The Massacre at Paris

The Massacre at Paris is an Elizabethan play by the English dramatist Christopher Marlowe (1593) and a Restoration drama by Nathaniel Lee (1689), the latter chiefly remembered for a song by Henry Purcell.

Both concern the Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre, which took place in Paris in 1572, and the part played by the Duc de Guise in those events.

[2] The only surviving text is an undated octavo edition, that at 1,250 or so lines seems too short to represent the complete original play and which has been conjectured to be a memorial reconstruction by the actors who performed the work.

It supplies a longer version of a speech of the Guise's than appears in the printed text, adding twelve lines of blank verse.

The play begins in Paris, at the wedding of Henry of Navarre (a Huguenot noble) to Margaret of Valois (sister to the Catholic king).

The royal family and the Guise faction leaders begin to plot a massacre while Charles, the King of France, visits the wounded admiral.

The massacre is considered successful, and the Queen Mother calls her son back from abroad to be crowned Henry III of France.

[5] Henry Purcell set the prophecy addressed to Charles IX from act V, "Thy genius, lo", in two versions, the one for baritone (Z 604a) appearing in Orpheus Britannicus.