The Fair Maid of the Inn

The Fair Maid of the Inn is an early 17th-century stage play, a comedy in the canon of John Fletcher and his collaborators. It was originally published in the first Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647. Uncertainties of the play's date, authorship, and sources make it one of the most widely disputed works in English Renaissance drama. The play's plot derives from the historical feud of the Bianchi and Neri factions in late medieval Florence. The white (Bianchi) and black (Neri) Guelph factions were in part family-based - respectively, the Cerchi family and the Donati. The disputed origins of the factions were by some accounts rooted in the rivalry of two lovers of Bianca Cancellieri; her name suggested the Biancha in this play. The factions are most famous for their role in the life of Dante Alighieri; when the Neri took power in Florence in 1301, Bianchi like Dante were exiled.