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Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay
Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
95 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1590
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
January 12, 2018
Much, much better than I had anticipated. Why is this not more well known as this play was really entertaining? The only flaw that I can see is that as far as plot structure, there's no tragedy and the climax isn't really all that exciting or that much in question. Even still, a good staging could turn the coupled finale scenes into something like tense drama and the characters are all enjoyable. The lack of an actual villain perhaps might make it something less in the eyes of some drama critics, but still in all, Greene's obvious influence on Shakespeare is plain.
December 27, 2012
What if Artaud travelled back in time to ruin "Doctor Faustus?" Well, it would be great.
September 3, 2022
You can very much see the influence of Faustus here - Greene may have said he hated Kit's work, but he was very quick to follow in their tracks. A romantic plot about Edward, Prince of Wales (Edward I to be, so before the title was actually created) interwoven with magical contests and Bacon's famous brazen head. Good fun, though nowhere near the same league as Marlowe of course.
October 9, 2025
plutarch mentioned 🧎♀️🧎♀️
April 12, 2023
“Build the Wall! Beat the Germans! Bewitch the Girl!”
Red-bearded Robert Greene (by turns profligate and penitent) seems to have been as dramatic a character in real life as any that he created for the early modern stage. Sometime after taking his BA and MA degrees at Cambridge in the early 1580’s, and before he attacked “the onely Shake-scene in a country” as “an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers,” Greene penned Pandosto (which became the source for The Winter’s Tale) and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, his best known -- and best -- play.
Beyond these Shakespeare connections, several traits make Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay an exciting choice for modern readers and actors. Chief among them is its central theme, the powerful but dangerous attraction of unnatural knowledge, represented both as new science and ancient magic.
Greene’s play brings “magic’s secret mysteries” to the stage with spectacle galore: notably a quartet of wizards’ duels (involving the two friars Bacon and Bungay, a brace of Oxford scholars, and a German magician Vandermast) as well as a fire-breathing dragon, a necromantic golden tree, and spirits carrying away the defeated sorcerers.
At the heart of the special effects are two extraordinary stage props. One unusual prop was Friar Bacon’s “glass perspective” – perhaps a prop telescope rather than the kind of mirror featured in Richard 2 – which allows the friar to reveal far-off actions to those who come to his cell and peer into his glass. Even more spectacular was the “brazen head” breathing “flames of fire” that was featured not only in Greene’s earlier Alphonsus of Aragon but in the subsequent Friar Bacon play as well (scene 11). Henslowe’s papers indicate that the properties of the Admiral’s Men included such an “owld Mahemetes head,” likely what is pictured on the title page of the 1630 edition of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. Bacon plans to animate this mechanical marvel so that it will reveal secret wisdom, perform the feat of encircling all of England with a wall of brass, and bring undying glory and fame to Bacon and his Oxford college of Brasenose.
Greene’s double plot play features rival lovers as well as dueling magicians, and Friar Bacon’s marvels are at the center of both rivalries. By play’s end the technological wonders are shattered, as knowledge, devotion and love assume their proper places.
What makes this play an appropriate and timely choice for a revival?
- This tale of magical technology is perfectly suited for the present generation who has grown up with Harry Potter and Bill Nye.
- Greene’s play comments pointedly on the vain dream of securing a nation’s borders with a wall, and on the attempt by a government to harness the intellectual capital of the nation’s greatest universities for its own political ends.
- It also dramatizes one of the most powerful men in the realm seeking to employ the latest technological advances of his day to further his own sexual conquest.
The play begins with Prince Edward and his minions leaving court responsibilities to ride to Oxford, seeking to recruit the famous magician Friar Bacon to charm Margaret, the Fair Maid of Fressingfield in Suffolk, to succumb to Prince Edward’s love-suit. Though Bacon has more important tasks than enchanting Margaret for the prince, he does establish his potency by summoning devils and unmasking fools in disguise. Bacon’s true quest has been to command another devil to craft a brazen head that the friar will command to rear a brass wall ringing all of England and protecting it from potential invasion. When the prince arrives in Oxford, having left his favorite Lacy, the Earl of Lincoln, to woo for him in his absence, he soon discovers via the Friar’s magic glass that Lacy woos the lovely Margaret for himself and that they are shortly to be married by the rival Friar Bungay.
