Jonson told
Drummond
that “Nat Field was
his scholar.
his scholar.
Cambridge History of English Literature - 1908 - v06
Duke Basilius has left his kingdom under
his brother and retired with his queen and two daughters to a
'desert isle,' sending a general challenge 'to all the youthful bloods
of Africa' to
Woo, win, entice, or any way defeat
Me of my charge, my daughters of their hearts.
The successful suitors—both of them, apparently-
Shall with their loves wear my imperial crown.
But, before the play begins, there is a prose induction containing
the conversation of three gentlemen, who interrupt the prologue,
supposing him to be the boy who should provide them with stools.
They ask whether the play has any connection with the recent
West-Ward Hoel and suppose that there is some political libel in
it, since the title, Ile of Guls, is obviously suggested by Nashe's Isle
of Dogs? . To the disappointment of the first gentleman, the pro-
logue protests fervently against these suppositions. He desires 'to
1 Cf. ante, chap. VII.
2 Cf. ante, vol. v, chap. VI.
## p. 213 (#231) ############################################
Day's Ile of Guls
213
hear vice anatomized and abuse let blood in the master vein'; he
asks of the play, 'Is there any great man's life charactered in't? . . .
And there be not wormwood water and copperas in't, I'll not like it. '
The second gentleman cares for none of these things; his tastes
are simpler; 'Is there any good bawdry in't, jests of an ell deep
and a fathom broad? ' He wants scenes that will make a man's
spirits stand on their tip toes and die his blood in a deep scarlet,
like your Ovid's Ars Amandi. ' When the prologue objects that
chaste ears would never endure it, he retorts, 'What should chaste
ears do at a play? ' But the third gentleman cares for neither
railing nor bawdry; he requires 'a stately penned history'. . .
‘high-written'-'mere fustian,' his friend calls it, 'full of tear-cut
thunderclaps. '
Upon these three kinds, says the dramatist, the popular audience
insists—all these we must have and all in one play or 'tis already
condemned to the hell of eternal disgrace. The induction shows
that Day intended to produce a new style if he could; it shows,
also, that he was very much afraid of failing; he has none of
Ben Jonson's sturdy scorn of popular taste; when the prologue is
finally allowed to speak, we get only a faint-hearted defiance of
'Opinion's voice,' whose tyranny is
The misery that waits upon the pen
Of the best writers.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Day fails to emancipate
himself from the evils he deprecates. In the matter of bawdry
especially, he yields to the base demands of 'opinion. ' He is not
more coarse than others and he makes no attempt to dye our blood
in a deep scarlet ; but he takes his story and his characters from
Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia and besmirches the sweet and noble
romance of his original with the indecencies of the work-a-day
Elizabethan drama. It may be urged that Shakespeare does the
same thing, even in As You Like It. But Shakespeare creates
such a soul of purity in his heroines that their most outrageous
jests and words fail to hurt them. Day puts no soul at all into
his women; his characters have almost no personality. Although
he protests that he will not be a satirist, it is his railer, Dametas,
who comes nearest in his play to being a live man, and the duke
and his queen are vulgarised as well as the heroines. We are fre-
quently reminded of Shakespeare's earlier comedies in reading Day.
In The Ile of Guls, we catch echoes from A Midsummer Night's
Dream. But this similarity almost forces us to compare Day's
duke and duchess with Shakespeare's Theseus and Hippolyta.
## p. 214 (#232) ############################################
214 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
What would have become of the romance and charm of Shake-
speare's play if Theseus—and, with him, Hippolyta—had been
involved in a clumsy intrigue, depriving the king and hero of all
grace and dignity? The two pairs of lovers are equally uninterest-
ing. It is enough to say that Day in no way differentiates them;
and we are unable to care much about what happens to either
couple. All these things interfere with our appreciation of Day's
art in providing us with a pretty tangle, neatly and deftly untied
at the end. Such an art there is in The Ile of Guls, and it is a
new thing in the Elizabethan drama as Day uses it. It points
forward to Restoration comedy, and has some kinship with the
comedy of Molière.
And it is not only in his plot that Day shows clear conception
of a comedy different from the Shakespearean romantic comedy
and from the Jonsonian comedy of humours—both of them full of
life and humanity; in his dialogue there is a new note-a new con-
vention of epigram and repartee—which, together with neatness of
plot, marks the typical Restoration comedy. In The Ile of Guls,
the plot by which all the characters are collected together at
the end of the play blindfolded, as it were, to find themselves
plain gulls when the bandage is taken off, is cleverly and neatly
elaborated; but, in the course of the play, we also have a continued
effort to present a dialogue duly arranged and ordered, in which
the wit has a scheme and keeps the rules. The most notable
instance is the famous tennis match scene in the second act.
Bullen says truly: 'Outside of Shakespeare's early comedies it
would be difficult to find among the dramatists of the time such
another tour de force of sprightly repartee’; but, although
Shakespeare's early work, probably, was the chief influence in
producing Day's type of comedy, there is a noticeable contrast
between the two kinds. The copiousness and exuberance of all
the punning and repartee of Love's Labour's Lost produce an
effect the exact opposite of Day's balanced and considered epi-
grams. Shakespeare gives his characters full play in the scenes
of quip and repartee; Day holds his in. His art has not enough
vigour and flow in it; Shakespeare's has too much. Shakespeare,
again, is eager to break loose from the fetters of rime for the
larger scope and movement of blank verse; Day, on the contrary,
desires to get back to rime; he has not breath enough for Eliza-
bethan blank verse. Shakespeare's fountain gushes and leaps, with
much danger to artificial restraints of all sorts; Day's rivulet, on
the contrary, flows obediently whither it is led, and often trickles
>
## p. 215 (#233) ############################################
Humour out of Breath
215
nearly dry. Elizabethan extravagance and overstrain are foreign
to his art, which is Attic, or even Doric, in its simplicity and
orderliness. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that Day never
does himself justice in his plays; he is too much hampered and
confused by the alien conditions in which his genius has to work.
In The Ile of Guls, it is only the induction wbich is quite easy and
lucid. The tennis scene, perhaps because the terms used are no
longer familiar, is hard to follow, and the verse effects are too
complicated. We see what the artist means, but his execution is
not perfect. A scene in Law-Trickes, where the countess dis-
courses to her maids as they sew, is his nearest approach to
dramatic effectiveness in his own style. This play, probably, was
written in 1606, and Humour out of Breath in 1607. The three
plays present, quite recognisably, a new dramatic type, but they
do not coherently and adequately realise it.
The title Humour out of Breath is actually quoted from The
Comedy of Errors, and the influence of Shakespeare's early
comedies is very evident in all three plays; but the neatness and
compactness of Day's prose style in his dialogue is more akin to
the manner of another master-John Lyly. Lyly does not exhibit
in his comedies the copiousness and exuberance which characterise
Shakespeare's first work. Lyly's plays, even more than Day's, lack
flesh and blood, and belong to a world of moonshine and shadow.
But, within their limits, they have a true charm of fancy, and their
style escapes the pedantry and tediousness of the writer's prose
work, and is as deft and crisp as Day at his best. To complete
the parallel, we may note that Lyly (supposing him to be their
author") gives us a handful of beautiful lyrics, remarkable as be-
longing not to the true Elizabethan type, but, rather, to the later
style of Herrick. Day's best lyric work in The Parliament of Bees
is, in the same way, post-Elizabethan. It must be compared with
Browne's Pastorals or Milton's L'Allegro.
· Day describes The Parliament of Bees as “an allegorical
description of the actions of good and bad men in these our
days. ' But he composed it from scenes contributed to two plays
which have reached us under the titles The Noble Souldier
and The Wonder of A Kingdome. Dekker, in cooperation with
Samuel Rowley, was mainly responsible for these plays. Between
their style and Day's, there could be no real accord, and only
enough of Day is left to make it clear that The Parliament
of Bees was not, as we might suppose, completely fresh work
1 On this question, cf. ante, vol. v, chap. VI, p. 125.
## p. 216 (#234) ############################################
216 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
constituting a new departure in the art of the writer. Scenes
contributed to more than one play were the groundwork upon
which Day composed his dainty and graceful series of 'Colloquies'
or 'Characters. The fact throws a true light on Day's dramatic
work; but the drama was not his natural vein. What would be
interesting to know is how he came to write The Parliament of
Bees. In the excellent prose tract, Peregrinatio Scholastica,
written, apparently, before The Parliament, he speaks of himself
as 'becalmed in a fog of necessity,' that is to say, he writes be-
cause he needs money, which he hopes to get not only from the
printer, but, also, from the patron to whom he dedicates his book.
He says, also, that he is lying at anchor 'before the Islands, Meliora
Speramus. ' Fleay's tempting suggestion is that Day means holy
orders by this, and by the 'shrine of Latria,' towards which, in the
allegory, the sometimes student of Gunvill and Caius Colledge in
Cambridge' is travelling. If this were so, it would be necessary
for the old playwright, until he was duly ordained, to make money
by some more edifying form of literature than plays. He, therefore,
wrote Peregrinatio and, after that, used certain scenes from old
plays to make his unique Parliament of Bees. There is extant a
manuscript copy of The Bees earlier than the quarto of 1641, and
the changes are not all of them merely in style; the poem is made
definitely graver in revision. The delightful first title disappears
as too flippant-'An olde Manuscript conteyning the Parliament
of Bees, found In a Hollow Tree In a garden at Hibla, in a strandge
Languadge, And now faithfully Translated into Easie English Verse
by John Daye, Cantabrig. ' The poem, it should be noted, is not a
masque in the ordinary and technical sense. It rather resembles
a series of pastoral eclogues. The successive scenes have no con-
tinuity, except such as is supplied by the idea of making all the
characters bees. Day conceives his poem as a series of satires ;
but he charges his bees to
Carry an humble wing
Buzz boldly what I bid, but do not sting
Any particular,
It is only the usuring bee whom we can identify:
Most of the timber that his state repairs
He hews out o' the bones of foundred players :
They feed on poets' brains, he eats their breath.
