King with His Two Sons: Difference between revisions

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Bowers, Fredson Thayer. " The Date of ''Revenge for Honour''", ''Modern Language Notes'', 52 (1937): 192-196.<br>
Bowers, Fredson Thayer. " The Date of ''Revenge for Honour''", ''Modern Language Notes'', 52 (1937): 192-196.<br>
Finkelpearl, P. J. "The Comedians' Liberty: Censorship of the Jacobean Stage Reconsidered," ''English Literary Renaissance'' 16 (1986): 127-39.<br>
Finkelpearl, P. J. "The Comedians' Liberty: Censorship of the Jacobean Stage Reconsidered," ''English Literary Renaissance'' 16 (1986): 127-39.<br>
Lawrence. W. J. "Early Substantive Theatre Masques", ''Times Literary Supplement'' (December 8, 1921), 814.
Lawrence. W. J. "Early Substantive Theatre Masques", ''Times Literary Supplement'' (December 8, 1921), 814.<br>
Nicol, David. "The Repertory of Prince Charles’s (I) Company, 1608-1625".  ''Early Theatre'' 9.2 (2006).<br>
Nicol, David. "The Repertory of Prince Charles’s (I) Company, 1608-1625".  ''Early Theatre'' 9.2 (2006).<br>



Revision as of 07:59, 7 June 2010

Anon. (January 1620)

Historical Records

A dispatch from the Venetian ambassador records:

In connection with the subject of comedians I ought not to conceal the following event from your Serenity, owing to the mystery that it involves. The comedians of the prince, in the presence of the king his father, played a drama the other day in which a king with his two sons has one of them put to death, simply upon suspicion that he wished to deprive him of his crown, and the other son actually did deprive him of it afterwards. This moved the king in an extraordinary manner, both inwardly and outwardly. In this country however the comedians have absolute liberty to say whatever they wish against any one soever, so the only demonstration against them will be the words spoken by the king (il che è seguito con grande commotione et sentimento del Re, interiormente et esteriormente, se ben tenendo in questi paesi li comedianti libertà assoluta di dire ciò che vogliono contra chi si sia, tutta la dimostratione contra di loro sarà stata quella che ha fatta il Re in parole).

From: 'Venice: January 1620, 1-10', Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Volume 16: 1619-1621 (1910), pp. 101-111. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=88746&strquery=comedians Date accessed: 07 June 2010.

Theatrical Provenance

Prince Charles's (I) at court

Probable Genre(s)

Tragedy

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

Revenge for Honour (see Critical Commentary).

Possible references to the Play

None known (apart from the above).

Critical Commentary

Although this record has been known for a long time, no title has previously been proposed for the play under discussion. The title A King with His Two Sons originates with this Lost Plays Database entry, and will, I hope, facilitate further study.

W. J. Lawrence and F. T. Bowers have suggested that this play could be identified. In each case the proposed candidate was The Parricide / Revenge for Honour, that is, the lost play The Parricide, licensed for Prince Charles's Men in 1624, which he believed to be identical with the extant play Revenge for Honour. There is, indeed, a broad similarity of plot between this lost play and Revenge for Honour, since that play does dramatize two feuding brothers, one of whom is executed and the other of whom commits parricide. However, it has since transpired that Revenge for Honour depends upon a source first printed in 1637. As for the lost The Parricide, the fact that it was licensed in 1624 implies that it was previously unacted, making Bowers's conjecture unattractive. (Bentley, 4.489-93, summarizes these debates). In short, this play cannot currently be identified with any other, extant or lost.

The lack of a title has made this play, hitherto, rather invisible in play-catalogues. It is not, seemingly, listed in Harbage. Bentley (1.204) refers to this play in his discussion of Prince Charles's (I) company, but does not give it a title or a separate entry in the list of plays. It is omitted from Nicol's otherwise excellent list of the known repertory of Prince Charles's (I).

The record is obviously interesting for the processes of censorship - or rather non-censorship - implied. Finkelpearl, "The Comedians' Liberty", offers a useful discussion of how this particular record relates to what else is known about Jacobean dramatic censorship. No record is known of action being taken against the players on this occasion, and W. J. Lawrence's suggestion that the furore caused the company to be denied a court performance of The World Tossed at Tennis is generally thought to be baseless.

For what it's worth

Is it worth pointing out the possibility that this lost play about a pair of brothers could be connected to The Younger Brother, a lost play which is recorded in performance, probably by the Prince's Men, in 1617? This possibility is, of course, completely untestable.

Works Cited

Bowers, Fredson Thayer. " The Date of Revenge for Honour", Modern Language Notes, 52 (1937): 192-196.
Finkelpearl, P. J. "The Comedians' Liberty: Censorship of the Jacobean Stage Reconsidered," English Literary Renaissance 16 (1986): 127-39.
Lawrence. W. J. "Early Substantive Theatre Masques", Times Literary Supplement (December 8, 1921), 814.
Nicol, David. "The Repertory of Prince Charles’s (I) Company, 1608-1625". Early Theatre 9.2 (2006).

Page created and maintained by Matthew Steggle, Sheffield Hallam University. Revised 7 June 2010.