Gallathea
At this point in his literary career, Lyly had already achieved success with his prose romance Euphues and was a writer in residence at Blackfriars theatre.
The play opens in a small village somewhere in Lincolnshire with the shepherd Tyterus informing his daughter Gallathea of Neptune's demands.
The shepherd Melebeus also has a beautiful daughter, Phillida, and is equally worried she will be this year's sacrifice.
Phillida agrees to the plan, even though she is sceptical of whether she can successfully pass as a boy, explaining the disguise "will neither become my bodie nor my minde" (1.3.15).
After several flirtatious attempts, she refuses his amorous advances due to her vow of chastity, which infuriates the god.
The play relies on the characters' confusion for humour; only the audience is aware that Gallathea and Phillida are both females.
Back in the village, Tyterus and Melebeus accuse one another of having a fair daughter, worthy of being sacrificed.
In a comedic twist, Hebe complains how unfortunate and unlucky she is; in death she would have been remembered as the most beautiful but now she must live with the shame that she is not fair enough for Neptune.
Finally, a truce is brokered; Diana hands Cupid over and Neptune revokes his call for virgin sacrifices.
They claim to be fortune tellers, meaning that they can tell the assembled audiences of their adventures in the woods.
Gallathea was acted at the royal palace at Greenwich before Queen Elizabeth I by the Children of Paul's, most likely on 1 January 1588 (new style).
During the Early Modern period in England, all female roles on the public stage were played by young boys.
In Twelfth Night, Viola is shipwrecked and dresses herself as Caesario whereas Rosalind in As You Like It adopts the male persona Ganymede and hides in the forest of Arden.
Even though cross dressing is common in the period, it raises interesting theories regarding female sexuality.
[3] The homosexual relationship between Gallathea and Phillida is often regarded as asexual; their attraction is genuine but there are no physical displays of affection.
By creating an amusing and insincere portrayal, Lyly is taking full advantage of the limitations of having child actors play the roles.
Diana and Venus represent the binary opposites of marriage and chastity and each offer valid arguments in support of each.
"[6] The first modern professional revival was in 1905 in Regent's Park, London, in a full production performed by the Idyllic Players by the lake in the Botanic Gardens, directed by Patrick Kirwan.
One of the first recorded productions in the 20th Century was directed by Ivan Fuller at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, SD in 1998.
The production sparked a 2003 paper "Everything Old is New Again: The Elizabethan and the Contemporary Appeal in Lyly's Gallathea" which was presented at the Shakespeare Association of America Conference, Victoria, BC.
A production directed by Brett Sullivan Santry, was performed by the students of Stuart Hall School of Staunton, Virginia.
When he directed the play, he was an MLitt/MFA graduate student in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in Performance at Mary Baldwin College.
[9] A staged reading of Gallathea was presented in May 2007 by Primavera Productions at the King's Head Theatre in London.
[citation needed] An all-female production of Gallathea was performed by the Uncut Pages Theater Company from 26 to 29 July 2007 as part of Washington D.C.'s Capitol Fringe Festival.
[11] The Gay Beggars Drama Group from Basel, Switzerland, performed Galatea for eight shows in spring 2011.
In May 2017, Maiden Thought Theatre performed it in English at their hometown, Bremen (Germany), bringing play to life in a humorous and current way including the Augur's appearance as a world-famous politician replete with red tie and tiny hands (cf.
