Thomas Goffe - Criticism and Controversy

Criticism and Controversy

Goffe'sThe Courageous Turk has received some unfavorable criticism. It has been called "all but unendurable" because of its "outrageous rant and bombast" by Felix Shelling in Elizabethan Drama (1908) and also called a "repulsive bombast" by Adolphus Ward in A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne (1875). However, The Courageous Turk's audience in the seventeenth-century liked the play because of the character of Amurath, the elaborate staging, the subject of Turkish history, and Goffe's vision the frailty of kings and the ultimate reward given to Christians who fought against earth's heathens.

There is specific evidence that suggests that Goffe knew of and responded to Seneca’s Phoenissae. Two of his tragedies, Tragedy of Orestes and The Courageous Turk, contain speeches translated from Seneca’s play. In The Courageous Turk, the speeches of a Turkish princess intervening in a quarrel between her father and husband are liberally adapted from a scene in Phoenissae in which Jocasta, the wife of Oedipus, comes between her warring sons. Ben Jonson said, in a conversation recorded by Bishop Plume, “So Tom Goff brings in Etiocles and Polynices.” Ben Jonson was much admired at Christ Church, and may have been invited to read a manuscript play by Goffe on the theme of the Phoenissae. In addition, unlike many writers and producers of academic drama in the Jacobean era, Goffe was not contemptuous of popular theater, and included many scenes and lines that were influenced by Hamlet and Antonio's Revenge in his tragedy, Orestes. Phoenissae has also been attributed to Goffe. It was probably performed at Christ Church in 1619 but is now lost.

Goffe is also believed by some to have authored The Careless Shepherdess, a pastoral that was probably produced at Christ Church between 1618 and 1629, and later revised and produced by Queen Henrietta's Men around 1638. However, the argument against this belief is that Goffe could not have authored the pastoral because of the statement on the title page of The Careless Shepherdess, which states that it was acted at Salisbury Court, a theater that did not open until after Goffe died.