The Loyal Subject

The Loyal Subject is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy by John Fletcher that was originally published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647. Scholars have devoted significant attention to the question of Fletcher's sources for his play. Fletcher modeled his play on an earlier work by Thomas Heywood titled The Royal King and the Loyal Subject, first published in 1637 but written two or three decades earlier. He also used a play by Lope de Vega called El gran duque de Moscovia, written c. 1613. An extensive study of the relationship between the plays of Fletcher and Lope de Vega and their background in Russian history has been published by Ervin Brody.