This can be none other than Philip Henslowe.
We gather, from both Peregrinatio and The Parliament, that
Day was not seeking orders from any unworthy motives. The prose
a
## p. 217 (#235) ############################################
Robert Armin
217
of the tract is more fluent than that of the plays. The style of the
poem, too, has, more fully than that of the plays, Day's special gift-'a
sense of delicate music in the fall and arrangement of quite common
words' In spite of the fog of necessity' around him, the writer
is at peace with himself and the world. A note of peevishness and
bitterness which occasionally obtruded itself in his earlier work
has disappeared, and the poet's music in his last poem is serene,
spontaneous and sweet. John Day died before the quarto of
The Parliament was printed, probably in the autumn of 1640.
A belated Elizabethan of considerable interest whose extant
work was printed in the early years of king James was Robert
Armin, reported to have been trained by Tarlton and called his
''
son. He followed William Kemp as player of Dogberry about
1599, continued in Shakespeare's company for some years and
has a place in the list of players in the 1623 folio. His single
play, printed 1609, is entitled The History of the two Maids of
More-clacke; With the life and simple maner of John in the
Hospitall. On the title-page, there is a cut of Armin in the
character of John in the hospital. In his words to the 'friendly
peruser,' Armin calls the play 'a Historical discourse,' and says
that
he would have 'againe inacted' John, if he had been able. His
age, presumably, prevented him, for he seems to have been born
about 1564 and was dead by 1612. He adds, you shall find verse,
as well blancke, as crancke, yet in the prose let it pass for currant. '
The blank verse of the play is in so disordered a state that it
has been compared with the mutilated 1603 quarto of Hamlet.
The phenomena suggest the solution that Armin was not re-
sponsible for the verse, but supplied the prose of the old-
fashioned fool's part of John, in which, earlier, he had made a
hit. He was no more the author of the serious part of the play,
than William Kemp was of the whole of A Knack to Know a
Knave. But the play is interesting, in spite of its corrupt con-
dition. There are in it indications that, in some form or other, it
dates back to Elizabeth's reign ; but, also, echoes from Shake-
speare's tragedies—from Macbeth, for instance—which date, ap-
parently, from about 1608. Humil's doubt of his mother's honour
reminds us of Hamlet, and the play is worth careful study for its
bearing on the Hamlet problem. The plot is absurdly compli-
cated and full of incident, and, in this respect, we are reminded of
Chettle's Tragedy of Hoffman. The play has genuine dramatic
1 Nero and other plays, p. 208.
## p. 218 (#236) ############################################
218 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
6
power, forcible eloquence and fine poetry, all of which we should
be inclined to ascribe to Dekker or Chettle, if another author than
Armin himself must be looked for. There are, however, some re-
semblances between Armin's other works and our play. In 1605,
he published Foole upon Foole, or, Sixe Sortes of Sottes, a prose
tract, amplified, in 1608, into A nest of Ninnies', in the dedica-
tion of which “To the most true and rightly compleat in all good
gifts and graces, the generous Gentlemen of Oxenford, Cambridge,
and the Innes of Court'he declares I have seene the stars at mid-
night in your societies. ' This, apparently, gave offence to some
of the graver spirits among the old player's hosts, and his next
and last tract, dated 1609, contains a kind of apology for it. This
tract, The Italian Taylor and his Boy, a verse translation from
the Italian, is written with considerable dexterity, and raises our
opinion of Armin's gifts and scholarship. It is curious that we
should have nothing from his pen earlier than 1605, although
Nashe and Harvey, in 1593, speak of him as a common pamphle-
teer and 'son' of Elderton.
Middleton's influence on comedy is apparent in the two sur-
viving plays of the lawyer Edward Sharpham-The Fleire, acted
probably early in 1606, and Cupid's Whirligig, produced about a
year later. Both plays were frequently reprinted, from 1607
onwards. They owed their popularity to their wit and rapidity
of action, but can hardly claim to be more than farces; there
is in them the shadow of Middleton's art, and more than the
substance of his grossness. Much better than these is Lodowick
Barry's single play Ram-Alley or Merrie-Trickes, acted perhaps
as early as 1609 and extant in several quartos. Ram alley was
a particularly disreputable lane, leading from Fleet street to the
Temple, and of the coarseness promised by the title of the play we
find, as it proceeds, a full supply. But this realistic indecency
is relieved by some breath of life and character. Many echoes
from Shakespeare's plays are introduced, both by way of parody
and of imitation. There is much of the London of the period-
both of the place and its manners—in this comedy; and it not
only shows force in its presentation of life and character, but is
also marked by a vigour in its blank verse, which, in one or two
places, almost reaches distinction. The prologue says that, if the
play succeeds, the writer will attempt something more serious,
which even puritans will accept as satisfactory. Barry, no doubt,
1 Cf. ante, vol. iv, p. 532.
## p. 219 (#237) ############################################
John Cooke and Robert Tailor
219
overrated the complaisance of puritans; but he was right in feeling
that he had in him the power to produce work of a higher rank
altogether than his Ram alley obscenities. It is disappointing
that this one play and his name are all that we know of him.
Two other single plays, Greene's Tu Quoque and The Hog hath
lost his Pearl, we may mention at this point, because they belong
rather to the early comedy of Haughton than the later Jonsonian
comedy. They are less touched by Middleton's influence than
Ram-Alley. The clever acting of Thomas Greene made Greene's
Tu Quoque or The Cittie Gallant very popular about 1611. It was
printed in 1614 as written by Jo. Cooke, Gent. ,' and Thomas
Heywood contributes a preface stating that both the author and
the actor Greene are dead. It is one of the pleasantest and live-
liest among the productions of the lesser dramatists. The blank
verse is not so good as Barry's; but Cooke's art and his capacity
for working out a comic idea are above the ordinary, and his prose
is excellent. The master, Staines, changes places with his man,
Bubble, and coaches him to take his place in the fashionable
world. There is an excellent scene in which the affectations of the
Italianate Englishman are taken off, probably aimed at Coryate.
The women in the play remind us of the girls of Porter and
Haughton; they are, perhaps, more refined—the sisters of
university students rather than of tradesmen—but they are very
naturally and pleasantly drawn. A scene in which Joyce, anxious
to hide the state of her heart, confounds and bewilders her lover,
first by her silence and then by her speech, recalls the vigorous
domestic comedy of Porter? It is curious that we should know
nothing whatever of 'Jo. Cooke,' and that, like Barry, he
should have just one play to his credit. The Hog hath lost his
Pearl is, again, the single play of a writer whose name—Robert
Tailor—is all that is known about him. Tailor's literary capacity
is below that of either Barry or Cooke. To a play of low comedy,
he tacks on a romantic plot of a painful character? which only a
master of dramatic art could make endurable. Tailor manages the
prose of his comedy much better than the verse of his moral
romance; the main interest of the play, however, is not in its style
or story but in the circumstances of its production. Sir Henry
Wotton, in a letter dated 16123, tells us that 'some sixteen
? See ante, vol. v, chap. XIII.
2 Otway's Orphan deals with the same plot.
3 The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, ed. Smith, L. P. , vol. 1, p. 13.
## p. 220 (#238) ############################################
220 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
apprentices,' having secretly learnt their parts, 'took up the
White Fryers for their theatre,' and invited their friends to see
them perform The Hog hath lost his Pearl. The sheriffs inter-
vened before the end of the performance and carried off six or
seven of the apprentices to prison. He adds that it was supposed
that Sir John Swinnerton was meant by the hog, and the late
lord treasurer by the pearl. The prologue of the printed play
alludes to this incident, but says that
our swine,
Is not as divers critics did define,
Grunting at state affairs or invecting
Much at our city vices;
if the play pleases, 'we'll say 'tis fortunate, like Pericles. ' Like
the two plays mentioned before it, Tailor's is full of interest for
the student of Jacobean London.
We come now to the main stream of Jacobean dramatic work,
in which the influence of Jonson, both personal and by his art, is
all-pervasive.
Among the extant plays of the reign of king James, two by
Nathaniel Field are of such merit as to suggest that the writer,
probably, would have risen above the ranks of the lesser dramatists,
had he persevered in the prosecution of his art. He was born in
1587, a few months before his father's death. That father was the
famous preacher John Field, whose rousing discourse upon the
collapse of a gallery in Paris garden in 1583 has come down to
us? . It contains interesting details about the catastrophe and a
violent attack upon theatrical performances, with valuable in-
formation about London players and their theatres. Nat's elder
brother, Theophilus, was educated at Cambridge and rose to be
bishop of Hereford; and it is singular, therefore, that Nat Field's
name should be found first among the six 'principal comedians'
of the band of lads called the children of the queen’s revels, who
acted in Jonson's Cynthia's Revels in 1600. These boys were the
‘young eyases' discussed by Hamlet. For a time, as has been seen? ,
they rivalled men players in public favour; and Field, as he grew
older, maintained his position and may claim to have succeeded
Burbage as the leading actor on the English stage. Jonson, no
doubt, owed a debt to Field for his clever acting in Cynthia's Revels
and Poetaster, and the debt is repaid by the mention of Field, in
1614, in Bartholomew Fayre— Which is your Burbadge now? . . .
i Cf. , as to this incident, post, chap. XIV.
Cf. ante, chap. II, and post, chap. XI.
## p. 221 (#239) ############################################
Field's A Woman is a Weather-cocke 221
Your best actor, your Field ? ' Field joined the King's company
before he finally retired from the stage, and, in the 1623 folio of
Shakespeare's plays, he is seventeenth in the list there given of
twenty-six players.
