The Fatal Dowry

The Fatal Dowry is a late Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy written by Philip Massinger and Nathan Field, and first published in 1632.

The play is set in Dijon in Burgundy in the later part of the fifteenth century, in the aftermath of the battles of Grandson, Morat (both 1476) and Nancy (1477), all mentioned in Act I, scene ii.

The protagonist's father, the elder Charalois, was a general who had gone into debt to pay the expenses of his troops; unable to repay those charges, he died in debtor's prison, and his rapacious creditors refused to release his body for a proper burial.

Rochfort has an only daughter named Beaumelle, the centre of a set of fashionables and foppish young people, featuring the aristocratic Novall Junior and his hangers-on.

Others, including Charalois' friend Romont, perceive the growing intimacy of Novall Junior and Beaumelle, and try to warn the parties involved – without success.

[3] The two collaborators divided the task according to their artistic strengths: Field wrote the portions of the play that deal with the fashionable world of Beaumelle and Novall Junior, while Massinger handled the parts involving soldiers, the law court, and the serious moral issues of the drama.

Rowe's version was enormously popular in its era; an adaptation by Richard Lalor Sheil, starring Charles Macready, was done at Drury Lane and in Bath in 1825,[6] and the original was performed at Sadler's Wells in 1845.