George Peele
George Peele (baptised 25 July 1556 – death date uncertain) was an
Life
Peele was christened on 25 July 1556 at St James Garlickhythe in the City of London. His father, James Peele (died 30 December 1585), who appears to have belonged to a Devonshire family, was clerk of Christ's Hospital, a school which was then situated in central London, and wrote two treatises on bookkeeping,[1] The Maner and Fourme How to Kepe a Perfecte Reconyng (1553) and The Pathe Waye to Perfectnes (1569).[2] The latter depicts James Peele in a woodcut on the title page.[3] No contemporary likeness of George is known, although he was said to be short-legged, dark complected, red haired, and squinting, although not necessarily from reliable sources.[4] George's mother, Anne, died on 1 July 1580, and his father married Christian Widers (d. 1597 in St Christopher le Stocks, a church since demolished) on 3 November 1580. She became a nurse on the Hospital payroll, where she remained five years after James Peele's death, when she married Ralph Boswell.[5] His siblings included Anne (died 10 January 1568/9), Isabel, Judith (died 16 April 1582) and James (born 3 January 1563/4). Anne married John Alford on 14 May 1565 and had one son, Robert (9 October 1567 – c. 12 March 1654/5). Judith married John Jackman on 19 June 1575 and had three children, Susan (born 3 June 1576), William (30 April 1577 – 1 July 1577) and Sarah (died 25 May 1578).[6] On 5 February 1568/9 Isabel married Mathew Shakespeare, with whom she had eight children.[7] Duncan Salkeld, a university lecturer at University of Chichester, has suggested that while Matthew Shakespeare "may have been unrelated" to William Shakespeare, the listing of Matthew's marriage to Isabel Peele suggests a possible link, because Isabels' playwriting brother is thought by some to have collaborated on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.[8] James Peele also wrote the Ironmongers' Pageants of 1566 and 1569, which may have led to George's writing of two Lord Mayor's pageants.
George Peele was educated at Christ's Hospital, and entered
In 1583, when Albertus Alasco (
Peele may have married a second time, to Mary Gates or Yates. It is not possible to state definitively that the George Peele who married Mary Gates is the dramatist, as another George Peele, a boxmaker who died in 1604, was living in London at the time. There is not enough information in the record to determine for certain to which George Peele she was actually married. Frank S. Hook, who edited a 1961 edition of Edward I,[20] suggests that David H. Horne's speculation in the first volume of the same edition is correct in believing this is the same George Peele based on a fictitious incident in the play's first scene:
Peele may be more interested in what should be done than in what actually has been done. The emphasis on generosity to soldiers and veterans is in ironic contrast to the way the fighting forces in the Netherlands were actually treated. Leicester's reports, summarized in the Calendar of State Papers (Foreign) show amply the suffering of soldiers; they were not paid on time, and their living conditions were deplorable. Likewise, the Acts of Privy Council for the period after 1590, when soldiers began returning from Willoughby's expedition to France, demonstrate the care of wounded veterans was becoming an increasingly embarrassing problem for Elizabeth's government. Read in light of these contemporary documents, this scene takes on a bitterly ironic note.
In the scene, Edward I establishes a "colledge" for wounded soldiers, something he did not do in real life, nor was this something Elizabeth did, although in 1587, the Earl of Leicester had done so in Elizabeth's name, at the Galthius.[21] While it must be said that Hook and Horne are writing for the same edition with Charles Tyler Prouty as general editor, this ties directly with Horne's supposition [22] that this is the same George Peele, for the George Peele who married Mary Gates was the widow of the former Master-Gunner of Berghen-op-Zoom, Lawrence Gates, and Mary and George Peele entered a lengthy legal battle to collect Mary's war widow salary. One wonders why Peele would have added such a fictitious moment to Edward I were he not the George Peele trying to collect these funds. This involved a three-year litigation against Thomas Gurlyn, who was a buyer of soldiers' uncollected wages, who countersued Mary on allegations that she had forged Lawrence Gates's will.[23] The record does not show whether Gurlyn, who stalled payment, ever actually paid what he owed to the Peeles, despite Peele obtaining a verdict against him.[24] Horne speculates that evidence of Peele's sickness in a letter to Lord Burghley indicates that he was probably unable to work and thus pay legal fees.[25] Horne also speculates that Peele himself may have been a soldier.[26]
Death
Peele died "of the pox," according to Francis Meres, and was buried on 9 November 1596 in St James's Church, Clerkenwell. One of the eight boarding houses at the modern Horsham campus of Christ's Hospital is now named Peele after George Peele, and as a commemoration to the work of the Peele family with the ancient foundation of the Christ's Hospital school.