Jonson told Drummond that “Nat Field was
his scholar. An interesting proof of Jonson’s regard for Field is
afforded by the insertion of an extra sheet of commendatory
verses addressed by Field to Jonson in some copies of the 1607
quarto of Volpone. Field's verses are amateurish-he speaks
justly of his 'weak flame'-but they show a great awe of Jonson,
whom 'to dare commend were damnable presumption. The
lines should be compared with the much more mature address
'to his worthy and beloved friend Master Ben Jonson on his
Catiline3. ' Field had been educated by Mulcaster at the
Merchant Taylors' school, but 'taken' by N. Giles as one of the
company of the children of the revels. Giles was accused of
kidnapping boys against their parents' wishes, and we may con-
jecture that Field would not have been annexed, had his strenuous
father been alive to protect him.
Field's first play, A Woman is a Weather-cocke, was produced
in 1610. In the first scene, Scudmore is discovered reading a
vehement letter from Bellafront, the lady he loves. To him, thus
occupied, enters his friend Nevill on his way to a wedding. The
lover very prettily takes his friend into his confidence, enlarges
like a Romeo on his mistress,
Whose face brought concord and an end of jars,
and passionately proclaims,
She is the food, the sleep, the air I live by.
He ends with the lady's name; whereupon his friend blurts out in
amazement, ‘But that's the wedding I was going to. ' This dramatic
scene is put before us with a force and vividness remarkable in so
young a writer. In itself, it is an excellent beginning ; but the
Jonsonian 'humours' of the next scene jar a little. They are not
in the same key as the romantic passionate opening of the play.
But Field's wit is considerable and is not a mere copy of
Jonson. His manner has a sprightliness and good-humour, and
a
1 They read Horace and Martial together; see Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations
with Drummond, ed. Laing, D. , p. 11.
? It is contained in the British Museum copy, C 12, c. 17, which was presented by
Jonson to John Florio with an inscription in Ben's autograph to his loving father
and friend, the aid of his Muses. ' See Percy Simpson in Notes and Queries, Ser. VIII,
vol. VIII, p. 301.
But in this age where jigs and dances move
How few there are that this pure work approve.
.
## p. 222 (#240) ############################################
222 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
an occasional naturalness, which are his own, and differentiate
his comic style quite definitely from Jonson's.
The second act is constructed on the same plan as the first. It
begins with a semi-romantic scene and ends with 'humour. ' When
captain Pouts, who has been rejected by Katharine, publicly insults
her at the door of the church in which she has just been married
to Strange, she urges her new husband to vindicate her honour;
and, perhaps, no better example could be given of Field's capacity
as a writer of strong, direct, blank verse than her invective:
Thou wert ordained,
And in thy cradle marked to call me wife,
And in that title made as my defence,
Yet sufferedst him to go away with life,
Wounding my honour dead before thy face!
Redeem it on his head, and his own way,
Even by the sword, his long profession,
And set it clear amongst the tongues of men,
That all eyes may discern it slandered,
Or thou shalt ne'er enjoy me as a wife.
The verse is in the manner of Shakespeare in the Henry V
period, although with less music and very little imaginative
decoration, and the excellence of its directness and spontaneity
is due, no doubt, to Field's training as an actor. His use of
language, too, is free, like Shakespeare's—to be understood by
the audience though not always approved by the grammarian. In
the passage quoted, ‘his long profession, with the meaning, ‘for so
long a time his profession,' has a Shakespearean sound, as, also, has
the rather enigmatic, but still forcible, 'made' of the third line.
Strange's speech, a little later, about the law's inequalities, again,
is forcible, eloquent blank verse. But the second part of the plot
overloads the play as a whole. Field, as a scholar of Jonson,
desires to show his dexterity as a plotter ; but, like all young
writers of promise, and like all immature dramatists, he gives his
audience too much, and cannot endure to limit his own scope.
In this play, which is full both of matter and of varied promise
of dramatic ability, Ben Jonson is obviously the master most con-
sciously copied. The ‘humours' are in Jonson's manner, as are
the complicated plottings. The compression of the action into
exactly one day is in accordance with Ben's teaching. It might
be contended that a certain intensity in the serious scenes
copies the splendid passion of Volpone, which is the high water
mark of Jonson's art. This, however, would be a mistake. The
serious scenes of the play are essentially romantic and idealistic,
suggesting Romeo and Juliet rather than The Alchemist. But
a
## p. 223 (#241) ############################################
3
T
1
ป
It
Field's Amends for Ladies
223
Romeo has been brought up as a player and has appeared upon
the public stage from his childhood, and Ben Jonson has been his
schoolmaster. He has, therefore, lost all exterior softness and
sentiment, and, at first reading, a certain hardness and bravado
in his manner deceive the student. Field's second play, Amends
for Ladies, followed hard upon the first, and was intended to atone
for the many hard things said against women in the first play.
There are three heroines, the lady Honour, the lady Perfect and
the lady Bright, who, as maid, wife and widow, vindicate, respec-
tively, the claims of their sex to constancy and virtue. It will be
seen, therefore, that, again, the scheme of the play is too full of
incident; there are three plays in one. The second play, on the
whole, is a more hasty piece of work than the first; it has the
drawbacks of an after-thought; but there is a distinct maturity
and strengthening to be noted in its style. Field's natural bent
is, more obviously than before, to draw ideal heroes, headstrong
and indomitable. He does not yet show much power of characteri-
sation; his heroes and heroines are all repetitions of one type.
We remember that one of his great parts was Bussy D'Ambois,
and that Chapman addresses some lines 'to his loved son Nat
Field. ' The comic scenes of the second play are less original and
less amusing than those of the first. There is something perfunc-
tory about 'the merry prankes of Moll Cut-purse, Or, the humour
of roaring. And, again, all that part of the play which uses the
plot of 'The Curious Impertinent' in Don Quixote, in which a
husband, in order to prove his wife's virtue, eggs on his friend to
tempt her, is intolerable to modern feeling. Field's audacity and
directness of treatment make him, when his subject is unpleasant,
unusually outrageous, even for the Jacobean stage. Yet he
cherishes an ideal of incorruptible and unassailable virtue which
was rare in the drama of the period.
Besides writing these two comedies, Field collaborated both
with Fletcher and Massinger. Of these collaborations, we need
mention only The Fatall Dowry, produced about 1619, shortly
before Field retired from the stage? It has been common to
refer to Field the lighter parts of plays in which he collaborated ;
but what we have noted in his work will make it highly probable
that Field, quite as much as Massinger, was responsible for the
romantic side of the play and especially for the uncompromising
honesty of Romont. In this respect, Chapman was his master;
and, from Chapman and Jonson equally, he learnt to remind his
i Cf. ante, chap. VI.
1
6
3
## p. 224 (#242) ############################################
224 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
reader that 'a play is not so idle a thing as thou art, but a mirror
of men's lives and actions. ' And yet his profession irked him; 'thou
know'st where to hear of me for a year or two and no more,'
he says, in the address to the reader which we have quoted. He
married about 1619 and became a publisher, dying in 1633. In
1616, he addressed a letter to Sutton, the preacher at St Mary
Overy, who, like Field's own father, was a great denouncer of the
stage. Field very loyally defends his profession; but his letter is
very remarkable for its religious earnestness, which, in itself, is
enough to explain his retirement.
Richard Brome', like Field, was in a special sense educated by
Jonson, and it will be convenient to consider his work after Field's
The stagekeeper who opens the induction to Bartholomew
Fayre, having occasion to pronounce the play 'a very conceited,
scurvy one,' looks behind the arras ‘lest the poet hear me or his
man, Master Brome. ' This was in 1614. Prefixed to Brome's
Northern Lasse, and dated, therefore, not later than 1632, we have
Jonson's characteristic sonnet 'to my old faithful servant and by
his continued virtue my loving friend . . . Mr Richard Brome. In
the first line, 'I had you for a servant, once, Dick Brome,' we
almost hear Jonson speak. He goes on to say that Brome has
sedulously worked at his profession :
You learned it well, and for it served your time,
A prenticeship.
Fleay regards this apprenticeship as extending over the whole of
the seven years 1623 to 1629. In 1623, we first hear of Brome as
an author. A Fault in Friendship was licensed in that year,
‘written by Brome and young Jonson. ' Unfortunately, the play
has not survived; but we may allow ourselves to suppose that the
servant and the son pursued their dramatic studies together, under
the father's august and austere supervision. We know nothing of
Brome's parents; but a sonnet of some literary merit by a brother
Stephen is printed among the poems prefixed to The Northern
Lasse. We must beware, therefore, of assuming that Brome was
of very lowly rank and uneducated till Jonson took him in
hand. This notion is suggested by the low life in Brome's plays,
as well as by a humility towards public and private patrons in
Brome's prologues and epilogues, which, sometimes, is almost
servile. But the sonnet must not be ignored ; and, when we find
.
1 Pronounced Broom. '
## p. 225 (#243) ############################################
Richard Brome
225
Jonson, in a well known epigram', expecting his 'man' to read
'a piece of Virgil, Tacitus, Livy, or of some better book' to his
guests at supper, we conjecture that the servant was not so much
a valet as a secretary and amanuensis, whose duties, from the first,
in connection with Jonson's dramatic and literary work, required
a grammar school education. The same inference is suggested by
the easy use of Latin in the sketch of the amusing pedant Sarpego
in The City Witt. Jonson is copied unblushingly. Sarpego’s
speech, ‘Diogenes Laertius on a certain time demanded of Cor-
nelius Tacitus, an areopagite of Syracusa, what was the most
commodious and expeditest method to kill the itch,' is modelled on
Clove's in Every Man out of His Humour: 'Aristotle in his dae-
monologia approves Scaliger for the best navigator in his time,
and in his hypercritics he reports him to be Heautontimoru-
menos 12' But there is very little of this misuse of long words and
classical names in the part; Sarpego redeems his promise, 'His
grace will see that we can speak true Latin and construe Ludovicus
Vives'; and his Latin has a sprightliness and comicality hardly
to be attained by a writer whose studies began after his school
days were over. But, if Brome's education was not much inferior to
Field's, the contrast between the personal characters of Jonson's
two ‘sons' is all the more striking. Field has more than a touch
of Jonson's arrogance, and inherits some of his strength of style.
