The Admiral's Vayvode of 1598

Open Access

Abstract

This essay proposes that the subject of the lost play Vayvode, performed by the Admiral's Men in 1598, may have been John Hunyadi, a fifteenth-century Hungarian military commander celebrated as a bulwark of Christian Europe against the Ottoman threat. It considers which historical sources would have been available to the playwright, the popularity of Hunyadi in the sixteenth century, and the theatrical contexts of the 1590s, as well as some alternative possibilities for the hero of the Admiral's play.