Love's Cure, or the Martial Maid

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John Fletcher and Philip Massinger's Love's Cure, or The Martial Maid, first staged by the King's Men in 1615, is a fascinating exploration of the performativity of gender and the transformative power of human desire. Based on a Spanish Golden Age comedia, the play is a provocative take on the construction of gender identity in its unusual retelling of the lives of two transgender characters. The play dramatises the story of two siblings, Clara and Lucio, who have been brought up as members of their opposite genders. Clara has lived with their father as a male soldier in Flanders, while the mother has educated Lucio at home as a lady. After twenty years apart, their family is reunited and they are ordered to switch around their genders. The play explores the struggle they face within the fiercely heteronormative society of early modern Seville. The aftermath of the brutal siege of Ostend, and the bitter family feud between the siblings' domineering father, Álvarez, and his mortal enemy, the young Vitelli, serve as tragicomic backdrop for their difficult re-education and add flavour to this superbly performable play. This Revels Plays volume is the first fully annotated critical edition of the play ever to be published. It provides a modernised text and thorough commentary that clarifies the play's language and cultural references. The introduction sheds new light on the play's engagement with its Spanish sources and it discusses the dating, authorship, and literary and theatrical reception of this hidden jewel of Jacobean drama.