Princes set on stages : Iconography on the early modern stage.

Abstract not provided

Presbyterian Imitation Practices in Zachary Boyd’s Nebuchadnezzars Fierie Furnace

The university administrator, preacher and poet Zachary Boyd (1585–1653) relied heavily on epithets and similes borrowed from Josuah Sylvester's poetry when composing his scriptural versifications Zion's Flowers(c. 1640?). The composition of Boyd's adaptation of Daniel 3, Nebuchadnezzars Fierie Furnace, provides an unusually lucid example of the reading and imitation practices of a mid-seventeenth-century Scottish Presbyterian in the years preceding civil war. This article begins by re-considering a manuscript transcription of Fierie Furnace held at the British Library previously described as an anonymous playtext from the early 1610s, then establishes the nature of Boyd's reliance on Sylvester by analyzing holograph manuscripts held at Glasgow University Library, a sermon Boyd wrote on the same theme, and the copy of Sylvester's Devine Weekes, and Workes that Boyd probably used.Arts and Humanities Research Counci

Guy of Warwick, Godfrey of Bouillon, and Elizabethan Repertory

This article considers the anonymous play The Tragical History, Admirable Atchievments and various events of Guy earl of Warwick and Thomas Heywood's The Four Prentices of London in the context of the generic label 'Turk plays'. I argue that both plays indicate their engagement with the Tamburlaine phenomenon, not only in their verse style and interest in stage spectacle but particularly in the ways in which both plays draw on the theatre's interest in and depiction of Islamic powers, either Turkish or Persian. To capitalize on the success of Marlowe's play and others like it, dramatists such as Heywood and the author of The Tragical History turned to medieval history and romance narratives for heroes whose stories they could dramatize. The careers of both Guy of Warwick and Godfrey of Bouillon involve a crusade or pilgrimage to the holy land and violent encounters with Saracen forces in Jerusalem. The Elizabethan dramatization of these two stories creates a palimpsest as English conceptions of Anglo-Ottoman relations in the sixteenth century are superimposed on the medieval depiction of English or European crusaders and their Saracen enemies. This palimpsestic effect is revealing in a number of ways. First, the adaptation of the story of Guy of Warwick for the stage permits insights into the repertorial strategies employed by dramatists and theatre companies as they strove to satisfy audience demand. Second, the apparently simplistic depictions of Anglo-Islamic relations in both The Tragical History and The Four Prentices of London point up the gap between the clear binarisms presented in each of the plays and the more complex relationship between England and the Ottoman empire at the end of the sixteenth century

A Darker Shade of Pale: Webster’s Winter Whiteness

This essay explores the politics of the colour scheme in John Webster’s tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. On the face of it, we are offered a clear and absolute opposition between black and white in which black, predictably, is bad, and white, equally predictably, is good. We argue, however, that it is actually white which is represented as the more sinister of the two colours, for reasons connected to the plays’ interest in the bodies and behaviour of rulers, specifically James I’s scheme for the annexation of Russia and his reburial of his mother, Mary, Queen of Scots.Reading the plays in relation to these two contemporary events, we argue that in his two great tragedies Webster prises open the instability of the term “white” to lay bare a tension between the spiritual and the material which reveals the darker side of whiteness

Early Modern English Drama and the Islamic World. Guy of Warwick, Godfrey of Bouillon, and Elizabethan Repertory

This article considers the anonymous play The Tragical History, Admirable Atchievments and various events of Guy earl of Warwick and Thomas Heywood's The Four Prentices of London in the context of the generic label 'Turk plays'. I argue that both plays indicate their engagement with the Tamburlaine phenomenon, not only in their verse style and interest in stage spectacle but particularly in the ways in which both plays draw on the theatre's interest in and depiction of Islamic powers, either Turkish or Persian. To capitalize on the success of Marlowe's play and others like it, dramatists such as Heywood and the author of The Tragical History turned to medieval history and romance narratives for heroes whose stories they could dramatize. The careers of both Guy of Warwick and Godfrey of Bouillon involve a crusade or pilgrimage to the holy land and violent encounters with Saracen forces in Jerusalem. The Elizabethan dramatization of these two stories creates a palimpsest as English conceptions of Anglo-Ottoman relations in the sixteenth century are superimposed on the medieval depiction of English or European crusaders and their Saracen enemies. This palimpsestic effect is revealing in a number of ways. First, the adaptation of the story of Guy of Warwick for the stage permits insights into the repertorial strategies employed by dramatists and theatre companies as they strove to satisfy audience demand. Second, the apparently simplistic depictions of Anglo-Islamic relations in both The Tragical History and The Four Prentices of London point up the gap between the clear binarisms presented in each of the plays and the more complex relationship between England and the Ottoman empire at the end of the sixteenth century