Early Modern Drama · Character Archetypes

FULGENTIO

in The Rebellion — Rawlins, Thomas

Metadata

PlayThe Rebellion
AuthorRawlins, Thomas
Year (catalogued)1640
First performance1638
Decade1640s
GenreTragedy
Play typeAdult Professional
CompanyKing's Revels Company
Speech prefix(es)Ful. | Fu.
Words229
Characters1308
Typicality0.33 (cosine to cluster centroid)
TCP idA10495
BritDrama no.2413
ClusterCluster 23 — Gulls, fops & laughing-stocks

Important excerpts

No keyword-matching excerpt could be extracted (the cluster label doesn't share vocabulary with this character's speech).

Full speech

Signior Alerzo. Come be free, Leave modesty for women to gild Their pretty thriving Art of plenitude, To enrich their Husbands brows with cornucopia's: A Soldier and thus bashful! Pox be open. Though he appear fresh as a bloom That newly kissed the Sun, adorned with pearly Drops, flung from the hand of the rose fingered morn, Yet in his heart lives a whole Host of valour. Let us salute him. Good sir no more, This ungrateful Land owes you too much already. Your honours vassals. Count Matchvill. Machvile from behind the hangings. Hum, hum. I have lost my faith, And can behold him now without a wonder. No, i'm reformed he's valiant. It's godlike counsel. A Masculine spirit. Tailor, you are too saucy. You would? You'd be advised, and render up your life a Sacrifice to patience. 'Twas and affront gales me to think on't: Beside his saucy valour might have ruined all Our forward Fortune's, had the French been Stronger: let him be banished. Go purge your self; your Country vomits you. Go vent your spleen amongst Satires, pen a Pamphlet, and call't the Scourge of greatness. Please you walk? Count Machvile waits your honour i'th Hall. Royal there's something in't. To what tends this? My Lord Antonio. Nor Hangman. Noble Antonio. The mirror of a Soldier. No, by the hand of Justice; fly, fly my Lord.

Plot summary

Plot — The Rebellion
Machvile envies Antonio his popularity and also covets the crown. When the French, under Raymond the Moor, lay siege to Seville, Machvile engineers Antonio’s downfall at a council of war: he speaks for a military strategy, Antonio responds with a proposal to make peace, and the city’s Governor accuses Antonio of treason and cowardice; this provokes Antonio into killing the Governor. Antonio flees to his home, where he is appalled to find his sister Evadne kissing the tailor Giovanno. Before he can do more than protest, he is arrested by Machvile, who has succeeded to the governorship; but Giovanno and other tailors rescue him and he goes into hiding among them. Despite Giovanno’s help, Antonio is unable to sanction his love for Evadne, being bound by a deathbed promise to his father only to allow her to marry a nobleman. Machvile’s aggressive strategy is put into effect: the Spanish break out of their besieged city and defeat the French; Giovanno captures Raymond, but Machvile takes charge of the prisoner and banishes the heroic tailor. Planning to seize the Spanish throne, he proposes an alliance with Raymond to divide the country between them, planning all the while to kill the Moor once his object is achieved. Meanwhile the captive Raymond looks for a way to communicate with France and ask for additional troops. Antonio is told in a dream to flee, but is found, arrested, and sentenced to be ground to death in a mill. Aurelia, daughter of the captain of the mill, falls in love with him at first sight, asks for the privilege of execution herself, and helps him to escape in disguise. Evadne is banished, but Giovanno meets her and rescues her from rape at the hands of bandits. Antonio finds them together, but Aurelia, fleeing with him, identifies Giovanno as her brother Sebastiano: he has adopted the guise of a tailor in order to woo Evadne. The King comes to Seville incognito and stays with an old tailor, Giovanno’s employer, who has overheard Machvile’s plotting. Antonio and Sebastiano get confirmation in disguise, Antonio as a physician attending Machvile’s wife and Sebastiano as a French cobbler whom Raymond engages as a messenger to the court of France, giving him his ring for authentication (which Sebastiano uses to dismiss the remaining French troops). The grateful King pardons Antonio and agrees to his marrying Aurelia. The plan is to give Machvile enough rope to hang himself. The King witnesses, in hiding, a meeting at which the army colonels,…