A Cure for a Cuckold

Last updated

A Cure for a Cuckold is a late Jacobean era stage play. It is a comedy written by John Webster and William Rowley. The play was first published in 1661, though it is understood to have been composed some four decades earlier.

Contents

Date and performance

Hard-data on the play's actual date of origin is lacking. Scholars have generally assigned the play's creation to the 1624–25 period. The King's Men is generally assumed to be the first theatrical troupe to have performed it. [1]

The play was later adapted by Joseph Harris into The City Bride (1696). [2]

Publication

In 1661 a quarto was printed by Thomas Johnson for the bookseller Francis Kirkman. Its title page assigns the play to Webster and Rowley. This quarto was the only edition of the play's publication printed before the nineteenth century.

Authorship

Nineteenth-century scholars and critics (notably F. G. Fleay) disputed the attribution to Webster and Rowley but following the lead of Edmund Gosse most twentieth-century commentators have accepted the original authorial assignment, [3] with Webster as the author of the serious main plot, and Rowley responsible for the comic subplot. Gosse, who admired the serious main plot, actually proposed splitting the play in two; [4] and surprisingly enough this was later done – Webster's portion was published as a short play titled Love's Graduate in 1884. Gosse wasn't alone in his attitude; Algernon Charles Swinburne called the play "a mixture of coarsely realistic farce and gracefully romantic comedy."

In a 1927 study, Henry Gray posited Thomas Heywood as a third author. Gray argued that the play is mainly Rowley's work, with three scenes by Webster and four by Heywood. Webster may have revised the whole, in Gray's view. [5] Gray's hypothesis has not found widespread support, though F. L. Lucas allowed a possibility that Heywood may have revised an original Webster/Rowley collaboration. [6] Webster appears to have handled the play's main plot, and Rowley (unsurprisingly for a professional clown) the comic subplot.

Influences

A Cure for a Cuckold shares a complex inter-relationship with a set of other plays of its era, including Marston's The Dutch Courtesan, Beaumont and Fletcher's The Scornful Lady, Fletcher and Massinger's The Little French Lawyer, and Massinger's The Parliament of Love . Since A Cure for a Cuckold is later than most, perhaps all, of these plays, it likely represents the cumulative influence of a skein of dramatic development winding through them, centring on the plot of a woman who wants her lover to duel with and kill his best friend. [7]

Synopsis

The house of Woodroff, an English merchant and justice of the peace, is celebrating the wedding of Woodroff's daughter Annabel with her suitor Bonvile. Two of the wedding guests, Lessingham and Clare, open the play in conversation about the wedding. Lessingham, who is in love with Clare, tries to use the occasion to further his own suit; but Clare is withdrawn and taciturn. She leaves him alone, then sends him a curt and cryptic message that reads:

Prove all thy friends, find out the best and nearest;
Kill for my sake the friend that loves thee dearest.

Lessingham is appalled at this but his passion for Clare is so intense that he feels compelled to obey Clare's dictates to win her love. When other wedding guests and friends reproach Lessingham for his preoccupation, he confesses that he needs a friend to second him in a duel – a friend who will not only support him morally, but fight and perhaps die with him. Lessingham's professed friends quickly drop away with a variety of excuses, till only one is left: it is Bonvile, the groom. Without hesitation, Bonvile delays his wedding night to accompany Lessingham to the "field of honor" – so proving himself to be the "best and nearest" friend whom Lessingham must kill.

Since duelling is illegal in England, Lessingham and Bonvile leave immediately for Calais, as was customary at the time. Annabel is distressed to find that her groom has left without a word; she sends a servant after him, and then follows herself. In the nearby woods, Rochfield, a younger son left destitute by the strictures of primogeniture, has decided to turn thief; he encounters Annabel, his first intended victim, and tries to rob her of her wedding necklace and bracelets. These, however, are locked onto her; as he fumbles with them in trying to remove them, Annabel grabs his sword. Yet because he is a gentlemanly thief who does not threaten her virtue, she returns his sword and promises to give him the monetary value of her jewellery, if he returns with her to her house. Since his career as a thief is not going well, Rochfield agrees.

