George Peele: David and Bethsabe (early 1590s)

 

The servants of Absalom killing Amnon, 1540 engraving by Heinrich Aldegrever

[Image source: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/428353 .]

George Peele's David and Bethsabe is one of just two surviving plays from Shakespeare's time with a biblical subject. However, we can see from the titles of lost plays that biblical subjects became popular in the early 1590s. (The other surviving play is A Looking Glass for London and England by Lodge and Greene, which is based on the book of Jonah.) 

David and Bethsabe recounts scenes from the history of David's reign: basically 2 Samuel 11-19. And what history! If you haven't read 2 Samuel recently, suffice it to say that there's places where even Peele tones it down a bit. On the whole, though, it was exactly his kind of thing: David's power-grab of  Bathsheba, his elimination of her husband Uriah, his son Amnon's rape of his half-sister Tamar, Absalom's revenge, insurrection and eventual death by multiple stabbings while dangling from a tree, to name a few highlights.  

[From now on I'll be using the names that appear in the play: Bethsabe, Urias, Thamar, Absalon...]

David and Bethsabe was entered in the Stationers' Register in May 1594. Various hypothetical composition dates have been thrown around but, so far as I can see, this is the only hard evidence. There appear to be borrowings from Tamburlaine (1587?) and from Book I of the Faerie Queene (1590). So "early 1590s" is likely. Irritatingly, that's not enough to determine if it antedates or postdates any of Peele's other plays of that period, i.e The Battle of Alcazar, Edward I, The Old Wives' Tale and his part of Titus Andronicus. 

The surviving text is rather a mess, and there are indications that some scenes are missing. Possibly Peele revised the play to make a reading text, adding the Du Bartas borrowings in the first and last scenes.

Nevertheless the play is more impressive and coherent than you might gather from its reputation. 

Earlier scholars had tended to accuse Peele, here as elsewhere, of poor plot structure. But as far as David and Bethsabe was concerned, Inga-Stina Ewbank surely put an end to those accusations in 1965 (details below).

The section Peele picked out of the book of Samuel is what biblical source critics call the "court history" or "succession narrative". It's unified by a focus on David's ill deeds and his subsequent troubles.

Peele made the focus more explicit than the bible does. He begins with the most notorious of David's offences, and proceeds to show him suffering the death of three of his sons (the infant son of Bethsabe, Amnon, Absalon) before ending with the education of Solomon, the son who will be his true successor. David, Nathan, and Semei all interpret the family turmoil as punishment for David's sin. The bible frames only the infant's death in that way, but Peele was unconsciously in line with a strand of Jewish commentary that understands David's "fourfold" retribution (2 Samuel 12:6) as realized in his infant son, Amnon, Tamar, and Absalon. 

In the bible the events of the play take place over a considerable stretch of years. Peele eliminates these time lapses, and interleaves the stories. Sometimes this leads to strange effects, e.g. when David, having just heard of Amnon's crimes through Absalon, doesn't seem to think there's anything odd about Absalon wanting Amnon to come to his sheep-shearing feast (Scene 5). But the time-compression can also work really well, as here:

Bethsabe. One medicine cannot heal our different harms;

But rather make both rankle at the bone:

Then let the king be cunning in his cure,

Lest flattering both, both perish in his hand.

David.  Leave it to me, my dearest Bethsabe,

Whose skill is cónversant in deeper cures. −

And, Cusay, haste thou to my servant Joab,

Commanding him to send Urias home

With all the speed can possibly be used.

(Scene 1)

Bethsabe is still resisting David's move on her, but with "let the king be cunning" there's a hint that her uncompromising chastity is turning into resignation. David, at any rate, takes it that way, and immediately sets about bringing Urias home from the wars. In the bible this plan arises from Bathsheba's pregnancy (2 Samuel 11:5-6); the idea is apparently to ensure that Urias sleeps with his wife as soon as possible, so he will believe that David's child is his own. Peele, tolerating no time gaps, brings the decision forward to the seduction scene. That is, his David already anticipates making Bethsabe pregnant, and sets about covering his tracks. 

The biblical narrative is quite tight-lipped about what's going on here, and Peele is more so. (Evidently, he relied on his audience knowing the story well.) But the absence of spelt-out motives makes for compelling drama. 

In Scene 5 it takes a comic turn, with David practically begging Urias to take a night off, then resorting  to making Urias so drunk that he might at least not remember whether he slept with Bethsabe or not. Here's the carouse in full swing:

Urias.  Cusay, I pledge thee all with all my heart. −
Give me some drink, ye servants of the king
Give me my drink.
[Drinks.]
David.  Well done, my good Urias! drink thy fill,
That in thy fulness David may rejoice.
Urias.  I will, my lord.
Abs.  Now, Lord Urias, one carouse to me.
Urias.  No, sir, I’ll drink to the king;
Your father is a better man than you.
David.  Do so, Urias; I will pledge thee straight.
Urias.  I will indeed, my lord and sovereign;
I’ll once in my days be so bold.
David.  Fill him his glass.
Urias.  Fill me my glass
[He gives him the glass.]
David.  Quickly, I say.

