Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay: Scene 8 FBFB: Scene 8 Director Peter Cockett Author of Annotations Peter Cockett Video Director Holger Schott Syme Video Compiler Peter Cockett Production Company Shakespeare and the Queen’s Men Project Conversion and Remediation LEMDO Team Queen’s Men EditionsQME

The Queen’s Men Editions anthology is led by Helen Ostovich, General Editor; Peter Cockett, General Editor (Performance); Andrew Griffin, General Editor (Text; until 2026); and Janelle Jenstad, General Editor (Text; 2026–)

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada McMaster University Poculi Ludique Societas University of Waterloo University of Toronto Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies University of Victoria Friends of the ISE

Released with Queen’s Men Editions 2.0

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

Intellectual copyright in this edition is held by the editor, Peter Cockett. The critical paratexts, including this Scene 8 page, are licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that they are freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the editor, QME, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of QME, the editor, and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the critical paratexts in the classroom.

Production photographs and videos on this site may not be downloaded. They appear freely on this site with the permission of the actors and the ACTRA union. They may be used within the context of university courses, within the classroom, and for reference within research contexts, including conferences, when credit is given to the producing company and to the actors. Commercial use of videos and photographs is forbidden.

Queen’s Men Editions

Page written by Peter Cockett. First published in the QME 1.0 anthology on the ISE platform. Converted to TEI-XML and remediated by the LEMDO Team for republication in the QME 2.0 anthology on the LEMDO platform.

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

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 Published file. Gave paragraph xml:id, tagged persName, fixed broken links, copyedit. Updated metadata Created remediated file from emdFBFB_video_scene07 Peer review arranged by QME Editorial Board

This scene features the climactic victory of Friar Bacon’s fun, English magic over the arrogant German Vandermast. The SQM actors’ adoption of clowning created characters that were comical and yet could still offer the debate a sense of intellectual gravity. David Kynaston (Vandermast) for example adopted a German accent and used it for comic effect but also gave his character a proud grandeur that made him a worthy opponent of the English friars. The debate between Vandermast and Bungay is one of the most impressive rhetorical achievements in the SQM repertory productions. The stage directions for the magic in this scene call for some spectacle and received relatively high-tech treatment with the use of elaborate props and flash-paper for pyrotechnics. Our hope was to create a sense of power and wonder but with our limited budget and tight fire regulations, it remained more funny than awe-inspiring. The tone of the magic, however, is secondary to the fact that a foreign power is brought to heel by a great Englishman—a familiar theme in the repertoire of the SQM company and the Queen’s Men. The magic in the performance served the political agenda of the Queen’s Men by representing the victory of jolly old England over a stuffy, foreign power.

 Navigation See Production Credits. Go back to scene index for the SQM production of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay.