Black Joan

Anon. (1598?)

Historical Records

Henslowe Papers

Greg, Papers, 118:

Under Henslowe's title, "The Enventary tacken of all the properties for my Lord Admeralles men, the 10 of Marche 1598" is:

Item, j frame for the heading [i.e. beheading] in Black Jone.

Greg, Papers, 121:

Under Henslowe's title, "A Note of all suche bookes as belong to the Stocke, and such as I have bought since the 3d of March 1598" is:

Blacke Jonne.

Theatrical Provenance

The Admiral's Company.

Probable Genre(s)

Tragedy (?) (Harbage, 64-5).

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

None known.

References to the Play

None known.

Critical Commentary

H. W. Herrington posits a “dramatic vogue” for witchcraft plays in the late 1590s (478), and, after discussing Mother Redcap, writes:

Earlier in the same year [1597] Henslowe notes a performance of "The Witch of Islington." By the next year had been written "Black Joan." The former was either an out-and-out witch play, or else such a play with political bearings. The latter, in all probability, was a witch play also. If we may judge from the titles and the growing realism of dramatic treatment, they were of a kind far closer to actual life than those hitherto considered. (478)

Purkiss supports Herrington's suggestion of a mini-vogue for witch plays at this time and speculates that the play may have influenced Shakespeare's Joan la Pucelle in 1 Henry VI (197 n.28)

In the context of stagecraft, Fiona Martin discusses the possible performance of the beheading in this play:

onstage decapitations appear to have been a rare occurrence during the early modern period; Owens draws attention to the possibility that there may have been onstage beheadings that we do not know about, because the plays have been lost (139), while it is also possible that beheadings were performed yet not specified in the stage directions. Such a possibility is suggested by Henslowe's diary, for example (Owens 139): in an inventory of properties dated 10 March 1598, one of the items listed is “j frame for the heading in Black Jone” (Rutter 137), a play no longer extant. This entry appears to confirm the possibility that a particular apparatus for the staging of beheadings did exist at that time, and that the action presumably took place onstage; unfortunately, the diary affords no further details of such equipment. (Martin 65)

Works Cited

Herrington, H. W. “Witchcraft and Magic in the Elizabethan Drama”. The Journal of American Folklore 32.126 (1919): 447–85. Print. Web.

Martin, Fiona. “‘Morbid Exhilarations’: Dying Words in Early Modern English Drama.” PhD dissertation. University of Waikato, New Zealand. 2010. Print. Web

Owens, Margaret E. Stages of Dismemberment: The Fragmented Body in Late Medieval and Early Modern Drama. Newark: U of Delaware P, 2005. Print.

Purkiss, D. The Witch in History. London & New York: Routledge, 199c. Print. Web (Google Books).

Rutter, Carol Chillington, ed. Documents of the Rose Playhouse. Revised ed. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1999. Print. Revels Plays Companion Library.

Site created and maintained by Simon Davies, University of Sussex, 13 May 2011; updated David McInnis 14 May 2011.