Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay - Performance and Publication

Performance and Publication

The title page of the play's first edition (see below) asserts that FBFB was originally acted by Queen Elizabeth's Men, as were several of Greene's other plays. When that company entered a period of difficulties in the early 1590s, the play appears to have passed into the control of theatre manager and impressario Philip Henslowe, and thereafter to have been performed by Henslowe-connected acting troupes. Lord Strange's Men performed the play on 19 February 1592 at the Rose Theatre; it was acted again by a combination of the Queen's Men and Sussex's Men on 1 April 1594. The play then passed into the repertory of the Admiral's Men; that company paid Thomas Middleton to write a Prologue and Epilogue for a Court performance in 1602.

FBFB was entered into the Stationers' Register on 14 May 1594, and was published later that year in quarto by the bookseller Edward White. The title page assigns the play to Greene. A second quarto was issued in 1630 by Elizabeth Allde; the Q2 title page states that the play was "lately played by the Prince Palatine his Servants" — the Admiral's Men in a later incarnation. A third quarto followed in 1655 from Jean Bell. Contemporary allusions indicate that the play was even more popular than its limited publication history indicates; references to the play are common in the literature of the era.