''Cupid's Revenge'' is a Jacobean

tragedy Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy i ...

written by

Francis Beaumont Francis Beaumont ( ; 1584 – 6 March 1616) was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher. Beaumont's life Beaumont was the son of Sir Francis Beaumont of Grace Dieu, near Thrin ...

and John Fletcher. 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 Events January–June * January 6 – Axel Oxenstierna becomes Lord High Chancellor of Sweden. He persuades the Riksdag of the Estates to grant the Swedish nobility the right and privilege to hold all higher offices of governme ...

and February

1613 Events January–June * January 11 – Workers in a sandpit in the Dauphiné region of France discover the skeleton of what is alleged to be a 30-foot tall man (the remains, it is supposed, of the giant Teutobochus, a legendary ...

by the

Children of the Revels A child ( : children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger ...

. The popular play was revived a decade later and acted again at Court on 28 December

1624 Events January–March * January 14 – After 90 years of Ottoman Empire, Ottoman occupation, Baghdad is recaptured by the Safavid empire, Safavid Empire. * January 22 – Korean General Yi Gwal leads Yi Gwal's Rebellion, an ...

by the Queen of Bohemia's Men; by 1639 it was in the repertory of

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 The troupe was formed in early 1637, under a royal warrant, ...

Publication

The play was entered into the

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 print ...

on 24 April

1615 Events January–June * January 1 – The New Netherland Company is granted a three-year monopoly in North American trade, between the 40th and 45th parallels. * February – Sir Thomas Roe sets out to become the first a ...

, and first published later that year in a

quarto Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...

printed by

Thomas Creede Thomas Creede (fl. 1593 – 1617) 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 ...

for the bookseller Josias Harrison. A second quarto was issued in

1630 Events January–March * January 2 – A shoemaker in Turin is found to have the first case of bubonic plague there as the plague of 1630 begins spreading through Italy. * January 5 – A team of Portuguese military advisers ...

by Thomas Jones, and a third quarto followed in

1635 Events January–March * January 23 – 1635 Capture of Tortuga: The Spanish Navy captures the Caribbean island of Tortuga off of the coast of Haiti after a three-day battle against the English and French Navy. * January 25 & ...

. 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 of

1647 Events January–March * January 2 – Chinese bandit leader Zhang Xianzhong, who has ruled the Sichuan province since 1644, is killed at Xichong County, Xichong by a Qing archer after having been betrayed one of his officers, ...

; but, again like other plays in this category, it was part of the

second folio The Second Folio is the 1632 edition of the collected plays of William Shakespeare. It follows the First Folio of 1623. Much language was updated in the Second Folio and there are almost 1,700 changes. The major partners in the First Folio had ...

of 1679.

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 Nathan Field (also spelled Feild occasionally; 17 October 1587 – 1620) was an English dramatist and actor. Life His father was the Puritan preacher John Field, and his brother Theophilus Field became the Bishop of Llandaff. One of his brothe ...

Robert Daborne Robert Daborne (c. 1580 – 23 March 1628) was an English dramatist of the Jacobean era. His father was also Robert Daborne, heir to family property in Guildford, Surrey and other places, including London, and a wealthy haberdasher by trade ...

, and/or

Philip Massinger Philip Massinger (1583 – 17 March 1640) 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 poli ...

to the play, though these suggestions have failed to convince other scholars through lack of evidence.

Cyrus Hoy Cyrus Henry Hoy (February 26, 1926 – April 27, 2010) was an American 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 (emerit ...

, 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'' of Sir

Philip Sidney Philip, also Phillip, is a male given name, derived from the Greek (''Philippos'', lit. "horse-loving" or "fond of horses"), from a compound of (''philos'', "dear", "loved", "loving") and (''hippos'', "horse"). Prominent Philips who popularize ...

for the source of its plot; the Duke in ''Cupid's Revenge'' is a blend of Sidney'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, or, The Child Hath Found his Father'' is a Jacobean play, probably written in whole or part by William Rowley. It was first performed in 1622 at the Curtain Theatre in Shoreditch. It contains a comic depiction of the birth ...

'', one of the plays of the Shakespeare Apocrypha. 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'' (printed

1660 Events January–March * January 1 ** At daybreak, English Army Colonel George Monck, with two brigades of troops from his Scottish occupational force, fords the River Tweed at Coldstream in Scotland to cross the border into Englan ...

After 1642

Material from ''Cupid's Revenge'', IV, iii was separately performed as a "

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 Elizab ...

" during the

Interregnum An interregnum (plural interregna or interregnums) is a period of discontinuity or "gap" in a government, organization, or social order. Archetypally, it was the period of time between the reign of one monarch and the next (coming from Latin '' ...

when the theatres were forbidden to stage full-length plays. The droll, ''The Loyal Citizens'', was printed in

1662 Events January–March * January 4 – Dziaddin Mukarram Shah becomes the new Sultan of Kedah, an independent kingdom on the Malay Peninsula, upon the death of his father, Sultan Muhyiddin Mansur. * January 10 – At the ...

and

1672 Events January–March * January 2 – After the government of England is unable to pay the nation's debts, King Charles II decrees the Stop of the Exchequer, the suspension of payments for one year "upon any warrant, secur ...

. The play was revived in an adaptation during the

Restoration Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to: * Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage ** Audio restoration ** Film restoration ** Image restoration ** Textile restoration *Restoration ecology * ...

era, as many other Fletcherian works were;

Samuel Pepys Samuel Pepys (; 23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no mariti ...

saw it in a version called ''Love Despised'' on 17 August

1668 Events January–March * January 23 – The Triple Alliance of 1668 is formed between England, Sweden and the United Provinces of the Netherlands. * February 13 – In Lisbon, a peace treaty is established between Afonso V ...

. Performances in the modern era have been rare: ''Cupid's Revenge'' was performed b
Bad Quarto Productions
in New York City in April 2017.

Plot

The play portrays Leontius, the Duke of Lycia, suppressing the customary worship of the god

Cupid In classical mythology, Cupid (Latin Cupīdō , meaning "passionate desire") is the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus and the god of war Mars. He is also known in L ...

, 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 choric figures in the tragedies of

Seneca Seneca may refer to: People and language * Seneca (name), a list of people with either the given name or surname * Seneca people, one of the six Iroquois tribes of North America ** Seneca language, the language of the Seneca people Places Extra ...

or the personification of Revenge in Kyd's ''

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 reven ...

'') 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.

References

{{Beaumont and Fletcher canon English Renaissance plays 1600s plays 1610s plays Plays by Francis Beaumont Plays by John Fletcher (playwright) Plays by Beaumont and Fletcher