16 January, 1596 - Pythagoras

Here's what the Admiral's Men performed at the Rose playhouse on this day, 424 years ago...

Henslowe writes: y^e 16 of Jenewary 1595 ... ne ... R at pethageros ... iij^ll j^s 

In modern English: 16^th January [1596] ... New ... Received at Pythagoras ... £3 and 1 shilling

Today, the Admiral's Men debuted a new play! But the subject matter of this lost play is puzzling. What could possibly be dramatic about the life of the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who is today most famous for the square on the hypotenuse being equal to the sum of the other two squares?

Pythagoras as portrayed in Raphael's
The School of Athens (1509-11)

In his article for the Lost Plays Database, Todd A. Borlik notes that in Elizabethan England, Pythagoras was known for many other things besides geometry and was quite frequently mentioned in the drama of the time. He was sometimes imagined as a magician, and he was particularly famed for the concept of metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls: that is, the notion that upon death, the souls of humans and animals pass into the bodies of other species to live new lives.

Indeed, Pythagoras is mentioned in some of the plays already performed at the Rose. In Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay he is referred to as one of the cabalists "that write of magic spells" (scene 9). And in Dr Faustus, the protagonist, faced with his impending doom, cries "Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis! Were that true, / This soul should fly from me, and I be changed / Unto some brutish beast!" (Act 5). Meanwhile, across the city, in the same year as Pythagoras (approximately), Shakespeare included in his Merchant of Venice the line "Thou almost mak'st me waver in my faith, / To hold opinion with Pythagoras, / That souls of animals infuse themselves / Into the trunks of men."

Borlik thus wonders whether the play may have portrayed Pythagoras as a wizard or a necromancer, rather like the ones in Friar Bacon, Faustus and The Wise Man of West Chester, and might perhaps have created some drama out of the transmigration of souls.

It's not easy to see how one could make a play about metempsychosis, but it has made for amazing cinema: Michelangelo Frammartino's Le Quattro Volte is that very rare thing, a Pythagorean movie.

Whatever happened in the enigmatic play of Pythagoras, its premiere was a great success, with a packed audience arriving to see what the ancient philosopher would do.

FURTHER READING

Pythagoras information

• Todd A. Borlik, "Pythagoras", Lost Plays Database (2013). 
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1028.

Henslowe links

• Transcript of this page of the Diary (from W.W. Greg's 1904 edition)
• Facsimile of this page of the Diary (from the Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project)

Comments?

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