Galatea and Midas: John Lyly

Galatea and Midas are two of John Lyly's most engaging plays. Shortly after his early success with Capaspe and Sappho and Phao in 1583-84, he took up the story of two young women, Galatea (or Gallathea) and Phillida who are dressed up in male clothes by their fathers so that they can avoid the requirement of the god Neptune that every year 'the fairest and chastest virgin in all the country' be sacrificed to a sea-monster. Hiding together in the forest, the two maidens fall in love, each supposing the other to be a young man. This leads to delightful complications that remind us of the mix-ups in Shakespeare's romantic comedies. Galatea has become the subject of considerable feminist critical study in recent years.

Midas (1590) uses mythology in quite a different way, dramatising two stories about King Midas (the golden touch and the ass's ears) in such a way as to fashion a satire of King Philip of Spain (and of any tyrant like him) for colossal greediness and folly. In the wake of the defeat of Philip's Armada fleet and its attempted invasion of England in 1588, this satire was calculated to win the approval of Queen Elizabeth and her court.

The plays are newly presented here by the scholars who have recently edited Campaspe, Sappho and Phao, and Endmion for the Revels series.

Author: George Hunter
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 01/01/2007
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.80d
ISBN13: 9780719078279
ISBN10: 071907827X
BISAC Categories:
- Drama | European | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
- Literary Collections | European | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh

About the Author

George K. Hunter is Professor Emeritus at Yale University

David Bevington is Phyllis Fay Horton Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago