The Sun's Darling is a masque, or masque-like play, written by John Ford and Thomas Dekker, and first published in 1656. The Sun's Darling was licensed for performance by Sir Henry Herbert, the Master of the Revels, on 3 March 1624. It was probably composed not long before; nineteenth-century speculations that the text was an old play of Dekker's, revised by Ford, have fallen out of favor. The original text may have been revised c. 1638–39; material in the early portion of Act V reflects the dominant political situation at that time. Cyrus Hoy has suggested that the play was revised and revived at that time, as a response to Thomas Nabbes's Microcosmus (1636; published 1637). Several attempts have been made by individual commentators to identify the shares of the two collaborators, though