Cupids Revenge. As it was often acted (with great applause) by the Children of the Revel.
London: London: Printed by A.M., 1635.
Price: $5,500.00
Quarto: 18 x 13.3 cm. [80] p. Collation: A-K4
THIRD EDITION (1st ed. 1615).
Bound in modern quarter calf and marbled boards. A good copy, lightly toned and a with a few wax or small damp-stains. Fore-edges of first leaves a bit brittle, dark dust-staining to upper margin of first gathering, a few marginal chips or tears.
The third edition of Beaumont and Fletcher’s tragedy dramatizing the death and destruction of the Lycian royal family in the wake of the Duke’s suppression of the worship of Cupid. The text is based on the first edition of 1615. The text printed here includes theatrical notations and stage directions likely culled from authorial papers (see below).
“Cupids Revenge” is notable in that it “is the first product of the collaboration to exhibit most of the characteristics of a ‘Beaumont & Fletcher’ play: an improbable plot set in a distant time and exotic place; realistic characters who seem intermixed with archetypes out of dreams; high-pitched rant alternating with gentlemanly conversation.” (Finkelpearl 128) “The play provided an important working out of certain aspects of characterization and dramatic atmosphere which mark the better known tragicomedies and tragedy; the blend of lack comedy, broad farce, and sentimental melodrama, which Beaumont and Fletcher would recombine more subtly in the plays which were to follow”. (Astington 219)
The play also represented an important revival in the staged portrayal of myth and allegory combined with “the spectacular effects possible with stage machinery. The dramatists of the commercial theaters responded immediately to these new or revived techniques of stage spectacle, and Beaumont and Fletcher were among the first to do so in ‘Cupid's Revenge’.” (ibid 227)
The play begins with the Duke of Lycia suppressing the worship of the god Cupid, the
patron deity of the land, after the duke’s daughter decides that her birthday wish is to
destroy the cult of Cupid that permeates Lycian culture. When Cupid’s statues and
temples are destroyed, the god oversees the ruin and death of the royal family and their
retainers through some very unwise romantic entanglements. As he is dying in the
bloody final scene, the Duke’s son restores the worship of Cupid to Lycia.
The play was a popular success and “clearly remained a valuable theatrical commodity. The 1622 Lady Elizabeth's Men had it in their repertory at the Phoenix, and performed it at court in 1624. The play had changed hands by 1637 when it was performed at court again, this time by Beeston's Boys, and ‘Cupid's Revenge’ possibly remained part of their repertory until 1642. The history of the play after 1615 suggests that it was regarded as a valuable piece of theatrical stock”. (ibid 218)
“A word must be said about the theatrical authority of the 1615 quarto of Cupid's Revenge. Fredson Bowers, who has edited the play for ‘The Dramatic Works in the Beaumont and Fletcher Canon’, doubts that the source of the printed text was the actual theatrical promptbook, suggesting instead that the theatrical notations evident in the play (in the entrance direction to V. ii, for example) indicate ‘that the manuscript was authorial papers that had been looked over by the book-keeper, who made various notes in them to be followed when the papers were copied out to make up the promptbook’. In other words the printed text of the play preserves a version with considerable, though not absolute authority with reference to its staging.” (ibid 224)
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher:
"We know relatively little of Beaumont and Fletcher's lives, and still less of their collaboration. Like Shakespeare, they became legendary in their lifetimes, and being almost as famous as their older contemporary their legend is almost as misty. The actual concept of collaboration became an essential part of the legend.”(Andrew Gurr, 'Philaster')
“Even in the seventeenth century the notion of what 'Beaumont and Fletcher' denoted was quite hazy. Their first folio of 1647, Comedies and Tragedies written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Gentlemen, clearly designed to rival the impressive folios of Shakespeare and Jonson, contained thirty-four plays and a masque… The implication that all these plays are collaborations by Beaumont and Fletcher is vastly misleading. Of the folio plays, Fletcher wrote at least sixteen alone; two or three were done with Shakespeare; probably eleven with Philip Massinger; ten or so with the involvement of as many as eight other writers. Beaumont wrote alone just The Knight and a masque. Thus only about nine plays of the vast canon were products of the famous collaboration. (Much on this topic is guesswork. The best job of untangling the probably insoluble problems of the canon is a series of articles by Cyrus Hoy, 'The shares of Fletcher and his collaborators in the Beaumont and Fletcher canon', Studies in Bibliography, 1956–62. See also the definitive edition edited by Fredson Bowers, Beaumont and Fletcher, Dramatic Works, 10.751–2, for a tentative list of ascriptions.)
“Regarding the division of labour within a play, much on the topic is based on gossip or guesswork. One contemporary maintained that Beaumont's 'maine businesse was to correct the overflowings of Mr. Fletcher's luxuriant Fancy and flowing witt' (John Earle, quoted in Brief Lives, 21); Robert Herrick stated that Fletcher designed the plots (see Herrick's commendatory verses in the 1647 folio); and Dryden thought that Beaumont was such a master of plotting that even Ben Jonson 'submitted all his writings to his [Beaumont's] censure and 'tis thought, used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, his plots' (Essays of John Dryden, 1.68). The problem, as John Aubrey said, is that there was such a 'wonderfull consimility of phansey' (Brief Lives, 21) between the collaborators that even an acute critic like Coleridge admitted that he could not distinguish Beaumont's writing from Fletcher's. As George Lisle said in the 1647 folio:
‘For still your fancies are so wov'n and knit,
'Twas FRANCIS FLETCHER, or JOHN BEAUMONT writ.” (Finkelpearl, ODNB).
ESTC S101158; STC 1669; Greg I 328 (c)