circa 1589–1592
Henslowe notes a performance on 19 February 1592
full synopsis available, click here
Go to "Notes of Interest"
Go to "Plays to be Compared"
II: Bacon, newly installed at Brazen-nose college in Oxford, has a foolish scholar for a servant, one Miles. Three scholars meet Bacon and ask if it is true that he is making a Brazen Head that will surround England with a wall of Brass. Bacon says it is true. When Burden, one of the scholars, scoffs, Bacon embarrasses him by revealing that the learned man spends his free time not in study but IN philandering with a maid in Henley and conjures up the maid for proof. Burden is chagrined.
III: St. James's Day. Margaret and Lacy meet at the fair. Lacy says he is from nearby Beccles, some six miles from Fressingfield. Margaret immediately sees he has proper courtly manners and is intrigued by him although he protests on behalf of the "gentleman in green who lately spoke to her in the room where
cheese is pressed."
IV: Henry III has guests—Emperor Frederick II, his brother-in-law, the King of Castile, Castile's daughter Eleanor (who is intended to marry Edward), and a magician that Frederick has brought with him named Jacques Vandermast. Eleanor has fallen in love with a portrait of Edward and wishes to meet him. Because Edward is rumored to be in Oxford, the royal party sets out to meet him there and in the process give Vandermast a chance to dispute with Bacon who is the greater magician.
V: Edward's party arrives in Oxford. Rafe is dressed as the Prince of Wales. The others in the party play the parts of his retainers. They meet Bacon and Miles. While Edward goes to Bacon's study for a private conference, Miles takes the fake Prince and retainers out for a bit of reveling.
VI: Bacon with Edward in the cell shows Edward a magic looking glass which reveals Bungay telling Margaret of Lacy's true identity. When Lacy enters and all is discovered, the two plight troth and prepare to be immediately married by Bungay. Bacon strikes Bungay dumb and whisks him to Oxford on the back of a devil. Edward posts to Fressingfield to be revenged on Lacy, whom he considers a traitor.
VII: The three scholars are inventing some entertainments, hearing that the royal party is on its way to Oxford, when a constable brings in the fake Prince and retainers along with Miles. They have done mischief to a tapster, broke his pate, and are brought before the learned doctors for sentencing. Rafe
tries to convince them that he is the Prince of Wales. When that does not work, his retainers reveal their true identities—Warren, Earl of Sussex, and Ermsby, true retainers of the Prince. They pay for the tapster's injuries and go to supper with the learned doctors.
VIII: Edward in Fressingfield finds Lacy and Margaret. He at first determines to kill Lacy for his treachery, but Lacy and Margaret plead so well for the power of their love that they convince Edward that Margaret would make a better wife to Lacy than concubine to Edward. He stays his wrath and gives his blessing to their marriage. Lacy and Edward, now friends, go back to Oxford to meet the Royal party. Lacy promises to return and marry Margaret as soon as he can.
IX: Henry and the Royal party in Oxford first meet Bungay, who conjures the tree from Hesperides with a fire-breathing dragon upon it. Vandermast summons Hercules to tear the tree apart as he did in myth. Just as Vandermast is flouting the English magicians' powers, Bacon enters and the devil disguised as Hercules stands in awe of the superior magician and will not perform Vandermast's orders. Vandermast is astounded by Bacon's power. Bacon has the Hercules apparition carry Vandermast back to Hapsburg. Edward, Lacy, Warren, and Ermsby come in. Eleanor and Edward like one another at once. Bacon prepares a banquet for the guests.
X: Lambert and Serlsby come to Margaret's father, the innkeeper, to ask for his daughter's hand. Not knowing about Lacy, the keeper promises that the one Margaret chooses may have her. Margaret buys time for Lacy's return by saying it will take her ten days to decide between the two. The two begin bickering and challenge each other to a duel and leave. A messenger comes with a letter from Lacy telling Margaret that the king requires him to marry one of Eleanor's maids, and he sends a bag of gold for her dowry. Margaret decides to become a nun.
XI: Bacon, exhausted with his labor building the Brazen Head leaves Miles to watch it while he takes a nap. He gives Miles explicit instructions to wake him should the head talk. As Miles watches, the head speaks. It says, "Time is." Miles thinks this an odd thing to say and believes the head is somehow inadequate. The head says, "Time was." Miles again flouts the head's lack of vocabulary. The head says "Time is past," and an arm appears with a hammer to break the head to pieces. A great commotion breaks out which wakes Bacon. When Miles tells Bacon what happened Bacon laments the passing of his powers and waste of seven years. He casts Miles out of his service to wander the world tormented by demons.
XII: The Royal party learns that Edward and Eleanor have agreed to marry. Henry, hearing of Margaret's beauty, sends Lacy to fetch his bride-to-be. Eleanor offers to allow her marriage to be a double ceremony. Edward is overjoyed that his best friend will be married with him.
XIII: Bacon tells Bungay of his failure. Two students enter—the sons of Lambert and Serlsby—and ask to use the magic mirror to see their fathers in Fressingfield. They see their once-friendly fathers duel and kill each other. In anger they take up their fathers' quarrel and kill one another as well. Seeing his magic bring only tragedy, Bacon breaks his mirror and devotes himself to divine thoughts.
XIV: The keeper tries to talk Margaret out of going to a convent. Lacy comes in, tells her that the letter was only a test of her constancy, and Margaret decides to forgive and marry him.
XV: Miles, dressed as a scholar, is having no luck getting preferment anywhere. When one of the devils enters to torment him, Miles engages it in conversation and decides to go to hell and become a tapster, serving drinks to the damned souls. He rides the devil's back down into hell.
