Love's Victory

Love's Victory is a Jacobean era pastoral closet drama written circa 1620 by English Renaissance writer Lady Mary Wroth.

There are only two known manuscripts of Love's Victory, one of which is an incomplete version located in the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.

The other version is complete, and is the Penshurst Manuscript which is owned by Viscount De L'Isle, indicating continued ownership by the Sidney family since its creation.

[2] The play is not as widely read as Wroth's prose romance Urania or her romantic sonnet sequence Pamphilia to Amphilanthus, but has been receiving more attention with the increasing interest in early modern women writers.

Love's Victory received its first professional performance on 16 September 2018 at Penshurst Place in Kent, where it is thought that Wroth wrote the play in 1618.

[3] Love's Victory begins with the goddess Venus commanding her son Cupid to cause a group of shepherds and shepherdesses in Cyprus[4] heartache and suffering for not showing her enough reverence.

After a series of misunderstandings and deceptions among the characters, Venus and Cupid show themselves and reveal their work in achieving, in the end, "Love's Victory.

Philisses Lissius Forester Lacon Rustic Arcas Musella Simeana Silvesta Climeana Dalina Phillis Musella's Mother Venus Cupid Priests ... Venus is upset because of the shepherds' and shepherdesses' apparent recent lack of attention towards her, and orders her son Cupid to make them victims to his will.

Meanwhile, Silvesta, who has recently been rejected by Philisses, has taken a vow of chastity to become a follower of the goddess Diana, much to the chagrin of Forester, who loves her.

Philisses, Dalina, Rustic, Lacon and Climeana decide to play a game in which each person reveals through song their past loves.

Venus re-enters berating Cupid for not causing enough characters pain, especially Lissius, who is openly scornful of love.

Arcas reveals that Musella rejected his love in the past, and Lissius and Dalina begin to suspect he's somehow responsible for the marriage.

The play closes with Forester vowing to continue to love Silvesta, even if it is unrequited, Philisses and Musella promising to wed, as well as Lissius and Simeana, and Dalina and Rustic.

[7] Further, some comparisons can be drawn to her uncle's, Sir Philip Sidney, own romantic sonnet sequence, Astrophel and Stella, specifically in the characters of Musella, Forester and Silvesta.

[2] Even the title characters of Wroth's own sonnet sequence are identical to the protagonists of her prose romance Urania.