Event Comment: The King's Company.
The date of
the first performance is not known.
Wilson (
Six Restoration Play-Dates, pp. 222-23) argues from a number of references (principally in
the Epilogue) to events of early 1681 which point to a premiere near May 1681: to
the dissolution of
Parliament, 28 March 1681; to
the comet which appeared in November 1680 and disappeared in January 1680@1; to
the Hatfield Maid; to
William Lilly,
the astrologer, who is referred to as though alive, thus suggesting a premiere before his death, 9 June 1681. It is possible that
the premiere may have been earlier than this. In 1681 was published
Poeta de Tristibus; or, The Poet's Complaint, whose author had obviously read
the Prologue and
Epilogue to
The Unhappy Favourite. He represents himself as a disappointed dramatist whose tragedy has been rejected by both houses because "
their Summer-store@Will all this Winter last." With
the work entered in
the Term Catalogues in 1682 and a copy purchased by
Narcissus Luttrell with his note "4d 1681 12 Nov" (see
A Bibliography of John Dryden, ed.
Macdonald, pp. 235-36), his quotations from
the Epilogue to
The Unhappy Favourite and references to
the Prologue would offer no difficulties if it were not that
the "Author's Epistle" in which
the references are made is dated "at
Dover the Tenth day of January 1680@1," thus suggesting that he had seen
the Prologue and Epilogue before that date. Never
theless, some of
the references in
the Epilogue (to
Heraclitus Ridens, beginning on 1 Feb. 1680@1, and
Democritus Ridens, beginning on 14 March 1680@1) preclude a January premiere for
the Prologue and Epilogue. Possibly
the dating of
the "Author's Epistle" is in error