Perkin Warbeck

Perkin Warbeck is a Caroline era history play by John Ford regarding pretender to the throne Perkin Warbeck. It is generally ranked as one of Ford's three masterpieces, along with 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and The Broken Heart. T. S. Eliot went so far as to call Perkin Warbeck "unquestionably Ford's highest achievement...one of the very best historical plays outside of the works of Shakespeare in the whole of Elizabethan and Jacobean drama." Date, performance, publication The play's date of authorship is uncertain, though it is widely thought to have been written in the 1629–34 period. It was first published in 1634, as The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck. A Strange Truth. The quarto was issued by the bookseller Hugh Beeston, with a dedication by Ford to William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle. The title page bears Ford's anagrammatic motto, "Fide Honor," and states that the play was performed "(some-times)" by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Phoenix or Cockpit Theatre. A second edition appeared in 1714 in duodecimo format. Ford's play was reportedly revived at Goodman's Fields in 1745, during Bonnie Prince Charlie's invasion of England; two other contemporary plays about Warbeck were also acted at that time. After 1745, the next production occurred in 1975 at Stratford-upon-Avon. An abridged version of the play was included in Episodes 23, "Ghosts", and 24, "The Pretender", of the 1977 BBC Radio 4 drama series Vivat Rex.