Date and Performance
Firm evidence for the play's date of authorship is lacking. Scholars have generally dated the play to c. 1637 or to the 1639–41 period. The play was allegedly composed in Basel in Switzerland. Killigrew may have been in the city in December and January in the winter of 1635–36, and perhaps began to draft the play at that time. Yet Killigrew apparently was also in Switzerland, in Geneva and Basel, in March 1640, and in Switzerland again in April 1641.
The play was performed in 1641, by the King's Men, in the Blackfriars Theatre. In Act V, Scene i, Killigrew refers to Joseph Taylor, the long-time leading man of that company; here, Killigrew is imitating Ben Jonson, who played the same trick of reference in his The Devil is an Ass (1616). In that play, Jonson mentions Richard Robinson, a King's Man actor who was cast of the play in which he's mentioned.
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