We are delighted that Edward’s Boys will be joining the BSA 2025 conference to give a performance of their latest production:

The Enterlude of the
Godly Queen Hester

Unperformed since the sixteenth century, and now played once more by a boys’ company, this play about the revered Old Testament Queen Esther is also a political satire on the fall of Thomas Wolsey, right-hand man of Henry VIII. Written in 1529 by Anonymous, King Assuerus can be seen as Henry, Esther as Katherine of Aragon, and Aman as the disgraced Cardinal. The ‘evil counsellor’ figure was important to Tudor drama of dissent; when it was unsafe to criticise the monarch directly, it was possible instead to attack his advisors, and blame unpopular policies on their bad advice.

Alongside the English Enterlude, Edward’s Boys will also present a short purimshpil, a Jewish folk play of the time. The purim plays (still a living tradition in Yiddish) tell the story of Esther in a rather different mode, celebrating the rescue of the Jewish people by their heroine in farcical style.