The Admiral’s Men, Shakespeare, and the Lost Arthurian Plays of Elizabethan England

Abstract

Shakespeare’s Elizabethan acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, is not known to have staged any play centering on Arthurian heroes. This is not the case with the company’s rivals, the Lord Admiral’s Players. The Admiral’s not only performed the Arthurian romances Chinon of England (1596) and Trystram of Lyons (1599), but during the period of Shakespeare’s second Henriad they mounted their own cycle of chronicle plays— Vortiger (1596), Uther Pendragon (1597), The Lyfe and Death of Arthur, King of England (1598)—a historical trilogy that used Arthurian history as a lense through which to explore political questions of succession and the dangers of Catholic intervention from abroad.

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