| This is a modern spelling edition, prepared in accordance with the editorial guidelines for the Revels series of plays, of the anonymous Sir Clyomon and Clamydes, printed in 1599 by Thomas Creede and acted by the Queen's Men. There are six generally known copies of the 1599 quarto. The play has previously been published in three nineteenth century editions (1869, 1883, and 1888), an old spelling edition (1968), and in the Tudor Facsimile and Malone Society series (both 1913).;This edition offers a fresh textual analysis and collation, and a comprehensive commentary which glosses vocabulary, classical allusions, and circumlocutions, and provides information on staging possibilities, Elizabethan chivalric conduct, and alternative interpretations of substantively obscure lines. Appendices contain a list of proverbs, a casting analysis, running-title and orthographic analyses, the text and music for Lord Vaux's "No pleasure without some paine" (1576) which is paraphrased in the play, and provenance and location histories of the known quarto copies.;The introduction assesses the principal arguments for the date of the play's composition, highlighting those aspects of the play which suggest the 1570s while acknowledging that Sir Clyomon and Clamydes may have been written as late as the 1580s or 90s. The history of authorship ascription is reviewed and an attempt is made to isolate characteristics of the play that distinguish its author from the candidates to whom it has been historically attributed. The introduction also addresses the play's language, versification, and staging, and provides a comprehensive summary of the play's source and its dramatic adaptation.;The introduction discusses Sir Clyomon and Clamydes' literary value. It is one of a few surviving plays from a flourishing period of romantic and heroic drama, and a engaging exemplar of the romance idiom in English vernacular drama. In its structure, characterizations, and motifs, there are distinct foreshadowings of the direction the idiom was to take, especially in the romantic comedies and romances of Shakespeare. In and of itself, the playwright's craftsmanship, in transforming the source and in creating such characters as Neronis and Subtle Shift, recommends Sir Clyomon and Clamydes to the attention of scholars and interested readers. |
