Absalom

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Historical Records

Performance Records (Henslowe's Diary)

None known

Payments

F. 116^v (Greg, I.182)

==== For properties in Philip Henslowe's diary ====

pd for poleyes & worckmanshipp for to	}
hange absolome} xiiijd

Theatrical Provenance

The likeliest venue for performances of "Absalom" is the Rose playhouse, where Worcester's company played after the Admiral's men moved into Edward Alleyn's new Fortune playhouse.

Probable Genre(s)

Harbage: Biblical History

Wiggins: Biblical Tragedy

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

The obvious source for a play is 2 Samuel 13-19. In those verses, Absalom, who was the third son of David by his wife, Maacah, defends the virtue of his sister, Tamar, who is raped by another of David's sons, Amnon, who lured her into his bedroom on the pretense of being ill, then, when she refused to lie with him, he forced her, then sent her away. When she objected, saying that the evil he had done to her was worse than the evil of the rape, Amnon summoned a servant to put her out. Thus humiliated, Tamar rent her garments and put ashes on her head. Absalom saw her distressed state, questioned her about what had happened, and took her in. Two years later, Absalom seized the opportunity of a harvesting mission to lure Amnon away from David's court. He ordered his servants to seize the opportunity of post-harvest drinking to murder Amnon. Other of David's sons who were also among the harvesters fled. David, however, received false intelligence that Absalom had murdered all of his sons. David, later convinced of Absalom's innocence, called him back to court.

At peace awhile, David and Absalom became estranged again over a challenge to David's rule. Battles followed, and in the midst of one, Absalom rode his mule under the thick boughs of an old oak tree and his beautiful thick locks got so entangled in those boughs that he was pulled from his mule and dangled helplessly from the branches. A cadre of the king's warriors found him there. One, Joab, stabbed him with darts whereupon his men finished the job (after taking Absalom's armor) after burying him under a heap of stones. David, learning of the execution, mourned, weeping "O my son Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom!, would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" (King James Version, Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1939; 2 Samuel 18.33).

References to the Play

None known.

Critical Commentary

Fleay, succumbing to the temptation of folding a lost play into an extant one, subsumes "Absalom" into The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe by George Peele (BCED, II.#6, 153-4).

Greg II, wrestling as he so often did with the creative play-identifications of Fleay, bluntly characterizes Fleay's assertions: "There is nothing to show what company Peele's play belonged to, and nothing to suggest that it was connected with the present piece ["Absalom"]." He casts doubt further on the identification of the properties with "Absalom," suggested instead "Two (Three) Brothers" (#269a, p. 232).

Wiggins, in the entry for The Love of King David and Fair Bathsheba (#870) gives no hint that the play had been previously invoked by Fleay and Greg as having had some connection with the lost "Absalom" (#870).