Alexander and Bagoas

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Anon. (1582)


Historical Records

Laurence Humphrey’s Ash Wednesday Sermon (De Fermento Vitando), 1582, reproduced in Elliott and Nelson, REED Oxford I.178.

John Finnis and Patrick H. Martin provide an English translation to accompany the Latin:

Quod etiam in illis vestries fabulis vidisse & animadvertisse vos arbitror: in quibus Amoris flamma sic apparuit & erupit, ut non amor sed amaror, non fervor sed furor esse videretur. An non meministis Euclionem sic ollam suam [marginal note: Fabulae in col: D. Ioannis, Christi, M. Magd.], Antonium sic Cleopatram, Alexandrum sic Bagoam suum Eunuchum, Philarchum sic Phaedram suam, Meleagrum suam Atalantam, & Menechmum Plautinum meretricem Erotium, Oedipum etiam matrem Iocastam, Iulium Caesarem sic imperium deamasse, ut regni causa iusiurandum imo omne ius violandum censeat?



[And I think you will have seen and noted this in the plays of yours I mentioned: there Love’s fire was so manifest, so uncontrolled, as to seem not love but bitterness, not fervor but madness. Don’t you remember Euclio like this about his pot [of gold], [marginal note: Plays in St John’s, Christ Church, Magdalen colleges] Antony like this about his Cleopatra, Alexander about his eunuch Bagoas, Philarchus about his Phaedra, Meleager about his Atalanta, Plautus’s Menechmus about the harlot Erotes, and Oedipus even about his mother, Jocasta; and Julius Caesar so in love with power that for the sake of it he thought he could violate oaths and any other kind of right?]

(Finnis and Martin 392)


Theatrical Provenance

Played at Oxford as part of a series of entertainments performed at St John's (a comedy and two tragedies on Sunday 18, Monday 19, and Tuesday 20 February 1582), Christ Church (a comedy and three tragedies) and Magdalen (musical activity) (the Christ Church and Magdalen performances occurred in the following week of February 1582) (see Finnis and Martin 393; see also Boas 161).


Probable Genre(s)

Latin.


Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues


"The Life of Alexander the Great" in North's Plutarch relates one of the more famous anecdotes about the two men.

It is said, that one day whē he had dronke hard, he went to see the games for daunsing: & amongst thē, the games which a yong man called Bagoas had set forth, (with whō Alexander fel in liking) & bare the bel. This Bagoas being in his daunsing gar|mēts, came through the Theater, & sat him downe by Alexander. The MACEDONIANS were so glad of it, that they showted & clapped their hands for ioy, crying out alowde, to kisse him: So that in fine he toke him in his armes, & kissed him, before them all. (758)


Quintus Curtius Rufus:




References to the Play

Only Humphrey's sermon, REED Oxford I.178.


Critical Commentary




For What It's Worth

Interestingly, from the point of view of the relationship between University plays and the London commercial theatre, Finnis and Martin note that "Of these nine plays staged at Oxford in the first two months of 1582, Shakespeare would subsequently make substantial use of central themes of at least four of them (Menechmi in The Comedy of Errors, Supposes in The Taming of the Shrew, Caesar Interfectus in Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra)..." (393).

The Stately Tragedy of the Great Cham also has a Bagoas or "Bagous" character, but because that play only exists in a MS fragment, it is not possible to gauge the extent of that Bagous's role.


Works Cited

Boas, Frederick S. University Drama in the Tudor Age. Oxford: OUP, 1914; rpt. Arno Press, Inc., 1978.

Curtius Rufus, Quintus. The history of Quintus Curcius conteyning the actes of the greate Alexander translated out of Latine into Englishe by Iohn Brende. Jmprinted at London : By Rycharde Tottell, 1553.

Finnis, John and Patrick H. Martin, “An Oxford Play Festival in February 1582,” Notes & Queries 50:4 (December 2003), 391-94.

Humphrey, Laurence. "Ash Wednesday Sermon" (1582), qtd. in Elliott and Nelson, REED Oxford I.177ff.

Plutarch, The lives of the noble Grecians and Romanes compared together by that graue learned philosopher and historiographer, Plutarke of Chæronea ; translated out of Greeke into French by Iames Amyot ... ; and out of French into Englishe, by Thomas North. Imprinted at London : By Thomas Vautroullier and Iohn VVight, 1579.


Site created and maintained by Dana F. Sutton, University of California, Irvine; updated David McInnis, 26 Oct 2010.