Hengist, King of Kent
Encyclopedia
Hengist, King of Kent, or The Mayor of Quinborough is a Jacobean stage play by Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as among the most successful and prolific of playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in...

, first published in 1661
1661 in literature
The year 1661 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* The Book of Kells is presented to Trinity College, Dublin.* Controversial author James Harrington is arrested on a charge of conspiracy....

.

Date

The date of authorship of the play is uncertain, though it is usually dated to c. 1615–20. Some critics have argued that the close relationship between Hengist and The Changeling
The Changeling (play)
The Changeling is a Jacobean tragedy written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley. Widely regarded as "among the best" tragedies of the English Renaissance, the play has accumulated a significant body of critical commentary....

indicates that the plays were written in fairly close conjunction. "Both plays are lavish in the use of dumb-show; both revolve around a licentious woman (Beatrice-Joanna, Roxena) believed to be virtuous, and a chaste one (Isabella, Castiza) mistreated by an unworthy husband; and the role taken by Horsus, the secret love of Roxena, in planning villainies is not dissimilar to that of De Flores."

Texts

The play was entered 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...

 on 4 September 1646, by Humphrey Robinson
Humphrey Robinson
Humphrey Robinson was a prominent London publisher and bookseller of the middle seventeenth century.Robinson was the son of a Bernard Robinson, a clerk from Carlisle; other members of his family were important clergymen and church office-holders. Humphrey Robinson became a "freeman" of the ...

 and Humphrey Moseley
Humphrey Moseley
Humphrey Moseley was a prominent London publisher and bookseller in the middle seventeenth century.Possibly a son of publisher Samuel Moseley, Humphrey Moseley became a "freeman" of the Stationers Company, the guild of London booksellers, on 7 May 1627; he was selected a Warden of the Company on...

; but it was not published until 1661, when the bookseller Henry Herringman
Henry Herringman
Henry Herringman was a prominent London bookseller and publisher in the second half of the 17th century. He is especially noted for his publications in English Renaissance drama and English Restoration drama; he was the first publisher of the works of John Dryden...

 issued it under the title The Mayor of Quinborough. The title page of the first 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"...

 assigns the play to "Tho. Middleton," and states that the play was acted by the King's Men
King's Men (playing company)
The King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged through most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it became The King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron.The...

 at the Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre
Blackfriars Theatre was the name of a theatre in the Blackfriars district of the City of London during the Renaissance. The theatre began as a venue for child actors associated with the Queen's chapel choirs; in this function, the theatre hosted some of the most innovative drama of Elizabeth and...

 (though no specific performances are known).

There are also two extant manuscripts of the play, both of which are scribal copies of the theatre prompt-book. The Lambarde MS. is 1487.2 in the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library
Folger Shakespeare Library
The Folger Shakespeare Library is an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, and is a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period...

 in Washington D.C., while the Portland MS. is in Nottingham University Library. The subject matter is derived from the Matter of Britain
Matter of Britain
The Matter of Britain is a name given collectively to the body of literature and legendary material associated with Great Britain and its legendary kings, particularly King Arthur...

; it tells the story of Saxon
Saxons
The Saxons were a confederation of Germanic tribes originating on the North German plain. The Saxons earliest known area of settlement is Northern Albingia, an area approximately that of modern Holstein...

 king Hengist
Hengest
Hengist and Horsa are figures of Anglo-Saxon, and subsequently British, legend, which records the two as the Germanic brothers who led the Angle, Saxon, and Jutish armies that conquered the first territories of Great Britain in the 5th century AD...

 during his wars against the Britons
Britons (historical)
The Britons were the Celtic people culturally dominating Great Britain from the Iron Age through the Early Middle Ages. They spoke the Insular Celtic language known as British or Brythonic...

.

Authorship

Middleton's authorship of Hengist has never been seriously questioned, though a few scholars have postulated a contribution by Middleton's most frequent collaborator, William Rowley
William Rowley
William Rowley was an English Jacobean dramatist, best known for works written in collaboration with more successful writers. His date of birth is estimated to have been c. 1585; he was buried on 11 February 1626...

, in the comic subplot concerning the Mayor of Quinborough. David Lake, in his study of authorship questions in the Middleton canon, refutes the Rowley hypothesis, and assigns the play to Middleton alone.

Genre

The play is an anomaly in Middleton's oeuvre, his only overt history play. Its genre does not prevent the playwright from injecting his usual sexual and thematic preoccupations. (One critic has called it "quirky.") In resorting to what by 1620 was a somewhat antiquated genre, Middleton chose to exploit an equally dated (from the 1620 perspective) dramaturgical technique: the murders of Constantius and Vortimer are acted out in dumb-show instead of being portrayed in the usual combination of speech and action. Another dumb-show features a personified Fortune figure.

Title

Through most of its existence the play was known by the title that refers to its comic subplot, as is true of a few other English Renaissance plays, like Blurt, Master Constable
Blurt, Master Constable
Blurt, Master Constable is a late Elizabethan comedy, interesting for the authorship problem it presents.The play is subtitled "The Spaniards' Night Walk," and an allusion to the Spanish in Ireland in the play's final scene — there was a Spanish raid on Ireland in September 1601 — helps...

— though modern scholarship tends to prefer the title from the manuscripts that refers to the play's main plot.

In 2005 it was published by Nick Hern Books under the title Mayor of Queenborough.

In the subplot, Middleton takes a satirical jab at the theatrical profession: in Act V, scene i, three thieves pretend to be actors to cheat the Mayor.
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