Bonduca
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Bonduca (ca. 1611-13) is a Jacobean tragedy in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon, generally judged by scholars[1] to be the work of John Fletcher alone. It was acted by the King's Men ca. 1613, and published in 1647 in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio.
The play is a dramatization of the story of Boudica, the British Celtic queen who led a revolt against the Romans in 60-61 A.D. Critics, however, have classified Bonduca as a "historical romance," rather than a history play comparable to those written by Shakespeare; historical accuracy was not Fletcher's primary concern.
Bonduca has a two-way relationship of influence or borrowing with other plays before and after it. Arthur Sherbo discovered a range of parallels and commonalities between the play and Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine, Part I (ca. 1587). In the opposite chronological direction, S. W. Brossman identified borrowings from Bonduca in John Dryden's Cleomenes (1692).[2]
A list of the cast members survives from the original production of Bonduca by the King's Men. The list includes: Richard Burbage, Henry Condell, John Lowin, William Ostler, John Underwood, Nicholas Tooley, William Ecclestone, and Richard Robinson.
In addition to the 1647 printed text, the play exists in manuscript form. The manuscript is thought to be a transcript or "fair copy" prepared for a private collector, as was occasionally done in that historical era.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Fletcher, Ian. Beaumont and Fletcher. London, Longmans, Green, 1967.
- Hoy, Cyrus. "The Shares of Fletcher and His Collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon," Studies in Bibliography, VIII-XV, 1956-62.
- Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith. The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, Nebraska, Univeristy of Nebraska Press, 1978.
