immediately after The Fatal Dowry, when Massinger’s mind was so saturated with the contents of the tragedy just laid aside that he was liable to echo in the new drama the expressions and import of lines in the old, whether by himself or his collaborator. That at any rate the chronological relationship of the two plays is one of juxtaposition is further attested by the fact that in minor parallelisms,4 too, to The Fatal Dowry, The Unnatural Combat is richer than any other work of Massinger.

Unfortunately The Unnatural Combat is itself another play of whose date no more can be said with assurance than that it preceeds the entry of Sir Henry Herbert into office in 1623, though its crude horrors, its ghost, etc., suggest moreover that it is its author’s initial independent venture in the field of tragedy, his Titus Andronicus, an ill-advised attempt to produce something after the “grand manner” of half a generation back. Next in closeness to The Fatal Dowry among the works of Massinger as regards the number of its reminiscences of phraseology stands his share of The Virgin Martyr; next in closeness as regards the strikingness of these parallels stands his share of The Little French Lawyer. These two plays can be dated circa 1620.

To sum up:

The Fatal Dowry appears to antedate the installation of Sir Henry Herbert in 1623.

It was probably written while Field was with the King’s Men; with whom he became associated in 1616, and whom he probably quitted in 1619.

The indications point to its composition during the latter part of this three-year period (1616–19), for it yields more and closer parallels to The Virgin Martyr and The Little French Lawyer, dated about 1620, than to The Knight of Malta and The Queen of Corinth, dated 1617–8,—closer, indeed, than to any work of Massinger save one, The Unnatural Combat, itself an undated but evidently early play, with which its relationship is clearly of the most intimate variety.

The following (at best hazardously conjectural) scheme of sequence may be advanced:

Fletcher and Massinger and Field together wrote The Knight of Malta and The Queen of Corinth—according to received theory, in 1617 or 1618. Thereafter, the last two collaborators (desirous, perhaps, of trying what they could do unaided and unshackled by the dominating association of the chief dramatist of the day) joined hands in the production of the tragedy which is the subject of our study. Then, upon Field’s retirement, 

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