Ladrones, or The Robbers' Island

Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmoreland (1658)

Historical Records

Tom Cain notes that a manuscript entitled Ladrones or the Robbers’ Iland, an Opera in a Romansike Way was “lot 1,054 in the 1887 Sotheby’s sale” and that “[i]t was bought by Toovey for £3 3s, but has since vanished” (27). Harbage (PLMA 690) adds the specific date of the Sotheby's sale: 17 July 1888.

Theatrical Provenance

Unknown.

Probable Genre(s)

Foreign history, recent history, voyage drama.

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

Detail of Hazlitt's marginalia, p127 Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library

Harbage notes that "Drake, Cavendish, and Magellan figure in the dramatis personae" (PMLA 690).

Hazlitt notes in the marginal annotations of his personal copy of A manual for the collector and amateur of old English plays that "Ladrones was the name given by Magellan to the group of islands in the Pacific on account of the dishonesty of the natives. This was in 1521-2. They are ever known as the Ladrones or Marianas Islands and lie in that part of the Pacific called Micronesia" (see image).

Hazlitt's printed entry for the play (p127) reads:

Ladrones; or, The Robbers Island: An opera in a Romansike Way, by Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmoreland. Unpublished MS. of the seventeenth century, with a map drawn in pen and ink.

Sotheby’s, July 17, 1888, No. 1054. Among the dramatis personæ occur Magellan, Drake, Cavendish, etc.

References to the Play

Only the Sotheby's catalogue described by Cain and Harbage.

Critical Commentary

In the context of Davenant's hybrid entertainments of the Interregnum ("part debate, part opera, part masque, and part play" [Clare 832]) whose generic form was a necessity, because it “enabled them to circumvent the prohibition of 1642, subsequently reinforced, on the presentation of plays” (Clare 832), McInnis argues that "Mildmay Fane, Earl of Westmoreland, appears to have taken a similar approach with a lost entertainment of his own," noting that the full title Ladrones or the Robbers’ Iland, an Opera in a Romansike Way suggests its similar incorporation of music (186n).

For What It's Worth

The Mariana (Marianas) Islands in the Pacific were known as the Ladrones, from the Spanish Islas de los Ladrones, Islands of Thieves.

Works Cited

Cain, Tom, ed. The Poetry of Mildmay Fane, Second Earl of Westmorland: From the Fulbeck, Harvard and Westmorland Manuscripts. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2001.

Harbage, Alfred. "Elizabethan and Seventeenth-Century Play Manuscripts." PMLA 50.3 (1935): 687-699.

Hazlitt, W. Carew. A Manual for the collector and amateur of old English plays. 1892. London: Burt Franklin, 1966 reprint.

McInnis, David. “The Wings of Active Thought: A Study of Mind-Travelling and Voyage Drama in Early Modern England.” Dissertation. University of Melbourne, 2010.

Site created and maintained by David McInnis, University of Melbourne; updated 19 March 2011.