John of Gaunt
Historical Records
Book Trade Records =
Stationers' Register
Adam Islip./.Entred likewise for his Copie vnder the handes of bothe the wardens Edward White./. a booke entituled / the famous historye of JOHN OF GAUNTE sonne to Kinge EDWARD the THIRD with his Conquest of Spaine and marriage of his Twoo daughters to the Kinges of Castile and Portugal &c vjd C./
Theatrical Provenance
- Unknown. However, reading White's entries as a batch acquisition from a single playing company, Wiggins, Catalogue assigns the play "tentatively" to the Queen's men (#823).
Probable Genre(s)
- Wiggins, Catalogue, "romance (or history?)"
Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues
- Any one of the chronicles of England in the fourteenth century could have provided the narrative of this play.
- Greg, BEPD (2.965, θ12) offered two likely story lines: "the successful expedition of John of Gaunt and the Black Prince in 1367, which restored Pedro the Cruel to the throne of Castile, and which was followed in 1372 by John of Gaunt's marriage to Constance, and that of his brother Edmund to Isabella, Pedro's daughters; or ... his rather inglorious invastion of 1386-7, undertaken in pursuit of his own claim to the throne in right of his wife, which in fact led to the marriage of his daughters philippa dn Catharine to John of Portugal and Henry, afterwards King of Castile." Greg thought it [v]ery likely" that the play addressed both "historical occasions."
References to the Play
Critical Commentary
For What It's Worth
Works Cited
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