Authorship
The question of the identity of the play's original author remains open. Alfred Harbage argued, on the basis of internal evidence of plotting, style, and subject matter, that both The Mistaken Husband and another problematical Dryden work, The Wild Gallant, were based on otherwise-unknown plays by Richard Brome. Harbage asserts that the sexual scandal in The Mistaken Husband is typical of Brome's drama; he notes that Brome's The Northern Lass and The Mistaken Husband feature marriages dissolving on the basis on non-consummation; and he argues that "The frequent parenthetical constructions, the abrupt and often purposeless alternation of prose with blank verse...and, above all, the diction, the turn of phrase, the general atmosphere" in The Mistaken Husband all point to Brome.
Harbage's argument is plausible, though by no means certain. One Brome scholar has complained that "there is too little evidence to sustain" the case. Alexander Brome has also been suggested as a possible original author of The Mistaken Husband.
Read more about this topic: The Mistaken Husband
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