True to her word, Annabel gives Rochfield twenty gold pieces, and introduces him as a friend of the groom. Justice Woodroff is gathering investors for a trading voyage that he's planning, and Annabel manoeuvres Rochfield into investing his twenty gold pieces in the venture. Broke again and having nothing to lose, Rochfield enlists in the venture personally. The voyage turns out to be brief but eventful: when not long out of port, the ship is attacked by "three Spanish men-of-war." The captain and master are killed – but Rochfield takes command and leads the crew in an effective resistance they even capture one of the Spanish ships, and return to England with a lucrative prize. From a desperate would-be thief, Rochfield has suddenly become a hero flush with new wealth.

On the beach at Calais, Lessingham reveals that Bonvile is his intended opponent. First surprised, then angered, Bonvile dismisses Lessingham's friendship; he suggests that Lessingham may want Annabel for himself, this being his true motive for the duel. This break in their friendship paradoxically negates the premise of the duel. Rather than fighting to the death as friends, the two men return to England separately, as enemies.

When Lessingham confronts Clare again, she tells him that he has completely misunderstood her meaning. Clare confesses that she was madly and hopelessly in love with Bonvile; with his marriage, she was deeply despondent. Clare had thought that Lessingham would recognise her, Clare, and his dearest friend, and therefore his correct victim. Once the five passionate young people, Annabel, Bonvile, Clare, Lessingham, and Rochfield, are all under the same roof, they involve themselves in a tangle of misunderstandings and jealousies – until wise old Woodroff manages to get them altogether and straighten them out at the end of the play.

In the subplot, a sailor named Compass returns home after four years at sea – to find that his wife Urse, believing him dead, has borne an illegitimate child, a son now a year old. Compass not only forgives her, but wants to be acknowledged as the child's father. In Compass's laissez-faire attitude, the true father has actually done the sailor a service in begetting him a child. This brings Compass into conflict with the boy's biological father, a merchant named Franckford. (Franckford is Woodroff's brother-in-law, and the link between the two plots.) Since Franckford's marriage (with Woodroff's sister Luce) is barren, Urse's baby is his only heir. Franckford has been paying the costs of the child's upkeep, and insists on his parental rights. The two men almost go to law over the issue (allowing for some satire on lawyers in the process), before Justice Woodroff, in a sort of mock-trial in a tavern, rules that the baby does not belong to either of the men, but to Urse, his mother. Compass and Urse renew their vows in the final scene, to make a new start as a family.

The easy amorality of the subplot distressed Victorian critics such as Swinburne and Gosse. Modern readers may tend to take the opposite approach, and judge the main plot's ethic of chastity, honour, and duelling far less humane and palatable than Compass's live-and-let-live ethos.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Massinger</span> English playwright (1583–1640)

Philip Massinger was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The City Madam, and The Roman Actor, are noted for their satire and realism, and their political and social themes.

John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often seen as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. His life and career overlapped with Shakespeare's.

William Rowley was an English Jacobean dramatist, best known for works written in collaboration with more successful writers. His date of birth is estimated to have been c. 1585; he was buried on 11 February 1626 in the graveyard of St James's, Clerkenwell in north London.

The Night Walker, or The Little Thief is an early seventeenth-century stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher and later revised by his younger contemporary James Shirley. It was first published in 1640.

<i>A Fair Quarrel</i>

A Fair Quarrel is a Jacobean tragicomedy, a collaboration between Thomas Middleton and William Rowley that was first published in 1617.

The Fair Maid of the Inn is an early 17th-century stage play. A comedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators, it was originally published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647. Uncertainties of the play's date, authorship, and sources make it one of the most widely disputed works in English Renaissance drama.

The Guardian is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by Philip Massinger, dating from 1633. "The play in which Massinger comes nearest to urbanity and suavity is The Guardian...."

The Parliament of Love is a late Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by Philip Massinger. The play was never printed in the seventeenth century, and survived only in a defective manuscript – making it arguably the most problematical work in the Massinger canon.

