beauty. Here is David after naming Soloman as the future king of Israel:

Salomon, my love, is David's lord;
Our God hath named him lord of Israel:
In him (for that, and since he is thy son,)
Must David needs be pleasèd at the heart;
And he shall surely sit upon my throne.
But Absalon, the beauty of my bones,
Fair Absalon, the counterfeit of love,
Sweet Absalon, the image of content,
Must claim a portion in his father's care,
And be in life and death King David's son.

King David bestrides this play just as Tamburlaine did in Christopher Marlowe's play and Peele imitates Marlowe's powerful lines with his own poetry laid out in strict iambic pentameters. However Peele is not only interested in power, he brings to his play the love of beauty. He celebrates David's prowess as a musician, his love for the beauty of Bethsabe, his love for his beautiful boy Absolom and does this with a softening of the more martial language that Marlowe might have used. Peele was a playwright that seems to straddle the line across the indoor smaller theatres of the boys theatre troupes and the large popular outdoor amphitheatres used by the adult players and David and Beshabe is a case in point. It certainly has some drama to entertain the London Theatre going public, but it has no recourse to comedy of any kind and the action seems to suddenly stop. Peele seems more intent to portray a visual/verbal sense of delight; conjured up by his poetry which also points to a moral dilemma. His source of material from the bible works against this in some respects because imagery from there can be violent in the extreme.

The play is ultimately concerned with David's soul. It asks the question can a man who is so easily seduced by the beauty that he finds all around him and which leads him to sin, be forgiven. Today we read the play for the assault on the senses contained in Peel's verse, perhaps we marvel at the hyperbole, at images that leap from the page, in some ways it is an astonishing piece of literature, but there are reasons why there are few attempts to realise it on a modern stage. I think this deserves a special place in the Elizabethan canon; I have not read anything quite like it, even if it cannot be made to work as a play I found myself enjoying passages of fine poetic drama and so 4 stars.

There was a film released in 1951 titled David and Bathsheba starring Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward, but that is another story.

[[George Peele]] - The Famous Chronicle of Edward I
Probably written in 1590 and attributed to George Peele: the play that has come down to us is a real hotchpotch. It is generally believed to be an extremely corrupted text, in that it either has suffered from revisions by Peele himself or more likely it has been patched together by more than one hand. There are obvious time line problems in the plot and occasionally the text makes no sense. King Edward I is named as Longshankes throughout the play and there are references to a play called Longshankes that was popular in London during the 1590's and historians believe this was Peele's play in some form or other.

The play can be divided into three parts which are loosely connected: the first part deals with Edward I return from the Holy Land and his subsequent battles with Lleuellen the rebel in Wales and John Baliol of Scotland, the second part is Lleuellen's impersonation of Robin Hood complete with Friar Tuck, Little John and Maid Marion and the third part is the vilification of queen Elinor of Spain wife to Edward I. Generally the play becomes more fantastical as it stumbles through its various stages, but there is some evidence of fine writing, some successful comedy interludes and some political overtones that might have appealed to the London public.

The play opens with Edward Longshankes triumphant return from the holy land. The stage directions point to a colourful display of pageantry with a large number of actors taking part which if they were all on stage together might have stretched resources a little, but this is pure spectacle and it has the text to go with it similar to Christopher Marlowe's mighty line used in Tamburlaine:

"Illustrious England, ancient seat of kings,
Whose chivalry hath royaliz'd thy fame,
That sounding bravely through terrestrial vale,
Proclaiming conquests, spoils, and victories,
Rings glorious echoes through the farthest world."

This is the queen mother paving the way for Edward to address the crowd, but when he does the high flown language comes down a peg or two and he refers lovingly to his companion in arms his wife Queen Elinor and then most surprisingly he commits to ensuring that all the soldiers that returned with him will be well looked after and hospitals will be found for those sick and maimed. He then starts a bidding war amongst the attending nobles as to who will grant the most money for relief of those hurt in the fighting. In the 1590's Elizabeth I and her courtiers had become dismissive of soldiers and sailors returning home from war, many of whom were left to roam the countryside to get a living as best they could. The speech by Edward I in the play would have made a succinct point to the audience. The next scene switches to the court of Lleuellen of Wales and the bawdy humour of the friar and the novice written in prose contrasts with the pageantry of the scene before and it concludes with a song from the Harper. The play starts to become confusing at this point with Edward negotiating with the Scots and then fighting in Wales. A Lady Elinor appears to be taken hostage and the play staggers on with the decision by Lleuellen and his followers to take to the forest and impersonate Robin Hood.

