The Scornful Lady

The Scornful Lady is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, and first published in 1616, the year of Beaumont's death. It was one of the pair's most popular, often revived, and frequently reprinted works.

The title page of the 1616 first edition states that the play was premiered by the Children of the Queen's Revels; it later passed into the possession of the King's Men, who revived the play in 1624. (The company's clown, John Shank, played the Curate in their 1624 production.) The King's Men acted The Scornful Lady on 19 October 1633, when Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, refused to let them perform The Woman's Prize. Prince Charles, the future King Charles II, attended a performance of the play at the Cockpit-in-Court Theatre on Twelfth Night, 6 January 1642.

While the theatres were closed during the English Civil War and the Interregnum (1642–60), material was extracted from The Scornful Lady to form a droll called The False Heir and Formal Curate, published by Kirkman in The Wits.

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