Cupid's Revenge
Encyclopedia
Cupid's Revenge is a Jacobean tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...

 written by Francis Beaumont
Francis Beaumont
Francis Beaumont was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher....

 and John Fletcher
John Fletcher (playwright)
John Fletcher was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's...

. It was a popular success that influenced subsequent works by other authors.

Date and performance

The play's date of authorship is uncertain; some scholars have dated it to as early as 1607–8, based on allusions and references to contemporary events, and on that basis have considered it the earliest collaborative effort by Fletcher and Beaumont. Others have preferred a date c. 1611, due to the cluster of evidence for the play in that era. The play was performed at Court three times between January 1612
1612 in literature
The year 1612 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 6 - Ben Jonson's masque Love Restored is performed.*January 12 - The King's Men and Queen Anne's Men unite for the first of two Court performances in January, with Thomas Heywood's The Silver Age*January 13 - The King's...

 and February 1613
1613 in literature
The year 1613 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*English poet Francis Quarles becomes cupbearer to Princess Elizabeth....

 by the Children of the Revels
Children of the Chapel
The Children of the Chapel were the boys with unbroken voices, choristers, who formed part of the Chapel Royal, the body of singers and priests serving the spiritual needs of their sovereign wherever they were called upon to do so....

. The popular play was revived a decade later and acted again at Court on 28 December 1624
1624 in literature
The year 1624 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*The King's Men perform The Winter's Tale at Whitehall Palace on January 18...

 by the Queen of Bohemia's Men
Lady Elizabeth's Men
The Lady Elizabeth's Men, or Princess Elizabeth's Men, was a company of actors in Jacobean London, formed under the patronage of King James I's daughter Princess Elizabeth. From 1618 on, the company was called The Queen of Bohemia's Men, after Elizabeth and her husband the Elector Palatine had...

; by 1639 it was in the repertory of Beeston's Boys
Beeston's Boys
Beeston's Boys was the popular and colloquial name of The King and Queen's Young Company, a troupe of boy actors of the Caroline period, active mainly in the years 1637–1642.-Origin:...

.

Publication

The play was entered into the Stationers' Register
Stationers' Register
The Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The company is a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers in England...

 on 24 April 1615
1615 in literature
The year 1615 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 6 - Mercury Vindicated from the Alchemists, a masque written by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones, is performed at Whitehall Palace....

, and first published later that year in a quarto
Book size
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from "folio" , to "quarto" and "octavo"...

 printed by Thomas Creede
Thomas Creede
Thomas Creede was a printer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, rated as "one of the best of his time." Based in London, he conducted his business under the sign of the Catherine Wheel in Thames Street from 1593 to 1600, and under the sign of the Eagle and Child in the Old Exchange from 1600 to...

 for the bookseller Josias Harrison. A second quarto was issued in 1630
1630 in literature
The year 1630 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* English literature, drama, and education lose a major patron and benefactor when William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and Lord Chamberlain of England, dies on April 10.-New books:...

 by Thomas Jones, and a third quarto followed in 1635
1635 in literature
The year 1635 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*February 22 - In Paris, the Académie française is founded.*May 6 - The King's Men perform Othello at the Blackfriars Theatre.*Birth of René Descartes' daughter, Francine....

. Like many of the previously-published plays in the Beaumont-Fletcher canon, Cupid's Revenge was not included in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio
Beaumont and Fletcher folios
The Beaumont and Fletcher folios were two large folio collections of the stage plays of John Fletcher and his collaborators. The first was issued in 1647, and the second in 1679. The two collections were important in preserving many works of English Renaissance drama.-The first folio, 1647:The 1647...

 of 1647
1647 in literature
The year 1647 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* Thomas Hobbes becomes tutor to the future Charles II of England.* Plagiarist Robert Baron publishes his Deorum Dona, a masque, and Gripus and Hegio, a pastoral, which draw heavily on the poems of Edmund Waller and John Webster's...

; but, again like other plays in this category, it was part of the second folio
Beaumont and Fletcher folios
The Beaumont and Fletcher folios were two large folio collections of the stage plays of John Fletcher and his collaborators. The first was issued in 1647, and the second in 1679. The two collections were important in preserving many works of English Renaissance drama.-The first folio, 1647:The 1647...

 of 1679
1679 in literature
This article lists some of the most significant events of the year 1679 in literature.-Events:*John Locke returns to England from France.*Étienne Baluze becomes almoner to King Louis XIV of France....

.

Authorship

The title page of Q1 attributes the play to John Fletcher alone, while the Q2 title page corrects this to Beaumont and Fletcher, an attribution that is universally accepted among modern scholars and critics. Individual nineteenth-century critics also linked, or attempted to link, Nathan Field, Robert Daborne
Robert Daborne
Robert Daborne was an English dramatist of the Jacobean era.Little is known for certain of his birth, background, or early life; he may have come from a family in Guildford, Surrey. He is now thought to have been a "sizar"—an undergraduate exempt from fees—at King's College, Cambridge...

