INTRODUCTION
1. Richard Brome
Descriptions of
Richard Brome's
career as a playwright are almost always overshadowed by the perhaps most interesting
fact about his life: he was
Ben
Jonson's manservant.
The extent to which Brome, the dramatist, can be considered as merely
a 'son of
Ben' (a member of a group of Jonsonian
playwrights, notably described in
Joe
Lee Davis'
book
The Sons of Ben
[1]
) has been diminished by recent studies of his work.
As Matthew Steggle notes, in his book
Richard Brome: Place and Politics on the Caroline
Stage, 'accounts of Brome's plays often seek…to treat them all as a part
of the same conventional comic milieu', when, in fact, they 'are much more complex
and diverse than such a generalization would suggest.'
[2]
Another assessment of Brome's place in early
modern theatrical history, by Ira Clark, also rejects any attempt to label his
work as 'normative'.
Responding to R.
J. Kaufmann,
[3]
Clark describes a 'revisionary' Brome, 'develop[ing] critiques
of current sociopolitical and artistic givens'.
[4]
As Clark suggests, this revisionary style may
be a product of Brome's social origins, and what little is known about Brome's
background suggests that 'he came from common origins and worked his way up.'
[5]
The specifics of Richard Brome's background
are unknown: there is no evidence to support an accurate date, place or circumstance
of his birth, and no known record of his education has been established.
[6]
Based on later records, it is generally thought
that Brome was born
c. 1590.
The first possible record of a Richard Brome, who is certainly the author
of
The Queen's Exchange and the other plays attributed to its author,
is found in the Induction to Jonson's
Bartholomew
Fair, acted in 1614.
At the beginning
of Jonson's play, the stage-keeper, keen not to be overheard, says, 'I am looking,
lest the poet hear me, or his man, Master Brome, behind the arras'.
[7]
However, this play is not known from any source
earlier than the date of its printing, in 1631.
Hence, the earlier date, of 1614, remains in
doubt as a strong indication to the age of the relationship between the two
men.
Brome was almost certainly Jonson's
'man' by 1625, when, according to Brome's much later elegy on John Fletcher,
Jonson 'was the master of his art and me, / Most knowing Jonson'.
[8]
As Steggle asserts, Brome's role is very likely
to have been that of servant and not amanuensis.
[9]
However, over the years to follow, Brome became
a respected playwright in his own right, and, despite early hostility, earned
the respect of Jonson, his erstwhile employer.
Brome's first recorded (though now
lost) play,
The Love-Sick Maid, was
written for the King's Men, and performed at the Globe and Blackfriars to notable
success in 1629.
Indeed, it was so successful
that Ben Jonson, commenting on the lack of success of his own play,
The
New Inn, jealously dismissed Brome's effort as 'sweepings' left over from
his 'Masters meale'.
[10]
Brome went on to have further early success
with
The Northern Lass, licensed in
1629.
The City Wit is thought to be another early play from Brome's time
working for the King's Men, but this cannot be conclusively established.
During the period 1632 to 1635, after his early
success working for the King's Men, Brome appears to have written plays for
performance by several different acting companies:
The Weeding of Covent Garden was possibly performed by the Prince
Charles company (or even the King's Men);
The
Queen's Exchange and
The Life and
Death of Sir Martin Skink (the latter being a collaboration with Thomas
Heywood) were likely to have been performed during a period when Brome was working
with the King's Men, the Prince Charles company and the King's Revels Company
at Salisbury Court.
The King's Men performed
the only play of this period in Brome's career that can be safely assigned:
The Late Lancashire Witches (another
collaboration with Thomas Heywood), that was acted at the Globe in 1634.
[11]
From July 1635, Brome had an exclusive contract
with the King's Revels Company, but this was interrupted by an outbreak of plague
in 1636.
The hardship that this brought
forced Brome into the composition of
The Antipodes, one of the plays, alongside
A Jovial Crew, that is most well known to modern audiences.
[12]
After the resumption of theatrical performances
in 1637, and up to the inevitable closure in 1642, Brome wrote a number of plays,
including the well regarded
A Jovial Crew.
He eventually
died in 1652, after contributing a significant number (sixteen extant) of plays
to the canon of Caroline drama.
2. The TextThere are two 'texts'
of
The Queen's Exchange, or rather,
there is one text presented with two different title-pages.
The quarto text, consulted for the purposes
of this edition, was first printed in 1657 by Henry Brome (seemingly no relation
to Richard Brome).
