Sex and Tyranny Revisited: Waller’s The Maid’s Tragedy and Rochester’s Valentinian

It is perhaps worth noting at the outset that Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays, unlike those of Shakespeare, were not generally subject to such radical adaptation in the Restoration. Instead, in many ways these works, especially the comedies, were regarded as dramatic models. Indeed, Waller in his poem ‘On Mr John Fletcher’s Plays’ presents Fletcher in this way:

Fletcher, to thee we do not only owe All our good Plays, but all those other too,

1 Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, The Maid’s Tragedy, ed. T.W. Craik (Manchester, 1988), II, 2, p. 83. Subsequent references to this edition are given after quotations in the text.