The Fatal Contract
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The Fatal Contract: A French Tragedy is a Caroline era stage play, written by William Heminges.[1][2] The play has been regarded as one of the most extreme of the revenge tragedies or "tragedies of blood," like The Spanish Tragedy and Titus Andronicus, that constitute a distinctive subgenre of English Renaissance theatre. In this "most graphic Caroline revenge tragedy...Heminges tops his predecessors' grotesque art by creating a female character, Chrotilda, who disguises herself as a black Moorish eunuch" and "instigates most of the play's murder and mayhem."[3]
The Fatal Contract was most likely written in 1638–39, and was acted, probably in the latter year, by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Salisbury Court Theatre. Heminges's primary source for plot materials was the General Inventory of the History of France by Jean de Serres, published in English in 1607.[4] The play was first published in a quarto originally printed for "J. M." in 1653, and reissued the following year with a new title page by the actor turned stationer Andrew Pennycuicke.[5] The booksellers dedicated the play to the Earl and Countess of Nottingham. The preface, co-signed by "A. T." (thought to be actor Anthony Turner), indicates that Heminges had died before publication. A second edition, printed for bookseller Richard Gammon, followed in 1661.[6]
During the Restoration, Elkanah Settle adapted Heminges's play into his Love and Revenge (1675).[7] The original 1653 text was again adapted in 1687 and issued under a new title, The Eunuch.[8] Although the action remained unchanged, the anonymous adapter omitted some lines, borrowed others from Settle's Love and Revenge, and expanded a few scenes.[9]
There are modern editions by Anne Hargrove (1978),[2] Carol Morley (2006),[1] and Andrea Stevens (2020, the only modern-spelling general edition).[10]
Influence of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists
The Fatal Contract owes a debt to the works of earlier dramatists. Similarities with passages in the works of Beaumont and Fletcher have been noted.[11] Among the writers of the later Jacobean and the Caroline eras, Heminges was perhaps the one most deeply influenced by Shakespeare, and the play is thick with borrowings from Shakespeare's works.[12] It has particularly close links with Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear, and commonalities with other works in Shakespeare's canon.[13]
The play's verbal echoes of Shakespeare are too numerous to detail. One example may stand for the rest: with Clotair's "And rise black vengeance from the depth of hell," compare Othello's "Arise, black vengeance, from the hollow hell!" (Othello, III,3,447). With Fredigond stabbing her portrait, compare Lucrece attacking a portrait with her nails (The Rape of Lucrece, lines 1562–68); rage and a rape context are common to both. Stabbed portraits also can be found in the plays The Noble Spanish Soldier (printed 1634) and James Shirley's The Traitor (acted 1631, printed 1635).[14]
Blackface
"By 1638 the disguised Moor had become a theatrical convention."[15] Richard Brome's The English Moor (c. 1637), almost contemporaneous with Heminges's play, is a noteworthy example.