Barnardo and Fiammetta

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Historical Records

Performance Records

Playlists in Philip Henslowe's diary


Fol. 13 (Greg I.25)


ye 28 of octobʒ 1595 . . . . . . ne . . Rd at barnardo & phvlameta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxxiis
ye 6 of novmbʒ 1595 Rd at barnardo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvijs


Fol. 14 (Greg, I.27)


ye 19 of novmbʒ 1595 . . . . . . . . . . Rd at barnardo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vjs
ye 3 of desembʒ Rd at barnardo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vijs
ye 26 of desembʒ Rd at barnardo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .lviijs


Fol. 14v (Greg, I. 28
ye 20 of Jenewary 1595 . . . . . . . . Rd at barnardo and phiameta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xjs



Fol. 15v (Greg 1.30):
ye 12 of aprell ester . . . . . . . . . . . . Rd at barnardo and fiameta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxs



Theatrical Provenance

The Admiral's men gave "Barnardo and Fiammetta" seven performances at the Rose playhouse from October 1595 into April 1596 and averaged a return of 24s to Henslowe.

Probable Genre(s)

Romance ? Harbage

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

References to the Play

Critical Commentary

Malone had no comment on "Barnardo and Fiammetta" (p. 297). See For What It's Worth below, for John Payne Collier's reaction to Malone's failure to link "Barnardo and Fiammetta" to "Bernardo and Galfrido."


Collier, in a cunning authorization of his own forgery, used a footnote on "Barnardo and Fiammetta" to assert that the valid lost play "had no connexion with [the forged] Bernardo and Galfrido … unless as a second part" (p. 59). Further embedding his forgery into stage history, Collier tagged the second performance of "Barnardo and Fiammetta" on the 6th of November as either the Henslowe play or his own made-up one. He then shamelessly implied that this second performance (which Henslowe recorded merely as "barnardo" was "perhaps" for "the older drama" (i.e., for the forgery) because it returned only 17s. to Henslowe (p. 59, n.1). By this specious reasoning, Collier left the impression that Henslowe's play and his own forgery were paired in performance in the manner of two-part plays such as "Hercules" and "Caesar and Pompey."


Fleay, BCED (2. #174, p. 304 ignored Collier's false claims about "Barnardo and Fiammetta" and a companion forgery, as did Greg II, who observed merely that "[n]othing is known of this play" (#80, p. 177).


Gurr also offers no opinion on the story or characters (#41, p. 219).


Wiggins, Catalogue (#1017) does not comment on the Collier forgery. He attends instead to the variant spellings in the diary of Barnardo's paired title character (which Wiggins reflects in alternative titles for the play as performed and as modernized). For any fruitful conjecture, it is a problem that no known sources treat the story of a Barnardo and a Fiametta/Philameta/Philametta, leaving only Henslowe's spellings as a means of identifying the second character in the title and play.

For What It's Worth

Collier, in yet another ruse to bolster his forgery, footnoted the fraudulent entry of "galfrido and Bernardo" in his edition of the diary (1845), chiding Malone for omitting the entry; Collier also provided a source for the forged title, which he said was "doubtless ... the recently-discovered poem by John Drout, entitled "The pityfull History of two loving Ilalians, Gaulfrido and Bernardo le Vayne" dated 1570 (p. 52, n.1). For more about the forgery, go to Galfrido and Bernardo.

Works Cited


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



Site created and maintained by Roslyn L. Knutson, Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas at Little Rock; 17 February 2021.