and shortened. The original date may be between the issue in 1608
of Baudouin's French translation of The Curious Impertinent from Don Quixote, which in original or translation suggested its plot, and Jonson's Alchemist (1610), IV. vii. 39, 'You are . . . a Don Quixote. Or a Knight o' the curious coxcombe'. The prologue refers to 'makers', and there is fair agreement in giving some or all of I. iv, vi, II. iv, III. iii, and V. ii to Beaumont and the rest to Fletcher. Fleay, Boyle, Oliphant, and Gayley think that there has been revision by a later writer, perhaps Massinger or W. Rowley.
The Maid's Tragedy > 1611
S. R. 1619, April 28 (Buck). 'A play Called The maides tragedy.' Higgenbotham and Constable (Arber, iii. 647). 1619. The Maides Tragedy. As it hath beene divers times Acted at the Blacke-friers by the King's Maiesties Seruants. For Francis Constable.
1622. . . . Newly perused, augmented, and inlarged, This second Impression. For Francis Constable.
1630. . . . Written by Francis Beaumont, and Iohn Fletcher Gentlemen. The Third Impression, Reuised and Refined. A. M. for Richard Hawkins.
1638; 1641; 1650 [1660?]; 1661.
Editions by J. S. L. Strachey (1887, Mermaid, i), P. A. Daniel (1904, Variorum, i), A. H. Thorndike (1906, B. L.), W. A. Neilson (1911, C. E. D.).—Dissertation: B. Leonhardt, Die Text-Varianten in B. und F.'s M. T. (1900, Anglia, xxiii. 14).
The play must have been known by 31 Oct. 1611 when Buck named the Second Maiden's Tragedy (q.v.) after it, and it was given at Court during 1612-13. An inferior limit is not attainable and any date within c. 1608-11 is possible. Gayley, 349, asks us to accept the play as more mature than, and therefore later than, Philaster. Fleay, i. 192, thinks that the mask in I. ii was added after the floods in the winter of 1612, but you cannot bring Neptune into a mask without mention of floods. As to authorship there is some division of opinion, especially on II. ii and IV. iii; subject thereto, a balance of opinion gives I, II, III, IV. ii, iv and V. iv to Beaumont, and only IV. i and V. i, ii, iii to Fletcher.
An episode (I. ii) consists of a mask at the wedding of Amintor and Evadne, with an introductory dialogue between Calianax, Diagoras, who keeps the doors, and guests desiring admission. 'The ladies are all placed above,' says Diagoras, 'save those that come in the King's troop.' Calianax has an 'office', evidently as Chamberlain. 'He would run raging among them, and break a dozen wiser heads than his own in the twinkling of an eye.'
The maskers are Proteus and other sea-gods; the presenters Night, Cinthia, Neptune, Aeolus, Favonius, and other winds, who 'rise' or come 'out of a rock'. There are two 'measures' between hymeneal songs, but no mention of taking out ladies.
In an earlier passage (I. i. 9) a poet says of masks, 'They must