However, it appears
that this first printing did not bring Henry Brome the profit he was seeking,
[13]
because he reissued the unsold copies under a different title,
The Royal Exchange, in 1661.
G. E. Bentley, in
The Jacobean and Caroline Stage: Plays and Playwrights, goes as far
as to describe Brome's reissue as 'a fraudulent attempt to sell the remaining
sheets of the 1657 edition'.
[14]
3. Date and PerformanceHenry Brome's involvement
in the production, and therefore the transmission, of the only text of
The
Queen's Exchange available to modern scholars, also makes it difficult to
assign the play to a particular company of actors or theatre, which in turn,
makes dating the play problematic.
Despite
the apparent authority of the statement on the title-page of the quarto, that
it 'was acted with generall applause at the Black-Friers By His Majesties Servants',
[15]
Henry Brome's addition of a preface, entitled '
The Stationer to the Readers', places these claims
in doubt. In his contribution, Henry
Brome contradicts the title-page by confessing, 'when 'twas written, or where
acted, I know not.' Without any solid
evidence, the dating of the play becomes a matter for conjecture. One suggestion, made by F. G. Fleay in 1891,
is that Jeffrey's comment, 'The King we make no doubt of, we have prayed for
him these seven years' (II.ii.83), establishes the date. The theory being that references such as these
are often allusions to the real monarch, and as such, the year of performance
must be the seventh year of Charles' reign, 1631-2.
[16]
This is an attractive solution, but does not
resolve the problem of dating The
Queen's Exchange conclusively. Of the other dates
tentatively offered by critics, Martin Butler's dating of the play to no 'later
than 1634', although partly based on the questionable assumption that it 'belonged
to the King's Men', does have merit.
[17]
As Matthew Steggle notes in adopting Butler's
time frame, a date as late as 1634 is credible, especially considering the evidence
of the Prologue, that 'speaks of the author as experienced, successful, and
established':
[18]
'Though most that he has writ has past the rest, / And found
good approbation of the best'.
[19]
Furthermore, as Steggle highlights, and as this
study will also explore, the themes of The Queen's Exchange resonate with the events surrounding King Charles' Scottish
coronation, in 1633.
[20]
And, although interpretative analysis of this
kind cannot provide secure evidence for dating, it does support both Butler
and Steggle in their conjecture. As regards
assigning the play to a particular company or theatre,
it is possible that
the play was acted by 'His Majesties Servants', the King's Men, but,
as noted above, during the likely period of performance of
The Queen's Exchange Richard Brome appears to have written plays for
several different acting companies: the Prince Charles company, the King's Revels
Company, as well as the King's Men.
The
King's Men were associated with a private theatre, the Blackfriars, and a 'public'
playhouse, the Globe.
Brome's association
with the Prince Charles company was at the 'public' Red Bull Theatre, and his
tenure at the King's Revels Company produced plays for the private Salisbury
Court Theatre.
The 'public' playhouses
of the period 'scarcely saw a new play', and '[t]he creative initiative seems
to have fallen to the "private" theatres (the Blackfriars, Phoenix
and Salisbury Court)'.
[21]
The private theatres, and their output, were
much more in tune with the more sophisticated tastes of the Caroline court than
were the public playhouses.
In this environment,
it has often been speculated which plays were performed at which theatres based
on the sophistication, or otherwise, of the production in question.
G. E. Bentley assesses
The Queen's Exchange to be 'too naïve in
its technique for a sophisticated Blackfriars audience.'
[22]
More generously, Martin Butler ascribes 'a serious
moral' to the play, and credits Brome with writing 'a play that looks courtly
but in fact is much more popular and spirited.'
[23]
This popular appeal could well have played well
at the Globe, with the King's Men.
Matthew
Steggle describes a play in which 'political ideas may be articulated and explored',
and which 'enters…into a form of intertextual dialogue with [Shakespeare's]
King Lear, addressing the same concerns
about the borders of the nation'.
[24]
This kind of politically sensitive theatre would
not have been out of place at the Blackfriars.
Clearly, given the lack of critical consensus
on the matter of how
The Queen's Exchange
might have been received by the respective audiences at the private or public
theatres, and the recent reappraisal of Brome's work made by critics such as
Matthew Steggle, it is difficult to argue for assigning the play to (or excluding
it from) any venue on this basis.
What
does seem to be evident, based on the absence of any known revival, Henry Brome's
failure to sell all his sheets in 1657 and its re-emergence, in print, under
a different title in 1661, is that
The Queen's Exchange was not a great success wherever it was performed.
