ABSTRACT
The Forc’d Marriage, Or the Jealous Bridegroom. A Tragi-Comedy opened the season of the Duke’s Company at Lincoln’s Inn Fields on Tuesday, 20 September 1670; this may have been the première of the play. The Forc’d Marriage shows some slight awareness of the new platform Restoration stage with its proscenium arch, jutting platform, back stage, and sets of shutters shutting off various spaces. Gerard Langbaine who, in An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, was eager to charge playwrights with plagiarism provided no original for it, although it does bear some resemblance to other romantic tragicomedies of the time and may have called a little on Beaumont and Fletcher’s The Maid’s Tragedy. The Forc’d Marriage was published again in 1688 ‘As it is Acted by His Majesties Servants at the Queens Theatre’ and printed for James Knapton at the Queen’s Head in St Paul’s Churchyard; it was entered in the Term Catalogues for May 1688.
