Fulgens And Lucrece

''Fulgens and Lucrece'' is a late 15th-century interlude by Henry Medwall. It is the earliest purely secular English play that survives.Bill Gilbert:
Chapter 20: Literary Movements in the Sixteenth Century
in ''Renaissance and Reformation''. Lawrence, Kansas: Carrie, 1998. Since John Cardinal Morton, for whom Medwall wrote the play, died in 1500, the work must have been written before that date. It was probably first performed at Lambeth Palace in 1497, while Cardinal Morton was entertaining ambassadors from Spain and Flanders.Wayne S. Turney
Pre-Shakespearean Interludes: Interludes from the Court of Henry VIII
The play is based on a Latin ''novella'' by Buonaccorso da Montemagno that had been translated into English by John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester and published in 1481 by William Caxton.
The play was printed in 1512–1516 by John Rastell, and was later only available as a fragment until a copy showed up in an auction of books from Lord Mostyn's collection in 1919. Henry E. Huntington acquired this copy, and arranged the printing of a facsimile. The play is an example of a dramatised ''débat''.

Sources

The source of the play is the Latin treatise ' (''On True Nobility'') by the Italian humanist Bonaccorso or Buonaccorso da Montemagno of Pistoia, written in 1438. This treatise had been translated into French by as ' and printed by William Caxton's friend, Colard Mansion, in Bruges around 1475. The French version was later translated into English by John Tiptoft, 1st Earl of Worcester and printed by Caxton in 1481, on the last pages of ''Cicero of Old Age and Friendship''. Medwall used Tiptoft's translation as his source.

' tells how , the daughter of the Roman senator , is wooed by the idle patrician and the studious plebeian . asks her father for advice, and asks the senate to decide on the matter.Frederick S. Boas: "Introduction", in ''Five Pre-Shakespearean Comedies arly Tudor Period'. (The World's Classics 418). London: Oxford University Press, 1934, 1950, p. viii. Each suitor then pleads before the senate. The senate's decision is not mentioned in the treatise.

Plot

The plot is set in ancient Rome and deals with the wooing of Lucrece, daughter of the Roman senator Fulgens, by , a patrician, and , a plebeian. They both plead their worthiness to Lucrece (and not to the senate, as in Medwall's source). Despite Publius' superficial charms, wealth, and noble background, Lucrece eventually chooses . He does not have a famous lineage like Publius but his honest love for Lucrece shows his true nobility.

The play also contains a comic subplot which appears to begin outside the play and then merges with it. In this subplot, the characters A and B discuss a play that they expect to see, and B relates the plot, which is actually the plot of '. A and B later turn out to be servants of Cornelius and Gaius, and they try to win the love of Joan, a handmaid of Lucrece.

The comic subplot and Lucrece's final choice were additions by Medwall. It disrupts the flow of the story as the mischievous comic relief characters A and B steal the audience's attention with their gags and breaking of the fourth wall. Medwall ingeniously uses A and B to subtly mock the idea of class and lordship, with the play asking if nobility can be found in the common man? A and B also make references to their fashion with A mistaking B for an actor because of his fine clothing, suggesting that actors were gaining a greater status in England around that time.

This is considered to be the first inclusion of a subplot in an English Language drama, and thus, in many ways, exceeds the main plot in critical discussion.

Productions

The first modern revival of Fulgens and Lucres was by the Group Theatre of London, at the Everyman Theatre, Hampstead in March 1932.§ There have since been several productions, including one in 1984 by the Joculatores Lancastrienses during a Medieval English Theatre conference dinner in Christ's College Hall, Cambridge, directed by Meg Twycross. Fulgens and Lucres was recently produced by Poculi Ludique Societas the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Toronto, Nov. 8–16, 2014. The production was directed by Matthew Milo Sergi, Professor of Early English Drama at the University of Toronto.

Editions

* F. S. Boas & A. W. Reed, eds.: ''Fulgens & Lucres. A fifteenth-century secular play''. (Tudor and Stuart Library). Clarendon Press, 1926.
* ''Five Pre-Shakespearean Comedies: Fulgens and Lucrece, The Four P.P., Ralph Roister Doister, Gammer Gurton's Needle, Supposes'' Oxford University Press, 1958.
* Alan H. Nelson, ed.: ''The Plays of Henry Medwall'' (Tudor Interludes). D. S. Brewer, 1980. .
* ''Fulgens and Lucres''. The Henry E. Huntington Facsimile Reprints, 1. George D. Smith, 1920.
* Seymour de Ricci (Foreword): ''Fulgens and Lucres''. Kessinger Publishing, 2007. .
* Oxford Text Archive
English 362: Henry Medwall's ''Fulgens and Lucres''
(complete text).
* From Stage to Page: Medieval & Renaissance Drama (University of Maine at Machias)
Full text
(plain text format).

Further reading

* William Anthony Davenport & Paula Neuss: ''Fifteenth-century English drama: the early moral plays and their literary relations''. Boydell & Brewer, 1982. . .
* Internet Shakespeare Editions, University of Victoria

Accessed 2009-07-09.
* The Oxford Dictionary of Plays
Fulgens and Lucrece
.
* Robert P. Merrix:
The Function of the Comic Plot in "Fulgens and Lucrece"
. ''Modern Language Studies'', Vol. 7, No. 1 (Spring, 1977), pp. 16–26.
* R. G. Siemens:

". ''Renaissance Forum: An Electronic Journal of Early-Modern Literary and Historical Studies'' Volume One, Number Two – September 1996.
* Olga Horner:
''Fulgens and Lucres'': An Historical Perspective
''Medieval English Theatre'' Vol. 15 (1993) pp. 49–86.
* James McBain:
‘By example and gode reason’: Reconsidering commonplaces and the law in ''Fulgens and Lucres''
''Medieval English Theatre'' Vol. 28 (2006) pp. 3–28.

References

{{Interludes

15th-century plays
British plays
Medieval drama
English Renaissance plays