''The Humorous Lieutenant'', also known as ''The Noble Enemies'', ''Demetrius and Enanthe'', or ''Alexander's Successors'', is a
Jacobean era stage play, a
tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragedy, tragic and comedy, comic forms. Most often seen in drama, dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the ov ...
written by
John Fletcher. Highly praised by critics, it has been called "Fletcher's best comedy."
The drama was initially published in the
first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of
1647
Events
January–March
* January 2 – Chinese bandit leader Zhang Xianzhong, who has ruled the Sichuan province since 1644, is killed at Xichong County, Xichong by a Qing archer, after having been betrayed by one of his officer ...
.
Date and performance
The second Beaumont/Fletcher folio of
1679 provides a cast list for the original
King's Men's production, which includes
Henry Condell
Henry Condell ( bapt. 5 September 1576 – December 1627) was a British actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. With John Heminges, he was instrumental in preparing and editing the First Folio, the c ...
,
Joseph Taylor,
John Lowin,
William Ecclestone,
Richard Sharpe,
John Underwood,
Robert Benfield—and
Thomas Pollard, the comic actor who filled the title role. This is the only cast list that includes both Taylor and Condell; Taylor joined the company in the spring of
1619, to replace
Richard Burbage
Richard Burbage (6 January 1567 – 13 March 1619) was an English stage actor, widely considered to have been one of the most famous actors of the Globe Theatre and of his time. In addition to being a stage actor, he was also a theatre owne ...
after his death in March of that year; and Condell is thought to have retired not long after—which appears to date the play fairly securely to 1619.
Manuscript
In addition to the printed texts in the two folios, the play exists in a manuscript version, a presentation copy prepared by the professional scribe
Ralph Crane for Sir
Kenelm Digby
Sir Kenelm Digby (11 July 1603 – 11 June 1665) was an English courtier and diplomat. He was also a highly reputed natural philosopher, astrologer and known as a leading Roman Catholic intellectual and Thomas White (scholar), Blackloist. For ...
. Crane sent the MS. to Digby on 27 November 1625. In Crane's text, the play is longer by some 70 lines; the printed texts provide a stage version trimmed for acting. The MS. is titled ''Demetrius and Enanthe,'' and attributes the play to Fletcher alone—a verdict that is generally accepted, since Fletcher's distinctive stylistic profile is continuous through the play. The MS. has been called "the most beautiful example of Crane's calligraphy that we have."
After 1642
Comic material from the play was adapted into a
droll during the
Interregnum
An interregnum (plural interregna or interregnums) is a period of revolutionary breach of legal continuity, discontinuity or "gap" in a government, organization, or social order. Archetypally, it was the period of time between the reign of one m ...
period. Like many plays in Fletcher's canon, ''The Humorous Lieutenant'' was revived at the start the
Restoration era, in
1660
Events
January–March
* January 1
** At daybreak, English Army Colonel George Monck, with two brigades of troops from his Scottish occupational force, fords the River Tweed at Coldstream in Scotland to cross the Anglo-Scottish ...
. When the new
Theatre Royal at
Drury Lane
Drury Lane is a street on the boundary between the Covent Garden and Holborn areas of London, running between Aldwych and High Holborn. The northern part is in the borough of London Borough of Camden, Camden and the southern part in the City o ...
opened on 8 April
1663, ''The Humorous Lieutenant'' was the first play staged, and ran for twelve nights in a row—highly unusual in the repertory system of the time. The play remained popular and was performed repeatedly, in various adaptations, into the early eighteenth century. Adapted forms of the play were published in 1697 and 1717, while the manuscript text was first printed by
Alexander Dyce in
1830
It is known in European history as a rather tumultuous year with the Revolutions of 1830 in France, Belgium, Poland, Switzerland and Italy.
Events January–March
* January 11 – LaGrange College (later the University of North Alabama) ...
.
The plot
''The Humorous Lieutenant'' has no known source in the previous literature,
[Logan and Smith, p. 41.] and seems to be that rare item in
English Renaissance drama: an original plot. It is set in the ancient Middle East after the death of
Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip ...
, and features the major historical figures of the era:
Antigonus, his son
Demetrius
Demetrius is the Latinization of names, Latinized form of the Ancient Greek male name, male Greek given names, given name ''Dēmḗtrios'' (), meaning "devoted to goddess Demeter".
Alternate forms include Demetrios, Dimitrios, Dimitris, Dmytro, ...
, and
Seleucus
Seleucus or Seleukos (Ancient Greek: Σέλευκος) was a Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedonian Greek name, possibly meaning "very bright" or “very white”. It is likely related to the ancient name Zaleucus (Ancient Greek language, Ancient ...
,
Ptolemy
Claudius Ptolemy (; , ; ; – 160s/170s AD) was a Greco-Roman mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, geographer, and music theorist who wrote about a dozen scientific treatises, three of which were important to later Byzantine science, Byzant ...
, and
Lysimachus
Lysimachus (; Greek language, Greek: Λυσίμαχος, ''Lysimachos''; c. 360 BC – 281 BC) was a Thessaly, Thessalian officer and Diadochi, successor of Alexander the Great, who in 306 BC, became king of Thrace, Anatolia, Asia Minor and Mace ...
. The plot centers on the love between Demetrius and an obscure young woman named Celia—who at the end of the play turns out to be Enanthe, the daughter of King Seleucus and so a suitable match for a prince.
The title character is the play's main
comic relief
Comic Relief is a British charity, founded in 1986 by the comedy scriptwriter Richard Curtis and comedian Sir Lenny Henry in response to the 1983–1985 famine in Ethiopia. The concept of Comic Relief was to get British comedians to make t ...
: an otherwise-unnamed lieutenant who is capable of fighting ferociously in battle but is a profound
hypochondriac the rest of the time. He is "humorous" in the seventeenth-century sense of the word: his bodily
humours are out of balance.
Notes
References
*
*Leech, Clifford. ''The John Fletcher Plays.'' London, Chatto & Windus, 1962.
*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.
*Oliphant, E. H. C. ''The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: An Attempt to Determine Their Respective Shares and the Shares of Others.'' New Haven, Yale University Press, 1927.
*Potter, Alfred Claghorn. ''A Bibliography of Beaumont and Fletcher.'' Cambridge, MA, Library of Harvard University, 1890.
*Sprague, Arthur Colby. ''Beaumont and Fletcher on the Restoration Stage.'' Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1926.
*Wilson, F. P. "Ralph Crane, Scrivener to the King's Players." ''Library'' 7 (1926), pp. 194–215.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Humorous Lieutenant, The
1619 plays
Plays set in the 4th century BC
English Renaissance plays
Plays by John Fletcher (playwright)
Plays set in ancient Greece
Tragicomedy plays
Cultural depictions of Ptolemy I Soter