Dissertation: W. J. Lawrence, The Date of F. P. in O. (T. L. S. 11 Dec. 1919).
This does not seem to have passed to the King’s men or the Cockpit, and cannot be assigned to any particular company. It has been supposed to be a boys’ play, presumably because it has much music and dancing. It has also much pageantry in dumb-shows and so forth and stage machinery. Conceivably it might have been written for private performance in place of a mask. Time, in particular, has much the form of a mask, with antimask. But composite plays of this type were well known on the public stage. There is no clear indication of date. Fleay, i. 179, suggested 1608 because The Yorkshire Tragedy, printed that year, is also described in its heading as ‘one of the Four Plays in One’, but presumably it belonged to another series. Thorndike, 85, points out that the antimask established itself in Court masks in 1608. Gayley, 301, puts Death and Time in 1610, because he thinks that they fall stylistically between The Faithfull Shepherdess and Philaster, and the rest in 1612, because he thinks they are Field’s and that they cannot be before 1611, since they are not mentioned, like Amends for Ladies, as forthcoming in the epistle to Woman a Weathercock in that year. This hardly bears analysis, and indeed Field is regarded as the author of the Induction and Honour only by Oliphant and Gayley and of Love only by Gayley himself. All these are generally assigned to Beaumont, and Death and Time universally to Fletcher. Lawrence’s attempt to attach the piece to the wedding festivities of 1612–13 does not seem to me at all convincing.
Love’s Cure; or, The Martial Maid (?)
1647. Loves Cure, or the Martial Maid. [Part of F1. A Prologue at the reviving of this Play. Epilogue.]
1679. Loves Cure, or the Martial Maid A Comedy. [Part of F2.]
Dissertation: A. L. Stiefel, Die Nachahmung spanischer Komödien in England (1897, Archiv, xcix. 271).
The prologue, evidently later than Fletcher’s death in 1625, clearly assigns the authorship to Beaumont and Fletcher, although the epilogue, of uncertain date, speaks of ‘our author’. This is the only sound reason for thinking that the original composition was in Beaumont’s lifetime. The internal evidence for an early date cited by Fleay, i. 180, and Thorndike, 72, becomes trivial when we eliminate what merely fixes the historic time of the play to 1604–9, and proves nothing as to the time of composition. On the other hand, II. ii,
the cold Muscovite ...
That lay here lieger in the last great frost,
points to a date later than the winter of 1621, as I cannot trace any earlier great frost in which a Muscovite embassy can have been in London (S. P. D. Jac. I, cxxiii, 11, 100; cxxiv. 40). Further, the critics seem confident that the dominant hand in the play as it exists is Massinger’s, and that Beaumont and Fletcher show, if at all, faintly through his revision. The play belonged to the repertory of the King’s men by 1641 (M. S. C. i. 364).