Greene's Tu Quoque

Greene's Tu Quoque, also known as The City Gallant, is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by John Cooke. The play was a major popular success upon its premier, and became something of a legend in the theatre lore of the seventeenth century.

Cooke's play was performed by Queen Anne's Men at the Red Bull Theatre in 1611. The play satirises Coryat's Crudities, the travelogue by Thomas Coryat published in that year. The company's leading clown, Thomas Greene, played the role of Bubble in the play, and his rendering of Bubble's catch phrase "Tu quoque" (Latin for "you also" or, colloquially, "the same to you"), repeated through the play, captured the audience's fancy. The play was performed twice at Court, on 27 December 1611 and 2 February 1612 (Candlemas night), before King James I and Queen Anne; Greene, representing his troupe, received a payment of £20 for the two performances on 18 June 1612 (which shows how long the players sometimes waited for money from their royal patrons). By that date in the summer of 1612, Cooke's play had already lost its original title; the Court records refer to the work as Tu Coque.

Greene's Tu Quoque would likely have become a key item in the Queen's Men's repertory, except for the unfortunate death of Thomas Greene in August 1612. The play was revived by the Queen of Bohemia's Men and performed at Court on 6 January 1625 before Charles I. In the Restoration period, Sir William Davenant produced his own adaptation of Cooke's play in 1667; Samuel Pepys saw it on 12 September of that year. Davenant's version was not published in its own era, and no copy of it has survived. Francis Kirkman's 1662 volume The Wits uses a frontispiece that alludes to the play: a picture of a clown peeking out from behind a curtain is captioned "Tu quoque."

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