Enriching the Judgement: Fulke Greville and Didactic Drama

Fulke Greville (1554-1628) was profoundly interested in the association between drama and didacticism. His two extant plays set in the Ottoman court, Alaham and Mustapha, can be read as polyphonic articulations of moral instruction and political counsel, representing processes of ethical formation as experienced by young men. These plays turn Greville's tragic theories into practice. Greville's school and university education helped to form his ideas about how drama should instruct. The didactic impulse we see in the drama can be read against two other works: the Dedication to Sidney and his longer philosophical poem, 'A Treatie of Humane Learning'.