recent studies in george peele (1969–1990)

RECENT STUDIES IN GEORGE PEELE ( 1969- 1990)

K E V I N J . D O N O V A N

The Life and Works ofGeorge Peele, gen. ed. Charles T. Prouty, 3 vols. (1952, 1961, 1970) remains standard.

I. G E N E R A L

A. Biographical. The known facts of Peele’s life are related in the first chapter of Leonard R. N. Ashley, George Peele (I970), and in Stanley J. Kozikowski, “George Peele,” Elizabethan Dramatists, ed. Fredson Bowers, D L B , vol. 62 (19871, PP. 242-53.

B. General Studies. Ashley (1, A) surveys the works, concluding that Peele “was essentially a lyric poet, in the theatre (like so many Elizabethan writers) principally for the money that could be made there.” A. R. Braunmuller, George Peele (1983), examines Peele’s works in relation to their social context: “Peele’s plays often reveal fragile human identity, political chicanery, and private relations absorbed into large, often hostile, political events or histor- ical forces.” Inga-Stina Ewbank, “ ‘What words, what looks, what won- ders?’: Language and Spectacle in the Theatre of George Peele,” in The Elizabethan Theatre, V , ed. G . R. Hibbard (I973), pp. 124-54, focuses on the “mutual illumination” of word and show in Peele, with special emphasis on Peele’s evocation of wonder.

C. Bibliographies. Charles W. Daves, “George Peele,” in The Predecessors of Shakespeare: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama, ed. Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith (1973), pp. 143-52, is a useful survey of modern criticism through 1968, including some items later than that date, such as Vol. I11 of the standard edition (111, C); since the present survey is designed as a supplement to Daves’s, items covered by Daves are not discussed here.

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11. S T U D I E S OF I N D I V I D U A L WORKS

A. T h e Old Wives’ Tale. Several recent studies continue the longstanding debate over the tone of the play-whether or not the romantic and folkloric elements are used satirically. Laurilyn J. Rockey, “ T h e Old Wives Tale as Dramatic Satire,” E T J , 22 (1970), 268-75, argues that “certain distinctive features of the play such as the sense of confusion and abruptness, the muddled multiplicity of plot threads, the stereotyped characterizations, and the bad verse” indicate an intention to satirize romantic plays like Clyomon and Clamydes and Common Conditions. Similarly, John Doebler, “The Tone of George Peele’s T h e Old Wives’ Tale,” ES, 5 3 (I972), 412-21, finds “parody of the conventions and burlesque of the style of contemporary romantic fiction, both popular and courtly.” Leonard R. N. Ashley ( I , A) sees the play as “palpably a deliberate parody and burlesque.”

In contrast, John D. Cox, “Homely Matter and Multiple Plots in Peele’s Old Wives Tale,” T S L L , 20 (1978), 330-46, argues that “ T h e Old Wives Tale is not an attempt to reproduce or to satirize popular ineptitude but to adapt folk material to the conventions of popular drama as well as the thematic organization of court comedy and masque.” Patricia Binney, in the introduc- tion to her edition of the play for the Revels series (1980), argues that the play invites the viewer to experience the magical and romantic action sympathet- ically, while a t the same time through its “distancing effects” it invites a more sophisticated, judgmental response. Philip Edwards, “ ‘Seeing Is Believing’: Action and Narration in T h e Old Wives Tale and T h e Winter’s Tale,” in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries: Essays in Comparison, ed. E. A. J. Honig- man (1986), pp. 79-93, compares Peele’s play to Shakespeare’s: each play insists on the impossibility of its fictional tale (mainly through inept narration), while making particular episodes seem intensely real through the powers of dramatic art. Margaret Dean-Smith, “The Ominous Wood: An Investigation into Some Traditionary Sources of Milton’s Comus,” in T h e Witch Figure: Folklore Essays, ed. Venetia Newall (1973), pp. 42-71, argues that T h e Old Wives Tale “is not a fairy-tale for a child, but adult fantasy compounded of romantic allusions comprehensible to an Elizabethan audience familiar with Apuleius and Ariosto, constructed upon the recogniz- able materials of folktale, legend and classical myth.” According to Joan C. Marx, “ ‘Soft, Who Have We Here?’: The Dramatic Technique of T h e Old Wives Tale,” R e n D , 12 (1981), I 17-43, “the play’s extraordinary dramatic technique consists in slipping suddenly from one genre to another. Such unexpected shifts create a mixture of surprise and daring-a comic sauci- ness-closely resembling, though differing from, the effect of parody.”

