A Knack to Know a Knave

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A Knack to Know a Knave (German roughly: "The art of knowing a crook") is a play from 1592, which is closely linked to the then theater stars Edward Alleyn and William Kempe . The play is a comedic morality (story with a moral message), which was tailored to the respective talents of these two actors and is only known today through a text that was reconstructed from memory. The author is unknown, but one suspects the playwright Robert Greene behind it, possibly the author is George Peele or Thomas Nashe . For some time now, literary studies have also assumed that Shakespeare may be the author. The play gives an insight into the nature of Elizabethan theater in William Shakespeare's time and the interplay between stage text and improvisational comedy .

The title page of A Knack to Know a Knave in the quarto published in 1594

Performance and publication

A Knack to Know a Knave first appeared as a mention in the diaries of theater director Philip Henslowe , after which the play was premiered on June 10, 1592 by the Lord Strange's Men at the Rose Theater . The other entries list the daily income of 3 pounds and 12 shillings , which allows conclusions to be drawn about the great success that evening. It is also documented there that the play was staged several times in that year and the following year.

The title page of the 1594 edition describes it as "a most pleasant and merry new comedy" and highlights Kemp's role as "Kemp's applauded Merrimentes of the Men of Gotham" of the men of Gotham ”), announced with the direction:“ Enter mad men of Goteham, to wit, a Miller, a Cobler and a Smith ”(“ There come in, crazy men from Goteham, namely a miller, a shoemaker and a blacksmith "). The lack of other stage directions and the brevity of the piece compared with other contemporary stage texts also indicate that the quarto, published in 1594, is not a complete performance text .

The text is full of allusions to the work of many contemporary playwrights, such as Robert Greene, Christopher Marlowe , Thomas Lodge and George Peele. There are word-for-word similarities between this text and that of The Taming of the Shrew , one of Shakespeare's first plays, which also helped to narrow down his work, which appeared only a short time later, more precisely. In Robert Greene's treatise Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit of 1592, which looks at his fellow writers satirically , there are notes that should suggest that Greene was bothered by the fact that some passages from A Knack to Know a Knave were rewritten by the rising Shakespeare should; whether this was so remains a matter of dispute.

action

The play takes place in the 10th century and tells the story of the four sons of the terminally ill bailiff from Hexham . On the deathbed, the old man tells his sons on their way: “Live to yourselves while you have time to live / Get what you can, but see you nothing give.” (“Take care of yourself for your life. Take what you can, but see that you give nothing. ”) Each of the sons then pursued his rip-offs (“ Knavery ”) in his own way, but in the end the righteousness exposed their rascals and resulted in a series of painful punishments.

A parallel narrative thread deals with the Anglo-Saxon King of England, Edgar . He desires Alfrida, Osrick's daughter. He sends Ethenwald, the Earl of Cornwall , to promote the beauty for him. At this point it is emphasized that the king is not without fault: "sins, like swarms, remain in thee" ("Sins, like swarms, remain in you"). Towards the end, a moral message becomes recognizable on both levels. Many of the comedic moments of the piece were presumably freely improvised by Kempe and are therefore not recorded. The title page mentions the appearance of the [Wise] Men of Gotham , a town in Northamptonshire . This was a Tudor-era popular term for deceitful tax avoidance, stemming from a 1540 scrapbook that told how an idiocy faked by men from Goteham successfully deterred a royal visit that would have required high local spending.

literature

  • A knack to know a knave ; 1594 (Dyce Cllection to S. Kensington), reproduced as a facsimile, 1911, online at archive.org

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tom Rutter: Merchants of Venice in a Knack to Know an Honest Man , published online in the scientific journal Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England , year 2006, issue 19
  2. ↑ a b c Hanspeter Born (Ed.): Why Greene was Angry at Shakespeare . Journal: Medieval and Renaissance Drama , Issue 25, 2012, pp. 133-173 (English, online ).
  3. ↑ Hanspeter Born: The rare wit and the rude groom: the authorship of A knack to know a knave, in relation to Greene, Nashe & Shakespeare , Francke Verlag, Bern 1971
  4. ↑ Philip Hensowe, RA Foakes, RT Rickert: Henslowe's diary , 2nd Edition; Cambridge University Press 2002, ISBN 0521524024
  5. ^ Henslowe-Alleyn: Digital Photographs . Retrieved October 21, 2019.
  6. ↑ a b William Kemp: A knack to know a knave ; Date of first known edition, 1594 (Dyce Cllection to S. Kensington), reproduced in facsimile, 1911, online at archive.org
  7. ↑ Tom Rutter: Shakespeare and the Admiral's Men: reading across repertories on the London stage, 1594-1600 , Cambridge, United Kingdom, ISBN 1107077435 online
  8. ↑ BBC - Legacies - Myths and Legends - England - Nottingham - Wise men of Gotham - Article on page 1 . Retrieved October 22, 2019.