4.
'Sweepings'
a)
JonsonBen Jonson's dismissal of Brome's early dramatic work as 'sweepings' seemed
to have been forgotten when the original source of this critique, Jonson's Horatian
'Ode to Himself', was printed in 1631: the revised version of the poem no longer
referred to Brome directly.
Nevertheless,
there remains a sense in much historical criticism that Brome, and several other
Caroline playwrights, produced plays that were nothing more than inferior copies
of those produced by their more talented Elizabethan and Jacobean predecessors.
Indeed, R. J. Kaufmann, writing in 1961, describes
The
Queen's Exchange as 'weakly constructed', and 'a virtual pastiche of borrowings
from Shakespeare' and others.
[25]
This study, in accordance with other more recent
assessments, will show Kaufmann's appraisal to be less than fair.
Nevertheless, a brief examination of Brome's
major dramatic influences is instructive, beginning with Ben Jonson.
Joe Lee Davis, in his book,
The Sons of Ben: Jonsonian Comedy in Caroline
England, describes a 'group of poets, playwrights, and merely conversational
wits who met…with the aging Jonson at various taverns of London'.
[26]
Richard Brome was part of this group, that came
to be 'dubbed "The Sons of Ben"',
[27]
and the influence of Jonson can be seen in Brome's dramatic
output.
An extensive catalogue of the parallels between
the plays of the two playwrights is given by Clarence Edward Andrews in his
study of Brome.
Andrews notes Brome's
'fondness for extremely complicated plots', and attributes the complexities
found in
The City Wit,
The Sparagus Garden and
The Weeding of Covent Garden to their 'resemblance…to
the
Alchemist.'
[28]
This favourable comparison is weakened by Andrews'
acceptance of a suggestion that Brome's intricacies result in a democracy of
plots, and a distinct absence of dominant story lines.
It is also evident that Brome owes much to Jonson
for the characterisations found in his city comedies.
In
The
City Wit, for example, the character of Tryman, an apparent widow, echoes
the central character in Jonson's
Volpone
when pledging several legacies to visitors to her deathbed, only to relieve
them of their money.
[29]
There is also a considerable overlap between
the subjects considered for satirical treatment by the two authors.
A notable example being the comic treatment
of the
monopoly
system in The Queen's Exchange. Jeffrey's decision to start 'a monopoly of fools'
(III.i.150) - a satirical attack on 'the granting to certain individuals the
right of manufacture of and exclusive trade in certain things, often articles
of the most common utility'
[30]
- has much in common with similar treatments in Brome's The Antipodes (IV.ix.), Jonson's Volpone,
[31]
and Jonson's The Devil
is an Ass.
[32]
b)
ShakespeareUnderstandably, of all
Brome's influences, apart from Jonson, Shakespeare is the most prominent. As will be discussed below, The Queen's Exchange is heavily influenced
by the plot devices, characterisations and verbal features of a number of Shakespeare's
plays. This is also the case, to a lesser
degree, in a number of Brome's other plays, and two notable examples are given
here. Andrews, drawing on the work of
earlier critics, highlights the similarity between the beginning of Richard
III (I.i.1-4) and the first lines of The
Queen and Concubine:The clouds of Doubts and Fears are
now dispers'd,And Joy, like the resplendent Sun, spreads forthNew life and spirit
over all this Kingdom,That lately gasp'd with Sorrow.
[33]
The similar use of metaphor
is striking. Another striking resemblance
is to be found in The Antipodes.
Here, Hamlet's advice to the players in Shakespeare's play (III.ii.17-36)
is mirrored by Letoy's instructions to his actors:Trouble not you your
head with my conceit,But mind your part.
Let me not see you act nowIn your scholastic way
you brought to town wi' ye,With seesaw sack-a-down,
like a sawyer.
[34]
There is less verbal
echoing here than in the instance from The Queen and Concubine, but in
the structure of the passage as a whole, and as a device, the debt to Shakespeare
is clearly apparent.
c)
FordFinally, in this brief
account of Brome's main influences, it is worth noting the stylistic influence
of John Ford on his work. Arguably, Ford's
best work was printed in the 1630s, when Brome was writing plays for several
different companies himself. Ford's 'Tis
Pity She's a Whore (printed in 1633) provides Brome with the theme of incest
in The Queen's Exchange. Another, more minor stylistic trait of Ford's
is also common in Brome's verse plays. Ford's
taste for dividing a line of verse between several speakers is repeated in Brome
(this edition of The Queen's Exchange
providing ample evidence), and it is possible that he could have adopted this
technique after observing it in Ford's work. The Broken
Heart, also printed in 1633, has several examples of this device, a more
extreme instance occurring in Act III:Bassanes.
