Date
The date of the play's authorship and stage premier is a matter of dispute among scholars. The play's text shows a number of references, allusions, and borrowings from dramas current around the turn of the century, like John Marston's Antonio's Revenge (1600); the play's parodies of passages in Hamlet, including the famous soliloquy, have been widely noted by commentators. So, some critics have agreed with Chapman scholar T. M. Parrott in favoring a date of c. 1601-2. Yet the text also shows links with works current almost a decade later, like Thomas Dekker's The Gull's Hornbook (1609). One solution for this contradiction is the hypothesis, offered by Parrott, that Chapman wrote the play c. 1601-2 and then revised it for a new production c. 1609. This hypothesis, while certainly possible, has also been received with a measure of skepticism.
Read more about this topic: May Day (play)
Famous quotes containing the word date:
“I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidentsor at least their staffsnever stop making mischief.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (18351910)
“Evrythins up to date in Kansas City.”
—Oscar Hammerstein II (18951960)