Albere Galles
Heywood, Thomas, Smith, Wentworth (1602)
Historical Records
Payments
For playbooks in Philip Henslowe's diary
- F. 115 (Greg I.179)
pd at the a poyntment the company } the 4 of septembʒ 1602 vnto Thomas hewod } vjll & mr smyth in fulle payment for a } Boocke called albe[t]re galles some of }
Theatrical Provenance
"Albere Galles" was written for Worcester's players while they were at the Rose, 1602-3.
Probable Genre(s)
- Unknown (Harbage), Foreign History (Greg, Wiggins, Steggle)
Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues
Wiggins (#1342) proposes a pamphlet entitled "A True Relation of [the] Taking of Alba Regalis" a source for the play; the pamphlet was published in 1601.
References to the Play
In 1602 Duke Philip Julius of Stettin-Pomerania visited England, and while in London, the nobleman attended plays. The duke's diary records that "on the 13th a play was acted showing how Stuhl-Weissenberg was gained by the Turks, and then won again by the Christians" (quoted from Steggle, p. 112).
Critical Commentary
Malone offers no comment on this play (p. 316), nor does Collier(p. 316).
Fleay, BCED #, silently correcting the title to "Albert[e] Galles," discusses the play in the context of Heywood's works, subordinating Smith's role with a q. v. (II, Smith #8, p. 249). In the Heywood entry (I, Heywood, #18), Fleay notes cryptically, "Query Archigallus," with a referral to Nobody and Somebody. He then explains (in an entry for Nobody and Somebody) that alterations of the designation "Britain" to "England" may conceal the already lost "Albere Galles": "the "England" version [of Nobody and Somebody] may have been the 1602 play of Albert Galles, by Heywood and Smith.... Henslow might easily mistake some such name as Archigall's three sons for Albert Galles (I, Heywood, #31, p. 294).
Greg II understands that Fleay has subsumed "Albere Galles" into Nobody and Somebody, explaining (as Fleay implies) that "Henslowe's title [becomes] a corruption of Archigallo, the King of Britain in the chronicle part of the play" (p.230, #264). Greg finds Fleay's guesswork that the lost play's title is a corruption of King Archigallo's name "reasonable," though he rejects Fleay's link of other characters from Nobody and Somebody with Archigallo's sons because Archigallo "had three brothers [but] no sons at all."
Wiggins, #1342 also considers Henslowe's rendering of the playtitle a corruption, calling it "Alba Regalis."