The Honest Man's Fortune[1] is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Nathan Field, John Fletcher, and Philip Massinger.
The play received its initial publication in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio in 1647; it also survives in a manuscript dated 1613, identified as MS. Dyce 9 in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
[2] Knight's manuscript "corrects some slips made in the 1647 Folio version, simplifies the language, makes a number of cuts, some of them probably by Herbert as censor, omits one scene from the last act and alters the conclusion.
"[3] The play's text in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679 is prefaced by a cast list for the original production, which cites Nathan Field, Joseph Taylor, Robert Benfield, William Ecclestone, Emanuel Read, and Thomas Basse.
[5] Insofar as an Act/scene division is possible and meaningful, Hoy offered this assignment: In 1952 Johan Gerritsen published a critical edition specifically of the manuscript version of the play, covering essential aspects of the subject.
The Duke's suit has no true merit; but he has the wealth and influence to "corrupt a jury, and make a judge afraid" – and through "false witnesses" and perjured testimony he wins the lawsuit.
The page remains devoted to his old master even after Montague has placed Veramour in the household of Lamira, a wealthy, single, and much sought-after young lady.
Amiens then goes in search of Montague, to fight him over the dishonor to his family – but the Duchess follows, and protests that her first admission was a falsehood, told to stop the duel.
(Montague makes a sexual advance to her, only to express his satisfaction when it is rejected – one of those "chastity tests" that are such a striking feature of the plays of the era, especially those of Fletcher.)
They decide to seek employment by staging a fake quarrel over the affair between Orleans and Amiens, in the hope that this will win them places as the noblemen's retainers.
But he has the bad luck to fall in with disreputable associates: a merchant named Mallicorn, the "knavish Courtier" Laverdine, and an unemployed sea captain called La-Poope.
It turns out that the Duchess has only fainted; Longaville had charged his pistol with gunpowder but no lead ball, hoping to frighten Orleans into abandoning the duel with Amiens.