The final section is the most weird as it strays into magical realism. Queen Elinor has produced a male heir, and the relationship with the king has improved, but then there are witnesses that see her sinking into the ground at Charring Cross and rising again at Queenhithe. Meanwhile there is more pageantry as Lleuellen's head on a spear is paraded through London along with his bother David on a hurdle and the Friar and Harpur who will be executed. The play shifts back to Queen Elinor who has taken to her bed and says that she must make her confession. The king disguises himself as her confessor and hears of her adultery with his brother Edmund on the eve of their wedding. There have already been clear signs of Queen Elinor's madness and Spanish pride when she had the Mayoress of London killed by adders sucking at her breast. Elinor dies, her daughter Joan succumbs through shame of a lowly birth, but Edward puts all this behind him as he prepares to battle with the Scots.

The source of Queen Elinor's sinking and rising again has been taken from an anonymous ballad entitled 'A warning piece to England against Pride and wickedness:

"With that at Charring Cross she sank
Into the ground alive
And after rose with life again
In London, at Queenhithe.”

Queen Elinor's disgrace at the end of this play probably owes much to the then current war with Spain and England's fears of invasion. It is true that historically Queen Elinor was not popular because of her use of power to make property deals in her favour, but the rest of the stuff in the play is pure fantasy.

How typical this patched together production of a play is for the London stage is a matter of conjecture and it might be that George Peele's name at the bottom of a printed version has led to its survival; as it is included in a volume of collected works published in 1829. For its curiosity value and the odd piece of fine writing 2.5 stars.½

George Peele -The Battle of Alcazar from [The dramatic and poetical works of Robert Greene & George Peele}

“To split the ears of the groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb shows and noise.”
Shakespeare, Hamlet.

Shakespeare was probably referring to George Peele’s play The Battle of Alcazar or a very similar production. Shakespeare had a point because The Battle of Alcazar proved popular with the Elizabethan theatre going public and it is certainly very noisy as the whole play is concerned with the build up to and the Battle fought between two Moorish (muslim) kings, the kIng of Portugal and an English expeditionary force led by Captain Thomas Stukely. Two of the kings are killed along with Stuckley, but as we are told this is going to happen in the first scene of the play then I am not giving anything away. Shakespeare may have been a bit jealous of the play’s popularity because it went onto a good number of performances and was revived at least twice during the early years of the theatre. Significantly however there have been no modern productions.

Shakespeare might not have liked the dumb shows, but Peele uses them well and they were still a feature of many plays at that time. Peele has a Presenter who informs the audience about what has happened and who the major players will be, while a dumb show is going on behind him. The audience will see the Moor’s uncle and his two young brothers being smothered in bed to display the Moor’s (Muly Mahamet) cruelty, tyranny, and ambition. Peele has a lot of information to share at the start of the first act and it serves to get the play underway and fills in the background while also leading the audience to wonder about what is going to happen next.

“Sit you and see this true and tragic war
A modern matter full of blood and ruth
Where three bold kings, confounded in their height
fell to the earth. contending for a crown;
And call this war The battle of Alcazar”

