Thierry and Theodoret: John Fletcher, Philip Massinger and Nathan Field

by Domenico Lovascio

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781526195449
Publisher:	Manchester University Press
Publication date:	01/20/2026
Series:	The Revels Plays
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Domenico Lovascio is Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Genoa

Table of Contents

Abbreviations and references
Introduction
THIERRY AND THEODORET
Appendix 1 Press variants in Q1
Appendix 2 Overview of the historical events dramatized in the play, based on the Chronique de Frédégaire (seventh century)
Appendix 3 ‘The eldest son chargeth his mother with incestuous life’: The Tale of the Lady of Cabrio in Fenton’s Tragical Discourses