The Fatal Dowry

by Philip Massinger, Nathan Field, T. A. Dunn (Editor)

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1969.

145 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1620

About the author

Philip Massinger (born 1583) 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.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a mediocre Jacobean play, little read and principally remembered for the contribution of Nathan Field--an actor-dramatist with a very small output--whom experts tell us composed about two-fifths of the play. (The experts say Massinger wrote the tragic scenes, Field the humorous and courtly ones.)

Perhaps I'm just getting burned-out on Jacobean and Caroline plays--after all, I've been reading one every month for about two years now--but I found little in this play to recommend it. The "honor-killing" theme--in which Rochmont, in a mock-trial, condemns his daughter Beaumelle to death for adultery, and then her husband Charalois "executes" her--is something I find particularly repellent. (At any rate, John Webster, in Appius and Virginia, treated a somewhat similar situation more effectively. But his characters were ancient Romans, not 15th century Burgundians, and I think that helped.)

My advice: if you're in the mood for an old play about jealousy and murder, do not read this. Read Shakespeare's Othello instead. If you've already read Othello, then read it again.

[Katheryn Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main storyline is reasonably interesting, but there are several episodes which don't seem to advance the plot, or otherwise add anything to the experience of reading the play.

I read this one online, using Early English Books Online (EEBO).

[Gill · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not one of Massinger's best plays. Partly about a weird story in which a dead man's creditors won't release his body for burial until his debts are paid off, which they can't be because he spent all the money on helping defend his country. It gets stranger too, with a healthy dose of misogyny and some really misplaced humour.

Read as part of the online reading group Reading Early Plays reading the King's Men repertoire on Zoom in the dreary lockdown late autumn of 2020.