Brome's meekness verges on servility. The note of self-depre-
ciation continually recurs:
A little wit, less learning, no poetry
This playmaker dares boast.
He is always reverent and loyal to Jonson; but his attitude of
deference to his audience, and his modest estimate of his own
powers as a writer, make quite clear his unlikeness to his master.
For all his sedulous imitation of Jonson's style and methods,
Brome has little of his master's soul in him. He can only be
Jonson on a small scale; but Jonson on a small scale is not
Jonson. Brome's sketches of London life are varied, minute,
careful, spirited, and yet they displease; they cannot be read
continuously without weariness, and are extremely coarse. Some
critics have been pleased to decide that Brome describes life from
the groom's point of view, and have ascribed his coarseness to bis
want of education and humble origin. The truer explanation is
1 Epigram ci.
? This parallel is noted in Faust's dissertation, Richard Brome, Halle, 1887, p. 52.
E. L. VI. CH, IX.
15
## p. 226 (#244) ############################################
226 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
that he uses Jonson's manner without Jonson's full-blooded,
massive humanity, without his satiric intensity, without his intel-
lectual power; so that the Jonsonian scenes in Brome, his
numerous efforts to describe the humours of London life, repel
or tire the reader.
Fifteen of Brome's plays have come down to us. Four of these
were published in quarto in Brome's lifetime ; five were printed
together, in 1653, shortly after his death ; five more in 1659; and
one other, in quarto, in 1657. The plays have been conveniently
classed under the headings of comedies of manners, romantic
comedies and romantic dramas of intrigue. These divisions ex-
hibit Brome's debt to Jonson, for the first class is much the
largest, including nine plays? . But these nine plays are not purely
Jonsonian. The Northern Lasse is the earliest of the extant
plays. It was printed in 1632 and, again, in 1635 and in 1663. It
was the most popular of Brome's plays and definitely made his
reputation as a writer. It is full of humours, which fill up the
scenes of an ingenious plot; but its popularity was mainly due
to the romantic note struck in the character of the northern lass
herself. The modern reader finds it hard to detect the charm of
Constance; she is very thinly and imperfectly drawn, and her
‘northern’ speech is clumsy ; but she pleased John Ford and
Thomas Dekker. It would appear that the seventeenth century
found in her some faint anticipation of the charm of the Scottish
heroines of The Waverley Novels. Brome did not get this romantic
note from Jonson, and the six romantic plays suggest to us that it
was more natural to him than Jonson's hard, intellectual satire,
and that he would have done better work if he had used it oftener.
But the nine plays of Jonsonian humour and plot have certain
merits. Brome always does his best. He works without enthusiasm,
but steadily and conscientiously, and, as pieces of stagecraft, the
plays are never contemptible. As a picture of the London of the
period, they are full of interest and value. If their outlook were
broader, if they depicted not only the vices and follies of life, but,
also, its virtues and amenities, they would be read with eagerness,
but it is not fair to blame Brome only for this defect. It is the
weakness of the satiric method of Jonson that it tends continually
to describe only what it can scourge, so that its world gets uglier
and uglier. Brome's temperament fitted him for a kindlier type
· The Northern Lasse, The Antipodes, The Sparagus Garden, Covent Garden Weeded,
The New Academy or The New Exchange, The Damoiselle, The Court Beggar, The
Madd Couple well matcht, The City Witt.
## p. 227 (#245) ############################################
Brome's Sparagus Garden
227
of comedy, and there are many indications in his plays that he
would have produced better work under a gentler master than
Jonson Jonson's satire is often mitigated by the introduction
of a purely comic idea, which is not vicious or even eccentric, but
merely whimsical, such as Morose's hatred of noise. Brome shows
a special aptitude in copying his master in this respect, and his
touch is lighter. Jonson is sometimes over-ingenious and his
workmanship heavy-handed. The Antipodes is Brome's best
effort in this kind.
Among the less interesting of the comedies of manners
which may be regarded as fairly representative of Brome's usual
work, The Sparagus Garden, acted 1635, takes its title from
the custom of going to eat asparagus in a garden where it
was grown. Such places were haunts of disreputable people of
both sexes, and the 'humours' of the garden are coarse though
sketched with much vivacity and some wit. They bulk so largely
in the play that it is justly classed as a comedy of manners.
The scenes in which Timothy Hoyden, a yeoman's son from the
country, is shown the way to become a fine gentleman, are ex-
cellent comedy ; they are whimsical as well as witty, and written
with a genuine gaiety. When Brome's humours have this gaiety
and lightness of touch, we are reminded of another master than
Jonson ; we are conscious of something of the spirit of Dekker.
Among the commendatory verses prefixed to The Northern Lasse
are some characteristic lines 'To my Sonne Broom and his Lasse,'
by Thomas Dekker. How much friendship these words imply we
have no means of discovering ; but Brome is more truly a 'son' of
Dekker than of Jonson. His best and happiest work is in the
vein of Dekker. But the scenes of our play are not all in the
asparagus garden. The first two suggest a quiet domestic drama
a
which might turn to tragedy or comedy, but would not harmonise
properly with the garden humours. Two young men decide to
attempt the reconcilement of two angry old men by proposing a
match between the son of one of them and the adopted daughter
of the other. The first scene describes the attempt and its failure.
In the second scene, the two friends try to console the son for
their failure and resolve to help him. Brome's verse rises to an
almost passionate height, as Gilbert insists that
Love is wit itself,
And through a thousand lots will find a way
To his desired end.
Both these scenes describe common life simply and naturally, and
15—2
## p. 228 (#246) ############################################
228 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
with a touch of idealism not very common in Brome, who recants
a
his usual creed when he confesses:
Poets they are the life and death of things.
The play is a mine of allusions and references to the life of old
London. From this point of view, Brome will always be worth
reading.
The brightest and pleasantest of Brome's comedies of manners
is The City Witt, or The Woman wears the Breeches. It is the
best, just because it most successfully keeps in one key. Fleay
contends that it is the earliest of the extant dramas, and says:
* Dekker's influence is more clearly visible in it than in the other
plays. ' He means that the gaiety and lightness of touch which we
have noted as Dekker's rather than Jonson's are very noticeable
in the play. But the prologue, composed by Brome for a revival
of the play, states that it 'past with good applause in former
times'; adding that
It was written when
It bore just judgment and the seal of Ben.
We must suppose, therefore, that Dekker's influence was sub-
ordinate to Jonson's, and that Brome himself was unconscious of
the force of the former. Its strength was due to its suitability to
Brome's temperament. The lines prefixed to The Northern Lasse
were the last we have from Dekker's pen; he, probably, died
before the end of 1632.
In his plots, Brome is apt to be over-ingenious, so that the
action of his plays is either obscure or too episodical. It is the
merit of The City Witt that its episodes are all held together by
one central idea which is clear and simple, so that the play is well-
knit and easily keeps the attention of the spectator to the end.
A young citizen, Mr Crasy, by his kindness and easy-going dis-
position, has involved himself in many difficulties, and discovers
that his fairweather friends all fall away when he asks for their
help. He disappears, therefore, and returns disguised, with the
object of bringing his false friends to book for their meanness.
The play is a lively and laughable protest against worship of rank
and money, and has in it a true breath of that unworldly spirit
which is conspicuous in Dekker's best plays. The protest is all
the more effective as coming from the tradesman's level. In that
age, the development of trade brought with it new temptations.
Dishonest speculation and the making of fortunes by all sorts of
trickery were becoming common. At the same time, the new
## p. 229 (#247) ############################################
Brome's City Witt
229
devices by which bankruptcy was made profitable were scorned
by oldfashioned tradesmen. Crasy declares
I must take nimble hold upon occasion
Or lie for ever in the bankrupt ditch
Where no man lends a hand to draw one out.
I will leap over it or fall bravely in't,
Scorning the bridge of baseness, composition,
Which doth infect a city like the plague,
And teach men knavery that were never born to 't.
His troubles are largely due to the odious malice of his mother-
in-law, Mistress Pyannet Sneakup, who illustrates the evil effect
upon tradesmen's wives of the degenerate times. Her son-in-law
asks gently, “May not an honest man—' when he is taken up by
the irate lady-
Honest man! Who the devil wished thee to be an honest man? Here's my
worshipfal husband, Mr Sneakup, that from a grasier is come to be a Justice of
Peace: and, what, as an honest man? He grew to be able to give nine
hundred pound with my daughter; and what, by honesty? Mr Sneakup and
I are come up to live i’ th City, and here we have lyen these three years;
and, what? for honesty? Honesty! What should the City do with honesty,
when 'tis enough to undoe a whole Corporation? Why are your wares
gumm’d; your shops dark; your prices writ in strange characters? what, for
honesty?
This 'woman of an eternal tongue, this creature of an ever-
lasting noise' is the most considerable character in the piece ;
but Sarpego is equally good in another direction. We have already
touched upon him. His sudden scraps of Latin are very comical-
O Dii! Quem video? Nonne Mr Sneakup? '-and one wonders
how far they were followed by the audience. Some of his para-
phrases are very happy—“Tempora mutantur; the town's ours
again'; 'Lupus in fabula ; the devil's in the woman's tongue’;
'Sic transit gloria mundi ; the learned is coney-caught. ' The
briskness and bustle of the play are maintained to the end, and,
if it were not for the absence of Mrs Tryman from the list of
dramatis personae, the dénouement would be a complete surprise.
Crasy's honesty, his ‘unsuspicious freeness' and 'most easy good-
ness' flavour the play and convince us that Brome, with all his
s
grossness, was unsophisticated.
By way of proving this point more fully and carrying further
the comparison of Brome with Dekker, we may next consider
Brome's masterpiece, A Joviall Crew, Or, The Merry Beggars.
