Although Arthur Wilson has been known chiefly as a historian since the publication of his The History of Great Britain, Being the Life and Reign of King James the First in 1653, he is also recognized as a Caroline playwright whose three plays--The Inconstant Lady (or Better Late Than Never), The Swisser, and The Corporal--were performed by the King's Men in the 1630s but were not subsequently published. In the late 1700s Philip Bliss discovered a manuscript for The Inconstant Lady in the Rawlinson collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and in 1814 published an edition of the play. With the further discoveries of the manuscript for The Swisser (now in the British Library), edited by Albert Feuillerat and published in 1904, and of the Lambarde manuscript of The Inconstant Lady (now in the Folger Shakespeare Library) in 1924, Wilson's reputation as a playwright has been clearly established.

Playwright, historian...