The Unnatural Combat is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy written by Philip Massinger, and first published in 1639.

The Honest Man's Fortune is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Nathan Field, John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger. It was apparently the earliest of the works produced by this trio of writers, the others being The Queen of Corinth and The Knight of Malta.

The Little French Lawyer is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.

The Lovers' Progress is an early seventeenth-century stage play, a tragicomedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. As its multiple titles indicate, the play has a complex history and has been a focus of controversy among scholars and critics.

<i>The Maid in the Mill</i>

The Maid in the Mill is a late Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher and William Rowley. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.

The Devil's Law Case is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy written by John Webster, and first published in 1623.

Love's Cure, or The Martial Maid is an early seventeenth-century stage play, a comedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators. First published in the Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647, it is the subject of broad dispute and uncertainty among scholars. In the words of Gerald Eades Bentley, "nearly everything about the play is in a state of confusion...."

Thierry and Theodoret is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators that was first published in 1621. It is one of the problematic plays of Fletcher's oeuvre; as with Love's Cure, there are significant uncertainties about the date and authorship of Thierry and Theodoret.

<i>The Scornful Lady</i>

The Scornful Lady is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, and first published in 1616, the year of Beaumont's death. It was one of the pair's most popular, often revived, and frequently reprinted works.

The Thracian Wonder is a stage play of English Renaissance drama, a work that constitutes a long-standing and persistent problem for scholars and historians of the subject.

A cuckquean is the wife of an adulterous husband, and the gender-opposite of a cuckold. In evolutionary biology, the term is also applied to females who are investing parental effort in offspring that are not genetically their own. Similar prying within a family is called wittoldry. The term is derived from Early Modern English dating back to AD 1562 and is composed of the terms cuck "someone whose partner is unfaithful" and quean "disreputable woman".

The Dumb Knight, The Dumbe Knight: A Historical Comedy, or The Dumbe Knight: A Pleasant Comedy, written by Lewis Machin and Gervase Markham in roughly 1601 was acted by the Children of the King's Revels likely in the Whitefriars Theatre, which was the acting group's primarily venue. The play was first published in 1608 by Nicholas Okes and were sold at John Bache's in Popes-head Palace near the Royal Exchange in London. The play takes place in Sicily and the main plot focus on the characters around the King of Cyprus, who has just conquered Sicily. A strange love between Philocles and Mariana form which nearly has Mariana executed. Out of revenge for the dishonour towards his sister Duke of Epire plans to remove Philocles and the King and make himself king promising that they “both shall tumble down”. While the subplot of Prate and Alphonso provide comic foolery and clash with the main plot at the end of the play. Although the title of the play is The Dumb Knight, Philocles, the “dumb knight” and the second in command to the King of Cyprus, is only mute for a couple of scenes in Act Two and Three. Philocles has an active voice throughout the play and his spell of speechlessness is used to advance the main plot but is not the plots focus.

References

  1. ↑ Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, eds., The Popular School: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama, Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1975; p. 96.
  2. ↑ Alfred Harbage, "Elizabethan:Restoration Palimpsests," Modern Language Review Vol. 35 No. 3 (July 1940), pp. 287–319; see p. 289.
  3. ↑ Elmer Edgar Stioll, John Webster: The Periods of His Work as Determined by His Relations to the Drama of His Day, Boston, Alfred Mudge, 1905; pp. 34–43.
  4. ↑ Edmund Goose, "John Webster," Fraser's Magazine, May 1874.
  5. ↑ Henry David Gray, "A Cure for a Cuckold by Heywood, Rowley, and Webster," Modern Language Review 22 (1927); pp. 389–97.
  6. ↑ Logan and Smith, p. 96. Lucas, The Complete Works of John Webster, 1927, Vol.3, pp. 10–18. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 20 August 2011. Retrieved 5 April 2011.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. ↑ Rupert Brooke, John Webster and the Elizabethan Drama, New York, John Lane, 1916; pp. 261–74.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.