The Royal Master is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by James Shirley, and first published in 1638.
The play was published in quarto later that year, also in Dublin, by the booksellers Edmund Crooke and Thomas Allot.
)[2] The 1638 text is dedicated by Shirley to George Fitzgerald, 16th Earl of Kildare, and is prefaced by dedicatory poems, including one by John Ogilby, the founder of the Werburgh Street Theatre.
The Epilogue extols both King Charles I and Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, the Lord Deputy of Ireland and Shirley's patron.
Montalto arranges a hunting party for the King and Duke, which pauses, by plan, at the country house of the noble widow Simphorosa.
The King orders Montalto and all his party of supporters into custody, and encourages all and sundry to present their complaints to the supposedly "disgraced" favorite.
Since this is a comedy, it turns out that a man Montalto is supposed to have had murdered is in fact alive, in disguise; he is Riviero, the Duke's secretary.