Plays – Listorati

Top 10 Weird Things That Happen in English Renaissance Plays

Johan Tobias — Sat, 22 Jul 2023 15:03:58 +0000

Usually, when people think of English Renaissance drama, they think of the plays by Shakespeare that they studied in school, such as Romeo and Juliet (1597) and Hamlet (c. 1599–1601). English Renaissance theater (also known as Elizabethan or Jacobean) refers to the theater of England between 1558 and 1642. Nowadays, English Renaissance plays are often thought of as highbrow, with their impressive monologues about love and death and everything in-between. But during this time, going to the theatre was the standard entertainment of the day. As a result, the plays are sometimes absolutely wild.

While serious and heartfelt speeches were often included, audiences also had a taste for over-the-top deaths, outlandish situations, and dirty jokes. Here are 10 of the weirdest moments from English Renaissance theater. Spoiler warnings ahead (but to be fair, they are all over 400 years old).

Related: 10 Shakespeare Authorship Theories That Will Surprise You

10 Necrophilia in The Revenger’s Tragedy

Revenge tragedies were all the rage during the Renaissance, and Thomas Middleton’s satiric The Revenger’s Tragedy sends up this violent genre. This 1606 play features the typical elements of disguise and deception but employs them in morbidly sexual ways. It basically stages necrophilia, though the person committing the act is unaware of the dead state of the recipient.

The play starts with Vindice wanting to get revenge on the Duke who poisoned his fiancée when she refused to sleep with him nine years previously. He has been creepily carrying around her skull ever since. Vindice puts on a disguise and is hired by the Duke as a pimp. In an act of poetic justice, he poisons the skull of his dead lover and places it on a dummy dressed up as an attractive woman. Thinking it is a shy prostitute, the Duke kisses the deadly effigy “like a slobbering Dutchman” (III.v.164), after which his teeth and tongue rot away.^[1]

9 Lioness Attack in As You Like It

Shakespeare’s As You Like It (1599) contains the famous “All the world’s a stage” speech (II.vii.139). And, as in many of his plays, it features people falling in love at first sight and gender-bending disguises. The male lead, Orlando, is forced into the forest by his mean-spirited older brother, Oliver. Of course, as the play is a comedy, they make up toward the end, but Shakespeare’s choice of reconciliation is certainly inventive.

Orlando sees Oliver sleeping against a tree with a lioness crouched nearby, ready to go in for the kill. Shakespeare overlooked the fact that lions have been extinct in Europe for thousands of years. Instead of leaving his brother to die, which he genuinely considers, Orlando fights the big cat: “The lioness had torn some flesh away, / Which all this while had bled; and now he fainted” (IV.iii.156-7). Orlando’s bravery causes Oliver to repent for his earlier cruelty, though a wolf attack could have achieved the same outcome.^[2]

8 Devil-Dog in The Witch of Edmonton

Written by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, and John Ford in 1621, The Witch of Edmonton was inspired by the real-life Elizabeth Sawyer, who had been executed for witchcraft that same year. In the play, Sawyer is shunned by her neighbors after being wrongly accused of witchcraft. However, she decides that she has nothing left to lose, so she gets revenge by selling her soul to the Devil.

The Devil doesn’t appear to her as a man, though. Instead, he takes the form of a dog called Tom (although onstage, he was obviously played by a human actor). Sawyer can be seen as a sympathetic character, but her relationship with the Devil-Dog is vaguely—and weirdly—sexual. She asks him to “Stand on thy hind-legs up. Kiss me, my Tommy” (IV.i.170) and then demands “Let’s tickle.” (IV.i.173). While reports of witchcraft sometimes involved sexual acts with the Devil, it feels extra weird when he’s in animal form.^[3]

7 Bottom’s Donkey Head in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Bottom is turned into a donkey and Titania falls for him – ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ (Balanchine)

Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, written in 1595 or 1596, is set in a forest inhabited by fairies, so you know some wild stuff is going to happen. As the title would suggest, the comedy has a dream-like quality to it. Midway through, the mischievous sprite, Puck, takes Bottom’s name as another word for ass and transforms his head into a donkey’s head.

