Synopsis
Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay is recognized as a groundbreaking play in terms of multiple-plot structure; it has three plots, or two, or four, depending on different scholars' analyses.
Prince Edward, the son and heir of King Henry III, plans to seduce Margaret, the Fair Maid of Fressingfield, with the help of the necromancer Friar Bacon. Edward also employs a more conventional approach, relying on the eloquence of his friend Earl Lacy to help with the seduction. Lacy goes to persuade Margaret, but quickly falls in love with her himself. When Edward learns of the love of Lacy and Margaret, he threatens to kill his friend — before he masters his passion and reconciles himself to the fact. Edward returns to Court, where he falls in love with and marries Elinor of Castile, the bride his father has chosen for him.
The beautiful Margaret is the unwilling cause of a quarrel between two of her neighbors, the Suffolk squires Serlesby and Lambert: they both fancy themselves in love with her, and kill each other in a duel. Margaret receives a letter from the absent Lacy, renouncing his love for her. She decides to enter a nunnery — but Lacy intercepts her before she takes her vows, and tells her that he was only testing her constancy. After an understandable hesitation, Margaret accepts Lacy's conduct and his explanation; they are married together with Edward and Elinor at the end of the play.
Another level of plot involves Friar Bacon and his magic. Bacon displays a range of magical skills: he shows Edward the romance of Lacy and Margaret in his magic glass, and interrupts their wedding at a distance; he magically transports a tavern hostess from one place to another; he wins a contest of magic with a German named Vandermast, witnessed by the Kings of England and Castile and the Emperor of Germany. In collaboration with another magician, Friar Bungay, Bacon labors toward his greatest achievement: the creation of an artificial head made of brass, animated by demonic influence, that can surround England with a protective wall of the same metal. Yet Bacon's inability to remain awake and the incompetence of his servant Miles spoil the opportunity. (The brazen head speaks three times, saying "Time is," "Time was," and "Time is past" — then falls to the floor and shatters. Miles doesn't have the wit to wake his master in time.) Finally, Bacon inadvertently allows two young Oxonians to witness their fathers' duel in the magic glass; in response the students themselves duel, and kill each other. Appalled by this outcome, Bacon renounces magic and turns to a life of repentance. His bad servant Miles, haunted by Bacon's conjured devils, gets a promise of a tapster's job in Hell from one of them, and rides to perdition on the devil's back.
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