The Spanish Viceroy
Encyclopedia
The Spanish Viceroy is a problem play of English Renaissance drama
. Originally a work by Philip Massinger
dating from 1624
, it was controversial in its own era, and may or may not exist today in altered form.
In December 1624 the King's Men
got into trouble with Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels
, because they performed a play, The Spanish Viceroy, without first obtaining Herbert's license. This step was bound to get them into trouble: Herbert's job was to oversee and censor every play acted in the London theatres, and he was zealous in doing his job, maintaining his authority, and collecting his fees.
The outcome was unsurprising, given the way the system of control worked. On December 20, 1624, the King's Men provided Herbert with a "submission," a written apology, signed by each actor who had taken part in the offending performance. The cast included Robert Benfield
, George Birch
, John Lowin
, Thomas Pollard
, John Rice
, Richard Robinson
, William Rowley
, John Shank
, Richard Sharpe
, Eliard Swanston
, and Joseph Taylor
. (Herbert copied the submission into his office book in 1633, a sign of the importance he assigned to it.)
1628
On May 6, 1628
, another Massinger play was duly licensed, a work titled The Honour of Women. This second play had no immediately obvious connection with The Spanish Viceroy; the connection between them would only appear a quarter-century later. The Honour of Women is one of the plays that was destroyed in the kitchen of John Warburton
. (His cook mistook his manuscript collection for scrap paper, and used it up lighting fires and lining pie pans. Some 50 manuscripts, many of them unique copies of plays, were destroyed.)
1653
On September 9, 1653, stationer
Humphrey Moseley
entered a large number of plays into the Stationers' Register
; one of the dramas he registered on that date was titled The Spanish Viceroy, or the Honour of Women. This would appear to indicate that Massinger reworked his 1624 Spanish Viceroy into a new form, which was licensed for performance in 1628 as The Honour of Women.
Moseley, however, had a habit of skimping on registeration fees by deliberately confusing titles and subtitles, and registering two plays for the price of one. He did this for The Lovers' Progress
, The Bashful Lover
, The Guardian
, and A Very Woman
, other plays in the Massinger canon. So there is no guarantee that Spanish Viceroy and Honour of Women were the same play after all. Scholars have been divided on the issue of whether these titles refer to one play, or two.
, the diplomat who had served as Spain's ambassador to England to 1622. The King's Men had made a sensation in August 1624 with their staging of Thomas Middleton
's A Game at Chess
, with its satiric portrayal of Gondomar. In this view, the King's Men attempted to repeat their controversial success of August 1624 with a similar play in December.
There is some reason to think that controversial plays like A Game at Chess were backed by interested factions at Court, and that the King's Men would not have staged such plays without some measure of official support. (Officials supported plays on controversial subjects when it was in their interest to do so, as with Sir John van Olden Barnavelt
and The Late Lancashire Witches
.) By this reasoning, the actors dared to stage the unlicensed Spanish Viceroy because they had protection from some segment of the Jacobean power structure.
The Gondomar hypothesis regarding The Spanish Viceroy is, however, speculative, with no firm evidence to support it.
A more modern and perhaps more plausible hypothesis suggests that The Spanish Viceroy was about Pedro Giron, Duke of Osuna
, who had served as the viceroy of Sicily and Naples. Osuna was suspected of planning to set himself up as king of an independent kingdom. He was recalled to Spain in 1620, and put on trial; he died in prison. Osuna's story would have been of current interest in 1624, and could have suited the English public's anti-Spanish mood.
play A Very Woman
. This is one of Massinger's collaborations with John Fletcher
; and the play does feature a Spanish viceroy of Sicily
as a supporting character. Yet plays are normally named after their protagonists, or on rare occasion the protagonists of their comic subplots; they are not named after supporting characters. This makes A Very Woman seem an unlikely candidate for The Spanish Viceroy.
A Very Woman also has nothing to do with the Count of Gondomar or the Duke of Osuna.
English Renaissance theatre
English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, refers to the theatre of England, largely based in London, which occurred between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642...
. Originally a work by Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The City Madam and The Roman Actor, are noted for their satire and realism, and their political and social themes.-Early life:The son of Arthur Massinger or Messenger, he was baptized at St....
dating from 1624
1624 in literature
The year 1624 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*The King's Men perform The Winter's Tale at Whitehall Palace on January 18...
, it was controversial in its own era, and may or may not exist today in altered form.
The facts
1624In December 1624 the King's Men
King's Men (playing company)
The King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged through most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it became The King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron.The...
got into trouble with Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels
Master of the Revels
The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...
