The Swisser

The Swisser is a Caroline era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Arthur Wilson. It was performed by the King's Men in the Blackfriars Theatre in 1631, and is notable for the light in throws on the workings of the premier acting company of its time.

(In seventeenth-century parlance, "Swisser," or "Swizzer" or "Switzer," referred to a Swiss mercenary soldier.)

Though Humphrey Moseley entered the play into the Stationers' Register on 4 September 1646, no edition of the drama was printed in the seventeenth century. The play remained in manuscript until it was published in the early 1900s.[1] The manuscript, now Add. MS. 36,749 in the collection of the British Museum, is in the author's hand.[2]

  1. ^ Albert Feuillerat, ed., The Swisser, Paris, Librairie Fischbacher, 1904.
  2. ^ Alfred Harbage, "Elizabethan and Seventeenth-Century Play Manuscripts," Papers of the Modern Language Association Vol. 50 No. 3 (September 1935), pp. 687–99; see p. 696.