Chester Tragedy



Philip Henslowe (c. 1550 – 6 January 1616) was an Elizabethan theatrical entrepreneur and impresario. Henslowe's modern reputation rests on the survival of "Henslowe's Diary", a primary source for information about the theatrical world of Renaissance London. The diary makes a reference to a play about the Earl of Chester: a play which has since been "lost".

The reference appears to relate to a payment to Thomas Middleton on October 21st 1602 of £4 in "part payment for his play Chester Tragedy" and of 40s on 9 November of the same year in "full payment of his play called Randall Earl of Chester". Thomas Middleton (baptised 18 April 1580 – July 1627; also spelt Midleton) was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. He, with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson, was among the most successful and prolific of playwrights at work in the Jacobean period, and among the few to gain equal success in comedy and tragedy. He was also a prolific writer of masques and pageants. The "Chester Play" would be among his earliest works.

John a Kent and John a Cumber
John a Kent and John a Cumber is a sixteenth-century English play by Anthony Munday. John a Kent was a legendary figure about whom stories were still being told in the Welsh border counties into the nineteenth century. It seems likely that The Wise Man of Westchester was about this celebrated 'wise man'; there surely were not two such figures from the area. There may well have been ballads about John a Kent, ballads that referred to him as the Wise Man of Westchester, as there also undoubtedly were ballads about another character in the play, Ranulph Earl of Chester; although none about either man are extant.

Sources and Links

 * "Lost Play's" database;
 * Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works: see section on "lost plays";