Plays, playscripts

Galatea and midas

John Lyly

by Edited by George Hunter and David Bevington

Description

Galatea and Midas are two of John Lyly's most engaging plays. Lyly took up the story of two young women, Galatea (or Gallathea) and Phillida who are dressed up in male clothes by their fathers so that they can avoid the requirement of the god Neptune that every year 'the fairest and chastest virgin in all the country' be sacrificed to a sea-monster. Hiding together in the forest, the two maidens fall in love, each supposing the other to be a young man. Galatea has become the subject of considerable feminist critical study in recent years. Midas (1590) uses mythology in quite a different way, dramatising two stories about King Midas in such a way as to fashion a satire of King Philip of Spain (and of any tyrant like him) for colossal greediness and folly. In the wake of the defeat of Philip's Armada fleet and its attempted invasion of England in 1588, this satire was calculated to win the approval of Queen Elizabeth and her court.

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Bibliographic Information

  • Publisher Manchester University Press
  • Publication Date January 2007
  • Orginal LanguageEnglish
  • ISBN/Identifier 9780719078279 / 071907827X
  • Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
  • FormatPaperback
  • Pages282
  • ReadershipProfessional and scholarly
  • Publish StatusPublished
  • Dimensions240x138 mm

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