Wench, to pass away the time in glee,
Guenthian, sit thee down with me
And let our lips and voices meet
In a merry country song. -Scene 2

Ambitious rebel, knowest thou what I am,
How great, how famous, and how fortunate?
And darest thou carry arms against me here,
Even when thou shouldst do reverence at my feet? -Scene 5

What foolish Edward, darest thou endanger thyself to travel these mountains? And art thou so foolish hardy as to combat with the Prince of Wales? -Scene 13

Prince Lluellen engages in fatal combat while pressing the sovereignty of Wales from his Snowdonian bastion.

The aim of this edition is to provide a retroform, a few unriddles in the text, modern spelling and punctuation, and an introduction for readers who are not familiar with the play.

Peele's Edward I presents to us a king, determined to unite the people of his kingdom, who opposes the ethnic and regional partisanship of Wales and Scotland. Peele presents an elemental case of a leader who feels deep emotions of duty and ambition, generosity and anger, gratitude and grief, while struggling against adverse forces along the classic lines of heroic drama.

Editor, George Kelsey Dreher, provides a retroform of Peele's King Edward The First, solving several chronological and contextual riddles through a close examination of the text that he discusses in the 43 page introduction covering Chronicle History Plays, Sources, Structure, Theme, Characterization, and Diction.

This hardcover edition features 10 medieval illustrations from the British Library, the Public Records Office, Eton College, and the Beinecke Rare Book Collection in Edward I; plus art of Raphael, Michelangelo, Salviati, Chapron, Rembrandt, Berton, Beckmann, Picasso, and Chagall in David and Bethsabe.

Bethsabe, with her maid, bathing over a spring. She sings, and David sits above, viewing her.

SONG
Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,
Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair.
Shine, sun. Burn, fire. Breathe, air, and ease me.
Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me.
Shadow (my sweet nurse), keep me from burning,
Make not my glad cause cause of mourning.
Let not my beauty's fire
Enflame unstaid desire
Nor pierce any bright eye
That wandreth slightly.

DAVID ... Fairer than Isaac's lover at the well,
Brighter than inside bark of a new hewn cedar,
Sweeter than flames of fine, perfumed myrrh,
And comelier than the silver clouds that dance
On Zephyr's wings before the King of heaven.

(David sends a servant to fetch Bethsabe.)

"As for our harps we hanged them up upon the trees." -Psalms
Dire personal experiences have sometimes choked the creativity of poets and other sorts of artists. Peele was temporarily feeling so discouraged that he was ready even to quit poetry, the source of his vitality and the outlet of his genius. As artists in several media have done throughout the centuries, Peele turned to the tangled, near-tragic and elementally human story told in II Samuel 1-19. After finishing this composition, Peele was going to sing again. He was going to write one of the finest among his poems, for the 37th anniversary of the Queen's reign.

What is the result when a gifted independent writer bypasses tradition and tells a vivid tale from the Bible in his own way? George Peele's play David and Bethsabe, written late in the 16th Century, is one exhibit for the answer. He chose to work with one of the most engaging human interest stories in ancient literature. It afforded him a means to treat passionate human relations and, at the same time, cosmic limits on human action.

Here are a few selections, plus parallel passages showing Bible sources, and a brief discussion of Peele's viewpoint, emotional involvement, and style. Topics include date of composition, Bethsabe's song, David's love speeches, Urias' tension with Absolon, David's confession of guilt, David's release from guilt, and David's grief personally attested by the playwright.

With insert David and Bethsabe (Samples) Dreher juxtaposes Peele's verse with parallel Bible passages in the 1525 translation by Miles Coverdale, suggesting that Peele worked primarily from the Latin and used as sources the Psalms as well as II Samuel. Dreher offers a 35 page commentary.