It was the latest play written by Brome, being produced in 1641
and continuing on the stage till it came to be the very last play
acted before parliament closed the theatres in 1642—'it had the
## p. 230 (#248) ############################################
230 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
luck to tumble last of all in the Epidemicall ruin of the Scene!
his brother and retired with his queen and two daughters to a
'desert isle,' sending a general challenge 'to all the youthful bloods
of Africa' to
Woo, win, entice, or any way defeat
Me of my charge, my daughters of their hearts.
The successful suitors—both of them, apparently-
Shall with their loves wear my imperial crown.
But, before the play begins, there is a prose induction containing
the conversation of three gentlemen, who interrupt the prologue,
supposing him to be the boy who should provide them with stools.
They ask whether the play has any connection with the recent
West-Ward Hoel and suppose that there is some political libel in
it, since the title, Ile of Guls, is obviously suggested by Nashe's Isle
of Dogs? . To the disappointment of the first gentleman, the pro-
logue protests fervently against these suppositions. He desires 'to
1 Cf. ante, chap. VII.
2 Cf. ante, vol. v, chap. VI.
## p. 213 (#231) ############################################
Day's Ile of Guls
213
hear vice anatomized and abuse let blood in the master vein'; he
asks of the play, 'Is there any great man's life charactered in't? . . .
And there be not wormwood water and copperas in't, I'll not like it. '
The second gentleman cares for none of these things; his tastes
are simpler; 'Is there any good bawdry in't, jests of an ell deep
and a fathom broad? ' He wants scenes that will make a man's
spirits stand on their tip toes and die his blood in a deep scarlet,
like your Ovid's Ars Amandi. ' When the prologue objects that
chaste ears would never endure it, he retorts, 'What should chaste
ears do at a play? ' But the third gentleman cares for neither
railing nor bawdry; he requires 'a stately penned history'. . .
‘high-written'-'mere fustian,' his friend calls it, 'full of tear-cut
thunderclaps. '
Upon these three kinds, says the dramatist, the popular audience
insists—all these we must have and all in one play or 'tis already
condemned to the hell of eternal disgrace. The induction shows
that Day intended to produce a new style if he could; it shows,
also, that he was very much afraid of failing; he has none of
Ben Jonson's sturdy scorn of popular taste; when the prologue is
finally allowed to speak, we get only a faint-hearted defiance of
'Opinion's voice,' whose tyranny is
The misery that waits upon the pen
Of the best writers.
It is not surprising, therefore, that Day fails to emancipate
himself from the evils he deprecates. In the matter of bawdry
especially, he yields to the base demands of 'opinion. ' He is not
more coarse than others and he makes no attempt to dye our blood
in a deep scarlet ; but he takes his story and his characters from
Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia and besmirches the sweet and noble
romance of his original with the indecencies of the work-a-day
Elizabethan drama. It may be urged that Shakespeare does the
same thing, even in As You Like It. But Shakespeare creates
such a soul of purity in his heroines that their most outrageous
jests and words fail to hurt them. Day puts no soul at all into
his women; his characters have almost no personality. Although
he protests that he will not be a satirist, it is his railer, Dametas,
who comes nearest in his play to being a live man, and the duke
and his queen are vulgarised as well as the heroines. We are fre-
quently reminded of Shakespeare's earlier comedies in reading Day.
In The Ile of Guls, we catch echoes from A Midsummer Night's
Dream. But this similarity almost forces us to compare Day's
duke and duchess with Shakespeare's Theseus and Hippolyta.
## p. 214 (#232) ############################################
214 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
What would have become of the romance and charm of Shake-
speare's play if Theseus—and, with him, Hippolyta—had been
involved in a clumsy intrigue, depriving the king and hero of all
grace and dignity? The two pairs of lovers are equally uninterest-
ing. It is enough to say that Day in no way differentiates them;
and we are unable to care much about what happens to either
couple. All these things interfere with our appreciation of Day's
art in providing us with a pretty tangle, neatly and deftly untied
at the end. Such an art there is in The Ile of Guls, and it is a
new thing in the Elizabethan drama as Day uses it. It points
forward to Restoration comedy, and has some kinship with the
comedy of Molière.
And it is not only in his plot that Day shows clear conception
of a comedy different from the Shakespearean romantic comedy
and from the Jonsonian comedy of humours—both of them full of
life and humanity; in his dialogue there is a new note-a new con-
vention of epigram and repartee—which, together with neatness of
plot, marks the typical Restoration comedy. In The Ile of Guls,
the plot by which all the characters are collected together at
the end of the play blindfolded, as it were, to find themselves
plain gulls when the bandage is taken off, is cleverly and neatly
elaborated; but, in the course of the play, we also have a continued
effort to present a dialogue duly arranged and ordered, in which
the wit has a scheme and keeps the rules. The most notable
instance is the famous tennis match scene in the second act.
Bullen says truly: 'Outside of Shakespeare's early comedies it
would be difficult to find among the dramatists of the time such
another tour de force of sprightly repartee’; but, although
Shakespeare's early work, probably, was the chief influence in
producing Day's type of comedy, there is a noticeable contrast
between the two kinds. The copiousness and exuberance of all
the punning and repartee of Love's Labour's Lost produce an
effect the exact opposite of Day's balanced and considered epi-
grams. Shakespeare gives his characters full play in the scenes
of quip and repartee; Day holds his in. His art has not enough
vigour and flow in it; Shakespeare's has too much. Shakespeare,
again, is eager to break loose from the fetters of rime for the
larger scope and movement of blank verse; Day, on the contrary,
desires to get back to rime; he has not breath enough for Eliza-
bethan blank verse. Shakespeare's fountain gushes and leaps, with
much danger to artificial restraints of all sorts; Day's rivulet, on
the contrary, flows obediently whither it is led, and often trickles
>
## p. 215 (#233) ############################################
Humour out of Breath
215
nearly dry. Elizabethan extravagance and overstrain are foreign
to his art, which is Attic, or even Doric, in its simplicity and
orderliness. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at that Day never
does himself justice in his plays; he is too much hampered and
confused by the alien conditions in which his genius has to work.
In The Ile of Guls, it is only the induction wbich is quite easy and
lucid. The tennis scene, perhaps because the terms used are no
longer familiar, is hard to follow, and the verse effects are too
complicated. We see what the artist means, but his execution is
not perfect. A scene in Law-Trickes, where the countess dis-
courses to her maids as they sew, is his nearest approach to
dramatic effectiveness in his own style. This play, probably, was
written in 1606, and Humour out of Breath in 1607. The three
plays present, quite recognisably, a new dramatic type, but they
do not coherently and adequately realise it.
The title Humour out of Breath is actually quoted from The
Comedy of Errors, and the influence of Shakespeare's early
comedies is very evident in all three plays; but the neatness and
compactness of Day's prose style in his dialogue is more akin to
the manner of another master-John Lyly. Lyly does not exhibit
in his comedies the copiousness and exuberance which characterise
Shakespeare's first work. Lyly's plays, even more than Day's, lack
flesh and blood, and belong to a world of moonshine and shadow.
But, within their limits, they have a true charm of fancy, and their
style escapes the pedantry and tediousness of the writer's prose
work, and is as deft and crisp as Day at his best. To complete
the parallel, we may note that Lyly (supposing him to be their
author") gives us a handful of beautiful lyrics, remarkable as be-
longing not to the true Elizabethan type, but, rather, to the later
style of Herrick. Day's best lyric work in The Parliament of Bees
is, in the same way, post-Elizabethan. It must be compared with
Browne's Pastorals or Milton's L'Allegro.
· Day describes The Parliament of Bees as “an allegorical
description of the actions of good and bad men in these our
days. ' But he composed it from scenes contributed to two plays
which have reached us under the titles The Noble Souldier
and The Wonder of A Kingdome. Dekker, in cooperation with
Samuel Rowley, was mainly responsible for these plays. Between
their style and Day's, there could be no real accord, and only
enough of Day is left to make it clear that The Parliament
of Bees was not, as we might suppose, completely fresh work
1 On this question, cf. ante, vol. v, chap. VI, p. 125.
## p. 216 (#234) ############################################
216 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
constituting a new departure in the art of the writer. Scenes
contributed to more than one play were the groundwork upon
which Day composed his dainty and graceful series of 'Colloquies'
or 'Characters. The fact throws a true light on Day's dramatic
work; but the drama was not his natural vein. What would be
interesting to know is how he came to write The Parliament of
Bees. In the excellent prose tract, Peregrinatio Scholastica,
written, apparently, before The Parliament, he speaks of himself
as 'becalmed in a fog of necessity,' that is to say, he writes be-
cause he needs money, which he hopes to get not only from the
printer, but, also, from the patron to whom he dedicates his book.
He says, also, that he is lying at anchor 'before the Islands, Meliora
Speramus. ' Fleay's tempting suggestion is that Day means holy
orders by this, and by the 'shrine of Latria,' towards which, in the
allegory, the sometimes student of Gunvill and Caius Colledge in
Cambridge' is travelling. If this were so, it would be necessary
for the old playwright, until he was duly ordained, to make money
by some more edifying form of literature than plays. He, therefore,
wrote Peregrinatio and, after that, used certain scenes from old
plays to make his unique Parliament of Bees. There is extant a
manuscript copy of The Bees earlier than the quarto of 1641, and
the changes are not all of them merely in style; the poem is made
definitely graver in revision. The delightful first title disappears
as too flippant-'An olde Manuscript conteyning the Parliament
of Bees, found In a Hollow Tree In a garden at Hibla, in a strandge
Languadge, And now faithfully Translated into Easie English Verse
by John Daye, Cantabrig. ' The poem, it should be noted, is not a
masque in the ordinary and technical sense. It rather resembles
a series of pastoral eclogues. The successive scenes have no con-
tinuity, except such as is supplied by the idea of making all the
characters bees. Day conceives his poem as a series of satires ;
but he charges his bees to
Carry an humble wing
Buzz boldly what I bid, but do not sting
Any particular,
It is only the usuring bee whom we can identify:
Most of the timber that his state repairs
He hews out o' the bones of foundred players :
They feed on poets' brains, he eats their breath.