A. R. Braunmuller ( I , B) argues that “Peele blended attitudes and values

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skillfully and made a play adaptable to both public and private or courtly performance.” According to Jackson I. Cope, “Peele’s Old Wives Tale: Folk Stuff into Ritual Form,” E L H , 49 (1982), 326-88; rpt. in his Dramaturgy ofthe Daemonic: Studies in Antigeneric Theater from Ruzante to Grimaldi (1984), pp. 50-61, “the ultimate audience was Peele’s view of a timeless viewer”; Cope finds “the illusion of antidrama, of formlessness” in the first half of the play to be “reforged into the mythic form of comedy which was once ritual. . . .”

Susan T. Viguers, “The Hearth and the Cell: Art in The Old Wives Tale,” S E L , 21 (1981), 209-21, emphasizes the contrast between the destructive art of Sacrapant, intended to deceive, and the restorative art of Madge, which insists on its own unreality. Leanore Lieblein, “Doubling as a Language of Transformation: The Case of The Old Wives Tale,” in D u Texte d la scene: Languages du thtdtre (1983), ed. M.-T. Jones-Davies, pp. 225-43, advocates doubling of roles in the theater to reinforce the play’s emphasis on “the transformations art can effect.”

Roger de V. Renwick, “The Mummers’ Play and T h e Old Wives Tale,” JAF, 94 (1981), 433-55, explores structural parallels and thematic contrasts between Peele’s play and the traditional mummers’ plays. W. M. S. Russell, “Folktales and the Theater,” Folklore, 92 (1981), 3-24, sees the play as “more like the British pantomime than any other genre.” James T. Bratcher, “Peele’s Old Wives’ Tale and Tale-Type 425A,” in Studies in Medieval, Renaissance, [and] American Literature: A Festschrifi, ed. Betsy F. Colquitt (1971), pp. 95- 102, focuses on Erestus-as-bear in relation to the folk-motif of the Monster Bridegroom.

Stephen C. Young, in The Frame Structure in Tudor and Stuart Drama (1974), Ch. 5, pp. 63-80, maintains that Peele makes the transition from frame to play deliberately abrupt in order “to present an implicit comparison between the old woman’s skill as a storyteller and his own as a dramatist.” According to Thelma N. Greenfield, The Induction in Elizabethan Drama (1969), “the main play seems partly within control of the frame and partly independent of it-as in watching a play we ourselves feel both creative and surprised as the drama unfolds.”

B. W. Ball reasserts the identification of Huanebango as Harvey in “George Peele’s Huanebango: A Caricature of Gabriel Harvey,” RenP 1968 (19691, 29-39.

B. The Love Of King David and Fair Bethsabe. Judith Weil, “George Peele’s Singing School: David and Bethsabe and the Elizabethan History Play,” Themes in Drama, 8 (1986), 51-66, argues that the play’s aesthetic principles are not those of traditional “divine” drama: “Peele subdues the patterns of divine history to human purposes, in this case the prolific Elizabethan theme

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of inspiration and its power over men and women.” The action of the play suggests “the immanent and humane operation of redemptive providence within carnal experience” rather than in “a transcendent or hidden way.” Braunmuller ( I , B) discusses Peele’s “typically Elizabethan” emphasis on the King’s immorality as tainting the entire nation. Roger Stilling, Love and Death in Renaissance Tragedy (1976), pp. 56-66, focuses on “the two separate but related erotic affairs,” that of Amnon and Thamar “showing sexuality as a purely evil force,” and that of David and Bethsabe, in which love is redeemed. Susan T. Viguers, “Art and Reality in George Peele’s The Araygne- ment ofParis and David and Bethsabe,” C L A J , 3 0 (1987), 481-500, discusses David as an audience wrongly responding to the “show” of Bethsabe bath- ing. Ewbank (1, B) discusses the parallel between visual and verbal “rising and falling” and notes “how much the play and its poetry are concerned with seeing.” T. W. Craik, “The Reconstruction of Stage Action from Early Dramatic Texts,” in The Elizabethan Theatre, V , ed. G. R. Hibbard (1973), pp. 76-9 I , focuses on problems of staging.

