“gives laws of justice and of peace,”The Battle of Alcazar displays a variety of bad rulers. The worst of them is Muly Mahamet, the Moorish usurper of Barbary who slaughters his own uncle and brothers so that his son may succeed him. One uncle, Abdelmelec, survives and, returning to claim his rightful throne, unseats Muly Mahamet. Crying revenge, Muly Mahamet goes to Sebastian, the young king of Portugal, to ask for help, and Sebastian is rash enough to offer it. For the expedition, Sebastian gets an offer of collaboration from Philip, the Spanish king, but at the last moment, the conniving Spanish king reneges. With his modest force, Sebastian goes off to Barbary, there to die on the desert battlefield of Alcazar, along with Abdelmelec, Muly Mahamet, and most of both armies. Significantly, Sebastian is killed by his own soldiers for leading them into disaster. Suffering the same fate at the hands of his Italian mercenaries is the English adventurer Tom Stukley, sidetracked on his way to becoming the Catholic king of Ireland. In case the audience misses the point, each act is preceded by a choruslike “presenter” and a grisly dumb show—for example, “To them enter Death and three Furies, one with blood, one with dead men’s heads in dishes, another with dead men’s bones.” Thus, in The Battle of Alcazar, Peele not only shows how blessed the English are in their ruler but also indulges in some typically vehement anti-Catholic propaganda.

Edward I

The blank verse of The Battle of Alcazar is full of rant, but the language in Edward I, mostly a mixture of blank verse and prose, is considerably better. Edward I also provides relief from the wars with some pleasant scenes of comedy, romance, and Welsh rebels playing Robin Hood. The inconsistency of mood, however, causes the long play to fall apart, especially the twist into domestic tragedy at the end. There is also inconsistency of character; it is disconcerting to see Queen Elinor, at first benevolent and loving, turn out to be a torturer who suckles a poisonous snake at the breast of the Lord Mayor’s wife. Then King Edward, hitherto an ideal exemplar of kingly behavior, poses as a French friar in order to hear Elinor’s secret deathbed confession of infidelities with his brother (on her wedding day) and with a friar. One is reminded of Peele’s penchant for spectacle when the earth at Charing Green opens up and swallows the evil queen:

Queen: Gape, earth, and swallow me, and let my soulSink down to Hell if I were author ofThat woman’s tragedy. Oh, Joan! Help, Joan,Thy mother sinks!

Unfortunately, the earth spits her forth again at Potter’s Hive, in time for this queen of Spanish origin to decimate her English royal family.

The Old Wives’ Tale

For unknown reasons, the first edition of The Old Wives’ Tale indicated only that the play was “written by G. P.” Perhaps the initials G. P. were readily identifiable at the time; in any event, the author was not identified in print as George Peele until 1782, by Isaac Reed in his Biographia Dramatica. Reed’s identification has not been much disputed because internal evidence of language and style points to Peele as author, as does the play’s unrestrained experimentation in content and form.

Indeed, most commentators stress the play’s uniqueness among extant Renaissance English drama: its wild mix of folkloric elements. The play is not as original, however, as this mix makes it first appear. The idea of dramatizing folklore could have been suggested by almost any village mumming or old gammer such as the one in the play. It was also only a short step from dramatizing classical mythology to dramatizing native folklore. Here, as in his other plays, Peele made heavy use of sources, except here the sources were likely oral rather than written. In form, too, the play’s compact action, suitable for folk material, is reminiscent of medieval drama, while the music and spectacle suggest the sophisticated influence of the court masque. Still, Peele’s daring use of folkloric elements opened a rich lode for Shakespeare and other dramatists, helped to bridge the gap between classical and native drama, and helped to legitimate certain “low” material for later romantic comedy.

Some features of the play still seem strikingly new, even modern. One such feature is the dignity accorded the “young master’s” retainers, however comically lost, and the old peasant couple, Clunch and Madge, who take the retainers in for the night. In his humble cottage, Clunch the “smith leads a life as merry as a king with Madge his wife.” Madge provides the evening’s entertainment with her old wives’ tale; she is not one of the “rude mechanicals” out of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play perhaps inspired by The Old Wives’ Tale. Another notable feature is the association of folklore with the night, with the world of dreams, the irrational, and the supernatural. Here the archetypes flow fast and furiously: the conjurer, the abducted maiden, the quest, the two brothers, the two sisters, the man-bear standing at the crossroads, the grateful dead, the heads in the well, and on and on. Finally, a related feature, familiar to modern audiences from Hollywood’s cinematic fade, is the merging of the old lady’s spoken narrative into dramatization. As in a modern psychological drama, this convention suggests that the play-within-the-play is taking place in her mind, or at least through her words.

