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  THE FATAL DOWRY

  BY

  PHILIP MASSINGER AND
  NATHANIEL FIELD

  EDITED, FROM THE ORIGINAL QUARTO,
  WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

  A DISSERTATION

  PRESENTED TO THE
  FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
  IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE
  OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

  BY
  CHARLES LACY LOCKERT, JR.

  ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, KENYON COLLEGE

  PRESS OF
  THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY
  LANCASTER, PA.

  1918

  Accepted by the Department of English, June, 1916




PREFACE


This critical edition of _The Fatal Dowry_ was undertaken as a Thesis
in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D. at
Princeton University. It was compiled under the guidance and direction
of Professor T. M. Parrott of that institution, and every page of
it is indebted to him for suggestion, advice, and criticism. I can
but inadequately indicate the scope of his painstaking and scholarly
supervision, and can even less adequately express my appreciation of
his ever-patient aid, which alone made this work possible.

I desire also to acknowledge my debt to Professor J. Duncan Spaeth
of Princeton University, for his valuable suggestions in regard to
the presentation of my material, notably in the Introduction; also to
Professor T. W. Baldwin of Muskingum College and Mr. Henry Bowman,
both of them then fellow graduate students of mine at Princeton, for
assistance on several occasions in matters of special inquiry; and to
Dr. M. W. Tyler of the Princeton Department of History for directing me
in clearing up a lego-historical point; and finally to the libraries of
Yale and Columbia Universities for their kind loan of needed books.




INTRODUCTION


In the Stationer's Register the following entry is recorded under the
date of "30th Martij 1632:"

  CONSTABLE Entred for his copy vnder the hands of Sir HENRY HERBERT
    and master _SMITHWICKE_ warden a Tragedy called _the ffatall
    Dowry_.    Vj d.

In the year 1632 was published a quarto volume whose title-page was
inscribed: _The Fatall Dowry_: a Tragedy: As it hath been often Acted
at the Private House in Blackfriars, by his Majesties Servants.
Written by P. M. and N. F. London, Printed by John Norton, for Francis
Constable, and are to be sold at his shop at the Crane, in Pauls
Churchyard. 1632.

That the initials by which the authors are designated stand for Philip
Massinger and Nathaniel Field is undoubted.


LATER TEXTS

There is no other seventeenth century edition of _The Fatal Dowry_. It
was included in various subsequent collections, as follows:

I. _The Works of Philip Massinger_--edited by Thomas Coxeter,
1759--re-issued in 1761, with an introduction by T. Davies.

II. _The Dramatic Works of Philip Massinger_--edited by John Monck
Mason, 1779.

III. _The Plays of Philip Massinger_--edited by William Gifford, 1805.
There was a revised second edition in 1813, which is still regarded as
the Standard Massinger Text, and was followed in subsequent editions of
Gifford.

IV. _Modern British Drama_--edited by Sir Walter Scott, 1811. The text
of this reprint of _The Fatal Dowry_ is Gifford's.

V. _Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford_--edited by Hartley Coleridge,
1840 (_et seq._). This follows the text of Gifford.

VI. _The Plays of Philip Massinger._ From the Text of William Gifford.
With the Addition of the Tragedy Believe as You List. Edited by Francis
Cunningham, 1867 (_et seq._). The Fatal Dowry in this edition, as in
the preceding, is a mere reprint of the Second Edition of Gifford.

VII. _Philip Massinger._ Selected Plays. (Mermaid Series.) Edited by
Arthur Symons, 1887-9 (_et seq._).

In addition to the above, _The Fatal Dowry_ appeared in _The Plays of
Philip Massinger_, adapted for family reading and the use of young
persons, by the omission of objectionable passages,--edited by Harness,
1830-1; and another expurgated version was printed in the _Mirror of
Taste and Dramatic Censor_, 1810. Both of these are based on the text
of Gifford.

The edition of Coxeter is closest of all to the Quarto, following even
many of its most palpable mistakes, and adding some blunders on its
own account. Mason accepts practically all of Coxeter's corrections,
and supplies a great many more variants himself, not all of which are
very happy. Both these eighteenth century editors continually contract
for the sake of securing a perfectly regular metre (e. g.: _You're_
for _You are_, I, i, 139; _th' honours_ for _the honours_, I, ii, 35;
etc.), while Gifford's tendency is to give the full form for even the
contractions of the Quarto, changing its _'em's_ to _them's_, etc.
Gifford can scarce find words sharp enough to express his scorn for his
predecessors in their lack of observance of the text of the Quarto,
yet he himself frequently repeats their gratuitous emendations when
the original was a perfectly sure guide, and he has almost a mania for
tampering with the Quarto on his own account. Symons' _Mermaid_ text,
while based essentially on that of Gifford, in a number of instances
departs from it, sometimes to make further emendations, but more often
to go back from those of Gifford to the version of the original, so
that on the whole this is the best text yet published.

There has been a German translation by the Graf von Baudisson, under
the title of _Die Unselige Mitgift_, in his _Ben Jonson und seine
Schule_, Leipsig, 1836; and a French translation, in prose, under
the title of _La dot fatale_ by E. Lafond in _Contemporains de
Shakespeare_, Paris, 1864.


DATE

The date of the composition or original production of _The Fatal Dowry_
is not known. The Quarto speaks of it as having been "often acted," so
there is nothing to prevent our supposing that it came into existence
many years before its publication. It does not seem to have been
entered in Sir Henry Herbert's Office Book.[1] This would indicate its
appearance to have been prior to Herbert's assumption of the duties of
his office in August, 1623. In seeking a more precise date we can deal
only in probabilities.[2]

The play having been produced by the King's Men, a company in which
Field acted, it was most probably written during his association
therewith. This was formed in 1616; the precise date of his retirement
from the stage is not known. His name appears in the patent of March
27, 1619, just after the death of Burbage, and again and for the last
time in a livery list for his Majesty's Servants, dated May 19, 1619.
It is absent from the next grant for livery (1621) and from the actors'
lists for various plays which are assigned to 1619 or 1620. We may
therefore assume safely that his connection with the stage ended before
the close of 1619. On the basis of probability, then, the field is
narrowed to 1616-19.[3]

More or less presumptive evidence may be adduced for a yet more
specific dating. During these years that Field acted with the King's
Men, two plays appeared which bear strong internal evidence of being
products of his collaboration with Massinger and Fletcher: _The Knight
of Malta_ and _The Queen of Corinth_. While several parallels of
phraseology are afforded for _The Fatal Dowry_ by these (as, indeed, by
every one of the works of Massinger) they are not nearly so numerous
or so striking as similarities discoverable between it and certain
other dramas of the Massinger _corpus_. With none does the connection
seem so intimate as with _The Unnatural Combat_. Both plays open with
a scene in which a young suppliant for a father's cause is counseled,
in passages irresistibly reminiscent of each other, to lay aside pride
and modesty for the parent's sake, because not otherwise can justice
be gained, and it is the custom of the age to sue for it shamelessly.
Moreover, the offer by Beaufort and his associates to Malefort of any
boon he may desire as a recompense for his service, and his acceptance
of it, correspond strikingly in both conduct and language with the
conferring of a like favor upon Rochfort by the Court (I, ii, 258
ff.); while the request which Malefort prefers, that his daughter be
married to Beaufort Junior, and the language with which that young man
acknowledges this meets his own dearest wish, bear a no less patent
resemblance to the bestowal of Beaumelle upon Char