The Law Against Lovers

Angelo doesn't really try to seduce the virtuous Isabella; he merely tests her commitment to chastity and virtue, like a protagonist in a John Fletcher play.

Samuel Pepys saw The Law Against Lovers at the theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields on February 18, 1662, and was pleased by it; as he recorded in his Diary, (Female performers were still a recent innovation at that time, having first appeared on the English stage only since December 1660.

Oddly, Davenant was able to represent The Law Against Lovers as his own work; he apparently had jumbled up Shakespeare so successfully that his audience did not recognise what they were seeing and hearing.

Gildon simplified the whole (Beatrice and Benedick were omitted), but added a masque about Dido and Aeneas and the music of the lately-deceased Henry Purcell.

Gildon's version was also staged at Lincoln's Inn Fields; Thomas Betterton played Angelo, and Anne Bracegirdle was Isabella.