Puck had previously given Titania, Queen of the Fairies, a love potion that compelled her to fall in love with the first creature she saw upon waking. That creature just so happens to be Bottom. So despite his half-man half-donkey appearance, she declares that “So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape. / And thy fair virtue’s force perforce doth move me / On the first view to say, to swear, I love thee” (III.i.127-9). Thankfully, the play isn’t a tragedy, so Bottom eventually gets his human head back.^[4]

6 Poisoned Portrait and Hat in The White Devil

John Webster’s The White Devil (1612) is based on the real-life murder of Vittoria Accoramboni in Padua 27 years earlier. Webster’s version of the tale contains all the ingredients of a typical Renaissance tragedy, such as adultery and corruption. Brachiano has fallen in love with Vittoria, but they each have spouses. However, the answer to every problem in a tragedy is, of course, murder.

Brachiano’s wife has a nightly ritual of kissing a portrait of her husband, but poison has been applied to it, and she dies. Vittoria’s husband, Camillo, is killed by her brother, Flamineo, when they decide to have a gymnastics competition (as you often do, I’m sure). Flamineo breaks Camillo’s neck and then arranges his body under the vaulting horse to make it look like an accident. Brachiano is later killed after poison is sprinkled into the helmet that he wears at a tournament, prompting him to cry out, “O, my brain’s on fire” (V.iii.4). However, it doesn’t kill him quickly enough, so he is then strangled.^[5]

5 Merlin Being Born as an Adult in The Birth of Merlin

When most people think of the wizard Merlin, they probably conjure up an image of an old man with a beard. Well, William Rowley decided Merlin should be born like that. His play The Birth of Merlin (1622) is about a woman named Joan, who has been impregnated by a stranger, and her brother, who happens to be a clown. The story follows them as they wander through a forest looking for a man to be a father to her unborn child (which doesn’t seem like a great plan).

It turns out that the Devil is the father, and instead of having a baby, Joan gives birth to a grown man. However, how that is physically possible is left unanswered. The Devil being Merlin’s father is actually rooted in traditional mythology; it is being half-demon that gives Merlin his prophetic powers. But the wizard being born as an adult was Rowley’s idea. Merlin’s clown-uncle comments on how bizarre this is: “a child to speak, eat, and go the first hour of his birth; nay, such a baby as had need of a barber before he was born, too; why, sister, this is monstrous” (III.iv.45-7).^[6]

4 Cannibalism in Titus Andronicus

Titus Andronicus (c. 1588–1593) is one of Shakespeare’s least staged plays, primarily because of its extreme violence. It depicts the cycle of revenge between Titus, a Roman general, and Tamora, Queen of the Goths. Lucy Bailey’s production of the play, staged at The Globe in London in 2006 and 2014, was so grotesque that it caused some spectators to faint.

Titus sacrifices one of Tamora’s sons and kills one of his own sons during an argument. Two of Tamora’s sons murder a man so that they can rape Titus’s daughter Lavinia. They cut off her tongue and hands so that she is unable to reveal their names, but she outsmarts them. Titus cuts the throats of her rapists as Lavinia holds a basin to catch their blood. He explains that he will “grind their bones to powder small / And with this hateful liquor temper it; / And in that paste let their vile heads be baked” (V.ii.250-2). Tamora then eats the pies that her sons have been baked into. Titus is basically the prototype for Mrs. Lovett of Sweeney Todd fame.^[7]

3 Incest in ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore

John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore (c. 1626–1633) controversially depicts incest. It is about the sexual relationship between brother and sister, Giovanni and Annabella. Their love is portrayed as both sinful and sincere. A reviewer of a 2014 production of the play explains that it “is unsettling” because of “Ford’s refusal to either condone or condemn incest: he simply presents it as an unstoppable force.”

Giovanni gets Annabella pregnant, and she marries another man to conceal the relationship. The play ends with Giovanni stabbing Annabella then telling everyone of their incestuous affair while he holds her heart skewered on a dragger. He explains that “For nine months space, in secret I enjoy’d / Sweet Annabella’s sheets” but “her too fruitful womb too soon bewray’d / The happy passage of our stolen delights” (V.vi.43-4, 47-8). This revelation causes the sibling’s father, Florio, to die of shock.^[8]

2 The Bear in The Winter’s Tale

The Winter’s Tale (c. 1610–1611) progresses as a regular Shakespearean tragedy until Act III, Scene iii, where Antigonus abandons baby Perdita in the woods. Then the funniest and most famous stage direction in all of Shakespeare’s plays occurs: “Exit, pursued by a bear.” Of course, a real bear wouldn’t have been used on stage, although bears were used for other forms of entertainment in Renaissance London, but the moment is startling all the same.

