visiting her on four successive days [cf. four days,' II. iv. 104, IV. iii. 10, 44] he offered her marriage. She replied that she had no wish to pass for a saint: she had been, and was, a sinner, but no subject of scandal [I. i. 73-4]; and was now looking out for a husband to settle down with and try to please. She had inherited no fortune, but the furniture of the house would fetch 2500 ducats. She could cook well:-"I can be the major domo in the house, the tidy wench in the kitchen, and the lady in the drawing-room: in fact I know how to command and make myself obeyed. I squander nothing and accumulate a great deal; my coin goes all the further for being spent under my own directions" [closely reproduced, I. vi. 41–9]. Campuzano, overjoyed, said that his own fortune was not so small but that with that chain which I wore round my neck, and other jewels which I had at home, and by disposing of some military finery, I could muster more than 2000 ducats, which, with her 2500, would be enough for us to retire upon to a village of which I was a native, and where I had relations and some patrimony' [so Perez thinks of selling his commission, II. ii. 18]. They were married on the fourth day . . . in the presence of two friends of mine, and a youth who she said was her cousin, and to whom I introduced myself as a relation with words of great urbanity [II. iv. 92]. Such, indeed, were all those which hitherto I had bestowed upon my bride-with how crooked and treacherous an intention I would rather not say. .. My servant removed my trunk from my lodgings to my wife's house. I put by my magnificent chain in my wife's presence; showed her three or four others, not so large, but of better workmanship, with three or four other trinkets of various kinds; laid before her my best dresses and my plumes, and gave her about 400 reals, which I had, to defray the household expenses. For six days I tasted the bread of wedlock'; and he describes his luxury, and Estefania's attentions and cooking-'My shirts, collars, and handkerchiefs were a very Aranjuez of flowers, so drenched they were with fragrant waters. I began to change for the better the evil intention with which I had begun this affair. At the end of them (the six days) one morning, whilst I was still in bed with Doña Estefania, there was a loud knocking and calling at the street door. The servant girl put her head out of the window, and immediately popped it in again, saying "There she is, sure enough; she is come sooner than she mentioned in her letter the other day, but she is welcome." "Who's come, girl?" said I. "Who?" she replied; "why, my lady Doña Clementa Buseo, and with her señor Don Lope Melendez de Almendarez, with two other servants, and Hortigosa the dueña she took with her." "Bless me! run, wench, and open the door for them," Doña Estefania now exclaimed; "and you, señor, as you love me, don't put yourself out, or reply for me to anything you may hear said against me. "Why, who is to say anything to offend you, especially when I am by? Tell me, who are these people, whose arrival appears to have upset you?" "I have no time to answer," said Doña Estefania, "only be assured that whatever takes place here will be all pretended, and bears upon a certain design which you shall know by and by." The arrivals enter, richly dressed, and the duenna reflects upon her lady's bed being occupied “the señora Doña Estefania has availed herself of my lady's friendliness to some purpose.' "That she has, Hortigosa," replied Doña Clementa; "but I blame myself for never being on my guard against friends who can only be such when it is for their own advantage." Estefania does not say she is married, but pretends some mystery and that the sequel will show her blameless: then, leading her husband into another room, she tells him that this friend of hers wanted to play a trick on that Don Lope who was come with her, and to whom she expected to be married. The trick was to make him believe that the house and everything in it belonged to herself. Once married, it would matter little that the truth was discovered, so confident was the lady in the great love of Don Lope; the property would then be returned;

and who could blame her, or any woman, for contriving to get an honourable husband, though it were by a little artifice? I replied that it was a very great stretch of friendship she thought of making, and that she ought to look well to it beforehand, for very probably she might be constrained to have recourse to justice to recover her effects. .: however he complies with her wishes 'on the assurance that the affair would not last more than eight days, during which we were to lodge with another friend of hers.

We finished dressing; she went to take her leave of the señora and the señor, ordered my servant to follow her with my luggage, and I too followed without taking leave of any one. Doña Estefania stopped at a friend's house, and stayed talking with her a good while, leaving us in the street, till at last a girl came out and told me and my servant to come in. We went up-stairs to a small room in which there were two beds so close together that they seemed but one, for the bedclothes actually touched each other. There we remained six days, during which not an hour passed in which we did not quarrel; for I was always telling her what a stupid thing she had done in giving up her house and goods.'