When the irate prince confronts Lacy and Margaret in Suffolk, they swear their eternal love to one another and both plead for their own deaths in order to save their beloved. Suddenly chastened, the royal heir Prince Edward masters his passions and magnanimously gives the couple his blessing to wed, before he speeds with Lacy to Oxford again – this time to join his father King Henry III and meet the royal bride who has been arranged for him, Princess Eleanor of Castile.
In an international wizards’ contest in Oxford, prompted by the king to demonstrate national supremacy, England’s Friar Bungay (the nation’s second best magician) conjures the golden tree of the Hesperides and the dragon protecting it; then the German champion Vandermast (the best professor of magical arts from the continent) bests Bungay by summoning Hercules to destroy Bungay’s marvelous vision. Just in time Friar Bacon, England’s true champion, appears to paralyze Hercules and command him to carry the defeated Vandermast back to Hapsburg. Then Princess Eleanor and Prince Edward declare their love at first sight, and the love-troubles seem to have vanished as surely as Bungay’s mystical golden tree.
BACK TO THE LOVE-PLOT . . . the still fair maid Margaret, now left alone in Fressingfield, is wooed by two neighboring landowners, who as rivals for her love prepare to duel. Though she remains faithful to her Lord Lacy, she receives word that Lacy has abandoned her for a new love, the chief lady in waiting to Castilian Princess Eleanor. Margaret bears this heartbreaking news as patiently as Griselda and prepares to enter a nunnery, while Friar Bacon prepares for his greatest feat, the animation of the Brazenose, aided by his assistant the poor scholar/clown Miles.
Soon Bacon’s servant Miles gets his just deserts, and the love plots wind their way to the anticipated happy endings, both domestically and internationally, accompanied by repentance and prophecy. After another magical episode with Bacon’s perspective glass, another violent duel, and another scene of iconographic destruction, mutual harmony and appropriate order comes to court, college and country alike -- not with a magical wall separating England from Europe but with a royal marriage uniting the two realms.
The final scorecard? the wall is not built, the nation’s intellectual supremacy is proven, technological dangers are averted, and sexual conquest gives place to mutual love – all happy endings for the early modern period, and for ours.
What does this play offer for today? Reflections on the threats represented by male sexual conquest, unbridled nationalism, the building of a massive impenetrable wall to protect the homeland from invasion, unchecked technological innovations, the state’s attempt to co-opt university and church alike for its own ends . . . and alternatives to all of these vain desires. Timely indeed.
Red-bearded Robert Greene (by turns profligate and penitent) seems to have been as dramatic a character in real life as any that he created for the early modern stage. Sometime after taking his BA and MA degrees at Cambridge in the early 1580’s, and before he attacked “the onely Shake-scene in a country” as “an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers,” Greene penned Pandosto (which became the source for The Winter’s Tale) and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, his best known -- and best -- play.
Beyond these Shakespeare connections, several traits make Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay an exciting choice for modern readers and actors. Chief among them is its central theme, the powerful but dangerous attraction of unnatural knowledge, represented both as new science and ancient magic.
Greene’s play brings “magic’s secret mysteries” to the stage with spectacle galore: notably a quartet of wizards’ duels (involving the two friars Bacon and Bungay, a brace of Oxford scholars, and a German magician Vandermast) as well as a fire-breathing dragon, a necromantic golden tree, and spirits carrying away the defeated sorcerers.
At the heart of the special effects are two extraordinary stage props. One unusual prop was Friar Bacon’s “glass perspective” – perhaps a prop telescope rather than the kind of mirror featured in Richard 2 – which allows the friar to reveal far-off actions to those who come to his cell and peer into his glass. Even more spectacular was the “brazen head” breathing “flames of fire” that was featured not only in Greene’s earlier Alphonsus of Aragon but in the subsequent Friar Bacon play as well (scene 11). Henslowe’s papers indicate that the properties of the Admiral’s Men included such an “owld Mahemetes head,” likely what is pictured on the title page of the 1630 edition of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. Bacon plans to animate this mechanical marvel so that it will reveal secret wisdom, perform the feat of encircling all of England with a wall of brass, and bring undying glory and fame to Bacon and his Oxford college of Brasenose.
Greene’s double plot play features rival lovers as well as dueling magicians, and Friar Bacon’s marvels are at the center of both rivalries. By play’s end the technological wonders are shattered, as knowledge, devotion and love assume their proper places.