The sudden materialization and then exit of this bear isn’t the only funny or odd moment in the play, though. Hermione, Queen of Sicily and mother of Perdita, dies, and her husband has a statue built to commemorate her. The statue then comes to life somehow, and Hermione is restored. It also features a scene where a servant is comically unaware that the word dildo has a sexual meaning. It is potentially the first recorded use of the word, so thanks for the dildo jokes, Shakespeare.^[9]

1 Lycanthropia in The Duchess of Malfi

John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1613) is another play loosely based on real events. It is about the titular Duchess who marries a man beneath her class, setting off a chain of murderous events involving her two brothers and a man they hire as a spy. Toward the end of the play, it is revealed that one of the brothers, Ferdinand, felt so much shame over murdering his sister that he lost grip on reality and now suffers from lycanthropia, the belief that one has become a wolf.

A doctor explains that the disease causes him to “Steal forth to church-yards in the dead of night, / And dig dead bodies up” (V.ii.14-5). He explains that Ferdinand was found “Behind Saint Mark’s church, with the leg of a man / Upon his shoulder; and he howl’d fearfully” (V.ii.17-8). The other brother, the Cardinal, displays no remorse. After revealing his part in his sister’s murder to his mistress, he forces her to take an oath of silence by kissing a bible. But he has poisoned the bible, and she dies instantly. Renaissance playwrights certainly loved to kill characters with poisoned objects.^[10]

The Greatest Plays in NFL Playoff History

Marjorie Mackintosh — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 19:39:09 +0000

What constitutes a great play is often in the eye of the beholder. Fans of the victims of a great play bemoan missed calls by officials. They claim some of the NFL’s greatest plays occurred because of misinterpretation of rules, unseen interference, or some other explanation of the calamity to their team. Meanwhile, fans of the team benefiting from such plays tout them as signs of their team’s superiority, in players, game calling, and football skill.

Great plays, and great controversies, are magnified during the playoffs, when every game is televised to a national audience. And the NFL has generated plenty of both in the playoffs going back, at least here, to 1958. Here is a subjective list of the top ten plays in NFL playoff history. Spoiler alert: Neither Aaron Rodgers, nor Tom Brady, figure in any of them.

(Note: while these plays are all available to view on YouTube, most are also restricted from being embedded here. We’ve provided links to each play within the body of each entry.)

10. The Hail Mary pass

Many believe the last second long pass to or near the end zone known as the Hail Mary to have been so christened on December 28, 1975, in a divisional playoff game. The Dallas Cowboys trailed the Minnesota Vikings 14-10. They had the ball near midfield, with 32 seconds left in the game. Roger Staubach launched a desperation pass fifty yards downfield toward Drew Pearson. Pearson collided with a defender while adjusting to the ball, knocking him to the ground. No flags were thrown. The catch gave Dallas the win, advancing them to the NFC Championship game. Afterward, Staubach told reporters, “It was a Hail Mary pass”. The name stuck.

It wasn’t the first time the name had been applied to a desperate play. As far back as the 1920s, players at the University of Notre Dame used the term. Georgetown used it in the 1940s, and even Staubach called a play against Michigan when he played for Navy a Hail Mary pass. But the 1975 play was in the NFL playoffs, on the national stage via television. The Cowboys went on to beat Los Angeles in the NFC Championship before losing to Pittsburgh in Super Bowl X. The desperation pass known as the Hail Mary has been a fixture of close NFL games ever since.

9. The Catch

The 1981 NFL Championship Game, played on January 10, 1982, featured the San Francisco 49ers against the Dallas Cowboys. Late in the fourth quarter the Cowboys led 27-21. San Francisco got the ball on their own 11 yard line, with just under five minutes to play. 49ers quarterback Joe Montana led the team on a drive which placed them on the Dallas six, with 58 seconds to play. On third and four, with a possible first down available if they advanced to the Dallas two, Montana found wide receiver Dwight Clark at the back of the end zone. Clark made a leaping, twisting catch with his fingertips. The Niners had the lead, but Dallas still had 50 seconds to drive for a game winning field goal.

The Cowboys drove to mid-field before their offense sputtered, and the 49ers won the game. The game winning play instantly became known as “The Catch.” Neither Montana nor 49ers head coach Bill Walsh saw the catch as it was made. Montana was on the ground after being hit, and Walsh assumed the ball had been thrown away due to its altitude in the end zone. The 49ers went on to win the Super Bowl that year, and three additional Super Bowls during the decade. The Cowboys fell into a period of decline. In 2019 NFL films listed The Catch second on their list of the 100 Greatest NFL Plays of All Time.

