Hengist, King of Kent
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Hengist, King of Kent, or The Mayor of Quinborough is a Jacobean stage play by Thomas Middleton, first published in 1661.
The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on Sept. 4, 1646, but not published till 1661, by the bookseller Henry Herringham, under the title The Mayor of Quinborough. The title page of the first quarto assigns the play to "Tho. Middleton," and states that the play was acted by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre (though no specific performances are known). There are also two extant manuscripts of the play, both of which are scribal copies of the theatre prompt-book. The Lambarde MS. is in the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C., while the Portland MS. is in Nottingham University Library.
Middleton's authorship of Hengist has never been seriously questioned, though a few scholars have postulated a contribution by Middleton's most frequent collaborator, William Rowley, in the comic subplot conerning the Mayor of Quinborough. David Lake, in his study of authorship questions in the Middleton canon, refutes the Rowley hypothesis, and assigns the play to Middleton alone.[1]
The play is an anomaly in Middleton's oeuvre, his only overt history play. Its genre does not prevent the playwright from injecting his usual sexual and thematic preoccupations. (One critic has called in "quirky.") In resorting to what by 1620 was a somewhat antiquated genre, Middleton chose to exploit an equally dated (from the 1620 prespective) dramaturgical technique: the murders of Constantius and Vortimer are acted out in dumb-show instead of being portrayed in the usual combination of speech and action. Another dumb-show features a personified Fortune figure.
The date of authorship of the play is uncertain, though it is usually dated to ca. 1615-20. Some critics have argued that the close relationship between Hengist and The Changeling indicates that the plays were written in fairly close conjunction. "Both plays are lavish in the use of dumb-show; both revolve around a licentious woman (Beatrice-Joanna, Roxena) believed to be virtuous, and a chaste one (Isabella, Castiza) mistreated by an unworthy husband; and the role taken by Horsus, the secret love of Roxena, in planning villainies is not dissimilar to that of De Flores."[2]
Through most of its existence the play was known by the title that refers to its comic subplot, as is true of a few other English Renaissance plays, like Blurt, Master Constable—though modern scholarship tends to prefer the title from the manuscripts that refers to the play's main plot. In the subplot, Middleton takes a satirical jab at the theatrical profession: in Act V, scene i, three thieves pretend to be actors to cheat the Mayor.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
- Hopkins, Lisa. The Female Hero in English Renaissance Tragedy. London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.
- Lake, David J. The Canon of Thomas Middleton's Plays. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1975.
- Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Popular School: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1975.
