Andromana
Encyclopedia
Andromana, or The Merchant's Wife is a mid-seventeenth-century stage play, a tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

 first published in 1660
1660 in literature
The year 1660 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* January 1 - Samuel Pepys starts his diary.* February - John Rhodes reopens the old Cockpit Theatre in London, forms a company of young actors and begins to stage plays...

. It has attracted scholarly attention for the questions of its auhorship and the influence of its sources.

The play's date of authorship is unknown with certainty, and has been estimated in the 1642–60 era, during the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...

 and the Interregnum
English Interregnum
The English Interregnum was the period of parliamentary and military rule by the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell under the Commonwealth of England after the English Civil War...

 when the theatres were officially closed. The play was reportedly performed in 1671
1671 in literature
The year 1671 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Nell Gwyn retires from the stage.*On November 9, the Duke's Company open their new venue, the Dorset Garden Theatre.-New books:...

, once the theatres had re-opened during the Restoration
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...

 era. The play's May 19, 1660 entry into the Stationers' Register
Stationers' Register
The Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The company is a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers in England...

 assigns the authorship of the work to James Shirley
James Shirley
James Shirley was an English dramatist.He belonged to the great period of English dramatic literature, but, in Lamb's words, he "claims a place among the worthies of this period, not so much for any transcendent genius in himself, as that he was the last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly...

; the quarto
Book size
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from "folio" , to "quarto" and "octavo"...

 published in the same year by the bookseller John Bellinger (which gives the play the subtitle The Fatal and Deserved End of Disloyalty and Ambition) attributes the play to "J. S." Many critics, however, have judged the play's "Burtonian
Robert Burton (scholar)
Robert Burton was an English scholar at Oxford University, best known for the classic The Anatomy of Melancholy. He was also the incumbent of St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford, and of Segrave in Leicestershire.-Life:...

 melancholy" atypical of Shirley's style of drama; and its perceived lack of quality has led many Shirley scholars to omit the play from Shirley's canon.

Andromana is one of the many literary works of its period that draws upon Sir Philip Sidney
Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...

's Arcadia
Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, also known simply as the Arcadia or the Old Arcadia, is a long prose work by Sir Philip Sidney written towards the end of the sixteenth century, and later published in several versions. It is Sidney's most ambitious literary work, by far, and as significant in...

 for its source material, both directly and through the secondary sources of the Beaumont and Fletcher
Beaumont and Fletcher
Beaumont and Fletcher were the English dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, who collaborated in their writing during the reign of James I ....

 play Cupid's Revenge
Cupid's Revenge
Cupid's Revenge is a Jacobean tragedy written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. It was a popular success that influenced subsequent works by other authors.-Date and performance:...

.
(The name "Andromana" derives from ancient Greek; the formidable women of ancient Sparta
Sparta
Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

 were known as "Andromanae.") Andromana also shows the influence of Robert Burton's
Robert Burton (scholar)
Robert Burton was an English scholar at Oxford University, best known for the classic The Anatomy of Melancholy. He was also the incumbent of St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford, and of Segrave in Leicestershire.-Life:...

 The Anatomy of Melancholy
The Anatomy of Melancholy
The Anatomy of Melancholy The Anatomy of Melancholy The Anatomy of Melancholy (Full title: The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections...

, as mediated through the plays of John Ford
John Ford (dramatist)
John Ford was an English Jacobean and Caroline playwright and poet born in Ilsington in Devon in 1586.-Life and work:...

.

Synopsis

Plangus, Prince of Iberia, from Book 2 of the Arcadia, is the royal protagonist of the play, though the primary focus, as the title indicates, is on the heroine/villainess Andromana, the Prince's adulterous commoner lover. (Once her husband dies early in the play, drowning "at the Rialto
Rialto
The Rialto is and has been for many centuries the financial and commercial centre of Venice. It is an area of the San Polo sestiere of Venice, Italy, also known for its markets and for the Rialto Bridge across the Grand Canal....

," she is no longer an adulteress, but she remains a villainess; the play's misogyny
Misogyny
Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...

 has caught the notice of critics.) King Ephorbus hopes to cure his son's melancholia, and end his affair with Andromana, by sending the Prince off to war; but this only gives Andromana a chance to seduce the King as well. When Plangus returns to court, he finds that his former lover is now his queen and stepmother. But Andomana assures the Prince that she will remain his mistress.

Plangus, however, rejects this arrangement, causing Andromana to become his enemy. She poisons the relationship between father and son, which leads to the Prince's incarceration—but a popular revolt frees the Prince from prison. Andromana plots a violent revenge once the Prince is rescued; Plangus overhears her instructing her minion, and stabs the man to death before he can act. Andromana cries for help, and the King, who responds, accuses his son of planning violence against the queen/stepmother/lover/slut; the King stabs and kills Plangus. Andromana then stabs the King, and Plangus's friend Inophilus, and then herself. She dies boasting of her villainy.

Critic Fredson Bowers judged the play an overall failure, and viewed the problem as a confusion of genres: Andromana suffers from "a fatal compromise between the villain play and the revenge tragedy."

Sources

  • Andrews, Michael C. "The Sources of Andromana." Review of English Studies 19 (1968); pp. 295-300.
  • Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama. Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1978.
  • Randall, Dale B. J. Winter Fruit: English Drama 1642–1660. Lexington, KY, University Press of Kentucky, 1996.
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