The Double Marriage

The Double Marriage is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger, and initially printed in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.

Though firm evidence on the play's date of authorship and early stage history is lacking, scholars usually assign the play to the 1619–22 period. It was acted by the King's Men, with Joseph Taylor playing the lead – a production that must have occurred after Taylor joined that company in the spring of 1619. The play's absence from the fairly thorough Revels Office records of Sir Henry Herbert probably indicates a date prior to May 1622, when Herbert first occupied the office of Master of the Revels. The cast list added to the play in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679 mentions, in addition to Taylor, John Lowin, Robert Benfield, Richard Robinson, John Underwood, Nicholas Tooley, George Birch, and Richard Sharpe.

The Double Marriage, like many of the plays in Fletcher's canon, was revived during the Restoration era. It was acted as late as 6 February 1688 at Whitehall Palace. A revival in the 1671–72 period was given a Prologue, perhaps written by Aphra Behn, which was re-used for Behn's Abdelazer (1677) and, as an Epilogue, for Behn's The Widow Ranter (1690).

Scholars have been able to differentiate the respective contributions of Fletcher and Massinger in the play. Cyrus Hoy, in his wide-ranging survey of authorship problems in Fletcher's canon, provided this breakdown, which resembles the verdicts of earlier critics:

The authorship division is unsurprising for the two collaborators; it resembles their shares in The Spanish Curate, in which Massinger handled the main plot and Fletcher the subplot. There is no distinct subplot in The Double Marriage; in this play, Fletcher took primary responsibility for the "underworld" elements about the pirates, and Massinger the "overworld" of the royal court of Naples, as is typical of him. (Massinger as collaborator – as with Nathan Field in The Fatal Dowry, and with Thomas Dekker in The Virgin Martyr — tended to handle "upper-crust" materials: kings and dukes; royal courts and law courts; aristocrats, noble families, and great houses. He relied on his co-workers for materials involving lower classes, the common people, the beau monde of fashion, and criminals and clowns and similar elements. The Double Marriage conforms to this pattern.) It appears that Massinger revised the play after Fletcher's death; Fletcher's characteristic preference for ye instead of you was toned down in Massinger's revision.

The dramatists drew their plot from two tales in The Orator (1596) by "Lazarus Pyott" (perhaps a pseudonym of Anthony Munday). The characters' names derive from The Historie of Philip De Commines, in Thomas Danett's English translation (1596/1601). [See: Philippe de Commines.] Fletcher may also have drawn upon the Controversiae of Seneca the Elder.

Naples suffers under the rule of a brutal and capricious despot, the "libidinous Tyrant" Ferrant. The opening scene shows the "noble Gentleman" Virolet brooding about the political situation. His wife Juliana questions him about his neglect of her; Virolet assures her that it is not lack of affection on his part, but his preoccupation with tyranny that keeps him from her bed. When she challenges him to do something about Ferrant's despotism, Virolet informs her that the plan is already in motion.

When Virolet meets with his co-conspirators, however, he is appalled to find that they've accepted Ronvere, the commander of Ferrant's guard, as a member. Ronvere tells them that he has lost his post and is disaffected with Ferrant, but Virolet disbelieves his story; and when he learns that Ronvere has brought others into the rebels' plot, Virolet realises that their plan is hopeless. He accepts Juliana's advice to hide in a cave under their house when the would-be rebels are arrested; but Juliana and her father Pandulpho are rounded up with the others.