Abdelemec or Muly Molocco is considered the rightful king of Barbary and in the first act he defeats Muly Mahamet and sends him into exile. The rest of the play details the efforts of the tyrant Muly Mahamet to win back his crown. He seeks an allegiance with the catholic Sebastian king of Portugal and also with an English adventurer Captain Thomas Stukeley. They all come together in the final act which describes in some detail the course of the battle. In my opinion Peele’s main reason for writing the play was to tell the story of this battle in a way that would be entertaining and exciting. It was also fairly contemporary, not something from Britain’s long lost past; the events happened just 10 years before the plays first performance. King Sebastian was killed at the battle and King Philip II of Spain (who refused an alliance in the play) was still alive, so the appeal; would have been of a story within living memory. Sir Thomas Stukeley, the notorious English courtier, pirate, adventurer and soldier also died at the Battle of Alcazar in Morocco in 1578, while serving in the army of King Sebastian of Portugal which again emphasises the contemporary nature of the action. It was one of the first plays to deal with Muslim Kings and their names and the descriptions of them as negro-moors would have made them sound exotic. Peele seems to have little interest in making any racial comparisons. If there is a theme then it is the depiction of the rightful heir to the throne, the rule of kings and their progeny. Muly Muhamet is a usurper and must be dethroned. The king of Portugal and Thomas Stukeley both ally themselves with the usurper and so they too must die. The noble Muly Molocco also dies but his army are victorious and his son takes the crown. The stage directions point to an all action play: Muly Mahamet makes his entrance in scene ii Act 1 on a chariot, there is the sight of a blazing star, diplomats prove their loyalty by making a fire and thrusting their hands in it, dead men’s heads are displayed on dishes, there are numerous skirmishes some described as long skirmished and a number of killing scenes. Stukeley’s slaying is perhaps the most dramatic:

Stukeley: Strike on, strike down this body to the earth
Whose mounting mind stoops t no feeble stroke
Jonas: Why suffer we this Englishman to live?-
(they stab Stukeley)
Villain, bleed on: thy blood in channels run
And meet with those whom thou to death has done.

This does not stop Stukeley giving a lengthy speech before he dies.

The powerful blood soaked language does not let up throughout the play and this is my main criticism because it makes it all too one dimensional. There is no subtlety, no emotions just the heavy thump of a language marching to the beat of a drum. There is time however for a panegyric to Queen Elizabeth, delivered by Stukeley who wants to be king of Ireland but realises this is impossible when Elizabeth I is “sacred, imperial and holy in her seat”. It has to be said that Peele’s blank verse is impressive and there is no let up in the action, but compared to The Spanish Tragedy it remains one dimensional and so although worth reading I rate it at three stars

Performed before queen Elizabeth I in 1584 George Peele’s Arraignment of Paris is very much a play of its time. It was its intention to amuse, entertain and beguile the classically educated audience of courtiers that surrounded the queen. The fact that it reads so well today is in my opinion the result of Peele’s excellent writing in verse and prose and his ability to deliver a play that for the most part the reader can imagine being performed. It has songs, dances, witty repartee and rhetorical arguments that keep on the right side of providing entertainment. If the reader is looking for character development, psychological insights or a dramatic storyline then he will not find it here, but this was not the aim of the author, he was concerned with delighting his audience with this masque like production, he was looking at delivering a spectacle.

George Peele (1556-1596) was one of a number of university educated men making their living primarily by their pen in Elizabethan England. Peele was a translator, poet, songwriter and dramatist and The Arraignment of Paris is his earliest attributed play. Along with other playwrights at the time: Greene, Nashe, and Marlowe he had a reputation for riotous living, but this should not detract from his skill as a wordsmith. The play is a court entertainment: a pastoral that includes mythical Roman Gods; it draws down from the knowledge base of its audience, who would be comfortable with the subject matter. Peele plays with genres here by making the mythological figure of Paris appear in a pastoral setting as a shepherd singer, but first Three Roman goddesses; Pallas representing wisdom, Juno representing majesty and Venus representing love, descend to earth and are welcomed with gifts. Paris and his lover Oenone walk in the pastoral paradise, sit under a tree and tell stories and sing and play together. The three goddesses also tell stories but are interrupted by a strange storm and from a lightning strike a golden apple descends to earth and a note saying that it belongs to the fairest. They each claim the apple but cannot decide who shall have it and so they agree that the next person they meet should be the judge. Enter the shepherd swain Paris; Juno promises Paris riches and a golden tree magically arises, Pallas shows the power of martial arts with a procession of armoured men, but Venus the goddess of love promises Paris success in love and shows him Helen surrounded by four cupids and Helen sings to Paris. Paris gives the golden apple to Venus.