What makes this play an appropriate and timely choice for a revival?
- This tale of magical technology is perfectly suited for the present generation who has grown up with Harry Potter and Bill Nye.
- Greene’s play comments pointedly on the vain dream of securing a nation’s borders with a wall, and on the attempt by a government to harness the intellectual capital of the nation’s greatest universities for its own political ends.
- It also dramatizes one of the most powerful men in the realm seeking to employ the latest technological advances of his day to further his own sexual conquest.
The play begins with Prince Edward and his minions leaving court responsibilities to ride to Oxford, seeking to recruit the famous magician Friar Bacon to charm Margaret, the Fair Maid of Fressingfield in Suffolk, to succumb to Prince Edward’s love-suit. Though Bacon has more important tasks than enchanting Margaret for the prince, he does establish his potency by summoning devils and unmasking fools in disguise. Bacon’s true quest has been to command another devil to craft a brazen head that the friar will command to rear a brass wall ringing all of England and protecting it from potential invasion. When the prince arrives in Oxford, having left his favorite Lacy, the Earl of Lincoln, to woo for him in his absence, he soon discovers via the Friar’s magic glass that Lacy woos the lovely Margaret for himself and that they are shortly to be married by the rival Friar Bungay.
When the irate prince confronts Lacy and Margaret in Suffolk, they swear their eternal love to one another and both plead for their own deaths in order to save their beloved. Suddenly chastened, the royal heir Prince Edward masters his passions and magnanimously gives the couple his blessing to wed, before he speeds with Lacy to Oxford again – this time to join his father King Henry III and meet the royal bride who has been arranged for him, Princess Eleanor of Castile.
In an international wizards’ contest in Oxford, prompted by the king to demonstrate national supremacy, England’s Friar Bungay (the nation’s second best magician) conjures the golden tree of the Hesperides and the dragon protecting it; then the German champion Vandermast (the best professor of magical arts from the continent) bests Bungay by summoning Hercules to destroy Bungay’s marvelous vision. Just in time Friar Bacon, England’s true champion, appears to paralyze Hercules and command him to carry the defeated Vandermast back to Hapsburg. Then Princess Eleanor and Prince Edward declare their love at first sight, and the love-troubles seem to have vanished as surely as Bungay’s mystical golden tree.
BACK TO THE LOVE-PLOT . . . the still fair maid Margaret, now left alone in Fressingfield, is wooed by two neighboring landowners, who as rivals for her love prepare to duel. Though she remains faithful to her Lord Lacy, she receives word that Lacy has abandoned her for a new love, the chief lady in waiting to Castilian Princess Eleanor. Margaret bears this heartbreaking news as patiently as Griselda and prepares to enter a nunnery, while Friar Bacon prepares for his greatest feat, the animation of the Brazenose, aided by his assistant the poor scholar/clown Miles.
Soon Bacon’s servant Miles gets his just deserts, and the love plots wind their way to the anticipated happy endings, both domestically and internationally, accompanied by repentance and prophecy. After another magical episode with Bacon’s perspective glass, another violent duel, and another scene of iconographic destruction, mutual harmony and appropriate order comes to court, college and country alike -- not with a magical wall separating England from Europe but with a royal marriage uniting the two realms.
The final scorecard? the wall is not built, the nation’s intellectual supremacy is proven, technological dangers are averted, and sexual conquest gives place to mutual love – all happy endings for the early modern period, and for ours.
What does this play offer for today? Reflections on the threats represented by male sexual conquest, unbridled nationalism, the building of a massive impenetrable wall to protect the homeland from invasion, unchecked technological innovations, the state’s attempt to co-opt university and church alike for its own ends . . . and alternatives to all of these vain desires. Timely indeed.
February 19, 2022
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay is a comedy (1589) in prose and verse by Robert Greene (one of the 'University Wits'), based on the legends of two magicians of the same names.
Bacon with the help out of Friar Bungay makes a head of brass and conjuring up the Devil learns from it how to give speech to the head. It is to speak within a month but "if they heard it not before it had done speaking, all their labour would be lost."
After invariable watch for three weeks, Bacon hands over the duty of watching to his servant Miles and falls asleep. Then the head begins to speak successively 'Time is', Time was', 'Time is past', but Miles thinking that the master would be angry if he is awakened lets him sleep on.
