by Claire Kimball, Production Dramaturg
You’ll be forgiven if you’ve never heard of The Bloody Banquet, a shocking (but largely ignored) Jacobean tragedy. Published in 1639 by Thomas Cotes, The Bloody Banquet’s author appears only as “T.D.” Over time, scholars have put forward a few possible names for a responsible playwright, including the opinion that the initials should stand for Thomas Dekker. Further attention to internal evidence has suggested Thomas Middleton as a co-collaborator.*
But beneath the surface of this seemingly innocuous, “anonymous” play lies a cavalcade of blood, bodies, and betrayal. Brave Spirits Theatre stands poised to delve into this overlooked smorgasbord of Jacobean theatrics.
Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton adapted the play’s violent plot from William Warner’s Pan his syrinx, or pipe compact of seuen reedes, printed in 1584. For the most part, they combined two stories found there: one about a Scythian king who discovers his wife’s adultery and another about a Cilician ruler who usurps the Lydian throne. In weaving these threads together, the playwrights crafted a tale that manages to explore the politics of warfare, the corruption of power, the deceit of family, friends, and foes, all while staging bed-tricks, disguises, murder, and a bloody cannibalistic spectacle the likes of which audiences of early modern drama haven’t seen for over three hundred years.
So why haven’t you ever heard of The Bloody Banquet?
To begin with, the published quarto text has a few problems. Without an identified author, the script lacked the sparkle of certainty and an associated persona. In addition, some lines are misprinted, some entrances and exits are haphazard, and it could be that we’re missing a scene or two that would clarify the narrative. These textual nuisances have lead scholars over the last couple of centuries to mostly ignore The Bloody Banquet’s merits. Samuel Schoenbaum commented in the Malone Society reprint of the quarto that it was “perhaps difficult in a play of this kind to distinguish between dramatic ineptitude and textual corruption,” and such reactions relegated the script to the oubliette of early modern theater (vii). It wasn’t until general editors Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino published The Complete Works of Thomas Middleton in 2007 that Banquet received a far more accessible, edited edition.
Another reason the play has languished in obscurity probably has to do with its fantastic plot twists and grisly climax — in which the tyrant Armatrites forces his adulterous wife to consume the dead body of her lover. Just as the chaos and violence of Titus Andronicus was once deemed unworthy and tawdry, critics of the past likely rejected Banquet’s outrageous turns and frank cannibalism. As a consequence of these obstacles, the play has earned almost no performance history that we know of since its publication. **
This summer, at the Capital Fringe Festival, Brave Spirits will stage one of the most horrific finales in all of early modern drama. The forthcoming performances of The Bloody Banquet in July will finally unveil Middleton and Dekker’s arresting collaboration about the consequences of betrayal.
We’re hard at work on this unique and exciting experience. Be sure to check in for next week’s post when we’ll start to investigate what makes The Bloody Banquet so unforgettable.
* For further reading about the text’s history and attribution to Middleton and Dekker, consult Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture (Taylor and Lavagnino, Oxford University Press)
** In 2012, the Blood and Thunder Theater Company staged a script-in-hand production for an audience at The Shakespeare Institute’s Mason Croft lecture hall as part of the Stratford Fringe Festival. Outsiders Inn, a micro-theatre company in Seattle, performed the play outdoors in 2013.
Schoenbaum, Samuel, ed. The Bloody Banquet. Malone Society Reprints. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961 [1962]. Print.