Frances Boothby

Frances Boothby (fl. 1669–1670), playwright, was the first woman to have a play produced in London: her tragicomedy, Marcelia, or, The Treacherous Friend, was performed by the King's Company at the Theatre Royal in 1669 (pub. 1670). The plot involves romantic difficulties and deceit. It is her only work extant, and little else is known of her.

References

• Hughes, Derek. “Boothby, Frances (fl. 1669–1670).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: OUP, 2004. 16 November 2006.
• Wynne-Davies, Marion. "Boothby, Frances (1669) English Restoration dramatist." Dictionary of English Literature. Bloomsbury, 1997.

External links

• Corporaal, Marguérite. "Love, Death and Resurrection in Tragicomedies by Seventeenth-Century English Women Dramatists." Early Modern Literary Studies 12.1 (May, 2006) 3.1-24.