George Peele (baptised 25 July 1556 – buried 9 November 1596) was an English translator, poet, and dramatist, who is most noted for his supposed, but not universally accepted, collaboration with William Shakespeare on the play Titus Andronicus. Many anonymous Elizabethan plays have been attributed to him, but his reputation rests mainly on Edward I, The Old Wives' Tale, The Battle of Alcazar, The Arraignment of Paris, and David and Bethsabe. The Troublesome Reign of John, King of England, the immediate source for Shakespeare's King John, has been published under his name.
Life Peele was christened on 25 July 1556 at St James Garlickhythe in the City of London. His father, James Peele (died 30 December 1585), who appears to have belonged to a Devonshire family, was clerk of Christ's Hospital, a school which was then situated in central London. He wrote two treatises on bookkeeping, The Maner and Fourme How to Kepe a Perfecte Reconyng (1553) and The Pathe Waye to Perfectnes (1569).David H. Horne. The Life and Dramatic Works of George Peele, Volume I: The Life and Minor Works of George Peele. Charles Tyler Prouty, general editor. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952, 7–8 The latter depicts James Peele in a woodcut on the title page.Horne, 8 No contemporary likeness of George is known, although he was said to be short-legged, dark complected, red haired, and squinting, although not necessarily from reliable sources.Horne, 45–46, citing William Gager and the Jests. George's mother, Anne, died on 1 July 1580, and his father married Christian Widers (d. 1597 in St Christopher le Stocks, a church since demolished) on 3 November 1580. She became a nurse on the Hospital payroll, where she remained five years after James Peele's death, when she married Ralph Boswell.Horne, 20 His siblings included Anne (died 10 January 1568/9), Isabel, Judith (died 16 April 1582) and James (born 3 January 1563/4). Anne married John Alford on 14 May 1565 and had one son, Robert (9 October 1567 – c. 12 March 1654/5). Judith married John Jackman on 19 June 1575 and had three children, Susan (born 3 June 1576), William (30 April 1577 – 1 July 1577) and Sarah (died 25 May 1578).Horne, 21 On 5 February 1568/9 Isabel married Mathew Shakespeare, with whom she had eight children.Horne, 21 Duncan Salkeld, a university lecturer at University of Chichester, has suggested that while Matthew Shakespeare "may have been unrelated" to William Shakespeare, the listing of Matthew's marriage to Isabel Peele suggests a possible link, because Isabels' playwriting brother is thought by some to have collaborated on Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus. James Peele also wrote the Ironmongers' Pageants of 1566 and 1569, which may have led to George's writing of two Lord Mayor's pageants.
George Peele was educated at Christ's Hospital, and entered Broadgates Hall, Oxford, in 1571. In 1574 he removed to Christ Church, taking his B.A. degree in 1577, and proceeding M.A. in 1579. In that year, the governors of Christ's Hospital requested their clerk to "discharge his house of his son, George Peele." He went up to London about 1580, the year he married his first wife, 16-year-old heiress Ann Cooke, the only child of Hugh Christian, who was also known by the surnames Cooke, Alettor, Elector, and Nelettor (his brother, Daniel, used Alettor).Horne, 49, 51."George Peele: A biographical sketch" Christian had died a few months before the marriage, and lawsuits over his estate were not settled for years, draining the inheritance.
In 1583, when Albertus Alasco (Albert Laski), a Polish nobleman, was entertained at Christ Church, Peele was entrusted with the arrangement of two Latin plays by William Gager (fl. 1580–1619) presented on the occasion. He was also complimented by Gager for an English verse translation of one of the Iphigenias of Euripides. In 1585 he was employed to write the Device of the Pageant borne before Woolston Dixie, and in 1591 he devised the pageant in honour of another Lord Mayor, Sir William Webbe. This was the Descensus Astraeae (printed in the Harleian Miscellany, 1808), in which Queen Elizabeth is honoured as Astraea.
