The Second Maiden's Tragedy

George Buc's license at the end of the manuscript. It reads "This second Maydens tragedy (for it hath no name inscribed) may with the reformations now be acted publikely."

The Second Maiden's Tragedy is a Jacobean play that survives only in manuscript. It was written in 1611, and performed in the same year by the King's Men. The manuscript that survives is the copy that was sent to the censor, and therefore includes his notes and deletions. The manuscript was acquired, but never printed, by the publisher Humphrey Moseley after the closure of the theatres in 1642. In 1807, the manuscript was bought by the British Museum.

Title

The play's original title is unknown. The manuscript bears no title, and the censor, George Buc, added a note beginning "This second Maiden's Tragedy (for it hath no name inscribed)...". Buc was comparing the play to Beaumont and Fletcher's The Maid's Tragedy. Buc's comment confused a seventeenth century owner of the manuscript, Humphrey Moseley, who listed the play in the Stationers' Register as The Maid's Tragedy, 2nd Part. Buc's title has stuck and the play is usually referred to as The Second Maiden's Tragedy.

However, two recent editors of the play have preferred to retitle it. In his anthology Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies, Martin Wiggins argues that since the word "second" refers to the play, not to a character (there is no "second maiden"), Buc was actually calling the play The Maiden's Tragedy. In Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, Julia Briggs goes further: pointing out that the word "maiden" never appears in the play, she retitles it The Lady's Tragedy, after the unnamed female protagonist.

Theatrical producers of the play have also retitled it on occasion. A 1984 production at the Upstream Theatre called it The Tyrant, while the 1994 Hen and Chicken production in Bristol used The Lady's Tragedy.

Authorship

The back page of the manuscript, featuring a title and three authorship attributions by its later owners. The names of Thomas Goffe and George Chapman are heavily crossed out, the words "by Will Shakespeare" less heavily so.

Thomas Middleton

The play's authorship is also contested. On the manuscript, three crossed-out attributions in seventeenth century hands attribute it first to Thomas Goffe, then to William Shakespeare, and then to George Chapman. Today, however, the scholarly consensus is that the true author was Thomas Middleton, as indicated by linguistic analysis, and by its similarity with other Middleton plays. It was first published under Middleton's name in Martin Wiggins's anthology Four Jacobean Sex Tragedies (1998), and subsequently in the 2007 Collected Works of Middleton.

Shakespeare and Cardenio

See also: Cardenio

In a further complication, a professional handwriting expert, Charles Hamilton, has claimed in a 1994 book that the manuscript of The Second Maiden's Tragedy is in fact the lost play Cardenio by William Shakespeare and indeed that the handwriting is Shakespeare's. Most literary scholars reject his argument and the position of mainstream literary scholarship is that the play is by Middleton.

However, on the rare occasions when the play has been revived on the stage, producers often name it Cardenio because Shakespeare's name helps to sell tickets. Although she dismisses Hamilton's claims, Julia Briggs points out that his book gave the play a new lease of life, with numerous productions in the 1990s trading on the Shakespeare association to raise awareness of this rarely staged play.

Plot

This wildly bizarre play has two storylines. The main plot is the tale of a sadistic and necrophiliac tyrant's love for the lover of his ousted rival. The subplot is based on a tale by Cervantes ("El Curioso Impertinente", included in Don Quixote, part I), and depicts a jealous husband's tragic attempt to test his wife's virtue by persuading his best friend to seduce her. The plots are only related in that there is a stated kinship between the main characters in the two plots.

The climactic plot device of the corpse's poisoned kiss, used earlier in The Revenger's Tragedy (1606), another play most likely by Middleton, was employed again by Philip Massinger in his The Duke of Milan (ca. 1621-2).