Plays
- Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes (1577) (attributed)
- The Arraignment of Paris (1581)
- The Troublesome Reign of King John (1589)
- Mucedorus (1590) (attributed)
- The Battle of Alcazar (1591)
- Shakespeare)
- The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First (1593)
- The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe (1594)
- The Old Wives' Tale (1595)
His pastoral comedy The Arraignment of
His play
Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes (printed 1599) has been attributed to Peele, but on insufficient grounds.[1] Other plays attributed to Peele include Jack Straw (ca. 1587), The Wisdom of Doctor Dodypoll (printed 1600), The Maid's Metamorphosis (printed 1600), and Wily Beguiled (printed 1606) – though the scholarly consensus has judged these attributions to be insufficiently supported by evidence. Indeed, individual scholars have repeatedly resorted to Peele in their attempts to grapple with Elizabethan plays of uncertain authorship. Plays that have been assigned to (or blamed on) Peele include Locrine, The Troublesome Reign of King John, and Parts 1 and 2 of Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy, in addition to Titus Andronicus. Edward III was attributed to Peele by Tucker Brooke in 1908. While the attribution of the entire play to Peele is no longer accepted, Sir Brian Vickers demonstrated using metrical and other analysis that Peele wrote the first act and the first two scenes in Act II of Titus Andronicus, with Shakespeare responsible for the rest.[30]
Minor works
Among his
Reputation
Peele belonged to the group of university scholars who, in Greene's phrase, "spent their wits in making playes." Greene went on to say that he was "in some things rarer, in nothing inferior," to Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nashe.[31] This praise was not unfounded. The credit given to Greene and Marlowe for the increased dignity of English dramatic diction, and for the new smoothness infused into blank verse, must certainly be shared by Peele.[1] The most familiar parts of Peele's work are, however, the songs in his plays—from The Old Wives' Tale and The Arraignment of Paris, and the song "A Farewell to Arms"—which are regularly anthologized.
My golden locks Time hath to silver turnd.
O Time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!
My youth 'gainst time and age hath ever spurnd,
But spurnd in vain. Youth waneith by increasing.
Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen,
Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.
My Helmet now shall make a hive for bees
And lovers' sonnets turne to holy Psalms.
A man at Armes must now serve on his knees,
And feed on pray'rs, that are Age his alms.
But though from Court to Cottage I depart,
My Saint is sure of mine unspotted heart.
And when I saddest sits in homely cell,
I'll teach my Swaines this Carrol for a song.
Blest be the hearts that wish my Sovereigne well,
Curs'd be the souls that thinke her any wrong.
Goddess, vouchsafe this aged man his right
To be your Beadsman now that was your knight.— George Peele, "A Farewell to armes", Polhymnia,[32] 17 November 1590.
Professor
Peele's Works were edited by
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Chisholm 1911.
- ^ David H. Horne. The Life and Dramatic Works of George Peele, Volume I: The Life and Minor Works of George Peele. Charles Tyler Prouty, general editor. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952, 7–8
- ^ Horne, 8
- ^ Horne, 45–46, citing William Gager and the Jests.
- ^ Horne, 20
- ^ Horne, 21
- ^ Horne, 21
- ^ "New evidence supports claim that William Shakespeare's 'Dark Lady' may". The Independent. 26 August 2012. Retrieved 28 June 2023.
- ^ Horne, 49, 51.
- ^ a b "George Peele". Poetry Foundation.
- ^ "George Peele: A biographical sketch"
- ^ David H. Horne. The Life and Minor Works of George Peele. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952.
- ^ Horne, 113.
- ^ Horne, 115
- ^ Horne, 117
- ^ Horne, 118–126
- ^ Horne, 127
- ^ Horne, 129
- ^ Horne, 131
- ^ George Peele. The Life and Dramatic Works of George Peele, Volume II: Edward I edited by Frank S. Hook/The Battle of Alcazar edited by John Yoklavich. General Editor Charles Tyler Prouty. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1961, 5
- ^ Hook, 4
- ^ Horne, 99ff.
- ^ Horne, 103.
- ^ Horne, 104
- ^ Horne, 104
- ^ Horne, 100
- ^ "George Peele (1558?–1597)"
- ^ Montrose, Louis Adrian. "Gifts and Reasons: The Contexts of Peele's Araygnement of Paris." ELH, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Autumn, 1980) 433–61.
- ^ The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 6th Edition. Edited by Margaret Drabble, Oxford University Press, 2000 Pp36
- ^ Vickers, Brian. Shakespeare, Co-Author. (2004) Oxford UP, 154.
- ^ Loughlin, Bell & Brace 2011, p. 1037.
- ^ A. Dyce, The Works of George Peele, vol. II, p. 195, Pickering, London, 1829.
Bibliography
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Peele, George". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 21 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 44–45. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Peele, George". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
- "George Peele: Poetry Foundation".
- Logan, Terence P.; Denzell S. Smith (1973). The Predecessors of Shakespeare: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE.
- Loughlin, Marie; Bell, Sandra; Brace, Patricia, eds. (2011). The Broadview Anthology of Sixteenth-Century Poetry and Prose. Broadview anthologies of English literature. ISBN 9781551111629.
Further reading
- Bevington, David, ed. (2017). George Peele. Routledge. ISBN 9781351933919, 1351933914
External links
- "Peele, George". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
- Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. XVIII (9th ed.). 1885. pp. 457–458. .
- Works by or about George Peele at Internet Archive
- Works by George Peele at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)