Publisher's Synopsis
The Knight of Malta is a Jacobean era stage play, a tragicomedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators. It was initially published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647. In the period in which the play was written, King James I was pursuing a policy of Spanish appeasement; the play's choice of subject, the Knights of Malta, has been interpreted in light of that policy, as a gesture at royal flattery. Modern critics have focused on the play's Christian/Muslim conflict, its sexual politics, and the racial implications of making the play's villain an African woman.
