Love's Cruelty

Love's Cruelty is a Caroline-era stage play, a tragedy written by James Shirley, and first published in 1640.

The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 14 November 1631. Like the majority of Shirley's dramas, it was acted by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre. The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 25 April 1639 by the booksellers Andrew Crooke and William Cooke, along with three other Shirley plays. (The three were The Opportunity, The Coronation, and The Night Walker.) The play was published the next year, in a quarto printed by Thomas Cotes — though only Andrew Crooke's name is on the title page.

Shirley based his plot on material from two sources: novel 36 of the Heptameron of Marguerite of Navarre, and novel 6, decade 3, of the Hecatomithi of Cinthio. Shirley may have accessed Marguerite's tale in English translation in The Palace of Pleasure by William Painter. Shirley's work also bears a significant resemblance to Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed with Kindness.

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