Category Archives: Endymion

After reading Kyd’s play, The Spanish Tragedy, and switching over to Lily’s comedy play, Endymion, there is quite a drastic change. It is obvious that this play was in fact written for Queen Elizabeth with her representation shown through Cynthia. It is interesting to notice the different style of the plays when they are made to be performed to different audiences. The plays themselves take on a mask and become much like the actors, fulfilling a certain role to please others.

Endymion takes on very different, mystical characters. It is extremely unrealistic in showing both godly and human characters conversing and taking notice of each other in the same world, but realistic in the emotions felt by the characters. Like most plays around this time, emotions were acted out rashly. However, unlike The Spanish Tragedy, there seemed to be more thought before the characters acted out purely for love. Eumenides proved this in his choice of Endymion over Semele. Furthermore, Cynthia had to act reasonable and realized being with Endymion would not be realistic. Instead of killing and seeking revenge on pure emotion, this play showed more logical sense while still being completely unreal.

Compared to a play taking a point of view and trying to promote a social idea, Endymion’s main purpose was to please Queen Elizabeth. The importance of friendship was shown but this play lacked a sense of social structure in the way that The Spanish Tragedy promoted. Showing her as Cynthia put her above mortals, not by choice but because it was her duty. It is ironic however that in both plays the women hold all of the power, and man’s fate seems to be directly tied to them.

While I’m quite sure that Lyly’s contemporary audiences recognized the not-quite-so-subtle homage to Queen Elizabeth I from the get-go (who could mistake the fawned over Cynthia, a woman of unsurpassed beauty and excellence, for anyone else?), but for those of us today not catching on quite as quickly, Lyly’s conclusion proved without a reservation that the plot of the play was written foremost to flatter the Queen. Now this isn’t such a terrible thing,  such an aim hardly inhibited Lyly’s stylistic choices as a playwright and that is arguably where he succeeds most, but it does necessarily affect his characterization, and it’s worth taking a look at.

For the majority of the play, Cynthia remains a figure of unattainable proportions, her appearances are few and her lines numbered, yet thanks to Endymion her presence is palpably felt even in her absence and her greatness simply understood. Taking Cynthia as a substitute for the Queen, it makes sense since Elizabeth’s power came not from her constant showing of authority, but the implicit understanding  of its existence. Until the final Act, Cynthia maintains this somewhat removed nature, however by the final scene Lyly entirely shifts her role from a passive force to an active one.

No longer able to simply stand over watch, Cynthia assumes the role of judge, jury, healer, mediator, and all-around resolver, bringing to a close the various strands of the play in a way that only an omnipotent figure could really hope to do. In fact, it makes you wonder why none of this could have been accomplished sooner (given the decades that passed with Endymion’s slumber). But placing such quibbles aside, Lyly built up the play adulating a mythical woman almost without reason only to close by justifying such praise when she finally takes action; and while I’m none too familiar with the reign of Elizabeth I, I’m content to say that this is a fitting way to pay tribute to any figurehead under ‘threat’ of seemingly unsubstantiated praise.

http://youtu.be/7WboeWJm0vc

As a group we wanted to take advantage of putting a modern twist on the play. Endymion and Eumenides are best friends and Eumenides makes sacrifices for Endymion’s own happiness. As a group we noticed that it is like a wolf pack relationship. Wolves travel together and protect each other, it is a very strong bond. This is the reason for the wolf masks, however there needed to be some distinction between Endymion and Eumenides. At first the plan was to wear the same color clothing to represent a bond, however after realizing that both characters are quite different in the way they think and act we choose black and brown to create the difference between the two men. For Cynthia’s clothes and color choices, after research a moon goddess wears all white to literally represent the moon.

The setting for the scene was at madison park. The scene shows the Endymion is asleep under a tree and after Cynthia kisses him she needs to hide behind him. The park had many trees and benches for Endymion to lay on and it gave us enough room to move around and film freely. Also the park can be seen as a form of wilderness, an area in which wolfs would more or less roam around.

The scene study was definitely a fun and creative assignment but required a great amount of research and work to put a modern twist to the play. Some problems that we can across as a group was reading with a mask on. The mask however was necessary for the interpretation of they play we took as a group. Another problem we came across was having to film in the freezing cold weather. We researched and agreed on the type of setting we wanted but did not take into account how cold it might have been on the day we needed to shoot. The final problem is being able to film with the other people in the park. We had to do many takes because of the noise around us or people walking too close to the camera.

Some must haves for filming would be to plan out who would do the filming. We have three people in the group and three roles to take on but to be better prepared we needed to plan out who could help us actually shoot the whole scene. Also if anyone has an Ipad, it is a great way to film if you don’t have a camera. Our main worry was the sound quality however we were able to capture our voices perfectly with the Ipad despite the amount of sound around us. Overall the recommendations are minor things we overlooked which planning ahead would have taken care of.

Finally a few suggestions would be: rehearse and prepare! Rehearsing at the destination you chose as a group can prepare you on the level of sound and the amount of distractions you can expect. Prepare early in advance so you can avoid any minor mistakes and can have a successful filming session.

-Angelic Rivera, Briana Kaufmann, Shazia Ahmed