The Antipodes - Date, Performance, Publication

Date, Performance, Publication

The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 19 March 1640, and printed later that year in a quarto printed by John Okes for the bookseller Francis Constable — "to be sold at his shops in King Street at the sign of the Goat, and in Westminster Hall." The title page of this first edition states that the play was acted in 1638 by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Salisbury Court Theatre, the regular troupe and venue for Brome's dramas from 1637 on. In a note addressed to the Courteous Reader at the end of the play's text, Brome writes that the play was originally intended for William Beeston's company at the Cockpit Theatre, which suggests that the play was written sometime around 1636. (Brome was involved in a contentious dispute over his change of companies in these years, as the theatres suffered a prolonged closure from May 1636 to October 1637, due to the bubonic plague epidemic of those years.)

In that first edition, Brome dedicated the play to his patron, William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset. At around the same time, Brome sent a manuscript of his recent play The English Moor to the Duke, likewise dedicated to Somerset.

The play was revived during the Restoration era; Samuel Pepys saw it performed on 26 August 1661.