Laughter,' of the Roaring Girl (1611). Here he compares playmaking to the 'alteration in apparel': 'Now in the time of spruceness, our plays follow the niceness of our garments, single plots, quaint conceits, lecherous jests, dressed up in hanging sleeves.' The comedy of the next generation lost the singleness of plot, and developed the other elements. In comparison with this quotation, we may take one from Richard Flecknoe's Discourse of the English Stage (c. 1660)1: The chief faults of ours are our huddling too much matter together, and making them too long and intricate; we imagine we never have intrigue enough, till we lose ourselves and Auditors, who shu'd be led in a Maze, but not a Mist; and through turning and winding wayes, but so still, as they may find their way at last.' Any modern reader will feel that this fits Brome's plays much better than C. G.'s lines before the Sparagus Garden: Nor is thy Labyrinth confus'd, but wee In that disorder, may proportion see. This last quotation and two more in the plays, may indicate that Brome was adversely criticized in this respect, even by some of his contemporaries. In Covent Garden Weeded a character says: 'Nay, mark, I pray you, as I would entreat an Auditory, if now I were a Poet, to mark the Plot, and several points of my play, that they might not say when 'tis done, they understood not this or that, or how such a part came in or went out, because they did not observe the passages.' And again in the Damoiselle3 occurs a similar remark: Now Wat Observe me : As an ingenious Critick would observe He lose the Plot. 1 Attached to Love's Kingdom, a Pastoral Tragicomedy, 1664. In Hazlitt's Treatises on the English Drama and Stage. 1 A thing which adds to the confusion of Brome's plots is his great fondness for introducing episodic scenes and characters. There is a natural temptation to do this, if one's chief aim is to show manners or humors. This is the reason for the introduction of the realistic scene of the shoemaker and tailor dunning the gallant in Covent Garden Weeded, and the tavern-scenes in the same play and in the Sparagus Garden, as well as of the scenes between the humors, Widgine and Anvile, in the Northern Lass, and the numerous episodic passages between Courtwit, Swaynwit, and Citwit in the Court Begger. Exact parallels to these are the scenes introducing Dawes and Lafoole in the Silent Woman. Of a less pardonable sort are the episodes which merely add confusion to the plot, without showing humors or manners. Such are those in which Anvile in the Northern Lass is sent to Constance's house, under the impression that it is a brothel, and is beaten; and Squelch, in the same play, is tried in his own house by another justice, and forced to marry Trainwell to extricate himself from his position. But in spite of this overloading with episode in some of the plays, I consider Brome a very clever master of plotting. Of course such involved intrigue cannot be approved of by modern standards; but if we accept the criteria of Caroline and Restoration taste, we must admit that none of the Sons of Ben,' and but few of the Restoration playwrights, equalled Brome in weaving four or five strands of interest into one play. Schelling2 and Ward agree in calling him a very skilful handler of plots; and even Symonds, who has little to say in his favor, 1 Dr. Allen is certainly mistaken in saying that Brome' chooses his incidents and scenes with a view to 'plot advancement, and, ordinarily, to that alone,' and that nothing is shown merely to exhibit or explain characters' (op. cit., p. 49.) admits that his plots are firmly traced, and sustained on one plan throughout, without any suggestion of improvisation. Dr. Faust,1 on the other hand, says his plays are looser in construction than even Every Man out of his Humor, but I do not see how even the most careless reading could lead to this conclusion. Brome's good points in plotting are his careful exposition in the first act, his attention to motives in the greater number of his plays, and the preparation he never fails to give for any important turn in the plot, except, of course, where he aims at complete surprise. The City Wit illustrates these qualities very well. The motives for Crasy's series of plots throughout the play are all carefully elaborated in the first act, where every one of his family and friends goes back on him in trouble. The entrance of Pyannet Sneakup, the shrew, is very well prepared for, so that she comes on in a whirlwind of invective. And near the beginning of the fifth act (p. 358), Crasy clarifies the very complicated situation by recapitulating the part of the scheme he has already planned. This monologue is very useful, and