This etext was produced by John Price, University College Worcester,
UK.
THE NOBLE SPANISH SOLDIER by THOMAS DEKKER
INTRODUCTION
THOMAS DEKKER
Thomas Dekker is believed to have been born in London around 1572,
but nothing is known for certain about his youth. He embarked on a
career as a theatre writer early in his adult life, the first extant
text of his work being 'Old Fortunatus' written around 1596, although
there are plays connected with his name which were performed as early
as 1594. The period from 1596 to 1602 was the most prolific of his
career, with 20 plays being attributed to him and an involvement in
up to 28 other plays being suggested. It was during this period that
he produced his most famous work, 'The Shoemaker's Holiday, or the
Gentle Craft', categorised by modern critics as citizen comedy, it
reflects his concerns with the daily lives of ordinary Londoners.
This play exemplifies his vivid use of language and the intermingling
of everyday subjects with the fantastical, embodied in this case by
the rise of a craftsman to Mayor and the involvement of an unnamed
but idealised king in the concluding banquet.
He exhibited a similar vigour in such prose pamphlets as the
ironically entitled 'The Wonderfull Yeare' (1603), about the plague,
'The Belman of London' (1608), about roguery and crime, and 'The Guls
Horne-Booke' (1609), a valuable account of behaviour in the London
theatres.
Dekker was partly responsible for devising the street entertainment
to celebrate the entry of James I into London in 1603 and he managed
the Lord Mayor's pageant in 1612. His fortunes took a turn for the
worse shortly after, when between 1613 and 1619 he was imprisoned,
probably for debt; this experience may be behind his six prison
scenes first included in the sixth edition (1616) of Sir Thomas
Overbury's 'Characters'. He died in 1632 and was buried at St James',
Clerkenwell.
HISTORY OF THE NOBLE SPANISH SOLDIER ('NSS')
Text
The first clear reference to the play is dated as 16 May 1631 when an
entry was made in the Stationer's Register, effectively licensing
texts for publication. The entry, made for John Jackman, referred to
manuscripts of two plays by 'Tho: Dekker', these being 'The Wonder of
a Kingdom' and 'a Tragedy called The Noble Spanish Soldier'. A
similar entry was made on 9 December 1633, this time for Nicholas
Vavasour. The play was printed in a quarto version in 1634, probably
by John Beale, on behalf of Vavasour, who initialled the foreword
entitled 'The Printer to The Reader'.
Sources, Authorship and Date
These aspects of the play have attracted more critical attention than
all others combined, reference frequently being made to the following
known facts:
(1) Although the entries in the Stationer's Register refer
unambiguously to Dekker as the author, the title page of the Quarto
states that the play is written by 'S.R.', the only Jacobean
playwright with those initials being Samuel Rowley.
(2) It has been observed, initially by nineteenth century scholar A.
H. Bullen, that three sections of a play by John Day called 'The
Parliament of Bees' are nearly identical to sections of NSS.
Furthermore a further five sections correspond closely to parts of
'The Wonder of a Kingdom' which as is noted above, was registered
alongside NSS in 1931.
(3) In 1601, theatre manager Philip Henslow made part payment for an
anonymous play called 'The Spanish Fig', no text of which survives
under that name.
(4) In April 1624 a poster appeared in Norwich advertising a touring
play, being 'An excellent Comedy called The Spanish Contract' to be
performed by Lady Elizabeth's men, a company with which Dekker is
believed to have had connections.
(5) There is some evidence of confusion in how the play has been
compiled for printing, in particular, a cast list which omits several
significant characters, the late appearance of two pointless
characters (Signor No and Juanna) and the delayed identification of
Alanzo as Captain of the Guard. These have been argued to be evidence
of revision of an earlier work.
(6) Dekker's 'The Welsh Embassador' reworked much of the material in
NSS, albeit in a comedic form. This is generally dated as c1623.
As may be imagined, these facts offer a considerable range of
possibilities as to authorship and provenance of the play. Various
critics, such as Fleay and Bullen, have tried to make sense of all of
them by postulating, largely without evidence, a variety of
permutations of collaboration and revision so as to give all of the
authorship candidates a role in the production of the text we now
have. The most persuasive contribution however, comes from Julia
Gasper who, building on work by R. Koeppel, convincingly identifies
the source of NSS as being Volume V of Jacques-Augueste de Thou's
Latin 'Historiarum Sui Temporis', published in 1620 <1>.
The de Thou volume tells of how Henri IV of France reneged on a
written promise of marriage to Hentiette d'Entragues, by marrying
Marie be Medicis in 1600; both women bore sons by the King, who is
later assassinated. This closely anticipates the marriage plot of NSS
but the critical detail which seals the identification of de Thou as
the source, is his reference to a soldier called Balthazare Sunica
who acted against the King and was clearly, the original of the
character Balthazar in NSS. This evidence demonstrates that the
earliest date for composition of NSS is 1620. Furthermore, due to the
likelihood that NSS predated 'The Welsh Embassador' of 1623/4, a last
possible date for the writing of NSS, can also be deduced and a
composition date of around 1622 can be established with some
certainty.
With respect to the relationship with other plays, any connection
with the 'The Spanish Fig' would seem to be ruled out on the grounds
that it pre-dates the publication of de Thou's Historiarum. In the
case of the later play 'The Spanish Contract', a connection is
possible although any theories that may be advanced little more than
conjecture. One such theory, put forward by Tirthanker Bose <2>, is
that 'the Spanish Contract' is a version of NSS, reworked as a comedy
and thus is an intermediate stage on the road to 'The Welsh
Embassador'.
The more pressing matter, the question of the connection with 'The
Parliament of Bees', is also addressed by Julia Gasper. The crucial
evidence here relates to instances where details, meaningful only in
the context of NSS, have become embedded in the text of 'The
Parliament of Bees'. The most significant example of this occurs in
Scene 1, Line 29 of 'The Parliament of Bees' where a character asks
'Is Master Bee at leisure to speak Spanish / With a Bee of Service?'.
There is no connection between 'The Parliament of Bees' and Spain or
indeed, the Spanish language, so it would seem strong evidence that
NSS was the source for 'The Parliament of Bees' and not the other way
around. This evidence is supplemented by an analysis of NSS, Act 2