Page images
PDF
EPUB

interpolation of contemporary actors,1 mentioned above, and the loose conduct of young gentlemen with the wives of citizen-tradesmen.2 This last mentioned theme occurs as an episode or an underplot in the New Academy, Sparagus Garden, City Wit, and Mad Couple, and is touched on in the Court Begger (1. 1, p. 194), where there is a 'project' mentioned to prevent cavaliers and courtiers from mixing with tradesmen's wives. Then there are humorous hits at poets for their poverty and reckless living the sort of fun at the author's expense that most of the playwrights seemed willing to make. The stilted language of the courtier, and his affected courtesy, were very obvious marks for the satirist. Brome makes fun of the same thing in the Sparagus Garden (4.9, 10) and the New Academy (4. 2). This does not mean that the bourgeois poet is ridiculing the elegance and greater correctness of usage of a sphere above his own, but rather that he is deriding a relic of Euphuism that seems to have persisted in the language of courtesy. Brome is here following Jonson, who satirized the same tendency in Cynthia's Revels. Other examples are to be found in Newcastle's Captain Underwit (2. 2), Shirley's Lady of Pleasure (5. 1), and Lovetricks.

The legal profession was in the seventeenth century, as it has been before and since, a favorite target for satirical shafts. The character-books did not spare them, and the drama was particularly violent in its attacks. A study of lawyers as dramatic characters has been made by Dr. H. Bormann in his thesis, Der Jurist im Drama der Elisabethanischen Zeit (Halle, 1906). Brome makes sly hits at the profession in short passages in Covent Garden Weeded (2. 1) and the Sparagus Garden (5.1). Here, again, Jonson may be considered as the 1 2. 2, p. 250.

[ocr errors]

22.7; 3. 8. The same old joke occurs in Massinger's Fatal Dowry 4. 3, The Courtier's Song of the Citizens' (Marmion's Fine Companion 2. 2), and Nabbes' Tottenham Court. Middleton and Dekker's Roaring Girl 2. 1 gives a very realistic picture of the manners of a wife in her husband's shop.

3 1. 6, p. 254, and 3. 2. 4 3. 5; 4. 7.

5 The justice is introduced as a comic figure in the Damoiselle, Northern Lass, and Jovial Crew.

i

readiest example for Brome, if he needed any predecessor at all to show him the possibilities of the theme. Jonson makes fun of lawyers in his Epigrams, and, in some form, either by introducing them as characters, or by directing witty remarks against them, in eight plays.1

Brome's satire on the lawyers in the Antipodes2 is rather commonplace. It is brought in purely for the humor of the inversions, with apparently little animosity to the profession. The harshest comment is

The lawes the river, ist? Yes tis a river,

Through which great men, and cunning wade or swimme,
But meane and ignorant must drowne in't.3

The Puritans, natural enemies of the playwrights, were undoubtedly ridiculed by them more than any other class of people. It is useless to discuss the question here, for Dr. E. N. S. Thompson, in his Controversy between the Puritans and the Stage, has given it detailed consideration. In satirizing them, Brome is following the lead of practically all the comic dramatists. He has really added nothing new in the way of abuse. This is also true of the rest of the Caroline dramatists. In fact, after Middleton and Jonson had finished their work, there was really nothing that could be added.

Brome repeats some of the points for which Jonson had satirized the Puritans in the Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair, and the Sad Shepherd. Jonson made fun of their dress; strange long names; fondness for large and solemn language; sophistry; the narrowness, which, because of its own virtue, objected to cakes and ale; and he even made against them the more serious accusations of hypocrisy and dishonesty. Brome, in Covent Garden Weeded, has drawn a typical stagePuritan, Gabriel. He whines through his nose, hates the

5

1 Bormann omits mention of the satire in the Silent Woman and the Poetaster. See also Magnetic Lady (second intermean). 2 1. 6, p. 254; 3. 2, 3, 4, 5. 3 4. 4, p. 301.

4 Yale Studies, No. 20.

5 See C. S. Alden's edition of Bartholomew Fair, Introduction, Pp. xx ff.

sight of a cross on a church because it is an 'idolatrous painted image,' and is as hypocritical as Tribulation Wholesome. In the Mad Couple well Matched (1. 1), a character is described as a Methodicall, Grave and Orthographicall speaking friend, Mr. Saveall that calls People Pe-o-ple.'

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

The Puritan in the Antipodes1 further follows Jonson's precedent. The sober young maid objects to her grandmother's interest in bear-baitings, and calls them' prophane and Diabolicall courses.' 'Let me entreat you,' she continues, Forbeare such beastly pastimes, th' are Sathanicall.' This young Puritan also reads devotional books. But in spite of this godly exterior, the 'blood rebells against the spirit,' and in the very next scene she accosts a man on the street. Here we have the hypocrisy of which Jonson accuses the Puritans. Besides the ridicule in these scenes, there are scattered allusions with the same purport. The poet2 turns thegodly life and death of Mistris Katherine Stubs' into metre for an alderman's son to woo an ancient lady with. In the antipodes all their Poets are Puritanes '3; Joyless' fear that his wife may fall in love with an actor at the play is exactly the Puritan attitude."

