Albumazar


Albumazar is a Jacobean era play, a comedy written by Thomas Tomkis that was performed and published in 1615.

Productions

The play was specially commissioned by Trinity College, Cambridge to entertain King James I during his 1615 visit to the University. College officials sought a play from alumnus Tomkis, then a lawyer in Wolverhampton, who had written the successful Lingua for his college a decade earlier. Gentlemen of Trinity College acted Albumazar before the King and his court on 9 March 1615. One report on this production from an audience member survives, in a letter from John Chamberlain to Dudley Carleton – though Chamberlain thought it a failure.
The play was revived onstage during the Restoration, by the Duke's Company at their theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields; Samuel Pepys saw it on 22 February 1668. In 1744 playwright James Ralph adapted Tomkis's play into his The Astrologer; it was not a success, and ran for one performance only. In 1747 David Garrick revived Tomkis's original; and in 1773 Garrick made and staged his own adaptation.

Publication

Albumazar was entered into the Stationers' Register on 28 April 1615, and was published soon after in a quarto printed by Nicholas Okes for the bookseller Walter Burre. The play is anonymous in its first edition, though college records clearly assign it to Tomkis. A second edition was issued in 1634 by Nicholas Okes ; that edition claims to have been "Newly revised and corrected by a special Hand," though the changes in the text amount to little more than normal proofreading and correction of errors. A new edition was published by Thomas Dring in 1668 to coincide with the Restoration revival. Ralph's and Garrick's adaptations both were published, in 1744 and 1773 respectively.
Though consensus scholarship accepts the attribution of Albumazar to Tomkis, a few individual commentators have proposed alternative hypotheses of authorship – one even assigning the play to Shakespeare. None of these alternatives has won scholarly approval.

The "perspicill"

In addition to purely literary sources, Tomkis also exploited Galileo Galilei's revolutionary book on his astronomical discoveries, Sidereus Nuncius, "The Starry Messenger". Galileo referred to the telescope as the "perspicillum," a term that Tomkis Anglicized into "perspicill." In keeping with his satirical intent, Tomkis gives a fanciful rather than realistic portrayal of the telescope, describing it as "an engine to catch starres" and "arrest" planets in their motions. Looking through it, a man in London can allegedly see Dover. When a character looks into the perspicill, he is amazed to view a richly-dressed crowd – which is the audience watching the performance of the play.
In a related flight of fancy, Tomkis's fraudulent astrologer produces a comparable instrument for extending the range of human hearing, which he calls the "otacousticon" – and which turns out to be an artificial pair of ass's ears. Albumazar also claims to possess a "wind instrument" that speaks ten languages.

Synopsis

Two elderly gentlemen, Antonio and Pandulfo, have formed an agreement to marry each other's daughters, Flavia and Sulpitia. Prior to the marriage, Antonio sails to Barbary to access his hoard of gold; but he does not return in time for the ceremony. Pandulfo is mad to have Flavia, but is frustrated by the resistance of the girl and her brother Lelio. Desperate for help, Pandulfo consults Albumazar the astrologer.
Albumazar, however, is a fraud and confidence man, in league with a band of thieves. He bamboozles his victims with verbose gibberish while setting them up to be robbed by his confederates. Albumazar convinces Pandulfo that he can transform the tenant farmer Trincalo into a double of Antonio for twenty-four hours; while in this form, Trincalo can deliver Flavia.
The foolish Trincalo actually believes in the transformation, which gives the thieves opportunity to trick and abuse him. Matters become more complex when the genuine Antonio returns from his adventures; he is mistaken for Trincalo, much to his confusion and distress. The old man establishes his identity, though, and expresses his regret at the marriage agreement he'd entered into with Pandulfo. The young people and Antonio trick Pandulfo into agreeing to a new bargain: Antonio's son Lelio and Pandulfo's son Eugenio marry the girls in place of their fathers.
The thieves have relieved the distracted Pandulfo of three thousand pounds' worth of his property; but in their greed they cut Albumazar out of any share in the loot. The chastened astrologer turns them in; Pandulfo regains his wealth, which moderates his resentment at his loss of Flavia. Albumazar is forgiven.

Influences

borrowed one plot element from Albumazar for his 1772 play She Stoops to Conquer.
Because of Tomkis's play and its adaptations, the name Albumazar came to be used as a generic term for an astrologer. It is employed in this sense in William Congreve's Love for Love and in Tobias Smollett's The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle.