Middleton — Act I, scene i (first 90 lines); Act II, scene i; Act III, scenes i and iii; Act IV, scenes ii and iii; Act V, scene i (last 52 lines); Rowley — Act I, scene I (last 341 lines); Act II, scene ii; Act III, scene ii; Act IV, scenes i and iv; Act V, scene i (first 395 lines). This division is generally accepted by the scholarly consensus, with some occasional and minor dissent; Edward Engelberg assigned part of Act III, scene ii to Middleton instead of Rowley. Rowley had a habit of writing "fat clown" roles for himself to play; Chough, the primary clown in A Fair Quarrel, is a wrestler, and may have been another role Rowley wrote for himself to play. The subject of duelling was highly topical in the period the play originated; duels were becoming much more common in England, and King James's first proclamation against duelling was issued in October 1613. Sources The most immediate source for the main plot of A Fair Quarrel is the subplot of Thomas Heywood's 1603 play A Woman Killed with Kindness — while Heywood's version itself derives from earlier sources, specific plot elements and verbal parallels link the Middleton and Heywood treatments of the material. The source for the Fitzallen subplot in A Fair Quarrel is one of the stories in the Hecatommithi of Cinthio. Rowley and Middleton derived the details of surgical practice in IV,ii and V,i of their play from a guide to "chirurgery" published in 1612, a fact that limits the earliest possible date of the play. Links and commonalities with a range of other contemporary dramas, including Middleton's collaboration with John Fletcher, The Nice Valour, place A Fair Quarrel in a larger context of literary and theatrical interrelationships. Synopsis The long opening scene, which fills all of Act I, introduces the linked first and second level plots. The scene begins with a soliloquy by a wealthy citizen named Russell, who is concerned about the marriage of his only child, his daughter Jane. Jane has been courted by a young man named Fitzallen; the couple want to marry, but Russell is unhappy about his prospective son-in-law's lack of fortune – and he has developed a scheme to thwart the marriage. Russell's soliloquy ends with the arrival of his sister, the widowed Lady Ager; Russell informs her that the troop of soldiers in