Reviews

The great favourite, or, The Duke of Lerma as it was acted at the Theatre-Royal by His Majesties servants / written by the Honourable Sir Robert Howard. by Robert Howard

gillothen's review

3.0

An odd play, a Restoration partial reworking of a 1620s play - lots of topical references make that obvious. Howard claimed he rewrote it all, but the feeling is of relatively little rewriting but a certain amount of reorganising and messing about. The title character was a real person, and quite a few of the events of the plot did happen - like becoming a cardinal to evade prosecution! He becomes an out-and-out villain here, with some complicated plotting which all ends badly, as you might expect.

A bit of a mess, frankly.

Read as part of the REP King's Men repertoire online Zoom readathon of covid-hit 2021.