Vestal, The

Henry Glapthorne (c.1633-1642)

Historical Records

Stationers' Register

On 29 June, 1660, the printer Humphrey Moseley entered on the Stationers' Register a list of twenty-six plays, including:

The Vestall. a Tragedy. [brace]

The noble Triall. a Tragicomedy [brace] by Hen: Glapthorne.

The Dutchesse of Fernandina. a Tragedy [brace]

Warburton's List

Among the manuscript plays which Warburton claimed had been destroyed by his cook are listed:

The Vestall A Tragedy by H. Glapthorn

The Noble Tryall. T. H. Glapthorn

Warburton seems to list the play again further down the list:

The vestal a Tragedy H. Glapthorn

Theatrical provenance

Unknown. Glapthorne is known to have been active throughout the 1630s, for a range of different dramatic companies (see below). The date range given above is from Harbage.

Probable genres

Tragedy

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

The Vestal Virgins, priestesses of Vesta in Ancient Rome, were well known in the English Renaissance through dozens of classical references to them. In particular, they were proverbially famous for their vows of virginity. If they infringed these vows, they were ritually entombed alive.

References to the Play

None known

Critical Commentary

"Moseley's entire list of 29 June 1660 is a curious one", comments Bentley (4.493-4), observing that most of the plays on it have disappeared. As W. W. Greg has argued, Warburton's list seems to be derived from Stationers' Register records, and cannot really be regarded as possessing an independent authority. (Greg, "Bakings of Betsy"; see also Warburton's List).

Henry Glapthorne is one of the unsung journeymen of Caroline drama. His six surviving plays include comedy, tragicomedy, and the tragedy The Parricide; his playwriting career seems to have extended from around 1630 to around 1640, and to have involved a range of companies including the King's Men, Queen Henrietta's Men, and Beeston's Boys. His surviving work tends towards the derivative and repetitive, but that does not make it uninteresting: indeed, Julie Sanders comments that "Glapthorne's plays have slipped from notice but they remain strong examples of Caroline drama and of the age's sensibility and taste."

F. G. Fleay (BCED, 1.246) guesses that this play is an alternative title for Glapthorne's Argalus and Parthenia. This guess is generally regarded as baseless (e.g. Bentley, 4.493-4). Fleay also argues that a reference in The London Chanticleers to "chaste Vestals" is an allusion to this lost play: an idea which, again, Bentley writes off as without merit.

It has been suggested that The Vestal might survive as a palimpsest, in the form of Sir Robert Howard's The Vestal Virgin, or the Roman Ladies, performed in 1663. However, John Harrington Smith refutes this suggestion, observing that Howard's play is actually based heavily on the French heroic romance Artamene, which would have been unavailable to Glapthorne. Smith also offers a plot summary of Howard's play, and useful further discussion of it.

For what it's worth

Vestal virgins are famed, above all, for their vows of chastity, and for being buried alive when those vows are - or are suspected to be - broken. Roman history offers various possible source stories about members of the order who underwent entombment, whether justly or unjustly accused. One might mention particularly Cornelia, entombed alive by the Emperor Domitian in 83 AD despite resolutely denying the charges of unchastity he laid against her. For Glapthorne, stories of Vestal virgins would offer particularly direct access to his culture's fascination with the interrelationships of female chastity, female desire, and death.

There are two other plays in early British theatre, both also tragedies, which refer in their title to Vestal virgins. One is Robert Howard's The Vestal Virgin, discussed briefly above, which features - actually as a relatively minor character - a young woman who has been brought up by the Vestal virgins. In the play, though, almost no stress is put on her Vestal connections, the fact being hardly mentioned after her first appearance, and she eventually stabs herself to be with her lover who has been killed in the course of the play's intrigues. The other play is Henry Brooke's The Vestal Virgin (1789), in which the heroine, Lavinia, is forced to choose between succumbing to the advances of the wicked Great Pontiff Valerius, and being buried alive. She chooses the latter course, being entombed alive onstage at the end of Act Four, with great ceremony. She is rescued by her proper lover in Act Five, only to die in his arms immediately thereafter.

If one were looking to forecast the likely content of Glapthorne's tragedy about a Vestal virgin, one would predict an episode in which she is entombed alive onstage, on the pattern of Brooke's play and of most of the classical stories about Vestal virgins.

Works Cited

Brooke, Henry. The Vestal Virgin in Poems And Plays, By Henry Brooke, 2nd edition (London: John Sewell,1789), cited from Literature Online.
Fleay, F. G. A Biographical Chronicle of the English Drama, 1559-1642. London: Reeves and Turner, 1891. Print. Internet Archive
Greg, W. W. “The Bakings of Betsy.” The Library, 3rd series. 7.11 (1911): 225-259. Print.
Sanders, Julie. ‘Glapthorne, Henry (bap. 1610)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [1].
Smith, John Harrington. "The Dryden-Howard Collaboration", Studies in Philology 51 (1954): 54-74.

Page created and maintained by Matthew Steggle, Sheffield Hallam University. Revised 11 April 2010.