Endymion (play)
[1] The action of the play centers around a young courtier, Endymion, who is sent into an endless slumber by Tellus, his former lover, because he has spurned her to worship the ageless Queen Cynthia.
The prose is characterised by Euphuism, Lyly's highly ornate, formalised style, meant to convey the intelligence and wit of the speaker.
While the title and characters are references to the myth of Endymion, the plot sharply deviates from the classical story and highlights contemporary issues in Elizabeth I's court through its allegorical framework.
In the final scene of this act, Tellus meets with Dipsas, the sorceress, who explains that while she cannot "rule hearts" (I.iv.27), she can make Endymion's love less ardent, but only for a little while.
After the two former lovers part, Dipsas and her assistant, Bagoa, secretly follow Endymion and listen as he laments his love of the unattainable Cynthia as well as regrets over his dismissal of the worthy Tellus.
Sir Tophas again appears and now proclaims his love for the hideous sorceress, Dipsas, whose decrepit body and unfavorable nature make her a perfect match in his eyes.
Lyly's fable, like the prologue, is a direct address to Queen Elizabeth, and suggests that control is gained more easily with warmth than with violence.
11–15).This directly applies the narrative of the fable to the behaviour of the queen it addresses, and suggests that the action of the play is also intended for her education and benefit.
Sir Tophas is the butt of the jokes and pranks of the crew of pages that constitute a standard feature of Lyly's drama.
[4] It is not known with certainty when Lyly wrote Endymion, but it was first performed by the Children of Paul's at Greenwich Palace in 1588, on Candlemas (2 February), before Queen Elizabeth I.
The 2009 American Shakespeare Center's Young Company produced the first Original Staging Practices production of Endymion, under the direction of Brett Sullivan Santry, in an estimated 400 years.
A 2012 full production by the T24 Drama Society of the University of Kent took place, directed by Freddy Waller and starring John Davis as Endymion and Holly Morran as Cynthia.
As the title indicates, the play references the mythical story of Endymion, but the narrative deviates sharply; the work is a product of the culture in which it was created, and does not seem bound to any historical precedence.
This change in plot, however, poses Cynthia as a chaste allegorical model for Queen Elizabeth, who was often represented as a moon goddess in popular imagery.
[9] It is widely recognised that Endymion is to a large extent allegorical, with Cynthia representing Queen Elizabeth I. Nineteenth-century critics tended to assign other roles in the play to historical figures of Elizabeth's court: Endymion, perhaps, was Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, while Tellus was Mary, Queen of Scots.
[10] Twentieth-century critics have approached these hypotheses sceptically, arguing that if Lyly had ventured any such bold or obvious commentary on Elizabeth's personal life, his career at Court would have ended quickly.
Endymion's conflicts between Tellus and Cynthia would be, in this sense, an allegory for the "struggle between fleshly temptation and heavenly contemplation" that all Christians must face.
[13] It is generally agreed that Endymion is the one of Lyly's plays that had the strongest influence on Shakespeare, most obviously on Love's Labor's Lost and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
In the view of one commentator, the play, "with its radiating central image, its mathematical elaboration, its receding depths, its near motionless and queer timelessness," is "more a contemplation than a comedy.
