Page images
PDF
EPUB

In Five New Plays, 1659.

Also in Pearson's edition, 1873.

To my Lord Newcastle, on his Play Called the Variety. In Five New Plays, preceding Weeding of Covent Garden, 1659.

Also in Pearson's edition, 1873.

The Old Man's Delight. Three stanzas, signed R. B., with two more added by A. B., in Poems by Alexander Brome, 1661.

Hazlitt's attribution to Brome of the verses added to John Donne's Poems (1635) and signed Mr. R. B., is undoubtedly wrong, for not only is the acquaintance with Donne most unlikely, but the style of the verses is totally different from Brome's.

[ocr errors][merged small]

The Song in the Jovial Crew, Act 2, 'Come! Come away! The spring' is reprinted in :

J. H.'s Catch that Catch Can (with music), 1652.
An Antidote Against Melancholy, 1661.

Walsh's Catch Club, c. 1705.

English Verse-Chaucer to Burns. Ed. Linton and Stoddard, 1883.

Rare Poems of the 16th and 17th Centuries. Ed. W. J. Linton, 1883.

[ocr errors]

Lyrics from the Dramatists. Ed. A. H. Bullen, 1889.
Sevententh Century Lyrics. Ed. G. Saintsbury, 1892.
English Lyric Poetry. Ed. F. I. Carpenter, n. d.
The Song in the Northern Lass, 2. 6, Nor love nor fate
do I accuse,' is reprinted in:
Choice Drollery, 1656.
Westminster Drollery, 1671.
Lyrics from the Dramatists.
Seventeenth Century Lyrics.

Reprint of 1875.

Ed. A. H. Bullen, 1889.

Ed. G. Saintsbury, 1892.

The Jonson Anthology. Ed. E. Arber, 1899.

EDITING

Monsieur Thomas, by John Fletcher. T. Harper for J. Waterson, London, Quarto, 1639.

Brome wrote prefatory verses to this volume and dedicated it to Charles Cotton, the Elder.

Lachrymæ Musarum; the Tears of the Muses; exprest in Elegies upon the Death of Henry Lord Hastings, etc. Collected and set forth by R. B., London, 1649. Octavo. Pp. 98.

Second title-page, 1650. Full description in Grolier Club Catalogue, Wither to Prior, p. 94, 1905.

The editorship of this volume is attributed to Brome, I think on good evidence, by the Bibliotheca AngloPoetica (1815), by Corser, and by the Grolier Club Catalogue (1905).

W. C. Ward, in the Mermaid edition of Wycherley (p. 292. n.), attributes the editorship of Covent Garden Drollery (1672) to Brome. Besides the fact that this was twenty years after Brome's death, the initials on the title-page are A. B.!

BROME AS A DRAMATIST1

The period of Brome's activity as a dramatist extends from the end of his apprenticeship with Jonson, which we may call about 1628, to the closing of the theatres in 1642. The records of his work show that he wrote, or had a hand in, twenty-three plays at least, sixteen of which have come down to us.

In order to determine a little better Brome's position in the history of drama, it may be well to place him with respect to his contemporaries. At the time he began to be prominent as a dramatist, most of the important Elizabethan and Jacobean writers were either dead or had ceased producing. Jonson's popularity had waned, though he wrote three more plays before his death in 1637. The same year Dekker died, but he had stopped writing plays more than ten years before. Fletcher had died in 1625, and Middleton in 1627, before Brome's success may be said to have begun. Heywood, Chapman, and Day still lived on, but were turning out but little dramatic work, the inferior productions of their old age. The only man of importance of the preceding generation who was still active was Massinger, who wrote eight plays between 1628 and the year of his death, 1639. Ford

1 Since the writing of this section another dissertation on Brome has appeared, A Study of the Comedies of Richard Brome, especially as Representative of Dramatic Decadence. by H. F. Allen, University of Michigan, 1912. The main thesis of this study, that Brome is a decadent dramatist, no one has ever disputed, but many of Dr. Allen's points have not sufficient evidence of first-hand investigation to make them convincing. He has not even availed himself of the material Dr. Faust had collected on the very points under discussion. The significant contributions of this study I have quoted in foot-notes.

produced his best work during this period. Shirley, who produced over forty masques and plays between 1625 and 1642, is, I think, the only other strictly contemporary dramatist who is Brome's superior either in the number or the value of his works.

This is not a very proud boast-to be ranked second or third in the third period, the decadent period of Elizabethan drama. Looked at from the contemporary point of view, however, Brome is of more consequence. In this 'brazen age' of drama we call Shirley the last of the Elizabethans with individuality; Brome we may regard as ranking first among those who succeeded purely by imitation. If we compare him with the very numerous tribe of Caroline imitators, he stands out as a figure of real importance. As a dramatist of humors and manners, he is distinctly the superior of Nabbes, Glapthorne, Marmion, and Davenant, his four principal contemporaries after Shirley. The lesser men who were working in the same field at this period were Jasper Mayne, Arthur Wilson, Sir Aston Cokayne, the Duke of Newcastle, Robert Chamberlayne, William Cartwright, and Alexander Brome. These last mentioned writers, all but one resting in comfortable obscurity, wrote one or two humor-comedies apiece between 1631 and 1640. In the field of romantic drama Brome produced one fine play, the Jovial Crew, which had a greater popularity than almost any other play written in the Caroline period. In romantic tragedy he ranks as a merely respectable imitator of Fletcher, not inferior to Cartwright, Carlell, and Suckling.

For a more detailed discussion of the plays technically, a classification will be necessary. Of the sixteen extant plays, one, the Lancashire Witches, we may put aside as a reworking of an older comedy of manners by Heywood. Nine more are comedies of manners, with a predominance of Jonsonian humor-characters. These

are the New Academy or the New Exchange, the City Wit or a Woman wears the Breeches, the Northern Lass (or a Nest of Fools),1 the Covent Garden Weeded or a Middlesex Justice of Peace, the Sparagus Garden, A Mad Couple well Matched, the Antipodes, the Damoiselle or the New Ordinary, and the Court Begger. The English Moor or the Mock Marriage has such a prominent underplot of manners that it may be classed here, though the main plot is romantic comedy. The two other romantic comedies are the Novella and the Jovial Crew or the Merry Beggers. The Novella, with its Italian setting, is pure romance, but the English Moor and the Jovial Crew have English settings and a number of humor-characters. Finally, there are three tragi-comedies, the Lovesick Court or the Ambitious Politique, the Queen's Exchange, and the Queen and the Concubine. These are written in the heroic manner, have some tragic feeling, deal with royal personages, and end happily. The scenes are laid respectively in Thessaly, Saxon England, and Sicily. Even here, when Brome is farthest from the manner of Jonson, he introduces humor-characters.

Of all of these plays of Brome, but one seems to have any problem of authorship connected with it. This is the matter of the dual authorship of Heywood and Brome in the Lancashire Witches. Fleay is undoubtedly correct in his statement that this is an old play of Heywood's revised by Brome to make it timely in its contemporary allusions, for a revival in 1634.3 Fleay, however, has not given a very accurate determination of the parts attributable to the two authors.

1 Sub-title first added to edition of 1663.

2 The five pages following are reprinted from my article, the Authorship of the Lancashire Witches in Modern Language Notes for this year.

Fleay, Biog. Chron. 1. 301.

« PreviousContinue »