Mucedorus: From Revision to Nostalgia

• Published in: Theatre notebook 2017-10, Vol.71 (3), p.140-160
• Main Author: Thomson, Leslie
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Apocrypha; British & Irish literature; Collaboration; Criticism and interpretation; Drama; Dramatists; Editing; Elizabethan drama; English literature; History; Rasmussen, Eric; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616)
• ISSN: 0040-5523; 2051-8358

Around 1590 when he was writing, the anonymous playwright could not have known how the disguise convention would develop over the next fifty years; presumably he delayed discovery of the disguise because doing so served his purposes, whatever they were. [...]in the late 1580s to early 1590s shepherds were not common on the stages of London, and princes disguised as shepherds even rarer. [...]this treatment of the shepherd disguise can be contrasted with how the playwright manages Mucedorus's hermit disguise, because this time the audience is told of his plans and then watches him actually disguise himself. In Peter Kirwan's view "The 1610 additions establish Mucedorus's character and pedigree from the start, making the audience complicit in his disguise and allowing the plot to proceed in a conventional way". [...]By removing the surprise of the prince's disguise, Mucedorus is made safe" (Idea of Apocrypha 103). According to Richard Proudfoot, "Of the fourteen editions known to STC 2 . . . none is known to survive in more than five copies, most in three or fewer" (18).13 On the one hand, if the play was seen as a relic of a happier past, it was evidently not considered worth preserving; but on the other hand, there seems to have been a continuous demand for copies.