- Edmund Ironside (play)
"Edmund Ironside, or War Hath Made All Friends" is an anonymous Elizabethan play that depicts the life of Edmund II of England, At least two critics have suggested that it is an early work by
William Shakespeare .Text
The play was never published in its own era; the unique copy of the text was preserved in
MS. Egerton 1994 , an important collection of play manuscripts now in the collection of theBritish Museum . [Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, eds., "The Popular School: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama",, Lincoln, NE, University of nebraska Press, 1975; pp. 157-62.]Authorship
E.B. Everitt and Eric Sams have argued that this play is perhaps Shakespeare's first drama. According to Sams, "Edmund Ironside" "contains some 260 words or usages which on the evidence of the "
Oxford English Dictionary " were first used by Shakespeare himself.... Further, it exhibits 635 instances of Shakespeare's rare words including some 300 of the rarest." [Sams, Eric. (1986). "Shakespeare's "Edmund Ironside": The Lost Play". Wildwood Ho. ISBN 0-7045-0547-9] However, this argument has failed to convince the majority of Shakespearian scholars.Plot
King Canutus (
Canute the Great ) faces an insurgency of the native English population led by Edmund II. Unbeknownst to them, they face a mutual enemy, a traitorous noble named Edricus, who hopes to take the crown for himself.References
External links
* [http://www.elizabethanauthors.com/iron1.htm Anonymous Plays: "Edmund Ironside"] complete text at [http://www.elizabethanauthors.com Elizabethan Authors]
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