Authorship
Since Francis Beaumont had retired from dramatic authorship in 1613 and had died in 1616, he could not have contributed to the authorship of The Queen of Corinth. One piece of external evidence states that Fletcher, Nathan Field, and Philip Massinger were collaborating c. 1616: an entry in the Stationers' Register dated 8 April 1654 assigns the lost play The Jeweller of Amsterdam to the three writers. The murder that that play dramatized occurred in 1616, and it is likely that the play was written soon after the event to capitalize on current public interest.
The styles of the three authors, Fletcher, Field, and Massinger, are distinctive enough to be fairly readily differentiable; scholars from E. H. C. Oliphant to Cyrus Hoy have been able to reach agreement on assignment of shares:
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- Massinger — Acts I and V;
- Fletcher — Act II;
- Field — Acts III and IV.
Other plays of this period, The Honest Man's Fortune and The Knight of Malta, also show clear internal signs of being collaborations among the three playwrights.
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