May Day (play) - Plot and Source

Plot and Source

Chapman based the plot of May Day, and its Venetian setting, upon a Commedia erudita by Alessandro Piccolomini called Alessandro (1544). The story, as adapted by Chapman, is a complex, crowded, multiple-plot tangle of intrigue and disguise. In the original production, "much of the play's humor probably derived from the child actors' interpretations of adult roles." "The whole play, if over-ingenious, is vivaciously written, and the characters are well-sustained."

The play exploits the plot device of gender disguise and cross-dressing that was so common in English Renaissance drama — though Chapman manages to double and re-double the cross-dressing trick. Two characters cross-dress, one male, one female. The page Lionell disguises "himself" as a "gentlewoman" in the course of the play; but at the conclusion it is revealed that Lionell is actually Theagine in disguise — so that a boy player played a female character who disguises as a male page, who then disguises as a woman.