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Lost Plays

''Iphigenia. c. 1579''

A translation of one of the two plays of Euripides, probably written at Oxford, is only known by some laudatory verses of William Gager, In Iphigeniam Georgii Peeli Anglicanis versibus redditam, printed by Bullen, i. xvii. Hunting of Cupid > 1591

S. R. 1591, July 26 (Bp. of London). 'A booke intituled the Huntinge of Cupid wrytten by George Peele, Master of Artes of Oxeford. Provyded alwayes that yf yt be hurtfull to any other Copye before lycenced, then this to be voyde.' Richard Jones (Arber, ii. 591). Probably the play—I suppose it was a play—was printed, as Drummond of Hawthornden includes jottings from 'The Huntinge of Cupid by George Peele of Oxford. Pastoral' amongst others from 'Bookes red anno 1609 be me', and thereby enables us to identify extracts assigned to Peele in England's Parnassus (1600) and England's Helicon (1600) as from the same source. The fragments are all carefully collected by W. W. Greg in M. S. C. i. 307. The Turkish Mahomet and Hiren the Fair Greek > 1594

The Merry Conceited Jests (Bullen, ii. 394) gives this as the title of a 'famous play' of Peele's. Conceivably it, rather than Greene's Alphonsus (q.v.), may be the 'Mahomet's Poo' of Peele's Farewell of 1589 (vide supra, s.v. Battle of Alcazar). An Admiral's inventory of 10 March 1598 includes 'owld Mahemetes head'. The Admiral's had played Mahomet for Henslowe from 16 Aug. 1594 to 5 Feb. 1595, and a play called The Love of a Grecian Lady or The Grecian Comedy from 5 Oct. 1594 to 10 Oct. 1595. In Aug. 1601 Henslowe bought Mahemett from Alleyn, and incurred other expenses on the play for the Admiral's (Henslowe, ii. 167; Henslowe Papers, 116). Possibly all the three titles of 1594-5 stand for Peele's play. Jacob Ayrer wrote a play on the siege of Constantinople and the loves of Mahomet and Irene. This may have had some relation on the one hand to Peele's, and on the other to a play of the siege of Constantinople used by Spencer (cf. ch. xiv) in Germany during 1612-14 (Herz, 73). Pistol's 'Have we not Hiren here?' (2 Hen. IV, iv. 173) is doubtless from the play. The Knight of Rhodes

This also is described in the Merry Jests (cf. ch. xxiv, s.v. Soliman and Perseda). Doubtful Plays

Peele's hand has been sought in nearly every masterless play of his epoch: Alphonsus of Germany, Captain Thomas Stukeley, ''Clyomon and Clamydes, Contention of York and Lancaster, George a Greene'', Henry VI, Histriomastix, Jack Straw, Troublesome Reign of King John,