The Mad Lover 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...

 by 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...

 that was initially published 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...

 of 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...

.

Fletcher's sole authorship of the play was specified during the seventeenth century by his friend Sir Aston Cockayne

Aston Cockayne

Sir Aston Cockayne, Baronet of Ashbourne was, in his day, a well-known Cavalier and a minor literary figure, now best remembered as a friend of Philip Massinger, John Fletcher, Michael Drayton, Richard Brome, Thomas Randolph, and other writers of his generation.-Biography:Aston Cockayne was the...

; since Fletcher's distinctive pattern of stylistic and textual preferences is continuous through the text, his authorship is not questioned.

Performance

The play was acted by 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 cast list added to the play in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679

1679 in literature

This article lists some of the most significant events of the year 1679 in literature.-Events:*John Locke returns to England from France.*Étienne Baluze becomes almoner to King Louis XIV of France....

 includes Richard Burbage

Richard Burbage

Richard Burbage was an English actor and theatre owner. He was the younger brother of Cuthbert Burbage. They were both actors in drama....

, John Lowin

John Lowin

John Lowin was an English actor born in the St Giles-without-Cripplegate, London, the son of a tanner. Like Robert Armin, he was apprenticed to a goldsmith. While he is not recorded as a free citizen of this company, he did perform as a goldsmith, Leofstane, in a 1611 city pageant written by...

, 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...

, Nathan Field, Richard Sharpe

Richard Sharpe (actor)

Richard Sharpe was an actor with the King's Men, the leading theatre troupe of its time and the company of William Shakespeare and Richard Burbage...

, and Henry Condell

Henry Condell

Henry Condell was an actor in the King's Men, the playing company for which William Shakespeare wrote. With John Heminges, he was instrumental in preparing the First Folio, the collected plays of Shakespeare, published in 1623....

. The cast list indicates a production between 1616

1616 in literature

The year 1616 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus is placed on the Index of Forbidden Books by the Roman Catholic Church....

, when Field joined the company, and Burbage's death in March 1619

1619 in literature

The year 1619 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Richard Burbage dies in March; his place as the star of the King's Men is filled by Joseph Taylor.*René Descartes has a dream that helps him develop his ideas on analytical geometry....

. In her diary, Lady Anne Clifford

Lady Anne Clifford

Lady Anne Clifford, 14th Baroness de Clifford was the only surviving child of George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland by his wife Lady Margaret Russell, daughter of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford...

 mentions seeing a performance of the play at Court on 5 January 1617

1617 in literature

The year 1617 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*March 4 - Shrovetide riot of the London apprentices damages the Cockpit Theatre...

 (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...

). The play was revived in 1630

1630 in literature

The year 1630 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* English literature, drama, and education lose a major patron and benefactor when William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and Lord Chamberlain of England, dies on April 10.-New books:...

.

Sources

Fletcher drew materials from Honoré D'Urfé

Honoré d'Urfé

Honoré d'Urfé, marquis de Valromey, comte de Châteauneuf was a French novelist and miscellaneous writer.- Life :...

's novel Astrée for this play, as he did with Monsieur Thomas

Monsieur Thomas

Monsieur Thomas is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher that was first published in 1639.-Date and Source:Scholars date the play to the 1610–16 period. Fletcher's source for the play's plot was the second part of the novel Astrée by Honoré d'Urfé, which was first...

and Valentinian

Valentinian (play)

Valentinian is a Jacobean era stage play, a revenge tragedy written by John Fletcher was that originally published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647. The play dramatizes the story of Valentinian III, one of the last of the Roman Emperors, as recorded by the classical historian...

. Fletcher also borrowed story materials from Bandello

Matteo Bandello

-Biography:Matteo Bandello was born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona , c. 1480 or 1485. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in theology. For many years he lived at Mantua, and superintended the education of the celebrated Lucrezia...

 and Josephus

Josephus

Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...

. The plot point in which Cleanthe suborns a priestess, to obtain a favorable oracle for her brother Syphax, is a version of the Paulina and Mundus story in Josephus.