One day in Estefania's absence the woman of the house asks him about this continual wrangling, and hears from him the story. 'Thereupon the woman began to cross and bless herself at such a rate, and to cry out, "O, Lord! O, the jade!" that she put me into a great state of uneasiness.' At last she tells him "The truth is, that Doña Clementa Buseo is the real owner of the house and property which you have had palmed upon you for a dower; the lies are every word that Doña Estefania has told you, for she has neither house nor goods, nor any clothes besides those on her back. What gave her an opportunity for this trick was that Doña Clementa went to visit one of her relations in the city of Plasencia, and there to perform a novenary in the church of our Lady of Guadelupe, meanwhile leaving Doña Estefania to look after her house, for in fact they are great friends. And after all, rightly considered, the poor señora is not to blame, since she has had the wit to get herself such a person as the Señor Alferez for a husband,” . . . I took my cloak and sword, and went out in search of Doña Estefania, resolved to inflict on her an exemplary chastisement; but chance ordained, whether for my good or not I cannot tell, that she was not to be found in any of the places where I expected to fall in with her. I went to the church of San Lorente . . .' [IV. i. 9-26] and there the wretched man finds relief in sleep, but is soon awakened. 'I went with a heavy heart to Doña Clementa's, and found her as much at ease as a lady should be in her own house. Not daring to say a word to her, because Don Lope was present, I returned to my landlady, who told me she had informed Doña Estefania that I was acquainted with her whole roguery; that she had asked how I had seemed to take the news; that she, the landlady, said I had taken it very badly, and had gone out to look for her, apparently with the worst intentions; whereupon Doña Estefania had gone away, taking with her all that was in my trunk, only leaving me one travelling coat. I flew to my trunk, and found it open, like a coffin waiting for a dead body; and well might it have been my own, if sense enough had been left me to comprehend the magnitude of my misfortune.'

Here Peralta breaks in with condolence on the loss of his valuables--the chain alone must have weighed over 200 ducats: but Campuzano assures him that all the trinkets together were only worth ten or twelve crowns, being counterfeit. "So then it seems to have been a drawn game," says the licentiate; to which Campuzano gives doubtful assent-he at least is saddled with her as wife: "without looking for her, I always find her in imagination; and, wherever I am, my disgrace is always present before me. She, however, has gone off with the 'cousin whom she brought to our wedding, who had been a lover of hers of long standing,' and he feels himself well rid of her. But, as a

result of the connexion, he has been attacked by disease, and driven by poverty into the hospital, where he has undergone forty sudations.-His story thus ended Campuzano passes on, pretty cheerfully, to relate the famous Colloquio between the two hospital dogs, Berganza and Scipio.

It will be seen that Fletcher has followed the tale closely, so far as it goes. His changes are all in the direction of dramatic effect, or to suit the combination with, and balance against, the main plot. As Leon, beginning with an exaggerated foolishness and meekness, succeeds in imposing his unquestioned authority on Margarita; so Perez, commencing with self-confidence and swagger (I. i. 38-41, II. ii. iv. 22-87), is brought to feel and confess his wife's superiority. No separation of the pair being contemplated, her cousin and former lover disappears; and Perez's civility to him at the wedding is transferred, along with the 'cousinship,' to Margarita on her arrival (II. iv. 92). The express deletion of Estefania's confession of a 'past' (I. vi. 23-5) is in the direction of probability: the Old Woman makes us amends on the point, but at least Perez is spared physical penalties for his union-those pains are transferred to the rake Alonzo (II. i.). His vacation of the house, again, is made more probable by Estefania's ready production of a document promising compensation; nor is he credited with any intention of selling it: his fondness for the beauty of the grounds is made a pathetic element in his disappointment -'I would live a swallow here,' he confesses with tears in his eyes, as he accepts Leon's generous offer of a home (V. v. 154). This change in the dénouement induces the development of the tale by some excellent scenes; namely III. v. 150-93 (he is dumb in the tale); the whole of IV. i., where his vain search for his wife is developed into the witty opposed speeches (10–50), and his private confession of the fraud of the trinkets into that indignant exposure by Estefania (62-104) which has earned him since the name of 'the Copper Captain' and leads on to his third discomfiture at the house (104-7 and IV. iii. 124-210); and the scene of the pistol, which ends in their reconciliation. The addition of a capital study of humanity at its poorest in the wealthy Cacafogo affords Estefania the means to effect that reconciliation (IV. i. 125170), and to provide for her future (V. v. 6 and 158), and Perez the consolation of a companion in misfortune (V. ii. 19-69). He is probably wholly Fletcher's. Dr. L. Bahlsen (cf. below, 'History') suggests, Bessus, to whom he bears some slight resemblance; but neither corpulence, drunkenness nor disappointed lechery, can affiliate him to Falstaff.