not at all crudely done. This last trait Dr. Koeppel has observed in Brome. He says, in speaking of Massinger's constructive power 2: 'Same of the dramas of his contemporaries resemble mazes in whose paths both author and spectator may be lost. Richard Brome tried to avoid this by drawing attention to particularly difficult complications by an explicit remark of one of his dramatis persona.' One reason Brome is difficult to follow, in spite of the craftsmanship displayed in this manner, is that these hints and preparations often come so far before the action that they are forgotten by the audience. Examples of this are to be found in the Sparagus Garden, where an important revelation of the fifth act is prepared for by 1 Op. cit., p. 32. 2 Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit. 6. 173. mysterious hints in the sixth scene of the second, and again in the Mad Couple. A place where this preparation of the audience is successfully accomplished is Covent Garden Weeded. Here a revelation of the fourth act is led up to by two conversations and a dumb show in the first three. A very fine dialogue, giving antecedent action with skilful unobtrusiveness, is that in the Sparagus Garden 1. 3. The Antipodes is an excellent example of Brome's attention to details in carrying out his main idea. Much of the humor of the play depends upon the detailed consistency in carrying out the inversions of position. These are but a few of the most striking illustrations of the playwright's careful endeavor to keep his plots clear. The plays of Brome's contemporaries, besides having his weaknesses, are deficient also in his best pointplotting. Nabbes' Covent Garden, for instance, is mostly aimless dialogue, with little plot, very loosely put together. Tottenham Court is not much better, and the Bride is a series of separate attempts of a villain upon his cousin, without any organic unity in the plot. Marmion's Holland's Leager has another very loose plot-merely a number of old situations thrown together with but little sequence. Brome's situations are usually hackneyed, but they at least grow organically out of what precedes. Marmion's Antiquary is better, but not equal to Brome in the handling of complicated intrigue. His Fine Companion, however, is as good a play as the average of Brome's. Cartwright's Ordinary is devoid of invention, and absurdly crude in stage-craft. Glapthorne's Hollander is clear because it is simple, but his Wit in a Constable is most confused and hard to follow, although it has not nearly so much material as Brome employs in one plot. Cokayne's Obstinate Lady is one of the poorestmade plays of even this poor period. Beside the four last mentioned plays, Brome's productions, tiresome as most of them are, shine like bright metal on a sullen ground. In Mayne's City Match we have a plot of some cleverness, but poorly knit and hard to follow. It is a play of complex type, that needs much more care in preparation and explicit reference. Shirley's comedies are not so complex in structure as Brome's, but, though Shirley is superior in most respects as a dramatist, he has often less ingenuity in plotting. Several times, however, Brome has fallen into a very serious fault in structure. This is the very cheap solution of a situation by the introduction of a deus ex machina in the fifth act. In the Antipodes, Old Truelock comes in at the end of the play, and relieves us of all doubts as to Lord Letoy's good intentions by explaining that Diana is really Letoy's daughter, who has been brought up from infancy as his own. A quite parallel situation is that of the dénouement of the New Academy, where it turns out that the chastity of Hannah is proved to her jealous husband by the information that Valentine is her halfbrother. Hardyman, her father, is introduced here for the first time to prove this. The Mad Couple has two dei ex machina in the fifth act. These plays are the only ones in which this inartistic device is used to bring about a real solution. Brome had precedents for this in at least two plays by Jacobean dramatists of the first rank, Massinger's crazily constructed play, Believe as You List, and Middleton and Rowley's Spanish Gipsy. In the former, two new characters are brought on in the fifth act to solve the situation, and in the latter, a long lost wife and daughter turn up unexpectedly at the end.1 1 One other fault, that has been pointed out by Dr. Allen (op. cit. p. 51), is that the preparation for the last act or the close of it is sometimes inadequate. According to long accepted tradition the conclusion of the comedy must be happy,- -even the villain must be punished very lighty, if at all... So Brome, like many ... |