George Peele was evidently one of the principal writers of chronicle history plays in the movement which rose to Shakespeare's One and Two Henry IV, and Henry V. He joined the group fellow Oxonian playwrights living just outside London, precursors of Shakespeare, known as the "university wits" which included Marlowe, Nashe, Lyly, and Greene, who were experimental with poetry in various meters. In 1587 Thomas Nashe could call him, "The chief supporter of pleasance now living, the Atlas of poetry, and primum verborum artifex (most excellent artist of words)," and one who "goeth a step beyond all that write." In 1592 Robert Greene considered him "no less deserving" than Marlowe or Nashe, "in some things rarer, in nothing inferior." His generation looked on him as a literary giant though the twenty years following his death would cast a shadow on his genius.

Peele's repertoire included such forms of literature as history, melodrama, pastoral, tragedy, folk, play, and pageant. His varied interests accented a desire not to be narrowly classified and a worry about poverty. While attending Oxford, Peele launched his diverse literary career and won praise as a translator of a play by Euripides. Here he also wrote the first of his surviving works, The Tale of Troy (published 1589), a 485-line verse epitome of the Illiad.

Peele developed his blank, or unrhymed, verse which greatly contributed to the tone of idyllic romance that later came to characterize comedy, demonstrated most in his works The Old Wives Tale (1595) and The Araygnement of Paris (1584). Edward I (1593) and The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe are two of only four dramtic works that certinly are the products of Peele's wit.

KING EDWARD I, w/insert DAVID & BETHSABE (SAMPLES)

Storyline is the 13th century conflict of Welsh Prince Lluellen and Longshanks, King of England. A retroform edited by George K. Dreher, solving several riddles in the text of the 16th century chronicle history play by English playwright George Peele, a contemporary of Shakespeare and one of the "university wits" (with Lyly, Greene, Nashe, and Marlowe). Includes samples from another Peele play, DAVID & BETHSABE. Also edited, with comment by George K. Dreher. Copiously illustrated. New hard cover edition (c) 1999, ISBN 0-9601000-7-5. Free international surface shipping. Price to the UK is about £13.50 delivered surface.

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KING EDWARD I, w/insert DAVID & BETHSABE (SAMPLES)

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KING EDWARD I, w/insert DAVID & BETHSABE (SAMPLES)

Storyline is the 13th century conflict of Welsh Prince Lluellen and Longshanks, King of England. A retroform edited by George K. Dreher, solving several riddles in the text of the 16th century chronicle history play by English playwright George Peele, a contemporary of Shakespeare and one of the "university wits" (with Lyly, Greene, Nashe, and Marlowe). Includes samples from another Peele play, DAVID & BETHSABE. Also edited, with comment by George K. Dreher. Copiously illustrated. New hard cover edition (c) 1999, ISBN 0-9601000-7-5. Free international surface shipping. Price to the UK is about £13.50 delivered surface.

Price: $19.50 USD Tax: % NA

Shipping: $Free

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KING EDWARD I, w/insert DAVID & BETHSABE (SAMPLES)

International and domestic air shipment. Price to the UK is about £19.50 delivered by air.

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KING EDWARD I, w/insert DAVID & BETHSABE (SAMPLES)

Storyline is the 13th century conflict of Welsh Prince Lluellen and Longshanks, King of England. A retroform edited by George K. Dreher, solving several riddles in the text of the 16th century chronicle history play by English playwright George Peele, a contemporary of Shakespeare and one of the "university wits" (with Lyly, Greene, Nashe, and Marlowe). Includes samples from another Peele play, DAVID & BETHSABE. Also edited, with comment by George K. Dreher. Copiously illustrated. New hard cover edition (c) 1999, ISBN 0-9601000-7-5. Free international surface shipping. Price to the UK is about £13.50 delivered surface.

Price: $19.50 USD Tax: % NA

Shipping: $Free

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KING EDWARD I, w/insert DAVID & BETHSABE (SAMPLES)

International and domestic air shipment. Price to the UK is about £19.50 delivered by air.

Price: $19.50 USD Tax: % NA

Shipping: $8.50

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