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The evidence which indicates that the play is a revision. is in the obvious interpolation of an episode, an omission of one or two incidents that we are led to expect, and a mention in two places of names of witches or spirits inconsistent with the names in the rest of the play. A transaction between Generous and Arthur, involving a mortgage, is mentioned in Act I (p. 178),1 and Robin in Act 3 (p. 210), gives his master Generous a receipt for one hundred pounds, which he has dropped. These two incidents seem to be connected but not very clearly. They also ought to lead up to something, but they are hardly mentioned further. Again, in Act 2 (p. 197), Arthur and Shakstone bet on the speed of their dogs in chasing a hare, but the scene ends abruptly on p. 199 without the interference of witchcraft which we are led to expect. These scenes indicate that something has been omitted in the present version of the play. Moreover, the incident of the boy and the greyhounds (pp. 196, 199-201) is obviously an interpolation with no connection with any of the threads of interest. The boy is brought in again in Act 5 (pp. 241 ff.) as a witness against the witches, but his evidence is quite unnecessary, for the dénouement is brought about by the soldier who sleeps in the mill. The final indication of revision is the speech of Mrs. Generous in Act 4 (p. 240):

Call Meg, and Doll, Tib, Nab, and Iug,

and the use of three of these names, Nab, Jug, and Peg, again in Act 5 (p. 244). The names of the witches throughout the rest of the play are Maud (Hargrave), Meg (Johnson), Gil (Goody Dickison), Mall (Spenser), and Nan Generous; while the familiars are Suckling, Pug, and Mamilion.2

1 Heywood's Works, 1873, Vol. 4.

2 See pp. 187–189, 199–202, 218–222, 235.

d

The play, then, as published in 1634, is a revision. We may dispose of the possibility of collaboration in the revision by the fact that Heywood was writing for the Queen's Company in 1633, and that the Lancashire Witches was brought out by the King's Men, the company for which Brome was writing in 1633 and 1634.

1

We are able to determine, to a certain extent, the parts that may be ascribed to each author by comparing the play with the three sources that have been discovered. The main plot, the story of a woman of wealth practising witchcraft, finally discovered and condemned, is taken from a celebrated witch-trial in Lancashire in 1612. As ten witches were condemned and executed as the result of the trial, considerable notoriety was given to it. Heywood, with a journalist's instinct, made a play on the subject probably within a year of the trial. Besides this indication of Heywood's authorship of the main plot, the treatment of the erring wife by her husband (Act 4. p. 228) strongly suggests the Woman Killed with Kindness.

Closely connected with the main plot are three characters, Arthur, Shakstone, and Bantam,3 who, in the first scene of the play, accuse Whetstone, a foolish fellow, of being a bastard. At the end of the fourth act, Whetstone has his revenge by showing, with the aid of witchcraft, visions of the fathers of the three gallants—a pedant, a tailor, and a serving-man. Since this incident, as Langbaine pointed out, occurs in Heywood's Hierarchy of Angels, which was not published until 1635, and was,

1 See title page to a Maiden-head well Lost, 1634, and Schelling's list, Eliz. Drama 2. 586.

2 T. Potts's Discoverie of Witches in the County of Lancaster, London, 1613, (reprinted by the Chetham Society, 1845) gives a full account of the trial, but I do not think was the actual source of the play. Heywood probably had merely heard of the trial. 3 See pp. 176, 189 ff., 246 ff., 250 ff.

4 Bk. 8. p. 512.

therefore, probably not known to Brome, I assign the parts in which these characters occur to Heywood.

Another interest in the play is the comic situation brought about by the reversal of the relations of father and son, mother and daughter, and servant and master, as an effect of witchcraft.1 This part of the play, which includes the characters of Old Seely, his son Gregory, and a friend, Doughty, I can find no good reason for attributing to Brome. On the other hand, as this reversed situation has some bearing on the relation of Arthur and Generous (pp. 178 and 182) in the main plot, it seems to me it must be assigned to Heywood.

