Anthony Munday

Anthony Munday (?1560-1633), The Downfall of Robert, Duke of Huntington, 1598. Courtesy A Lytell Geste of Robin Hood.

Anthony Munday (or Monday) (?1560 - 10 August 1633) was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer.

Life

Anthony Munday

Overview

Munday, son of a draper in London, appears to have had a somewhat chequered career. He went to Rome in 1578, and published The Englyshe Romayne Life, in which he gives descriptions of rites and other matters fitted to excite Protestant feeling; and he appears to have acted practically as a spy upon Roman Catholics. He had a hand in 18 plays, of which 4 only are extant, including 2 on Robert, Earl of Huntingdon (Robin Hood) (1598), and another on the Life of Sir John Oldcastle. He was ridiculed by Ben Jonson in The Case is Altered. He was also a ballad-writer, but nothing of his in this kind survives, unless "Beauty sat bathing in a Spring" be correctly attributed to him. He also wrote city pageants, and translated popular romances, including Palladino of England, and Amadis of Gaule. He was made by Stow the antiquary his literary executor, and published his Survey of London (1618). The chief interest in Munday for the modern reader lies his writings on Robin Hood, and in his collaboration with Shakespeare]] and others on the play Sir Thomas More.

Career

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Munday was born in 1553 or 1554, the son of Christopher Monday, a London draper. He had already appeared on the stage when in 1576 he bound himself apprentice for 8 years to John Allde, the stationer, an engagement from which he was speedily released, for in 1578 he was in Rome.

In the opening lines of his English Romayne Lyfe (1582) he avers that in going abroad he was actuated solely by a desire to see strange countries and to learn foreign languages; but he must be regarded, if not as a spy sent to report on the English Jesuit College in Rome, as a journalist who meant to make literary capital out of the designs of the English Catholics resident in France and Italy.

He says that he and his companion, Thomas Nowell, were robbed of all they possessed on the road from Boulogne to Amiens, where they were kindly received by an English priest, who entrusted them with letters to be delivered in Reims. These they handed over to the English ambassador in Paris, where under a false name, as the son of a well-known English Catholic, Munday gained recommendations which secured his reception at the English College in Rome. He was treated with special kindness by the rector, Dr Morris, for the sake of his supposed father. Munday gives a detailed account of the routine of the place, of the dispute between the English and Welsh students, of the carnival at Rome, and finally of the martyrdom of Richard Atkins (?1559-1581).

He returned to England in 1578-1579, and became an actor again, being a member of the Earl of Oxford's company between 1579 and 1584. One of his earliest works was The Mirror of Mutability, 1579, when he was in his 26th year: he dedicated it to the Earl of Oxford.

In a Catholic tract entitled A True Reporte of the death of M. Campion (1581), Munday is accused of having deceived his master Allde, a charge which he refuted by publishing Allde's signed declaration to the contrary, and he is also said to have been hissed off the stage. He was a chief witness against Edmund Campion and his associates, and wrote about this time 5 anti-popish pamphlets, among them the savage and bigoted tract entitled A Discoverie of Edmund Campion and his Confederates; whereto is added the execution of Edmund Campion, Raphe Sherwin, and Alexander Brian, the 1st part of which was read aloud from the scaffold at Campion's death in December 1581.

Munday's political services against the Catholics were rewarded in 1584 by the post of messenger to her Majesty's chamber, and from this time he seems to have ceased to appear on the stage.

In 1598-1599, when he travelled with the earl of Pembroke's men in the Low Countries, it was in the capacity of playwright to furbish up old plays. He devoted himself to writing for the booksellers and the theatrs, compiling religious works, translating Amadis de Gaule and other French romances, and putting words to popular airs.

He was the chief pageant-writer for the City, from 1605 to 1616, and it is likely that he supplied most of the pageants between 1592 and 1605, of which no authentic record has been kept. It is by these entertainments of his, which rivalled in success those of Ben Jonson andThomas Middleton, that he won his greatest fame In some of his pageants he signs himself "citizen and draper of London," and in his later years he is said to have followed his father's trade.

Of all the achievements of his versatile talent, however, all that was noted in his epitaph in St Stephens, Coleman Street, London, where he was buried on 10 August 1633, was his enlarged edition (1618) of Stow's Survey of London.

Writing

Munday's works usually appeared under his own name, but he sometimes used the pseudonym of "Lazarus Piot." Of the 18 plays between the dates of 1584 and 1602 which are assigned to Munday in collaboration with Henry Chettle, Michael Drayton, Thomas Dekker, and other dramatists, only 4 are extant.

John a Kent and John a Cumber, dated 1595, is supposed to be the same as Wiseman of West Chester, produced by the Admiral's men at the Rae Theatre on 2 December 1594. A ballad of British Sidanen, on which it may have been founded, was entered at Stationers' Hall in 1579.

