Syracusan Tragedy, A

Elizabeth Cary (1603-1612): possibly 1604

NB. A Syracusan Tragedy is a recent assignation for this untitled play, and should be viewed as a convenience for the database.

Historical Records

John Davies of Hereford's The Muses Sacrifice (1612)

Davies alludes to Cary's lost play in his dedicatory epistle to Lucy Russell, Countess of Bedford; Mary Herbert, Countess of Pembroke; and Elizabeth Cary:

CARY (of whom Minerua stands in feare,

   lest she, from her, should get ARTS Regencie)

Of ART so moues the great-all-mouing Spheare,

   that eu'ry Orbe of Science moues thereby.

Thou mak'st Melpomen proud, and my Heart great

   of such a Pupill, who, in Buskin fine,

With Feete of State, dost make thy Muse to mete

   the Scenes of Syracuse and Palestine.

(Davies, sig. ⁂3v)

Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam (1613)

Cary refers to the Tragedy of Mariam as her second play, and to having written a previous one which she had dedicated to her husband. This is in the prefatory sonnet to Mariam, dedicating the play to her sister-in-law, and namesake, Elizabeth Cary;

WHen cheerfull Phœbus his full course hath run,

His sisters fainter beams our harts doth cheere:

So your faire Brother is to mee the Sunne,

And you his Sister as my Moone appeare.

You are my next belou'd, my second Friend,

For when my Phœbus absence makes it Night,

Whilst to th' Antipodes his beames do bend,

From you my Phœbe, shines my second Light.

Hee like to SOL, cleare-sighted, constant, free,

You LVNA-like, unspotted, chast, diuine:

Hee shone on Sicily, you destin'd bee,

T'illumine the now obscurde Palestine.

My first was consecrated to Apollo,

My second to DIANA now shall follow.

(Cary, sig. A1r)

Theatrical Provenance

Closet drama

Probable Genre(s)

Tragedy of state (per Davies)

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

Unknown. Syracuse, a city-state in Sicily, enjoyed a long and turbulent political history.

References to the Play

None known beyond Davies and Cary

Critical Commentary

Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland (1585–1639), is best-known for The Tragedy of Mariam, frequently described as the first extant original play written by an Englishwoman. Hodgson-Wright identifies Davies's Syracusan tragedy with the lost early play referred to by Cary, and offers arguments about its likely date, which is, of course, constrained by the date of The Tragedy of Mariam.

In spite of the considerable attention focussed on Mariam in recent years, relatively little mention has been made of what appears, from Cary's own description, to have been something of a companion piece to it.

Wiggins 1446 calls it a "Tragedy set in Syracuse".

For What It's Worth

Assuming that the Syracusan tragedy was not an original story but rather following an existing source, as does The Tragedy of Mariam; and knowing, as we do, something of Cary's reading habits; there ought to be a fairly short list of plausible candidate stories.

Works Cited

Cary, Elizabeth. The Tragedie of Mariam, the Faire Queene of Iewry. London, 1613. STC 4613.
Cary, Lady Elizabeth. The tragedy of Mariam, the fair queen of Jewry, ed. Stephanie Hodgson-Wright. Toronto: Broadview, 2000.
Davies, John. The Muses Sacrifice. London, 1612. STC 6338.

Site created and maintained by Matthew Steggle, Sheffield Hallam University; updated 18 September 2011.