Isle of Dogs, The

Jonson, Ben Nashe, Thomas(1597)

Historical Records

Acts of the Privy Council

28 July 1597 (Dasent, 27.313-13)

15 August 1597 (Dasent, 27.338)

8 October 1597 (Dasent, 28.33)

Probable Genre(s)

Satirical comedy (Harbage)

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

<Enter any information about possible or known sources. Summarise these sources where practical/possible, or provide an excerpt from another scholar's discussion of the subject if available.>

References to the Play

Francis Meres, Palladis Tamia

"As Actaeon was worried of his owns hounds: is is Tom Nash of his Isle of Dogs. Dogges were the death of Euripedes, but be not disconsolate gallant young Iuuenall, Linus, the sonne of Apollo died the same death. Yet God forbid that so brake a witte should so basely perish, thine are but paper doggies, neither is thy banishment like Ouids, eternally to conuerse with the barbarous Getes. Therefore comfort thy self sweet Tom, with Ciceros glorious return to Rome, & with the counsel Aeneas gives to his seabeaten soldiers.

Thomas Nashe, Nashes Lenten Stuffe, 1599

the straunge turning of the Ilse of Dogs from a commedie to a tragedy two summers past, with the troublesome stir which hapned aboute it" ... "unfortunate imperfect Embrion of my idle hours, the Ile of Dogs before mentioned ... was no sooner borne but I was glad to run from it [i.e., run to Yarmouth]" ... Marginal note: "An imperfect Embrion I may well call it, for I hating begun but the induction and first act of it, the other four acts without my consent, or the least guess of my drift or scope, by the players were supplied, which bred both their trouble and mine to ([ McKerrow 3.153])

Thomas Dekker, Satiromastix (S. R. 11 November 1601; Q1602)

In an abrasive confrontation, Tucca, a blowhard captain, rails at Horace (Ben Jonson) that he has called Demetrius (Thomas Dekker) a "Iorneyman Poet"; Tucca then turns the insult on Horace: " but thou putst vp a Supplication to be a poore Iorneyman Player, and hadst beene still so, but that thou couldst not set a good face vpon't: thou hast forgot how thou amblest (in leather pilch) by a play-wagon, in the highway, and took'st mad Ieronimoes part, to get seruice among the Mimickes: and when the Stagerites banisht thee into the Ile of Dogs, thou turn'dst Ban-dog (villanous Guy) and euer since bitest, therefore I aske if th'ast been at Parris-garden, because thou hast such a good mouth, thou baitst well ...."

Critical Commentary

Privy Council Order

Wickham claims that the Swan "lost its license as a result of the performance of The Isle of Dogs in 1597 (vol.2, pt. 1, p. 134). [see xerox 2.1.279+ n#5 on "owners [of playhouses being brought] sharply to heel to reassure the government and admit of its entering upon a new agreement with the acting companies"; in note: companies "which acted regularly in London without inhibition after The Isle of Dogs affair of 1597 [were] the Lord Chamberlain's, another the Lord Admiral's and the third the Earl of Worcester's" (373, n. 5);

for more, see 2.part 2 xerox (whole chapter on 1597): p. 5 = "the performance ... which provoked an immediate Order from the Privy Council condemning both authors and actors to a spell in prison and authorizing the City Council to demolish all playhouses in and arund Londond." (2.2.5);

Forgeries

F. 29^v (Greg, I.57)

Lent the 14 may 1597 to Jubie vppon a notte

from Nashe twentie shellinges more for the Jylle

of dogges w^ch he is wrytinge for the company

Works Cited

Bowers, Fredson. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker;;. 4 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962.

Ingram, William. A London Life in the Brazen Age: Francis Langley, 1548-1602. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978.

Wickham, Glynne. Early English Stages, 1300 to 1660. 3 vols. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963.

Site created and maintained by Roslyn L. Knutson, Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas at Little Rock; updated 17 February 2012.