Longshanks
Historical Records
Performance Records
Playlists in Philip Henslowe's diary
Fol. 12v (Greg, I. 24)
ye 29 of aguste 1595 ne . . Rd at longe shanke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxxs ye 10 of septembʒ 1595 Rd at longshancke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iijll
Fol. 13 (Greg, I. 25)
ye 30 of septembʒ 1595 . . . . . . Rd at longe shancke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxijs ye 21 of octobʒ 1595 Rd at long shancke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxs
Fol. 14 (Greg, I. 27)
ye 9 of novembʒ 1595 . . . . . . Rd at longshancke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxiijs ye 26 of novembʒ 1595 Rd at longshancke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xviijs ye 10 of desembʒ 1595 Rd at prynce longshanke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxs ye 29 of desembʒ 1595 Rd at longshanckes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxijs
Fol. 14v (Greg, I. 28)
ye 5 of febreary 1595 . . . . . . . Rd at longshancke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiiijs ye 27 of febreary 1595 Rd at longshancke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxxs
Fol. 15v (Greg, I. 30)
ye 21 of aprell 1596 . . . . . . . . . . Rd at longshancke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiiijs ye 28 of aprell 1596 Rd at longschancke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xxs
Fol. 21v (Greg, I. 42)
ye 2 of June 1596 . . . . . . . . . . . Rd at longshancke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iijll ye 9 of July 1596 Rd at longshancke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvs
Payments
Purchase of the play from Edward Alleyn in Philip Henslowe's diary
Fol. 107 (Greg, I. 169)
pd vnto my sone EA for ij bocke called } phillipe of spayne & Longshanckes the 8 } iiijll of agust 1602 the some of . . . . . . . . . . . . . . }
Inventories
Philip Henslowe's papers in the Dulwich College Library
List of apparel
The booke of the Inventary of the goods of my Lord Admeralles men, taken the 10 of Marche in the yeare 1598. Greg, Papers (APX. I. art. 1, p. 113, l. 7)
- Gone and loste.
- Item, j longe-shanckes sewte.
The Enventorey of all the aparell of the Lord Admeralles men, taken the 13th of Marche 1598, as followeth: Greg, Papers (APX., I. art. 1, p. 121, l. 175)
- Item, j Longeshankes seute.
Theatrical Provenance
The Admiral's players introduced "Longshanks" in the opening week of their fall season at the Rose playhouse, August 1595. It was the first play of the season to be marked by Henslowe's enigmatic "ne." It received fourteen performances through 9 July 1596, and it returned an average of 31s. per performance to Henslowe.
On 8 August 1602 the company purchased the playbook of "Longshanks" from Edward Alleyn, along with another lost play, "Philip of Spain." These purchases belong to a set of transactions in which Alleyn sold plays to Henslowe (and thus to the Admiral's men) in 1601-2. Henslowe recorded nine of these purchases, beginning with "Mahomet" (entered on 22 August 1601) and ending with "Tamar Cham" (entered on 2 October 1602). Some of these plays were revived in conjunction with their purchase from Alleyn, as evidenced by payments for apparel. These include "Mahomet," Massacre at Paris, and "Crack Me This Nut" but not "Longshanks" (if Henslowe's records give an accurate account of its post-purchase stage life).
Probable Genre(s)
History (Harbage).
Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues
Holinshed
Mirror for Magistrates
References to the Play
Henry Oxinden's list (ca. 1663-65) includes an item worded "Edward Longshankes 1593," which, due to the 1593 date, appears likely to refer to Peele's play.
Critical Commentary
The central question about the play Henslowe entered "ne" on 29 August 1595 and bought from Edward Alleyn for the Admiral's men on 8 August 1602 is its relationship to Edward I by George Peele, which was published in 1593 (S.R. 8 Oct 1593) and 1599. If, as some scholars have believed, "Longshanks" is Edward I (or a revision of it), the play is not lost. Current opinion leans toward splitting "Longshanks" from Peele's play, considering it a discrete play, now lost.
"Longshanks" as George Peele's Edward I
Malone, who first published a transcript of Henslowe's diary from the Dulwich Library archives in 1790, opined that the "Longshanks" introduced on 26 August 1595 was "probably" George Peele's play, Edward I, entered in the Stationers' Register on 8 October 1593 by Abel Jeffes and published in 1593 with an advertisement of Jeffes as printer and William Barley as bookseller (Internet Archive, I, pt.2, 297, n1).
Fleay in 1891 repeated Malone's choice, tagging "Longshanks" as "a 'mended' version of Peele's" Edward I (BCED, II, 304).
