The Dutch Courtesan

"The Dutch Courtesan" is an early Jacobean stage play written by the dramatist and satirist John Marston ca. 1604. It was performed by the Children of the Queen's Revels, one of the troupes of boy actors active at the time, in the Blackfriars Theatre in London.

The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on June 26, 1605, and published later that year by the bookseller John Hodgets. The play was revived in the following decade, and performed at Court by the Lady Elizabeth's Men on Feb. 25, 1613.

The play tells the story of two friends, the relaxed, pleasure-loving Freevill and the repressed Puritan Malheureux, and the turbulent relationship that both have with the passionate Dutch courtesan Franceschina. It explores the nature of human desire and the problems involved with trying to lead a "good," moral life when sexuality is so fundamental a part of man's nature. Critics have judged the play both anti-Puritan and anti-Stoic, and have also seen it as a satire on Thomas Dekker's contemporary play "The Honest Whore". [Logan and Smith, pp. 202-5.]

"The Dutch Courtesan" was a popular work at the time, and was performed and adapted several times during the Restoration era, the most famous adaptation being Thomas Betterton's "The Revenge; or, a Match in Newgate." However, this adaptation is more sentimental and less morally complex than Marston's original.

Notes

References

* Caputi, Anthony. "John Marston, Satirist." Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1961.
* Chambers, E. K. "The Elizabethan Stage." 4 Volumes, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1923.
* Finkelpearl, Philip J. "John Marston of the Middle Temple". Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1969.
* Logan, Terence P., and Denzell S. Smith, eds. "The New Intellectuals: A Survey and Bibliography of Recent Studies in English Renaissance Drama." Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 1977.

External links

* [http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/eprosed/eprosed-idx?coll=eprosed;idno=P1.0169 The play text online.]