XVI: The wedding day. The Royal party express their joy and gratitude. Bacon, newly repentant and following God's ways prophecies the day when all the goddess's flowers will bow to "Diane's rose"—an obvious reference to the "Virgin's rose"—the Tudor rose, and hence to Elizabeth. The party does not fully
understand the prophecy, but go in to feast the celebrants.
No other character, except possibly Miles, is as fully developed and explored. Miles, however, is a foolish scholar whom Greene obviously enjoyed writing although he seems more ill at ease composing the Skeltonic verse in which the foolish Miles sometimes speaks.
Bungay, like Ermsby, Warren, Mason, Clement, and Castile, is just a follower of the leader of his group—in Bungay's case that is Bacon, for Ermsby and Warren it is Edward and Lacy, for Mason and Clement it is Burden, for Castile it is Frederick and Henry.
Edward is a difficult character. He is willing to make a virgin his whore, kill his friend for falling in love with her, but still he must be a fine fellow in the audience's eyes to marry the noble Eleanor and become the next king.
Lacy is the typical romantic lover: willing to die for his love—which makes his test of the letter all the more puzzling. It seems out of character for him. It seems a mere plot device to keep some interest in the Margaret subplot after Lacy and the Prince are reconciled.
Margaret is the typical ingenue.
Lambert, Serlsby, and their student sons seem also to be extraneous to the play. Their deaths throw a pall upon the action. Without those deaths, the play would be very like a romantic comedy. Again, they seem to add a little spice to the Margaret subplot after the reconciliation of Edward and Lacy. To say that the four deaths make Bacon repent his magic is weak, however. He has already despaired of continuing after the destruction of the Brazen Head. He tells Bungay as much.
Rafe is a roarer and a fool. After his impersonation of the Prince in the tavern he virtually disappears for the play, making one wonder what his importance was in the first place.
Go Back to Top
Middleton appears to have written a now-lost prologue and epilogue for the play in 1602 for a revival of the play by the Admiral's Men.
The meeting of the Prince and Bacon is reminiscent of Chaucer's "Franklin's Tale" when the French magician is met and knows all about the reason for the young man's wishes to see him. The use of the mirror to see other places is to be repeated some thirty years later (as a scam) in Middleton's A Game At Chess.
It is possible that the scene wherein Bungay is whisked away by Bacon to prevent the marriage of Lacy and Margaret (VI) ends with a de praesenti marriage. The suggestion is tenuous at best. No actual words of marriage are spoken.
Miles is given to speaking in "Skeltonic Verse" (that verse employed by John Skelton in the time of Henry VIII). It uses tandem iambic trimeter lines with internal and end rhyme thus:
The letter Lacy sends to Margaret is a poor dramatic device. Lacy is playing with her affections only to test her constancy. This makes Lacy look heartless. It also makes Margaret appear foolish (after her well-reasoned protestations why she should follow God) to turn away from the religious life to marry Lacy. Although the action works as a foil to Bacon's conversion to God's way, it makes the statement that women are less holy and good than are men. In fact Warren says as much:
The ending prophecy, from the converted and repentant Bacon, regarding the coming of a good and beautiful ruler—"Diane's rose"—is base flattery of Elizabeth, which probably worked nevertheless. Synopsis:
I: Prince Edward, Prince of Wales and son to Henry III, returns malcontented from a hunting trip. His friends wonder what has worked the change in him. Rafe, the fool, determines that he has fallen in love with the innkeeper's daughter where they had stopped after the hunt. Rafe suggests that he and Prince Edward ("Ned") change clothes so that the Prince can woo the country maid without frightening her off. Edward wants her to be his concubine. They determine to go to Oxford and see Friar Bacon for advice. Edward sends Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, to woo Margaret in his behalf while Edward is at Oxford. Lacy is to dress as a country swain and meet the maid on Friday, St. James's Day (July 25). Characterization:
Bacon is carefully depicted so not to resemble Faustus. His spells and control of the devils, while damnable, is relieved in part by his profession of "white" magic—nevertheless he must, by Renaissance standards, repent and follow God so not to be ultimately damned. Notes of Interest:
The play's dating is difficult, although a date of 1589-90 seems likely (Greene died in 1592). We know that the play was performed 19 February 1592 from an entry in Henslowe's diary. It was performed at the Rose by Lord Strange's Men and later by the Queen's Men and Sussex's Men.
The opening stage direction of scene XI has troubled scholars. Because the "inner stage" concept has fallen from favor with some, it is difficult to determine what is meant by the direction "Bacon drawing the curtain" and Bacon's later admonition to "Draw close the curtain, Miles." The problem doesn't seem so troubling, though, if we assume that the arras is the curtain. Bacon draws it aside and Miles brings out the Brazen Head. Miles places the head just beyond the curtain line of the arras and draws it closed after Bacon goes behind it to sleep. The actor playing Bacon could then—unseen by the audience—actually perform the voice of the head and the arm that breaks the head. Bacon's first line after Miles calls him is "Miles, I come," which is not convincing if he is asleep on stage. It could mean "I come from my chamber." He appears through the arras immediately to say, "Oh, passing wearily watched"—congratulating Miles before seeing that all has gone wrong.
u / u / u "me" u / u / u "thee" etc.
The other point that this suggested staging suggests is that Bacon, as the scholars have suggested earlier, hasn't the power to make a Brazen Head that will gird England in brass. Bacon may be perpetrating a hoax, using the simpleton Miles as his excuse for failure. Bacon's voice as that of the head and his arm as the instrument of destruction may well point out Bacon's wish to cease his magical labors. He casts Miles into the world presumably to punish him, but it also works to have Miles attest to his fault in foiling Bacon's plans. The failure also acts as catalyst for Bacon to give up his magic, which may be his intention all along.