, because they performed a play, The Spanish Viceroy, without first obtaining Herbert's license. This step was bound to get them into trouble: Herbert's job was to oversee and censor every play acted in the London theatres, and he was zealous in doing his job, maintaining his authority, and collecting his fees.
The outcome was unsurprising, given the way the system of control worked. On December 20, 1624, the King's Men provided Herbert with a "submission," a written apology, signed by each actor who had taken part in the offending performance. The cast included Robert Benfield
Robert Benfield
Robert Benfield was a seventeenth-century actor, noted for his longtime membership in the King's Men in the years and decades after William Shakespeare's retirement and death.Nothing is known of Benfield's early life...
, George Birch
King's Men personnel
King's Men personnel were the people who worked with and for the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the King's Men from 1594 to 1642...
, John Lowin
John Lowin
John Lowin was an English actor born in the St Giles-without-Cripplegate, London, the son of a tanner. Like Robert Armin, he was apprenticed to a goldsmith. While he is not recorded as a free citizen of this company, he did perform as a goldsmith, Leofstane, in a 1611 city pageant written by...
, Thomas Pollard
Thomas Pollard
Thomas Pollard was an actor in the King's Men — a prominent comedian in the acting troupe of William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage....
, John Rice
King's Men personnel
King's Men personnel were the people who worked with and for the Lord Chamberlain's Men and the King's Men from 1594 to 1642...
, Richard Robinson
Richard Robinson (17th-century actor)
Richard Robinson was an actor in English Renaissance theatre and a member of Shakespeare's company the King's Men.Robinson started out as a boy player with the company; in 1611 he played the Lady in their production of The Second Maiden's Tragedy. He was cast in their production of Ben Jonson's...
, William Rowley
William Rowley
William Rowley was an English Jacobean dramatist, best known for works written in collaboration with more successful writers. His date of birth is estimated to have been c. 1585; he was buried on 11 February 1626...
, John Shank
John Shank
John Shank was an actor in English Renaissance theatre, a leading comedian in the King's Men during the 1620s and 1630s.-Early career:...
, Richard Sharpe
Richard Sharpe (actor)
Richard Sharpe was an actor with the King's Men, the leading theatre troupe of its time and the company of William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage...
, Eliard Swanston
Eliard Swanston
Eliard Swanston , alternatively spelled Heliard, Hilliard, Elyard, Ellyardt, Ellyaerdt, and Eyloerdt, was an English actor in the Caroline era. He became a leading man in the King's Men, the company of William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage, in the final phase of its existence.-Career:Swanston...
, and Joseph Taylor
Joseph Taylor (17th-century actor)
Joseph Taylor was a 17th-century actor. As the successor of Richard Burbage with the King's Men, he was arguably the most important actor in the later Jacobean and the Caroline eras....
. (Herbert copied the submission into his office book in 1633, a sign of the importance he assigned to it.)
1628
On May 6, 1628
1628 in literature
The year 1628 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Ben Jonson is appointed city chronologer of London.*Ten-year-old Abraham Cowley produces his Tragicall History of Piramus and Thisbe....
, another Massinger play was duly licensed, a work titled The Honour of Women. This second play had no immediately obvious connection with The Spanish Viceroy; the connection between them would only appear a quarter-century later. The Honour of Women is one of the plays that was destroyed in the kitchen of John Warburton
John Warburton (officer of arms)
John Warburton was Somerset Herald of Arms in Ordinary at the College of Arms in the early 18th century. Warburton was a collector of old drama manuscripts, who is perhaps most notable because of his carelessness. On one occasion, he left a pile of manuscripts in the kitchen. When he came looking...
. (His cook mistook his manuscript collection for scrap paper, and used it up lighting fires and lining pie pans. Some 50 manuscripts, many of them unique copies of plays, were destroyed.)
1653
On September 9, 1653, stationer
Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers
The Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The Stationers' Company was founded in 1403; it received a Royal Charter in 1557...
Humphrey Moseley
Humphrey Moseley
Humphrey Moseley was a prominent London publisher and bookseller in the middle seventeenth century.Possibly a son of publisher Samuel Moseley, Humphrey Moseley became a "freeman" of the Stationers Company, the guild of London booksellers, on 7 May 1627; he was selected a Warden of the Company on...
entered a large number of plays into the Stationers' Register
Stationers' Register
The Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The company is a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers in England...
; one of the dramas he registered on that date was titled The Spanish Viceroy, or the Honour of Women. This would appear to indicate that Massinger reworked his 1624 Spanish Viceroy into a new form, which was licensed for performance in 1628 as The Honour of Women.
