Note 2 — INTRODUCTION
Reading edition
Two other arguments—both fallacious—have been advanced for a more assured dating.
Formal prologues and epilogues came into fashion about 1620, and the absence of such appendages in the case of The Fatal Dowry has been generally taken as evidence for its appearance before that year; but for a Massinger production no such inference can be drawn—there is no formal prologue or epilogue in any of his extant plays before The Emperor of the East and Believe as You List, which were licensed for acting in 1631.
The suggestion (Fleay: Chron. Eng. Dra., I, p. 208) that Field took the part of Florimel, and that the mention of her age as thirty-two years (II, ii, 17) has reference to his own age at the time the play was produced (thus fixing the date: 1619), is an idea so far-fetched and fantastic that it is amazing to find it quoted with perfect gravity by Ward (Hist. Eng. Dra. Lit., III, 39). That Field, second only to Burbage among the actors of his time, should have played the petty role of Florimel is a ridiculous supposition. It is strange that anyone who considered references of this sort a legitimate clue did not build rather upon the statement (II, i, 13) that Charalois was twenty-eight. But such grounds for theorizing are utterly unsubstantial; there is no earthly warrant for identifying the age of an author’s creation with the age of the author himself. [↩]