Chamber combats Are felt not heard.Prophilus. [within] 'A
wakes.Bassanes.
What's that?Ithocles. [within] Who's there?
[35]
Ford's play, The Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck: A
Strange Truth, also appears to have a scene that has much in common with
one in The Queen's Exchange. It is debatable which play was written and performed
first, Ford's play being 'entered in the Stationers' Register on 24 February
1634'.
[36]
The scene in Ford is that where George Gordon,
Earl of Huntly, is arguing with James IV about the marriage of his daughter,
Katherine. Huntly's disposition, the
mixture of deference and irreverence he employs, has a near parallel in Segebert's
protestations to Bertha in the first scene of Brome's play.
Considering the political climate in Caroline England in the 1630s, it
would not be surprising to find two playwrights creating such scenes, quite
independently, where nobles have to tread this fine line with their respective
monarchs. However, it cannot be discounted that one was
influenced by the other. It would be,
perhaps, understandable for critics to prefer the influence to be in one direction
(from Ford to Brome), especially considering the obvious disparity in talent,
but the converse is not impossible. 5. The Play
a)
The PlotThe plot of The Queen's Exchange reflects many of the
influences that Brome takes from other playwrights. The action is staged in a Saxon England of unknown
date, but, in common with much early modern drama, the characters and their
lives reflect the England as it would have been known to the author. Furthermore, the themes and events would have
been familiar to any experienced Elizabethan, Jacobean or Caroline theatregoer.
Nevertheless, Brome's treatment of the familiar, arguably, has a very
particular application to the political scene of the early 1630s, in London
and the nation as a whole. The first scene takes place in the court of
the recently crowned Bertha, Queen of the West Saxons. She is planning a marriage to Osric, the King
of Northumbria, and a group of courtiers are gathered in support of their queen's
decision. However, not all are in agreement:
Segebert, a wise and faithful counsellor of Bertha's late father, advises against
the marriage. He wishes to protect his
late master's kingdom, and fears that all will be undone by Bertha's proposed
alliance: 'All your wealth, / Your state, your laws, […] Must all be
altered, or quite subverted, / And all by a wilful gift unto a stranger?' (I.i.53-9)
[37]
Although there are moments of comedy in this
and almost every other scene of the play (the sycophancy of Bertha's lords being
the main source for humour in the West Saxon court), Segebert's subsequent banishment
and his valedictory speeches to his children (I.ii) begin the play in a tragic
tone.
Brome's debt to Shakespeare is
very much evident in the character of Segebert and his relationship with his
children.
Segebert is a banished lord
in the image of Kent from
King Lear, yet his sons resemble those of Gloucester from the same
play.
Offa is Segebert's favoured son,
but most resembles Edmund in his Machiavellian and murderous schemes, whereas
the less favoured Anthynus is loyal and pious, and thus resembles Edgar.
Mildred, Segebert's daughter, provides Brome
an opportunity to echo a theme from another notable playwright, more of which
will be discussed below.
Segebert's exile,
in the company of Anthynus, leads him to Northumbria, the location for another
troubled royal court.
In Act I, at Bertha's
court, the Northumbrian ambassador, Theodric, receives the Queen's affirmative
answer to Osric's request for marriage, and, apparently, while in the West Saxon
kingdom, he has fallen in love with, and acquired a portrait of, Mildred.
On his return to his own land, the good news is received well by Osric,
that is, until he sees Mildred's likeness, and becomes uncontrollably jealous
of his courtier: '
Protest it rapt me 'bove the pitch of mortals' (II.i.102).
Osric's rapture manifests itself as apparent madness, and his court is
thrown into turmoil; the theme of an apparently mad king continues Brome's references
to Shakespeare's King Lear. Beyond the court in Northumbria, the farming
people, represented by four 'clowns' and Jeffrey, the leader of their clowning,
are preparing to celebrate the King's betrothal with 'bells and bonfires' (II.ii.107).
This motley collection of working people, presented as clowns, resembles
the characters of Jack Cade, Dick the Butcher, Smith the Weaver et
al in Shakespeare's 2 Henry VI (IV.ii). Indeed, they are similarly irreverent and anti-authority
in their behaviour, and their taste for the traditional celebratory activities
of ordinary English people strikes a particularly anti-puritanical note.