Moseley, however, had a habit of skimping on registeration fees by deliberately confusing titles and subtitles, and registering two plays for the price of one. He did this for The Lovers' Progress
The Lovers' Progress
The Lovers' Progress, also known as The Wandering Lovers, or Cleander, or Lisander and Calista, is an early seventeenth-century stage play, a tragicomedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger...
, The Bashful Lover
The Bashful Lover
The Bashful Lover is a Caroline era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Philip Massinger. Dating from 1636, it is the playwright's last known extant work; it appeared four years before his death in 1640....
, The Guardian
The Guardian (play)
The Guardian is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by Philip Massinger, dating from 1633. "The play in which Massinger comes nearest to urbanity and suavity is The Guardian...."-Performance:...
, and A Very Woman
A Very Woman
A Very Woman, or The Prince of Tarent is an early seventeenth-century stage play, a tragicomedy written by Philip Massinger and John Fletcher...
, other plays in the Massinger canon. So there is no guarantee that Spanish Viceroy and Honour of Women were the same play after all. Scholars have been divided on the issue of whether these titles refer to one play, or two.
Gondomar and Osuna
Early critics developed the argument that The Spanish Viceroy was a play about the Count of GondomarDiego Sarmiento de Acuña, conde de Gondomar
Don Diego Sarmiento de Acuña, Count of Gondomar , was a Galician diplomat, the Spanish ambassador to England in 1613 to 1622 and afterwards, as a kind of ambassador emeritus, as Spain's leading expert on English affairs until his death...
, the diplomat who had served as Spain's ambassador to England to 1622. The King's Men had made a sensation in August 1624 with their staging of Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as among the most successful and prolific of playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in...
's A Game at Chess
A Game at Chess
A Game at Chess is a comic satirical play by Thomas Middleton, first staged in August 1624 by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre, notable for its political content.-The play:...
, with its satiric portrayal of Gondomar. In this view, the King's Men attempted to repeat their controversial success of August 1624 with a similar play in December.
There is some reason to think that controversial plays like A Game at Chess were backed by interested factions at Court, and that the King's Men would not have staged such plays without some measure of official support. (Officials supported plays on controversial subjects when it was in their interest to do so, as with Sir John van Olden Barnavelt
Sir John van Olden Barnavelt
The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt was a Jacobean play written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger in 1619, and produced in the same year by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre...
and The Late Lancashire Witches
The Late Lancashire Witches
The Late Lancashire Witches is a Caroline era stage play, written by Thomas Heywood and Richard Brome, published in 1634. The play is a topical melodrama on the subject of the witchcraft controversy that arose in Lancashire in 1633.-Performance:...
.) By this reasoning, the actors dared to stage the unlicensed Spanish Viceroy because they had protection from some segment of the Jacobean power structure.
The Gondomar hypothesis regarding The Spanish Viceroy is, however, speculative, with no firm evidence to support it.
A more modern and perhaps more plausible hypothesis suggests that The Spanish Viceroy was about Pedro Giron, Duke of Osuna
Pedro Téllez-Girón, 3rd Duke of Osuna
Pedro Téllez-Girón, 3rd Duke of Osuna was a Spanish nobleman and politician. He was the 2nd Marquis of Peñafiel, 7th Count of Ureña, Spanish Viceroy of Sicily , Viceroy of Naples , a Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece since 1608, Grandee of Spain, member of the Spanish Supreme...
, who had served as the viceroy of Sicily and Naples. Osuna was suspected of planning to set himself up as king of an independent kingdom. He was recalled to Spain in 1620, and put on trial; he died in prison. Osuna's story would have been of current interest in 1624, and could have suited the English public's anti-Spanish mood.
A Very Woman
Neither The Spanish Viceroy nor The Honour of Women has survived under its original title. Yet commentators also developed the hypothesis that The Spanish Viceroy exists in an altered form, as the extant 16341634 in literature
The year 1634 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 1 - The King's Men perform Cymbeline at the court of King Charles I of England.*January 22 - The King's Men perform Davenant's The Wits at the Blackfriars Theatre....
play A Very Woman
A Very Woman
A Very Woman, or The Prince of Tarent is an early seventeenth-century stage play, a tragicomedy written by Philip Massinger and John Fletcher...
. This is one of Massinger's collaborations with John Fletcher
John Fletcher (playwright)
John Fletcher was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's...
; and the play does feature a Spanish viceroy of Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
as a supporting character. Yet plays are normally named after their protagonists, or on rare occasion the protagonists of their comic subplots; they are not named after supporting characters. This makes A Very Woman seem an unlikely candidate for The Spanish Viceroy.
A Very Woman also has nothing to do with the Count of Gondomar or the Duke of Osuna.