, and/or Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger
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.-Early life:The son of Arthur Massinger or Messenger, he was baptized at St....

 to the play, though these suggestions have failed to convince other scholars through lack of evidence. Cyrus Hoy
Cyrus Hoy
Cyrus Hoy was a literary scholar of the English Renaissance stage who taught at the University of Virginia and Vanderbilt University, and was the John B. Trevor Professor of English at the University of Rochester...

, in his classic study of authorship problems in the canon of Fletcher and his collaborators, observed that the clear dichotomy between the styles of Fletcher and Beaumont that is typical of their plays is less evident in Cupid's Revenge, apparently due to a revision by Beaumont; yet based on the available evidence he assigned shares to the two authors this way:
Beaumont — Act I, scenes 1 and 3; II, 1-2 and 4-5; III, 1-2; IV, 1 and 5; V, 1;
Fletcher — Act I, scenes 2 and 4; II, 3; III, 3-4; IV, 2-4; V, 2-3.

Source and influences

The play depends upon the Arcadia
Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, also known simply as the Arcadia or the Old Arcadia, is a long prose work by Sir Philip Sidney written towards the end of the sixteenth century, and later published in several versions. It is Sidney's most ambitious literary work, by far, and as significant in...

of Sir Philip Sidney
Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...

 for the source of its plot; the Duke in Cupid's Revenge is a blend of Sydney's King of Lycia and King of Iberia. In turn, Cupid's Revenge served as a source for other dramatists. There is a significant relationship between this play and The Birth of Merlin
The Birth of Merlin
The Birth of Merlin, or, The Child Hath Found his Father is a Jacobean play, first performed in 1622 at the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch. It contains a comic depiction of the birth of the fully grown Merlin to a country girl, and also features figures from Arthurian legend, including Uther...

, one of the plays of the Shakespeare Apocrypha
Shakespeare Apocrypha
The Shakespeare Apocrypha is a group of plays that have sometimes been attributed to William Shakespeare, but whose attribution is questionable for various reasons...

. Plot elements shared by both works — the missing prince, and the ruler and his heir who fall in love with the same woman—could be due to derivation from common sources; but the plays also feature specific shared lines and passages. Critics also cite detectable influences from Cupid's Revenge on the anonymous tragedy Andromana
Andromana
Andromana, or The Merchant's Wife is a mid-seventeenth-century stage play, a tragedy first published in 1660. It has attracted scholarly attention for the questions of its auhorship and the influence of its sources....

(printed 1660
1660 in literature
The year 1660 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* January 1 - Samuel Pepys starts his diary.* February - John Rhodes reopens the old Cockpit Theatre in London, forms a company of young actors and begins to stage plays...

).

After 1642

Material from Cupid's Revenge, IV,iii was separately performed as a "droll
Droll
A droll is a short comical sketch of a type that originated during the Puritan Interregnum in England. With the closure of the theatres, actors were left without any way of plying their art. Borrowing scenes from well-known plays of the Elizabethan theatre, they added dancing and other...

" during the Interregnum
English Interregnum
The English Interregnum was the period of parliamentary and military rule by the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell under the Commonwealth of England after the English Civil War...

 when the theatres were forbidden to stage full-length plays. The droll, The Loyal Citizens, was printed in 1662
1662 in literature
The year 1662 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*September 29 - Samuel Pepys sees the King's Company production of A Midsummer Night's Dream...

 and 1672
1672 in literature
The year 1672 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* In London, the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is destroyed by fire. The King's Company moves into the theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields, which their rivals the Duke's Company left the previous year.* During the 1672–73 theatre...

. The play was revived in an adaptation during the Restoration
English Restoration
The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...

 era, as many other Fletcherian works were; Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys
Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...

 saw it in a version called Love Despised on 17 August 1668
1668 in literature
The year 1668 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler goes into its fourth edition.*John Dryden signs a contract to produce three plays a year for the King’s Company.-New books:...

.

Plot

The play portrays Leontius, the Duke of Lycia, suppressing the customary worship of the god Cupid
Cupid
In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the god Mars. His Greek counterpart is Eros...

, the patron deity of the land, in response to the pleadings of his son and daughter, Leucippus and Hisdaspes. In revenge, Cupid (who functions as a chorus in the play, comparable to the choral figures in the tragedies of Seneca
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero...

 or the personification of Revenge in Kyd's
Thomas Kyd
Thomas Kyd was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama....

 The Spanish Tragedy
The Spanish Tragedy
The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. Its plot contains several violent...

) oversees the ruin and death of the royal family and their retainers through some very unwise amorous entanglements. As he is dying in the play's bloody final scene, Leucippus reverses his father's edict against Cupid.
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