Troy

Historical Records

y^e 22 of June 1596	. . . . . ne . .	Res at troye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .	xxxxv^s

y^e 2 of julye 1596		Res at troye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .	xxxxiiij^s

y^e 7 of julye 1596		Res at troye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .	xxix^s

y^e 16 of julye 1596		Res at troye . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .	xxj^s

note: Following the entry of 8 July 1596 for a performance of the second part of Tamburlaine, Philip Henslowe's list of dates and plays was reset to 4 July 1594. Consequently, the third performance of "Troy" has the same day-date as does a performance of "The Wise Man of West Chester," and the accuracy of the 16 July date for the fourth performance is questionable.

Theatrical Provenance

"Troy" apparently belonged to the Admiral's men, who in July of 1596 were performing at the Rose playhouse.

Probable Genre(s)

Classical

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

Homer's Iliad is the obvious source of a "Troy" story, but it was of course not the only classical narrative familiar to early modern English poets. In addition to ancient works, though, Elizabethan dramatists had contemporary plays for reference. On this subject, Wiggins, Catalogue #1037 explores the works of Thomas Heywood, as filtered through his Apology for Actors, which variously addresses the story-complex of Troy. Misha Teramura, looking in detail at the repertorial offerings of the Admiral's men in the 1590s, contextualizes "Troy" in terms of early British history and the character of Brute ("Brute," 1598), in whose story "the matter of Britain was intimately and organically joined with the matter of Troy" (p. 128).

References to the Play

None known specifically, but, as is so often the case, had we the texts of plays now lost on the matter of Troy, we would surely find plausible references.

Critical Commentary

Malone makes no comment on "Troy" (p. 298), nor does Collier (p. 75). Fleay, BCED considers the play "[p]robably Heywood's Iron Age (2.304 #182). Greg II thinks the play is possibly Heywood's Iron Age but "more likely perhaps an earlier and shorter version later expanded into the two-part play" that was printed in two parts in 1632 (p. 180, #92).

Wiggins, Catalogue #1037, complementing observations about the relevance of Thomas Heywood and his interest in the story-complex of Troy, observes that the repertory of the Admiral's men had a "Troy cycle" in 1599 that "included Troilus and Cressida and two plays about the aftermath" ("Agamemnon" [#1186] and "Troy's Revenge" [#1202]). Noting that these three plays dramatize events at the end of the Troy complex, he muses that "a revival" of a play that dramatized the fall of the city—perhaps this 1596 "Troy"—"would have covered that part of the story."

Teramura perceives a repertorial thread to which the play of "Troy" belongs in the offerings of the Admiral's men, 1595-1600, that combined "the Galfridian tradition" of English history and the epics of Homer and Virgil and thus offered "a sweeping yet disjointed survey of Britain's deep mythical prehistory and its earliest legendary rulers" (p. 129).

For What It's Worth

Works Cited

Teramura, Misha. "Brute Parts: From Troy to Britain at the Rose, 1595-1600." Lost Plays in Shakespeare's England. Ed. David McInnis and Matthew Steggle. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. 127–47.

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