In all the things satirized by Brome that we have mentioned thus far, he is ridiculing rather obvious follies, without any evident endeavor to reform them. In his satire on the projectors, however, he is dealing with a serious abuse of his time, the satiric treatment of which may have contributed to its reform. The monopoly system, to which these projectors belonged, was the granting to certain individuals the right of manufacture of and exclusive trade in certain things, often articles of the most common utility. For instance, among the monopolies granted in the reign of James I, are those on flasks and cartridge-boxes, for the transportation of horns for twenty-one years, to buy and bring in anise seed for twenty-one years, to buy and transport ashes and old shoes for seven years, to make spangles, to print the Psalms of David,

1 4. 1, 2, 3. 2 3. 2, p. 277. 3 1. 6, p. 254. 42.9, p. 272. 5 E. N. S. Thompson, op. cit., p. 229.

4.

9.

to sow wood in a certain number of shires.1 Of course the granting of royal patents for such articles brought large revenues to the Crown, but also great abuses to the public. As the result of protests from Parliament, the monopolies were twice abolished in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., but the system persisted, and continued to be a matter of contention, for many years afterward.2

Dr. W. S. Johnson, in the introduction to his edition of the Devil is an Ass, gives a rather full and very excellent discussion of the system, which is the chief object of satire. in that play. Other satiric treatments of the theme mentioned by him are:

Randolph's Muses' Looking-Glass (Dodsley 9. 180).
Marmion's Holland's Leager 1. 5.

Brome's Court Begger.

Wilson's The Projectors.

Taylor's The Complaint of M. Tenterhook, the Projector, and Sir Thomas Dodger, the Patentee.

Dr. Johnson says that that in the Devil is an Ass (1616) is probably the earliest dramatic representation of the projector; and, moreover, that the later appearances in the plays just mentioned lack the timeliness of Jonson's satire, and the conception must have been largely derived from literary sources.' Now it is undoubtedly true that Brome and the rest are following Jonson in this point of satire, which appears again in a slighter form in the character of Sir Politick Wouldbe in Volpone, and also in the Masque of Augurs. However, in saying that monopolies were no longer a political

1 E. Lodge, Illustrations of British Hist. (1838) 3. 6. Price (see note 2) gives lists of monopolies in Appendices B to G.

2 Dr. W. H. Price's English Patents of Monopoly, Boston, 1906, is a complete setting forth of the whole subject from the historical and economic point of view. It says nothing of the satire of the dramatists.

3 P. viii.

• Cf. the list of projects in the Devil is an Ass draining the drowned lands, turning dog-skins into Spanish leather, bottling of ale, making wine of raisins or blackberries.

issue, Dr. Johnson is undoubtedly mistaken. Gardner states that the monopoly act of 1621 had merely done away with private projectors, corporations being distinctly excluded from the incidence of the act. The king, therefore, had it in his power to create monopolies, by placing the sole right of manufacture in the hands of corporations. From 1631 to 1635 the monopoly on soap actually became an issue in affairs of state.2 It was doubtless the wrangle caused by this that made the satire of Brome and other late dramatists timely. For the purpose of dramatic presentation, or perhaps as the result of the establishing of a type of humor-character by Jonson, the individual projector continued to be brought on the stage, though he now represented a corporation.

[ocr errors]

Shirley introduces into his masque, the Triumph of Peace (1633/4), a number of projectors, the same broad caricatures that Brome employs. Dyce's note from a contemporary source, Whitlock's Memorials, shows that monopolies were still a great abuse, which statesmen were trying to reform. After describing the antimasque in some detail, Whitlock says: Several other Projectors were in like manner perso nated in this Antimasque; and it pleased the spectators the more, because by it an information was covertly given to the King of the unfitness and ridiculousness of these projects against the law; and the Attorney Noy, who had most knowledge of them, had a great hand in this Antimasque of the Projectors.' Strafford's Letters (1. 167), cited by P. Reyher,* show further the persistance of the monopolies at this same time.

For proof that the Antipodes is not even three or four years late in its satire, we have Gardner's further statement that there were more corporations erected in 1636.5 This caused great discontent, which brought about the finishing stroke to monopolies, dealt by the Long Parliament in Nov., 1640."

1 Personal Government of Chas. I. 2. 165–171. 2 See also Price, op. cit., pp. 118-128.

Les Masques Anglais, p. 251.

is excellently treated here.

5 Gardener, op. cit. 2. 313.

3 Memorials, p. 20, b. The whole subject of projectors

Price, op. cit., p. 45.

« PreviousContinue »