18 December, 1596 - Nebuchadnezzar

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

Henslowe writes: y^e 19 of desembȝ 1596 ... ne ... R at nabucadonizer ... xxx^s 

In modern English: [18^th] December, 1596 ... New ... Received at Nebuchadnezzar ... 30 shillings

Today, the Admiral's Men premiered a new play, the third in as many weeks. Nebuchadnezzar is lost, but its title tells us that it told a story from the Bible about the Babylonian king and how the prophet Daniel interpreted his dreams. Let's explore what such a play might have looked like..

The tale of Nebuchadnezzar

In chapters 1-4 of the Book of Daniel, we learn of King Nebuchadnezzar, who conquers Jerusalem and captures high-born young Jewish men to take back to Babylon, some of whom are to be trained in the mystical knowledge of the Chaldeans. They include the pious Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Hazariah. 

One night, Nebuchadnezzar is troubled by a strange dream, but when he wakes he cannot remember it. He calls the wise men of Babylon to him and tells them, "if ye will not make known unto me the dream, with the interpretation thereof, ye shall be cut into pieces, and your houses shall be made a dunghill" (2.5). They are unable to do so, and so Nebuchadnezzar orders the deaths of every so-called wise man in Babylon. Daniel prays for salvation and that night a miracle happens: God reveals to him the nature of Nebuchadnezzar's dream. 

Nebuchadnezzar's dream
of the statue, from
Speculum Humanae
Salvationis, a 15th-
century French manuscript

Daniel helps Nebuchadnezzar recall his dream, in which a statue composed from different metals was smashed by a stone that then became a mountain. Daniel explains that the dream describes the supremacy of the kingdom of God's heaven over earthly kingdoms such as Nebuchadnezzar's. The astonished and humbled king acknowledges God's power and awards Daniel a governership. 

Despite what he has learned, Nebuchadnezzar's next act is to build a gigantic golden idol and order that "whoso falleth not down and worshippeth shall the same hour be cast into the midst of a burning fiery furnace" (3.6). The people of Babylon obediently worship the idol, but Hananiah, Mishael and Hazariah refuse. Nebuchadnezzar orders them thrown into the furnace, but another miracle occurs: the fire does not harm them. Nebuchadnezzar once again acknowledges the power of God and makes the three men governors. 

Nebuchadnezzar's dream
of the tree, from
Speculum Humanae
Salvationis, a 15th-
century French manuscript

In the final part of the story, Nebuchadnezzar has another strange dream, this time about the chopping down of a great tree. Daniel interprets it to mean that Nebuchadnezzar risks being driven from power until he accepts that kingly power is awarded only at the mercy of God, who "giveth it to whomsoever he will" (4.25). But the king doesn't listen, because a year later, he boasts of his achievements in building up the resplendent city of Babylon. A voice from the sky announces, "Thy kingdom is departed from thee" (4.31) and Nebuchadnezzar finds himself thrown from power; he ends up living in the wilderness and eating grass like an oxen. When he acknowledges God's power, his kingdom is restored to him. 

Chapter 4 of the Book of Daniel thus ends with the words "Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth" (4.37). 

Nebuchadnezzar on stage

The Biblical narrative seems a solid bedrock for a play; it has a clear beginning, middle and end, opening with Nebuchadnezzar's attack on the Holy city and closing with his humility and repentance. In an essay on the Biblical plays recorded in Henslowe's Diary, Paul Whitfield White proposes that Nebuchadnezzar could have been played as a stage tyrant reminiscent of Tamburlaine, that Daniel would be the hero, and that the golden idol and the fiery furnace provides opportunities for visual spectacle. 

Daniel in the Lions' Den by Rubens (1615)

White proposes that the play might also have included the sequence from later in the Book of Daniel in which the prophet is condemned to be thrown into the lions' den and is saved when God closes their mouths. Nebuchadnezzar is not in fact part of that story, but it is hard to imagine any self-respecting playwright ignoring such an opportunity for spectacle, and White notes the presence in Henslowe's inventory of props of various lion heads and lion skins, in addition to "Daniel's gown" in a list of costumes.

A disappointment

All of this may sound theatrically exciting, but London's theatregoers do not seem to have been enticed by the prospect of a play about Nebuchadnezzar. The theatre is only about half full, a devastating result for a premiere, indeed, in her book on the Rose documents, Carol Chillington Rutter observes that this is the worst opening performance of any Rose play. The Admiral's Men will need to hope for good word of mouth to turn this disappointment around.

What's next?

There will be no blog entry tomorrow because 19 December was a Sunday in 1596 and the players did not perform. Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! will thus return on the 20th for the week leading up to Christmas!

FURTHER READING

Nebuchadnezzar information

• The Bible: Authorized King James Version with Apocrypha (Oxford University Press, 1997)
• Carol Chillington Rutter, Documents of the Rose Playhouse (Manchester University Press, 1984), 107
• David McInnis, "Nebuchadnezzar", Lost Plays Database (2011), accessed December 2020
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1050
• Paul Whitfield White, "'Histories out of the scriptures': Biblical Drama in the Repertory of the Admiral's Men, 1594-1603", in Loss and the Literary Culture of Shakespeare's Time, ed. by Roslyn L. Knutson, David McInnis and Matthew Steggle (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 191-214

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?

Did I make a mistake? Do you have a question? Have you anything to add? Please post a comment below!