All's Lost by Lust

All's Lost by Lust is a Jacobean tragedy by William Rowley. A "tragedy of remarkable frankness and effectiveness," "crude and fierce," it was written between 1618 and 1620.

The play was first published in 1633 (seven years after Rowley's death), in a quarto published by the bookseller Thomas Harper. This 1633 quarto was the only edition of the play in Rowley's era; the drama would not be reprinted until the nineteenth century.

All's Lost by Lust was first performed by Rowley's playing company, Prince Charles' Men, and later by the Lady Elizabeth's Men and Queen Henrietta's Men. The play was popular in its own period and was revived during the Restoration; Samuel Pepys saw George Jolly's production at the Red Bull Theatre on 23 March 1661. In his famous Diary, Pepys described the production as "poorly done" with "much disorder" — when a boy singer performed a song poorly, the music master "fell about his ears and beat him so, that it put the whole house into an uproar."

Like many English Renaissance plays, Rowley's tragedy was adapted for later productions. One "W. C." was responsible for a version called The Rape Reveng'd, or the Spanish Revolution in 1690. A 1705 adaptation titled The Conquest of Spain in credited to Mary Pix.

Since then, the work has fallen out of favour and has not been revived.

Rowley's reputation as an author is grounded on his comedies; All's Lost by Lust is his only surviving tragedy. The tragicomic Fitzallen subplot in A Fair Quarrel and the opening and closing scenes in The Changeling are other rare examples of the serious side of Rowley's authorship.

All's Lost by Lust has been classed with other Jacobean tragedies that treat the private crime of rape in a larger political and social context, Including John Fletcher's Valentinian and Bonduca, and Thomas Middleton's Hengist, King of Kent and The Revenger's Tragedy, among other works of the era that feature a "tyrant-rapist" figure.

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