This can be none other than Philip Henslowe.
We gather, from both Peregrinatio and The Parliament, that
Day was not seeking orders from any unworthy motives. The prose
a
## p. 217 (#235) ############################################
Robert Armin
217
of the tract is more fluent than that of the plays. The style of the
poem, too, has, more fully than that of the plays, Day's special gift-'a
sense of delicate music in the fall and arrangement of quite common
words' In spite of the fog of necessity' around him, the writer
is at peace with himself and the world. A note of peevishness and
bitterness which occasionally obtruded itself in his earlier work
has disappeared, and the poet's music in his last poem is serene,
spontaneous and sweet. John Day died before the quarto of
The Parliament was printed, probably in the autumn of 1640.
A belated Elizabethan of considerable interest whose extant
work was printed in the early years of king James was Robert
Armin, reported to have been trained by Tarlton and called his
''
son. He followed William Kemp as player of Dogberry about
1599, continued in Shakespeare's company for some years and
has a place in the list of players in the 1623 folio. His single
play, printed 1609, is entitled The History of the two Maids of
More-clacke; With the life and simple maner of John in the
Hospitall. On the title-page, there is a cut of Armin in the
character of John in the hospital. In his words to the 'friendly
peruser,' Armin calls the play 'a Historical discourse,' and says
that
he would have 'againe inacted' John, if he had been able. His
age, presumably, prevented him, for he seems to have been born
about 1564 and was dead by 1612. He adds, you shall find verse,
as well blancke, as crancke, yet in the prose let it pass for currant. '
The blank verse of the play is in so disordered a state that it
has been compared with the mutilated 1603 quarto of Hamlet.
The phenomena suggest the solution that Armin was not re-
sponsible for the verse, but supplied the prose of the old-
fashioned fool's part of John, in which, earlier, he had made a
hit. He was no more the author of the serious part of the play,
than William Kemp was of the whole of A Knack to Know a
Knave. But the play is interesting, in spite of its corrupt con-
dition. There are in it indications that, in some form or other, it
dates back to Elizabeth's reign ; but, also, echoes from Shake-
speare's tragedies—from Macbeth, for instance—which date, ap-
parently, from about 1608. Humil's doubt of his mother's honour
reminds us of Hamlet, and the play is worth careful study for its
bearing on the Hamlet problem. The plot is absurdly compli-
cated and full of incident, and, in this respect, we are reminded of
Chettle's Tragedy of Hoffman. The play has genuine dramatic
1 Nero and other plays, p. 208.
## p. 218 (#236) ############################################
218 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
6
power, forcible eloquence and fine poetry, all of which we should
be inclined to ascribe to Dekker or Chettle, if another author than
Armin himself must be looked for. There are, however, some re-
semblances between Armin's other works and our play. In 1605,
he published Foole upon Foole, or, Sixe Sortes of Sottes, a prose
tract, amplified, in 1608, into A nest of Ninnies', in the dedica-
tion of which “To the most true and rightly compleat in all good
gifts and graces, the generous Gentlemen of Oxenford, Cambridge,
and the Innes of Court'he declares I have seene the stars at mid-
night in your societies. ' This, apparently, gave offence to some
of the graver spirits among the old player's hosts, and his next
and last tract, dated 1609, contains a kind of apology for it. This
tract, The Italian Taylor and his Boy, a verse translation from
the Italian, is written with considerable dexterity, and raises our
opinion of Armin's gifts and scholarship. It is curious that we
should have nothing from his pen earlier than 1605, although
Nashe and Harvey, in 1593, speak of him as a common pamphle-
teer and 'son' of Elderton.
Middleton's influence on comedy is apparent in the two sur-
viving plays of the lawyer Edward Sharpham-The Fleire, acted
probably early in 1606, and Cupid's Whirligig, produced about a
year later. Both plays were frequently reprinted, from 1607
onwards. They owed their popularity to their wit and rapidity
of action, but can hardly claim to be more than farces; there
is in them the shadow of Middleton's art, and more than the
substance of his grossness. Much better than these is Lodowick
Barry's single play Ram-Alley or Merrie-Trickes, acted perhaps
as early as 1609 and extant in several quartos. Ram alley was
a particularly disreputable lane, leading from Fleet street to the
Temple, and of the coarseness promised by the title of the play we
find, as it proceeds, a full supply. But this realistic indecency
is relieved by some breath of life and character. Many echoes
from Shakespeare's plays are introduced, both by way of parody
and of imitation. There is much of the London of the period-
both of the place and its manners—in this comedy; and it not
only shows force in its presentation of life and character, but is
also marked by a vigour in its blank verse, which, in one or two
places, almost reaches distinction. The prologue says that, if the
play succeeds, the writer will attempt something more serious,
which even puritans will accept as satisfactory. Barry, no doubt,
1 Cf. ante, vol. iv, p. 532.
## p. 219 (#237) ############################################
John Cooke and Robert Tailor
219
overrated the complaisance of puritans; but he was right in feeling
that he had in him the power to produce work of a higher rank
altogether than his Ram alley obscenities. It is disappointing
that this one play and his name are all that we know of him.
Two other single plays, Greene's Tu Quoque and The Hog hath
lost his Pearl, we may mention at this point, because they belong
rather to the early comedy of Haughton than the later Jonsonian
comedy. They are less touched by Middleton's influence than
Ram-Alley. The clever acting of Thomas Greene made Greene's
Tu Quoque or The Cittie Gallant very popular about 1611. It was
printed in 1614 as written by Jo. Cooke, Gent. ,' and Thomas
Heywood contributes a preface stating that both the author and
the actor Greene are dead. It is one of the pleasantest and live-
liest among the productions of the lesser dramatists. The blank
verse is not so good as Barry's; but Cooke's art and his capacity
for working out a comic idea are above the ordinary, and his prose
is excellent. The master, Staines, changes places with his man,
Bubble, and coaches him to take his place in the fashionable
world. There is an excellent scene in which the affectations of the
Italianate Englishman are taken off, probably aimed at Coryate.
The women in the play remind us of the girls of Porter and
Haughton; they are, perhaps, more refined—the sisters of
university students rather than of tradesmen—but they are very
naturally and pleasantly drawn. A scene in which Joyce, anxious
to hide the state of her heart, confounds and bewilders her lover,
first by her silence and then by her speech, recalls the vigorous
domestic comedy of Porter? It is curious that we should know
nothing whatever of 'Jo. Cooke,' and that, like Barry, he
should have just one play to his credit. The Hog hath lost his
Pearl is, again, the single play of a writer whose name—Robert
Tailor—is all that is known about him. Tailor's literary capacity
is below that of either Barry or Cooke. To a play of low comedy,
he tacks on a romantic plot of a painful character? which only a
master of dramatic art could make endurable. Tailor manages the
prose of his comedy much better than the verse of his moral
romance; the main interest of the play, however, is not in its style
or story but in the circumstances of its production. Sir Henry
Wotton, in a letter dated 16123, tells us that 'some sixteen
? See ante, vol. v, chap. XIII.
2 Otway's Orphan deals with the same plot.
3 The Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, ed. Smith, L. P. , vol. 1, p. 13.
## p. 220 (#238) ############################################
220 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
apprentices,' having secretly learnt their parts, 'took up the
White Fryers for their theatre,' and invited their friends to see
them perform The Hog hath lost his Pearl. The sheriffs inter-
vened before the end of the performance and carried off six or
seven of the apprentices to prison. He adds that it was supposed
that Sir John Swinnerton was meant by the hog, and the late
lord treasurer by the pearl. The prologue of the printed play
alludes to this incident, but says that
our swine,
Is not as divers critics did define,
Grunting at state affairs or invecting
Much at our city vices;
if the play pleases, 'we'll say 'tis fortunate, like Pericles. ' Like
the two plays mentioned before it, Tailor's is full of interest for
the student of Jacobean London.
We come now to the main stream of Jacobean dramatic work,
in which the influence of Jonson, both personal and by his art, is
all-pervasive.
Among the extant plays of the reign of king James, two by
Nathaniel Field are of such merit as to suggest that the writer,
probably, would have risen above the ranks of the lesser dramatists,
had he persevered in the prosecution of his art. He was born in
1587, a few months before his father's death. That father was the
famous preacher John Field, whose rousing discourse upon the
collapse of a gallery in Paris garden in 1583 has come down to
us? . It contains interesting details about the catastrophe and a
violent attack upon theatrical performances, with valuable in-
formation about London players and their theatres. Nat's elder
brother, Theophilus, was educated at Cambridge and rose to be
bishop of Hereford; and it is singular, therefore, that Nat Field's
name should be found first among the six 'principal comedians'
of the band of lads called the children of the queen’s revels, who
acted in Jonson's Cynthia's Revels in 1600. These boys were the
‘young eyases' discussed by Hamlet. For a time, as has been seen? ,
they rivalled men players in public favour; and Field, as he grew
older, maintained his position and may claim to have succeeded
Burbage as the leading actor on the English stage. Jonson, no
doubt, owed a debt to Field for his clever acting in Cynthia's Revels
and Poetaster, and the debt is repaid by the mention of Field, in
1614, in Bartholomew Fayre— Which is your Burbadge now? . . .
i Cf. , as to this incident, post, chap. XIV.
Cf. ante, chap. II, and post, chap. XI.
## p. 221 (#239) ############################################
Field's A Woman is a Weather-cocke 221
Your best actor, your Field ? ' Field joined the King's company
before he finally retired from the stage, and, in the 1623 folio of
Shakespeare's plays, he is seventeenth in the list there given of
twenty-six players.