Robert Greene, at the end of his pamphlet Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, exhorts Peele to repentance, saying that Peele, like Greene himself, has "been driven to extreme shifts for a living." Anecdotes of his reckless life were emphasized by the use of his name in connection with the apocryphal Merrie conceited Jests of George Peele (printed in 1607). Many of the stories had circulated before in other jestbooks, unattached to Peele's name, but there are personal touches that may be biographical. The book provided source material for the play The Puritan, one of the works of the Shakespeare Apocrypha. This is largely dismissed by Peele biographer David H. Horne.David H. Horne. The Life and Minor Works of George Peele. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952. "In the minds of at least some of those who have voiced such views a process of circular reasoning must have unconsciously taken place: Meres' statement that Peele died by the pox means that Peele was dissipated, since the hero of the Jests is dissipated. His acquaintanceship with Greene, who was dissipated, bears this out. therefore, because he was acquainted with Greene and died of the pox, the evidence of the Jests to the effect that he was dissipated may be accepted as authentic."Horne, 113. He notes that jest books on famous subjects were common, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Colley Cibber, Thomas Killigrew, James Quin, David Garrick, Laurence Sterne, William Congreve, Lord Sandwich, Lord Chesterfield, Samuel Johnson, Falstaff, Tristram Shandy, and Polly Peachum.Horne, 115 He shows that most were derived from Merry Tales and Quick Answers,Horne, 117 while the few jests unique to the volume follow similar patterns to traditional jests with merely the details changed.Horne, 118–126 "Peele was a product of the middle London," Horne writes, "but his recurrent courtly themes of war and pastoralism show that in his work he aspired to the highest. It is ironical that his present reputation should have dropped him to the lowestHorne, 127 ... But why is it that although Ben Jonson killed a man and was in prison many times, his reputation does not seem to have suffered? Let us not single out Peele for opprobrium unless we are prepared to maintain that all of Greene's acquaintances, and men like Jonson, were immersed in sin."Horne, 129 Horne then attacks W.M. Creizenach's view that David and Bethsabe is the "product of a crapulous morality dating from the last years of the poet's dissolute life" as having a questionable basis – "Peele was in most respects like his fellow Elizabethans, morally neither better or worse, aesthetically more perceptive; in technical skill equal to his fellow poets; in the sweetness of his piping superior to all but Marlowe, Spenser, and Shakespeare."Horne, 131
Peele may have married a second time, to Mary Gates or Yates. It is not possible to state definitively that the George Peele who married Mary Gates is the dramatist, as another George Peele, a boxmaker who died in 1604, was living in London at the time. There is not enough information in the record to determine for certain to which George Peele she was actually married. Frank S. Hook, who edited a 1961 edition of Edward I,George Peele. The Life and Dramatic Works of George Peele, Volume II: Edward I edited by Frank S. Hook/The Battle of Alcazar edited by John Yoklavich. General Editor Charles Tyler Prouty. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1961, 5 suggests that David H. Horne's speculation in the first volume of the same edition is correct in believing this is the same George Peele based on a fictitious incident in the play's first scene:
Peele may be more interested in what should be done than in what actually has been done. The emphasis on generosity to soldiers and veterans is in ironic contrast to the way the fighting forces in the Netherlands were actually treated. Leicester's reports, summarized in the Calendar of State Papers (Foreign) show amply the suffering of soldiers; they were not paid on time, and their living conditions were deplorable. Likewise, the Acts of Privy Council for the period after 1590, when soldiers began returning from Willoughby's expedition to France, demonstrate the care of wounded veterans was becoming an increasingly embarrassing problem for Elizabeth's government. Read in light of these contemporary documents, this scene takes on a bitterly ironic note.
In the scene, Edward I establishes a "colledge" for wounded soldiers, something he did not do in real life, nor was this something Elizabeth did, although in 1587, the Earl of Leicester had done so in Elizabeth's name, at the Galthius.Hook, 4 While it must be said that Hook and Horne are writing for the same edition with Charles Tyler Prouty as general editor, this ties directly with Horne's supposition Horne, 99ff. that this is the same George Peele, for the George Peele who married Mary Gates, who was the widow of the former Master-Gunner of Berghen-op-Zoom, Lawrence Gates, and Mary and George Peele entered a lengthy legal battle to collect Mary's war widow salary. One wonders why Peele would have added such a fictitious moment to Edward I were he not the George Peele trying to collect these funds. This involved a three-year litigation against Thomas Gurlyn, who was a buyer of soldiers' uncollected wages, who countersued Mary on allegations that she had forged Lawrence Gates's will.Horne, 103. The record does not show whether Gurlyn, who stalled payment, ever actually paid what he owed to the Peeles, despite Peele obtaining a verdict against him.Horne, 104 Horne speculates that evidence of Peele's sickness in a letter to Lord Burghley indicates that he was probably unable to work and thus pay legal fees.Horne, 104 Horne also speculates that Peele himself may have been a soldier.Horne, 100
Death
Peele died "of the pox," according to Francis Meres, aged 40, and was buried on 9 November 1596 in St James's Church, Clerkenwell. One of the eight boarding houses at the modern Horsham campus of Christ's Hospital is now named Peele after George Peele, and as a commemoration to the work of the Peele family with the ancient foundation of the Christ's Hospital school.
Plays Sir Clyomon and Sir Clamydes (1577) (attributed) The Arraignment of Paris (1581) The Troublesome Reign of King John (1589) Mucedorus (1590) (attributed) The Battle of Alcazar (1591) Titus Andronicus (1592) (attributed; co-written with Shakespeare) The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First (1593) The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe (1599) The Old Wives' Tale (1595)
His pastoral comedy The Arraignment of Paris was presented by the Children of the Chapel Royal before Queen Elizabeth"George Peele (1558?–1597)" perhaps as early as 1581, and was printed anonymously in 1584. In the play, Paris is asked by Jupiter to decide which goddesses, Juno, Pallas or Venus should be awarded the golden apple. He awards this to Venus who carries Paris away, leaving his wife Oenone disconsolate. Juno and Pallas arraign Paris before the gods of partiality in his judgement. The case is then referred to Diana, with whom the final decision rests. She gives the apple to none of the competitors but to a nymph called Eliza, 'our Zabeta fayre', a reference to Queen Elizabeth I.Montrose, Louis Adrian. "Gifts and Reasons: The Contexts of Peele's Araygnement of Paris." ELH, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Autumn, 1980) 433–61.The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 6th Edition. Edited by Margaret Drabble, Oxford University Press, 2000 p. 36