The Prophetess is a late Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647.
The play was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 14 May 1622. It was acted by the King's Men; the cast included John Lowin, Joseph Taylor, Robert Benfield, Nicholas Tooley, John Shank, George Birch, Richard Sharpe, and Thomas Holcombe.
Due to Fletcher's distinctive stylistic profile, the division of authorship in the play is largely clear and unambiguous. Cyrus Hoy gave this breakdown of the two writers' relative shares:
E. H. C. Oliphant provided the same scheme, except for an assignment of V,2 to Fletcher. Massinger may have revised the original play in 1629, for a revival in July of that year. One source of the play's plot is the History of Carinus of Flavius Vopiscus. (Massinger had previously dealt with the reign of Diocletian in The Virgin Martyr, his collaboration with Dekker.)