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The Birth of Merlin
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The Birth of Merlin
The Birth of Merlin, or, The Child Hath Found his Father is a Jacobean play, probably written in whole or part by William Rowley. It was first performed in 1622 at the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch. It contains a comic depiction of the birth of the fully grown Merlin to a country girl, and also features figures from Arthurian legend, including Uther Pendragon, Vortigern, and Aurelius Ambrosius.
The 1662 first edition of The Birth of Merlin was a quarto printed by Thomas Johnson for the booksellers Francis Kirkman and Henry Marsh; it attributed the play to William Shakespeare and William Rowley. Merlin is thus one of two plays published in the seventeenth century as a Shakespearean collaboration, the other being The Two Noble Kinsmen. Most scholars reject the attribution to Shakespeare and believe that the play is Rowley's, perhaps with a different collaborator. The play has occasionally been revived in the modern era, for example at Theatr Clwyd.
The Birth of Merlin shares a significant relationship with Cupid's Revenge, a play in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon. Large-scale resemblances in plotting – the missing prince, the ruler and his heir who both fall in love with the same woman – could be explained through derivation from common sources; but these larger-scale elements are supported by multiple specific lines and passages that occur in both plays.
The early critics who first discovered these commonalities took them as evidence that Beaumont and Fletcher had a hand in the authorship of The Birth of Merlin. This view, however, has not been accepted by the consensus of scholars and critics, since apart from the cited common passages, there is no evidence of Beaumont's or Fletcher's authorship in the play. The common passages appear to be best explained as the type of borrowings sometimes found in works of the era (the borrowings from Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, for example) that have no bearing on questions of authorship. Though the dates of authorship for both plays are uncertain, it seems likely that Cupid's Revenge is the earlier work, and that the author or authors of Merlin borrowed from the Beaumont–Fletcher play.
The Birth of Merlin possesses a three-level plot, a structure common in plays of its era.
The play is rich with visual effects of varying types, including gods and devils, magic, and masque-like spectacles. It was clearly designed to provide broad, colourful, fast-paced entertainment, rather than to reflect on real-world life.
Unusually, the play is staged to begin on its second level: The opening scene introduces the nobleman Donobert, his daughters Constantia and Modestia, and their suitors Cador and Edwin, and begins the story of Modestia's conflict between her desire for a religious vocation versus social pressures to marry. The famous characters of Arthurian romance do not appear until the second scene, which introduces King Aurelius and his royal court. The British are flush with a recent victory over the invading Saxons, though they are troubled by the absence of the king's missing brother, Uther.
Saxon emissaries arrive at court to negotiate a peace; they are led by the Saxon princess Artesia. Aurelius instantly falls in love with Artesia, and in his infatuation grants the Saxons very generous peace terms, despite the objections of his courtiers and the criticism of a holy hermit who interjects his own opposition. (Before the scene ends, Modestia consults the Hermit about her personal spiritual difficulty.)
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The Birth of Merlin
The Birth of Merlin, or, The Child Hath Found his Father is a Jacobean play, probably written in whole or part by William Rowley. It was first performed in 1622 at the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch. It contains a comic depiction of the birth of the fully grown Merlin to a country girl, and also features figures from Arthurian legend, including Uther Pendragon, Vortigern, and Aurelius Ambrosius.
The 1662 first edition of The Birth of Merlin was a quarto printed by Thomas Johnson for the booksellers Francis Kirkman and Henry Marsh; it attributed the play to William Shakespeare and William Rowley. Merlin is thus one of two plays published in the seventeenth century as a Shakespearean collaboration, the other being The Two Noble Kinsmen. Most scholars reject the attribution to Shakespeare and believe that the play is Rowley's, perhaps with a different collaborator. The play has occasionally been revived in the modern era, for example at Theatr Clwyd.
The Birth of Merlin shares a significant relationship with Cupid's Revenge, a play in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon. Large-scale resemblances in plotting – the missing prince, the ruler and his heir who both fall in love with the same woman – could be explained through derivation from common sources; but these larger-scale elements are supported by multiple specific lines and passages that occur in both plays.
The early critics who first discovered these commonalities took them as evidence that Beaumont and Fletcher had a hand in the authorship of The Birth of Merlin. This view, however, has not been accepted by the consensus of scholars and critics, since apart from the cited common passages, there is no evidence of Beaumont's or Fletcher's authorship in the play. The common passages appear to be best explained as the type of borrowings sometimes found in works of the era (the borrowings from Thomas North's translation of Plutarch's Parallel Lives in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra, for example) that have no bearing on questions of authorship. Though the dates of authorship for both plays are uncertain, it seems likely that Cupid's Revenge is the earlier work, and that the author or authors of Merlin borrowed from the Beaumont–Fletcher play.
The Birth of Merlin possesses a three-level plot, a structure common in plays of its era.
The play is rich with visual effects of varying types, including gods and devils, magic, and masque-like spectacles. It was clearly designed to provide broad, colourful, fast-paced entertainment, rather than to reflect on real-world life.
Unusually, the play is staged to begin on its second level: The opening scene introduces the nobleman Donobert, his daughters Constantia and Modestia, and their suitors Cador and Edwin, and begins the story of Modestia's conflict between her desire for a religious vocation versus social pressures to marry. The famous characters of Arthurian romance do not appear until the second scene, which introduces King Aurelius and his royal court. The British are flush with a recent victory over the invading Saxons, though they are troubled by the absence of the king's missing brother, Uther.
Saxon emissaries arrive at court to negotiate a peace; they are led by the Saxon princess Artesia. Aurelius instantly falls in love with Artesia, and in his infatuation grants the Saxons very generous peace terms, despite the objections of his courtiers and the criticism of a holy hermit who interjects his own opposition. (Before the scene ends, Modestia consults the Hermit about her personal spiritual difficulty.)