Fortune by Land and Sea is a Jacobean era stage play, a romantic melodrama written by Thomas Heywood and William Rowley.
[2][3] Fortune by Land and Sea was entered into the Stationers' Register on 20 June 1655, and was published later that year in a quarto by the booksellers John Sweeting and Robert Pollard.
But while being open to this earlier dating, analysis by Martin Wiggins and Catherine Richardson suggests limits of 1607-9 and 1619–26, with a 'best guess' of 1623 owing to Rowley's identifiable collaborations with Heywood during the 1620s.
[6] The 1655 quarto calls the play a tragicomedy, though it differs from the specific genre as it was developed by John Fletcher and his imitators during the Jacobean and Caroline eras.
In Fortune by Land and Sea, the playwrights based their plot on actual events from the reign of Queen Elizabeth, as recounted in a 1583 pamphlet.
In the opening scene, Old Forrest tries dissuade his headstrong elder son Frank from carousing with his fair-weather friends, a "quarrelsome gentleman" named Rainsford and his hangers-on Foster and Goodwin.
Old Harding is prepared to sign the papers that will disinherit son Philip permanently and settle his estate upon younger brothers John and William; but a sailor arrives with the news of the Merchant's original capture by the pirates.
The Clown brings word of the old man's sudden death with comic distress: Old Harding has died before the inheritance documents are signed.
From the lowly position of a servant, Philip Harding now inherits his father's estate, leaving his younger brothers dependent upon his goodwill.
Better news, of Young Forrest's triumph and the Merchant's rescue, quickly arrives; far from taking a large loss, the Harding estate is now wealthier than ever.