Love's Cure - Authorship

Authorship

Early critics assigned the authorship of the play to Beaumont and Fletcher, Philip Massinger, Thomas Middleton, William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, John Webster, James Shirley, and even Ben Jonson, in diverse combinations. The most common view is that the play is a work originally by Fletcher and Francis Beaumont, later revised by Massinger. (The play's Prologue mentions Beaumont and Fletcher by name, while the Epilogue refers to a single author, probably meaning the reviser.) Massinger's revision was sweeping, covering most of Acts I, IV, and V. Cyrus Hoy, in his survey of authorship problems in Fletcher's canon, produced a detailed breakdown of authorship shares among scenes, portions of scenes, and single speeches. Simplified to the level of whole scenes, Hoy's analysis yields this schema:

Massinger — Act I, scenes 1 and 3; Act IV, 1, 2, and 4; Act V, 1 and 2;

Beaumont — Act III, scene 1;

Fletcher — Act III, scene 5;

Fletcher and Massinger — Act I, scene 2; Act III, 2 and 4; Act IV, 3;

Beaumont and Fletcher — Act II, scene 1; Act III, 3;

Beaumont, Fletcher, and Massinger — Act II, scene 2; Act V, 3.