Pilades and Horestes (Folger MS X.d.391)
Anon. (unknown date)
Historical Records
Folger Shakespeare Library MS fragment
A single quarto leaf of the manuscript of this lost play exists (Folger MS X.d.391):
Folger X.d.391, reproduced by permission of the
Folger Shakespeare Library.τ τελοσ y<ea> ust m<e.> S . . .τελοσ . . .he<
- σσσσ . . . . . . . . . . . . . Q . . . <H> . . .B
- σ
__________________________________________
. . . . . . .Pilades. / horestes. / Campo. <I . . .I>
py. . . . .Ho ho sir? I pray yow from what qu<a
. . . . . . the world haue yow travelled toe<
. . . . . . good my frend horestes? / ho. / no no not <
. . . . . . I pray yow old acquaintance from wh<
. . . . . . haue yow landed tell me frend myn<e> p<
py. . . . surly your question smelethe frend an<
ho./ . . .yow haue sayde, your questione indede may b<
. . . . . . in the foles caldron and by the in y<
. . . . . . therofe increase more foles. pi’/ what what ? m<
. . . . . . yow as hot as a tost al[e]redye. I pce<a
. . . . . . pathe wch I walke in liethe hid from <
. . . . . . and yet yt shoewethe the readye<.t>way that I <
. . . . . . to goe. / ho./ harke o pilades <
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . smith<
. . .<E>nd . . .I . . . . . . . . . .Ihon . . . . . .[When as v we
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R M for]*
. . . . . .Wh
. . . . . . . . . . /12695
.JPG)
(* This text is written upside down in the manuscript)
The transcription is based on G. R. Proudfoot's Malone Society edition of "Five Dramatic Fragments" (58).
Theatrical Provenance
Unknown (incomplete/unacted?). Proudfoot notes that "The scribbles of τελοσ suggest that the lines were written on the end flyleaf of a printed or manuscript book by a student or schoolboy---a view which the untidy informal English hand and the tone of the dialogue tend equally to support" (57).
Probable Genre(s)
Classical. Harbage merely lists this as "Dramatic fragment in verse, c. 1620." (Supplementary List I). Proudfoot notes that this description "seems to be mistaken in supposing that the lines are metrical" (58).
Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues
Horestes (more usually "Orestes") was the son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, and brother of Electra. After murdering his mother as revenge for her adultery, and murdering Pyrrhus, Orestes is driven mad by the furies and wanders far abroad, ultimately making a sacrifice to Diana in the country of Taurica (Crimea); he is accompanied always by his friend Pilades (more usually "Pylades").
Pilades and Horestes are typically evoked as an example of true friendship; for example, in Thomas Elyot's The boke named the Gouernour, the following anecdote is briefly related in the chapter on "The true description of amitie or frendeshyp":
Horestes and Pilades, beinge wonderful lyke in al features, were taken to geder, and presented vnto a tirant, who deedly hated Horestes. But whan he behelde them bothe, and wolde haue slayne Horestes only, he coulde not decerne the one from the other: And also Pilades, to delyuer his frende, affirmed, that he was Orestes: on the other parte Orestes, to saue Pilades, denyed, and sayd, that he was Orestes (as the trouthe was) Thus a longe tyme they togyther contendynge, the one to dye for the other, at the laste so relented the fierse and cruell harte of the tyraunte, that wondringe at theyr meruaylous frendshyp, he suffred them frely to departe, without doinge to them any damage. (ff.135r-v)
Their story is given as an instantiation of marvellous friendship comparable to that of Damon and Pithias, themselves the subject of a lost Henry Chettle play of 1600 for the Admiral's men. Elyot also compares the friends to Titus and Gisippus, whose story Elyot gives in full (ff.136v-152) and about whom a lost play of 1577 concerned itself.
Lodowick Lloyd (117) refers to Pilades and Horestes in the context of Damon and Pithias (see Admiral's, 1600), Theseus and Perithous, Achilles and Patroclus, Titus and Gisippus (see Paul's, 1577), Palamon and Arcite (see Admiral's men, 1594), and Alexander and Lodowick (see Martin Slater's play for the Admiral's men, 1597).
References to the Play
(Information welcome)
Critical Commentary
On the dating of the manuscript, Harbage speculates "c.1620," but Proudfoot thinks Harbage "may offer rather too late a date" (58). He argues instead for a turn-of-the-century date based on the handwriting: "The words 'y<ea t>rust m<e.' in line 1 are in a hand other than that of the author but which, like his, probably dates from the last years of the sixteenth century or the very beginning of the seventeenth" (57). Proudfoot's dating would place this play in proximity of the lost Chettle play on those other famous friends, Damon and Pithias, in 1600.
For What It's Worth
It has been speculated that the MS may be a Collier forgery: "Doubts of its genuineness might be raised by the fact that it was among several loose papers discovered in a copy of John Payne Collier's The History of English dramatic poetry, 3 vols. (1879), annotated by the author [now in the Folger Library: shelfmark W.a. 189]. ... This leaf was found at vol.ii, p.413 (a location of no apparent significance): it was removed for separate cataloguing at the Folger Library on 27 August 1945" (Proudfoot 57).
Robert Greene reports that "The Scithians for this cause canonized Pilades & Orestes, erecting temples vnto the~, & calling the~ the Gods of amitie" (74).
In what might be evidence that the characters had often appeared on stage, Jonson, in Every Man Out, has Carlo Buffone describe Sogliardo and Shift's adoption of the names "Pylades" and "Orestes" as "an old stale Enterlude deuise" (sig.Miiiv).
Works Cited
Site created and maintained by David McInnis, University of Melbourne; updated 10 Feb 2011.