A change of scene in act III but still very much in a pastoral setting, indeed Peele cleverly refers to Edmund Spenser’s Shepherds Calendar published five years earlier by introducing characters from that play: Colin, Hobbinol, Diggon, and Thenot who play and sing about constancy in love. The jilted Oenone appears to sing a lovers complaint and the God Mercury arrives to sing a duet which soon becomes a singing competition; a staple of pastoral poems dating back to Virgil. Mercury says that he will report Paris’ wrongdoing to Jove the father of the gods, meanwhile there is a funeral procession featuring Colin’s hearse. Mercury summons Paris and the goddesses to appear on trial before Jove and Paris with a flash of fore sight says:

“The angry heavens, for this fatal jar
name me the instrument of dire and deadly war”

Paris appears before the Gods and presents his case argued on logical rhetoric. A central theme to the play is the definition and moral validity of beauty and in Paris’ eloquent defence in front of the tribunal he says he should not be blamed because he was bewitched by the beauty of the goddess Venus. It is a well thought out and structured argument and provides a climax to the action of the play. In the second longest speech of the play Apollo’s diplomacy saves the day. Paris is acquitted, but there is still the problem of who should have the golden apple. Jove says that as the apple appeared near to Diana’s bower, she the goddess of chastity should decide. Diana refers to the nymph Eliza and speaks in glowing terms of the rule of Elizabeth of the kingdom of the English. In this final act Peele has high-jacked his own play to turn it into a panegyric to Queen Elizabeth who is presented with the golden apple. It must have produced a not unexpected moment of drama when the play was performed in front of the Queen. In view of all the pageantry that had gone before it would have been the icing on the cake.

It is a play that largely avoids the long speeches that were a feature of the morality influenced plays of the then recent past. It was written and played as a spectacle with plenty of images to delight the audience, who would be expected to appreciate the pastoral setting, the mythological figures, the logical arguments and of course Paris role in the Trojan Wars. The play features rhyming verse, blank verse and snatches of prose and while the modern reader may not be able to envisage the scene before the queen and all the pageantry, song and dance, he can enjoy Peele’s poetry. I enjoyed reading this play which I think is one of the better examples of the spectacles presented for the queen and so 4 stars

My favorite of the lesser-known works, this has got more outright horror than most contemporary slasher novels. Sure, the rhetoric is a bit stilted and Shakespeare borrows heavily from Ovid, but it's a fascinating study of the bottomless pit that people can find themselves in once they succumb to the lure of violence.

I’m fond of this one, but I’d better go four stars to distinguish between my Shakespeares. It is the Quentin Tarantino of Shakespeare plays, with The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover thrown in (remember that?) Put another way, it is the Marlowe – Tamburlaine, Jew of Malta – and The Spanish Tragedy – deck strewn with dead – of Shakespeares. And fun was had. But you can take this as an exploration of the exploitation of violence. Will loved those plays, presumably, and I feel here he questions himself about why he loves this stuff.

Avoid the Oxford edition. Its introduction told me cruelty can only have been staged for the ‘unlettered groundling’ – nobody educated has such low appetites in entertainment – and never addressed the one thing that bothers me in the play, Aaron the Moor being black and a stereotype villain. However, I see he’s direct from a popular story, and when I place him with Marlowe’s Jew (whose lines he steals), I start to understand. So that’s saved you from marks off, Shakespeare.

As for Lavinia, she is best read against young Will's poem The Rape of Lucrece, published in the same year: fantastic poem, which gives a woman voice on sexual violence, unlike Lavinia who has her tongue cut out.

A little to gory for my taste. I don't remember where this was, but there was a part where there was about 4 murders in 20 lines.

This was surprisingly easy to follow for such a complex plot line. It is Shakespeare's first tragedy and, compared to his others, not as well developed. But the seeds of elements from all of his other tragedies are in this. Especially interesting is the villain, Aaron the Moor, who is a less developed Iago. Though the play is very interesting from the standpoint of seeing how far Shakespeare developed as a dramatic playwright, it is so incredibly violent. So much of the violence occurs so suddenly that it is shocking even while just reading it in manuscript form. Can't wait to see what the Utah Shakespeare Festival handles this one!

This was surprisingly easy to follow for such a complex plot line. It is Shakespeare's first tragedy and, compared to his others, not as well developed. But the seeds of elements from all of his other tragedies are in this. Especially interesting is the villain, Aaron the Moor, who is a less developed Iago. Though the play is very interesting from the standpoint of seeing how far Shakespeare developed as a dramatic playwright, it is so incredibly violent. So much of the violence occurs so suddenly that it is shocking even while just reading it in manuscript form. Can't wait to see what the Utah Shakespeare Festival handles this one!