Jonson told Drummond that “Nat Field was
his scholar. An interesting proof of Jonson’s regard for Field is
afforded by the insertion of an extra sheet of commendatory
verses addressed by Field to Jonson in some copies of the 1607
quarto of Volpone. Field's verses are amateurish-he speaks
justly of his 'weak flame'-but they show a great awe of Jonson,
whom 'to dare commend were damnable presumption. The
lines should be compared with the much more mature address
'to his worthy and beloved friend Master Ben Jonson on his
Catiline3. ' Field had been educated by Mulcaster at the
Merchant Taylors' school, but 'taken' by N. Giles as one of the
company of the children of the revels. Giles was accused of
kidnapping boys against their parents' wishes, and we may con-
jecture that Field would not have been annexed, had his strenuous
father been alive to protect him.
Field's first play, A Woman is a Weather-cocke, was produced
in 1610. In the first scene, Scudmore is discovered reading a
vehement letter from Bellafront, the lady he loves. To him, thus
occupied, enters his friend Nevill on his way to a wedding. The
lover very prettily takes his friend into his confidence, enlarges
like a Romeo on his mistress,
Whose face brought concord and an end of jars,
and passionately proclaims,
She is the food, the sleep, the air I live by.
He ends with the lady's name; whereupon his friend blurts out in
amazement, ‘But that's the wedding I was going to. ' This dramatic
scene is put before us with a force and vividness remarkable in so
young a writer. In itself, it is an excellent beginning ; but the
Jonsonian 'humours' of the next scene jar a little. They are not
in the same key as the romantic passionate opening of the play.
But Field's wit is considerable and is not a mere copy of
Jonson. His manner has a sprightliness and good-humour, and
a
1 They read Horace and Martial together; see Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations
with Drummond, ed. Laing, D. , p. 11.
? It is contained in the British Museum copy, C 12, c. 17, which was presented by
Jonson to John Florio with an inscription in Ben's autograph to his loving father
and friend, the aid of his Muses. ' See Percy Simpson in Notes and Queries, Ser. VIII,
vol. VIII, p. 301.
But in this age where jigs and dances move
How few there are that this pure work approve.
.
## p. 222 (#240) ############################################
222 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
an occasional naturalness, which are his own, and differentiate
his comic style quite definitely from Jonson's.
The second act is constructed on the same plan as the first. It
begins with a semi-romantic scene and ends with 'humour. ' When
captain Pouts, who has been rejected by Katharine, publicly insults
her at the door of the church in which she has just been married
to Strange, she urges her new husband to vindicate her honour;
and, perhaps, no better example could be given of Field's capacity
as a writer of strong, direct, blank verse than her invective:
Thou wert ordained,
And in thy cradle marked to call me wife,
And in that title made as my defence,
Yet sufferedst him to go away with life,
Wounding my honour dead before thy face!
Redeem it on his head, and his own way,
Even by the sword, his long profession,
And set it clear amongst the tongues of men,
That all eyes may discern it slandered,
Or thou shalt ne'er enjoy me as a wife.
The verse is in the manner of Shakespeare in the Henry V
period, although with less music and very little imaginative
decoration, and the excellence of its directness and spontaneity
is due, no doubt, to Field's training as an actor. His use of
language, too, is free, like Shakespeare's—to be understood by
the audience though not always approved by the grammarian. In
the passage quoted, ‘his long profession, with the meaning, ‘for so
long a time his profession,' has a Shakespearean sound, as, also, has
the rather enigmatic, but still forcible, 'made' of the third line.
Strange's speech, a little later, about the law's inequalities, again,
is forcible, eloquent blank verse. But the second part of the plot
overloads the play as a whole. Field, as a scholar of Jonson,
desires to show his dexterity as a plotter ; but, like all young
writers of promise, and like all immature dramatists, he gives his
audience too much, and cannot endure to limit his own scope.
In this play, which is full both of matter and of varied promise
of dramatic ability, Ben Jonson is obviously the master most con-
sciously copied. The ‘humours' are in Jonson's manner, as are
the complicated plottings. The compression of the action into
exactly one day is in accordance with Ben's teaching. It might
be contended that a certain intensity in the serious scenes
copies the splendid passion of Volpone, which is the high water
mark of Jonson's art. This, however, would be a mistake. The
serious scenes of the play are essentially romantic and idealistic,
suggesting Romeo and Juliet rather than The Alchemist. But
a
## p. 223 (#241) ############################################
3
T
1
ป
It
Field's Amends for Ladies
223
Romeo has been brought up as a player and has appeared upon
the public stage from his childhood, and Ben Jonson has been his
schoolmaster. He has, therefore, lost all exterior softness and
sentiment, and, at first reading, a certain hardness and bravado
in his manner deceive the student. Field's second play, Amends
for Ladies, followed hard upon the first, and was intended to atone
for the many hard things said against women in the first play.
There are three heroines, the lady Honour, the lady Perfect and
the lady Bright, who, as maid, wife and widow, vindicate, respec-
tively, the claims of their sex to constancy and virtue. It will be
seen, therefore, that, again, the scheme of the play is too full of
incident; there are three plays in one. The second play, on the
whole, is a more hasty piece of work than the first; it has the
drawbacks of an after-thought; but there is a distinct maturity
and strengthening to be noted in its style. Field's natural bent
is, more obviously than before, to draw ideal heroes, headstrong
and indomitable. He does not yet show much power of characteri-
sation; his heroes and heroines are all repetitions of one type.
We remember that one of his great parts was Bussy D'Ambois,
and that Chapman addresses some lines 'to his loved son Nat
Field. ' The comic scenes of the second play are less original and
less amusing than those of the first. There is something perfunc-
tory about 'the merry prankes of Moll Cut-purse, Or, the humour
of roaring. And, again, all that part of the play which uses the
plot of 'The Curious Impertinent' in Don Quixote, in which a
husband, in order to prove his wife's virtue, eggs on his friend to
tempt her, is intolerable to modern feeling. Field's audacity and
directness of treatment make him, when his subject is unpleasant,
unusually outrageous, even for the Jacobean stage. Yet he
cherishes an ideal of incorruptible and unassailable virtue which
was rare in the drama of the period.
Besides writing these two comedies, Field collaborated both
with Fletcher and Massinger. Of these collaborations, we need
mention only The Fatall Dowry, produced about 1619, shortly
before Field retired from the stage? It has been common to
refer to Field the lighter parts of plays in which he collaborated ;
but what we have noted in his work will make it highly probable
that Field, quite as much as Massinger, was responsible for the
romantic side of the play and especially for the uncompromising
honesty of Romont. In this respect, Chapman was his master;
and, from Chapman and Jonson equally, he learnt to remind his
i Cf. ante, chap. VI.
1
6
3
## p. 224 (#242) ############################################
224 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
reader that 'a play is not so idle a thing as thou art, but a mirror
of men's lives and actions. ' And yet his profession irked him; 'thou
know'st where to hear of me for a year or two and no more,'
he says, in the address to the reader which we have quoted. He
married about 1619 and became a publisher, dying in 1633. In
1616, he addressed a letter to Sutton, the preacher at St Mary
Overy, who, like Field's own father, was a great denouncer of the
stage. Field very loyally defends his profession; but his letter is
very remarkable for its religious earnestness, which, in itself, is
enough to explain his retirement.
Richard Brome', like Field, was in a special sense educated by
Jonson, and it will be convenient to consider his work after Field's
The stagekeeper who opens the induction to Bartholomew
Fayre, having occasion to pronounce the play 'a very conceited,
scurvy one,' looks behind the arras ‘lest the poet hear me or his
man, Master Brome. ' This was in 1614. Prefixed to Brome's
Northern Lasse, and dated, therefore, not later than 1632, we have
Jonson's characteristic sonnet 'to my old faithful servant and by
his continued virtue my loving friend . . . Mr Richard Brome. In
the first line, 'I had you for a servant, once, Dick Brome,' we
almost hear Jonson speak. He goes on to say that Brome has
sedulously worked at his profession :
You learned it well, and for it served your time,
A prenticeship.
Fleay regards this apprenticeship as extending over the whole of
the seven years 1623 to 1629. In 1623, we first hear of Brome as
an author. A Fault in Friendship was licensed in that year,
‘written by Brome and young Jonson. ' Unfortunately, the play
has not survived; but we may allow ourselves to suppose that the
servant and the son pursued their dramatic studies together, under
the father's august and austere supervision. We know nothing of
Brome's parents; but a sonnet of some literary merit by a brother
Stephen is printed among the poems prefixed to The Northern
Lasse. We must beware, therefore, of assuming that Brome was
of very lowly rank and uneducated till Jonson took him in
hand. This notion is suggested by the low life in Brome's plays,
as well as by a humility towards public and private patrons in
Brome's prologues and epilogues, which, sometimes, is almost
servile. But the sonnet must not be ignored ; and, when we find
.
1 Pronounced Broom. '
## p. 225 (#243) ############################################
Richard Brome
225
Jonson, in a well known epigram', expecting his 'man' to read
'a piece of Virgil, Tacitus, Livy, or of some better book' to his
guests at supper, we conjecture that the servant was not so much
a valet as a secretary and amanuensis, whose duties, from the first,
in connection with Jonson's dramatic and literary work, required
a grammar school education. The same inference is suggested by
the easy use of Latin in the sketch of the amusing pedant Sarpego
in The City Witt. Jonson is copied unblushingly. Sarpego’s
speech, ‘Diogenes Laertius on a certain time demanded of Cor-
nelius Tacitus, an areopagite of Syracusa, what was the most
commodious and expeditest method to kill the itch,' is modelled on
Clove's in Every Man out of His Humour: 'Aristotle in his dae-
monologia approves Scaliger for the best navigator in his time,
and in his hypercritics he reports him to be Heautontimoru-
menos 12' But there is very little of this misuse of long words and
classical names in the part; Sarpego redeems his promise, 'His
grace will see that we can speak true Latin and construe Ludovicus
Vives'; and his Latin has a sprightliness and comicality hardly
to be attained by a writer whose studies began after his school
days were over. But, if Brome's education was not much inferior to
Field's, the contrast between the personal characters of Jonson's
two ‘sons' is all the more striking. Field has more than a touch
of Jonson's arrogance, and inherits some of his strength of style.