Dunlop (Hist. of Fiction, ch. vii., pp. 129–32, ed. H. Wilson) pointed out some resemblance to our underplot in the story of the mutual outwitting of Jancofiore of Palermo and her Florentine admirer in the Decamerone, viii. 10, a story Boccaccio may have borrowed from the Cento Novelle Antiche, but which is traceable back through the Gesta Romanorum, the Disciplina Clericalis of Petrus Alphonsus, and the Thousand and One Nights, and as an Arabian tale may well have been accessible to Cervantes.

For the main plot (Leon, Margarita and the Duke) no direct source has hitherto been indicated beyond some obvious general example in The Taming of the Shrew, which is however sufficiently distinct. Hallam, while owning a likelihood of some Spanish prototype, recognized native qualities in the variety and spirit of character and the vivacious humour. Indeed, the vigour of Leon's part throughout suggests that the author is working on a conception of his own. The title of a comedy by Gaspar de Avila, 'El Valeroso Español y Primero de su Casa' (Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, tom. xliii., pp. 563-81) has allured us but examination shows the piece to deal with Cortez's triumph over envious charges at the Spanish Court on his return from his American conquests, the title referring to the marquisate granted him by the emperor Charles V. If Fletcher was at all aware of it, he can have borrowed nothing but the name El Duque de Medina, a staunch champion of Cortez, who is the

means of introducing the heroine Doña Juaña to the imperial Court, where the emperor bestows her hand on Cortez, for whom she has conceived a passion; while the reference to Margarita's possessions in the Indies (IV. iii. 199-201) might be suggested by this or a thousand other works.

Were literary example needed for wanton life the Italian novelists supplied it in abundance. Two conspicuous cases from Bandello, for instance, had been reproduced (through Belleforest) in Geoffrey Fenton's Tragicall Discourses of 1567, of which the seventh deals with the Countess of Celant, and the third with Pandora, ‘a younge Ladye in Myllan' who 'longe abused the vertue of her youth and honor of mariage with an vnlawful haunte of diuerse yonge Gentlemen,' and secured 'the whole conveygh of all the househoulde doinges, whereby her commaundement was only currant, and she, houldinge the rayne of her lybertie in her owne hand, might haunte and use what place for recreacion she lyste at her pleasure' but this is the limit of suggestion. A germ at least for Leon and Margarita is furnished in the Doña Clementa and Don Lope of Cervantes' novel: the duenna might suggest the complaisant old ladies of I. iv.; and a further distinct leaning upon the tale is noticeable in the transfer of Estefania's cousinship with a former lover to Margarita and the Duke (cf. Leon's satirical 'What cousin's this?' IV. iii. 126, following 11. 97, 99). But the vigorous Leon remains still without forerunner. Dr. Koeppel is inclined to find a leading source of inspiration in Morose's disillusion when his silent wife breaks into her first flow of talk (cf. note on III. i. 89), a reference which he also made in regard to The Woman's Prize, and a probable reminiscence, but quite inadequate.

In all probability Fletcher relied upon his own invention in the rehandling and variation of a theme of conjugal contest which he had treated with striking similarities of detail in two other and earlier plays. In The Woman's Prize (before 1622) Petruchio, like Margarita and Morose, is surprised to find that he has caught a Tartar. Maria's successful revolt is followed by an exhibition of wasteful extravagance. Petruchio feigns sickness: she meets the move by ordering the hangings to be taken down, the linen and plate packed up and the infected house cleared, and afterwards pretends the order was his. When he himself threatens departure, she feigns madness. His pretended death is equally vain; but the moment of final victory is also that of wifely submission'From this hour make me what you please: I have tamed ye, And now am vow'd your servant.' (V. iv. 45-6.)

Compare, in IV. iii. of our play, Leon's orders to pack and Margarita's feigned sickness, and in V. iii. 19-20 his generous confidence

'Command you now and ease me of that trouble,
I'll be as humble to you as a servant.'

In The Noble Gentleman (perhaps adapted from Tourneur's The Nobleman of 1612), which was performed Feb. 3, 1626, after Fletcher's death (see our Introd. to the play in a later volume) we have a close parallel to Margarita in the wanton and extravagant Madame Mount Marine, who allies herself with some loose courtiers in order to overcome her husband's determination to quit Paris. There is the same talk of hasty packing, and the same device of pretended promotion which, when it proves unsuccessful, is, as here, withdrawn. A similar contest of wills, drawn out through a succession of devices, is seen in the still earlier Scornful Lady (1609 or 1610).