Greg II, whose 1904 edition of the diary and companion 1908 commentary were the benchmark until the edition of R. A. Foakes and R. T. Rickert in 1961, accepted the identification of "Longshanks" with Peele's Edward I. Like Fleay, Greg found it plausible that the play in Henslowe's listings was marked "ne" because it was revised. He did point out that no revisions occur in the 1599 reprint of Peele's play, which had initially been published in 1593. Greg thought it likely that Alleyn, who owned the play in 1602, had owned it when he was a member of Strange's men ((#75 p.176).
Chambers, ES opined in 1923 that "Longshanks" was an independent play "unless there had been substantial revision" to Peele's Edward I (III.460-1, esp. 461). However, a year later, he had reconsidered: "When Henslowe marks Longshanks in his diary as n.e. we need not suppose that we have to do with anything but a recast of Peele's Edward I ("Disintegration," p.45).
Hook, discussing "Longshanks" in his introduction to Edward I in the Yale edition of Peele's work, considers the lost play "almost certainly" Peele's play (7). His reasoning is that "Longshanks is a name used for no one but Edward I, and no other play is known to have been written about that monarch" (7). He considers the item of apparel listed as both "Gone and loste" and found in Henslowe's inventory ("long-shanckes sewte," "Longeshankes seute") as additional proof, conjecturing that the suit is no ordinary "royal robe" but the "special garment" specified in the opening stage direction for scene 3 in Edward I: Enter … king Edward in his sute of Glasse (7, 93). In a note, Hook cites the line-up of Collier, Fleay, Greg, and Chambers as evidence that the identification of "Longshanks" as Edward I (with or without revisions) "is widely accepted" (7).
Braunmuller repeats the received wisdom on the identification of "Longshanks" as Peele's Edward I, considering the 1595-6 run as proof of Peele's "play's popularity" (87). In a note, Braunmuller raises but does not engage the issue of Henslowe's designation of "Longshanks" as "ne" (146).
Gurr follows the tradition of Malone, et. al., by identifying "Longshanks" as Peele's Edward I. One facet of Gurr's characterization of the repertory of the Admiral's men after its reconfiguration in 1594 is that the company relied on Peele's plays from Edward Alleyn's personal collection. Gurr claims further that Alleyn had bought "Longshanks" (i.e., Edward I) from Peele in 1590 (p. 39).
"Longshanks" as a discrete play
Collier, next after Malone to edit the diary (1845), disagreed with the identification of "Longshanks" as Edward I, excusing Malone for not knowing that Henslowe's "ne" marked new plays. Collier assigned the play to "some other dramatist upon the same portion of English history" (p. 55, n2). He implied that the printing of Peele's play disqualified it as the play Henslowe called "Longshanks" and (once) "Prince Longshanks."
Knutson, noting that "a regular feature of competition among the professional companies" was the duplication of one another's successful repertorial offerings (4), considers "Longshanks" to be in that sense a duplicate of Edward I; she makes the case for "Longshanks" as a commercially desirable offering both in 1595 and 1602.
Wiggins acknowledges the argument of lumping "Longshanks" with Edward I because of subject matter and the article of apparel (the suit) in Henslowe's inventory, but he finds the "case against identification … [to be] stronger" (Catalogue, #1007). Agreeing with the thrust of Collier's opinion, he thinks it unlikely that the Admiral's men would have staged a play already in print as if it were new. Noting that Henslowe called the play "Prince Longshank" in one entry, Wiggins opines that the 1595 play may have treated "Edward's adventures in Palestine before he became King," and that the suit could have been used for "his coronation … [at] the climax of the action."
For What It's Worth
On 29 November 1595, Henslowe entered a performance of "the welche man," for which show he received 7s. Greg II rejected Fleay's suggestion that this is an early appearance of Robert Armin's Valiant Welshman (1615); he also rejected its identification with a 1598 play in the Admiral's inventory, "Henry I and the Prince of Wales." He thought it "just possible" this entry belongs with the performances of "Longshanks" (#83, p. 178). Wiggins is skeptical (Catalogue, #882). He does not see a neat fit amongst offerings of "Longshanks" for the one performance of "the welche man" ; consequently, he offers a stage history for the play in which it "did poor business" at its initial performance and thus was not given a second chance. Wiggins does not explain why he lists "the welche man" immediately after Peele's Edward I, thus implying a date c. 1593 although 29 November 1595 is the date of its only recorded performance.
Works Cited
Site created and maintained by Roslyn L. Knutson, Professor Emerita, University of Arkansas at Little Rock; created in 2012; last updated 13 March 2018.