Fair Em

Fair Em

Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester, is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy written c. 1590. It was bound together with Mucedorus and The Merry Devil of Edmonton in a volume labelled "Shakespeare. Vol. I" in the library of Charles II – though scholarly opinion universally rejects the attribution to William Shakespeare.

Fair Em was published in quarto twice before the closing of the theatres in 1642:

  • Q1, undated, with no attribution of authorship, was printed by "T. N. and I. W." The title page states that "it was sundrietimes publiquely acted in the honourable citie of London, by the right honourable the Lord Strange his seruaunts" – which dates the play to the 1589–93 period.
  • Q2, 1631, printed by John Wright, also by no attribution of authorship. The full title as given on both editions is A Pleasant Comedie of Faire Em, the Millers Daughter of Manchester. WIth the love of William the Conqueror.

Edward Phillips, in his Theatrum Poetarum (1675), states that Fair Em was written by Robert Greene; but since Greene ridicules the play's author and parodies two lines from the closing scene in his 1591 pamphlet Farewell to Folly, this attribution also seems unsound. Fair Em has a clear relationship with one of Greene's plays, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay; it seems most likely that the author of Fair Em borrowed from Greene. Since Greene's play is thought to date to c. 1589, Fair Em would have to have originated between that date and the publication of Farewell to Folly in 1591. This span of 1589–91 conforms to the dating based on the Lord Strange connection, noted above.

In modern scholarship, the attributions of authorship that have attracted the most support are to Robert Wilson and to Anthony Munday. The attribution to Munday relies on similarities between Fair Em and John a Kent and John a Cumber. A later play, John Day's The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green (1600), bears noteworthy resemblances to Fair Em.

The plot derives from traditional sources; a ballad titled The Miller's Daughter of Manchester was entered into the Stationers' Register on 2 March 1581.

A few nineteenth-century commentators (notably F. G. Fleay) read hidden significance into the play, interpreting it as an allegory on the theatrical conditions of its day. Modern scholarship rejects these views as fanciful, and regards the work as a light entertainment, successful on its own level. Speculations that Shakespeare may have played either William the Conqueror or Valingford have also not been judged favorably.

Read more about Fair Em:  Synopsis, Performance

Famous quotes containing the word fair:

    It is always fair sailing when you escape evil.
    Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)