The Coxcomb is an early Jacobean era stage play, a comedy

Comedy

Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...

 written by Francis Beaumont

Francis Beaumont

Francis Beaumont was a dramatist in the English Renaissance theatre, most famous for his collaborations with John Fletcher....

 and 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...

. It 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...

.

Date and performance

Scholars date the play to c. 1608–10, based on contemporary allusions and availability of sources. (It has been argued that one of the play's sources was the "Curious Impertinent" episode in Don Quixote, which was published in French translation in 1608

1608 in literature

The year 1608 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 10 - Ben Jonson's The Masque of Beauty is performed by Queen Anne and her retinue at the Banqueting House, Whitehall, a sequel to The Masque of Blackness....

, that translation being the playwrights' source. Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...

 refers to the play in The Alchemist

The Alchemist (play)

The Alchemist is a comedy by English playwright Ben Jonson. First performed in 1610 by the King's Men, it is generally considered Jonson's best and most characteristic comedy; Samuel Taylor Coleridge claimed that it had one of the three most perfect plots in literature...

in 1610

1610 in literature

The year 1610 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*Thomas Bodley makes an agreement with the Stationers' Company of London to put a copy of every book registered with them into his new Bodleian.-New books:...

.) The Coxcomb was performed at Court early in November 1612

1612 in literature

The year 1612 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 6 - Ben Jonson's masque Love Restored is performed.*January 12 - The King's Men and Queen Anne's Men unite for the first of two Court performances in January, with Thomas Heywood's The Silver Age*January 13 - The King's...

 by the Children of the Queen's Revels

Children of the Chapel

The Children of the Chapel were the boys with unbroken voices, choristers, who formed part of the Chapel Royal, the body of singers and priests serving the spiritual needs of their sovereign wherever they were called upon to do so....

.

The play's text 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....

 provides a cast list for one production, a list that 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....

, Giles Gary, Emanuel Read, Richard Allen, Hugh Atawell, 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...

, and William Barkstead. This combination of personnel matches not the Queen's Revels Children but 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...

. The former company combined with the latter for a time in 1613. The children's troupe later passed out of existence, leaving some of its plays, including The Coxcomb, behind with the Lady Elizabeth's company.

The play then passed into the possession 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...

, who acted it at Court on 5 March 1622

1622 in literature

The year 1622 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*February 28 - Loiola, a Latin comedy mocking the Jesuits, is acted at Cambridge; the performance is repeated before King James I on March 12.*March 12 - Teresa of Ávila The year 1622 in literature involved some significant...

, and on 17 November 1636

1636 in literature

The year 1636 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 31 - The King's Men perform Shakespeare's Julius Caesar at St. James's Palace.*February - James Shirley's The Duke's Mistress is performed at St...

.

Authorship

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 survey of authorship problems in the canon of Fletcher and his collaborators, provided this breakdown between the respective shares of Beaumont and Fletcher:

Beaumont — Act I, scene 4; Act II, 4; Act IV, 1, 3, and 7; Act V;

Fletcher — Act I, scenes 1-3 and 5; Act II, 1 and 3; Act III, 1 and 2; Act IV, 2, 4-6, and 8;

Beaumont and Fletcher — Act I, scene 6; Act II, 2; Act III, 3.

Critics have long recognized that the existing text is a revised version of the Beaumont and Fletcher

Beaumont and Fletcher

Beaumont and Fletcher were the English dramatists Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, who collaborated in their writing during the reign of James I ....

 original, likely done for one of the King's Men's revivals. The favorite candidate for the reviser is 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....

, a major participant in Fletcher's canon; but William Rowley

William Rowley

William Rowley was an English Jacobean dramatist, best known for works written in collaboration with more successful writers. His date of birth is estimated to have been c. 1585; he was buried on 11 February 1626...

 has also been considered. If the revision was done for the 1636 revival, as some believe, Rowley would be eliminated, since he died a decade earlier.

After 1642

Along with many other plays in Fletcher's canon, The Coxcomb was revived during 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; it proved popular, and was reprinted in a single-play edition in 1718. The play is one of the relatively few Beaumont/Fletcher works given a performance in later centuries; it was acted by the Elizabethan Stage Society

Elizabethan Stage Society

The Elizabethan Stage Society was a theatrical society dedicated to putting on productions of drama from the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, particularly those of William Shakespeare. It was founded in 1895 by William Poel...

 in the Hall of the Inner Temple

Inner Temple

The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court in London. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and Wales, an individual must belong to one of these Inns...

 on 10 February 1898 — a production reviewed by George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

.