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.
Nevertheless, 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