The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntingdon, afterwards called Robin Hood of merrie Sherwodde (acted in February 1599) was followed in the same month by a 2nd part, The Death of Robert Earl of Huntingdon (printed 1601), in which he collaborated with Chettle. Munday also had a share with Drayton, Robert Wilson, and Richard Hathway in the First Part of the history of the life of Sir John Oldcastle (acted 1599), which was printed in 1600, with the name of William Shakespeare (which was speedily withdrawn) on the title page.

A.H. Bullen identifies him with the "Shepherd Tony" who contributed "Beauty sat bathing by a spring" and 6 other lyrics to Englands Helicon (ed. Bullen, 1899, 15).

Sir Thomas More

Sir Thomas More is an Elizabethan play based on events in the life of Catholic martyr Thomas More, who rose to become the Lord Chancellor of England during the Reign of Henry VIII. Whether or not the play was performed in the Elizabethan or Jacobean age is unsettled, and there are indications to support both sides of the question. Scholars of the play think that it was originally written by Munday and Chettle, and some years later heavily revised by another team of playwrights, including Thomas Heywood, Thomas Dekker, and William Shakespeare.

Critical reputation

William Webbe (Discourse of English Poetrie, 1586) praised Munday for his pastorals, of which there remains only the title, Sweet Sobs and Amorous Complaints of Shepherds and Nymphs; and Francis Meres (Palladis Tamia, 1598) gives him among dramatic writers the exaggerated praise of being "our best plotter."

Recognition

There is a monument to Munday in the church of St. Stephen Coleman Street, London.

His poem "Beauty Bathing" was included in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900.

In popular culture

Ben Jonson ridiculed Munday in The Case is Altered as Antonio Balladino, pageant poet.

Plays

The subsequent catalogue of plays which Munday wrote, either alone or in conjunction with others, is derived from the materials supplied by Edmond Malone.

Sir Thomas More audiobook Anthony MUNDAY

• Fedele and Fortuna or Fedele and Fortunio, by Anthony Munday. c.1584.
• Mother Redcap, by Anthony Munday and Michael Drayton. December 1597. Not printed and therefore did not survive.
• The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington, by Anthony Munday. February 1597-8. Printed in 1601.
• The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington, by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle. February 1597-8. Printed in 1601.
• The Funeral of Richard Cordelion, by Robert Wilson, Henry Chettle, Anthony Munday, and Michael Drayton. May 1598. Not printed.
• Valentine and Orson, by Richard Hathwaye and Anthony Munday. July 1598. Not printed.
• Chance Medley, by Robert Wilson, Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, and Thomas Dekker. August 1598. Not printed.
• Owen Tudor, by Michael Drayton, Richard Hathwaye, Anthony Munday, and Robert Wilson. January 1599-1600. Not printed.
• Fair Constance of Rome, by Anthony Munday, Richard Hathwaye, Michael Drayton, and Thomas Dekker. June 1600. Not printed.
• Fair Constance of Rome, Part II., by the same authors. June 1600. Not printed.
• The Rising of Cardinal Wolsey, [154] by Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, Henry Chettle, and Wentworth Smith. November 12, 1601. Not printed.
• Two Harpies, by Thomas Dekker, Michael Drayton, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, and Anthony Munday. May 1602. Not printed.
• The Widow's Charm, by Anthony Munday. July 1602. Printed in 1607, as Malone conjectured, under the title of The Puritan or Widow of Watling Street, and ascribed to Shakespeare.
• The Set at Tennis, by Anthony Munday. December 1602. Not printed.
• The first part of the Life of Sir John Oldcastle, by Anthony Munday, Michael Drayton, Robert Wilson, and Richard Hathwaye; printed anonymously in 1600 (Q1), and again in 1619 (Q2) under the name of William Shakespeare.

Translations

• Palmerin D'Oliva (1588)
• Francisco de Morais's The honorable, pleasant and rare conceited historie of Palmendos (1589)
• Etienne de Maisonneuf's Gerileon of England (1592)
• The anonymous Primaleon of Greece (from 1594)
• Amadis de Gaul (from 1596)
• Palmerin of England (from 1596)

I Serve a Mistress by Anthony Munday

See also

• List of British poets
• List of English-language playwrights

References

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). "Munday, Anthony". Encyclopædia Britannica. 19 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 3-4. . Wikisource, Web, Feb. 15, 2018.
• Tracey Hill, Anthony Munday and Civic Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).

External links

Poems

• "Beauty Bathing".
• Munday. Anthony (1560-1633) (1 poem) at Representative Poetry Online
• Anthony Munday at Poetry Nook (8 poems)

Audio / video

• Anthony Munday at YouTube

Books

• Anthony Munday at Amazon.com

About

• Anthony Munday in the Encyclopædia Britannica
• Anthony Munday at NNDB
• Munday, Anthony in the Dictionary of National Biography
• Anthony Munday (1560?-1633) at Luminarium
• Introduction to the Munday Plays at University of Rochester

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the 1911 Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. Original article is at Munday, Anthony