Misha Teramura identifies the fifteenth-century military leader
John Hunyadi as the probable subject of the lost play Vayvode, performed by the Admiral's Men in 1598.
October 1st, 1938 The German forces enter the Sudetenland October 4th, 1948 Arthur, Whittam Brown, pioneer aviator, dies October 18th, 1748 The Treaty of Aix la Chapelle is signed, ending the War of the Austrian Succession October 19th, 1448 The Hungarians under
John Hunyadi are defeated by the Ottoman Sultan Murad II at Kosovo October 22nd, 1798 Slave rebel Toussaint L'Ouverture drives the last French agent out of Santo Domingo October 27th, 1798 The French invasion of Ireland collapses October 29th, 1618 Sir Walter Ralegh is executed
Yet despite the dearth of information that survives about this play, I will argue in what follows that the subject of the Admiral's Vayvode might well have been John Hunyadi, a fifteenth-century Hungarian military commander celebrated as a bulwark of Christendom against the Ottoman threat to eastern Europe.
(10) A different proposal, raised by George Gomori in a survey of depictions of John Hunyadi in Renaissance England, suggested that the Admiral's play may have been a dramatic version of the Hunyadi story.
John Hunyadi (ca 1407-56), one of the most important figures in the Kingdom of Hungary, enjoyed a dazzling career as a military commander and politician.
(33) If performances of Tamar Cham represented attempts by both Strange's Men and the Admiral's Men to profit on the success of Tamburlaine, a play on John Hunyadi would have represented something similar.
As I have tried to show, the play titled Vayvode performed by the Admiral's Men in 1598 was likely about John Hunyadi. His story was accessible in one of the most ubiquitous books in early modern England, and could be supplemented by other sources, which, depending on the resources available to the playwright, may have included highly detailed depictions of Hunyadi's life and times.
While the first section of this essay argues that John Hunyadi represents a particularly strong candidate for the subject of the Admiral's Vayvode, I hope that this cursory survey of some alternative possibilities might encourage other scholars to champion the claims of these rival vaivodes and even to send new contenders into the fray.
Born in 1403, probably at Kruge, the son of Giovanni Castriota and his Serbian wife Voisava Tripalda; sent to Anatolia as a hostage when the Turks captured Kruge (1414), and was educated as a Muslim; took the Muslim name Iskander (Alexander); rose in the Turkish service to become a bey (general) and governor of a sanjak (district), and fought against Venetians and Serbs; following
John Hunyadi's great victory over the Turks at Snaim (1443) Castriota defected from the Turks and hurried to Albania to aid a revolt there; soon established his authority through his vigor, and the force of his personality, rallying most of the clans to his standard and driving the Turks from Albania (1443-c.