ABSTRACT
The Revenge: Or, A Match in Newgate is partly a revision, partly an adaptation of John Marston’s The Dutch Courtesan. It was performed in the early part of 1680; Robert Hume suggests a premiere in January 1680, while The London Stage suggests late June. The Revenge has been assigned both to Aphra Behn and to Thomas Betterton and may well have been collaboration. The Revenge was not included in the collections of Behn’s plays brought out shortly after her death and Montague Summers omitted it from his edition of 1915, declaring, Betterton’s adaptation of Marston’s The Dutch Courtezan. Marston’s Dutch Courtesan, which The Revenge follows most of the time has, as its Tabulae Argumentum’, The difference betwixt the love of a courtesan and a wife’. In 1715 Christopher Bullock, who specialised in making old plays more farcical, revised Behn’s The Revenge, while also looking back at Marston’s original play.
