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of 15 shillings a week, plus the first day's profits from each new play as a benefit. In 1638 it was agreed that the contract should be continued seven years longer, at 20 shillings a week for Brome's exclusive services. But the rival theatre, the Cockpit, lured him away with a better offer, and the new contract was not signed. The most interesting items here are the limit of three plays a year, and special provision that Brome should not be allowed to publish any of his own plays without the consent of the company.' The discovery of this document is not only an extremely important addition to our knowledge of Brome, but a most significant contribution to stage-history. It shows us much as to the relation of a popular playwright to the company for which he was writing.

Professor Wallace has been so generous as to send me some further facts regarding this contract, from his hitherto unpublished notes. He states that Brome, previous to the contract, was with the Red Bull Company.1 The contract is dated July 20, 1635. The amount of the benefit of the first night on one occasion was estimated at 5 £ or upwards. Brome was to give his exclusive services to the company. One play he wrote for them, the Sparagus Garden, was so popular that the estimated profits to the company were 1000 £. In the three years during which Brome was writing for the Salisbury Court Theatre, he had written, besides numerous songs, epilogues, and revisions of scenes in revived plays, but six of the nine plays agreed on in the contract. He had also written a play or two for the Cockpit, contrary to contract.

1 This indicates that Brome must have been connected with two companies at the same time, for in 1634 he was writing for the King's Men, who were playing at the Globe and Blackfriars (see Chronology). There is no other evidence that he was connected with the Red Bull Company after 1623.

Though Professor Wallace states in the article quoted above that the second contract was not signed, he writes me that Brome, on this new contract, which is dated August, 1638, delivered one play the following winter after Christmas, and another before Easter, 1639, which the company refused to accept. refused to accept. Then he went to the Cockpit with Beeston, where he met with better favor, about which details are not given.'

Further light is thrown on these facts by the curious note appended to the Antipodes in the quarto of 1640. It reads 'Courteous Reader, You shal find in this Book more than was presented upon the Stage, and left out of the Presentation, for Superfluous length (as some of the Players pretended) I thought it good al should be inserted according to the allowed Original; and as it was, at first, intended for the Cockpit Stage, in the right of my most deserving Friend Mr. William Beeston, unto whom it properly appertained; and so I leave it to thy perusal, as it was generallly applauded, and well acted at Salisbury Court. Farewell, Ri. Brome.'

What evidently happened was that Brome, late in 1637,1 before the expiration of his contract with the Salisbury Court Theatre, wrote the Antipodes for the newly formed King and Queen's Young Company, or Beeston's Boys.2 The Salisbury Court Company forced Brome to give the play to them, because he had delivered but six of the nine plays promised, and had guaranteed his exclusive services. The following passage in the Court Begger (1640) (2. 1, p. 215) seems to indicate that the company brought suit against him: 'Here's a trim business towards, and as idle as the players going to Law with their Poets.'

1 See Chronology, below, p. 36.

2 J. T. Murray (English Dramatic Companies 1. 367) says the company was formed shortly before Feb. 7, 1637, and played at the Cockpit.

The fact that the Salisbury Court Theatre, in spite of Brome's failing to furnish his full quota of plays, made such a liberal offer for the renewal of the contract before the trouble that I have just discussed, indicates that the plays written under the first three-year arrangement must have been very successful. Among them are, if our chronology is correct, Queen and Concubine, Sparagus Garden, Mad Couple well Matched, English Moor, and Damoiselle. As the lost play, Wit in a Madness, was entered in the Stationers' Register March 19, 1639/40, along with the Sparagus Garden and the Antipodes, it is possibly of the same period of composition. Two other lost plays, Christianetta and Jewish Gentleman, entered the same year, admit of no conjecture as to the date of composition.

Some of the plays just mentioned as written for the Revels Company at Salisbury Court must have passed to the Queen's Company when it absorbed the Revels in 1637, just before the expiration of Brome's first contract. The history of the transference of plays at this time is extremely confusing and doubtful. Two of the plays went to Beeston's Boys after they were organized— the Mad Couple1 and the Antipodes. All the plays of this period were first produced at Salisbury Court.