C. The Arraignment ofParis. Braunmuller ( I , B) sees Peele “trying to convert the naive and basically anecdotal progress shows into a court play resembling John Lyly’s sophisticated dramas”; thematically, the play “reaffirms the need for conciliation in the England of the early I 580s.” According to Ewbank ( I , B), “wonder is the point of the whole play. . . . [I]f there is a unity in this gallimaufry of a play, it lies exactly in the spectacle. . . .” Louis Adrian Mont- rose, “Gifts and Reasons: The Contexts of Peele’s Araygnement of Paris,” ELH, 47 (1980), 433-61, discusses the play as “an epitome of the forms and motives of Elizabethan prestation [sic]. . . . Hierarchical social relationships are ritually defined and affirmed in the offering and accepting of gifts.” Susan T. Viguers (11, B) discusses Paris’ tragic choice as a confusion between art and reality. R. Headlam Wells, “Elizabethan Epideictic Drama: Praise and Blame in the Plays of Peele and Lyly,” CahiersE, 23 (1983), 15-33 , emphasizes the play’s seriousness, in contrast to Ashley (I, A), for whom the play is “[e]ssentially a potpourri of popular dramatic elements of the time . . . more like a musical comedy than a drama.” A. B. Taylor, “George Peele and Golding’s Metamorphoses,” NGQ, 16 (1969), 286-87, identifies Golding as a source on the basis of verbal echoes.

D. The Battle ofAlcazar. Braunmuller ( I , B) discusses the play in relation to English anxiety over the royal succession and argues that “Peele’s use of pageantry and his repeated invocation of revenge and Nemesis propose a view of history and of man’s place in it” in which human identity is fragile. Peter Berek, “ Tamburlaine’s Weak Sons: Imitation as Interpretation Before 1593,’’ R e n D , 1 3 (1982). 55-82 , finds Peele “trying, not altogether suc-


cessfully, to combine Marlowe’s new hero with traditional strategies for directing the audience’s sympathies in ways Tamburlaine doesn’t attempt. As is true of all the immediate heirs of Marlowe, Peele wants to exploit new sensations while clinging to an undisturbing moral vision.” Muriel Brad- brook, “Bogeymen, Machiavels, and Stoics,” in Collected Papers of Muriel Bradbrook, 111: Aspects of Dramatic Form in the English and Irish Renaissance, pp. 95-1 I I , calls Muly Mahomet “a magnificent Bogeyman part”; she also argues that the play’s “notorious” verbal repetitions “may have served to put across words through the noise of crowds and stage battle, representing not tautology so much as loud-hailing.’’ Ewbank ( I , B) maintains that “the imaginative core of the play is the framework of dumbshows which show us how evil deeds set in motion an infernal machinery. . . . From the audience’s point of view, the chief character in this play is the Presenter.” Susan T. Viguers, “Peele’s The Battle ofAlcazar,” Expl, 43, 2 (1985), 9-12, argues that “the Presenter’s unreliability . . . makes the play considerably more complex and at least somewhat more interesting than scholars have perceived.” Jo- seph Candido, “Captain Thomas Stukeley: The Man, the Theatrical Record, and the Origins of Tudor ‘Biographical’ Drama,” Anglia, 105 (1987), 50-68, sees Peele’s development of the character Stukeley as an important precursor of a sub-genre of the history play, “Tudor ‘biographical’ drama.”

