The play is a dramatisation of the story of Boudica, the British Celtic queen who led a revolt against the Romans in 60–61 AD. Critics, however, have classified Bonduca as a "historical romance," rather than a history play comparable to those written by Shakespeare; historical accuracy was not Fletcher's primary concern. The play constantly shifts between comedy and tragedy.
The principal hero is not Bonduca herself, but rather Caratach (Caratacus), who is anachronistically depicted as her general, despite having been exiled from Britain almost a decade prior. Nennius, the legendary British opponent of Julius Caesar, is also included. However, most of the action takes place from the Roman point of view, centring on the Roman officers Junius and Petillius, who fall in love with Bonduca's two daughters. Petillius is a fictionalised version of Quintus Petillius Cerialis.
Characters
Caratach, General of the Britons, brother-in-law to Bonduca.
Nennius, a British Commander.
Hengo, Nephew to Caratach and Bonduca.
Suetonius, General of the Roman Army in Britain.
Poenius, a Roman commander
Junius, a Roman commander
Demetrius, a Roman commander
Decius, a Roman commander
Petillius, a Roman commander
Curious, a Roman commander
Regulus, an officer under Poenius
Drusus, an officer under Poenius
Bonduca, Queen of the Iceni.
Bonduca's first daughter.
Bonduca's second daughter.
Macer, a Roman Lieutenant.
Judas, a Roman Corporal.
Herald.
Druids.
Soldiers.
Guides, Servants.
Plot
Bonduca, the queen of the Iceni, gloats over the defeats suffered by the Romans at the hands of her forces. She predicts that the Romans will soon be crushed. Bonduca's confidence is challenged by her general Caratach, who tells her that the Romans are not easily crushed and that the war will be very different from the tribal conflicts they are familiar with. It will be either total victory or utter defeat. Bonduca accepts Caratach's words of caution.
In the Roman camp, one of the officers, Junius, is depressed because he is in love. His friend Petillius tries to cheer him up, but to no avail. Junius reveals that his beloved is Bonduca's younger daughter. Soldiers led by corporal Judas enter, complaining that they are starving. Petillius and Junius tell them to remember their duties. The commander Suetonius is informed of the restive state of the troops. He tells his officers that he intends to provoke a decisive battle. An officer is sent to contact Poenius Postumus, another Roman commander, to join his army with Suetonius' force.
In Poenius's camp the troops are keen to join their comrades, but the haughty Poenius refuses to accept orders from Suetonius, considering battle against the much larger Briton force to be suicidal. He refuses to send the troops. Back in Suetonius' camp Petillius and fellow officers make fun of the love-stuck Junius. Petillius bets another officer, Demetrius, that Poenius will refuse to join them.
In Bonduca's camp Judas and some Roman soldiers have been captured while foraging for food. The Britons ridicule the half-starved Romans. Bonduca's vengeful daughters are keen to hang the captured men, but Caratach intervenes and orders them to be well fed and sent back to the Roman camp. While plying them with food and drink he extracts information from them. Judas reveals Junius' love for Bonduca's younger daughter. She decides she will write a fake love letter to him to capture him. She gives it to Judas, who returns with the others to the Roman camp, drunk.
In the British camp Bonduca makes an impassioned appeal to the thunder god Taranis, while the Druids make sacrifices and read omens. The daughters also pray for victory. Caratach gives a rousing speech to the troops. In the Roman camp Junius reads the fake love-letter, in which Bonduca's daughter tells him that he has won her love. If he meets her, she will allow herself and her family to be captured, as long as they will be well treated. Junius and his friends decide to trust the daughter's plans. Meanwhile, Suetonius gives his own speech to his troops.
Caratach watches the movements of the armies. Poenius also observes from a distance. Junius and the others are brought to Bonduca's daughters in captivity, having been lured into the trap. Junius is taunted by the younger daughter. Her viciousness cures him of any feelings for her. The daughters intend to kill the Romans, but again Caratach intervenes and insists that honourable adversaries should not resort to such tricks. He frees them.
