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Galatea and Midas: John Lyly
Galatea and Midas are two of John Lyly's most engaging plays. Shortly after his early success with Campaspe and Sappho and Phao in 1583-4, he took up the story of two young women, Galatea (or Gallathea) and Phillida who are dressed up in male clothes by their fathers so that they can avoid the requirement of the god Neptune that every year "the fairest and chastest virgin in all the country" be sacrificed to a sea-monster. Hiding together in the forest, the two maidens fall in love, each supposing the other to be a young man. Galatea has become the subject of considerable feminist critical study in recent years. Midas (1590) uses mythology in quite a different way, dramatizing two stories about King Midas (the golden touch and the ass's ears) in such a way as to fashion a satire of King Philip of Spain (and of any tyrant like him) for colossal greediness and folly. In the wake of the defeat of Philip's Armada fleet and its attempted invasion of England in 1588, this satire was calculated to win the approval of Queen Elizabeth and her court. The plays are newly presented here by the scholars who have recently edited Campaspe, Sappho and Phao, and Endymion for the Revels series.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
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About the author
John Lyly
119 books21 followers(c. 1553 or 1554 – November 1606) An English writer, best known for his books Euphues,The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England. Lyly's linguistic style, originating in his first books, is known as Euphuism.
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
September 4, 2011
I only read Galatea , but I was quite impressed by it. For a play that's only been staged a handful of times in the last hundred years, the handling of gender and sexuality within the play is surprisingly progressive for something from the 16th century. Of course, cross-dressing happens all the time on the Renaissance stage - boys played all of the women, but in Galatea the two women (played by boys) then disguise themselves as boys and fall in love with each other. In fact, even after the women realize that they're both women, they decide to ignore the issue at hand (a same-sex love affair, what?!) and head off into the woods to "make much of one another."
Although the ending results in a sex change (performed by Venus) for one of the women, the central message seems to be that the love these women have for each other is entirely natural. There is nothing wrong with their love, EXCEPT that their union would not be able to do what unions/marriages should do - produce babies.
Obviously it's not a progressive play in the way that we from the 21st century would expect, but this is hundreds of years old! It's nice to know that a lot of experimental productions (focusing heavily on the gender/sexuality aspects) have been popping up within the last decade.
Although the ending results in a sex change (performed by Venus) for one of the women, the central message seems to be that the love these women have for each other is entirely natural. There is nothing wrong with their love, EXCEPT that their union would not be able to do what unions/marriages should do - produce babies.
Obviously it's not a progressive play in the way that we from the 21st century would expect, but this is hundreds of years old! It's nice to know that a lot of experimental productions (focusing heavily on the gender/sexuality aspects) have been popping up within the last decade.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 22, 2023
Read just Galatea but read it twice so I don't feel bad marking it read. Interesting.
1. Destiny: Interesting to compare w/ Two Noble Kinsman in the treatment of the gods' caprice. Hunter has an excellent note to 1.1.59-62 "Tityrus: [...] To avoid therefore destiny (for wisdom ruleth the stars), I think it better to use an unlawful means, your honor preserved, than intolerable grief, both life and honor hazarded; and to prevent, if it be possible, thy constellation by my craft": the note begins "Tityrus tries to have it both ways." I think this is spot on, and of course the play treats this remark classically in that Tityrus' is being hubristic in this moment which invites the comic-tragic turn: Destiny will not be ruled by "wisdom." But it's interesting that the play offers no alternative characterization of destiny. Unlike in TNK which very much has destiny as a capricious and indecipherable force*, operating somewhere between aiming to frustrate human desire and simply having nothing to do with it, Lyly portrays people at the whims of gods that are themselves the playthings of capricious fortune. Neptune molds the play's pastoral society, Cupid forces shepherds to fall in love, but Neptune is swayed from murderous rage to mediating compromise by the memory love, and Cupid lackies after Diana--thus the Auger's conception of destiny is counterfeited; a conception which would be very much at home in Lyly's more politicized plays (requiring, in being written for the court, a moral order that deserves to be obeyed, or at least one which is more rigidly structured). Hebe's conception ("destiny hasteth")--quite in line with Shakespeare's in TNK--being surrounded as it is by such bathetic lines as "How happy had I been if I had not been!" and "Glut thyself [Agar, thou unsatiable monster] till thou surfeit" is comically pessimistic and thus not viable. While even Tityrus meekly submits before when faced with the gods directly. The subplot mocks the three boys entrepreneurism, and the epilogue, which extols the virtues of love (?) is equivocal on the subject. So, while not subversive, the play is ambiguous in an interesting way.
2. There is an emendation BEGGING to be made in 3.1: "Eurota: If thou be in love (for I have heard of such a beast called Love)." CLEARLY "be" should be "beest." It's a classic Lylyian pun.
