ABSTRACT
Marlowe’s influence upon the dramatic work of George Peele has frequently been noted in relation to Peele’s The Battle o f Alcazar. lrrhe play is often grouped with those plays designated “The Sons of Tamburlaine”, which were written in imitation of Marlowe’s first theatrical smash hit. 2In this paper I want to discuss in greater detail the specific nature of the relationship between Marlowe’s Tamburlaine and those plays which sought to imitate it, beginning with David and Bethsabe, another of Peele’s plays which also bears traces of Marlovian influence. Whilst critics such as G.K. Hunter and David Bevington have noted this connection, Peele’s biblical play continues to be overlooked in this context, as criticism to date has tended to focus upon the play’s anomalous position within Peele’s body of dramatic works and amongst the work of his contemporaries. aMy approach to David and Bethsabe and the biblical drama from the period c.1590 to c.1602 is influenced by recent work in repertory studies by Scott McMillin and Sally Beth MacLean in their seminal study The Queen’s Men and their plays in which they advocate a fresh approach to Elizabethan drama by shifting the focus away from the dramatist and onto the theatre companies and their repertories. 4I therefore devote some discussion to the place of biblical drama in the repertories of the theatre companies which performed at the Rose and Fortune theatres, so that they are considered in terms of their place within a commercial enterprise and not simply as an isolated, disparate group. Recently Roslyn Knutson, Susan Cerasano and John H. Astington have suggested that later Elizabethan biblical plays formed part of a wider repertorial policy, whereby companies such as the Admiral’s Men, for example, could build on the success of existing plays in their repertory such as Tamburlaine, The Jew o f Malta and Doctor Faustus, since many of these plays, including David and Bethsabe, recycle Marlovian themes and motifs such as exotic locations, charismatic protagonists and stage spectacle. They also provide comparable roles for their leading actor Edward Alleyn, whose celebrity status had been confirmed by his performances in the roles of Tamburlaine, Barabas and Faustus. My argument will, therefore, build on the work of Knutson and Cerasano, who have both argued that Elizabethan theatre
1 See for example, Peter Berek, ‘ Tamburlaine’s Weak Sons: Imitation as Interpretation Before 1593’ in Renaissance Drama, 13 (1982), 55-82.
