The Honest Man's Fortune - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Honest Man's Fortune is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy

Tragicomedy

Tragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious play with either a happy ending or enough jokes throughout the play to lighten the mood.-Classical...

written by Nathan Field, 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...

, and 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....

. It was apparently the earliest of the works produced by this trio of writers, the others being The Queen of Corinth
The Queen of Corinth
The Queen of Corinth is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.-Date:...

and The Knight of Malta
The Knight of Malta
The Knight of Malta is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.-Date and source:...

.

Texts

The Honest Man's Fortune exists in two versions. The play received its initial publication 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...

in 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...

; it also survives in a manuscript dated 1613

1613 in literature

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

, identified as MS. Dyce 9 in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum

Victoria and Albert Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum , set in the Brompton district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England, is the world's largest museum of decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 4.5 million objects...

in London. The MS. differs in some particulars from the printed text, most notably in its omission of Act V, scene iii and its alternate ending to the play's final scene.

The manuscript was produced by Edward Knight

Edward Knight (King's Men)

Edward Knight was the prompter of the King's Men, the acting company that performed the plays of William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, John Fletcher, and other playwrights of Jacobean and Caroline drama.In English Renaissance theatre, the prompter managed the company's performances, ensuring that they...

, the "book-keeper" or prompter

Prompter

The prompter in an opera house gives the singers the opening words of each phrase a few seconds early. Prompts are mouthed silently or hurled lyrically in a half-voice, audible only on stage...

of the King's Men

King's Men (playing company)

The King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged through most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it became The King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron.The...

. The last page of the manuscript contains permission for performance from Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels

Master of the Revels

The Master of the Revels was a position within the English, and later the British, royal household heading the "Revels Office" or "Office of the Revels" that originally had responsibilities for overseeing royal festivities, known as revels, and later also became responsible for stage censorship,...

, dated February 8, 1624 (or 1625, new style

Old Style and New Style dates

Old Style and New Style are used in English language historical studies either to indicate that the start of the Julian year has been adjusted to start on 1 January even though documents written at the time use a different start of year ; or to indicate that a date conforms to the Julian...

), a license confirmed in Herbert's own records. The play had passed into the possession of the King's Men as had several other plays from the Lady Elizabeth's company, along with key members (Field, Taylor, Benfield, Ecclestone). The King's Men's manuscript of 1624/5 was probably prepared for use as a prompt book for an intended revival, the original prompt book having been lost. Knight's MS. was likely made from the three authors' "foul papers" or working draft.

Knight's manuscript "corrects some slips made in the 1647 Folio version, simplifies the language, makes a number of cuts, some of them probably by Herbert as censor, omits one scene from the last act and alters the conclusion."

Date and performance

The play's text in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679 is prefaced by a cast list for the original production, which cites Nathan Field, Joseph Taylor

Joseph Taylor (17th-century actor)

Joseph Taylor was a 17th-century actor. As the successor of Richard Burbage with the King's Men, he was arguably the most important actor in the later Jacobean and the Caroline eras....

, Robert Benfield

Robert Benfield

Robert Benfield was a seventeenth-century actor, noted for his longtime membership in the King's Men in the years and decades after William Shakespeare's retirement and death.Nothing is known of Benfield's early life...

, William Ecclestone

William Ecclestone

William Ecclestone or Egglestone was an actor in English Renaissance theatre, a member of Shakespeare's company the King's Men.Nothing is known with certainty about Ecclestone's early life...

, Emanuel Read, and Thomas Basse. This combination of personnel indicates that the play was premiered by the Lady Elizabeth'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...

at the Whitefriars Theatre

Whitefriars Theatre

The Whitefriars Theatre was a theatre in Jacobean London, in existence from 1608 to the 1620s — about which only limited and sometimes contradictory information survives.-Location:...

in the 1612–13 period. The production must have occurred before Ecclestone's departure from that company in 1613, which is consistent with the date on the manuscript.

Authorship

Nineteenth-century scholars recognized that the play had multiple authors, based on its profile of internal evidence; critics beginning with F. G. Fleay

Frederick Gard Fleay

Frederick Gard Fleay was an influential and prolific nineteenth-century Shakespeare scholar.Fleay, the son of a linen draper, graduated from King's College London and Trinity College, Cambridge , where he received mathematical training that was key to his later achievements...

proposed several potential authors working in combination, including Fletcher, Massinger, 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...

, Cyril Tourneur

Cyril Tourneur

Cyril Tourneur was an English dramatist who enjoyed his greatest success during the reign of King James I of England. His best-known work is The Revenger's Tragedy , a play which has alternatively been attributed to Thomas Middleton.-Life:Cyril Tourneur was possibly the son of Captain Richard...

, and John Webster

John Webster

John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. He was a contemporary of William Shakespeare.- Biography :Webster's life is obscure, and the dates...

. 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 wide-ranging study of authorship problems in the Fletcher canon, argued that both the printed and manuscript texts support an attribution to the first three of these six, eliminating the latter three. Hoy determined that the play is "very largely" the work of Field, but also that the collaboration among the writers is close and complex and cannot fully be split among the scenes of the play. Insofar as an Act/scene division is possible and meaningful, Hoy offered this assignment:

Field — Acts I and II; Act III, scenes 1b (after Montague's entrance) and 2; Act IV;

Field and Fletcher — Act V, scenes 1 and 4;

Field and Massinger — Act III, scene 3;

Fletcher — Act V, scenes 2 and 3;

Massinger — Act III, scene 1a (to Montague's entrance).

