The Maid's Metamorphosis
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The Maid's Metamorphosis is a late Elizabethan stage play, a pastoral first published in 1600. The play, "a comedy of considerable merit,"[1] was published anonymously, and its authorship has been a long-standing point of dispute among scholars.
The Maid's Metamorphosis was entered into the Stationers' Register on 24 July 1600, and published later that year in a quarto printed by Thomas Creede for the bookseller Richard Olive. The title page of the first edition states that the play was acted by the Children of Paul's, one of the companies of boy actors popular at the time.[2] That company resumed dramatic performances in 1599, and the play itself refers to a leap year and a year of drought, which was true only of 1600 in the relevant period – indicating that the play was performed in that year.
Authorship
The earliest attribution of authorship was on Edward Archer's play list of 1656, which assigned the play to John Lyly. The play is written in rhymed couplets, a rather dated style for 1600; and it bears obvious resemblances to Lyly's type of drama. Yet 1600 is very late, perhaps too late, for a play by Lyly; modern critics have suggested that Archer may have confused this play with Lyly's Love's Metamorphosis. Individual scholars have discussed Lyly, John Day, Samuel Daniel, and George Peele as possible authors, though no conclusive argument has been made and no consensus has evolved in favour of any single candidate.[3] "Anonymous imitator of Lyly" may be the most accurate assignment of authorship that can be made, based on the available evidence.
Sources and influences
The author of The Maid's Metamorphosis "borrowed incidents, characters, speeches, words, phrases and rhymes" from Arthur Golding's 1567 English translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses.[4] The play also shows the influence of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596).
The play has been noted for its abundant music[5] and its use of fairies, and for a possible influence on John Fletcher's pastoral tragicomedy The Faithful Shepherdess (c. 1608).
An occasional play?
Several commentators (William J. Lawrence, Harold N. Hillebrand, Peter Saccio)[6] have argued that The Maid's Metamorphosis was an "occasional play," meaning that it was composed for a specific occasion – in this case a noble wedding, most likely the wedding of Henry Somerset, Lord Herbert (later Earl and Marquess of Worcester) and Anne Russell, which occurred on 16 June 1600.