Edward IV (play)

Last updated

Edward IV, Parts 1 and 2 is a two-part Elizabethan history play centring on the personal life of King Edward IV of England. It was published without an author's name attached, but is often attributed to Thomas Heywood, perhaps writing with collaborators.

Contents

Publication history

The two parts were entered into the Stationers' Register together on 28 August 1599, and were published together later that year in a quarto issued by the bookseller John Oxenbridge. [1] The title page of the first edition states that the play was acted by "the Earl of Derby his servants". A second quarto was released in 1600 by Oxenbridge and Humphrey Lownes. The play was popular, and was reprinted in 1605, 1613, 1619, and 1626. All of the early quartos were anonymous; Heywood was first connected with the plays by Francis Kirkman in his 1661 play list. [2]

Plot

The central character in the play is Jane Shore, the king's mistress. The historical events of the reign of Edward IV form a background, involving "the bastard Faulconbridge," the "Tanner of Tamworth," and other figures of the era. The play draws material from the 1587 edition of Holinshed's Chronicles. [3]

The play shows Edward wooing Jane, Jane struggling with the morality of accepting the king's offers, but using her influence to grant pardons to those wrongfully punished. In the end she expresses regret for her relationship with Edward. After Edward's death she is cast out by the new king Richard III. In this version of events, Jane is reconciled with her husband right before dying. They are buried together in a ditch which is named "Shores Ditch, as in the memory of them". This is supposed to be the origin of the name Shoreditch.

Author

The play has often been attributed to Heywood; the normally cautious W. W. Greg regarded it as "undoubtedly Heywood's" though the rarely cautious F. G. Fleay demurred. Some scholars have dated the play as early as 1594; others have favored a date toward the end of that decade. The records of theatre manager Philip Henslowe show that Henry Chettle and John Day were working on a play about Jane Shore in May 1603 for Worcester's Men, the company with which Heywood was associated at the time. A play on Jane Shore was popular in the first decade of the 17th century, and is mentioned in The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1607) and Pimlico or Run Red-Cap (1609). In Part 1 of Edward IV, Act III scene ii, is a three-part song about the Battle of Agincourt that strongly resembles Michael Drayton's The Ballad of Agincourt and Drayton was a regular writer for Henslowe c. 1600 and frequently collaborated with Chettle and others. All of these facts and factors, taken together, suggest that Edward IV was composed by Heywood, perhaps with other Henslowe house dramatists, and perhaps revised over a span of years by various hands. [4]

Performances

In 1607, a company of English actors touring Austria were at the archducal court of Graz; on 19 November they performed, for Archduke Ferdinand II and his duchess Maria Anna of Bavaria, a play called The King of England and the Goldsmith's Wife which might have been Edward IV. [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Drayton</span> 16th/17th-century English poet and playwright

Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era, continuing to write through the reign of James I and into the reign of Charles I. Many of his works consisted of historical poetry. He was also the first English-language author to write odes in the style of Horace. He died on 23 December 1631 in London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Dekker (writer)</span> 16th/17th-century English dramatist and pamphleteer

Thomas Dekker was an English Elizabethan dramatist and pamphleteer, a versatile and prolific writer, whose career spanned several decades and brought him into contact with many of the period's most famous dramatists.

Philip Henslowe was an Elizabethan theatrical entrepreneur and impresario. Henslowe's modern reputation rests on the survival of his diary, a primary source for information about the theatrical world of Renaissance London.

Henry Chettle was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer of the Elizabethan era, best known for his pamphleteering.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Heywood</span> 16th/17th-century English playwright, actor, and author

Thomas Heywood was an English playwright, actor, and author. His main contributions were to late Elizabethan and early Jacobean theatre. He is best known for his masterpiece A Woman Killed with Kindness, a domestic tragedy, which was first performed in 1603 at the Rose Theatre by the Worcester's Men company. He was a prolific writer, claiming to have had "an entire hand or at least a maine finger in two hundred and twenty plays", although only a fraction of his work has survived.

