William Percy (1573 - 1648) wrote The Faery Pastorall
in 1603 with the expectation that it would be performed before
King James, probably when the new king visited. Sion House to
thank the Earl, Percy's older brother, for assisting James's efforts
to succeed Elizabeth on the English throne. The Faery Pastorall is
one of five plays Percy wrote between 1601 and 1603, all of
which may have been used as part of the Percy family's backing of
James's bid for the crown. The plays remain in three separate
manuscripts transcribed by Percy himself in his old age. Two of
the three documents, Alnwick Castle MS 508 (1644) and Alnwick
Castle MS 509 (1646), remain in the Duke of Northumberland's
library, and one, the copy text for this edition, Huntington MS
HM4 (1647), is in the Huntington Library in California. Although
there is no evidence that any of Percy's plays was ever produced,
the plays are valuable to theatre historians, because they include
many stage directions and full descriptions of the staging and
properties that Percy expected to be at his disposal.
This edition of The Faery Pastorall includes an
introduction which examines Percy's life, the history and
description of the manuscripts, the possibility of the play's
performance, its structure and themes, sources and analogues, and
the stage directions and list of properties. Also included are an
old-spelling version of the text complete with textual notes
incorporating substantive variations of all three manuscripts, two
appendices incorporating valuable material from the manuscripts
not included in the play proper, and a full commentary glossing
difficult words and passages.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU.2429/8492 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Fenn, Robert Denzel |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Relation | UBC Retrospective Theses Digitization Project [http://www.library.ubc.ca/archives/retro_theses/] |
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