The Lost Lady

The Lost Lady is a tragicomedy first played at the court during the Christmas festivities of 1637-8. The text survives in three states: a scribal manuscript (now a fragment) which Berkeley himself corrected, and which was prepared for presentation to Queen Henrietta Maria; a first folio dated 1638 (but with an imprimatur of 1637), which has manuscript corrections and interlineations; and a second folio, with two variant states dated 1638 and 1639, and further corrections by hand. The significance of the variations between the texts (cancelled stage directions, revised readings etc) was first noted fifty years ago by R. C. Bald, who was interested in what might be learnt from The Lost Lady about the nature of prompt-books. In the Society's edition - based on the manuscript, but supplemented with text from the first folio, and provided with footnote textual collations - such issues are discussed alongside brief accounts of the author (Berkeley was Governor of Virginia during the English Civil War), and the genre and historical circumstances of the play. Scholars and graduate students of Renaissance drama, textual and bibliographical problems, and social history.