Love's Victory

Love's Victory is a Jacobean era pastoral closet drama written circa 1620 by English Renaissance writer Lady Mary Wroth. The play is the first known original pastoral drama and the first original dramatic comedy written by a woman. It is written primarily in rhyming couplets. There are only two known manuscripts of Love's Victory, one of which is an incomplete version located in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. The other version is complete, and is the Penshurst Manuscript which is owned by Viscount De L'Isle, indicating continued ownership by the Sydney family since its creation. The play is not as widely read as Wroth's prose work Urania or her romantic sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, but has been receiving more attention with the increasing interest in early modern women writers.

Love's Victory begins with the goddess Venus commanding her son Cupid to cause a group of shepherds and shepherdesses in Cyprus heartache and suffering for not showing her enough reverence. The action then shifts to how Cupid has affected the various characters. After a series of misunderstandings and deceptions among the characters, Venus and Cupid show themselves and reveal their work in achieving, in the end, "Love's Victory." Venus's priests act as a chorus throughout the play.

Philisses
Lissius
Forester
Lacon
Rustic
Arcas

Musella
Simeana
Silvesta
Climeana
Dalina
Phillis
Musella's Mother

Venus
Cupid
Priests

Venus is upset because of the shepherds' and shepherdesses' apparent recent lack of attention towards her, and orders her son Cupid to make them victims to his will. In doing so, she hopes to regain their reverence. Philisses is soon affected by Cupid's arrows, and forlornly swoons for Musella, whom he loves, but who he believes loves Lissius. Lissius recognises Philisses's anguish as heartache, and vows never to fall victim to it. Meanwhile, Silvesta, who has recently been rejected by Philisses, has taken a vow of chastity to become a follower of the goddess Diana, much to the chagrin of Forester, who loves her. Philisses, Dalina, Rustic, Lacon and Climeana decide to play a game in which each person reveals through song their past loves. Venus re-enters berating Cupid for not causing enough characters pain, especially Lissius, who is openly scornful of love. Cupid vows to do so.

...
Wikipedia