Philaster (play)

Philaster, or Love Lies a-Bleeding is an early Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher.

One of the duo's earliest successes, the play helped to establish the trend for tragicomedy that was a powerful influence in early Stuart-era drama.

[2] Scholars have debated the cause of the differences between Q1 and the subsequent editions; the modern critical consensus favours censorship as the most plausible explanation.

King James I, however, favoured a pacifistic foreign policy and improved relations with Spain, so that the play needed to be revised for Court performance, primarily in the opening (I,i) and closing scenes (V,iii-iv, yielding the Q1 version.

[5] Cyrus Hoy, in his sweeping examination of the authorship problems in Fletcher's canon, produced this division of authorship in the play: Philaster was revived during the Restoration era in an adapted form, as were many of the plays in the canon of Fletcher and his collaborators; but the 1695 adaptation by Elkanah Settle was not a success.

The king has a plan, however: with no son of his own, he will marry his daughter Arethusa to a Spanish prince named Pharamond, and make the Spaniard his heir.

The falsehood of Pharamond's accusation against Arethusa is exposed when Bellario is revealed to be a disguised woman (she is Euphrasia, a courtier's daughter, infatuated with Philaster).