Jeffrey's name may be an ironic allusion to the influential twelfth-century
'historian', Geoffrey of Monmouth, or perhaps even more pointedly, to Jeffrey
Hudson, Queen Henrietta Maria's dwarf. The
significance of this latter possibility is discussed below. Eventually, Jeffrey is recruited by a courtier
to be the King's fool (and potential cure), and leaves his country comrades
for the court. Meanwhile, in another,
wilder part of Northumbria, Segebert and Anthynus are assailed by outlaws, accompanied
and hired by a disguised Offa (II.iii). Segebert is wounded, but Anthynus manages to
fight off his attackers before going in search of aid. Both Segebert and a similarly wounded outlaw
are helped by a pious hermit, who as Martin Butler observes, is 'an emblem of
the piety, patience and goodness of the country'.
[38]
Anthynus' journey to get help is initially fruitless,
and on his return Segebert has vanished, with the aid of the hermit. Eventually Anthynus is found asleep by a group
of courtiers, but not before he has 'heard' a playful 'Echo' (II.iii) - a natural
or supernatural phenomenon, that could also be an auditory hallucination - and
'seen' a procession of Saxon kings who seem to predict his own succession to
the West Saxon throne (III.ii). The latter vision echoing the procession of
kings before Macbeth in Shakespeare's Jacobean play (Macbeth, IV.i). The courtiers
mistake the sleeping Anthynus for his look-alike, Osric, and remove him to the
court. On there return, Osric, whose
madness is revealed to be a sham, is planning a secret journey to the West Saxon
kingdom, and the appearance of a look-alike aids his deception (III.iii).
Act IV sees Offa, now back in his own house, imprison his fellow outlaws
to avoid paying them, and make an incestuous attempt on Mildred's virtue.
With the aid of her nurse, Mildred manages to forestall him. This theme of incest between a brother and a
sister is reminiscent of a play written and performed during the same period
as Brome is likely to have been writing The
Queen's Exchange: John Ford's 'Tis
Pity She's a Whore, 'printed in 1633 and probably written about three years
earlier.'
[39]
Also, while Osric is away from his kingdom,
Anthynus (as king), who continuously hears the voice of his own genius whispering
in his ear, is eventually married to the newly arrived Queen Bertha (IV.ii).
The play's complexities, with look-alikes, mistaken identities and thwarted
incest are all resolved in Act V when the Northumbrian court comes to the West
Saxon equivalent in celebration of the 'royal' marriage.
Initially, Osric, mistaken for Anthynus, stands accused of the murder
of the missing Segebert, but both he and the real Anthynus are cleared when
Jeffrey appears with Segebert, the wounded outlaw and their saviour, a previously
banished lord, Alberto. Alberto, although
the 1657 quarto does not make this explicit, is presumed by this editor to be
the hermit, not least because no other character, apart from Anthynus, has had
a hand in saving Segebert from death. Offa
is exposed as the origin of the plot on Segebert's life, not only by the return
of the wounded outlaw, but also by the farcical release of his partners in crime
from Offa's dungeon. This latter episode
involves a botched but highly comic attempt at theft, including a rare instance
of attempted cannibalism (V.i.161-8). Curiously,
the play ends with forgiveness for everyone, including Offa. Bertha is satisfied with her marriage to Anthynus
(the prophecy that he would be king fulfilled), Osric is blessed with the hand
of Mildred, and the now mad Offa is free to go. Jeffrey, the promoted fool, in a final nod to
Brome's main inspiration for this play, chooses to leave with Offa. This is a gesture that plays like a parody of
Jacques' departure to follow Duke Frederick at the end of Shakespeare's As You Like It. Whereas Jacques, in following Frederick, declares,
'I am for other than for dancing measures' (AYLI, V.iv), Jeffrey, the dancer of the 'hobbyhorse' (II.ii.133),
vows to continue his palliative fooling: 'I'll off with him, for 'tis unknown
to you / What good a fool may on a madman do' (V.ii.116-7).
b)
A Political PlayAs R. J. Kaufmann ungenerously
observed, Brome's
The Queen's Exchange
does incorporate several features of Shakespeare's plays, not to mention his
borrowings from Ford.
However, it is
possible to discover, in Brome's particular use of his influences, an acute
sensitivity to the politics of the Caroline court, and its relationship with
the country at large.