William Haughton was an English playwright in the age of English Renaissance theatre.

Anthony Munday was an English playwright and miscellaneous writer. He was baptized on 13 October 1560 in St Gregory by St Paul's, London, and was the son of Christopher Munday, a stationer, and Jane Munday. He was one of the chief predecessors of Shakespeare in English dramatic composition, and wrote plays about Robin Hood. He is believed to be the primary author of Sir Thomas More, on which he is believed to have collaborated with Henry Chettle, Thomas Heywood, William Shakespeare, and Thomas Dekker.

Robert Wilson, was an Elizabethan dramatist who worked primarily in the 1580s and 1590s. He is also believed to have been an actor who specialized in clown roles.

<i>Thomas Lord Cromwell</i>

Thomas Lord Cromwell is an Elizabethan history play, depicting the life of Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex, the minister of King Henry VIII of England.

<i>Sir John Oldcastle</i> 17th-century play sometimes attributed to William Shakespeare

Sir John Oldcastle is an Elizabethan play about John Oldcastle, a controversial 14th-/15th-century rebel and Lollard who was seen by some of Shakespeare's contemporaries as a proto-Protestant martyr.

Richard Hathwaye, was an English dramatist.

Wentworth Smith, was a minor English dramatist of the Elizabethan period who may have been responsible for some of the plays in the Shakespeare Apocrypha, though no work known to be his is extant.

The Admiral's Men was a playing company or troupe of actors in the Elizabethan and Stuart eras. It is generally considered the second most important acting troupe of English Renaissance theatre.

<i>The Merry Devil of Edmonton</i>

The Merry Devil of Edmonton is an Elizabethan-era stage play; a comedy about a magician, Peter Fabell, nicknamed the Merry Devil. It was at one point attributed to William Shakespeare, but is now considered part of the Shakespeare Apocrypha.

The Earl of Worcester's Men was an acting company in Renaissance England. An early formation of the company, wearing the livery of William Somerset, 3rd Earl of Worcester, is among the companies known to have toured the country in the mid-sixteenth century. A later iteration of the company toured through the 1580s and '90s; little is known about its activities, though in 1583 it included the sixteen-year-old Edward Alleyn, at the start of his illustrious career.

Valentine Simmes was an Elizabethan era and Jacobean era printer; he did business in London, "on Adling Hill near Bainard's Castle at the sign of the White Swan." Simmes has a reputation as one of the better printers of his generation, and was responsible for several quartos of Shakespeare's plays. [See: Early texts of Shakespeare's works.]

Thomas Millington was a London publisher of the Elizabethan era, who published first editions of three Shakespearean plays. He has been called a "stationer of dubious reputation" who was connected with some of the "bad quartos" and questionable texts of Shakespearean bibliography.

The Blind Beggar of Alexandria is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy written by George Chapman. It was the first of Chapman's plays to be produced on the stage; its success inaugurated his career as a dramatist.

The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon are two closely related Elizabethan-era stage plays on the Robin Hood legend, that were written by Anthony Munday in 1598 and published in 1601. They are among the relatively few surviving examples of the popular drama acted by the Admiral's Men during the Shakespearean era.

The Woeful Lamentation of Jane Shore is an English broadside ballad from the 17th century. It tells the story of Jane Shore, a mistress of King Edward IV, and her downfall after the death of Edward. Copies of the broadside can be found at the British Library, the University of Glasgow Library, and Magdalene College, Cambridge.

References

  1. Thomas Heywood, The First and Second Parts of King Edward IV, edited by Richard Rowland; The Revels Plays, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2005; p. xi.
  2. Rowland's Introduction to his edition, p. 9.
  3. Rowland, p. 12.
  4. E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 4, pp. 10-11.
  5. Chambers, Vol. 2, p. 281.