Scholarship and criticism

In 1952 Johan Gerritsen published a critical edition specifically of the manuscript version of the play, covering essential aspects of the subject. (Gerritsen, interestingly, assigned the play to Field, Fletcher, and Tourneur.) More recently, the play has attracted critical attention for its treatment of sexual themes, what one commentator has called "the faithful page/loving heroine/boy player/catamite nexus."

Synopsis

The play's plot turns on a conflict among three French noblemen. The Duke of Orleans is a rich and powerful aristocrat, arrogant and ruthless, "a spleenful detracting Lord." He resents Montague because Montague had courted his Duchess before the Duke married her; and the Duke has chosen to vent his spleen by suing for control of the lands that provide Montague his income. The Duke's suit has no true merit; but he has the wealth and influence to "corrupt a jury, and make a judge afraid" — and through "false witnesses" and perjured testimony he wins the lawsuit. Montague, suddenly in deep financial trouble, has to dismiss his retainers, including his loyal page Veramour. The intensity of Veramour's attachment to Montague has an almost erotic quality to it, a fact noted by several characters in the play. The page remains devoted to his old master even after Montague has placed Veramour in the household of Lamira, a wealthy, single, and much sought-after young lady.

Orleans turns his malice toward his wife as well, accusing her of infidelity with Montague. This provokes Lord Amiens, the Duchess's brother; the two men quarrel, and are about to duel when the Duchess breaks in upon them and confesses that her husband's accusation is true. Amiens then goes in search of Montague, to fight him over the dishonor to his family — but the Duchess follows, and protests that her first admission was a falsehood, told to stop the duel. Once Amiens withdraws, Montague and the Duchess are left alone, and their conversation reveals that their former courtship was chaste and honorable. (Montague makes a sexual advance to her, only to express his satisfaction when it is rejected — one of those "chastity tests" that are such a striking feature of the plays of the era, especially those of Fletcher.)

Two of Montague's cashiered followers are gentlemen named Longaville and Duboys. They decide to seek employment by staging a fake quarrel over the affair between Orleans and Amiens, in the hope that this will win them places as the noblemen's retainers. Both Orleans and Amiens hear about the matter; the ruthless Orleans is quick to take Duboys into his service, and instructs him to murder Montague. Amiens reacts oppositely, resentful that his affairs are being bandied about by ruffians in the street; but once he meets Longaville and judges him worthy of patronage, Amiens takes the man into his service as well.

Montague tries to recoup his fortunes by investing his last 500 crowns. But he has the bad luck to fall in with disreputable associates: a merchant named Mallicorn, the "knavish Courtier" Laverdine, and an unemployed sea captain called La-Poope. Mallicorn takes Montague's money, then arranges to have him arrested for some small debts. As Montague is being led away to debtor's prison by officers and creditors, Duboys arrives, ostensibly to fulfill Orleans' order of murder; but Duboys arranges the confrontation so that Montague can grab his sword. Montague fights his way free, though he kills an officer in doing so; he escapes, wounded.

The scene shifts to the garden of Lamira's country estate, where Veramour the page has entered service. The Duchess of Orleans is present too, having found sanctuary with Lamira when her husband drove her out of his house. They are enjoying the quiet scene, and commenting on their pleasant seclusion from the corrupt city — when the wounded Montague bursts in upon them. Lamira provides him shelter and aid, and Montague, having no other present recourse, enters into her service.

Soon, Laverdine, Mallicorn, and La-Poope arrive to pay court to Lamira; they meet and mock Montague for his decline in status. Laverdine, though a suitor to Lamira, is strongly attracted to Veramour, and convinces himself that the page is actually a woman in disguise. He propositions the page sexually, though Veramour tells Laverdine that he would "rather lie with my lady's monkey."

Amiens employs Longaville to deliver a challenge to Orleans; after doing so, however, Logaville goes to Lamira's house to inform the Duchess. She, Lamira, and Montague arrive at the intended duel's location to try to stop it. In the confusion, Longaville discharges a pistol and the shot seems to strike the Duchess; she falls. Orleans, thinking that his wife has been killed, is shocked out of his pose of arrogant self-importance. It turns out that the Duchess has only fainted; Longaville had charged his pistol with gunpowder but no lead ball, hoping to frighten Orleans into abandoning the duel with Amiens.

The abortive duel and Orleans' change of heart provide the resolution of the plot. Lamira holds a banquet at which she announces that she will choose a husband from among her suitors. To the surprise and displeasure of Mallicorn, La-Poope, and Laverdine, she selects Montague, who reproves the other three for their presumption in seeking the hand of a lady so far above them. The now-repentant Orleans decides to restore Montague's rightful estates to him. With Montague's fortunes restored, Duboys and Longaville can be his retainers once again. (The dead officer is conveniently forgotten.) Laverdine attempts to recover from Lamira's rejection by revealing that he has formed an alliance with Veramour, who appears in a woman's gown; but it quickly transpires that Veramour is playing a joke on the courtier — he wears his boy's "breeches" underneath the gown, and reveals the truth to Laverdine's humiliation.

Sources