Literature & Literary Studies
June 2024
Thierry and Theodoret
John Fletcher, Philip Massinger and Nathan Field
by Domenico Lovascio
Enthusiastically praised by Charles Lamb and A. C. Swinburne but unjustly neglected since the early twentieth century, Thierry and Theodoret dramatizes events from medieval French history. With its disenchanted depiction of royalty, its eerie instability in terms of genre, and its black comic overtones, Thierry and Theodoret strikes as a distinctive specimen of tragic drama in the Jacobean mould and ranks as one of the most powerful plays in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators. This Revels Plays volume is the first fully annotated critical edition of the play, and the first to attribute it to Nathan Field alongside Fletcher and Philip Massinger. It provides a thorough introduction reassessing the play's engagement with its sources - including Shakespeare - and discusses the dating, authorship, and reception of this bizarrely captivating play, pointing the way for future scholarship, especially of a historical or gender-based nature.
