A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 07 — Text and Context

Diction and Register in Tragedy and Comedy

The volume’s tragic pieces, like Tancred and Gismund, favor formal, Latinate diction and balanced rhetorical periods. Gismunda’s plea—'But in thy brest if eny spark remaine / Of thy dere love'—employs courtly address and conditional syntax. By contrast, the comedies adopt a lower, more idiomatic register. In The Two Angry Women of Abington, Mall Barnes declares: 'For maids that wear cork shoes may step awry,' a proverb-like line that blends homely imagery with sexual innuendo. The juxtaposition of these registers within a single volume highlights how Elizabethan dramatists matched language to genre and audience expectation.

Dialogue as Character Revelation

Dialogue in these plays often serves to expose character through verbal tics and argumentative patterns. In The Two Angry Women, Mrs. Barnes’s anger erupts in a string of epithets—'Mistress Flirt—yea, foul strumpet, / Light-a-love, short-heels!'—the accumulation of insults revealing her jealous fury. Her son Philip responds with measured appeals: 'O my dear mother, have some patience!' This contrast between impulsive and restrained speech defines their relationship. Similarly, in Tancred and Gismund, Gismunda’s elaborate pleas for mercy from her father Tancred build tension through formal supplication, her controlled diction masking desperate emotion.

Structural Choices: Classical vs. Popular Models

The plays differ in their structural debts. The editors observe that Tancred and Gismund 'was formed on a classical model, and bears marks of resemblance in tone and style to the “Jocasta” of Euripides.' This influence appears in its five-act division, stichomythic exchanges, and use of a chorus. In contrast, The Two Angry Women follows a more episodic, popular structure, with scenes shifting rapidly between domestic interiors and outdoor settings. The stage direction 'Enter MRS BARNES' after Mall’s soliloquy creates a comic juxtaposition of private fantasy and maternal authority. Such structural variety within one collection illustrates the range of dramatic conventions available to late-16th-century playwrights.

Recurring Details: Objects, Gestures, and Social Codes

Small recurring details anchor the plays in material life. In The Two Angry Women, Mrs. Barnes demands of her son: 'Where's your blue coat, your sword and buckler, sir?'—a reference to the livery of a serving-man, signaling both social status and maternal anxiety about his companions. Mall’s mention of 'cork shoes' evokes contemporary fashion and its association with unsteady morals. In Tancred and Gismund, the repeated motif of 'brest' (breast) as the seat of love and memory—'in thy brest if eny spark remaine'—ties emotion to physical anatomy. These details, drawn from domestic and courtly spheres, ground the plays in recognizable social codes.

Readers approaching this volume will benefit from attending to the editorial apparatus: the introduction to Tancred and Gismund collates manuscript variants, revealing how Wilmot revised the original 1568 text. Comparing the Lansdowne and Hargrave manuscripts with the printed 1591 version offers a case study in authorial and editorial intervention. The comedies, less documented, reward close reading of their stage business and verbal play. This collection thus serves not only as a repository of plays but as a window into the collaborative, revisionary processes that shaped early English drama.

Reading the old plays’ clashing voices, I remembered sitting with my grandfather’s leather-bound set, his pencil marks in the margins of Tancred. He’d whisper how even grief sounded staged. Later, a friend passed me The Group: A Farce — Context and Discussion, and I felt that same ache—how words meant to wound sometimes land merely as noise.