In his groundbreaking
work on the Caroline theatre of the 'pre-revolutionary period', Martin Butler
banished many 'widely-held preconceptions which…distort[ed] and predetermine[d]
discussion of the drama' of Brome's most creative period.
[40]
As Butler notes, during the 1620s, when Charles
I came to the throne, parliaments, in England, 'were coming to be seen as an
important check on the crown.
The electorate
seems to have been growing and…demanding greater accountability from its MPs.'
[41]
Nevertheless, as Butler emphasises, the 1630s,
despite Charles' dissolution of parliament in 1629, were not a period when there
was a corrosion of the king's authority that would inevitably result in civil
war.
Rather, 'Charles's problems were
essentially ones of government rather than authority'.
[42]
Charles' personal rule foundered not on its
absolutism, but on the nature of its policies.
Indeed, there is a reference at the heart of
The Queen's Exchange to one of Charles' unpopular policies.
Jeffrey's 'monopoly of fools'
(III.i.150) directs
its satirical force at Charles' 'discrimination in favour of preferred businessmen
and by the proliferation of monopolies.'
[43]
Brome, like other playwrights, could satirise
such widely disliked inequities as the monopoly system, but even on the brink
of civil war there was apparently little appetite for something more radical.
As Butler puts it, 'those who felt alienated by the behaviour of the
crown…still expected to find in the monarchy the centre of society and the source
of all power and authority'.
[44]
It is in this atmosphere that Brome's play would
have been produced, and therefore any political comment it might offer is likely
to be coded and with ambiguous (maybe deliberately evasive) meaning.
I propose, in the following passage,
to expose several possible meanings behind the allusions and references to earlier
politically interesting plays (mostly by Shakespeare) that litter
The Queen's Exchange. The key
to most of these readings lies in the extent to which it is possible to see
parallels between the court of King Charles and Queen Henrietta Maria and those
depicted in the play. The other main
focus for political readings of the play is the possibility that Brome's play
looks back to the Elizabethan era as an age that is preferable to his own. Indeed, as Matthew Steggle points out, Bertha
is described as 'The bright Cynthia in her full of lustre' (II.i.49), soon after
likening herself to the goddess, in Act I: 'As ardently, but with more
pure affection, / As ere did
Cynthia
her
Endymion' (I.i.195).
Cynthia, the
goddess of the moon is, in John Lyly's Endymion, Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene and Sir Walter Raleigh's poem 'The Ocean's Love to Cynthia',
a representation of Queen Elizabeth. It
is suggested by Steggle, that this parallel representation, where Bertha, as
Cynthia, is a representation of Elizabeth, supports the idea that The
Queen's Exchange is a separatist play.
At a time when the union between England and Scotland was under scrutiny,
more especially around the time of Charles' Scottish coronation in 1633, the
happy failure of Bertha to marry the northern king, Osric (thus not uniting
their kingdoms) would be seen as a comment on the union.
The allusion to a pre-union Elizabethan England could be regarded as
further evidence of this latent message. This
aspect of the play's political significance is not solely based on its ability
to use Elizabeth as a model to criticise Charles Stuart: the Saxon setting is
important here too. As Lisa Hopkins observes,
'the very name "British" was said to derive from the legend of Brutus,
supposed great-grandson of Aeneas, who fled Rome after committing parricide.'
[45]
This legend
was, interestingly, propagated by what Hopkins dubs the 'pseudo-history of Geoffrey
of Monmouth',
[46]
and seeks to establish the notion of 'Britain' as pre-dating
that of 'England'. Hence, a Caroline
separatist would look back to the time of the Saxons (and Angles), and the associated
origin of England, as crucial to their political agenda. In this context, Brome's use of King
Lear, that other notable play set in the England
of ancient history, has a potentially greater significance. As Steggle notes, 'King Lear has increasingly come to be seen as an articulation
of insecurities to do with national sovereignty and the division of the kingdoms.'
[47]
Despite
the potential political significance of looking back to England's early history,
the settings for both King Lear and The Queen's Exchange appear to be less than historically specific. However, an examination of the possible sources
used by Brome in assembling his list of characters for his play does raise some
interesting possibilities for political readings of the play. A search in Holinshed's chronicle history, so
often plundered by playwrights of the Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline periods,
does reveal it as a possible source for most of the names used by Brome.
