Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay: Scene 14 FBFB: Scene 14 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 14 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. Added paragraph xml:id, encoded titles, minor copyedits Updated metadata Created remediated file from emdFBFB_video_scene13 Peer review arranged by QME Editorial Board

The Queen’s Men give a familiar stage trope a secular twist in this scene. The Vice riding off to hell on the devil’s back is featured in William Wager’s Enough is as Good as Feast and Feste’s reference to the same stage business in Twelfth Night (TN 4.2.27–28) suggests this may have been pervasive device. In the Queen’s Men version, however, it is the secular clown Miles that rides off to hell. The scene is basically a double act and the basic shtick was that Miles treats the devil as if he were a human acquaintance and their conversation a job interview. When he rides off to hell Miles is the master of the devil rather than its victim, putting on his spurs to ride him off to hell. The scene ties up Miles’s storyline as bearing the blame for Bacon’s failed brazen-head experiment, but its particular expression feels likeadds another good example of the Queen’s Men’s commitment to variety of action over unity.

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