Henslowe writes: R at cossmo the 23 of Jenewarye 1593 ... xxxs
In modern English: Received at Cosmo, 23rd January, 1593 ... 30 shillings
Woodcut illustrating cuckoldry.
Today, Lord Strange's Men revived again their lost play The Comedy of Cosmo. This is probably an alternative title for The Jealous Comedy which had premiered recently. If so, it was likely an Italian-style comedy about the perennially popular subject of cuckolds. You can learn more about The Jealous Comedy in the entry for 5th January, and about Cosmo in the entry for 11th January.
Cosmo (and The Jealous Comedy) has until now received above average box office, but today's results shows it descending into the realms of the average.
Henslowe writes: R at the comodey of cosmo the 12 of Jenewary 1593 ... xxxxvijs
In modern English: Received at The Comedy of Cosmo, 11th January, 1593 ... 47 shillings.
Henslowe seems to have muddled his dates again, skipping the 11th. His dates make more sense if we assume that he's a day out of sync until the end of the week, so that's what I'll do.
Cosimo de Medici. He had nothing to do
with this play, but his name was Cosimo, so he gets his picture here anyway!
Anyway, today Lord Strange's Men performed a play that we haven't seen them perform before. The Comedy of Cosmo is now lost and we can't say much about it except that it was presumably Italian in style, since Cosmo sounds like a variant on the Italian name Cosimo.
So, what was The Comedy of Cosmo? Well, most scholars think it was probably just an alternate title for The Jealous Comedy, which the company had premiered last week. The logic is that we've never heard of Cosmo before, and yet Henslowe doesn't describe it as "new". And just as The Jealous Comedy sounds like the title of an Italian-style comedy, so too does this one. So, either the company was reviving a long-unused play, or else the main character in The Jealous Comedy was called Cosimo, and Henslowe began thinking of the play via his name.
If Cosmo was indeed the same play as The Jealous Comedy, that means it made a little more box office than it did last week; the play may not initially have done as well as other premieres, but its popularity was rising rather than falling.
FURTHER READING
Comedy of Cosmo information
Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entries 945 and 946.
Henslowe writes: ne ... R at the gelyous comodey the 5 of Jenewary 1592 ... xxxxiiijs
In modern English: New. Received at The Jealous Comedy, 5th January, 1593 ... 44 shillings
Today was a big day for Lord Strange's Men, because they premiered their first new play of the season: The Jealous Comedy! Unfortunately, this play is now lost, but its title enables us to speculate as to its content.
Woodcut illustrating cuckoldry.
It's a fair guess that the jealousy of the title was sexual jealousy, an endlessly popular topic in the Renaissance. Possessive husbands, wayward wives, devious seducers and hapless cuckolds were stock figures in hundreds of comedies. They are all illustrated in the wonderful woodcut on the right, in which an overtly demonic seducer flirts with a wife at her door, while a giant alerts the husband at the window by blowing a horn to say 'Look out!' The house is decorated with antlers, the traditional mark of the cuckold, and the husband himself is growing little horns on his head.
It's possible that the play was set in Italy, because Italian comedy was an especially popular source for such tales. Indeed, the Italians still do this stuff better than anyone else, as can be seen in this clip from Divorce, Italian Style(1961):
But despite the popularity of its subject matter, two things indicate that The Jealous Comedy failed to delight the Rose audience. First, it received remarkably low box office for a new play. This is strange, because new plays almost always resulted in the Rose being packed with theatregoers; instead, today's play received only 44 shillings compared to the usual 60-70.
Second, the company will never perform this play again. Was it received so badly that they abandoned it? Possibly not. Later this week we'll encounter a play called Cosmo, which may be an alternate title for The Jealous Comedy. Hold that thought.
This weak debut is interesting because The Jealous Comedy does seem an outlier among the usual fare of the Rose. Most of the repertory consisted of violent dramas about war and horror, and even the comedies were of an old-fashioned English morality type. An Italian-style sex comedy may have felt out of place, since only Bindo and Ricciardowas similar. Conceivably, the company was trying to diversify their repertory by experimenting with something a little different. They may have regretted it, though.
FURTHER READING
Jealous Comedy information
Martin Wiggins, British Drama, 1533-1642: A Catalogue, vol. 3 (Oxford University Press, 2013), entry 945.
