The old Wives Tale, 1595

by Professor George Peele, Walter Wilson Greg

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Genres: Plays, Theatre, Fantasy

84 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1595

Reviews

[savanna renee lambert · Rating 5 out of 5]

genuinely had me laughing out loud at parts

[jessica]

Excellent for its time, creative, comical, and inspiring. Also absolutely laborious to read.

[Richard Rogers · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this is pretty entertaining. With a play-within-a-play structure, you have an old woman telling the story, sitting off to one side with two men listening, while it's enacted on the stage. There's something charming about this, and it feels like modern drama made for kids. It's much easier to understand than a lot of drama from that era, which makes it more fun to read, but it kinda falls apart (IMO) in the second half.

The action gets sorta messy and only gets worked out via some ghostly deus ex machina. The plot is meaningless; nobody's effort has any discernible impact on the outcome. Some women find husbands basically by accident, or the working of fate; they didn't do anything to make it happen. Several characters go up against the villain, an ancient sorcerer, and get defeated easily, with zero drama. The hero, though, defeats the sorcerer, but only with the unexpected help of a ghost. Yes, he helped bury the man whose ghost then wants to repay him, but that's his only contribution to his success. Without supernatural help, he would have failed, too.

So, there is no plot. Not really. There are conflicts, but no meaningful striving to overcome them. Stuff happens. Winners win and losers lose, with all of it wired by the author. Compared to other plays of the time and since, the plot feels rudimentary and filled with dramatic cheating, without the hero winning through his own efforts. In effect, it's a pageant, a spectacle, and that's fine. I bet it was fun to watch.

So, three stars seems about right. Pretty fun, but not structured in the way we've come to expect in such stories.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gosh: this lovely play from the late 1590s is bonkers: possibly not quite as batshit as The Knight of the Burning Pestle, but strange on a large number of levels....

Three travellers end up lost in the woods, and the only place to stay seems to be a molly house. While one of their number is off being serviced, the smith's Grandma, Madge, tells the other two a vastly convoluted fairy tale, that is sort of part Snow White (Delia is white as snow and red as blood), part Jack and the Beanstalk (the giant calls out "Fee Faw Fum, I smell the blood of and Englishman"), part The Faerie Queene, part The Wisdom of Solomon, and part other Grimm tales. One gets the impression that these are all tales Peele's audience knows, so that he can riff off them without really telling any of them directly.

It is entertaining, and would be great to see in a full performance.

As the only other Peele I've read is his much more serious Battle of Alcazar (and the first Act of Titus Andronicus), I was not expecting this. This is more weird than reading Two Gentlemen of Verona having only read King Lear. Possibly Copenhagen to Noises Off would be a better comparison.

[Barbora · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was lots of fun and easily understandable (minus the odd parts).

[Mackenzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

fun fact this play contains the first ever use of “Once upon a time!”

[Perry Whitford · Rating 4 out of 5]

A charming little romp, written by a contemporary of that good Mr Shakespeare.

Three servants get lost in a wood, a blacksmith offers them a roof for the night and his wife's storytelling prowess ("I'faith, gammer, a tale of an hour long were as good as an hour's sleep") whereupon her characters take on a life of their own and invade the stage. The old wife and her guests are variously excited, scared and even boring as the action unfolds.

The play within a play is about the beautiful Delia ("as white as snow and as red as blood"), who has been abducted and enthralled by Sacrapant the sorcerer. Her lover and two brothers have gone on a quest to free her.

An old man is also afflicted by the sorcerer's spell. He helps the other characters by way of some gnomic sayings which act like good spells, e.g. "Start not aside from every danger, / Be not afeard of every danger; / Things that seem are not the same."

Not much is known about George Peele, what little biographical information survives suggests he was a violent sleazeball, not the kind of guy likely to write this light-hearted mishmash of fairytale tropes (Sleeping Beauty, Jack and the Beanstalk), happy songs and fairyfied frolics.

A different midsummer night's dream.

[Anne Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two books with the same title--written in 1580's--very Elizabethan. A play within a play--could also be a fairy tale.