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prosa seiner vorgänger und zeitgenossen boten. Er nimmt sich dabei selten die zeit, ein motiv sauber herauszuarbeiten und es organisch mit der haupthandlung zu verknüpfen; er will nur durch eine möglichst bunte reihenfolge von scenen fesseln. Begreiflicher weise werden wir in dem sammelsurium seiner production oft auch an Shakespeare erinnert - Bromes freundschaft mit Ben Jonson, der als dichter in erster linie sein vorbild war, hielt ihn nicht ab, auch die werke des grossen dichterischen antipoden seines meisters für seine zwecke auszubeuten.'

But once does Brome refer to Shakespeare by name. In the Antipodes,1 Letoy says of his troop of actors,

These lads can act the Emperors lives all over,
And Shakespeares Chronicled histories to boot.'

But there are, besides this passage, many cases of parallelism which show an undoubted knowledge of Shakespeare.

Of the several resemblances in situations, most are too slight to prove any direct influence. There is a rather unimportant resemblance between the situation in one of the minor interests in the Mad Couple well Matched— in which Alicia, the light wife of the merchant Saleware, falls in love with Bellamy, a woman in disguise—and the Olivia-Viola motive in Twelfth Night. Professor Koeppel's comment on this is 2: Schon diese andeutungen genügen, uns erkennen zu lassen, dass sich Brome's dramatis persona in einer viel unreineren luft bewegen als Shakespeare's gestalten'; but I think the resemblance too slight to suggest anything else. The same monograph has a comparison of the main outline of the City Wit with Timon of Athens. Here, again, I should say that the resemblance is too slight to be worth noting, were it not for a

1 1. 5.

2 Op. cit.,
P. 43.

3 Op. cit., p. 43.

rather close verbal imitation of a single passage. There is no likeness in plot or character, but merely in the situation of a man refused credit by his friends when he has suffered financial reverses. The attitude of mind and the behavior of the leading character in the two plays are totally different. A much more obvious case of borrowing is that pointed out by Professor Koeppel1 between the Court Begger, Act 3, and the Merchant of Venice 1. 2. Lady Strangelove and her maid Philomel discuss the lady's lovers with great freedom, much as Portia and Nerissa discuss Portia's.

The Queen's Exchange is much more reminiscent of Shakespeare than any other of Brome's plays. Professor Koeppel,2 following Ward's hint,3 has shown the resemblance of the relations between Segebert and his sons, Anthynus and Offa, to those of Lear and his daughters, as well as a further parallel between the two sons and Edgar and Edmund in Lear. Another instance of indebtedness in the same play is the fact that Anthynus has a vision, in which six West-Saxon kings appear in dumb show, like the show of Scottish kings in Macbeth. Dr. Faust 5 finds a resemblance between the scene in which Segebert and Anthynus are set upon by Offa and that in Macbeth in which Banquo is murdered and Fleance escapes, but I doubt whether any one else can detect any similarity. Dr. Faust has two better suggestions, however the comparison of the flight of the lovers in the Novella with the elopement of Lorenzo and Jessica in the Merchant of Venice, and the parallel between Victoria's characterization of her lovers in the same play and the dialogue between Portia and Nerissa,' which Brome borrowed again in the Court Begger. Furthermore,

1 Op. cit., p. 44.

4 Act 3. p. 505.

Faust, op. cit., p.

2 Op. cit., p. 46. 3 Ward, op. cit., 3. 129, n. 4.

5 Faust, op. cit., p. 94.

80. 7 Faust, op. cit., p. 80.

there is a passage in Antipodes 2. 2 that is an undoubted imitation of Hamlet's advice to the players in Hamlet 3.2.1 To these examples may be added one more. The scene in the City Wit (3. 2), in which Pyannet assumes the part of the prince, so that her husband may practise bargaining the sale of his jewels, may be compared with the famous one in which Falstaff takes the part of the king (1 Hen. IV. 2. 4).

Brome seems to have been indebted to Shakespeare also for a half dozen of his characters. Garrula, in the Lovesick Court, is one of the numerous imitations of the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet. The likeness is especially close in Act 1, scene 2 (p. 98); cf. Romeo and Juliet 2. 5.2 Swinburne suggests another imitation of Juliet's nurse in Closet, an old Crone, Nurse-keeper,' in a Mad Couple well Matched. In the same play, the Methodicall, Grave, and Orthographicall speaking friend Mr. Saveall, that cals People Pe-o-ple '4 seems to be a faint reminiscence of Holofernes,5 but the resemblance is more in this description than in the later working out of the character himself. Andrea, the faithful fool, in the Queen and Concubine, who follows his mistress into exile, is very like the Fool in Lear; the parson with his scraps of Latin is another repetition of Holofernes; and the misuse of words by Lollio and Poggio suggests Dogberry and Verges."

There are, moreover, three or four verbal reminiscences of Shakespeare in Brome. The parallel passages from the City Wit and Timon of Athens, alluded to before, are as follows :

'All things rob another Churches poule the People, Prices pill the Church; Minions draw from Princes,

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Mistresses suck Minions, and the Pox undoes Mistresses; Physicians plague their Patients; Orators their Clients ; Courtiers their Suitors, and the Devil all. The water robs the earth, earth choakes the water fire burns ayre, ayre still consumes the fire.

Since Elements themselves do rob each other,
And Phoebe for her light doth rob her brother,
What ist in man, one man to rob another.'

(City Wit 4. 1. p. 341.)

I'll example you with thievery :

The sun's a thief, and with his great attraction
Robs the vast sea: the moon's an arrant thief,
And her pale fire she snatches from the sun :
The sea's a thief, whose liquid surge resolves
The moon into salt tears; the earth's a thief,
That feeds and breeds by a composture stolen
From general excrement; each thing's a thief :
The laws, your curb and whip, in their rough power
Have uncheck'd theft. Love not yourselves

Rob one another.

away,

(Timon of Athens 4. 3, 438 ff.)

A simile in the English Moor may be compared with one in I Henry IV:

This alters not thy beauty,

Though for a time obscures it from our eyes.
Thou maist be, while at pleasure, like the Sun ;
Thou dost but case thy splendour in a cloud,
To make the beam more precious in1 it shines.
In stormy troubled weather no Sun's seen.
But let the roaring tempest once be over,
Shine out again and spare not.

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(English Moor 3. 1, p. 38.)

Yet herein will I imitate the sun,

Who doth permit the base contagious clouds

1 'when'?

To smother up his beauty from the world,
That, when he please again to be himself,
Being wanted, he may more be wondered at,
By breaking through the foul and ugly mists
Of vapours that did seem to strangle him.

(1 Henry IV. 1. 2, 221 ff.)

These two parallels have been discovered by Professor Koeppel. Dr. Faust1 compares the opening lines of the Queen and Concubine,

The clouds of Doubts and Fears are now dispers'd,

And Joy, like the resplendent Sun spreads forth

New life and spirit over all this Kingdom

That lately gasp'd with Sorrow,

with the beginning of Richard III.

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York;

And all the clouds, that lower'd upon our house,

In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

I should like to add one more verbal reminiscence from the prologue to the Damoiselle :

Bayes will buy no Sack,

And Honour fills no belly, cloaths no back.

This is an echo of Falstaff's soliloquy on the same subject (1 Henry IV. 5. 1).

In general, the influence of Shakespeare on Brome differs from that of Jonson in that it consists wholly of details, rather than of principles or point of view. Whether many of these details are genuine cases of influence I am extremely doubtful.

1 Op. cit., p. 100.

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