8. Alan Ameche’s touchdown in “The Greatest Game Ever Played”

Often called “The Greatest Game Ever Played” the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants featured 12 players who eventually were enshrined in the NFL Hall of Fame. Among them were Frank Gifford, Sam Huff and Don Maynard from the Giants. Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, and Gino Marchetti were among the Colts. Legendary coaches and rivals Tom Landry and Vince Lombardi ran the New York defense and offense respectively. The Colts head coach Weeb Ewbank joined them in the Hall.

The game was nationally televised by NBC and despite a blackout in the New York area, 45 million fans watched it on television. Unitas led the Colts in a late fourth quarter drive, called the first to utilize the two-minute drill, to tie the game with a field goal with just seven seconds left in regulation. When the game went into sudden death overtime the Giants received the football first. They failed to advance, punted, and Unitas led the Colts on an 80-yard drive to the New York one yard line. From there, Alan Ameche, on a third down play, scored the winning touchdown. Until the 1958 championship, college football was more popular in the United States than its professional counterpart. Following the game NFL popularity exploded on the still relatively new medium of television, and has grown with it ever since.

7. The Immaculate Reception

The Pittsburgh Steelers had a long record of failure in the NFL when they faced the Oakland Raiders in an AFC divisional playoff game on December 3, 1972. At that point, the Steelers had never won a playoff game. In the fourth quarter it appeared that drought would continue. The Raiders led, 7-6, late in the quarter. Steelers quarterback Terry Bradshaw, with 30 seconds left in regulation, through a deep pass to receiver John Fuqua. What happened next remains controversial. Either the ball hit Fuqua’s helmet, his hands, or the hands of Raiders safety John Tatum. It ricocheted backwards, heading toward the ground. Steelers running Franco Harris back caught the ball and ran to the end zone with the winning touchdown. It became known as the Immaculate Reception.

Raiders fans contended the ball hit Fuqua and Tatum never touched it, which made Harris’s catch illegal since a defender had not touched the ball. Others claimed Harris snatched the ball just as it touched the ground, making it an incomplete pass. The Steelers won the game. Though they lost that year’s AFC Championship to the Miami Dolphins (who went undefeated) it began a run of success which saw them win four Super Bowls within the decade. The Immaculate Reception fueled a long and bitter rivalry between the Steelers and Raiders, which included some of the most physically fought games in NFL history.

6. Earnest Byner’s fumble at the goal line cost the Browns a Super Bowl appearance

As of this writing, the Cleveland Browns have never appeared in a Super Bowl, one of just four teams to share that dubious distinction. But they have come close, never closer than on January 17, 1988, when they faced the Denver Broncos at Mile High Stadium. Trailing 21-3 at halftime, the Browns, led by running back Earnest Byner and quarterback Bernie Kosar, clawed their way back in the third and fourth quarter. After Denver scored a late touchdown the Browns began another drive, reaching the Denver eight-yard line. On second and five, Kosar handed the ball yet again to Byner, who ran to his left, picked up the first down, and continued toward the end zone.

He reached the end zone, but the ball didn’t. Bronco defender Jeremiah Castille, unblocked, hit Byner at the three yard line. Castille later admitted he knew he couldn’t stop Byner and went after the ball. He succeeded in knocking it free and the Broncos recovered. After forcing Cleveland to use their timeouts, Denver deliberately gave up a safety. That made the score 38-33 Denver. Cleveland got the ball back with time for a Hail Mary from mid-field, which failed. Earnest Byner had 67 yards and a touchdown running the ball that day, and 120 yards and another touchdown receiving. He is remembered for what entered NFL lore as “The Fumble.” To Cleveland fans it remains another piece of evidence all their sports teams are cursed.

5. Bart Starr’s quarterback sneak to win the Ice Bowl

New Year’s Eve, 1967, saw the Dallas Cowboys and the Green Bay Packers in a rematch of the preceding season’s NFL Championship Game. It remains the coldest game in NFL history. At game time the temperature in frigid Green Bay was minus 12 degrees. It became known as the Ice Bowl. The system meant to keep Lambeau Field’s playing surface from freezing failed. Several players suffered frostbite. Some players believed the game would be postponed. Officials considered postponing the game, until they learned the forecast predicted the next day would be even colder. The game went on, though the pregame performance by the Wisconsin-La Crosse marching band was canceled when the musicians’ lips froze to their mouthpieces.

