The Maid's Tragedy: Beaumont and Fletcher (The Revels Plays) (Paperback)

~ T. W. Craik (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Generally acknowledged to be the most powerful of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays and frequently performed by the best actors of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, The Maid’s Tragedy (1610-11) disappeared from the stage (except in a much-altered and very successful Victorian adaptation) until recent years, when major companies have rediscovered its appeal. In this fully annotated edition, the editor has given careful attention to the sense of the lines, the stage action and the verse. Many new emendations of textual errors, as well as improvements in stage directions and lineation, are either introduced or proposed. The introduction explores Beaumont and Fletcher’s use of the three known sources (two of them previously neglected) for incidents in the play, gives the fullest available account of its stage history, and provides a sympathetic interpretation of the play as a romantic tragedy.

Book Description

Generally acknowledged to be the most powerful of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays and frequently performed by the best actors of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century, The Maid’s Tragedy (1610-11) disappeared from the stage (except in a much-altered and very successful Victorian adaptation) until recent years, when major companies have rediscovered its appeal. In this fully annotated edition, the editor has given careful attention to the sense of the lines, the stage action and the verse. Many new emendations of textual errors, as well as improvements in stage directions and lineation, are either introduced or proposed. The introduction explores Beaumont and Fletcher’s use of the three known sources (two of them previously neglected) for incidents in the play, gives the fullest available account of its stage history, and provides a sympathetic interpretation of the play as a romantic tragedy.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 210 pages
• Publisher: Manchester University Press; Revised edition (June 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0719030986
• ISBN-13: 978-0719030987
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,839,058 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The essential edition of an essential play, June 29, 2007

By	Dr. Richard M. Price (London, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

A Maid's Tragedy is one of the most effective of all Jacobean plays. Craik tells us that `it is only in the theatre that its power can be fully appreciated,' but in fact it reads extremely well, with its limited cast and uncluttered dramatic action. What puts it above most other revenge tragedies of its period is not profundity (as in Hamlet or The Broken Heart) but extraordinary dramatic invention and a technique able to draw the maximum effect out of each dramatic idea. The most amazing scene of all is that of the wedding night in which the bride rejects consummation, revealing that she is the king's mistress and that the purpose of the marriage (arranged by the king) was simply to provide a cloak under which their liaison could continue unsuspected: the bride's brazenness and the poor groom's horror and humiliation could not be more powerfully conveyed. Later scenes are equally effective and equally sure in their presentation.

The huge merit of this edition lies not in its introduction (which is comparatively brief and leaves a lot unexplored) but in the detailed annotation, where Craik answers almost all the reader's questions about what difficult lines actually mean, and suggests many convincing emendations, many of them modestly relegated to the footnotes.

This new `digital, on demand' edition has ugly, very thick print, that is not up to this publisher's usual standards.