and the three parts of Henry VI.) as well as four Beaumont and Fletcher plays (The Honest Man’s Fortune, Women Pleased, The Faithful Shepherdess, and Wit at Several Weapons), two of Ford’s (The Broken Heart and The Lover’s Melancholy), all of which were associated with the King’s men.[1]
In collecting his plays at the time of the Restoration D’Avenant seems to have culled them from three separate sources. He evidently took over from Beeston, or held in his own right, many of the “Cockpitt playes appropried” in 1639. To the list given above might be added Massinger’s The Bondman, Heywood’s Love’s Mistress, and Shirley’s The Grateful Servant, The Witty Fair One, and The School of Compliment, all of which we know from other sources to have been acted in the first years of the Restoration period either at Salisbury Court or at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and all included in the Cockpit list. D’Avenant was enabled, moreover, to secure a number of dramas which had originally been produced by children’s companies or by companies other than that serving the King. Most important of all, he seized upon some of the most popular pieces of the King’s men themselves. It certainly seems strange that he should thus have been able to purloin what obviously were among the most taking plays of that time, and still more strange that the Lord Chamberlain and the King should have supported him by their warrants. What, we may well ask, was the justification for granting him these rights? Autocratically as Charles II. behaved in regard to the theatres, we can hardly believe that he wilfully alienated a number of the best of Shakespeare’s plays from those who were after all his own servants; and the problem arises of discovering some reason underlying the two warrants. There are no other documents here to assist us; but there seems to be a clue, never followed out, to be discovered in the texts of some of the plays in question. Of these plays a number were reprinted in the period of the Restoration, notably The Tempest (in D’Avenant’s and Dryden’s alteration), Measure for Measure and Much Ado about Nothing (in D’Avenant’s own composite adaptation), Macbeth (in 1673, and as an opera in 1674), Hamlet, and The Duchess of Malfi. The Law against Lovers, which unites parts of Measure for Measure and Much Ado about Nothing, may be dismissed, as the alterations
- ↑ The Honest Man’s Fortune seems to have been produced by the Lady Elizabeth’s men, but was later licensed to the King’s company (Chambers, op. cit. iii. 227). The introduction of The Faithful Shepherdess in both the lists is an exception which presupposes some error.
