[1] This dating is confirmed by the cast list added to the play in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679, which cites Richard Burbage, Nathan Field, Henry Condell, John Lowin, John Underwood, Nicholas Tooley, Thomas Pollard, and Thomas Holcombe.
The list indicates that the play was produced by the King's Men in the 1616–19 period, between Field's joining the troupe in the earlier year and Burbage's death in the later.
One piece of external evidence states that Fletcher, Nathan Field, and Philip Massinger were collaborating c. 1616: an entry in the Stationers' Register dated 8 April 1654 assigns the lost play The Jeweller of Amsterdam to the three writers.
The styles of the three authors, Fletcher, Field, and Massinger, are distinctive enough to be fairly readily differentiable; scholars from E. H. C. Oliphant to Cyrus Hoy[2][3] have been able to reach agreement on assignment of shares: Other plays of this period, The Honest Man's Fortune and The Knight of Malta, also show clear internal signs of being collaborations among the three playwrights.
The fact that the play's leading comic character has two different names, Onos and Lamprias, is the kind of inconsistency that sometimes indicates a revision by a hand other than that (or those) the original author(s).
For some time before the play's action starts, Theanor has been the intended husband of Merione, a young ward of the Queen who has grown to adulthood in her court.
Crates and other court sycophants abduct Merione in the night and take her to a secluded place, where Theanor commits the act.
She is discovered on the front stoop by Leonidas and Agenor, and awakened; her condition becomes understood by them and by the Queen and her court, to general outrage.
Crates experiences a change of heart as a result of the duel and his wound (which happens repeatedly in the works of Fletcher and his collaborators); he confesses Theanor's plan against Beliza.
Euphanes, Leonidas, and Agenor concoct a scheme to apprehend Theanor as he tries to commit the crime; they do so, but not before the prince completes a second rape.
Euphanes and Beliza are also headed toward the altar; and the Queen compensates Agenor for his lost bride by marrying the Argosian prince herself.
The clown, seconded by tutor and uncle, attempts to fulfill the role of a gentleman and a gallant; but he fails badly, and ends the play abused and ridiculed by pages and grooms.
Modern critics have concentrated attention of the gender issues of the play: "The Queen of Corinth is best known today for its appalling sexual politics and its treatment of rape.