Finally Dr. Koeppel has well noted that Altea's plot to secure a good match for her brother is anticipated by that of Cleanthe and Syphax in regard to the princess Calis in The Mad Lover.

HISTORY.-Among the drolls, or excerpts from the comic portions of plays, furtively given at fairs during the suppression of the theatres and mostly

credited to the comic actor Robert Cox (Dyce, i. 200), was one called An Equall Match. It appears as the seventh in Kirkman's collection, The Wits, or Sport upon Sport, 1672 (Part I. pp. 45-50), and is no more than a reprint (as prose) of Perez and Estefania in III. ii. iv. and IV. i. 1-101 of our play, with frequent omission of a line or two and rare change of a word, but without addition or other alteration. Philaster, The Scornful Lady, and Cupid's Revenge furnished similar drolls to Kirkman's collection.

At the Restoration the play entered on a long career of popularity. Sir Henry Herbert records a performance on Jan. 28, 1662 (Malone, iii. 275-for original production see under 'Date'), and Pepys saw it 'very well done' a week later, Feb. 5. It was among the stock pieces of Killegrew's company at the Theatre Royal, opened April 8, 1663: casts are preserved of performances in 1663 or 4, 1683, 1706, 1731, 1741; while on March 25, 1756, it was revived by Garrick at Drury Lane after a fifteen years' interval, when Leon was played by Garrick, the Copper Captain' by Woodward, and Estefania first by Mrs. Cibber and then by Mrs. Pritchard. It was given again by Garrick in 1757 and 1759, and at Covent Garden in 1761 and 1763; revived by Garrick at Drury Lane in 1775 and 1776; given at the Haymarket 1777, 1810; at Drury Lane again 1784, 1788, 1797, and 1815; and at Covent Garden 1780, 1797, 1803, 1809, 1811, 1825. All these performances are recorded by Genest, and the casts given: see his Index, near beginning of vol. i.

The British Museum contains separate editions as follows: London, 1717. 4°; 1720. 12°; Dublin, 1728. 12°; London, 1733. 12°; 1767. 12°—‘As perform'd at the Theatres'; 1772. 8° (a verbal reprint of the last); 1777. 8°-As it is acted at the Theatres Royal in Drury Lane and Covent Garden'; 1811. 8° -Adapted to the stage by James Love; revised by J. P. Kemble: and now first published as it is acted at the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden'; Edinburgh, 1813? 12°; 1825? 12°: and it appears further in the following collections

Bell's British Theatre (vol. iv.). 1776. 12°. As performed at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, and Regulated from the Prompt-Book, By permission of the Managers, By Mr. Hopkins Prompter';

The New English Theatre (vol. iii.). 1776. 8°. Marked with the variations in the Manager's Book, at the Theatre-Royal in Drury Lane';

The British Theatre (vol. vi.). Ed. by Mrs. Inchbald. 1808. 12°. 'As performed at the Theatres-Royal, Covent Garden and Drury Lane. Printed under the authority of the managers from the prompt-book';

The Modern British Drama (vol. iii.). 1811. 8°.

The New English Drama (vol. x.). Ed. W. Oxberry. 1820. 8°. 'Altered from Beaumont and Fletcher by David Garrick';

The London Stage (vol. i.). 1824. 8°. Altered from Beaumont and Fletcher by David Garrick';

The British Drama (vol. ii.). 1826. 8°; Cumberland's British Theatre (vol. xii.). 1829. 8°; and last in Dick's Standard Plays (No. 60). 1883. 8°, which is also announced as Garrick's alteration.

Of these printed versions (and there were doubtless others), (1) the first in which sensible alteration occurs is the duodecimo of 1767, which is exactly reprinted in the octavo of 1772. The changes here are almost confined to the omission of numerous passages of one to six lines (ten, II. i. 34-43, v. 25–36, and the whole short scene V. i.) throughout the play, whether to excise a coarseness or for abbreviation's sake, until the final scene is reached. Here the reviser, doubtless feeling the exaggeration by which the hitherto wanton Margarita is represented as the eloquent champion of the sanctity of the hearth, and the libertine Duke as a superstitious and cowardly poltroon, makes large omissions (11. 17-23, 26–37, 46–8, 52-70, 73-77, 79–84, 89–106), including almost all the references to Cacafogo 'below,' and everything in the nature of