In the Restoration

The play was revived early in the Restoration

English Restoration

The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...

 era, with Edward Kynaston

Edward Kynaston

Edward Kynaston was an English actor, one of the last Restoration "boy players," young male actors who played women's roles.-Career:...

 in the role of the princess (when women onstage were still an innovation and a rarity). Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...

 saw it at the Salisbury Court Theatre

Salisbury Court Theatre

The Salisbury Court Theatre was a theatre in 17th-century London. It was located in the neighbourhood of Salisbury Court, which was formerly the London residence of the Bishops of Salisbury. Salibury Court was acquired by Richard Sackville in 1564; when Thomas Sackville was created Earl of Dorset...

 on 9 February 1661

1661 in literature

The year 1661 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* The Book of Kells is presented to Trinity College, Dublin.* Controversial author James Harrington is arrested on a charge of conspiracy....

, again on 2 December the same year, and again on 18 February 1669

1669 in literature

The year 1669 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:* Samuel Pepys stops keeping his diary on May 31.* The final section of Parthenissa, the prose romance by Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, is published...

. The play was adapted to meet changing tastes, again like other Fletcherian plays; a version by Peter Anthony Motteux

Peter Anthony Motteux

Peter Anthony Motteux , born Pierre Antoine Motteux, was an English author, playwright, and translator...

 was scored with music and songs by John Eccles and Daniel Purcell

Daniel Purcell

Daniel Purcell was an English composer, the younger brother of Henry Purcell.As a teenager, Daniel Purcell joined the choir of the Chapel Royal, and in his mid-twenties he became organist of Magdalen College, Oxford. He began to compose while at Oxford, but in 1695 he moved to London to compose...

  and staged by Thomas Betterton

Thomas Betterton

Thomas Patrick Betterton , English actor, son of an under-cook to King Charles I, was born in London.-Apprentice and actor:...

 in 1703–4.

Melancholy and music

The Mad Lover, as its title indicates, deals with a case of "melancholia" or depression

Clinical depression

Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...

 due to an unsatisfactory romantic attachment. In this respect, it relates to a number of other dramas of its historical era that include the same or similar subject matter, including Fletcher's The Noble Gentleman

The Noble Gentleman

The Noble Gentleman is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators that was first published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647...

, The Nice Valour

The Nice Valour

The Nice Valour, or The Passionate Madman is a Jacobean stage play of problematic date and authorship. Based on its inclusion in the two Beaumont and Fletcher folios of 1647 and 1679 and two citations in 17th-century sources, the play has long held a place in the canon of John Fletcher and his...

, and John Ford's

John Ford (dramatist)

John Ford was an English Jacobean and Caroline playwright and poet born in Ilsington in Devon in 1586.-Life and work:...

 The Lover's Melancholy

The Lover's Melancholy

The Lover's Melancholy is an early Caroline era stage play, a tragicomedy written by John Ford. While the dating of the works in Ford's canon is very uncertain, this play has sometimes been regarded as "Ford's first unaided drama," an anticipation of what would follow through the remainder of his...

. The Mad Lover has been noted for its use of music as a treatment for mental illness; the play has been called "the most extensive example within a single play of the use of musical sound and imagery in the depiction and cure of madness." The characters in the play stage a masque

Masque

The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment which flourished in 16th and early 17th century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio...

 in their attempt to treat the mad general, Memnon; drawing on the myth of Orpheus

Orpheus

Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...

, it is a Masque of Beasts and Trees, with an ape, dog, lion, and dancing trees — all former men and foolish lovers.

----

In 1897

1897 in music

- Events :*January 13 - At a memorial concert in Paris for composer Emmanuel Chabrier , the first act of his uncompleted work, Briséïs, is performed for the first time.*March 27 - Premiere of Sergei Rachmaninoff's First Symphony...

, Charles Villiers Stanford

Charles Villiers Stanford

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer who was particularly notable for his choral music. He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.- Life :...

composed and orchestrated a musical setting for an excerpt from The Mad Lover, titled "The Battle of Pelusium."