The head then falls down and breaks. Bacon on waking heaps curses on the servant. To this middle-of-the-road comedy is added the romantic story of the loves of Edward, the Prince of Wales (afterwards Edward I) and Lord Lacy for the fair Margaret, the keeper's daughter.
Lacy sent by the Prince to act as his go-between actually wins the heart of the milk-maid. At this the Prince becomes furious and would kill the traitor but eventually relents and gives Margaret to Lacy.
There is a scene in which Bacon, Bungay and a German magician exhibit their individual powers before the emperor and the Kings of England and Spain. The title is rather misleading, for the story of the magicians is altogether subsidiary.
The foremost motif of the comedy is the love idyll of Prince Edward and Margaret. Margaret is a unique creation and in painting the character Greene shows truly Shakespearean qualities.
It is a ground-breaking work in romantic comedy.
In its diversity of episodes and mingling of the characters and high characters it anticipates the romantic comedy of Shakespeare. Margaret is the anticipation of Shakespeare's Rosalind in As You like It.
Bacon with the help out of Friar Bungay makes a head of brass and conjuring up the Devil learns from it how to give speech to the head. It is to speak within a month but "if they heard it not before it had done speaking, all their labour would be lost."
After invariable watch for three weeks, Bacon hands over the duty of watching to his servant Miles and falls asleep. Then the head begins to speak successively 'Time is', Time was', 'Time is past', but Miles thinking that the master would be angry if he is awakened lets him sleep on.
The head then falls down and breaks. Bacon on waking heaps curses on the servant. To this middle-of-the-road comedy is added the romantic story of the loves of Edward, the Prince of Wales (afterwards Edward I) and Lord Lacy for the fair Margaret, the keeper's daughter.
Lacy sent by the Prince to act as his go-between actually wins the heart of the milk-maid. At this the Prince becomes furious and would kill the traitor but eventually relents and gives Margaret to Lacy.
There is a scene in which Bacon, Bungay and a German magician exhibit their individual powers before the emperor and the Kings of England and Spain. The title is rather misleading, for the story of the magicians is altogether subsidiary.
The foremost motif of the comedy is the love idyll of Prince Edward and Margaret. Margaret is a unique creation and in painting the character Greene shows truly Shakespearean qualities.
It is a ground-breaking work in romantic comedy.
In its diversity of episodes and mingling of the characters and high characters it anticipates the romantic comedy of Shakespeare. Margaret is the anticipation of Shakespeare's Rosalind in As You like It.
Read
August 3, 2023I confess that I read this purely for its mention in Upstart Crow, which piqued my curiosity. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for with this strange and hilarious little play. Perhaps influenced by Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, this play features Franciscan necromancers, a lord falling in love with a milkmaid, the summoning of the spirit of Hercules, and a prophesying brazen head, which I later learned was a tale associated with various historical figures from the Middle Ages. Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay at times reminded me of Jane Austen's Love and Friendship, which I read earlier this year, in that both are over the top comedic treatments of genres others took quite seriously. Sometimes I wasn't sure if I was laughing with Greene or at Greene, but I enjoyed this play and am glad to have dipped into more drama of the English Renaissance beyond Shakespeare.
June 16, 2020
If only from brief references to it, as in Shakespeare in Love ("Is this the face that launched a thousand ships...") or in Tombstone (with Dana Delaney playing the devil in the theater scene), most of us know something about Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. (The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, in full.) And it's interesting in its own way. However, Friar Bacon, which is similar to it in many ways, is a more substantial and more satisfying play, even if it's by an author I have never heard of before.
Both plays can be understood to have been exciting special-effects plays for Elizabethan audiences, an excuse to show them something amazing on stage--characters performing magic, traveling through time and space, speaking with famous people, and so on. Seeing such marvels would be the main draw for the audience, and both supply plenty of it. But Friar Bacon, as I was promised, is a better play, boasting a more sophisticated plot, more interesting characters, and a more modern approach to conflict.
Dr. Faustus is an odd story, without a traditional plot structure; the story peters out in the end with a conclusion that was ordained from the beginning, like a train taking you from one station to the other, where you get off. Friar Bacon offers more than that, with numerous characters having their own conflicts which they try to resolve in ways more familiar to modern readers.
