The Mad Lover

The Mad Lover is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy by John Fletcher that was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.

Fletcher's sole authorship of the play was specified during the seventeenth century by his friend Sir Aston Cockayne; since Fletcher's distinctive pattern of stylistic and textual preferences is continuous through the text, his authorship is not questioned.

The play was acted by the King's Men; the cast list added to the play in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679 includes Richard Burbage, John Lowin, Robert Benfield, William Ecclestone, Nathan Field, Richard Sharpe, and Henry Condell. The cast list indicates a production between 1616, when Field joined the company, and Burbage's death in March 1619. In her diary, Lady Anne Clifford mentions seeing a performance of the play at Court on 5 January 1617 (new style). The play was revived in 1630.

Fletcher drew materials from Honoré D'Urfé's novel Astrée for this play, as he did with Monsieur Thomas and Valentinian. Fletcher also borrowed story materials from Bandello and Josephus. The plot point in which Cleanthe suborns a priestess, to obtain a favorable oracle for her brother Syphax, is a version of the Paulina and Mundus story in Josephus.

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