- The Assignation
"The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery" in a
Restoration comedy written byJohn Dryden . [George Saintsbury and Sir Walter Scott, eds., "The Works of John Dryden", Vol. 4, Edinburgh, William Paterson, 1883; p. 365 and ff.] The play was first acted late in 1672, by theKing's Company at their theatre atLincoln's Inn Fields , but was not a success with its audience.Apart from the question of the play's quality — many critics have regarded it as a rush job, written mainly in prose with some blank verse — Dryden was suspected of anti-Catholic satire, especially in his choice of a subtitle. This was a sensitive issue at the time, given strong Catholic sympathies among some elements of the royal court — primarily the Duke of York, the future King James II.
The cast of the original production included
Michael Mohun as the Duke of Mantua,Edward Kynaston as Prince Frederick, Charles Hart as Aurelian, William Cartwright as Mario, andNicholas Burt as Camillo. The role of Hyppolita, the nun, was taken byMary Knep ;Rebecca Marshall played Lucretia.Dryden drew plot material from a play by
Pedro Calderón de la Barca titled "Con quien vengo vengo." [James Urvin Rundle, "The Source of Dryden's 'Comic Plot' in "The Assignation"," "Modern Philology", Vol. 45 No. 2 (November 1947), pp. 104-11.]"The Assignation" was published in quarto in 1673 by
Henry Herringman . Dryden dedicated the play to Sir Charles Sedley. [Steven N. Zwicker, ed., "The Cambridge Companion to John Dryden", Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004; p. 207.] The play was republished in 1678 and 1692.References
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