The only extant plays that were written for Beeston's Boys seem to be the Court Begger (c. 1640)3 and the Jovial Crew (1641). We may presume that, during the three years he was with this company before the elosing

1 J. T. Murray, op. cit. 1. 369.

2 J. P. Collier, Hist. Eng. Dram. Poetry 3. 139.

3 Not 1632, as the title-page states. Fleay (Biog. Chron. 1. 40) is undoubtedly right in this correction.

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4 Fleay (ibid.) says it was acted by their Majesties' servants.' He may mean the King and Queen's Young Company, the official title of Beeston's Boys, who were the only company at the Cockpit from 1637-1642.

of the theatres in 1642, he wrote other plays that have been since lost.

We have one more glimpse of him during this period, when we find him editing, apparently as a labor of love,1 the first edition of Fletcher's Monsieur Thomas, which appeared in quarto in 1639, with a dedication to Charles Cotton.

Between the time that Brome was deprived of the opportunity to pursue his calling by the downfall of things theatrical in 1642 and his death about 1652, we have but three references to him. One is his long poem in praise of Fletcher, which appeared among the verses of admirers in the folio of Beaumont and Fletcher's works in 1647. Two years later he contributed to the Lachrymæ Musarum, a collection of elegies in memory of Henry, Lord Hastings, and in all probability was the R. B.2 who edited the volume. Other contributors to this volume were the Earl of Westmorland, Lord Falkland, Sir Aston Cokayne, Charles Cotton, Herrick, Denham, Marvell, Alexander Brome, J. Bancroft, and the young Dryden, who here appeared in print for the first time.

In 1652 Brome published the very popular Jovial Crew, undoubtedly his best play. The dedication to Thomas Stanley shows that the old dramatist had fallen on evil days. He says fortune has made him a beggar, but he is 'poor and proud.' 'You know, Sir, I am old, and cannot cringe, nor Court with the powder'd and ribbanded Wits of our daies. The Times conspire to make us all Beggers.' If forty shillings were still the price of a dedication, Brome must have found other means of

3

1 See Dedication and Prefatory Verses.

2 A break in the pagination and an added note show that Brome's verses were to be placed last, as the volume was originally planned. See Grolier Club Catalogue, and Corser.

* Field, A Woman is a Weathercock, Dedication (1612); see also below, p. 24.

b

livelihood at this period of his misfortune and decline. In the above mentioned dedication he hints at favors from his patron. This may suggest possible aid. His condition must have been much the same as that mentioned in the Actor's Remonstrance1 (1643): 'For some of our ablest ordinary Poets instead of their annuall stipends and beneficiall second-dayes, being for meere necessitie compelled to get a living by writing contemptible penny pamphlets in which they have not so much as poeticall license to use any attribute of their profession but that of Quidlibet audendi? and faining miraculous stories and relations of unheard of battels.'

The publication of the Jovial Crew is the last we hear of Brome during his lifetime. The following year, 1653, Alexander Brome, who edited Five New Plays, says in his preface for the Author bid me tell you that, now that he is dead, he is of Falstaffs minde, and cares not for Honour.' We may therefore place the date of his death as 1652 or 1653. The same editor, who brought out five more plays in 1659, refers with some pathos to the poverty in which he died:

He was his own Executor, and made

Ev'n with the world; and that small All he had –

He without Law or Scribe put out of doubt;

Poor he came into th' world and poor went out.

His soul and body higher powers claim.

There's nothing left to play with, but his name;
Which you may freely toss; he all endures.
But as you use his name, so 'll others yours.

Beside these facts about Brome's career proper, a number of hints in regard to his literary relationships are furnished by prefaces and commendatory verses, which the imaginative student will find to supply bases for

1 Ed. Hazlitt, 264.

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