There are entries for 'Segebert', 'Osric', 'Offa' 'Alcwine' (a possible
source for 'Elkwin'), and several others. The
name Segebert (or 'Sigebert') occurs in several descriptions of early English
history in Holinshed. There is a Sigebert, son of 'Sebert king of the Eastsaxons',
[48]
who appears to have been alive in the seventh century.
Also, 'Sigebert king of the Eastangles began to erect that vniuersitie
at Cambridge about the yéere of our Lord 630.'
[49]
Furthermore,
one series of entries has versions of the names Osric, Offa and Sigebert in
close proximity. An Offa, 'succéeded
in […] […] uernment of' the kingdom of the East Saxons, before being succeeded
by 'Selred the sonne of Sigbert the good'. At
about the same time, in the early eighth century, the King of Northumberland
is one 'Osricke…famous onelie in this, that being worthilie punished for shedding
the bloud of their naturall prince and souereigne lord [an act of usurpation],
they [Osricke and his predecessor] finished their lives with dishonourable deaths'.
[50]
These entries,
although not necessarily indicating the precise source of Brome's characters,
do suggest the period of history within which the play is set, and also that,
in the case of Osric, there was a historical character of the same name in the
same role as in Brome's play. By contrast,
the entry for 'Alcwine' probably refers to Alcuin, an eighth-century Northumbrian
deacon and author,
[51]
who does not appear to resemble the sycophantic Lord
Elkwin of The Queen's Exchange.Despite
the faintness of these links with England's history, the entry for Bertha has
greater potential significance for readings of the play.
In Holinshed's 'Fift Booke of the Historie of England', there is a reference
to 'Ethelbert king of kent', who 'is maried to the French kings daughter', and
'vpon cautions of religion, the king imbraceth the gospell'.
[52]
This is the
same king, King Æthelberht of Kent, described in Bede's The Ecclesiastical History of the English People,
of 731, who received St Augustine - newly arrived in Kent (597 A.D.) from Rome,
at the behest of Pope Gregory - and was ultimately converted to Christianity.
In Bede's account,Some knowledge about the Christian religion had already
reached him because he had a Christian wife of the Frankish royal family whose
name was Bertha.
He had received her from her parents on condition
that she should be allowed to practise her faith and religion unhindered, with
a bishop named Liuhard whom they had provided for her to support her faith.
[53]
The parallels between the Frankish Bertha ('daughter
of the Merovingian king Charibert I (561-7), whose short-lived realm had been
centred on Paris'
[54]
) and the French Henrietta Maria (daughter of Marie
de Medici, Queen Regent in France), queen to Charles I, are striking. Henrietta Maria was not only of a similar continental
origin, but her marriage to Charles was also attended by assurances that 'nothing
would be put in the way of his wife continuing in her faith',
[55]
that is as a Roman Catholic.It
is also worth noting at this point, in support of the idea that The Queen's
Exchange contains such a direct reference to Henrietta Maria,
that the figure of Jeffrey, Osric's fool, is also likely to be a representation
of Jeffrey Hudson, a notable figure in Henrietta Maria's court. Hudson, often referred to as 'the Queen's dwarf',
was 'given' to the Queen by George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, at a banquet,
where it is said that Hudson emerged from a pie placed before the young Henrietta
Maria; '[h]e was seven years old and only eighteen inches high.'
[56]
This theory
is supported by Jeffrey's joke at his own expense in Act III, which could be
an ironic reference to his own lack of height: 'I am advanced to high
promotion, am I not? To wear long coats
/ again' (III.i.135-6). This joke
would be more effective in the theatre, where the character of Jeffrey could
be played by a boy actor or a man similarly lacking in height.
Although Jeffrey is Osric's fool, this is perhaps
understandable because of the inherent danger, to any playwright, of making
a representation of the Queen too transparent.
Nevertheless, other aspects of the play also
suggest that Bertha could be a pointed image of Charles' queen.One particular
line in Act I is particularly suggestive, and may even offer a more subtle reading
of the meaning behind the 'exchange' of the play's title.
When Celeric refers to the future prospect of Bertha acquiring 'An happy
husband' (I.i.77), and Bertha responds by saying, 'I thank you, good my lord'
(I.i.77), she is accepting what could have been regarded as a dubious pleasure
in the minds of the seventeenth-century literati.
The phrase 'an happy husband' recalls a famous poem of 1622, 'A Happy
Husband' by the poetaster Patrick Hannay, which reflects contemporary attitudes
to roles for husbands and wives.
