Beaumont and Fletcher Rewrite Cervantes: Love’s Pilgrimage, a Farcical Representation of Spain and a Subversion of Jacobean Patriarchy

Abstract

Abstract Co-authored by the English dramatists Beaumont and Fletcher, Love’s Pilgrimage (c. 1615–1616) is a stage adaptation of Las dos doncellas (The Novel of the Two Maidens) (1613), an exemplary novel penned by the renowned Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes. Produced at a time when Anglo-Spanish relations were marked by an ambivalent state of religiopolitical hostility and cultural fascination, the play offers a bitterly farcical representation of the perceived ethos and social norms of the source culture. At the same time, it engages with the target culture’s political and ideological matrix, offering – oblique – commentary on the authors’ own society. This article provides a comparative study of both works, to assess both the playwrights’ representation of Spain and their stance on certain political and ideological contingencies that shaped Jacobean England.