Jugurtha, King of Numidia

William Boyle (1600)

Historical Records

Henslowe's Diary

F. 67^v (Greg I.118)

lent vnto me W birde the 9 of febreary 1599 to paye

for a new booke to Will: Boyle. cald Jugurth xxx^s

w^c if yo^u dislike Ile repaye it back ... xxx^s

Dramatic Records of Henry Herbert

Herbert, 28:

1624, May 3. "An Old Play, called, Jugurth, King of Numidia, formerly allowed by Sir George Bucke." (Internet Archive)

Citing George Chalmers (A Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare-Papers. London, 1799, 218), Adams adds the following in a footnote:

"Elsewhere Chalmers writes (S. A. 203): 'On the 3d of May, 1624, Sir Henry Herbert states, that he had licensed, without a fee, Jugurth, an old play, allowed by Sir George Bucke, and burnt, with his other books.'" Adams then quotes the entry in Henslowe's Diary (above) for the payment to William Boyle and adds: "Apparently this is the play now licensed by Herbert" (Herbert 28).

Theatrical Provenance

The Admiral's Men paid William Bird 30s. on 9 February 1600 "for a new booke" by William Boyle during that early spring season of heavy expenditure on plays when their competitors were in full swing across Maid Lane at the Globe and their own plans for the building of the Fortune were underway. The 30s. solo payment is well below the cost of a new play (usually £6), but scholars have assumed that the script was completed both because of Bird's wording ("for a new booke") and the licensing of Jugurtha, King of Numidia by Henry Herbert and the tagging of that play as old and previously "allowed" by Sir George Buc, Deputy Master of the Revels in 1600. Reaching further, scholars have seen some kind of survival for the Boyle play in a seventeenth-century manuscript for a play called Jugurtha, or The Faithless Cousin German.

Probable Genre(s)

Tragedy ? (Harbage), Classical Tragedy (Knutson)

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

The story of Jugurtha (c. 160-104 BCE) was widely known from the Roman historian, Sallust (Internet Archive). Jugurtha was the king of Numidia in North Africa; he was loosely allied with Rome until he decided to expand his kingdom. He incurred Rome's wrath by killing some Italian merchants in the course of battle with a neighboring warlord. Jugurtha was captured, brought to Rome, and executed in 104 BCE.

References to the Play

In 1654, in Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixot, Edmund Gayton says the following:

"I have known upon one of these Festivals, but especially at Shrovetide, where the Players have been appointed, nothwithstanding their bils to the contrary, to act what the major part of the company had a mind to; sometimes Tamerlane, sometimes Jugurth, sometimes the Jew of Malta, and sometimes parts of all these, and at last, none of the three taking, they were forc'd to undresse and put off their Tragick habits and conclude the day with the merry milk-maides" (Bentley, 3.37).

Because The Jew of Malta and Tamburlaine were still being performed post-1624, when the "Jugurtha" licensed by Herbert was current, it is not clear whether Gayton was referring to the 1624 or the 1600 play. However, his anecdote does support stage performances of some version of a play on the Numidian king.

Critical Commentary

Fleay identifies the play at the Rose with the item licensed by Buc and theorizes further that "Boyle" is "merely a nom de plume for Bird himself" (I.33).

Carson theorizes that Boyle, who is not otherwise known as a dramatist, was paid so little for his play because he was a novice (60).

Knutson sees a plausible responsiveness of Jugurtha to offerings in the repertory of the Chamberlain's Men in 1600 such as Julius Caesar (on the basis of Roman history), Titus Andronicus (North African characters), and The Tartarian Cripple ("motifs of conquest and exotic warlords") (25).

For What It's Worth

Scholars since Chalmers have been inclined to identify the 1600 Jugurtha by Boyle with the Jugurtha licensed by Herbert because it is referred to as an old play formerly licensed by Sir George Buc. Scholars also have assumed that the book burning specified in Chalmers's note on the Jugurtha in 1624 refers to the fire at the Fortune in 1621. Bentley describes a manuscript entitled Jugurtha or the Faitless [sic] Cosen German a Tragedy, which is preserved in the Bodleian Library (Bodleian MS. Rawl. poet.195). He connects this manuscript to the play licensed by Herbert, labeling the manuscript "an incomplete and inexpert Restoration adaptation of Boyle's old play" (3.38). The manuscript in the Bodleian Library ends at IV.i, with "three or four sketched-in scenes following, and, after a break of three pages, four smaller pages of rought unintegrated material" (Bentley, 3.37). Bentley provides the list of characters from the manuscript, second folio, verso:

Jugurtha		partner in the Kingdome of Numidia Supposed Sonn of Monstabales and adopted Son Mysipsa [?] late King of Numidia & ffather to the Brothers
Atherball		partner in the Kingdome of Numidia Brother to Hyempsall in love with Seraphina
Hyempsall		partner in the Kingdome of Numidia in Love with Seraphina
Marius		The Roman Consull
Calphurnius		his Generall
Nabdalsa		Generall of Iugurtha's Army
	women
Octavia		Marius Daughter in Love with & beloved by Iugurtha
Seraphina		Sister to Iugurtha in Love with Hyempsall
Lysandra		Seraphina's Woman of Honour and Confident to Atherball

Concerning two scenic notations ("Scane Thala or thereabouts," "Actus primus Scene a pallace"), Bentley believes both are marks of a post-, not pre-, Restoration play (3.28).

Gurr, gathering the evidence that links the Bodleian manuscript and Herbert license to the play by Boyle, adds that "Heywood published a translation of Sallust's history of the Catiline conspiracy and the life of Jugurtha of Numidia in 1608" (250n).

Works Cited

Carson, Neil. A Companion to Henslowe's Diary. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988.

Chalmers, George. A Supplemental Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare-Papers'. London, 1799.

Fleay, Frederick Gard. A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama. 2 vols. London, 1891. rpt. NY: Burt Franklin, 1962.

Gurr, Andrew. Shakespeare’s Opposites: The Admiral’s Company 1594-1625. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Knutson, Roslyn L. “Toe to Toe Across Maid Lane: Repertorial Competition at the Rose and Globe, 1599-1600,” in June Schlueter and Paul Nelsen (eds) Acts of Criticism: Performance Matters in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Madison & Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005), 21-37.

Pollard, Alfred. The Catiline and Jugurtha of Sallust, Translated into English. London: Macmillan and Co., 1882. Internet Archive

Site created and maintained by Roslyn L. Knutson, Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas at Little Rock; updated 24 November 2009.