A Yorkshire Tragedy
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A Yorkshire Tragedy is an early Jacobean era stage play, a domestic tragedy printed in 1608. The play was originally assigned to William Shakespeare, though the modern critical consensus rejects this attribution, favoring Thomas Middleton.
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[edit] History of the play
A Yorkshire Tragedy was entered into the Stationers' Register on May 2, 1608; the entry assigns the play to "Wylliam Shakespere." The play was published soon after, in a quarto issued by bookseller Thomas Pavier, who had published Sir John Oldcastle, another play of the Shakespeare Apocrypha, in 1600. The title page of the quarto repeats the attribution to "W. Shakspeare," and states that the play was acted by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre.
The play was reprinted in 1619, as part of William Jaggard's False Folio. It was next reprinted in 1664, when Philip Chetwinde included it among the seven plays he added to the second impression of the Shakespeare Third Folio.
[edit] Form and genre
The play is unusual in consisting of only ten scenes. The original printed text of the play identifies it as "ALL'S ONE. OR, One of the foure Plaies in one, called a York-Shire Tragedy...." This plainly implies that the existing play was one of a quartet of related works that were performed on stage together. In that respect it must have resembled Four Plays, or Moral Representations, in One, from c. 1608–13, a play in the John Fletcher canon in which Fletcher wrote the last two parts of the quartet, while another playwright, most likely Nathan Field, wrote the others. Other examples of such anthologies of short plays from the English Renaissance can also be given; see, for instance, The Seven Deadly Sins.
The nature and authorship of the three lost pieces that accompanied A Yorkshire Tragedy can only be a matter of conjecture.
Domestic tragedy, while not one of the primary genres of English Renaissance theatre, is not unknown in the dramatic canon of the age. Arden of Faversham, another play of the Shakespeare Apocrypha, is a famous instance; A Woman Killed with Kindness is another prominent example.
[edit] Sources
The plot of the play is based on the biographical account of Walter Calverley of Calverley Hall, Yorkshire, who was executed on August 5, 1605 for murdering two of his children and stabbing his wife. The crimes were a well-known scandal of the day; a pamphlet on the case was issued in June 1605, with a ballad following in July. The chronicler John Stow reported the case in his Annals.[1][2] The murders were also dramatized in a play titled The Miseries of Enforced Marriage (1607), by George Wilkins. Scholars have disagreed on the relationship between Wilkins's play and A Yorkshire Tragedy; some of have seen one play as a source for the other, or even the work of the same author, while others regard the two dramas as essentially separate works.[3]
[edit] Authorship
While some early critics allowed the possibility of Shakespeare's authorship, most, over the past two centuries, have doubted the attribution. The modern critical consensus favours the view that the play was written by Thomas Middleton, citing internal evidence from the text of the play.[4] Cases for the authorship of Thomas Heywood or George Wilkins have been made, but have convinced few commentators.[5]
[edit] Synopsis
The play opens with a conversation among three servants of an anonymous Yorkshire gentleman, who is returning to his country house after a long sojourn in London. Sam, who has returned with his master, explains to Ralph and Oliver that their master has abandoned his local fiancé to marry another young woman: "he's married, beats his wife, and has two or three children by her." Sam also details his master's fondness for drunkenness, and sets the mood for what follows.
The second scene introduces the principal characters. The Wife has an opening soliloquy, "What will become of us?," that fills out the picture of the protagonist's devotion to drink and gambling and riotous behaviour; when the Husband enters, he justifies her worry with his cruel words and general bad behaviour. The Husband's reputation has gotten so bad that three neighbors, local Gentlemen (otherwise unnamed), seek him out to reprove him and urge his reform. One of the Gentlemen is so persistent that the Husband loses his temper and draws his sword; the two fight, and the Husband is left wounded on the floor — but he retains his unrepentant attitude.
The Wife tries to find some way to reach and reason with her Husband; thinking of her Husband's university days, she solicits the help of the Master of his college. The Master manages to touch the Husband's conscience and work an effect, though it is not as positive as intended. Once alone, the Husband plunges into despondency over his moral decline, expressed in his soliloquy "Oh thou confused man...." (Those commentators who allow a possibility of a Shakespearean contribution to the play tend to centre their attention on this fourth scene and this soliloquy.) In a fit of passion, the Husband is moved to kill his children to save them from the poverty that he sees in his future. He grabs his young son, draws his dagger, and stabs the child.
Wild with rage, the Husband fights with a serving maid for another child; he dashes the baby to the floor. His Wife is horrified, but unable to control her husband; he wounds her and leaves her for dead. The one servingman bold enough to confront him is overcome. The Husband flees, planning to murder the third and youngest of his children, who is living with its wet nurse nearby. He is pursued by the Master and servants; they apprehend him, and bring him to the Knight who serves as the local Justice of the Peace.
In the final scene, the Husband is brought in custody past his ancestral home. His Wife is recovering from her wounds, and the bodies of the murdered children are laid out for burial. The Husband is finally repentant and contrite over his actions...too late for any restoration. The Husband departs with the officers escorting him, to meet the judgement of justice; the Master is left to express his grief at the family tragedy.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
- 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, 1965.
- Maxwell, Baldwin. Studies in the Shakespeare Apocrypha. New York, King's Crown Press, 1956.
- Tucker Brooke, C. F. The Shakespeare Apocrypha. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1908.
[edit] External links
- The Cambridge Literary History Discussion
- Full modern-spelling edited text from Chris Cleary's Middleton page
- A full electronic text from UC Irvine
- Lisa Hopkins's literary criticism of the play
- A Yorkshire Tragedy eText at Project Gutenberg
