The Prophetess is a late Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger.
Cyrus Hoy gave this breakdown of the two writers' relative shares:[1] E. H. C. Oliphant provided the same scheme, except for an assignment of V,2 to Fletcher.
The Prophetess has been called "a strange and difficult play," noteworthy as almost the only work in Fletcher's canon that treats magic and thaumaturgy as a serious element, with Delphia "as a kind of a curiously feminized Prospero.
The plot certainly does offer historical information (some fairly accurate, some wildly not), intermingled with borrowings from folklore, legend, and fairy tale.
They decide to offer a munificent reward to the man who kills Aper – co-rulership of the Roman Empire and Aurelia's hand in marriage.
She reproves his faithlessness, but Dioclesian is recalcitrant; in the early scenes of the play he acts with the egomania and bombast of Marlowe's Tamburlaine.
He is victorious over the Persians on the battlefield, yet with uncharacteristic magnanimity he pardons and releases Cosroe and Cassana, and then surprises all by abdicating his position in favor of his nephew Maximinian.
Maximinian believes that his own rule will never be secure as long as Dioclesian lives: the soldiers admire the abdicated uncle more than the nephew in power.
The play's comic relief is supplied by the clown character Geta, a servant and follower of Dioclesian who is promoted to an officer, without any of the qualities that would qualify him for the position.
The play contains spectacular elements; critics have wondered exactly how the entrance of Delphia and Drusilla in II, iii, "in a Throne drawn by Dragons," could have been staged.