Read this in an edition of ca. 1950 - Quiller-Couch/Dover Wilson. Source - University of Calgary. Quiller-Couch writes that this is an over-written version of an early effort, and I believe him: it's uneven in every sense, bumping along from blank verse to rhyming couplets. But early critics also claim to be uneasy about the moral tendencies of this play, where a man is tricked into marrying, and then tricked into accepting, his wife. Putting aside real life for now -- "real life" is decidedly not what we're dealing with here; this is a peculiarly placeless and timeless play -- I find nothing particularly reprehensible about the working-out of the tale. For this is surely nothing other than a fairy tale, with its tokens and signs, its children who regain identity, its arbitrary edict from a ruler at the beginning. Perhaps a little more like a high-tone fabliau in some ways, with mistaken identities in bed - as in the Summoner's Tale, or Measure for Measure, which is very like this play in many ways. [These notes made in 1982:]