E. Edward I . Marie Axton, The Queen’s Two Bodies: Drama and the E l i z - abethan Succession (1977), explains Peele’s treatment of Elinor and Edward’s brother Edmund as a strategy to show the illegitimacy of Spanish claims to the Elizabethan succession, an idea further developed by Braunmuller (I, B), who also sees a political significance in Prince Lluellen’s disguise as Robin Hood. Ewbank (1, B) discusses “Queen Elinor’s Speech” in relation to Edward’s suit of glass. William Tydeman, “Peele’s Edward I and the Eliz- abethan View of Wales,” in The Welsh Connection: Essays by Past and Present Members ofthe Department ofEnglish Language and Literature, University College of North Wales, Bangor, ed. William Tydeman (1986), pp. 24-53, finds a unifying thread in a theme of the play-“the several ways in which rulers can be deceived both politically and emotionally”-but finds this theme under- cut by the “far from unsympathetic manner in which [Peele] handles Lle- wellyn and the Welsh risings.” Roslyn L. Knutson, “Play Identifications: The Wise Man of West Chester andJohn a Kent andJohn a Cumber; Longshanks and Edward I,” H L Q , 47 (1984), 1 -11 , argues that the play Henslowe calls Longshanks is not the same as Peele’s Edward I .

F. Entertainments. Braunmuller (I, B) devotes a chapter to Peele’s “Entertain- ments for Court and City,” and finds Peele reflecting contemporary political and social anxieties in these minor works. David M. Bergeron, “The Eliz-

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abethan Lord Mayor’s Show,” S E L , 10 (I970), 269-85; rev. and rpt. in his English Civic Pageantry 1558-1642 (1971). pp. 125-39, discusses T h e Pageant before Woolstone Dixie and Descensus Astraea as pioneer achievements in the artistic maturation of the Lord Mayor’s shows. Anthony Brian Taylor, “Arthur Golding and George Peele’s Polyhymnia,” NGQ, 32 (1985), 17-18, identifies Golding’s translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses as a source for Peele’s poem.

G. The State of Criticism. Questions of canon, dating, and sources account for much less of the scholarship on Peele than in earlier years. The O l d Wives’ Tale continues to attract the most critical attention; surprisingly little work has been done on the other plays.

111. C A N O N A N D TEXTS

A. Canon and Chronology. Thomas Clayton, ‘‘ ‘Sir Henry Lee’s Farewell to the Court’: The Texts and Authorship of ‘His Golden Locks Time Hath to Silver Turned,’ ” E L R , 4 (1974)~ 268-75, reviews the evidence for the authorship of the poem, first printed in Polyhymnia, and concludes that Sir Henry Lee is “more likely than anyone else to have been the author.”

Carter A. Daniel, “The Date of Peele’s Arraignment of Paris,” NGQ, 29 (1982), 1 3 1 - 3 2 , cites evidence from records of the Office of the Revels to confirm a date of 1582 for the play.

B. Apocrypha and Uncertain Ascriptions. Michel Lucazeau, “L‘lrine de Peele retrouvee? Compte rendu d’enqu&te,” E A , 3 I (1978). 340-59, identifies Peele’s suppositious play The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek with Gilbert Swinhoe’s The Unhappy Fair Irene (1658).

C. Critique ofthe Standard Edition. The Yale edition of The Lije and Works of George Peele, gen. ed. Charles T. Prouty, continues to command respect and is unlikely to be superceded in the foreseeable future.

D. Textual Studies. Paul Werstine, “Provenance and Printing History in Two Revels Editions.” M R D E , I (1984), 243-62, suggests that “a theatrical manuscript, perhaps an abridgement, stands behind The Old Wives Tale,” identifies compositors differently from the Yale and Revels editors, and finds evidence of casting off which may explain two textual cruces.

E. Other Editions. Patricia Binnie’s Revels edition of The O l d Wives Tale (1980) discusses authorship, date, text, sources, and stage history, and pro-


vides a critical interpretation and a modernized text of the play. A modernized text of T h e Old Wives Tale is also included in Three Sixteenth-Century Comedies: “Gammer Gurton’s Needle, ” “Roister Doister, ” “ T h e Old Wife’s Tale,” ed. Charles Walters Whitworth (1984). Whitworth’s text of T h e Old Wives Tale is reprinted in Elizabethan and Jacobean Comedies, intro. by Brian Gibbons (1984). A Scolar Press facsimile of the I 595 quarto of T h e Old Wives Tale was published in 1970. A modernized text of David and Bethsabe appears in Drama of the English Renaissance, Vol I : T h e Tudor Period (1976), ed. Rus- sell A. Fraser and Norman Rabkin. Selected poems appear in George Peele, ed. Sally Purcell (1972).

