The Blind Beggar of Alexandria

Last updated

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.

Contents

Performance and publication

The play was acted by the Admiral's Men at the Rose Theatre; the records of theatre impresario Philip Henslowe show that it premiered on 12 February 1596. A popular hit, Blind Beggar was staged 22 times throughout April 1597. (Performances of Blind Beggar on 15 April, 26 April and 13 May 1596 paid 40 shillings per day, a better and more consistent return than provided by most of the company's offerings that season.) [1] The play was revived in 1601 and 1602. The work was published after its initial run: it was entered into the Stationers' Register on 15 August 1598 and appeared in print later that year, in a quarto issued by the bookseller William Jones. (The play was less popular in print than on stage: the quarto was never reprinted. This set a pattern for Chapman's remaining dramatic career; with the exception of his masterpiece Bussy D'Ambois , Chapman's plays rarely went through more than a single edition.) [2] One extant printed version, unfortunately, is mangled, incomplete, and unusually short; it likely represents a version cut down for an abbreviated stage presentation, which emphasizes the farcical comedy at the expense of the romantic main plot. [3]

Plot

Chapman's comedy derives from the commedia dell'arte tradition of Italy – perhaps more directly than most English plays so influenced: Chapman may have based Blind Beggar on a commedia that he witnessed first-hand during a trip to Italy. [4] Not atypically for a play so influenced, the plot of Blind Beggar depends heavily on the comedic effects of disguise. Cleanthes, a swindler and pretended duke, has wooed the imperious Queen Aegiale, who rewards his temerity by banishing him. Cleanthes returns to Alexandria in the guise of the blind beggar and fortune-teller Irus. In that disguise and others – Leon the usurer, and the "mad-brain" aristocrat Count Hermes – Cleanthes manipulates people and events to turn in his favor (and for the sheer egotistical fun of it). He seduces Aegiale; he marries a pair of sisters in his different personas – and then tempts both of them to engage in adultery, though only with himself in other guises. He ends up king of Egypt, and disposes of his two sibling wives (now pregnant) as the mates of two captured kings.

Critics have recognized Cleanthes, a shepherd by birth who becomes a king, as a comic parody of Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine. [5] Even in a relatively light and slight project like Blind Beggar, a hint of Chapman's classical learning and inclination shows through. The pretend-beggar Irus is named after the bragging beggar who foolishly challenges Odysseus to a fight in the final book of The Odyssey . Some of the farcical comedy elements in Blind Beggar may be the work of an unknown play doctor rather than Chapman himself; the dedication printed in the first edition of his later comedy All Fools (published 1605) indicates that Chapman supervised the publication of that text himself, to prevent the appearance of a play "patch'd with others' wit." This may imply that earlier Chapman comedies, Blind Beggar and perhaps An Humorous Day's Mirth , had been "patch'd" in just this way.

Influence

The Blind Beggar of Alexandria was hardly the first disguise play to appear on the Elizabethan stage; the anonymous The Knack to Know an Honest Man (1594), another Admiral's play, is one prior instance, and others can be noted. [6] Yet the popularity of Chapman's play gave an impetus to the comic device; disguise plays were produced frequently in its aftermath. The anonymous Look About You (printed 1600), The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (1600) by Henry Chettle and John Day, Westward Ho and Northward Ho (c. 1604–5) by Thomas Dekker and John Webster, and Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone (1606) and The Alchemist (1610) are among the various examples that can be cited. [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Early texts of Shakespeare's works</span> Late 16th and early 17th-century editions of William Shakespeares works

The earliest texts of William Shakespeare's works were published during the 16th and 17th centuries in quarto or folio format. Folios are large, tall volumes; quartos are smaller, roughly half the size. The publications of the latter are usually abbreviated to Q1, Q2, etc., where the letter stands for "quarto" and the number for the first, second, or third edition published.

John Day (1574–1638?) was an English dramatist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.

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

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

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Chapman</span> 16th/17th-century English dramatist, poet, and translator

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.

<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.

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>Mucedorus</i>

A Most pleasant Comedie of Mucedorus the Kings Sonne of Valentia, and Amadine the Kinges daughter of Aragon, commonly called Mucedorus, is an Elizabethan romantic comedy, first performed around 1590 and regularly revived until the Restoration. It was one of the most performed plays of its age, and 16 quarto editions were published between 1598 and 1668 making it the most widely printed play from the time. It was performed for both Queen Elizabeth and King James I. A revised and expanded version was published in 1610 with additional scenes.

Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester, is an Elizabethan-era stage play, a comedy written c. 1590. It was bound together with Mucedorus and The Merry Devil of Edmonton in a volume labelled "Shakespeare. Vol. I" in the library of Charles II. Though scholarly opinion generally does not accept the attribution to William Shakespeare, there are a few who believe they see Shakespeare's hand in this play.

An Humorous Day's Mirth is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy by George Chapman, first acted in 1597 and published in 1599.

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.]

<i>Englishmen for My Money</i>

Englishmen for My Money, or A Woman Will Have Her Will is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy written by William Haughton that dates from the year 1598. Scholars and critics often cite it as the first city comedy. Indeed, the play inaugurated a dramatic subgenre that would be exploited and developed by Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, and others in the following years and decades.

Thomas Creede was a printer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, rated as "one of the best of his time." Based in London, he conducted his business under the sign of the Catherine Wheel in Thames Street from 1593 to 1600, and under the sign of the Eagle and Child in the Old Exchange from 1600 to 1617. Creede is best known for printing editions of works in English Renaissance drama, especially for ten editions of six Shakespearean plays and three works in the Shakespeare Apocrypha.

Peter Short was an English printer based in London in the later Elizabethan era. He printed several first editions and early texts of Shakespeare's works.

Andrew Wise, or Wyse or Wythes, was a London publisher of the Elizabethan era who issued first editions of five Shakespearean plays. "No other London stationer invested in Shakespeare as assiduously as Wise did, at least while Shakespeare was still alive."

<i>All Fools</i> Play written by George Chapman

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."

May Day is an early 17th-century stage play, a comedy written by George Chapman that was first published in 1611.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gabriel Spenser</span> 16th-century English actor

Gabriel Spenser, also spelt Spencer, was an Elizabethan actor. He is best known for episodes of violence culminating in his death in a duel at the hands of the playwright Ben Jonson.

References

  1. ↑ John Payne Collier, ed., The Diary of Philip Henslowe, from 1591 to 1609, London, The Shakespeare Society, 1845; pp. 67–8.
  2. ↑ E. K. Chambers. The Elizabethan Stage, 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 3, pp. 251–9.
  3. ↑ Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, eds., The New Intellectuals: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama, Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1977; p. 148.
  4. ↑ Helen Andrews Kaufman, "The Blind Beggar of Alexandria: A Reappraisal," Philological Quarterly 38 (1959), pp. 10–16.
  5. ↑ Eugene M. Waith, Ideas of Greatness: Heroic Drama in England, London, Routledge, 1971; pp. 124–5.
  6. ↑ Roslyn L. Knutson, "Toe to Toe across Maid Lane: Repertorial Competition at the Rose and Globe, 1599–1600," in: Acts of Criticism: Performance Matters in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, Paul Nelsen and June Schlueter, eds. Madison/Teaneck, NJ, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2006; pp. 21–37, esp. pp. 30 and 37.
  7. ↑ William J. Lawrence, Pre-Restoration Stage Studies, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1927; pp. 277–89
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.