The Queen of Corinth - Date

Date

Scholars have dated the play to the 1616–18 period, based in part on an allusion in the play to "the Ulyssean traveller that sent home his image riding upon elephants to the great Mogul" (Act III, scene i). This is a reference to Thomas Coryat's Greetings from the Court of the Great Mogul, which was published in London in 1616. The play, therefore, could not pre-date that year. The casual and somewhat deprecating tone of the allusion — "his wit is so huge, nought but an elephant could carry him" — has been interpreted to mean that it also dates prior to Coryat's death in Surat in 1617, or prior to news of his death reaching England, in 1618 at the latest.

This dating is confirmed by the cast list added to the play in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679, which cites Richard Burbage, Nathan Field, Henry Condell, John Lowin, John Underwood, Nicholas Tooley, Thomas Pollard, and Thomas Holcombe. The list indicates that the play was produced by the King's Men in the 1616–19 period, between Field's joining the troupe in the earlier year and Burbage's death in the later.

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