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The rapid succession of monarchs across Nobody and Somebody satirizes the standard plots of “Shakespearean” histories that end with the overthrow or death of the preceding tyrannical monarch, and suggest hope that the next monarch will be better, before this hope is dispelled in the next tragic history, as is the case with the chronological series of Edward III, Richard II, and 1 Henry IV. Nobody is set in 85-60 BC, or just before the Roman invasion of the British Isles. The plot opens with two Court advisors, Cornwall and Marcian, scheming to overthrow their corrupt King Archigallo who unfairly confiscates land to grant it to Lord Sycophant and names a common Wench as his Queen. The coup d’état succeeds, and Elidure accepts the crown when the advisors explain he is the only rational choice. A while into his reign, Elidure finds Archigallo in exile in a forest, and insists that Archigallo retakes the throne from him. While Archigallo’s second term is less tyrannical it ends shortly thereafter due to his natural death, upon which the throne passes back to Elidure. Without a reprise in the events, Elidure’s two younger brothers then wage war against Elidure and overthrow him. And then these brothers cannot agree on who between them should have power over the other, and so they wage war against each other and both die, leaving Elidure to again reclaim the throne. The radical moral story against tyranny in this central plot is dampened by the constant interruptions of a rival plotline about Nobody and Somebody. Nobody is a fair, charitable and unassuming land owner, against whom the corrupt and fraudulent landowner called Somebody wages a slander-campaign. Every word in this play is dense not only with this extremely violent, sexually-charged and outrageous plotlines, but also with subtexts of implied meanings and historical backstory.
Exordium
Plot and Staging
Primary Sources
“The Seventh Chapter” About Elidure from the “Raphael Holinshed”-bylined and Gabriel Harvey and Richard Verstegan-Ghostwritten The Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland
“The Well-spoken Nobody”
Alexander Smith’s “Note” from the 1877 Old-Spelling Glasgow Edition
Text
Terms, References, Questions, Exercises
Autoren-Profil
William Percy (1567?-1648) is the dominant tragedian behind the “William Shakespeare” pseudonym according to the computational-linguistic study in The Re-Attribution of the British Renaissance Corpus. Percy was a younger son of the assassinated 8th Earl of Northumberland and the brother of the imprisoned in the Tower 9th Earl.
