A Wife for a Month in June 1623 and could not have been cast in a 1624 production. Commentators have suggested this Tooley's name may be a mistake for that of John Lowin, or else that Fletcher may have drawn up the cast list when he was writing the play; the cast list would therefore reflect the author's intention rather than the onstage reality. Since Fletcher functioned as a house dramatist for the King's Men in the final phase of his career, this idea, while speculative, is not impossible. Fletcher's solo authorship of the play is undisputed. "A Wife for a Month" was revived during
A Wife for a Month Fletcher's "lewdest" play, and complaining of its "oppressiveness" and its celebration of a "macabre marriage." The play's plot turns on the idea of a tyrannical king who allows a man to marry the woman he loves...for a month, and without sexual relations. (If he violates the rule, she will be put to death.) At the end of that month, he will be executed. A Wife for a Month centers on Evanthe, a beautiful and chaste lady-in-waiting to Frederick's Queen. Evanthe has never been married, and King Frederick lusts after her. In the first scene, he calls for her to be