The greater part of the rest of the play is taken up with the strange events at the marriage of Lawrence and Parnell, the servants of the Seely family. The witches play all sorts of pranks with the wedding-feast and frighten the guests; and one of them, Mall Spenser, gives Lawrence a bewitched cod-piece point, which causes a great deal of vulgar comedy by preventing him from consummating his marriage. This plot is involved to such an extent with all the different interests I have mentioned before, that I cannot see any possibility of a separate authorship for it. Arthur, Bantam, Shakstone, Whetstone, Seely, Doughty, and Gregory-characters in the other plotsare present in some capacity at most of the wedding scenes; Mall Spenser, who gives Lawrence the fatal present, has an intrigue with Robin, the servant who plays such an important part in the Nan Generous plot. Furthermore, there is a piece of external evidence which, I think, indicates that the Lawrence-Parnell plot was in the early version of the play. In Field's Woman is a Weathercock (5. 1), one character, addressing another as a very lusty person, says, 'O thou beyond Lawrence of Lancashire.' As Field's play was entered in the 1 1 Pp. 179–187.

Stationers' Register Nov. 23, 1611, and the trial in Lancashire, from which Heywood drew his play, was not over until Aug., 1612, Field cannot be referring to Heywood's Lawrence. However, the probability is that both dramatists are using the name of a real character well-known to the audience, or a proverbial name for a person of his type. Whichever be the case, I think it safer to infer that the allusions to Lawrence should be dated as close together as possible. An allusion of this sort twenty years old would probably be forgot. Therefore, this external evidence also points to 1613 as the date of composition of the Lawrence-Parnell plot. Fleay seems to imply that the part of Lawrence and Parnell was added by Brome, because he says that the dialect which they speak is that of the Northern Lass.1 This, however, is not true. The speech of Lawrence and Parnell, which is considered fairly good Lancashire dialect, is much more difficult for the average reader than that of Constance in the Northern Lass, who speaks a sort of general North English dialect. As Heywood also has used a northern dialect elsewhere-e. g. in Edward IV.-as well as Brome, Fleay's argument is useless.

2

This attribution leaves very little part in the play to Brome. I think that all that can be shown positively to be his work are the passages that are undoubtedly based on the evidence gathered at the second trial for witchcraft in Lancashire in 1633. These are the short scene of the boy and the greyhounds in Act 2 (pp. 196–197); the sequel to it, in which one of the grayhounds turns into Goody Dickison (pp. 199–201); the scene of the meeting

1 Fleay, op. cit. 1. 303.

2 Crossley's Intro. op. cit. p. 65, n. l.

3 Compare the words listed from the two plays by Eckhardt, Die Dialekt- und Ausländertypen des Alteren Englischen Dramas. 1900, 1. 86 and 87.

of the witches (pp. 218-221)1; and the boy's report of his adventure, at the beginning of Act 5 (pp. 241-244). This assigns to Brome about nine pages in all, out of a play of eighty-nine. Besides this, Brome changed the names of the witches and spirits throughout the play, and probably altered slightly the riming scene in Act 4 (p. 235), to introduce the references to Meg, Mamilion, Dickison, Hargrave, and All Saints' night. He also must have added the prologue and epilogue, and probably the song for Act 2, appended to the play.

All these details of the play, just enumerated, were drawn from the Examination of Edmund Robinson and the Confession of Margaret Johnson. They must, therefore, because of their later date, have been the additions of Brome. These interpolations have nothing to do with the rest of the play. In fact, Brome's reworking here has resulted in making a worse play out of a very poor one, merely to be up to date.

The authorship of the rest of Brome's work we have no reason to question. Four of the plays appeared during the author's lifetime, apparently under his supervision, for they have prefaces by him, and numerous commendatory verses by his friends. Moreover, the Antipodes has an appended note which I think assures us absolutely of its authorship. Ten more plays appeared under the editorship of Alexander Brome, the author's close friend. For the authenticity of the Queen's Exchange we have only the word of Henry Brome, the bookseller, but internal evidence, I think, confirms this. In fact, in all fifteen plays said to be by Brome alone, I can find no reason

1 The original idea of this scene was probably in the first version, but the getting a feast by pulling at ropes and the presence of the boy, come from the 1633 source.

2 Both found in Crossley's introduction to T. Potts, op. cit., pp. 59-76.

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