The Merry Devil

by William Shakespeare

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Genres: Plays, Drama, Classics, Shakespeare, Fiction, Poetry, Literature

77 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1601

About the author

William Shakespeare was an English playwright, poet, and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon" (or simply "the Bard"). His extant works, including collaborations, consist of some 39 plays, 154 sonnets, three long narrative poems, and a few other verses, some of uncertain authorship. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare remains arguably the most influential writer in the English language, and his works continue to be studied and reinterpreted.
Shakespeare was born and raised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner ("sharer") of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men after the ascension of King James VI and I of Scotland to the English throne. At age 49 (around 1613), he appears to have retired to Stratford, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive; this has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, his sexuality, his religious beliefs, and even certain fringe theories as to whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
Shakespeare produced most of his known works between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories and are regarded as some of the best works produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until 1608, among them Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, all considered to be among the finest works in the English language. In the last phase of his life, he wrote tragicomedies (also known as romances) and collaborated with other playwrights.
Many of Shakespeare's plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. However, in 1623, John Heminge and Henry Condell, two fellow actors and friends of Shakespeare's, published a more definitive text known as the First Folio, a posthumous collected edition of Shakespeare's dramatic works that includes 36 of his plays. Its Preface was a prescient poem by Ben Jonson, a former rival of Shakespeare, that hailed Shakespeare with the now famous epithet: "not of an age, but for all time".

Reviews

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this to try and make better sense of the frontispiece woodcut on the Q6 edition. Discovered, thanks to the editor, that it is a representation of Smug sitting on the tavern/inn sign, convincing the two onlooking gentlemen that this is the St. George Inn (rather than the White Horse). The play itself reads like a cross between Doctor Faustus and Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, but a sight funnier than FB/FB. Considering that it's only a fragment of the original play (so there are some significant pieces of action alluded to but not extant), it's quite good.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Merry Devill of Edmonton is another play whose publisher claimed it was by Shakespeare and which was in the collection I am reading of Shakespeare Apocrypha; various scholars have suggested other more plausible authors, from Drayton or Heywood to Dekker, but there is no real evidence. Today the play is thought to have been written in the early 1600's, although it was earlier thought to have been from about 1592. It was one I had not read before.

This is another light romantic comedy, about a maiden, Milliscent Clare, whose father wishes to marry her to a rich young man, Franke Jerningham (who is in love with someone else, never actually named in the play) and commits her for a time to a nunnery (so the play is apparently set before the time of Henry VIII) to break off her previous engagement to the man she wants to marry, Raymond Mounchensey. Raymond, Franke, and her brother Harry, with the help of a magician, Peter Fabell, the Merry Devill of the title, rescue her from the nunnery and she is married to Mounchensey by Sir John, a priest who is also involved with some other comic characters in a subplot about poaching deer in the royal forest. The play begins with Fabell deceiving the devil to escape a Faustian deal, but otherwise there is nothing supernatural in the play. It is a fun read but nothing deep and nothing in any way suggesting Shakespeare.

[Ruchika Pahwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Draining!

A bit more energy-draining than the other writings of Shakespeare...I lost interest after a while, even though I enjoyed some of his other plays with more appealing storylines.

[Forked Radish]

The attribution to Shakspeare (sic) is dubious.

[Gill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love this play; I'd give it five stars if only it was complete. The whole sequence by which the angry father is misled into staying the night at the wrong tavern is missing, which is a great shame; there are probably some other, mostly comic, scenes not there either. It was almost certainly by Dekker, and hugely popular, but the printed versions are all maimed.

In one way it's a parody of Dr Faustus; Henslowe's Admiral's Men had a revival in repertoire. This shows at the start how Faustus should have handled Mephostophilis, but then goes on to show the magician helping a pair of young lovers escape the plans of a harsh father, making fun of nuns in the process.

Read as part of the Shakespeare Institute "Extra Mile" readathon in the lockdown summer of 2020 - on Zoom, but great fun. And again in January 2024 in a re-read of the entire surviving body of work of the company.

[Will Boncher · Rating 1 out of 5]

My original review was going to be:
"Lesser known works of Shakespeare are lesser known for a reason. This sucked."

Then I went to Wikipedia to find out what the hell was up with what I just read. Turns out, not Shakespeare as my Kindle said. Someone (Humphrey Moseley) said Shakespeare wrote it and somehow messed up my Kindle 300+ years later.

My new review is:
"This was dumb. This sucked."

[Irène Wadowski uliasz · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ennuyeux !