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usually guilty of the mortal sin of spiritual pride in his boastful excessive modesty, we are told by his friend Alexander Brome1 that he was a devout believer: 'One he adored and all the rest defied.'2 This, however, says Ward, was not inconsistent with his hatred of Scotch Presbyterians, and of Puritans in general.

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There is a considerable amount of evidence to show that Brome was an extremely popular playwright in his day. Though none of it taken individually can be considered conclusive, the whole body of it will bear some weight. The statements of many of the title-pages to the plays, Brome's own dedications and prologues, and the verses of Jonson and other friends,' all agree in giving us the impression that the confidence in Brome's power to please the public that is implied in the two offered contracts with Salisbury Court was well justified. The fact is worth considering, too, that fifteen plays of a man of very obscure origin were published within seven years after his death. The stationer's preface to the last volume of five plays states that the first had sold well, but this may be taken cum grano. Finally, a remark in the epilogue to the Court Begger shows that he received the best price for his plays from the actors, 'because we would ha' the best.' But in spite of this general approval, there seem to be also suggestions of adverse criticism in the commendatory verses of friends who hasten to deny the charges intimated. The four references on which I base this may be considered merely as examples of a literary convention

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1 Jovial Crew, Dedication.

2 Five Plays, 1653, Preface. 3 Dict. Nat. Biog. 4 Court Begger. 5 E. g., Northern Lass. • Especially the broad statement in Prologue to Queen's Exchange.

7 E. g., Tatham and A. Brome in Jovial Crew.

8 The verses of C. G. and R. W. before the Sparagus Garden, those of Chamberlain before the Antipodes, and Tatham's contribution to the Jovial Crew.

in such verses, or as indications of the growing tendency of the late drama toward romance in tragedy and comedy. As the great body of Brome's work deals with manners, his most successful vein,1 the hostile criticism may mean merely this.

Brome's own impression of his place among his contemporaries was, I think, generally speaking, quite correct a writer of no mean ability, who wrote without illusions as to the value of his work for the future, purely to obtain a livelihood. This practical view he has expressed in the prologue to the Damoiselle, which epitomizes him for us:

• ...

He does not
claime
Lawrell, but Money; Bayes will buy no Sack,
And Honour fills no belly, cloaths no back.
And therefore you may see his maine intent
Is his own welfare, and your merriment.

In spite of this materialistic attitude, Brome's works were in greater repute after the Restoration than could be expected from plays written frankly with such an intent. Four of them, at least, were revived, and one held the stage for a hundred and fifty years. The Antipodes was seen by Pepys in 1661; the Mad Couple Well Matched was slightly altered by Mrs. Aphra Behn, and played and published under the title of the Credulous Cuckold in 1677; the Northern Lass was acted in 1684, 1706, 1717, and 17382; and the Jovial Crew three times in 1661,3 and again in 1705, 1707, and 1708. In 1731 it was made into an opera by the addition of many songs, and continued to be produced.4 Dodsley,5 in 1744, gives

1 The Jovial Crew is the one notable exception, but even here the interest in humors is strong.

2 Genest 1. 420; 2. 360; 2. 601; 4. 549.

3 Pepys' Diary for 1661.

5 Dodsley, Vol. 6.

Genest 2. 384; 2. 395; 3. 288.

two casts of performances; Genest adds others of 1760, 1774, and 17911; and, finally, Charles Lamb reviewed what I think was probably the last production, in 1819.2 Further evidence of Brome's popularity in the eighteenth century may be seen in the numerous reprints of the two last-mentioned plays in the Bibliography.

But the public interest in a few of the plays did not create much interest in the author, for I find but few personal references to Brome after his death. One allusion occurs in Choyce Drollery (1656), in a satirical piece called On the Time Poets, written in imitation of Suckling's Session of the Poets. The poem begins,

One night the great Apollo pleased with Ben,
Made the odd number of the Muses ten,

and continues with allusions to Shakespeare, May, and others, and satiric hits at Chapman, Dabourn, Ford, etc., and finally has:

Sent by Ben Jonson, as some authors say,

Broom went before and kindly swept the way.

