seeking a more precise date we can deal only in probabilities.2

 The play having been produced by the King’s Men, a company in which Field acted, it was most probably written during his association therewith. This was formed in 1616; the precise date of his retirement from the stage is not known. His name appears in the patent of March 27, 1619, just after the death of Burbage, and again and for the last time in a livery list for his Majesty’s Servants, dated May 19, 1619. It is absent from the next grant for livery (1621) and from the actors’ lists for various plays which are assigned to 1619 or 1620. We may therefore assume safely that his connection with the stage ended before the close of 1619. On the basis of probability, then, the field is narrowed to 1616–19.3

More or less presumptive evidence may be adduced for a yet more specific dating. During these years that Field acted with the King’s Men, two plays appeared which bear strong internal evidence of being products of his collaboration with Massinger and Fletcher: The Knight of Malta and The Queen of Corinth. While several parallels of phraseology are afforded for The Fatal Dowry by these (as, indeed, by every one of the works of Massinger) they are not nearly so numerous or so striking as similarities discoverable between it and certain other dramas of the Massinger corpus. With none does the connection seem so intimate as with The Unnatural Combat. Both plays open with a scene in which a young suppliant for a father’s cause is counseled, in passages irresistibly reminiscent of each other, to lay aside pride and modesty for the parent’s sake, because not otherwise can justice be gained, and it is the custom of the age to sue for it shamelessly. Moreover, the offer by Beaufort and his associates to Malefort of any boon he may desire as a recompense for his service, and his acceptance of it, correspond strikingly in both conduct and language with the conferring of a like favor upon Rochfort by the Court (I, ii, 258 ff.); while the request which Malefort prefers, that his daughter be married to Beaufort Junior, and the language with which that young man acknowledges this meets his own dearest wish, bear a no less patent resemblance to the bestowal of Beaumelle upon Charalois (II, ii, 284–297). Now this last parallel is significant, because The Unnatural Combat is an unaided production of Massinger, while the analogue in The Fatal Dowry occurs in a scene that is by the hand of Field. The similarity may, of course, be only an accident, but presumably it is not. Then did Field borrow from Massinger, or did Massinger from Field? The most plausible theory is that The Unnatural Combat was written 

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