The Fairy Knight, or Oberon the Second is an early Stuart

House of Stuart

The House of Stuart is a European royal house. Founded by Robert II of Scotland, the Stewarts first became monarchs of the Kingdom of Scotland during the late 14th century, and subsequently held the position of the Kings of Great Britain and Ireland...

 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...

 of uncertain and problematic authorship. Never published in its historical period, the play existed only in a manuscript, which is now MS. 46.1 in the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library

Folger Shakespeare Library

The Folger Shakespeare Library is an independent research library on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., in the United States. It has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare, and is a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period...

 in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

A play titled The Fairy Knight was licensed for performance by 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,...

, on June 11, 1624

1624 in literature

The year 1624 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*The King's Men perform The Winter's Tale at Whitehall Palace on January 18...

. In his records, Herbert attributed the play to John Ford

John Ford (dramatist)

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

 and Thomas Dekker. Scholars and critics have widely rejected any application of this assignment of authorship to the extent text; in the words of Gerald Eades Bentley

Gerald Eades Bentley

Gerald Eades Bentley was an American academic and literary scholar, best remembered for his The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, published by Oxford University Press in seven volumes between 1941 and 1968...

, "nothing in the manuscript sounds like Ford or Dekker...." Many doubt that the play licensed by Herbert in 1624 is the same as the manuscript play; the critical literature often describes the Ford/Dekker Fairy Knight as a lost work.

Fredson Bowers advanced a hypothesis that Thomas Randolph

Thomas Randolph (poet)

Thomas Randolph was an English poet and dramatist. He was baptized on 18 June 1605 and was the uncle of American colonist William Randolph.-Education:...

 wrote the existing Fairy Knight. Bowers developed his hypothesis in his modern edition of the play, published in 1942; he argued that Randolph wrote the play for a performance at Westminster School

Westminster School

The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...

 around 1623 or 1624. Other commentators, however, have generally been unconvinced by Bowers' assignment of the play to Randolph. Some have seen signs of the influence of James Shirley

James Shirley

James Shirley was an English dramatist.He belonged to the great period of English dramatic literature, but, in Lamb's words, he "claims a place among the worthies of this period, not so much for any transcendent genius in himself, as that he was the last of a great race, all of whom spoke nearly...

 in the play, noting resemblances to Shirley's The Traitor

The Traitor

The Traitor is a Caroline era stage play, a tragedy written by James Shirley. Along with The Cardinal, The Traitor is widely considered to represent the finest of Shirley's efforts in the genre, and to be among the best tragedies of its period...

(1631

1631 in literature

The year 1631 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*January 9 - Love's Triumph Through Callipolis, a masque written by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones, is staged at Whitehall Palace....

) and The Young Admiral

The Young Admiral

The Young Admiral is a Caroline era tragicomedy written by James Shirley, and first published in 1637. It has often been considered Shirley's best tragicomedy, and one of his best plays....

(1633

1633 in literature

The year 1633 in literature involved some significant events.-Events:*On May 21, Ben Jonson's masque The King's Entertainment at Welbeck is performed....

), and have concluded that The Fairy Knight must post-date those plays. Since the MS. includes a 1658 epitaph (on the "virtuous lady Frances Monson"), critics tend to place the authorship of the play sometime between the mid-1630s and 1658 — generally too late for Randolph, who died in 1635. Critics have also noted borrowings from Jonson's

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...

 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 The Fairy Knight.

The play draws upon the fairy lore of the folktales and legends of the British Isles, and so can be classed with similar works like Drayton's

Michael Drayton

Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...

Nymphidia. In the play, Loswello is the name of the fairy knight, while a silly politician called Politico is the pretender king of the fairies.