This old pun, which we have met with often enough already, seems to have been a hardy perennial, for an eighteenth-century satirist remarks of William Broome, Pope's collaborator in the Odyssey:

Pope came off clean with Homer, but they say
Broome went before and kindly swept the way.

In 1660, the third edition of Sir Richard Baker's Chronicle of England appeared, with an added account of the reign of Charles I. Here we find the next reference

1 Genest 3. 591-593; 6. 148; 7. 67.

2 Lamb's Works, ed. E. V. Lucas, 1. 186. The production, he says, was a revival after seven years.

to Brome, in a list of poets of the age 1: 'Poetry was never more resplendent, nor never more graced ; wherein Johnson, Sylvester, Shakespere, Beaumont, Fletcher, Shirley, Broom, Massinger, Cartwrite, Randolph, Cleaveland, Quarles, Carew, Davenant, and Sucklin, not only far excelled their own Countrymen, but the whole world beside.'

Nine years later, Edward Phillips added to the seventeenth edition of Thesaurus V. Buchleri of 1669, a treatise on English poets, called Tractatus de Carmine Dramatico Poetarum etc.2 In this, after mentioning Shakespeare, Jonson, and Fletcher, the greatest poets of the age, he continues: Ante hos in hoc genere Poeseos apud nos eminuit Nemo. Pauci quidem antea scripserunt, at parum foeliciter; hos autem tanquam duces itineris plurimi saltem æmulati sunt, inter quos præter Sherleium (proximum a supra memorato Triumviratu), Sucklingium, Randolphium, Davenantium et Cartuenumerandi veniunt Ric. Bromeus, Tho.

ritium .

Heivodus, etc.'

References like these last two are scarcely worth noticing, but they show, at least, with what names Brome's was associated. The omission of other contemporaries is significant. Another reference of the same sort is the inclusion of Brome in the catalogue of plays for sale by the publisher, Francis Kirkman. He appended this to John Dancer's Translation of Nicomede, 1670. The added title runs: Together with an exact catalogue of all the English Stage Plays printed till this present year, 1671. In the Advertisement to the Reader (p. 16), Kirkman says3: 'First, I begin with Skakespeare, who hath in all written forty-eight. Then Beaumont and Fletcher fifty-two, Johnson fifty, Shirley thirty-eight, Heywood twenty-five,

1 Shakespeare Allusion-Book, New Shak. Soc. (1909) 2. 86.
2 Ibid. 2. 160.
Ibid. 2. 117.

Middleton and Rowley twenty-seven, Massinger sixteen, Chapman seventeen, Brome seventeen, and D'Avenant fourteen; so that these ten have written in all, 304.'1 I have not been able to find a copy of this list, but I suppose Kirkman includes, beside the fifteen plays wholly by Brome, the Lancashire Witches and the Royal Exchange, which is merely the Queen's Exchange (printed 1657), with a new title-page (printed 1661).

The first criticism of Brome appears in Edward Phillips' later work, Theatrum Poetarum, 1675. He says2: 'Richard Brome, a servant to Ben Jonson ; a Servant suitable to such a Master, and who, what with his faithful service and the sympathy of his genius, was thought worthy his particular commendation in Verse; whatever instructions he might have from his Master Johnson, he certainly by his own natural parts improved to a great heighth, and at last became not many parasangues inferior to him in fame by divers noted Comedies.' After giving an incomplete list, Phillips commends especially the Northern Lass, Jovial Crew, and the Sparagus Garden.

Winstanley's Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) adds nothing to Phillips' criticism, but Langbaine's Account of the English Dramatic Poets (Oxford, 1691) gives us the first real discussion of the dramatist, and adds many facts about the plays. His criticisin is: 'In imitation of his master Mr. Johnson, he studied Men and Humors more than books; and his genius affecting comedy, his province was more observation than study. His plots were his own, and he forged all his various Characters from the mint of his own experience, and judgment. 'T is not therefore to be expected, that I should be able to trace him, who was so excellent an

1 A similar list, very detailed, but inaccurate, is appended to Thomas Whincop's Scanderbeg, London, 1747.

2 P. 157.

C

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