Sir Giles Goosecap, Knight is an early 17th-century comedy first published anonymously in 1606, and generally attributed to George Chapman.
Sir Giles Goosecap, Knight is an early 17th-century comedy first published anonymously in 1606, and generally attributed to George Chapman.
The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 10 January 1606 and was published later that year in a quarto printed by John Windet for the bookseller Edward Blount. The title page of the quarto states that the play was acted by the Children of the Chapel, a production that most likely occurred in the 1601–3 period. (The Children of the Chapel were known by that name only in the company's first three years of existence, before the theatres closed in May 1603 due to an epidemic of bubonic plague. When the theatres re-opened, the company was known as the Children of the Queen's Revels or variations thereof.) The play was revived in the mid-1630s at the Salisbury Court Theatre; a second quarto followed that revival, issued in 1636 by Hugh Perry and Roger Bell. [1]
19th-century critics noted the resemblances between Sir Giles Goosecap and Chapman's acknowledged comedies. The case for Chapman's authorship was stated persuasively by T. M. Parrott in 1906. [2] Parrott's attribution essay has come to be regarded as among the best of its kind, and its conclusion has won general acceptance; even Samuel Schoenbaum, a prominent critic of authorship studies in general, conceded that Parrott's argument was likely valid. [3]
The play centers on the melancholic poet-lover Clarence and his relationship with his mistress, the Countess Eugenia. Lord Momford, Eugenia's uncle, helps to treat and cure Clarence's depression by aiding him in the realisation of his bond with Eugenia. The supporting characters conform to greater or lesser degrees to the concept of humours comedy that Chapman had introduced in his An Humorous Day's Mirth (1597); Captain Foulweather, for example, is an extreme Francophile who not only embraces French ways but rejects English manners — and English women.
Superficially, the play is a farce about "gulled knights and waggish servants," though it has also been perceived to possess deeper levels of meaning; critics have judged it a "rarefied, pedantic neo-platonic allegory" as well as "a modern dress version of the Troilus story, based primarily on Chaucer's account and on Estienne Tabourot's Les apothegmes du sieur Gaulard." [4]
William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Thomas Middleton was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. He, with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson, was among the most successful and prolific of playwrights at work in the Jacobean period, and among the few to gain equal success in comedy and tragedy. He was also a prolific writer of masques and pageants.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1606.
George Chapman was an English dramatist, translator and poet. He was a classical scholar whose work shows the influence of Stoicism. Chapman has been speculated to be the Rival Poet of Shakespeare's sonnets by William Minto, and as an anticipator of the metaphysical poets of the 17th century. Chapman is best remembered for his translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and the Homeric Batrachomyomachia.
Eastward Hoe or Eastward Ho! is an early Jacobean-era stage play written by George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston. The play was first performed at the Blackfriars Theatre by a company of boy actors known as the Children of the Queen's Revels in early August 1605, and it was printed in September the same year.
Like most playwrights of his period, William Shakespeare did not always write alone. A number of his surviving plays are collaborative, or were revised by others after their original composition, although the exact number is open to debate. Some of the following attributions, such as The Two Noble Kinsmen, have well-attested contemporary documentation; others, such as Titus Andronicus, are dependent on linguistic analysis by modern scholars; recent work on computer analysis of textual style has given reason to believe that parts of some of the plays ascribed to Shakespeare are actually by other writers.
Jack Drum's Entertainment, or the Comedy of Pasquil and Katherine is a late Elizabethan play written by the dramatist and satirist John Marston in 1600. It was first performed by the Children of Paul's, one of the troupes of boy actors popular in that era.
The Isle of Gulls is a Jacobean era stage play written by John Day, a comedy that caused a scandal upon its premiere in 1606.
The Tragedy of Chabot, Admiral of France is an early seventeenth-century play, generally judged to be a work of George Chapman, later revised by James Shirley. The play is the last in Chapman's series of plays on contemporary French politics and history, which started with Bussy D'Ambois and continued through The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron, and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois.
Thomas Marc Parrott (1866–1960) was a prominent twentieth-century American literary scholar, long a member of the faculty of Princeton University in New Jersey.
Caesar and Pompey is a Jacobean era stage play, a classical tragedy written by George Chapman. Arguably Chapman's most obscure play, it is also one of the more problematic works of English Renaissance Drama.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) was an English poet and playwright. He wrote approximately 39 plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems.
Summer's Last Will and Testament is an Elizabethan stage play, a comedy written by Thomas Nashe. The play is notable for breaking new ground in the development of English Renaissance drama: "No earlier English comedy has anything like the intellectual content or the social relevance that it has."
Kenneth Arthur Muir was a literary scholar and writer, prominent in the fields of Shakespeare studies and English Renaissance theatre. He served as King Alfred Professor of English Literature at Liverpool University from 1951 to 1974.
The Widow's Tears is an early Jacobean era play, a comedy written by George Chapman. It is often considered the last of Chapman's comedies, and sometimes his most problematic, "the most provocative and the most paradoxical of any of his dramatic works."
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.
All Fools is an early Jacobean era stage play, a comedy by George Chapman that was first published in 1605. The play has often been considered Chapman's highest achievement in comedy: "not only Chapman's most flawless, perfectly balanced play," but "also his most human and large-minded." "Chapman certainly wrote no comedy in which an ingenious and well-managed plot combined so harmoniously with personages so distinctly conceived and so cleverly and divertingly executed."
The Gentleman Usher is an early 17th-century stage play, a comedy written by George Chapman that was first published in 1606.
Monsier D'Olive is an early Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by George Chapman.
The Shakespeare authorship question is the argument that someone other than William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon wrote the works attributed to him. Anti-Stratfordians—a collective term for adherents of the various alternative-authorship theories—believe that Shakespeare of Stratford was a front to shield the identity of the real author or authors, who for some reason—usually social rank, state security, or gender—did not want or could not accept public credit. Although the idea has attracted much public interest, all but a few Shakespeare scholars and literary historians consider it a fringe theory, and for the most part acknowledge it only to rebut or disparage the claims.