Brome's meekness verges on servility. The note of self-depre-
ciation continually recurs:
A little wit, less learning, no poetry
This playmaker dares boast.
He is always reverent and loyal to Jonson; but his attitude of
deference to his audience, and his modest estimate of his own
powers as a writer, make quite clear his unlikeness to his master.
For all his sedulous imitation of Jonson's style and methods,
Brome has little of his master's soul in him. He can only be
Jonson on a small scale; but Jonson on a small scale is not
Jonson. Brome's sketches of London life are varied, minute,
careful, spirited, and yet they displease; they cannot be read
continuously without weariness, and are extremely coarse. Some
critics have been pleased to decide that Brome describes life from
the groom's point of view, and have ascribed his coarseness to bis
want of education and humble origin. The truer explanation is
1 Epigram ci.
? This parallel is noted in Faust's dissertation, Richard Brome, Halle, 1887, p. 52.
E. L. VI. CH, IX.
15
## p. 226 (#244) ############################################
226 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
that he uses Jonson's manner without Jonson's full-blooded,
massive humanity, without his satiric intensity, without his intel-
lectual power; so that the Jonsonian scenes in Brome, his
numerous efforts to describe the humours of London life, repel
or tire the reader.
Fifteen of Brome's plays have come down to us. Four of these
were published in quarto in Brome's lifetime ; five were printed
together, in 1653, shortly after his death ; five more in 1659; and
one other, in quarto, in 1657. The plays have been conveniently
classed under the headings of comedies of manners, romantic
comedies and romantic dramas of intrigue. These divisions ex-
hibit Brome's debt to Jonson, for the first class is much the
largest, including nine plays? . But these nine plays are not purely
Jonsonian. The Northern Lasse is the earliest of the extant
plays. It was printed in 1632 and, again, in 1635 and in 1663. It
was the most popular of Brome's plays and definitely made his
reputation as a writer. It is full of humours, which fill up the
scenes of an ingenious plot; but its popularity was mainly due
to the romantic note struck in the character of the northern lass
herself. The modern reader finds it hard to detect the charm of
Constance; she is very thinly and imperfectly drawn, and her
‘northern’ speech is clumsy ; but she pleased John Ford and
Thomas Dekker. It would appear that the seventeenth century
found in her some faint anticipation of the charm of the Scottish
heroines of The Waverley Novels. Brome did not get this romantic
note from Jonson, and the six romantic plays suggest to us that it
was more natural to him than Jonson's hard, intellectual satire,
and that he would have done better work if he had used it oftener.
But the nine plays of Jonsonian humour and plot have certain
merits. Brome always does his best. He works without enthusiasm,
but steadily and conscientiously, and, as pieces of stagecraft, the
plays are never contemptible. As a picture of the London of the
period, they are full of interest and value. If their outlook were
broader, if they depicted not only the vices and follies of life, but,
also, its virtues and amenities, they would be read with eagerness,
but it is not fair to blame Brome only for this defect. It is the
weakness of the satiric method of Jonson that it tends continually
to describe only what it can scourge, so that its world gets uglier
and uglier. Brome's temperament fitted him for a kindlier type
· The Northern Lasse, The Antipodes, The Sparagus Garden, Covent Garden Weeded,
The New Academy or The New Exchange, The Damoiselle, The Court Beggar, The
Madd Couple well matcht, The City Witt.
## p. 227 (#245) ############################################
Brome's Sparagus Garden
227
of comedy, and there are many indications in his plays that he
would have produced better work under a gentler master than
Jonson Jonson's satire is often mitigated by the introduction
of a purely comic idea, which is not vicious or even eccentric, but
merely whimsical, such as Morose's hatred of noise. Brome shows
a special aptitude in copying his master in this respect, and his
touch is lighter. Jonson is sometimes over-ingenious and his
workmanship heavy-handed. The Antipodes is Brome's best
effort in this kind.
Among the less interesting of the comedies of manners
which may be regarded as fairly representative of Brome's usual
work, The Sparagus Garden, acted 1635, takes its title from
the custom of going to eat asparagus in a garden where it
was grown. Such places were haunts of disreputable people of
both sexes, and the 'humours' of the garden are coarse though
sketched with much vivacity and some wit. They bulk so largely
in the play that it is justly classed as a comedy of manners.
The scenes in which Timothy Hoyden, a yeoman's son from the
country, is shown the way to become a fine gentleman, are ex-
cellent comedy ; they are whimsical as well as witty, and written
with a genuine gaiety. When Brome's humours have this gaiety
and lightness of touch, we are reminded of another master than
Jonson ; we are conscious of something of the spirit of Dekker.
Among the commendatory verses prefixed to The Northern Lasse
are some characteristic lines 'To my Sonne Broom and his Lasse,'
by Thomas Dekker. How much friendship these words imply we
have no means of discovering ; but Brome is more truly a 'son' of
Dekker than of Jonson. His best and happiest work is in the
vein of Dekker. But the scenes of our play are not all in the
asparagus garden. The first two suggest a quiet domestic drama
a
which might turn to tragedy or comedy, but would not harmonise
properly with the garden humours. Two young men decide to
attempt the reconcilement of two angry old men by proposing a
match between the son of one of them and the adopted daughter
of the other. The first scene describes the attempt and its failure.
In the second scene, the two friends try to console the son for
their failure and resolve to help him. Brome's verse rises to an
almost passionate height, as Gilbert insists that
Love is wit itself,
And through a thousand lots will find a way
To his desired end.
Both these scenes describe common life simply and naturally, and
15—2
## p. 228 (#246) ############################################
228 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
with a touch of idealism not very common in Brome, who recants
a
his usual creed when he confesses:
Poets they are the life and death of things.
The play is a mine of allusions and references to the life of old
London. From this point of view, Brome will always be worth
reading.
The brightest and pleasantest of Brome's comedies of manners
is The City Witt, or The Woman wears the Breeches. It is the
best, just because it most successfully keeps in one key. Fleay
contends that it is the earliest of the extant dramas, and says:
* Dekker's influence is more clearly visible in it than in the other
plays. ' He means that the gaiety and lightness of touch which we
have noted as Dekker's rather than Jonson's are very noticeable
in the play. But the prologue, composed by Brome for a revival
of the play, states that it 'past with good applause in former
times'; adding that
It was written when
It bore just judgment and the seal of Ben.
We must suppose, therefore, that Dekker's influence was sub-
ordinate to Jonson's, and that Brome himself was unconscious of
the force of the former. Its strength was due to its suitability to
Brome's temperament. The lines prefixed to The Northern Lasse
were the last we have from Dekker's pen; he, probably, died
before the end of 1632.
In his plots, Brome is apt to be over-ingenious, so that the
action of his plays is either obscure or too episodical. It is the
merit of The City Witt that its episodes are all held together by
one central idea which is clear and simple, so that the play is well-
knit and easily keeps the attention of the spectator to the end.
A young citizen, Mr Crasy, by his kindness and easy-going dis-
position, has involved himself in many difficulties, and discovers
that his fairweather friends all fall away when he asks for their
help. He disappears, therefore, and returns disguised, with the
object of bringing his false friends to book for their meanness.
The play is a lively and laughable protest against worship of rank
and money, and has in it a true breath of that unworldly spirit
which is conspicuous in Dekker's best plays. The protest is all
the more effective as coming from the tradesman's level. In that
age, the development of trade brought with it new temptations.
Dishonest speculation and the making of fortunes by all sorts of
trickery were becoming common. At the same time, the new
## p. 229 (#247) ############################################
Brome's City Witt
229
devices by which bankruptcy was made profitable were scorned
by oldfashioned tradesmen. Crasy declares
I must take nimble hold upon occasion
Or lie for ever in the bankrupt ditch
Where no man lends a hand to draw one out.
I will leap over it or fall bravely in't,
Scorning the bridge of baseness, composition,
Which doth infect a city like the plague,
And teach men knavery that were never born to 't.
His troubles are largely due to the odious malice of his mother-
in-law, Mistress Pyannet Sneakup, who illustrates the evil effect
upon tradesmen's wives of the degenerate times. Her son-in-law
asks gently, “May not an honest man—' when he is taken up by
the irate lady-
Honest man! Who the devil wished thee to be an honest man? Here's my
worshipfal husband, Mr Sneakup, that from a grasier is come to be a Justice of
Peace: and, what, as an honest man? He grew to be able to give nine
hundred pound with my daughter; and what, by honesty? Mr Sneakup and
I are come up to live i’ th City, and here we have lyen these three years;
and, what? for honesty? Honesty! What should the City do with honesty,
when 'tis enough to undoe a whole Corporation? Why are your wares
gumm’d; your shops dark; your prices writ in strange characters? what, for
honesty?
This 'woman of an eternal tongue, this creature of an ever-
lasting noise' is the most considerable character in the piece ;
but Sarpego is equally good in another direction. We have already
touched upon him. His sudden scraps of Latin are very comical-
O Dii! Quem video? Nonne Mr Sneakup? '-and one wonders
how far they were followed by the audience. Some of his para-
phrases are very happy—“Tempora mutantur; the town's ours
again'; 'Lupus in fabula ; the devil's in the woman's tongue’;
'Sic transit gloria mundi ; the learned is coney-caught. ' The
briskness and bustle of the play are maintained to the end, and,
if it were not for the absence of Mrs Tryman from the list of
dramatis personae, the dénouement would be a complete surprise.
Crasy's honesty, his ‘unsuspicious freeness' and 'most easy good-
ness' flavour the play and convince us that Brome, with all his
s
grossness, was unsophisticated.
By way of proving this point more fully and carrying further
the comparison of Brome with Dekker, we may next consider
Brome's masterpiece, A Joviall Crew, Or, The Merry Beggars.
It was the latest play written by Brome, being produced in 1641
and continuing on the stage till it came to be the very last play
acted before parliament closed the theatres in 1642—'it had the
## p. 230 (#248) ############################################
230 Lesser Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists
luck to tumble last of all in the Epidemicall ruin of the Scene!
