Telomo

Anon. (1583)

Historical Records

Court Records

Accounts of the Office of the Revels

Christmas Twelftide & Shrouetide and makeing choise of plaies. Anno Regni Regine Elizabethe: xxv^o 1582

A historie of Telomo shewed before her maiestie at Richmond on Shrovesondaie at night Enacted by the Earle of Leicesters servauntes, for which was prepared and Imployed, one Citty, one Battlement of canvas iij. Ells of sarcenet and viij. paire of gloves. And furnished with sondrey other garmentes of the store of the office &c.

(Feuillerat 350)

Theatrical Provenance

Performed for the court by Leicester's Men at Richmond on Shrove Sunday (10 February) 1583.

Probable Genre(s)

(Under construction.)

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

(Under construction.)

References to the Play

None known.

Critical Commentary

Probably following Collier (22), Harbage suggests this play might be the same as "Ptolemy", performed at the Bull Inn in the late 1570s.

Wiggins points out that Harbage's identification is quite problematic, especially because by 1583 the play would have been too old to be staged before the Queen (serial number 736). He also hypothesises that there may be a connection between "Telomo" and the romance Palmerin d'Oliva, where Ptolome is the name of one of the main character's friends.
If a connection exists, however, it would be to the original Spanish (1511) or the French translation (1546) rather than to Anthony Munday's English translation, which was only published in 1588. Wiggins indicates 1581 as the date of publication of Palmerin d'Oliva, which is in fact the year when one of the other romances in the Palmerin cycle, namely Palmerin of England, was entered into the Stationers' Register. However, Palmerin of England does not feature Ptolome as a character. Interestingly enough, the character's Spanish name in Palmerin de Oliva is Tolomé, which is indeed even closer to Telomo.

MacLean remarks that for the members of Leicester's Men who had obtained the royal patent in 1574 the performance of "Telomo" must have been one of the last before joining the newly-formed Queen's Men in March 1583 (261-262).

As a result of "a series of 'brute force' searches in EEBO-TCP" (11) seeking to veryfy whether "Telomo" might have been an alternative or corrupted form of the name "Ptolemy", Lovascio concludes that 'Since the proposed identification of Telomo and Ptolome was exclusively predicated on the supposed similarity between the spellings of the two titles, the search results [...] make it appear quite unlikely that Telomo was a play about someone called Ptolemy, thereby adding another, possibly stronger, argument to the one Wiggins already advanced about Telomo and Ptolemy being not one and the same play" (12).

Then, Lovascio suggests that—since " the name 'Telamon'—albeit quite uncommonly—be written as 'Telomon' [...] it is not impossible that Telomo could have been a play about Ajax Telamonius" (12). However, a number of problems are attached to this hypothesis. First, "it appears extremely difficult to find a plausible reason why the play would have been titled ‘Telamon’ rather than ‘Ajax’"; second, "Ajax and Ulysses had been performed at court in 1572 and [...] it does not seem particularly likely that Leicester’s Men would have brought to court a play on a subject that had already been staged in front of the queen ten years earlier"; finally, "while we know little about Leicester’s Men’s repertory, a play about Ajax would not sit very comfortably among the other play titles we know, which seem to point to a repertory mostly featuring romance, pastoral themes, and morally instructive contents" (13-14).

Lovascio also notes that "if Telomo was a play about someone named Telamon, it could also theoretically have been about Ajax’s father, Telamon of Salamis" (14), who was also a well-known mythological figure. Yet, this possibility does not seem particularly likely, "insofar as in most adventures in which he takes part Telamon is usually a background character; moreover, there is no evidence available in the surviving play-texts suggesting that [...] he raised any significant interest in early modern English playwrights, nor does there seem to be any particular contextual reason why Leicester’s Men should have chosen him as a subject for a play to be performed at court" (14).

If 'Telomo' was indeed a misspelling of 'Telamon', there is perhaps a more plausible candidate as the subject of this lost play, namely one of the characters in Brian Melbancke's early euphuistic romance Philotimus. The Warre betwixt Nature and Fortune, published in 1583. Interestingly, the name Telamon is here once spelled "Telamō".
The plot of Philotimus is not in the least interesting in relation to Leicester's Men's lost "Telomo", but the episode of "The Vnkindly Loue of Telamon to Castibula His Frends Wife" might be. Colby, the only editor of the romance to date, sums up the storyline of this inset narration as follows:

Telamon [...] has conceived an illicit passion for Castibula [...]. He pursues her, but she vigorously rejects him, and eventually Telamon agrees to say no more to her of the matter. But he hires two cutthroats to murder Cleocritus. Suspecting the truth, Castibula first bewails her husband’s death then swears to avenge his murder. She agrees to marry Telamon, but at the marriage feast they both drink from a poisoned cup she has prepared. Telamon retires to die; Castibula commends [her daughter] Fulvia to Philotimus’ care, Philotimus to [his tutor] Mondaldo’s care, and after praying for forgiveness of her double sin of murder and suicide, she dies.

For What It's Worth

(Under construction.)

Works Cited

Collier, John Payne. "History of the English Drama and Stage to the Time of Shakespeare." Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, Tragedies, and Poems. 6 vols. London: Whittaker, 1858. 1:1—38. Google Books, open access

Lovascio, Domenico. “Leicester's Men and the Lost Telomo of 1583”. Early Theatre 20.1 (2017): 9-26.

MacLean, Sally-Beth. "Tracking Leicester's Men: The Patronage of a Performance Troupe." Paul Whitfield White, Suzanne R. Westfall (eds). Shakespeare and Theatrical Patronage in Early Modern England. Cambridge: CUP, 2006. 246-271.

Site created and maintained by Domenico Lovascio, University of Genoa; updated 04 October 2018.