In short: the prince wants to attract a certain young woman, a commoner, and sends one of his men to woo her for him. (She also is being fought over by a couple of local squires.) Inevitably, his man falls in love and wants the young woman for himself. This plot includes disguises and sword fights and jealousy and revenge, already putting us in Shakespeare territory. But it also has a subplot, with Friar Bacon, a sorcerer, trying to complete some very difficult magic which will protect England from invasion. His subplot also includes marvels and magic, including a contest where he defeats foreign sorcerers. It almost seems that the two plots couldn't be connected in any way, but they come together in a way that I thought worked well. Also, the sorcerer's apprentice offers some pretty good comic relief, especially riding off to hell in the end. Well done.
More so than the Marlowe play (which I rather liked, actually) this story is interesting and satisfying enough that I'd like to see it performed someday. And I wonder why I never read it in school anywhere. Hmm.
A friend at Elizabethandrama.org recommended I take a look at this play, and I am pleased I did. I was also informed the play had the coolest stage prop ever, and I find I agree. A talking brazen head? Seriously? How awesome is that!
This is not a difficult read, especially if you get an annotated version like I did. Entertaining and recommended.
Both plays can be understood to have been exciting special-effects plays for Elizabethan audiences, an excuse to show them something amazing on stage--characters performing magic, traveling through time and space, speaking with famous people, and so on. Seeing such marvels would be the main draw for the audience, and both supply plenty of it. But Friar Bacon, as I was promised, is a better play, boasting a more sophisticated plot, more interesting characters, and a more modern approach to conflict.
Dr. Faustus is an odd story, without a traditional plot structure; the story peters out in the end with a conclusion that was ordained from the beginning, like a train taking you from one station to the other, where you get off. Friar Bacon offers more than that, with numerous characters having their own conflicts which they try to resolve in ways more familiar to modern readers.
In short: the prince wants to attract a certain young woman, a commoner, and sends one of his men to woo her for him. (She also is being fought over by a couple of local squires.) Inevitably, his man falls in love and wants the young woman for himself. This plot includes disguises and sword fights and jealousy and revenge, already putting us in Shakespeare territory. But it also has a subplot, with Friar Bacon, a sorcerer, trying to complete some very difficult magic which will protect England from invasion. His subplot also includes marvels and magic, including a contest where he defeats foreign sorcerers. It almost seems that the two plots couldn't be connected in any way, but they come together in a way that I thought worked well. Also, the sorcerer's apprentice offers some pretty good comic relief, especially riding off to hell in the end. Well done.
More so than the Marlowe play (which I rather liked, actually) this story is interesting and satisfying enough that I'd like to see it performed someday. And I wonder why I never read it in school anywhere. Hmm.
A friend at Elizabethandrama.org recommended I take a look at this play, and I am pleased I did. I was also informed the play had the coolest stage prop ever, and I find I agree. A talking brazen head? Seriously? How awesome is that!
This is not a difficult read, especially if you get an annotated version like I did. Entertaining and recommended.
April 10, 2021
Greene was popular in his day, a contemporary of Shakespeare and Marlowe, the latter of whom he had long time animosity with. This play, based on a chapbook, as was Marlowe's DOCTOR FAUSTUS, it has been suggested that one was copping on the other's success (meaning Greene and Marlowe); as the animosity was created by Greene, who had already tried and failed to outdo Marlowe's TAMBURLAINE with his own ALPHONSUS, KING OF ARAGON, coupled with Marlowe's immortality versus Greene's lack thereof (and Greene was also known for his writing derisively of all his rivals, including Shakespeare) I go with Greene being the copycat. That said, this is of some interest, as Roger Bacon (c.1219-c.1292) was a fascinating historical figure, a Renaissance Man 300 years before the Renaissance. And the play makes for easier reading than the chapbook, for those of us inclined to read all kinds of literature through time.
June 20, 2024
In this comedy, Greene is obviously seeking to compete with Marlowe's tragedy, Doctor Faustus. The historical Roger Bacon was one of the first and greatest scientists in mediaeval England; perhaps not surprisingly he was wrongly credited with both real inventions such as gunpowder and occult practices such as the creation of a speaking brass head, which features in this play. Otherwise, Greene treats him as a Faust who makes use of demons to foresee and influence events. Friar Bungay is a somewhat less powerful magician of the same type. They both become involved with a love story between a nobleman and a peasant girl. This is one of the more humorous comedies I have read; it was the first time I had read it, and it was in three of the anthologies, Fraser and Rabkin, Brooke and Paradise, and the Works of the British Dramatists.
