Frances Boothby

Little is known of Boothby's life but the dedications of her two extant works have led to speculation that she may have been the daughter of Walter Boothby, a "prosperous merchant" with aristocratic connections.[1]

Boothby is mainly remembered for her tragicomedy Marcelia, or, The Treacherous Friend (licensed 1669; published 1670). It was performed by the King's Company at the Theatre Royal, probably in August 1669.[2] The published play is dedicated to Lady Mary Yate, of Harvington Hall in Worcestershire, whom she addresses as her kinswoman.

Marcelia is "a conservative work."[1] The plot involves romantic difficulties and deceit in love precipitated by a king who abandons his lover to pursue the heroine. As order is reestablished by the end, full-blown tragedy is avoided.[3] Audiences likely perceived implicit criticism of King Charles II in the character of the lustful king;[4] such criticism of the monarch was "widespread, but as yet tactful."[1]

Boothby's only other known work is a poem, addressed to her cousin Anne Somerset (née Aston), which laments the failure of her play,[1] though one scholar writes that the play went off "with some success."[5] She also left a collection of recipes.[6]

• Marcelia: or the Treacherous Friend. A Tragicomedy. As it is Acted at the Theatre-Royal, by His Majesties Servants. Written by Mrs. F. Boothby. Licenc'd, October 9, 1669. Roger L'Estrange. London: Printed for Will. Cademan at the Popes-Head in the lower Walk of the New-Exchange, and Giles Widdowes at the Maiden-head in Aldersgate-street, 1670:[7] Etext, British Library

• Brown, Susan, et al. "Frances Boothby." Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present. Ed. Susan Brown, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge UP, n.d. 22 Mar. 2013. Accessed 9 Sept. 2022.
• 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
• 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
• London Stage Database. "London Stage Event: August 1669 at The (first) Drury Lane Theatre." Accessed 9 September 2022.
• Todd, Janet M. "Boothby, Frances (fl. 1669)." A Dictionary of British and American women writers, 1660-1800. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Allanheld, 1985, p. 52. (Etexte, Internet Archive]).
• Wynne-Davies, Marion. Boothby, Frances (1669) English Restoration dramatist. Dictionary of English Literature. Bloomsbury, 1997

• Works by Frances Boothby at Open Library