Despite abundant signs of growing intoxication, Urias is resolute in not going home to his wife, like the proud soldier he is. It's time for David to roll out Plan C. 

The drinking scene is all the funnier because we understand that it holds Urias' life in the balance. (It shows that Peele had learnt from Kyd's stagecraft  as well as Marlowe's.) 

In passing, the drunk Urias even intuits Absalon's longing to outshine his father, a theme that still lies in the future. 

It's a small example of how Peele brings his stories to life by interlacing them. Larger examples are  Amnon's story getting under way (in Scenes 3 - 4) while Urias is still on the way back to base, and David being told of Amnon's death at the very moment he's crowing over his victory at Rabbah (Scene 9). 

At such moments we recognize the kinship of David and Bethsabe with the history plays of the same period. Here (as in Shakespeare's Henry plays) foreign war is succeeded by civil war, and the ultimate cause of national turmoil is a monarch's sin.  

*

This post was inevitably going to happen, following on from my post on Tom Raworth's "West Wind", which unexpectedly quotes from the superb parasol song that begins David and Bethsabe.

Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,

Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair:

Shine, sun; burn, fire; breathe, air, and ease me;

Black shade, fair nurse; shroud me, and please me:

Shadow, my sweet nurse, keep me from burning,

Make not my glad cause cause of mourning.

Let not my beauty's fire

Inflame unstaid desire,

Nor pierce any bright eye

That wandereth lightly.

Elsewhere Peele writes a ringing, regular iambic pentameter, with few feminine endings or inversions, mainly end-stopped. It's ornamented with copious alliteration and gorgeous imagery, but it has better things to offer than a monotony of riches. 

[David.] Bright Bethsabe gives earth to my desires ...

(Scene 1)

[Amnon to Thamar.] 

Hence from my bed, whose sight offends my soul

As doth the parbreak of disgorgèd bears!   

(Scene 4)

[Nathan to David.] 

Urias thou hast killèd with the sword;

Yea, with the sword of the uncircumcised

Thou hast him slain: wherefore, from this day forth,

The sword shall never go from thee and thine ...

(Scene 7)

[Cusay to Absalon's council of war.] 

... To gather men from Dan to Bersabe,

That they may march in number like sea-sands,

That nestle close in one another's neck ... 

(Scene 11. Dan and Bersabe (=Beersheba) describe the northern and southern limits of David's kingdom)

[Achitophel, about to commit suicide.] 

Let all the sighs I breathed for this disgrace,

Hang on my hedges like eternal mists,

As mourning garments for their master's death. 

(Scene 13)

[Joab to Absalon.] 

Hold, Absalon, Joab's pity is in this;

In this, proud Absalon, is Joab's love.

        [Stabs him again.]  

(Scene 15)

Doubtless Absalon was suspended from a stage arbour, like the one in the 1623 illustration showing the hanged body of Horatio in Kyd's Spanish Tragedy. The same property (looking like a fire-screen with painted branchwork) would also have been e.g. what Benedick and Beatrice eavesdropped behind. 

*

We are very lucky to have Peele's plays online, with copious annotation; they (and many others) are on the site elizabethandrama.org, a labour of love by Peter Lukacs:

http://elizabethandrama.org/the-playwrights/george-peele/david-bethsabe-george-peele/

(If you just want to read the play, choose the un-annotated text.)

*

Inga-Stina Ewbank, "The House of David in Renaissance Drama: A Comparative Study". Renaissance Drama vol 8 (1965), pp. 3-40. 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/41913890

Defence of the structure of Peele's play (saying most of what I said above, but better); with numerous analogues from European sources. 

She also wrote an earlier note (not online):

Inga-Stina Ekeblad (later Ewbank), ‘The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe: A Note on George Peele’s Biblical Drama’, English Studies 39 (1958), 57-62 (57).

Annaliese Connolly, "Peele's David and Bethsabe: Reconsidering Biblical Drama of the Long 1590s". Early Modern Literary Studies Special Issue 16 (October, 2007) 9.1-20.

https://extra.shu.ac.uk/emls/si-16/connpeel.htm#

This essay gives a lot of useful background. Connolly argues that biblical history was a speciality brand of the Admiral's Men, and that David was just the kind of role in which Edward Alleyn excelled. But it's odd that it's totally absent from Henslowe's Diary, unless connected with the payment for "poleyes & worckmanshipp for to hang absolome" in October 1602. (The 1599 quarto claims that it had been frequently performed.) 

Peter Auger, British Responses to Du Bartas’ Semaines, 1584-1641 (D. Phil. Thesis, 2012 (Merton College, Oxford)). 

https://ora.ox.ac.uk/catalog/uuid:be0f89c2-c2e4-482d-ac8f-e867985ff72e/download_file?file_format=application%2Fpdf&safe_filename=British%2BResponses%2Bto%2BDu%2BBartas%2BSemaines

Provides a detailed account of how Peele uses Du Bartas in the first and last scenes of David and Bethsabe. See especially pp. 189 - 197. 

*

On King David:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2020/11/king-david.html

On Titus Andronicus, by William Shakespeare and George Peele:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2015/11/william-shakespeare-and-george-peele.html

Complete list of posts on Shakespeare and his contemporaries