An episode (I. ii) consists of a mask at the wedding of Amintor and Evadne, with an introductory dialogue between Calianax, Diagoras, who keeps the doors, and guests desiring admission. ‘The ladies are all placed above,’ says Diagoras, ‘save those that come in the King’s troop.’ Calianax has an ‘office’, evidently as Chamberlain. ‘He would run raging among them, and break a dozen wiser heads than his own in the twinkling of an eye.’
The maskers are Proteus and other sea-gods; the presenters Night, Cinthia, Neptune, Aeolus, Favonius, and other winds, who ‘rise’ or come ‘out of a rock’. There are two ‘measures’ between hymeneal songs, but no mention of taking out ladies.
In an earlier passage (I. i. 9) a poet says of masks, ‘They must commend their King, and speak in praise Of the Assembly, bless the Bride and Bridegroom, In person of some God; th’are tyed to rules Of flattery’.
A King and No King. 1611
S. R. 1618, Aug. 7 (Buck). ‘A play Called A king and noe kinge.’ Blount (Arber, iii. 631).
1619. A King and no King. Acted at the Globe, by his Maiesties Seruants: Written by Francis Beamount and Iohn Flecher. For Thomas Walkley. [Epistle to Sir Henry Nevill, signed ‘Thomas Walkley’.]
1625.... Acted at the Blacke-Fryars, by his Maiesties Seruants. And now the second time Printed, according to the true Copie.... For Thomas Walkley.
1631; 1639; 1655; 1661; 1676.
Editions by R. W. Bond (1904, Bullen, i), R. M. Alden (1910, B. L.).—Dissertation: B. Leonhardt, Die Text-Varianten von B.’s und F.’s A K. and No K. (1903, Anglia, xxvi. 313).
This is a fixed point, both for date and authorship, in the history of the collaboration. Herbert records (Var. iii. 263) that it was ‘allowed to be acted in 1611’ by Sir George Buck. It was in fact acted at Court by the King’s on 26 Dec. 1611 and again during 1612–13. A performance at Hampton Court on 10 Jan. 1637 is also upon record (Cunningham, xxv). The epistle, which tells us that the publisher received the play from Nevill, speaks of ‘the authors’ and of their ‘future labours’; rather oddly, as Beaumont was dead. There is practical unanimity in assigning I, II, III, IV. iv, and V. ii, iv to Beaumont and IV. i, ii, iii and V. i, iii to Fletcher.