Galatea and Midas are two of John Lyly's most engaging plays. Lyly took
up the story of two young women, Galatea (or Gallathea) and Phillida who
are dressed up in male clothes by their fathers so that they can avoid
the requirement of the god Neptune that every year 'the fairest and
chastest virgin in all the country' be sacrificed to a sea-monster.
Hiding together in the forest, the two maidens fall in love, each
supposing the other to be a young man. Galatea has become the subject of
considerable feminist critical study in recent years. Midas (1590) uses
mythology in quite a different way, dramatising two stories about King
Midas in such a way as to fashion a satire of King Philip of Spain (and
of any tyrant like him) for colossal greediness and folly. In the wake
of the defeat of Philip's Armada fleet and its attempted invasion of
England in 1588, this satire was calculated to win the approval of Queen
Elizabeth and her court.