August 20, 2025
Skeltonics!! I can't believe it man there's no way it's a coincidence this means that my boy Greene read Skelton!! So happy.
It was fine and silly and I bet the special effects were really good at the time, but there's really only one standout scene. The main plot is pretty grim because the fool isn't funny and everything else is romance play tropes, but the subplot is interesting if for nothing else than for the conflation of mathematics with magic and for the rather un-condmnatory attitude of the playwright towards summoning literal daemons. Even the repentance seems perfunctory; c.f. Faustus.
Love Greene. I want more.
It was fine and silly and I bet the special effects were really good at the time, but there's really only one standout scene. The main plot is pretty grim because the fool isn't funny and everything else is romance play tropes, but the subplot is interesting if for nothing else than for the conflation of mathematics with magic and for the rather un-condmnatory attitude of the playwright towards summoning literal daemons. Even the repentance seems perfunctory; c.f. Faustus.
Love Greene. I want more.
November 16, 2016
A substantially strange play, this is an Elizabethan version of Medieval England which includes a whole bunch of magic, a whole bunch of people dressing as other people, and a larger quantity of demons than you get in most works not named Paradise Lost. If you're interested in Roger Bacon attempting to put a wall around England (for its defense?) via the medium of spirits, and some confused laughter on the way, this is a good play-- perhaps the only play!-- for you.
February 5, 2018
3.6 stars
This is a pretty fun play. The plot meanders a little, but there is a lot of humor and some random occurrences that provide comedy. It would have been interesting to see how they originally staged all the magical effects so long ago. Weird and fun.
This is a pretty fun play. The plot meanders a little, but there is a lot of humor and some random occurrences that provide comedy. It would have been interesting to see how they originally staged all the magical effects so long ago. Weird and fun.
October 10, 2017
* Read for my Advanced Studies in Renaissance Literature class
February 6, 2020
3.5
Cute and funny with a Dr. Faustus-esque twist. The ending was a little off for me with Friar Bacon, but that’s probably just me.
Cute and funny with a Dr. Faustus-esque twist. The ending was a little off for me with Friar Bacon, but that’s probably just me.
October 24, 2021
basically a "lmao" all around
January 24, 2022
fun little play featuring magical friars and a friar's assistant happily riding to hell on a devil's back.
December 19, 2022
Actually made me laugh
November 25, 2023
Interesting but a bit boring
December 27, 2023
Weird in the way Greene’s plays usually are. A scene (maybe more) that doesn’t really make sense & a resolution that feels too easy and unearned. Overall—some fun, some confusion.
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June 20, 2024I learned of this play from Henslowe's diary as a blog and then read this play online.
September 10, 2025
3.5/5
I read an annotated version for class, and my favourite annotation was "Miles remembers he is now unemployed" when he's making a deal with the devil.
I read an annotated version for class, and my favourite annotation was "Miles remembers he is now unemployed" when he's making a deal with the devil.
December 28, 2025
It Greene but it good
January 22, 2026
How the heck did Friar Bungay earn second billing in this title?
April 3, 2024
It’s giving ‘I forgot to do my homework, can I copy yours?’ ‘Yes, but make sure you change some things’
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July 1, 2024normally dated to the 1588–92 period. 1589 may be the single most likely year: a line in the play's opening scene, "Next Friday is S. James", fixes St. James's Day (25 July, the feast day of St. James the Great) as a Friday, which was true in 1589. . Some critics argue that the magic in Greene's play was inspired by the magic in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, (c. 1589–92. most likely 1590?) which if valid would mean that Bacon and Bungay must post-date Faustus. Yet since none of the plays in question can be dated with absolute certainty, the nature of the relationships among them are open to question and cannot resolve the pertinent dating issues.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
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November 4, 2023Brazen head
July 17, 2013
What a strange little play. I can see its being a great deal of fun in performance, with all the flying devils and magically appearing golden trees and all, and where the power of performance might enable the audience to overlook problems with plot and character. And I can certainly see its influence on later, better plays.
March 30, 2015
What an odd play this is...but an entertaining read, for sure!
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews