1 July, 1596 - Paradox

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

Henslowe writes: y^e 1 of Junley 1596 ... ne ... R at peth paradox ... xxxxv^s 

In modern English: 1^st July, 1596 ... New ... Received at Paradox ... 45 shillings

The Borromean
Rings, a
paradoxical
object

Today, the Admiral's Men premiered a new play! But this is a puzzling moment in the Diary. The play (now lost) carries the peculiar title of Paradox. And it will never be performed again after today's debut.

Paradox is a strange name for a play. Perhaps it refers to an enigma or difficult puzzle, in which case the play might have been of the same kind as another lost play, Crack Me This Nut, whose title means 'solve this problem for me'.

A paradox could also be an absurd statement. In his article on the play for the Lost Plays Database, David McInnis makes an intriguing observation. A 1607 joke-book entitled Jests to Make You Merry, which contains a "jest" by the playwrights Thomas Dekker and George Wilkins entitled "A Paradox in Praise of Sergeants". Like most jests of this period, it is immensely unfunny. It tells of a spendthrift gentleman in prison who befriends the sergeants watching him and rewards them with a 'paradox': a speech in praise of prisons. He describes prisons as being similar to a private home and as teaching wisdom through experience, and he describes sergeants as "cunning pilots that in all storms bring men safely to these havens of peace and contemplation". How amusing.

The book is too late to be a source for the play, but this jest makes reference to drama throughout (the reprobate gentleman is referred to as a "furious Tamburlaine" at one point) and was written by two playwrights, so it may have some distant connection with the theatre.

But whatever was seen on the Rose stage today, its reception may have been disastrous. Although the promise of a new play seems to have drawn a fairly large audience, but the company will never stage Paradox again. Perhaps it was less funny than a jest-book.

FURTHER READING

Paradox information

• David McInnis, "Paradox", Lost Plays Database (2011), accessed June 2020. 
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1038.

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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