Jerusalem

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Historical Records

Performance Records (Henslowe's diary)

Two records of performance survive in Henslowe’s accounts for early 1592:

Fol. 7 (Greg I, 13)

							Res at (Q) Jerusallem the 22 of marche 1591	......................	xviijs

Fol. 7 ^v (Greg I, 14)

							Res at Jerusalem the 25 of aprell 1592	..................................	xxxxvjs

Theatrical Provenance

"Jerusalem" was the eighteenth of twenty-four plays performed by Lord Strange's men at the Rose from February to June, 1593. It was introduced in the fifth week of their run.

Probable Genre(s)

Harbage, basing his choice apparently on a scholarly tradition of association with the literature of the crusades, suggests that "Jerusalem" was an historical romance. Wiggins, Catalogue #892, also linking the play with source material from the crusades, abbreviates the generic label to "romance."

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

The scholarly commentary on "Jerusalem" is a product of guesswork about its subject matter:

Malone thought "Jerusalem" was "[p]robably The Destruction of Jerusalem, by Dr. Thomas Legge," 1577? (p. 291). Collier tactfully dismissed Malone's suggestion of lumping the play with Legge's (primarily because the latter was in Latin), but he did not dismiss the possibility of similar narratives.

Fleay, BCED, 2. #110, repeated the link to Legge, but he was much more interested in possible connections to two later plays, the lost two-part "Godfrey of Bulloigne" in the repertory of the Admiral's men at the Rose starting in June and July 1594 (Fleay, 2.#152), as well as Thomas Heywood's Four Prentices of London.

Greg II, #18 (p. 155) mentioned the link to Legge's Destruction of Jerusalem only to dismiss it in favor of a "Conquest of Jerusalem" play. At the turn of the twentieth century, there was a powerful desire among theater historians to blend various discrete plays on the crusades into variations of one another, and Greg agreed, linking the lost 1592 "Jerusalem" with the lost "Godfrey" plays and Heywood's 1600 Four Prentices.

Wiggins, Catalogue, #892 doubles down on the serial relationship of Strange's men's "Jerusalem" and the Admiral's men's two-part "Godfrey of Bulloigne." He offers "Godfrey of Bouillon, with the Conquest of Jerusalem" as a contemporary alternative to Henslowe's choice of "Jerusalem." He offers a plot summary of "Jerusalem" drawn from the early parts of William of Tyre's Godfrey of Bouillon (trans. William Caxton, 1481) and Torquato Tasso's Gerusalemme liberata (1575).

References to the Play

Information welcome.

Critical Commentary

Wiggins, Catalogue #892 suggests that "Jerusalem" (despite only two performances by Lord Strange's men) "cannot have been a box-office failure" if another company (here, the Admiral's men) acquired a play or two as sequels (i.e., the two-part "Godfrey of Bulloigne").

For What It's Worth

Manley and MacLean call attention to Henslowe's recording one performance of "Q Ierusallem" and another of "Ierusalem," asking whether the titles represent "one play or two" (p. 393, n.80).

Wiggins, Catalogue #892, in the context of "Jerusalem" as the first part of the lost two-part "Godfrey of Bulloigne," describes the Admiral's men as, in effect, "the successors of Lord Strange's Men." It is not clear in what sense he means "successors" except as successive lessees of the playhouse, but the claim is open to the possibility that "Jerusalem" was on the tiring house shelf at the Rose when the Admiral's men began to play there in May 1594.

Works Cited

Site created and maintained by Roslyn L. Knutson, Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas at Little Rock; updated 9 July 2020.