See also

I. G E N E R A L S T U D I E S

Beal, Peter, comp. “George Peele,” in his Index ofEnglish Literary Manuscripts. Vol. I: 1450-1625, (1980), pp. 359-62.

Braunmuller, A. R. “Characterization through Language in the Early Plays of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries,” in Shakespeare, M a n ofthe The- ater: Proceedings ofthe Second Congress ofthe International Shakespeare Asso- ciation, 1981, ed. Kenneth Muir, Jay L. Halio, and D. J. Palmer (1983),

. “Early Shakespearian Tragedy and Its Contemporary Context: Cause and Emotion in Titus Andronicus, Richard I I I , and T h e Rape of Lucrece,” in Shakespearian Tragedy, ed. Malcolm Bradbury and David Palmer (1984), pp. 97-128.

Fricker, Robert. “George Peele,” in his Das &ere englische Schauspiel, Vol. 11: John Lyly bis Shakespeare (1983), pp. 142-60.

Howarth, Robert G. Diary, Drama, and Poetry: Presentations and Recoveries (I97 1).

Senn, Werner. Studies in the Dramatic Construction ofRobert Greene and George Peele (1973).

Sturzl-Aspock, Ingeborg Maria. “George Peele-ein Elisabethaner zwischen Vergangenheit und Zukunft,” in Zeit , Tod und Ewigkeit in der Renaissance Literatur, 111, ed. James Hogg (1987), pp. 178-205.

pp. 128-47.

11. I N D I V I D U A L W O R K S

A. T h e Old Wives’ Tale Ardolino, Frank R. “Severed and Brazen Heads: Headhunting in Elizabethan

Drama,”JEP, 4 (1983), 168-81.

Kevin J . Donovan 219

Evans, T. M. “The Vernacular Labyrinth: Mazes and Amazement in Shake-

Free, Mary G. “Audience within Audience in The Old Wives Tale,” RenP 1983

Gelber, Mark. “The Unity of George Peele’s The Old Wives’ Tale,” N . Y.-Pa.

Grove, Thomas N. “Some Observations on the ‘Marvellous’ Old Wives’

Rossky, William. “The Two Gentlemen of Verona as Burlesque,” E L R , 1.2

speare and Peele,” SJ W (1980), I 65-73.

(I984)9 53-61.

M L A Newsl., 2 , I (1969), 3-9.

Tale,” SAP, I I (1979), 201-02.

(1982), 210-19.

B. Daoid and Bethsabe Blackburn, Ruth H. Biblical Drama Under the Tudors (1971). Frontain, Raymond-Jean. “The Curious Frame of Chapman’s Ovids Banquet of

Sence: 2 Samuel I I , ” CahiersE, 3 I (1987), 37-43.

C. The Arraignment ofParis Strong, Roy. The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry

(1 977).

D. Edward I Dreher, G. K., ed. The Chronicle ofKing Edward the First, Surnamed Long-

shanks, with the Life of Lluellen, Rebel in Wales (1974). Jackson, MacD. P. “India and Indian or Judea and Judean? Shakespeare’s

Othello V.ii.356, and Peele’s Edward Zi.107.” NGQ, 3 5 (1988), 479-80. Maxwell, J. C. “Peele, Edward I , 1238-9.” NGQ, 22 (1975), 248. Nellis, Marilyn K . “Peele’s Edward I.” Expl, 44, 2 (1986), 5-8. Wiles, David. The Early Plays o f Robin Hood (198 I ) .

E. Entertainments Fleming, Robert E. “Hemingway and Peele: Chapter I of A Farewell to

Arms,” SAF, I I (1983), 95-100.

111. C A N O N A N D TEXTS

Craik, T. W. “Some Notes on the Text of Peele’s David and Bethsabe,” NGQ,

Morton, A. Q. “Once. A Test of Authorship Based on Words which are not 23 (1976), 208-10.

Repeated in the Sample,” LGLC, I (1986), 1-8.


Nellis, M. K. “Peele’s Night: Dumb or Divine Architect?” NGQ, 30 (1983), 132-3 3 .

Smith, M. W. A. “Hapax Legomena in Prescribed Positions: An Investiga- tion of Recent Proposals to Resolve Problems of Authorship,” LGLC, 2

(198719 145-52.

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recent studies in george peele (1969–1990)

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