Lust's Dominion
Encyclopedia
Lust's Dominion, or The Lascivious Queen is an English Renaissance
English Renaissance theatre
English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, refers to the theatre of England, largely based in London, which occurred between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642...

 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...

 written perhaps around 1600 and first published in 1657
1657 in literature
The year 1657 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* Prohibition of young male actors in Japan.* Madame de la Fayette becomes friends with Madame de Sévigné.-New books:*François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac - Pratique du théâtre...

, probably written by Thomas Dekker in collaboration with others.

The play has been categorized as a "tragedy of blood," comparable to Kyd's
Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama....

 The Spanish Tragedy
The Spanish Tragedy
The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. Its plot contains several violent...

and Shakespeare's
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, and possibly George Peele, believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy, and is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were...

, and to tragedies 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...

, John Webster
John Webster
John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.- Biography :Webster's life is obscure, and the dates...

, and Cyril Tourneur
Cyril Tourneur
Cyril Tourneur was an English dramatist who enjoyed his greatest success during the reign of King James I of England. His best-known work is The Revenger's Tragedy , a play which has alternatively been attributed to Thomas Middleton.-Life:Cyril Tourneur was possibly the son of Captain Richard...

.

Authorship

The first edition attributed the authorship of the play to Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...

, though this attribution has been recognized as spurious by critics and scholars for nearly two centuries. (The play borrows from a pamphlet, published in 1599, about the 1598 death of King Philip II of Spain
Philip II of Spain
Philip II was King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily, and, while married to Mary I, King of England and Ireland. He was lord of the Seventeen Provinces from 1556 until 1581, holding various titles for the individual territories such as duke or count....

. Marlowe died in 1593.)

The 1657 duodecimo
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"...

 edition was published by Francis Kirkman
Francis Kirkman
Francis Kirkman appears in many roles in the English literary world of the second half of the seventeenth century, as a publisher, bookseller, librarian, author and bibliographer...

, to be sold by the bookseller Robert Pollard. Of the four surviving copies of the 1657 edition, three attribute the play to Marlowe on their title pages—but one does not. This fourth copy also includes three dedicatory poems prefacing the play.

Many critics who have studied the play judge the internal evidence to be suggestive of the style of Thomas Dekker. John Payne Collier
John Payne Collier
John Payne Collier , English Shakespearian critic and forger, was born in London.-Reporter and solicitor:...

 was the first to identify Lust's Dominion with the play The Spanish Moor's Tragedy, a play that has not survived under its original name. Collier's argument has been accepted by a number of subsequent commentators. Philip Henslowe
Philip Henslowe
Philip Henslowe was an Elizabethan theatrical entrepreneur and impresario. Henslowe's modern reputation rests on the survival of his diary, a primary source for information about the theatrical world of Renaissance London...

's Diary records a down-payment of £3 to Dekker, John Day
John Day (dramatist)
John Day was an English dramatist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.-Life:He was born at Cawston, Norfolk, and educated at Ely. He became a sizar of Caius College, Cambridge, in 1592, but was expelled in the next year for stealing a book...

, and William Haughton
William Haughton
William Haughton was an English playwright in the age of English Renaissance theatre. During the years 1597 to 1602 he collaborated in many plays with Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, John Day, Richard Hathwaye and Wentworth Smith....

 in February 1600
1600 in literature
The year 1600 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 1 - The Admiral's Men perform Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday at Court....

 for The Spanish Moor's Tragedy; the Diary, however, does not show that that play was ever finished, and its identification with Lust's Dominion remains uncertain. Individual scholars have also discussed the hypothesis that Henry Chettle
Henry Chettle
Henry Chettle was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer of the Elizabethan era.The son of Robert Chettle, a London dyer, he was apprenticed in 1577 and became a member of the Stationer's Company in 1584, traveling to Cambridge on their behalf in 1588. His career as a printer and author is...

 may have had a hand in the play, and a few have allowed a possibility that Marlowe may have had some connection with the text in an earlier form. John Marston
John Marston
John Marston was an English poet, playwright and satirist during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods...

 has also been linked to the play as a potential part-author.

Abd-el-Oahed ben Massood

If Lust's Dominion is The Spanish Moor's Tragedy by another name, it may have been influenced by the August 1600 arrival in London of Abd-el-Oahed ben Massood, Ambassador of Muley Hamet, King of Barbary. The embassy had the goal of building an alliance against Spain. The visit, which ended in February 1601, was not a success; later in the year Queen Elizabeth
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...

 ordered "negars and Blackamoores" to be expelled from the country.

The plot

Eleazar, Prince of Fez, the anti-hero protagonist, is a prisoner in the Spanish Court, but honored for his military victories. Eleazar has a strong grudge against the Spaniards over his father's death; and he is ruthless enough to make a bold attempt to seize the Spanish crown for himself. The Queen Mother of Spain, Eugenia, is in love with Eleazar; King Ferdinando loves the Moor's wife, Maria. Cardinal Medoza loves the Queen. All of these characters are consumed by ungovernable passions — except for the cold and Machiavellian Eleazar. The Moor pretends to love the Queen Mother, but manipulates her into murdering her son Philip; then he kills her as well. To strike at the Cardinal, he betrays his chaste young wife. And he stabs King Ferdinando as the culmination of his evil plans. Despite all of his strategems, however, Eleazar is defeated in the end; he goes to his death unrepentant.

Adaptions

In 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, Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn
Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the English Restoration and was one of the first English professional female writers. Her writing contributed to the amatory fiction genre of British literature.-Early life:...

 adapted the play into Abdelazar, or The Moor's Revenge (1676
1676 in literature
The year 1676 in literature involved some significant events.-New books:*Robert Barclay - Theses Theologiae*Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery - English-Adventures by a Person of Honor...

), her sole venture into Restoration tragedy.
The play, under the title of "Lust's Dominion", has also been adapted in the 21st century.
http://www.archive.org/details/LustsDominiontereus

External links

  • Text of Lust's Dominion at Sheffield Hallam University
    Sheffield Hallam University
    Sheffield Hallam University is a higher education institution in South Yorkshire, England, based on two sites in Sheffield. City Campus is located in the city centre, close to Sheffield railway station, and Collegiate Crescent Campus is about two miles away, adjacent to Ecclesall Road in...

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