The Coxcomb

The Coxcomb is an early Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.

Scholars date the play to c. 1608–10, based on contemporary allusions and availability of sources. (It has been argued that one of the play's sources was the "Curious Impertinent" episode in Don Quixote, which was published in French translation in 1608, that translation being the playwrights' source. Ben Jonson refers to the play in The Alchemist in 1610.) The Coxcomb was performed at Court early in November 1612 by the Children of the Queen's Revels.

The play's text in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679 provides a cast list for one production, a list that cites Nathan Field, Joseph Taylor, Giles Gary, Emanuel Read, Richard Allen, Hugh Atawell, Robert Benfield, and William Barkstead. This combination of personnel matches not the Queen's Revels Children but the Lady Elizabeth's Men. The former company combined with the latter for a time in 1613. The children's troupe later passed out of existence, leaving some of its plays, including The Coxcomb, behind with the Lady Elizabeth's company.

The play then passed into the possession of the King's Men, who acted it at Court on 5 March 1622, and on 17 November 1636.

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