The play was acted by the King's Men; the cast list added to the text in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679 cites Richard Burbage, Nathan Field, Henry Condell, John Underwood, John Lowin, Nicholas Tooley, Richard Sharpe, and William Ecclestone – which indicates a production in the 1616–19 era, between 1616, when Field joined the company, and Burbage's death in March 1619.
The company revived the play in 1633, and performed it at the Palace of Whitehall on the night of Tuesday, 10 December of that year, before King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria.
[2] An extensive study of the relationship between the plays of Fletcher and Lope de Vega and their background in Russian history has been published by Ervin Brody.
On 18 August 1660, Samuel Pepys saw a production that featured Edward Kynaston, the last of the famous boy actors of the century, in the role of the Duke's sister.
Fletcher's play was adapted into a version titled The Faithful General by a woman who identified herself as M. N.; among other changes, she shifted the setting from Russia to Byzantium.
The idea of an extreme test of a subject's loyalty under outrageous royal misbehavior is one that Fletcher employs in other plays, including The Maid's Tragedy and Valentinian.