The experimentation in content and form carries over into the play’s mix of prose, blank verse, rhymed verse, and songs. As in most Renaissance work, there is a great deal of punning and play with language (including Latin). There is parody of other writers, of Petrarchan conventions, and of the folkloric mode. There is much sexual innuendo, especially in the folklore material.

Some commentators have found only confusion in this mixture of styles, but at least two themes stand out clearly and simply in The Old Wives’ Tale. First, the old wife tells her tale to entertain her guests. Her purpose suggests that a story—and, by extension, art in general—need be nothing more than pleasant playing, which is a value in itself, a human gesture in a human context, a gift more sustaining than the bread and pudding that the guests refuse. The second theme, related to the first, is suggested by the father of the two sisters, Lampriscus, who pleads with the bear-man Erestus “for charity,” “for neighborhood or brotherhood.” Erestus gives Lampriscus charity, as he does other characters, in the form of his oracles. Throughout the play-within-the-play, those characters who show charity or “brotherhood” are rewarded, while those who are uncharitable also get their deserts. Even in the framing action, the theme of charity is enforced by Clunch and Madge’s hospitality to the lost retainers, by the old wife who shares her food, her fire, and her imagination.

David and Bethsabe

There is no doubt that David and Bethsabe, the only biblical play among extant English Renaissance drama, is Peele’s work, but there is evidence that the text is corrupt (for example, in one startling textual fragment, Absalom bounces forth, alive and well, after he has just writhed through one of those sensational and prolonged Elizabethan deaths). It is thus uncertain whether one should criticize Peele or a corrupt text for occasional instances of awkward or obscure imagery and action. Such imagery may be a result of Peele’s striving for a biblical richness, which he sometimes achieves (with the help of his source) but which he sometimes inflates into purple passages or bombast. Any awkward action may be attributable to Peele’s condensation of time and action here, as in The Old Wives’ Tale. Despite the play’s tendency toward long speeches, events move rapidly, covering the David-Bethsabe affair, the incest of Amnon and Thamar, and the rebellion of Absalom. During this time, Salomon is born to David and Bethsabe, grows to a youth, and begins spouting his traditional wisdom. The rambling plot is held together by an Aeschylean curse wherein the evils visited on David’s children are presumably caused by the sins of the father, in particular his affair with Bethsabe. With his many wives and concubines and his close relationship to God, David may have reminded contemporary audiences of Henry VIII, Elizabeth I’s father.

Aside from the sometimes rich blank verse, the sordid action, and the plot’s biblical basis, the play’s main attraction is the conjunction of theology, politics, and character, though modern audiences might find the theme offensive. David is depicted as an Asian tyrant whose greatness is measured by his self-indulgence; hence, it is natural in the play to see outward events as an extension of his ego. He forces himself on Bethsabe, sends her soldier-husband Urias into the front lines to die, appears at the siege of Rabbah in time to take credit for the victory, and orders all the town’s inhabitants slaughtered. Then, for his sins, punishment is visited on his children: Amnon forces himself on Thamar, Absalom kills Amnon, and Absalom is killed in a rebellion against David. Modern audiences might view Absalom as a force for reform, but they would be wrong. Absalom’s vanity makes him an unworthy successor to David; instead, the wise Salomon, son of David and Bethsabe, is the next chosen one. In rebelling against David, proud Absalom has also tried to usurp the authority of God, whose prerogative it is to punish chosen ones. The proper role of subjects is illustrated by the submissive Bethsabe and the sycophantic Urias. In all of English Renaissance drama, one could hardly find a more enthusiastic endorsement of the divine right of kings.

David and Bethsabe, like much of Peele’s work, shows that the playwright was more than a budding sycophant himself. A member of the London middle class who worked his way up from a Christ’s Hospital scholar to an Oxford gentleman to a University Wit and would-be court hanger-on, Peele identified with the greatness of the ruling class in his writing. When he was not offering outright flattery to the queen and members of the nobility, he was usually giving implicit advice on the proper behavior of rulers and subjects. He apparently felt that, as a writer, a volunteer poet laureate, he played an important part in the ruling order. It is therefore ironic that the Lord High Treasurer of England scorned his dying plea for patronage; it is also ironic that Peele should be best remembered for The Old Wives’ Tale, a play that dignifies humble people.