Tereus with a pastoral

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Anon. (Year)


Historical Records

Hill's List of Early Plays in Manuscript

Hill's List was compiled by the book collector Abraham Hill (1635-1721): "The list seems to have been Hill's record of the stock of some bookseller, set down between 1677 and 1703, but it is notable that nearly all the identifiable plays and playwrights of the list are Jacobean or Caroline" (Bentley, 5.1283). The list was transcribed by J.Q. Adams, who also added numbers for ease of reference. Adams's Record 34 runs as follows:

34 Tereus with a pastoral M.A
Actors. Agnostus Eupathus &c
Actors Mufti Nassuf &c



Theatrical Provenance

Unknown, but of the other play-titles on the list, ten can be associated with the professional theatre. The presumption, then, is that this play too came from that theatre.

Probable Genre(s)

Pastoral?

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

"Tereus with a pastoral" sounds like an extremely unlikely combination of subject and genre, if the titular character does indeed refer to the Tereus, husband of Procne, who wronged Philomela (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 6.422-674). However, see For What It's Worth below.

References to the Play

(Information welcome)

Critical Commentary

Bentley claims that "neither Tereus nor any of the character names is familiar from other seventeenth-century records" (3.1).


For What It's Worth

Even if the title is not a direct reference, it might at least gesture towards a play similar to the Latin tragedy Philomela from the Christmas Prince cycle of 1607. That play includes the un-Ovidian characters Faustulus and Faustula who are shepherd and shepherdess, thus lending some credence to a "Tereus with a pastoral" title.

As Dana F. Sutton explains in his edition of Philomela, "The setting is in front of the royal palace of Thrace, as the characters enter from the direction of the harbor. King Tereus had gone to Athens to visit Pandion, the father of Procne and Philomela, and to fetch Philomela. Rather uncharacteristically for a tragedy, Philomela requres two onstage “houses” on either side of the stage, one representing the Thracian royal palace, and the other the hut of Faustulus and Faustula, where Philomela is concealed after her rape, and the action oscillates between the two sides of the stage, sometimes within the same act" (Philomela, 1.1.SDn)

The Authorship of the Christmas Prince Alfred Harbage Modern Language Notes , Vol. 50, No. 8 (Dec., 1935), pp. 501-505 – shows that texts associated with The Christmas Prince did have a separate life circulating in manuscript


Works Cited

Sutton, Dana F., ed. The Anonymous Tragedy, Philomela (1607): A Play from the Christmas Prince Cycle. Philological Museum. 2006.

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