consistent with his theories, as far as the circumstances of the age would permit.1 Brome keeps these unities strictly in but five plays-the New Academy, Covent Garden Weeded, the Novella, the Antipodes, and the Court Begger. Four of the plays take place in two weeks or over, and the rest in about two or three days. All the plays, except four with romantic plots, keep the unity of place, interpreted as Jonson interprets it-confining the action to one city. In another classical practice, which really amounts to a detail in printing, making the entrance of every character a new scene,3 Brome followed Jonson quite closely in three of the four plays published during his own lifetime. By the time he published the fourth, the Jovial Crew, he evidently considered this unnecessary. Nabbes is the only contemporary whom I have observed to imitate Jonson in this point in the printing of comedies.5 Artificial points of technique of this kind are of slight consequence. Brome's imitation of Jonson is of a much more fundamental character. I think that even the types of plot he uses are developments of the types used by his master. I have already mentioned, in the discussion 1 L. S. Friedland, Dramatic Unities in England,' Jour. Eng. and Germ. Phil. 10. 77-84. 6 2 Friedland (p. 85) mentions but one example of Brome's violation of the unities, and considers his allusion to the lawes of comedy' (Sparagus Garden, Prologue) to refer to the unities. This reference, as well as those in the Epilogue to the English Moor, and in Jonson's lines before the Northern Lass, I take to mean the laws of humor-comedy or of satiric drama, rather than to the unities. 3 Jonson speaks of the division into acts and scenes according to the Terentian manner' in the Induction to Every Man Out, and follows the principle in the printing of his first folio. • The Queen and the Concubine, published after his death, also shows an attempt to keep this practice. 5 Nabbes also mentions the unity of time in the Epilogue to his Covent Garden. of the structure of the plays, the resemblance of the City Wit, and the underplots of the Sparagus Garden and Covent Garden Weeded, to the Alchemist. This type of plot that consists of a series of tricks, a type that became a great favorite on the Caroline stage, I think is the result of imitation of Jonson's great farce.1 Another result is the fondness for extremely complicated plots. The Alchemist has a great many situations, a great variety of trickery, complicated by counterplotting on the part of the dupes, and even by division among the plotters themselves. However, as there is one main interest throughout, the plot remains clear in spite of its extreme intricacy. The lesser men who imitated this could gain this complication only by introducing several interests. The result is such a maze as that in which Brome involves himself in most of his comedies. These many interests divide the attention so much that one may say of many of Brome's plays, as Genest does of Covent Garden Weeded, that they have no main plots. Jonson himself, as Miss Woodbridge has pointed out, often has no single line of action dominant, for instance in the Devil is an Ass. Brome's method of exposition of plot and character also shows the influence of Jonson. Jonson almost always announces a new actor before he enters the scene, and very often characterizes the humor of one of his personages in speeches of another. This, of course, is not exclusively a Jonsonian device, but it is carried so far by him that it becomes a mannerism of his comedy. For instance, in Every Man In (1. 3), Cob explains Bobadil's character to Matthew, and then adds some facts of the plot in a soliloquy. Again, in 3.2 the humor of Justice Clement is given before his entry on the scene. In Cynthia's Revels this method of exposition is carried so far as to become very undramatic. Mercury and Cupid 1 See above, p. 55. (2. 1) give the character of everybody at such great length that the scene sounds like a long but witty extract from Overbury or Earle.1 Brome never carried the method so far as this, but he uses it repeatedly as one of his important technical devices. Examples are to be found in the English Moor (1. 2, p. 9), Sparagus Garden (3.4, p. 159), Mad Couple well Matched (3. 1, pp. 41, 44), Court Begger (2. 1, pp. 205-7, 213), and Covent Garden Weeded (1. 1, p. 33. 2, p. 50). The entrance of nearly every character in the Antipodes is prepared for by such a brief introduction. The use of the soliloquy in clarifying a situation by a recapitulation of certain details, already commented on,2 is exemplified in the Damoiselle (4. 