In collaboration with Thomas Dekker
The Bloody Banquet was not entered into the Stationers’ Register, but in August 1639 the play was listed as the property of William Beeston and his acting troupe was permitted to perform it. Beeston was an actor and theatre manager, who mostly worked during the Caroline era. He was the son of the well-known theatre impresario Christopher Beeston, who established the Cockpit theatre in 1616. The Bloody Banquet was first published in quarto in 1639 by Thomas Cotes — a prominent London printer during the period — with the work attributed to ‘T.D’ on the title page. During the 17th century, Thomas Dekker was suggested as the author of the play and in the 19th century Thomas Drue was posited as the possible playwright despite there being little besides his initials to support the idea of his authorship. In 1925, E. H. C. Oliphant argued the play was a collaboration between Dekker and Middleton and this claim was later supported by both David Lake (The Canon of Thomas Middleton Plays, Cambridge University Press, 1975) and Macdonald P Jackson (Editing, Attribution Studies, and ‘Literature Online: A New Resource for Research in Renaissance’, Research Opportunities in Renaissance Drama, Vol. 37). It has been asserted that the work was written in the first decade of the 17th century, but that significant revisions were made to it before it was published in 1639.
The tragedy opens with the King of Lydia being usurped by the King of Cilicia. The new ruler is known as the Tyrant; he has a beautiful young wife whom he keeps imprisoned and under constant supervision. Zenarchus, the Tyrant’s son, manages to persuade his father to allow the old King’s son Tymethes, to remain at court, which pleases the Tyrant’s daughter, who is in love with the former prince. There is a plot involving the old King and his allies attempting to exact revenge on the Tyrant, while the New Queen and Tymethes become embroiled in a liaison, which leads to the horrendous and suitably named bloody banquet of the title. In Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works (ed Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, Oxford University Press, 2010) Julia Gasper and Gary Taylor highlight Middleton and Dekker’s repurposing of Greek myths about cannibalism. An obvious source is Seneca’s tragedy Thyestes; the titular character is deceived into consuming his own children. Ovid’s telling of the legend of Philomela, an important inspiration for Shakespeare’s own cannibalism tragedy — Titus Andronicus — is another example of the ‘banquet myth’. (Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works, ed Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, OUP, 2010, p637).
There were subtle changes made by Renaissance dramatists to the classical myths, often due to the differences between Christian and classical culture. The critics outline a couple of significant alterations: one is the change from male to female in regards to the banqueter, revealing interesting medieval ideas about gender and the ‘role of the female’ ( p639). However, what is striking in The Bloody Banquet is the nuanced and somewhat sympathetic depiction of the young Queen. Many of the central characters are unscrupulous and revolting, but the Queen’s actions — infidelity and the murder of her lover after asking him to kneel to pray — are horrific by 17th century moral standards, and yet Middleton and Dekker choose not to solely condemn the Queen as a figure of unrepentant evil. As Gasper argues, the playwrights show the abhorrent treatment of the new Queen by her ‘Tyrant’ husband, and portray her actions as attempts of self-preservation. They refuse to ‘confine moral blame to the woman’ and also highlight the ‘pressures and constraints which can lead men or women to resort to duplicity’( p640).