Poenius watches as the small Roman army is apparently overwhelmed by the British forces, but the fog of the battle conceals things. In the midst of the struggle Suetonius and Petillius keep the Romans together. Junius and the others arrive back just as the battle is turning in favour of the Romans. Watching from the hill Caratach berates Bonduca for launching a mass-attack, as the British superiority in numbers is turned against them, creating a crush between the Romans and the baggage train. Victorious, Suetonius pursues the retreating Britons. Caratach and his young nephew Hengo escape after a fight with Junius.
After the battle Petillius continues to ridicule Junius for his former love-sickness. Suetonius tells Petillius to contact Poenius, who he intends to forgive for failing to join the battle. Caratach and Hengo encounter Judas and other soldiers. In the fight Judas is humiliated by the brave boy, while the other soldiers flee from Caratach. Petillius goes to meet Poenius, who is depressed. He tells him of Suetonius' forgiveness, but also gives away his own view that Poenius' honour is irretrievable. Poenius says he will kill himself. Petillius agrees. Poenius stabs himself. His friends blame Petillius for his death.
Bonduca and her daughters are surrounded in a fortress. Suetonius asks them to surrender, but Bonduca refuses. The Romans attempt to breach the defences. The younger daughter now pleads with her mother to surrender, but her mother and her sister scorn her. When the wall is breached, Bonduca forces her younger daughter to kill herself. The older daughter gives a grand speech of self-sacrifice, leading Petillius to fall in love with her. She and Bonduca kill themselves.
Caratach and Hengo watch the funeral of Poenius. Meanwhile, Petillius can't stop thinking about Bonduca's older daughter, and Junius takes the opportunity to play tricks on him in revenge for the ridicule he had received. The Romans make the capture of Caratach a priority. Junius is promoted, but Petillius is not because of his role in Poenius' suicide. Depressed Petillius asks Junius to kill him, but Junius tells him that Suetonius has only put off the promotion to placate Poenius' friends. In fact he has put Petillius in charge of capturing Caratach. Judas plans to trick Caratach by leaving food and drink for him. Caratach and Hengo find the provisions, but when Hengo comes out into the open Judas shoots him. He dies in Caratach's arms. With a single stone-throw, Caratach kills Judas. Petillius and Junius arrive and fight Caratach but he surrenders only when Suetonius appears. Caratach is sent to Rome and Petillius is promoted.
Text
Bonduca has a two-way relationship of influence or borrowing with other plays before and after it. Arthur Sherbo discovered a range of parallels and commonalities between the play and Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Part I (c. 1587). In the opposite chronological direction, S. W. Brossman identified borrowings from Bonduca in John Dryden's Cleomenes (1692).[2]
In addition to the 1647 printed text, the play exists in manuscript form. The manuscript was written by Edward Knight, the "book-keeper" or prompter of the King's Men, probably c. 1630. In a note appended to his transcript, Knight explains that the original prompt-book that supported the stage performances had been lost, and that he had re-copied the author's "foul papers" into the existing manuscript.[3] Knight, however, was unable to transcribe the entire play (he had to summarise the first two and a half scenes in Act V), because the set of foul papers from which he worked was itself incomplete – a useful demonstration of the difficulties in textual transmission that plagued English Renaissance theatre.[4] (The missing scenes are present in the 1647 printed text, though their order, as Knight describes it, is reversed: his V,i comes second and his V,ii comes first.)
Adaptations
Henry Purcell's last major work, composed in 1695, was music for an adaptation entitled Bonduca, or the British Heroine (Z. 574). Selections include "To Arms", "Britons, Strike Home!" and "O lead me to some peaceful gloom". An adaptation of the play was made by George Colman the Elder in the 18th century.
Many scholars have argued that Fletcher's sympathies seem to lie more with the Romans than the Britons, though it has also been argued that the play constantly parallels the two sides.[5]
Claire Jowitt in her article Colonialism, Politics, and Romanization in John Fletcher's "Bonduca" explores the ways in which the play engages with Britain's early-seventeenth-century colonial ambitions – in particular the Virginia colony. She also highlights the topical political allegories in the play.[6] Jowitt argues that the play's sympathies are ambiguous. The Britons in part stand for the Native Americans of the Virginia colony, and are depicted as savage pagans. Nevertheless, the play invites the reader to patriotically identify with their resistance to Rome.
