Aglaura was entered into the
Stationers' Register on 18 April,
1638 and published later that year, in an edition printed by John Haviland for the bookseller
Thomas Walkley – a vanity edition subsidized by Suckling. Instead of the
quarto format then standard for individual plays,
Aglaura was printed in the larger
folio format, normally restricted for serious works. (Stage plays were then treated largely as ephemera with little claim as serious literature.) Critics –
Richard Brome was prominent among them – mocked the folio edition of
Aglaura, especially the unusually broad page margins that compensated for the limited text. (For modern readers, the pleasing innovation of the 1638 edition is that it abstained from the full and verbose titles fashionable in the 17th century, and employed a title of one word.) The play was reprinted by
Humphrey Moseley in his
octavo collection of Suckling's works,
Fragmenta Aurea, in
1646 and
1648, and was included in subsequent collections. An early manuscript of the work also exists, in the collection of the
British Museum (
Royal MS. 18 C. 25). A modern facsimile edition of
Aglaura was issued in 1970, reproduced from the copy in the collection of the
British Museum. ==Inspiration==