Albere Galles

Heywood, Thomas, Smith, Wentworth (1602),Property "Paratext" (as page type) with input value "{{{paratexts}}}" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.Property "Contributor" (as page type) with input value "{{{contributors}}}" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.Property "Partnering Institution" (as page type) with input value "{{{partneringInstitutions}}}" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.

Historical Records

Payments

For playbooks in Philip Henslowe's diary

F. 115 (Greg I.179)

pd at the a poyntment the company	}
the 4 of septembʒ 1602 vnto Thomas hewod	}	vjll
& mr smyth in fulle payment for a	}
Boocke called        albe[t]re galles     some of	}

Theatrical Provenance

"Albere Galles" was written for Worcester's players while they were at the Rose, 1602-3.

Probable Genre(s)

Unknown (Harbage), Foreign History (Greg, Wiggins, Steggle)

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

Wiggins (#1342) and Steggle concur that a pamphlet entitled "A True Relation of [the] Taking of Alba Regalis" was a likely source for the play; the pamphlet was published in 1601.

References to the Play

In 1602 Duke Philip Julius of Stettin-Pomerania visited England, and while in London, the nobleman attended plays. The duke's diary records that "on the 13th a play was acted showing how Stuhl-Weissenberg was gained by the Turks, and then won again by the Christians" (quoted from Steggle, p. 112).

Critical Commentary

Malone offers no comment on this play; he does, however, render the title "albeke galles" (p. 316). Collier also changes the title, rendering it "alberte galles" (p. 239); further, he offers an opinion on the main character, whom he identifies as Albertus Wallenstein (hence the title correction to "alberte"). In a note (#1), he explains that reading Henslowe's manuscript requires a bit of ingenuity, which he illustrates by suggesting that the play might have used the lances and silk flag that Henslowe had paid for in two immediately preceding payments on September 3rd and 4th (pp. 239, 238). He explains further that Henslowe's first rendering of the "al" word in the entry was Albete.

Fleay, BCED, repeating Collier's change of the title to "Albert[e] Galles," discusses the play in the context of Heywood's works, subordinating Smith's role (II, Smith #8, p. 249). In the Heywood entry, Fleay redirects attention to an extant play, Nobody and Somebody, with the cryptic suggestion, "Query Archigallus" (I, Heywood, #18). He then explains (in an entry for Nobody and Somebody) that alterations of the designation "Britain" to "England" may conceal the already lost "Albere Galles," surmising that "Henslow might easily mistake some such name as Archigalle's three sons for Albert Galles (I, Heywood, #31, p. 294).

Greg II understands that Fleay has subsumed "Albere Galles" into Nobody and Somebody, explaining (as Fleay implies) that "Henslowe's title [becomes] a corruption of Archigallo, the King of Britain in the chronicle part of the play" (p.230, #264). Greg finds Fleay's guesswork that the lost play's title is a corruption of King Archigallo's name "reasonable," though he rejects Fleay's link of other characters from Nobody and Somebody with Archigallo's sons because Archigallo "had three brothers [but] no sons at all."

Wiggins, #1342 labels Henslowe's rendering of the title a corruption on evidence that the play was a dramatization of the siege of the Hungarian city, "Alba Regalis," which was held by the Turks for many years. In addition to connecting Heywood's and Smith's play with an historical moment (and thus untangling Henslowe's mangled "Albere Galles"), Wiggins gathers payments for various properties (including costumes) which might have been acquired for this play; in that discussion he considers whether the Turk's head ("tvrckes head") purchased on 24 August 1602 might have been used in "Albere Galles/Alba Regalis," and if so whether it was "an elaborate costume headdress" more like "an enormous turban" or a "severed head," thus marking the Turkish warlord-prince's roles from ruler to one of the vanquished.

Steggle, reinforcing Wiggins' identification with results from a search of EEBO-TCP using the name implied by the play title, turns up "Alberegalis," which has 30 hits that collectively deliver "a version of the whole solution" (p. 104).a A common variant of Alba Regalis, "Alberegalis" is Latin for the city known by the Hungarian name, Székesfehérvár, as well as the German name, Stuhlweissenberg.

Works Cited

Site created and maintained by Roslyn L. Knutson; Last updated by Rlknutson on 16 February 2024 18:28:30