Eastward Hoe
is an early Jacobean-era stage play written by George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston.
The play was first performed at the Blackfriars Theatre by a company of boy actors known as the Children of the Queen's Revels in early August 1605,[1] and it was printed in September the same year.
also references, even parodies, popular plays performed by adult companies such as The Spanish Tragedy, Tamburlaine and Hamlet.
[4] William Touchstone, a London goldsmith, chastises his apprentice Francis "Frank" Quicksilver for his laziness and prodigality.
Touchstone's second daughter, Gertrude, is engaged to the fraudulent Sir Petronel Flash, a knight who possesses a title but is bankrupt.
Unlike her sister, Gertrude is vain and lascivious, preoccupied with opulent fashion and advancing her social status by marrying Petronel.
The morning after Gertude and Petronel's costly wedding, Touchstone breaks Quicksilver's apprenticeship and dismisses him for his shameful gluttony and drunkenness.
They revel in the promise of abundant gold in Virginia and spend the night drinking while Petronel and Quicksilver conceal Winifred's identity from Bramble and Security.
Separated from Quicksilver and Petronel, Security washes ashore on Cuckold's Haven where he stays in a nearby tavern.
Quicksilver sings a song about his repentance of his schemes and dishonesty, whose change in character and denouncement of vice moves Touchstone to amazement.
[2] More recently, however, scholars have suggested that the play's authorship was more collaborative, since numerous passages Eastward Ho!
Later in December 1605 and March 1606, George Eld printed more quartos issued by Aspley[9] to meet the high demands for the play.
exemplify the anti-Scottish sentiment that likely offended Scottish-born King James I: In Act 1, when Sir Petronel's knighthood is questioned, Mistress Touchstone says, "Yes, that he is a knight!
[5] This remark possibly references the perception that Scots accompanying King James invaded the English Court.
[5] This line references a practice in Scotland where "notorious cohabitation" is accepted as "matrimonial engagement without formal ceremony.
While explaining the other inhabitants in the new country, Seagull hints that he wishes for all of the King's Scotsmen to leave England:[4] "And you shall live freely there ... with only a few industrious Scots, perhaps, who indeed are dispers'd over the face of the whole earth.
[5] Like the reference in Act 1, this line mocks King James's selling of knighthoods and granting titles to fellow Scots.
After the play's first performances, Jonson and Chapman were imprisoned for offending King James I with satirical Scottish references.
[12] In August 1605, when the play premiered, King James I was travelling to Oxford with courtiers including the Lord Chamberlain "whose permission should have been obtained before the comedy was performed.
[11] Jonson later recounted to William Drummond of Hawthornden that he "was delated by Sir James Murray to the king for writing something against the Scots in a play, Eastward Ho, and voluntary imprisoned himself with Chapman and Marston who had written it amongst them.
[11][13] Between late August and early September, Jonson and Chapman wrote urgent letters to friends, petitioning for their intervention.
[11] Chapman's personal correspondences and commendatory poem in the first edition of Jonson's Sejanus (1605) suggest that the Earl of Suffolk was influential in obtaining their release in November 1605.
After David Garrick's 1751 production in London and Charlotte Lennox's 1775 adaption, the play was infrequently performed through the nineteenth century.