Ronald J. Boling and Julie Crawford argue that the nominal hero Caratach is portrayed in a satirical fashion, and that this probably represents contemporary ambivalence about the court of King James I.[7]
Notes
↑ Cyrus Hoy, Ian Fletcher, Denzell S. Smith; see references.
↑ Paul Green, "Theme and Structure in Fletcher's Bonduca," Studies in English Literature, 22, 2 (Spring 1982): 305–16; Sandra Clark, The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: Sexual Themes and Dramatic Representation (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994), pp. 85–8; and Jodi Mikalachki, The Legacy of Boadicea: Gender and Nation in Early Modern England (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 103–5.
↑ Jowitt, Claire (2003) Colonialism, Politics, and Romanization in John Fletcher's "Bonduca", Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, Spring, 2003, vol. 43, no. 2, p. 475-494
↑ Ronald J. Boling, "Fletcher's Satire of Caratach in Bonduca," CompD 33, 3 (Fall 1999): 390–406; Julie Crawford, "Fletcher's The Tragedie of Bonduca and the Anxieties of the Masculine Government of James I," Studies in English Literature 39, 2 (Spring 1999): 357–81.
Related Research Articles
Boudica or Boudicca, known in Latin chronicles as Boadicea or Boudicea, and in Welsh as Buddug, was a queen of the Iceni tribe of Celtic Britons, who led an uprising against the conquering forces of the Roman Empire in AD 60 or 61. According to Roman sources, shortly after the uprising failed, she poisoned herself or died of her wounds, although there is no actual evidence of her fate. She is considered a national heroine and symbol of the struggle for justice and independence.
Gnaeus Julius Agricola was a Roman general and politician responsible for much of the Roman conquest of Britain. Born to a political family of senatorial rank, Agricola began his military career as a military tribune under Governor Gaius Suetonius Paulinus. In his subsequent career, he served in a variety of political positions in Rome. In 64, he was appointed quaestor in Asia province. Two years later, he was appointed Plebeian Tribune, and in 68, he was made praetor. During the Year of the Four Emperors in 69, he supported Vespasian, legate of Syria, in his bid for the throne.
AD 61 (LXI) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Turpilianus and Caesennius. The denomination AD 61 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Caratacus was a 1st-century AD British chieftain of the Catuvellauni tribe, who resisted the Roman conquest of Britain.
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Quintus Petillius Cerialis Caesius Rufus, otherwise known as Quintus Petillius Cerialis, was a Roman general and administrator who served in Britain during Boudica's rebellion and went on to participate in the civil wars after the death of Nero. He later crushed the rebellion of Julius Civilis and returned to Britain as its governor.
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The battle which ended the Boudican Rebellion took place in Roman Britain in AD 60 or 61, and pitted an alliance of British peoples led by Boudica against a Roman army led by Gaius Suetonius Paulinus. Although heavily outnumbered, the Romans decisively defeated the allied tribes and inflicted heavy losses. The battle marked the end of resistance to Roman rule in most of the southern half of Great Britain, a period that lasted until 410 AD. Modern historians are dependent for information about the uprising and the defeat of Boudica on the narratives written by the Roman historians Tacitus and Dio Cassius, which are the only surviving accounts of the battle known to exist.
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The Boudican revolt was an armed uprising by native Celtic tribes against the Roman Empire. It took place c. 60-61 AD in the Roman province of Britain, and was led by Boudica, the Queen of the Iceni. The uprising was motivated by the Romans' failure to honour an agreement they had made with her husband, Prasutagus, regarding the succession of his kingdom upon his death, and by brutal mistreatment of Boudica and her daughters by the Romans. The revolt ended unsuccessfully after a decisive Roman victory at the Defeat of Boudica.
References
Fletcher, Ian. Beaumont and Fletcher. London, Longmans, Green, 1967.
Halliday, F. E. A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Baltimore, Penguin, 1964.
Hoy, Cyrus. "The Shares of Fletcher and His Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon," Studies in Bibliography, VIII-XV, 1956–62.
Ioppolo, Grace. Dramatists and Their Manuscripts in the Age of Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton and Heywood: Authorship, authority and the playhouse. London, Routledge, 2006.
Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith. The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, Nebraska, University of Nebraska Press, 1978.
† = Not published in the Beaumont and Fletcher folios
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