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Here are a few of my favourite, maddest things in early modern drama (
). Please add your own.
). Please add your own.
1. King Cambyses (in Preston's play) proves he's not drunk by having another drink and boasting he can shoot an arrow through a child's heart -- he proceeds to call for a bow and arrow and does precisely that.
Later he flays the child's father alive onstage.
Later he flays the child's father alive onstage.
2. In *The Revenger's Tragedy*, Vindice tricks the lascivious Duke into kissing the 'bony lady' (the perfumed and poisoned skull of the woman -- Gloriana; Vindice's dead girlfriend) whom the Duke had sexually assaulted years ago.
3. In *Look About You*, a series of ridiculous disguises culminates in Skink and Gloucester accidentally bumping into each other disguised AS THE SAME PERSON.
The play also features Robin Hood in drag.
The play also features Robin Hood in drag.
4. Mephistopheles tells Marlowe's Doctor Faustus that Helen of Troy can't be raised from the dead (her body is decomposed) and that the apparition before him is just a devil in disguise --- but Faustus has sex with 'her' anyway.
5. *Malfi*: Ferdinand lusts incestuously after his sister (whom he weirdly fantasises about having sex with some 'strong-thighed bargeman'); hangs around graveyards & is spotted 'with the leg of a man / Upon his shoulder', claiming he's a werewolf but with the hair on the inside.
6. In Chapman's *Blind Beggar of Alexandria*, Cleanthes disguises himself as four different people who each woo a different vulnerable woman... and then sets about cuckolding himself by swapping which alter ego sleeps with which woman.
7. In Jonson's *The Devil is an Ass*, The devil goes to London to corrupt more souls to take down to Hell, only to find that contemporary London is far more depraved and debased than Hell, so retreats to his infernal safety.
8. In Robert Greene's (sublime) *Friar Bacon & Friar Bungay*, Prince Edward gains access to a magical crystal ball that lets him see across time and space; uses it to perv on a barmaid in Fressingfield.
9. In Barnabe Barnes's rabidly anti-Catholic *The Devil's Charter*, Lucretia Borgia burns off her face (a 'strange leprosy') by unwittingly applying poisoned cosmetics.
10. In Peele's *Battle of Alcazar*, Abdelmelec dies leading his side in war. No problem: his brother adopts the 'Weekend at Bernie's' approach, setting up the dead body 'in his chair with cunning props' to rally the troops.
