Fairy Knight

Dekker (?) & Ford (1624)


Historical Records

Dramatic Records of Sir Henry Herbert

Revels Documents to 1642 (Bawcutt 152, item 104):

*A new play, called the Fairy Knight, written by Forde and Decker, alld 11 June 1624. Ili.



Theatrical Provenance

Prince's?


Probable Genre(s)

Romance (?) (Harbage)


Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

<Enter any information about possible or known sources. Summarise these sources where practical/possible, or provide an excerpt from another scholar's discussion of the subject if available.>


References to the Play

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Critical Commentary

Fleay (BCED 1.232) queries whether "The Fairy Knight" might be the 1590s Sussex's men play, "Huon of Bordeaux".

In the context of Dekker's possible authorship of the Guy of Warwick play printed in 1661, Helen Moore (in her Malone Society edition) builds on Fleay's conjectural association of "The Fairy Knight" with "Huon of Bordeaux" and notes that "since Huon is the source for the Oberon elements of Guy, it is potentially significant that Dekker wrote a lost play that may have been a version of the Huon story" (xxiii).


For What It's Worth

Curiously, a MS play called The Fairy Knight, dated to c.1623-24, still exists. It has been digitised by the Folger Shakespeare Library (V.a.128). Fredson Bowers, who edited the play, attributes its Thomas Randolph at the Westminster School.


Works Cited

Bowers, Fredson, ed. "The fary knight; or, Oberon the Second," a manuscript play attributed to Thomas Randolph. Chapel Hill, NC, University of North Carolina Press, 1942.


Site created and maintained by David McInnis, University of Melbourne; updated 28 Jan 2016.