INTRODUCTION

In the Stationer’s Register the following entry is recorded under the date of “30º Martij 1632:”

CONSTABLE Entred for his copy vnder the hands of Sir HENRY HERBERT and master SMITHWICKE warden a Tragedy called the ffatall Dowry. Vj d.

In the year 1632 was published a quarto volume whose title-page was inscribed: The Fatall Dowry: a Tragedy: As it hath been often Acted at the Private House in Blackfriars, by his Majesties Servants. Written by P. M. and N. F. London, Printed by John Norton, for Francis Constable, and are to be sold at his shop at the Crane, in Pauls Churchyard. 1632.

That the initials by which the authors are designated stand for Philip Massinger and Nathaniel Field is undoubted.

Later Texts

There is no other seventeenth century edition of The Fatal Dowry. It was included in various subsequent collections, as follows:

I. The Works of Philip Massinger—edited by Thomas Coxeter, 1759—re-issued in 1761, with an introduction by T. Davies.

I.

II. The Dramatic Works of Philip Massinger—edited by John Monck Mason, 1779.

II.

III. The Plays of Philip Massinger—edited by William Gifford, 1805. There was a revised second edition in 1813, which is still regarded as the Standard Massinger Text, and was followed in subsequent editions of Gifford.

III.

IV. Modern British Drama—edited by Sir Walter Scott, 1811. The text of this reprint of The Fatal Dowry is Gifford’s.

IV.

V. Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford—edited by Hartley Coleridge, 1840 (et seq.). This follows the text of Gifford.

V.

VI. The Plays of Philip Massinger. From the Text of William Gifford. With the Addition of the Tragedy Believe as You List. Edited by Francis Cunningham, 1867 (et seq.). The Fatal Dowry in this edition, as in the preceding, is a mere reprint of the 

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