3. Euphuism w/r/t Hamlet: It's pretty generally accepted that, in Hamlet, Osric is a parody of Lyly's style (which had become unfashionable by the date of Hamlet's publication). I've also heard Polonius's non-stop string of commonplaces called Euphuistic. One bold scholar has called Hamlet's "what a piece of work is a man" speech Euphuistic in its equivocation, but I don't really think this really holds water. I would meekly add that I think there is a hunt of Euphuism in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern's lines in their dialogue with Hamlet in 2.2: they are so ready with a jingle-jangle proverb "I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow", "As the indifferent children of the earth", "I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late innovation." And, personally, I think Hamlet's responses to these lines, even more than the simple mocking Osric is subjected to, constitutes Shakespeare's demolition of this style. Out of these gnomic commonplaces he comes up with the truly great "Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and / outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows."
4. Euphuism in general: Lyly CANNOT resist a parallelism. I don't know why classical allusion and over-ornamentation come first in the description of his style, because almost EVERY sentence not assigned to a clown has SOME kind of parallelism. It's not altogether unpleasant, and it creates a quite rigid structure, but it has a ridiculously prominent role in his prose.
5. I concur w/ George Hunter that the play seems especially well-suited to performance boy actors. The scenes are, with the exception of the final scene, completely static. Characters do not change their attitudes. It feels very much like a series of still lives or tableaus. But the jingley jangley language would be interesting coming from the voices of kids.
6. There is some gender stuff going on in this play, and maybe it reveals something about gender in the Elizabethan era, but I think maybe that aspect is somewhat overstated. Dramaturgically, the love between the two maids is used as a vehicle for some weak punning and double-meaning. It's by far most interesting at the end where they unexpectedly maintain their love for one-another even after learning that the other is a woman--and despite the fact that, for each of them, the mere thought that the other would be "as I am" has been the main source of conflict for the entirety of the subplot. Clearly Galatea becomes the man, fight me on this.
All in all this is a much more interesting play than I expected. Maybe I should read more Masques. Likely I'll come back to this edition to read Midas. And I think I'm slowly learning how to use the Revels plays editions. The key is to read the dang things twice, I think. No need to get it all in one go--the vast quantity of footnotes make it a horrible experience if you do. And of course introduction should be read after the play.
*(Interestingly, even though TNK adapts Chaucer, it echoes earlier romantic Tristan & Isolde-type conceptions on destiny as both something which excuses what would otherwise be morally wrong and frustrates those desires it foists on people; a very un-Chaucerian position).
Cupid: Is love a punishment?
Larissa: It is no pastime.
Phillida: But seeing we are resolved to be both absent, let us wander into these groves till the hour be past
Galathea: I am agreed, for then my fear will be past.
Phillida: Why, what dost thou fear?
Galathea: Nothing but that you love me not.
1. Destiny: Interesting to compare w/ Two Noble Kinsman in the treatment of the gods' caprice. Hunter has an excellent note to 1.1.59-62 "Tityrus: [...] To avoid therefore destiny (for wisdom ruleth the stars), I think it better to use an unlawful means, your honor preserved, than intolerable grief, both life and honor hazarded; and to prevent, if it be possible, thy constellation by my craft": the note begins "Tityrus tries to have it both ways." I think this is spot on, and of course the play treats this remark classically in that Tityrus' is being hubristic in this moment which invites the comic-tragic turn: Destiny will not be ruled by "wisdom." But it's interesting that the play offers no alternative characterization of destiny. Unlike in TNK which very much has destiny as a capricious and indecipherable force*, operating somewhere between aiming to frustrate human desire and simply having nothing to do with it, Lyly portrays people at the whims of gods that are themselves the playthings of capricious fortune. Neptune molds the play's pastoral society, Cupid forces shepherds to fall in love, but Neptune is swayed from murderous rage to mediating compromise by the memory love, and Cupid lackies after Diana--thus the Auger's conception of destiny is counterfeited; a conception which would be very much at home in Lyly's more politicized plays (requiring, in being written for the court, a moral order that deserves to be obeyed, or at least one which is more rigidly structured). Hebe's conception ("destiny hasteth")--quite in line with Shakespeare's in TNK--being surrounded as it is by such bathetic lines as "How happy had I been if I had not been!" and "Glut thyself [Agar, thou unsatiable monster] till thou surfeit" is comically pessimistic and thus not viable. While even Tityrus meekly submits before when faced with the gods directly. The subplot mocks the three boys entrepreneurism, and the epilogue, which extols the virtues of love (?) is equivocal on the subject. So, while not subversive, the play is ambiguous in an interesting way.
2. There is an emendation BEGGING to be made in 3.1: "Eurota: If thou be in love (for I have heard of such a beast called Love)." CLEARLY "be" should be "beest." It's a classic Lylyian pun.
3. Euphuism w/r/t Hamlet: It's pretty generally accepted that, in Hamlet, Osric is a parody of Lyly's style (which had become unfashionable by the date of Hamlet's publication). I've also heard Polonius's non-stop string of commonplaces called Euphuistic. One bold scholar has called Hamlet's "what a piece of work is a man" speech Euphuistic in its equivocation, but I don't really think this really holds water. I would meekly add that I think there is a hunt of Euphuism in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern's lines in their dialogue with Hamlet in 2.2: they are so ready with a jingle-jangle proverb "I hold ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's shadow", "As the indifferent children of the earth", "I think their inhibition comes by the means of the late innovation." And, personally, I think Hamlet's responses to these lines, even more than the simple mocking Osric is subjected to, constitutes Shakespeare's demolition of this style. Out of these gnomic commonplaces he comes up with the truly great "Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and / outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows."
