ABSTRACT
Date and publication. The play was ready for performance in July 1682, but was banned by the Lord Chamberlain because it was thought to reflect on the Duke of Monmouth; Act IV, where the French King rebukes the Duke of Guise for returning to Paris without his permission, parallels Charles’s rebuke to Monmouth in 1679 for returning to London. One newsletter said: ‘though His Majesty be displeased with the Duke yet he will not suffer others to abuse him’ (L S 310). D. provided the Lord Chamberlain with the source for the scene in D ’Avila’s History of the League as evidence that no such reflections were intended. The Lord Chamberlain returned the play without comment in September, but the political climate was changing and at the end of October he gave permission for it to be acted. It was performed by the King’s Company at the Theatre Royal on 28 November; the Queen saw it on I December. See further Macdonald 124-6; L S 310, 317; Winn 370-1. Immediately after the play’s premiere a folio pamphlet headed Prologue, To The Duke of Guise was published by Tonson, dated 1683 (Luttrelľs copy (Huntington) has the MS dates 30 November and 4 December [i.e. 1682], perhaps the dates of performance and purchase; Cambridge UL copy dated 30 November). It contains the Prologue and Epilogue, with ‘Another Epilogue, Intended to have been Spoken to the Play, before it was forbidden, last Summer.’ A single sheet containing Song II, headed Loue andJealousie: O r, A Song in the Duke of Guies [sic] was published by P. Brooksby in 1683. The play itself, The Duke of Guise, A Tragedy, was published by Bentley and Tonson in 1683 (advertised in The Observator 13 February); reprinted 1687, 1699 (two issues). This included the Prologue and Epilogue but not Another Epilogue. The play was dedicated to Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester. The Prologue (but called ‘Epilogue’) is found in BL MS Add 27408, with one extra couplet after 1. 42 which probably derives from the playhouse, though its authorship is uncertain. Song II was printed in Choice Ayres and Songs (1683) set by Capt. Pack (facsimile in Day 62-3). The present text of the Prologue, Epilogue and Another Epilogue is taken from the 1683 pamphlet; that of the songs is from the first edition of the play.
