Plot
The plot of John of Bordeaux depends heavily on that of the original Friar Bacon. The setting shifts to Germany from England, where Bacon is visiting the Emperor's court. Ferdinand, the son of Emperor Frederick II, fulfills the role of Prince Edward in the earlier play: Ferdinand lusts after a woman named Rossalin, just as Edward pursues Margaret. Rossalin, unlike Margaret, is married, to John of Bordeaux, the commander of the Emperor's armies in his war against the Turks. Ferdinand's pursuit of Rossalin is much harsher and more ruthless than that of Edward's of Margaret: Rossalin is disgraced, deprived of her home, reduced to beggary, imprisoned, and even threatened with death.
Vandermast, the villainous magician from FBFB, returns in the sequel for a series of contests of magic with Bacon — which Bacon consistently wins. Though the manuscript text is defective toward the end of the story, it is clear that Bacon brings about a happy ending, with the restoration of John and Rossalin to their prior good fortune and the exposure and repentance of Ferdinand. Bacon's English servant Perce constitutes the center of the play's comic relief in the subplot, as Bacon's servant Miles does in the original play. Among his other stunts, Perce gets German scholars to trade their copies of the works of Plato and Aristotle for a couple of bottles of wine.
The story in John of Bordeaux bears some resemblance to that in the anonymous A Knack to Know an Honest Man (1594), which was a sequel to the earlier A Knack to Know a Knave (1592). Greene, among others, has been proposed as the author of A Knack to Know a Knave.
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