A lost Jacobean tragedy: Henry the Una (c.1619)

Abstract

This article concerns a lost play whose title is partially preserved in 'List D' of British Library: Cotton MS. Tiberius E.X. Connecting together existing scholarly work on other plays on the list, and combining this with evidence from the computer database EEBO-TCP, the essay proposes a new complete title for the play; discusses its possible sources in Spanish history; and addresses anew questions of its date, company provenance, and even authorship. The Play-list British Library: Cotton MS. Tiberius E.X. is a manuscript of Sir George Buc's History of Richard III. The History is written on the recto of each sheet and, on some of the verso sides, there are various cancelled pieces of writing Fig. 1. The manuscript fragment (f 247). © British Library Board (Cotton MS. Tiberius. E.X.). 'If Mr. Marcham has read the manuscript rightly, I cannot identify the play', comments Chambers of the fourth item on the list. Similarly, G.E. Bentley raises the possibility of palaeographical error, calling it '[t]his mutilated title-whatever it may have been in its perfect form, the last three letters are doubtful'. 4 Although neither Chambers nor Bentley explicitly says so, the reason for their doubt is partly because the letters are difficult, but partly too because it seems impossible to think of any plausible play title that might start with these letters. As a result of its enigmatic partial title, the fourth play on the list has remained firmly unknown, and is referred to, when referred to at all, as Henry the Una. In recent years, Benjamin Griffin has described the record as 'impossible to interpret confidently'. 5 Since Bentley, there have been two significant, and hitherto unconnected, advances in scholarship relating to this list. The first was made by Tucker Orbison, who in 1971 published a record showing that in 1619 William Rowley's company, the Prince's Men, performed at the Middle Temple a comedy, which seems to have involved extensive musical interludes, called The Bridegroom and the Madman. Orbison plausibly identified The Bridegroom and the Madman with the second title on List D. 6 As well as giving a faint flavour of that lost play, Orbison's record seems decisively to establish its company provenance. The second, independent advance is in the form of the Taylor/ Lavagnino Collected Works of Thomas Middleton, whose various contributing editors make several piecemeal adjustments to received wisdom about Wit at Several Weapons, The Old Law, and A Fair Quarrel, affecting issues including authorship, date, and company provenance. The combined effect of the changes made by the edition is to give a much more focussed sense of the homogeneity of the plays in the first section of List D. 7 The following table, then, shows the current best guesses as to title, authorship, company provenance, and date for the plays in the first section of List D. For the three plays with Middleton associations, these dates, author attributions, and company attributions are taken from the 2007 Collected Works; for The Bridegroom and the Ma...

<i>The Peaceable King, or the Lord Mendall</i>: A Lost Jack Cade Play and its 1623 Revival

“…The Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership database (EEBO-TCP) is proving to be a powerful tool for researchers intrigued by lost plays such as this one, as it enables users to search for words and phrases within over 25,000 texts from the early modern era. 5 The database reveals that the primary title, The Peaceable King, was something of a cliché, appearing in numerous contemporary texts; it is especially often applied to Solomon (who was 'a Type of the mirrour of perfection, Jesus Christ', wrote Edward Topsell, 'for he was the King of peace, or a peaceable King'), 6 and to Edgar, who was typically referred to by chroniclers as 'the peaceable king Edgar', 7 but was also applied to other kings and is thus of no help by itself in determining the play's subject. 8 The alternative title, The Lord Mendall, however, has a very clear meaning: it almost certainly refers to Jack Cade, leader of the peasant revolt of 1450.…”

Lost Plays from Early Modern England: Voyage Drama, A Case Study

“…Other scholars working on theatre history or a specific dramatist, company or time period, may augment their findings with the scholarship assembled and produced for entries of previously unfathomable lost plays. A superb research outcome of the database to date is Matthew Steggle’s eminently plausible identification of playwright (William Rowley), company (Prince Henry’s Men), genre (historical tragedy/foreign history), date (1613–1619) and subject matter (King Henry IV of Castile) for a play about which nothing previously was known: the curiously titled ‘Henry the Una...’, recorded on a playlist dubbed ‘List D’ on the verso of Sir George Buc’s History of Richard III (British Library Cotton MS. Tiberius E. X.)…”