1, p. 437). The great frequency with which this sort of exposition is employed by both Jonson and Brome-I have merely cited some typical cases—leads me to believe that here we have another direct influence through the study of models. Influences that can be traced more definitely than those of structure and tricks of technique are the borrowings of situations and scenes. The parallels with the Alchemist, where Kastrill is taught to quarrel and his sister Pliant to be a lady, have been mentioned before. With the similar situation, that of the bogus academy of deportment in the New Academy and the Damoiselle, may be compared the news office in the Staple of News. Both establishments are meeting-places for people who are gulled by their own folly and vanity. These places, and those in which country gulls are taught to become 1 Cf. also Lovel's characterization of Lady Frampul, New Inn 1. 5, the epigrammatic characterizations of Magnetic Lady 1. 1, the character of Hilts given by Tub, Tale of a Tub 1. 1, and the long explanation of Sir Hugh's disguise, 3. 5. 2 See above, p. 61. 4 However, see note, p. 68. 3 See above, p. 55. gentlemen, are kept by what Schelling1 calls a group of 'irregular humorists'—a Jonsonian device. The situation of The Silent Woman-a man disguised as a girl, concealing his identity even from the audience until the end of the last act, and bringing about a double climax by the revelation-Brome has used in the City Wit, where Tryman turns out at the end to be Jeremy, who in disguise has been helping his master play tricks on everybody else in the play, though neither his master nor the audience recognizes him.2 The reverse of this situation—a girl, disguised as a man, keeping her identity concealed until the dénouement-which occurs in the New Inn, is used by Brome in the Damoiselle and the Mad Couple well Matched. Another disguise, that of the obliging courtezan who is willing to impersonate any character needed by the scheme of her employer-e. g. Dol Common's duping of Dapper— occurs repeatedly in Brome. Dr. Faust has found a suggestion for the situation in the Jovial Crew in a phrase in the Gipsies Metamorphosed Gaze upon . . . : this brave Spark struck out of Flintshire, upon Justice Jug's Daughter, then sheriff of the county, who running away with a Kinsman of our captain's, and her father pursuing her to the marshes,' etc. This passage, however, has to be wrenched from its absurd context to show any suggestion of the plot of the Jovial Crew. 3 An interesting parallel in a single short scene is that between the one in the English Moor (1.2, p. 15), in which masqued friends enter and make a noisy congratulation and warning to old Quicksands, who has lately married a young wife, and that in the Silent Woman (2. 1), in which Truewit does the same thing to Morose under similar circumstances. Four other parallels in single scenes are 1 Eliz. Drama 2. 287, n. pointed out by Professor Koeppel.1 Three of them occur in the City Wit, a play which also shows Jonsonian influence strongly in satire and in humor-study. Crasy (2. 1, p. 295), disguising himself as a lame soldier in order to get some money out of Sarpego, is following Brainworm, who plays the same trick in Every Man in his Humor 2. 2. In the same play, the scene in which Pyannet gives her husband instructions as to how to behave at court may be compared with Every Man out of his Humor 5. 1, and Cynthia's Revels 3.3. Again, in the CityWit (3. 1, pp. 309 ff.; 3. 3, pp. 325 ff.)2 the supposed widow, Tryman, apparently on her deathbed, gives many legacies to the various persons interested, in order to dupe them of their money. There is a slight resemblance between the scenes in which this occurs and the first act of Volpone. One more interesting parallel is that between the New Academy 2. 1 (pp. 39 ff.) and the Silent Woman 3. 2. In both plays an old man thinks he has married a quiet and obedient wife, but finds that she is a virago. These half-dozen resemblances in situation at the bases of plots, and the five in single scenes, need not all be considered as cases of conscious borrowing. Whenever two situations, the elements of which may be identical, are changed in treatment of background, period, or social grade, they often become so different that no one but the student on the scent of literary influences would even suspect a parallel. The most important part of Brome's imitation is, of course, his humor-study. This becomes patent from even 1 Ben Jonson's Wirkung, und Andere Studien (Anglistische Forschungen 20) 120, 134, 151, 154. The first of these is in Faust, op. cit., p. 52. Koeppel is not always careful about acknowledging his debts to his predecessors. 24 'Sparagus Garden' (Koeppel, p. 151) is evidently a mistake for City Wit.' Also, for vol. III.' read vol I.' |