4 December, 1596 - Vortigern

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

Henslowe writes: y^e 4 of desembȝ 1596 ... ne ... R at valteger ... l^s 

In modern English: 4^th December, 1596 ... New ... Received at Vortigern ... 50 shillings

Today, at long last, the Admiral's Men premiered a new play! It's been a very long time since we have seen anything new at the Rose, and the unimpressive box office since the re-opening in October may have been caused in part by this lack of novelty in the company's output. Now, finally, the players are offering their audience something different! 

Henslowe calls today's play Valteger, but this is probably his idiosyncratic rendering of Vortigern, a mythical king of the Britons whose power-hungry machinations brought about his own doom and the loss of part of Britain to the Anglo-Saxons. The play is lost, but information from various sources allows us to imagine the story it told. 

Who was Vortigern?

Vortigern, a detail
from a manuscript
of the Roman de Brut
by Wace

It is not known whether Vortigern was a real person. His story emerges out of the murky period following the withdrawal of the Roman army from Britain and the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. It can be found in some of the legendary histories of Britain, the best known being the 12th-century History of the British Kings by Geoffrey of Monmouth. 

The typical pattern of the legend is that Vortigern schemes his way to the British throne by having the pious king Constantius assassinated and by forcing Constantius's brothers to flee (the brothers are Aurelius and Uther Pendragon, the latter being the future father of King Arthur). Vortigern takes the crown. 

But a war is ongoing with the Picts and Scots, and Vortigern makes a fatal error. To defeat them, he calls upon the Saxon warlords Hengist and Horsa, who to cross the sea from Germany to Britain to aid him.  But the Saxons do not leave afterward, and Hengist uses his daughter Rowena (or Roxena) to seduce and manipulate Vortigern. 

In addition, the Saxons use trickery. In one legend, Vortigern allows them to keep only as much land in Britain as they can cover with a leather hide, but the Saxons cut the hide into narrow thongs and encircle a huge amount of land. There, they found the the kingdom of Kent, setting in motion events that will lead to further Anglo-Saxon migration to Britain and, ultimately, the creation of England.

Vortigern (right) meets young Merlin.
From a 13th-century manuscript of
Geoffrey of Monmouth's The
Prophecies of Merlin. Note the
dragons underneath them...

Vortigern is now unpopular with the Britons, and retreats into Wales. He tries to build a new fortress there, but it keeps collapsing. He is told that the tower will only stand if he sprinkles onto the ground the blood of a boy without a father.  Vortigern tracks down such a boy; in some versions of the legend, the boy is the young Merlin the magician. The boy identifies the problem: there are two dragons, one red, one white, fighting underground, beneath the tower. The red dragon symbolizes the Britons, the white the Saxons. 

Vortigern in his burning
castle. From a 14th-century
manuscript of Peter of
Langtoft's Chronicle of England.  

The Saxons follow Vortigern to Wales and he is ultimately killed; in some versions of the legend when fire from heaven blasts his castle and burns it to the ground. 

Such is the legend of Vortigern. Its purpose seems to be to provide someone to blame for the Anglo-Saxon dominance over the Britons in England. Vortigern's blinkered ambition results in a great loss for his people. 

What was the play like?

We cannot know exactly which elements of the Vortigern legends appeared in the play at the Rose, but we can speculate as there are two surviving plays about him from, albeit from a few decades later. 

Hengist and Horsa arriving in 
Britain. From Richard Verstegan's
A Resitution of Decayed
Intelligence (1605)

Thomas Middleton's Hengist, King of Kent (c.1620) tells the story of Vortigern's usurpation of the throne and of the arrival of Hengist and Horsa. It dramatizes the legend of the leather strips (see above). Vortigern falls for Hengist's daughter, called Roxena in this play, and spurns his own queen, Castiza. The Britons do not like this and rebel, replacing Vortigern with his son, Vortiner. But Roxena assassinates Vortiner. Vortigern returns to power, but on condition that he get rid of the Saxons. Instead, Hengist takes Vortiger prisoner and forces him to cede eastern Britain to the Saxons, thus becoming King of Kent. Vortigern escapes to Wales, whereupon Aurelius and Uther return. Vortiger's castle burns, as per tradition, and the play builds toward a fight between Vortiger and Horsus in which they kill one another, while Roxena dies in the flames. Afterward, Aurelius and Uther force the Saxons to convert to Christianity. 

Vortigern finds the dragons fighting beneath
the unstable tower. From a 15th-century
manuscript at Lambeth Palace Library.

William Rowley's The Birth of Merlin (1622) at first glance appears to be a sequel to Hengist because Aurelius is now King of Britain and at war with the Saxons.  However, the play is better thought of as an analogue, because Vortigern is still alive in Wales, albeit as a minor character. The play dramatizes the legend of the collapsing tower, Merlin, and the dragons. Vortigern ultimately dies in his burning castle, but this takes place offstage, almost as an afterthought. The play concludes with Merlin showing Uther a vision of Britain's future, in which his son Arthur will have many triumphs, but the Saxons will gradually take over. 

Both of these plays follow tradition in portraying Vortigern as a tragic but overambitious villain. We can thus speculate that the play at the Rose did something similar (and indeed that Middleton and Rowley might have borrowed elements from this lost play). Paul Whitfield White has identified a couple of clues in Henslowe's 1598 inventories: the inventory of costumes lists a "Merlin gown and cape" and the inventory of props lists a "chain" (possibly meaning a pair) of "dragons".

Performing Vortigern

While we cannot be certain of the plot, is is easy to speculate that Edward Alleyn took the role of Vortigern and gave the Briton king some tragic glamour. And there are some scraps of information about how Vortigern might have appeared onstage. Last week, Henslowe recorded in his accounts the purchasing of "copper lace and fringe", and later, "lace and other things" for Vortigern. And a couple of years from now, Henslowe will list in his inventory of costumes "one pair of hose and a jerkin for Vortigern", and a few days later, "one Vortimer suit" and a "Vortiger robe of rich taffeta". 

Clearly, Alleyn wore a resplendent costume, and from this list we also learn that young Vortimer also appeared in the play. 

The rewards of novelty

This is the first time in nearly 6 months that a new play has appeared at the Rose, the last one being the ill-fated Tinker of Totnes on 24 July. Today's box office, though not representing a full house, is still much more impressive than the most other performances this season. The Admiral's Men must feel as though they are back in business as a company that is moving forward instead of stagnating. 

What's next?

For reasons unknown, there are no performances recorded at the Rose for the next two days. Henslowe's Diary ... as a Blog! will thus return on the 7th. See you then!

FURTHER READING

Vortigern information

• Andrew Gurr, Shakespeare's Opposites: The Admiral's Company, 1594-1625 (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 233.
• Robert W. Vermaat, Vortigern Studies (1999-2010).
• Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 1048.
• Paul Whitfield White, "The Admiral's Lost Arthurian Plays," in Lost Plays in Shakespeare's England, edited by David McInnis and Matthew Steggle (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 151-3.
• Roslyn L. Knutson, "Vortigern", Lost Plays Database (2019), accessed September 2020. 

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!