Book, Paperback George K. Hunter, David Bevington Published in: 2008 Publisher: Manchester University Press Language: English Galatea and Midas are two of John Lyly's most engaging plays. Shortly after his early success with Campaspe and Sappho and Phao in 1583-4, he 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, dramatizing two stories about King Midas (the golden touch and the ass's ears) in such a way as to fashion a satire of King Philip of Spain (and of any tyrant like him) for colossal greediness and fol