Job, The History of

[Robert Greene (?)] (1587)

Historical Records

John Warburton’s list of lost manuscripts is the sole authority for this play’s existence. The Lansdowne manuscript (Mss. 807) catalogues the play as:

His ͭ. of Jobe by Rob. Green

Theatrical Provenance

Unknown

Probable Genre(s)

Biblical History (Harbage), Tragedy

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

The most likely source for The History of Job is the Book of Job from the Old Testament. There is only one reference to the story of Job in Greene’s other works. In Greenes Vision (1592), the narrator makes a passing reference to the ‘deuill that grudged at the sinceritie of Iob’.

Together with Thomas Lodge, Robert Greene wrote another biblical drama, A Looking Glass for London and England (c. 1589). The play dramatises the Prophet Jonah’s struggle to encourage the inhabitants of Nineveh to repent their sins. The play, which is frequently read allegorically, depicts the corrupt court of Rasni, a king, who surrounded by flatters, is blind to the possible repercussions of his sinful behaviour. Yet, as the prophetic figures of Oseas and Jonah frequently remind the audience, the court is merely a microcosm for the sinful depravity of contemporary London. Along with George Peele’s David and Bethsabe (c. 1593-4), A Looking Glass constitutes one of the final attempts to revive the tradition of biblical drama in England. Between 1590 and 1620 contemporary records show that at least thirteen biblical plays were commissioned (Connolly).

The History of Job could also provide a tempting analogy with Shakespeare’s King Lear, which Steven Marx has recently argued is indebted to the Book of Job.

References to the Play

None Known

Critical Commentary

None Known

For What It's Worth

W. Carew Hazlitt and J. Churton Collins mistakenly claim that the lost play The History of Job was entered in the Stationers’ Register in 1594. No reference to the play appears in the Register. It seems likely that this error originated in Stephen Jones’s Biographia Dramatica (1812).

W. W. Greg dismissed the attribution of the play to Greene. In his article of 1911 ‘The Bakings of Betsy’, Greg argued that Warburton’s reference to ‘Rob. Green’ was most likely an abbreviated version of ‘S ͬ. Rob. Le Green’, an author who is listed earlier in the inventory:

Nothing Imposable to love T. C. S ͬ. Rob. Le Green

The History of Job is frequently confused with a piece called Job’s Afflictions written by R. Radcliffe, a biblical interlude of 1547 called Jube the Sane (ie. Job the Saint) and Daniel Baker’s sacred poem of 1706, The History of Job.

Works Cited

Collins, J. Churton, ed., The Plays and Poems of Robert Greene (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905), Vol. I, pp. 43-44 Connolly, Annaliese, ‘Peele’s David and Bethsabe: Reconsidering Biblical of the Long 1590s’, Early Modern Literary Studies 16 (2007), pp. 1-20 Greene, Robert, Greenes Vision (London, 1592), sig. E2 Greg, W. W., The Bakings of Betsy, in The Collected Papers of Sir Walter W. Greg, ed. J. C. Maxwell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 53, 52 Harbage, Alfred, ed. Annals of English Drama, 975-1700 (London: Routledge, 1964), pp. 54-5 Hazlitt, W. Carew, A Manual for the Collector and Amateur of Old English Plays (New York: Burt Franklin, 1966), p. 121 Jones, Stephen, com., Biographia Dramatica; or, a Companion to the Playhouse (London: Longman, 1812), Vol. II, p. 346 Marx, Steven, ‘Within a Foot of the Extreme Verge’: The Book of Job and King Lear, in Shakespeare and the Bible (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 59-78 Jones, Stephen, Biographia Dramatica; or, a Companion to the Playhouse (London: Longman, 1812), Vol. II, p. 346

[[category: biblical history], [category: tragedy], [category: Robert Greene (?)]

Site created and maintained by Jenny Sager, Jesus College, Oxford; updated 22 June 2011.