The Doubtful Heir
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The Doubtful Heir, also known as Rosania, or Love's Victory, is a Caroline era stage play, a tragicomedy written by James Shirley and first published in 1652. The play has been described as "swift of action, exciting of episode, fertile of surprise, and genuinely poetic."[1]
The play dates from the Irish phase of Shirley's dramatic career (1636–40), and was acted at the Werburgh Street Theatre, most likely in 1638, under its alternative Rosania title. After Shirley's return to London (April 1640), the play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, still as Rosania (June 1, 1640), and was performed at the Globe Theatre by the King's Men. (In the play's Prologue, Shirley comments on how "vast" the stage of the Globe is, compared to the small private theatre in Dublin where the work premiered.) The title was changed by the time the play was included in a general list of works belonging to the King's Men (1641).[2]
The play was published first as a single copy in 1652. The title page indicated that this was its first time in print and that it has been acted at the Blackfriars theater. It was issued by the booksellers Humphrey Moseley and Humphrey Robinson, who then included it in the octavo volume Six New Plays, in 1653. The play is dedicated by Shirley to Sir Edmund Bowier, probably Bowyer, who had also been at Cambridge.
For the plot of his play, Shirley exploited Tirso de Molina's El Castigo del Penséque, a source he had previously employed for his The Opportunity. The play's Fletcherian aspects have been noted, with special emphasis on A King and No King and Philaster.[3]