Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester, is anElizabethan-era stage play, a comedy written c. 1590. It was bound together withMucedorus andThe Merry Devil of Edmonton in a volume labelled "Shakespeare. Vol. I" in the library ofCharles II. Though scholarly opinion generally does not accept the attribution toWilliam Shakespeare, there are a few who believe they see Shakespeare's hand in this play.[1]
Fair Em was published inquarto twice before the closing of the theatres in 1642:
Edward Phillips, in hisTheatrum Poetarum (1675), states thatFair Em was written byRobert Greene; but since Greene ridicules the play's author and parodies two lines from the closing scene in his 1591 pamphletFarewell to Folly, this attribution also seems unsound.Fair Em has a clear relationship with one of Greene's plays,Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay; it seems most likely that the author ofFair Em borrowed from Greene. Since Greene's play is thought to date to c. 1589,Fair Em would have to have originated between that date and the publication ofFarewell to Folly in 1591. This span of 1589–91 conforms to the dating based on the Lord Strange connection, noted above.[2]
In modern scholarship, the attributions of authorship that have attracted the most support are toRobert Wilson and toAnthony Munday.[3] The attribution to Munday relies on similarities betweenFair Em andJohn a Kent and John a Cumber. A later play,John Day'sThe Blind Beggar of Bednal Green (1600), bears noteworthy resemblances toFair Em. Brian Vickers attributes the play toThomas Kyd,[4] an ascription endorsed by Darren Freebury-Jones.[5]
The plot derives from traditional sources; a ballad titledThe Miller's Daughter of Manchester was entered into theStationers' Register on 2 March 1581.[6]
In the main plot,William the Conqueror falls in love with the image on the shield that the Marquess of Lubeck carries in a tournament. In disguise, William travels to the court of KingZweno of Denmark to see the original of the portrait; once there, he falls in love with Marianna, a Swedish princess held hostage at the Danish court. Marianna, however, is faithful to her suitor, Lubeck, and has no interest in William; but the king's daughter Blanche becomes infatuated with the newcomer. The ladies stage a plot, in which William absconds with the woman he thinks is Marianne; in doing so he gets in trouble with Zweno, who is under the same mistaken impression. When the woman's true identity is revealed – she is of course Blanche – William accepts her as his wife. Lubeck and Marianne are left, happily, to each other.
In the subplot, Em, the beautiful daughter of the miller ofManchester, is wooed by three suitors, Valingford, Mountney, and Manvile. Preferring Manvile, she pretends blindness to evade Valingford, and deafness to avoid Mountney. But Manvile proves unfaithful to Em. In the end, Manvile loses both of the women he pursues, and Em marries Valingford, the only one of the three who has remained true to her; and it is revealed that Em is actually of the gentry – her father is Sir Thomas Goddard, and the miller of Manchester was his disguise. The two plots meet at the end, as William recognizes Goddard's banishment was unjust and revokes it. Em makes William realize that the world does contain virtuous women, which helps to reconcile him to his marriage with Blanche.
A few nineteenth-century commentators (notablyF. G. Fleay) read hidden significance into the play, interpreting it as an allegory on the theatrical conditions of its day. Modern scholarship rejects these views as fanciful, and regards the work as a light entertainment, successful on its own level. Speculations that Shakespeare may have played either William the Conqueror or Valingford have also not been judged favorably.Brian Vickers believes the play to be byThomas Kyd.[7]
The first modern-day revival production ofFair Em opened in 2013 at the Union Theatre, Southwark, London. Directed byPhil Willmott, this performance ran from 8 January to 9 February.[8]
A Pleasant Commodie of Faire Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester, with the Love of William the Conquerour public domain audiobook atLibriVox