The game was hard-fought. Late in the fourth quarter, with Dallas leading 17-14, Green Bay executed a 67-yard drive, bringing them to the one-yard line (actually about a foot from the goal line) with 16 seconds remaining. People glancing at the scoreboard could see the time remaining, yard line, down, score, and the temperature, minus 20 degrees. On the next play, Packer guard Jerry Kramer drove the fearsome Cowboy defensive lineman Jethro Pugh off the line of scrimmage and quarterback Bart Starr dove across for the touchdown and a Packer victory. It was their third straight NFL Championship.

4. Ben Roethlisberger’s touchdown pass to Santonio Holmes

Super Bowl XLIII (43 for those challenged by Roman numerals) is remembered for, among other things, being the last appearance in the television booth by the late John Madden. It also featured a 100 yard interception return for a touchdown by Steelers linebacker James Harrison. Despite that play and other heroics, with 2:37 remaining to play, Pittsburgh trailed the Arizona Cardinals 23-20.

Led by Ben Roethlisberger, Pittsburgh drove 78 yards, with 73 of those yards via receptions made by Santonio Holmes. The final play of the drive was a six-yard completion in the back corner of the end zone, when Holmes made one of the most spectacular catches in NFL playoff history. Some fans call the game itself the best in Super Bowl history, though not many of them are Arizona supporters. The play gave Pittsburgh its sixth Super Bowl win, making them the first team to reach that level of continued success.

3. The Ghost to the Post

On Christmas Eve, 1977, the Raiders, who then called Oakland home, faced the Baltimore Colts in an AFC Divisional Playoff game. The game seesawed in the second half, and late in the fourth quarter Oakland trailed the Colts by three. They got the ball with just under three minutes left on their own 30-yard line. Raider quarterback Ken Stabler needed to get the team into at least field goal range to force overtime.

He got them there with a 42-yard completion to tight end Dave Casper (known to teammates as “the Ghost,” a la Casper the Friendly Ghost) on a play the Raiders called “Ghost to the Post.” Casper altered his route and made an over-the-head catch of the high-arching pass which put the Raiders in field goal range. The Raiders tied the game a few plays later, forcing overtime. In the second overtime, Casper caught a 10 yard pass from Stabler which won the game, but it would not have been possible if not for the athletic catch he made late in the fourth quarter.

2. Malcolm Butler’s goal line interception in Super Bowl XLIX

Super Bowl XLIX saw the Seattle Seahawks, winners of the preceding year, playing the New England Patriots, which had not won a championship for ten years. Played on February 1, 2015, the game pitted a Seattle defense they called the Legion of Boom against New England’s explosive offense. In the end though, it was New England’s defense which completed the winning play. Seattle built a 10 point lead in the third quarter, but the Patriots scored two touchdowns in the fourth, giving them a 28-24 lead late in the game.

With just two minutes and two seconds remaining, the Seahawks weren’t finished. They drove from their own 20 yard line to the Patriot one, where they faced second and goal with 26 seconds to play. Inexplicably to some fans, the Seahawks called a pass play, and Malcolm Butler intercepted the ball. The play did not end the game. A penalty for excessive celebration made the possibility of a safety on the Patriots real. But an encroachment penalty on Seattle moved the ball back, and a following brawl led to a personal foul on the Seahawks, driving them back further, and giving Tom Brady sufficient room to take a knee and run out the clock.

1. Knile Davis’s 106 yard kickoff return on the first play of the 2015 playoffs

On January 9, 2016, the NFL Playoffs for the 2015 season opened with the wildcard game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Houston Texans in Houston. On the opening kickoff, Chiefs return specialist and running back Knile Davis caught the football six yards deep in his end zone. He elected to run it out. 11 seconds later he was in the Texans’ endzone, having completed the longest kickoff return in NFL playoff history. It was also the quickest score in playoff history.

The stunned Texans never recovered. By halftime they trailed 13-0, and the game ended with a score of 30-0. The Chiefs logged four interceptions during the rout. It was the first time the Texans had failed to score in a game on their home field. In the end, the only points the Chiefs needed for their first playoff victory in 26 years came on the opening kickoff .By the way, Davis’s kickoff return was not the longest of his career. In his rookie season, 2013, he returned a kickoff 108 yards for a touchdown against the Denver Broncos, tying the second longest in NFL history. The record is 109 yards, currently held by three players.