4. Euphuism in general: Lyly CANNOT resist a parallelism. I don't know why classical allusion and over-ornamentation come first in the description of his style, because almost EVERY sentence not assigned to a clown has SOME kind of parallelism. It's not altogether unpleasant, and it creates a quite rigid structure, but it has a ridiculously prominent role in his prose.
5. I concur w/ George Hunter that the play seems especially well-suited to performance boy actors. The scenes are, with the exception of the final scene, completely static. Characters do not change their attitudes. It feels very much like a series of still lives or tableaus. But the jingley jangley language would be interesting coming from the voices of kids.
6. There is some gender stuff going on in this play, and maybe it reveals something about gender in the Elizabethan era, but I think maybe that aspect is somewhat overstated. Dramaturgically, the love between the two maids is used as a vehicle for some weak punning and double-meaning. It's by far most interesting at the end where they unexpectedly maintain their love for one-another even after learning that the other is a woman--and despite the fact that, for each of them, the mere thought that the other would be "as I am" has been the main source of conflict for the entirety of the subplot. Clearly Galatea becomes the man, fight me on this.
All in all this is a much more interesting play than I expected. Maybe I should read more Masques. Likely I'll come back to this edition to read Midas. And I think I'm slowly learning how to use the Revels plays editions. The key is to read the dang things twice, I think. No need to get it all in one go--the vast quantity of footnotes make it a horrible experience if you do. And of course introduction should be read after the play.
*(Interestingly, even though TNK adapts Chaucer, it echoes earlier romantic Tristan & Isolde-type conceptions on destiny as both something which excuses what would otherwise be morally wrong and frustrates those desires it foists on people; a very un-Chaucerian position).
February 28, 2010
Like Shakespeare but with Diana capturing Cupid for defiling her chaste nymphs and Neptune having to act as mediator between Diana and Venus . . . oh and did I mention the human sacrifice tradition that leads two men to dress up their virgin daughters as boys only to have each girl fall in love with the other because each thinks the other is really a boy. Good thing Venus is willing to change at least one of them into a boy in the end that way they can love each other forever and always. Unfortunately overlooked, quite enjoyable pastoral comedy though it definitely needs to have some of its fat trimmed.
November 18, 2014
I read "Gallathea" for a graduate Renaissance literature class focusing on gender and sexuality. The play is entertaining and produced many nuanced discussions and thoughts on love, gender production, knowledge accumulation, and more. I would recommend it for any fan of early modern drama.
November 12, 2020
Clear influence on Twelfth Night - but also Polonius's mannered speech?
September 14, 2023
SO much gayer than anticipated andI’m so happy about it
October 13, 2024
3.25
Quite difficult to get to grips with but an interesting and unique tale
Quite difficult to get to grips with but an interesting and unique tale
March 6, 2025
i only read galatea. i wish there had been a bit more plot, but the silly end bumped it up for me. it’s weird. it’s queer. it’s early modern. so ofc i love it.
June 23, 2025
Read Galatea for class
October 9, 2025
just read galatea, one of the BEST english renaissance plays
February 11, 2024
a sapphic romance play that was actually written during the renaissance; all i could've asked for.
September 23, 2020
lese beans
September 30, 2012
Read "Gallathea" for EN4341: Renaissance Sexualities: Rhetoric
and the Body 1580-1660.
I can see that this is going to be a pretty interesting text to study, but that didn't make it the most interesting to read. Perhaps it would make more of an impact on stage? There was one amusing moment that made me smile, when the two women (dressed as boys) meet for the first time and try to perceive how men act from the way the other is behaving, but other than that, this wasn't the most entertaining of reads. Perhaps I'll enjoy it more after my classes this coming week. For now, it's getting 3*.
and the Body 1580-1660.
I can see that this is going to be a pretty interesting text to study, but that didn't make it the most interesting to read. Perhaps it would make more of an impact on stage? There was one amusing moment that made me smile, when the two women (dressed as boys) meet for the first time and try to perceive how men act from the way the other is behaving, but other than that, this wasn't the most entertaining of reads. Perhaps I'll enjoy it more after my classes this coming week. For now, it's getting 3*.
September 7, 2011
Just read Galatea for class. Two young virgin girls dress up like boys to avoid being sacrificed to Neptune, and desire/hilarity ensue. The whole thing feels a bit unsteady, the scenes are fast, the secondary story borders on being completely erroneous. But Lyly has a lot of fun with seemingly stable concepts of sex and gender.
Read
November 21, 2009None
April 22, 2013
I hated the parts with the Mariners and Astronomer and Alchemist. It made no sense to me at all. I wish Lyly didn't compress time though. It would have been better.
Read
September 27, 2016Just Galatea.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews