The Scornful Lady
The Scornful Lady is a
Performances
The title page of the 1616 first edition states that the play was premiered by the Children of the Queen's Revels; it later passed into the possession of the King's Men, who revived the play in 1624.[1] (The company's clown, John Shank, played the Curate in their 1624 production.) The King's Men acted The Scornful Lady on 19 October 1633, when Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, refused to let them perform The Woman's Prize. Prince Charles, the future King Charles II, attended a performance of the play at the Cockpit-in-Court Theatre on Twelfth Night, 6 January 1642.
While the theatres were closed during the
The play was revived early in the
Authorship
The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 19 March 1616; both the Register entry and the first edition assign the play to Beaumont and Fletcher. Cyrus Hoy, in his survey of authorship problems in the canon of Fletcher and his collaborators, produced this breakdown in the two writers' contributions:[4]
- Beaumont – Act I, scene 1; Act II, 2; Act V, 2;
- Fletcher – Act I, scene 2; Act II, 2 and 3; Act III; Act IV; Act V, scenes 1, 3, and 4.
Hoy's schema is in general agreement with the work of earlier researchers.[5] A few early critics suggested the participation of Philip Massinger, though that possibility has generally been rejected due to lack of evidence. Based on references and allusions to contemporary events, scholars generally date the play to the 1613–16 period, though dates as early as 1610 have also been proposed.[6][7][8]
The Scornful Lady participates in a complex inter-relationship with several other plays of its era, a set of dramas that includes Marston's The Dutch Courtesan, Fletcher and Massinger's The Little French Lawyer, Massinger's The Parliament of Love, and A Cure for a Cuckold by John Webster and William Rowley.[9] All the plays exploit the idea of a woman who wants her beloved to duel with and kill his closest friend.
Texts
The play went through multiple editions in the 17th century, leaving it with a complex publication history.[10]
- The 1616 first edition, published in quarto by the bookseller Miles Partridge, with the printing probably done by Richard Bradock.
- Q2, 1625, published by Thomas Jones, the printing presumably done by Augustine Matthews.
- Q3, 1630, issued again by Thomas Jones, printed by Bernard Alsop and Thomas Fawcett.
- Q4, 1635, published and printed by Augustine Matthews, the printer of Q2.
- Q5, 1639, issued by Robert Wilson, printing by Marmaduke Parsons.
- Q6, 1651, published by Humphrey Moseley; the printer was probably William Wilson.
- Two pirated editions of Moseley's Q6, issued by Francis Kirkman, both with the false date "1651."
- Q7, 1677, which, in light of the previous piracies, pointedly identifies itself as "The Seventh Edition" on its title page; "As it is now Acted at the Theatre Royal" in Drury Lane. The likely publishers were Thomas Collins and Dorman Newman, acting through the bookseller Simon Neale.
- Q8, 1691, from Dorman Newman.
Subsequent editions followed in the 18th century. Like other already-published
References
- E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1823; Vol. 3, p. 229.
- ^ Arthur Colby Sprague, Beaumont and Fletcher on the Restoration Stage, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1926; pp. 42–3.
- ^ Sprague, p. 124.
- ^ Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, eds., The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama, Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1978; p. 63.
- ^ E. H. C. Oliphant, The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher: An Attempt to Determine Their Respective Shares and the Shares of Others, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1927; p. 210.
- ^ Chambers, Vol. 3, pp. 229–30.
- ^ Oliphant, p. 209.
- ^ Logan and Smith, p. 63.
- ^ Rupert Brooke, John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama, New York, John Lane, 1916; pp. 261–74.
- ^ Fredson Bowers, general editor, The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon, Vol. 2., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970. Cyrus Hoy, Textual Introduction, pp. 451–5.
- ^ Albert Stephens Borgman, Thomas Shadwell: His Life and Comedies, New York, New York University Press, 1928; reprinted New York, Benjamin Blom, 1969; pp. 185–90.