The Fatal Dowry

The Fatal Dowry is a late Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy written by Philip Massinger and Nathan Field, and first published in 1632. It represents a significant aspect of Field's very limited dramatic output.

Though hard evidence is lacking, the play is thought to have been composed c. 1619; it may have been the last writing for the theatre done by Field before his death in 1620. The play was acted by the King's Men at the Blackfriars Theatre. The 1632 quarto was printed by John Norton for the bookseller Francis Constable. The quarto's text is corrupt and badly printed.

The play is set in Dijon in Burgundy in the later part of the fifteenth century, in the aftermath of the battles of Grandson, Morat (both 1476) and Nancy (1477), all mentioned in Act I, scene ii. The protagonist's father, the elder Charalois, was a general who had gone into debt to pay the expenses of his troops; unable to repay those charges, he died in debtor's prison, and his creditors refuse to release his body for a proper burial. The general's son has taken his cause to court, but his suit is rejected by the judges, led by the hostile Novall Senior, president of the Dijon parlement. The younger Charalois amazes everyone by offering to assume his father's debts and take his place in prison, thus freeing his father's corpse. A retiring judge named Rochmont is impressed by Charalois' courage, virtue, and self-sacrifice, and decides to pay the general's debts himself.

Rochmont has an only daughter named Beaumelle; she is the centre of a set of fashionable and foppish young people, featuring the aristocratic Novall Junior and his . Beaumelle's waiting-woman, Bellapert, is a cynical who tempts her mistress with the idea of marrying to enjoy sexual indulgence with many illicit lovers. Beaumelle's father is so taken with Charalois that he arranges a marriage between the young man and his daughter.

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