The City Bride

The City Bride (1696), by Joseph
Harris

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Title: The City Bride (1696) Or The Merry Cuckold
Author: Joseph Harris
Commentator: Vinton A. Dearing
Release Date: October 12, 2007 [EBook #22974]
Language: English
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JOSEPH HARRIS
The City Bride
(1696)
With an Introduction by Vinton A. Dearing
Publication Number 36
Los Angeles William Andrews Clark Memorial Library University of
California 1952
GENERAL EDITORS
H. RICHARD ARCHER, Clark Memorial Library RICHARD C.
BOYS, University of Michigan ROBERT S. KINSMAN, University of
California, Los Angeles JOHN LOFTIS, University of California, Los
Angeles
ASSISTANT EDITOR
W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan
ADVISORY EDITORS
EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of Washington BENJAMIN
BOYCE, Duke University LOUIS BREDVOLD, University of
Michigan JAMES L. CLIFFORD, Columbia University ARTHUR
FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago EDWARD NILES HOOKER,
University of California, Los Angeles LOUIS A. LANDA, Princeton
University SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota ERNEST
MOSSNER, University of Texas JAMES SUTHERLAND, University
College, London H. T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California,
Los Angeles
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
EDNA C. DAVIS, Clark Memorial Library

INTRODUCTION
The City Bride, by Joseph Harris, is of special interest as the only
adaptation from the canon of John Webster to have come upon the
stage in the Restoration. Nahum Tate's Injur'd Love: or, The Cruel
Husband is an adaptation of The White Devil, but it was never acted
and was not printed until 1707. The City Bride is taken from A Cure for
a Cuckold, in which William Rowley and perhaps Thomas Heywood
collaborated with Webster. F. L. Lucas, Webster's most recent and most
scholarly editor, remarks that A Cure for a Cuckold is one of the better
specimens of Post-Elizabethan romantic comedy. In particular, the
character of the bride, Annabel (Arabella in Harris's adaptation), has a
universal appeal. The City Bride, a very close copy of its original,
retains its virtues, and has some additional virtues of its own.
Not much is known of its author, Joseph Harris. Genest first notices
him as playing Bourcher, the companion of a French pirate, in A
Common-Wealth of Women. Thomas Durfey's alteration of The Sea
Voyage from the Beaumont and Fletcher folio, which was produced
about September 1685. His subsequent roles were of a similar calibre,
but if he never rose to be a star he seems to have become a valued
supporting player, for in 1692 he was chosen to join the royal
"comedians in ordinary." He did not at first side with Thomas Betterton
in his quarrel with the patentees of the theatre in 1694-5, but he
withdrew with him to Lincoln's Inn Fields. Genest notices him for the
last time as playing Sir Richard Vernon in Betterton's adaptation of 1
Henry IV, which was produced about April 1700.
During his career on the stage Harris found time to compose a
tragi-comedy, The Mistakes, or, The False Report (1691), produced in
December 1690; The City Bride, produced in 1696; and a comedy and a
masque, Love's a Lottery, and a Woman the Prize. With a New Masque,
call'd Love and Riches Reconcil'd (1699), produced about March
1698/9. The Mistakes is clearly apprentice work, for Harris
acknowledges in a preface the considerable help of William Mountfort,
who took the part of the villain, Ricardo. Mountfort, who had already

written three plays himself, cut one of the scenes intended for the fifth
act and inserted one of his own composition (probably the last) which
not only clarified the plot but also elevated the character of the part he
was to play. The company seems to have done its best by the budding
dramatist, for Dryden wrote the prologue, a rather unusual one in prose
and verse, and Tate supplied the epilogue. Harris professed himself
satisfied with the play's reception, but owned that it was Mountfort's
acting which really carried it off.
The City Bride, on the other hand, shows its author completely
self-assured, and rightly so. No doubt some of his ease comes from the
fact that he had nothing to invent, but in large part it must derive from
his ten-years' experience on the stage. Harris added nothing to the plot
of The City Bride, although he commendably shifted its emphasis, as
his title makes clear, from infidelity to fidelity; but he rewrote the
dialogue almost completely, and the