Locrine

Locrine is an Elizabethan play depicting the legendary Trojan founders of the nation of England and of Troynovant (London).

The authorship of the original play has been assigned to several dramatists of the era, with George Peele and Robert Greene being the two most common candidates.

[7] A manuscript note found in a copy of the 1595 quarto, and apparently by Sir George Buck, who was Master of the Revels under King James I from 1609 to 1622, states that his cousin, Charles Tilney, was the author: Char.

)[8][9] Samuel A. Tannenbaum disputed the authenticity of the note, claiming it was a forgery, probably by John Payne Collier, but it has been demonstrated that the handwriting is genuine.

Just as Virgil, in the Aeneid, credited the founding of Ancient Rome to exiles from a defeated Troy, so later English writers such as William Caxton and Raphael Holinshed, adapting the medieval pseudo-history of the Welsh-Norman author Geoffrey of Monmouth, credited another band of Trojan exiles for the foundation of a British realm.

It was this fanciful origin myth, applied to the English rather than the Brythons, that provided the foundation for Locrine (Locrinus in Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae).

In addition to the poetry of Spenser and Lodge noted above, critics have pointed to links with the contemporary dramas of Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, Robert Greene and George Peele.

[14] The majority of scholars who have considered the problem judge the author of Selimus to have borrowed from Locrine – though a minority has favored the opposite conclusion.

Following the Senecan model of revenge tragedy, each of the play's five acts is preceded by a Prologue that features Atë, the ancient Greek goddess of folly and ruin.

The opening scene of the play proper shows the aged Brutus, the leader of the Trojans in Britain, before his courtiers, including his three sons, Locrine, Albanact and Camber.

Brutus knows he is dying, and attempts to order the kingdom's affairs; among other points, he decrees that Locrine marry Guendoline, the daughter of his loyal general Corineus.

Meanwhile, the invading Scythians arrive for their incursion into the British Isles, led by their king Humber, with his wife Estrild and their son Hubba.