Sir George Buck, or Buc (1560 – 1622) was an antiquarian who served as Master of the Revels to King James I of England. An antiquarian or antiquary is one concerned with Antiquities or things of the past The Master of the Revels was a position within the British royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally James VI and I (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625 was King of Scotland as James VI, and King of England and King of Ireland as James
George Buck was educated at the Middle Temple, and served on the successful Cádiz expedition of 1596 under Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex. The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple is one of the four Inns of Court exclusively entitled to call their members to the English Bar as Barristers Cádiz ( Spanish:) is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the province of the same name, a province which is one of eight Robert Devereux 2nd Earl of Essex ( 10 November 1566 &ndash 25 February 1601) a favourite of Queen Elizabeth I of England He had some connection with the powerful William Cecil, Lord Burghley. Lord Burghley redirects here For other holders of the title see Baron Burghley William Cecil 1st Baron Burghley (13 September 1520 &ndash [1] In the mid-to-late 1590s Buck was in competition with playwright John Lyly for the reversion of the office of the Master of the Revels, then held by Buck's relation Sir Edmund Tilney ("reversion" meaning that the candidate would obtain the office when the present office-holder vacated it — usually by death). John Lyly ( Lilly or Lylie) (c 1553 or 1554 &ndash November 1606 was an English writer best known for his books Euphues The Anatomy of Wit The Master of the Revels was a position within the British royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally Edmund Tilney (c 1536 - 1610 was a courtier best known now as Master of the Revels to Elizabeth I and James I. Many sources, depending on the Dictionary of National Biography, identify Tilney and Buck as uncle and nephew, but their true familial relationship seems to have been more distant. The Dictionary of National Biography ( DNB) is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history published from 1885 [2]
Lyly was vocal in his distress at facing competition for an office he thought he'd been promised; his letters of protest and supplication to Queen Elizabeth and to Cecil are still extant. [3] Heartfelt thought they may have been, Lyly's complaints had no effect. Sometime in this period, Buck also obtained the office of Esquire of the Body (likely an honorary distinction for him); it was an office he held when Elizabeth died in 1603.
Upon the start of the new Stuart dynasty in 1603, Buck was knighted (July 23) and formally received the reversion to the office of Master of the Revels with an appointment as Deputy Master, by a royal patent (June 23). The House of Stuart or Stewart was a Royal house of the Kingdom of Scotland, later also of the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of He worked as Tilney's assistant until his predecessor's death in 1610, when Buck assumed the office. [4] Unfortunately for posterity's knowledge of English Renaissance theatre, neither Tilney nor Buck kept the detailed records that would be produced by their successor, Sir Henry Herbert. English Renaissance theatre is English drama written between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642. Henry Herbert may refer to Henry Herbert (Master of the Revels to Charles I and Charles II of England Henry Herbert 2nd Earl of Pembroke
The Master of the Revels was responsible for supervising and censoring the plays performed in the public theatres, and for arranging performances of those plays at Court. (Curiously, he had relatively little to do with the sumptuous performances of masques that were such noteworthy features of the Stuart court. The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in sixteenth and early seventeenth century Europe though it was developed earlier in Italy ) Scholars have disagreed about Buck's role during the years he was Tilney's assistant, 1603–10. It has been argued that Buck had no role in censoring plays prior to 1610. [5] Yet starting in 1606, Buck licensed plays for publication, a function that had not previously been the responsibility of the Master's office. George Chapman's The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles, Duke of Byron (1608) was censored when it appeared on the stage, and caused a scandal when the players violated that censorship; Buck has been associated with the scandal,[6] and it is certainly true that Buck licensed the publication of the censored text later in that year. George Chapman (c 1559 &ndash May 12 1634) was an English Dramatist, Translator, and Poet. The Conspiracy and Tragedy of Charles Duke of Byron Marshall of France is a Jacobean Tragedy by George Chapman, a two-part play or double play
Once he assumed the full office in 1610, Buck clearly was the primary censor for public drama. The extant manuscript for The Second Maiden's Tragedy (1611) shows censorship notes in Buck's hand, as do a few other surviving manuscripts from the era, like that of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt (1619). The Second Maiden's Tragedy is a Jacobean play that survives only in manuscript The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt was a Jacobean play written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger in 1619, and produced [7]
Buck was also a minor poet and prose writer. He published "A Discourse or Treatise of the third universitie of England" (1615), an account of the Inns of Court. The Inns of Court in London are the professional associations to one of which every barrister in England and Wales (and those judges who were formerly barristers His major work, his History of the Life and Reign of Richard III, would not be published until 1646.
As an antiquary, Buck was noted for his discovery of the copy of the act of Parliament, Titulus Regius, which brought Richard III to the throne. Titulus Regius ( the royal title in Latin) is a statute of the Parliament of England, issued in 1483, by which the title of King Richard III ( 2 October 1452 &ndash 22 August 1485) was King of England from 1483 until his death He found it in the Croyland Chronicle, one of the sources for his History of King Richard III. The Croyland Chronicle (or " Crowland Chronicle " is an important if not always reliable primary source for English Medieval history in particular (Sir George was a descendant of Sir John Buck, an adherent of Richard III who had been executed following the Battle of Bosworth Field. The Battle of Bosworth or Bosworth Field ( 22 August, 1485) was Lancastrian Henry Tudor's defeat of Yorkist Richard )
Buck also claimed to have seen a letter written by Elizabeth of York to John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, shortly before the death of Queen Anne Neville, in which Elizabeth declared her love for King Richard and her hope of becoming his wife. Elizabeth of York (11 February 1466 &ndash 11 February 1503 was the Queen Consort of King Henry VII of England, whom she married in 1486 John Howard 1st Duke of Norfolk (mid-1420s &ndash August 22 1485) was an English nobleman Anne Neville (11 June 1456 &ndash 16 March 1485 was Queen consort of King Richard III of England 1483-1485 In Buck's words, the letter asks Norfolk "to be a mediator for her to the King, in behalf of the marriage propounded between them", who, as she wrote, was her "onely joy and maker in this world", and that she was his in heart and thought: "withall insinuating that the better part of February was past, and that she feared the Queen would never die. " The letter, if it ever existed, is now lost. Buck fell from favour, was overwhelmed by debt, and died insane.
References
- ^ Chambers, E. K. The Elizabethan Stage. Sir Edmund Kerchever Chambers (1866&ndash1954 was an English literary critic and Shakespearean scholar 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923; Vol. 1, p. 96.
- ^ Eccles, Mark. "Sir George Buc, Master of the Revels. " In: Thomas Lodge and Other Elizabethans. Edited by Charles J. Sisson. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1933; pp. 409-506.
- ^ Chambers, Vol. 1, pp. 96-8.
- ^ Halliday, F. E. A Shakespeare Companion 1564–1964. Baltimore, Penguin, 1964; p. 74.
- ^ Dutton, Richard. Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama. London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1991.
- ^ Auchter, Dorothy. Dictionary of Literary and Dramatic Censorship in Tudor and Stuart England. London, Greenwood Press, 2001; p. 65.
- ^ Auchter, pp. 334-5.
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