Wit Without Money

Wit Without Money is a Jacobean era stage play, a comedy written by John Fletcher, and first published in 1639.

Scholars have dated the play to c. 1614, based on allusions to contemporary events — notably to the dragon that was reportedly seen in Sussex in August 1614. The early editions of the play assign it to Beaumont and Fletcher, but scholars who have studied the play since the nineteenth century agree that Beaumont is absent from the work; "All investigators are agreed in giving the play to Fletcher" alone. Some critics, however, have argued that the text was revised, perhaps around 1620, a light revision which nonetheless removed Fletcher's characteristic preference for ye as against you.

The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 25 April 1639, as a solo work by Fletcher, and was published in quarto later that year, the text printed by Thomas Cotes for the booksellers Andrew Crooke and William Cooke. The title page of the first edition states that the play was acted by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre; and the play later passed to Beeston's Boys. Given these facts, it is most likely that the play was originally performed by the Lady Elizabeth's Men. Andrew Crooke issued another quarto edition in 1661. The play was included in the second Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1679.

Wit Without Money is one of the few plays known to have been performed during the English Civil War and the Interregnum period, 1642–60, when the London theatres were formally closed but operated when they could (an early form of "guerilla theatre"). The play was staged at the Red Bull Theatre on 3 February 1648; unable to sell tickets openly, the actors had tickets thrown into the gentry's coaches. Another performance, on 29 December 1654, was broken up by the authorities.

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