[57]
Essentially, the poem espouses the maintenance
of the dominance of the husband over his wife, as opposed to 'what was thought
to be the absurdest of marital aberrations, the dominance of the wife'.
[58]
Charles' marriage to the Catholic Henrietta
Maria, in 1625, would have aroused a degree of disquiet in an England that 'was
deeply suspicious of Catholicism'.
[59]
Indeed, when Charles (then Prince Charles) returned
unmarried from Catholic Spain, in October 1623, after failing to secure a marriage
to the Infanta, 'the city of London went wild with joy'.
[60]
As David Cressy records, '[f]or several years
the return of Prince Charles was remembered as an event of major national importance,
comparable to the deliverance from the Spanish Armada and the discovery of the
Gunpowder Plot.'
[61]
The mode of celebration was the ringing of bells
and the lighting of bonfires; this age-old English tradition was now adopted
for 'commemorating the emergence and safety of the English Protestant regime.'
[62]
Moreover, during the Caroline era, the celebration
of 'Queen Elizabeth's regnal anniversary was dangerously close on the calendar
to the King's birthday on 19 November and to Henrietta Maria's birthday on 16
November. […] Mid-November became a busy time for bells and bonfires in the
1630s';
[63]
the former anniversary being much more joyously celebrated
than the latter two occasions.
Further
celebrations were added to the calendar, and more appropriate celebrations demanded,
as a response.
All of which adds greater
resonance to the Northumbrian scene of Act II, where Jeffrey and the clowns
are willing to celebrate almost any occasion, as long as they can ring their
bells and burn their bonfires.
David
Cressy even notes that the London celebrations for Charles' return from Spain
included the burning of 'valuable and useful items',
[64]
not unlike those suggested by Osric's subjects in
The Queen's Exchange.
It is
clear that Brome's play is intended to chime with the public taste for these
celebrations, which are heavily associated with English Protestantism at this
time.
Although 'Henrietta Maria's Catholicism',
as Julie Sanders asserts, 'was in fact of a distinctly moderate nature',
[65]
there was a suspicion that she had too much influence over
the King, and, as the notorious Puritan William Prynne feared, that she was
seeking 'to convert the nation by seducing it through her feminine wiles'.
[66]
With this in mind, any reference in
The Queen's Exchange that draws attention
to the possibility that the Queen may have the upper hand in the royal marriage
is of political import.
The Queen's 'exchange',
rather than merely being the exchange of Osric for Anthynus, could be an exchange
of roles, with far more disconcerting consequences for a Caroline audience.If
Bertha is a representation of Henrietta Maria, and the significance of that
is a contemporary fear of Catholicism, it might be expected to find something
in Bertha's behaviour that was particularly Catholic in nature.
I suggest, to maintain the coded nature of his
representations, Brome would be more likely to attach those attributes to Bertha
indirectly.
I maintain that this is achieved
through the character of Anthynus.
Bertha
marries Anthynus, and if Anthynus were Catholic then a simple 'exchange' of
genders would map this couple onto the other royal couple, Charles and Henrietta
Maria.
Anthynus' Catholicism, I contend,
is evident in more than one scene of the play.
When he returns to find the wounded Segebert
gone, in Act II Scene iii, he refers to Segebert's 'poor martyred body' (II.iii.301)
and goes on to remove a piece of the blood-stained earth as a relic
'in memory of the guilt, / And of my vow, never to feed or rest, / Until I find
him here, or with the blessed' (II.iii.319-21).
This is a clear echo of the Catholic practice of 'veneration of relics',
[67]
and especially those associated with martyrdom, that is vividly
described by Richard Wilson in the chapter on Macbeth
in his book Secret Shakespeare. Indeed, the references to Macbeth also proliferate in The Queen's Exchange. Anthynus is witness to a vision of Saxon kings
(III.ii) similar to those that parade before Macbeth. The scene in Macbeth (IV.i) has significance for a Stuart audience, because Banquo
is suggested to be the ancestor of the line of Stuart monarchs in Scotland,
and by repeating Shakespeare's scene so faithfully, Brome associates Anthynus
with Charles Stuart in a thinly veiled manner.
More significantly for the argument that Anthynus is a Catholic is the
fact that his supernatural experiences continue into Act IV.
The 'genius' that whispers to Anthynus (after
its entrance, which is before IV.ii.127), as well as possibly being of pagan
origin, is also synonymous with the Christian concept of an angel.
In post-Reformation England, angels, especially
those associated with guardianship of the soul in purgatory, were associated
with the Catholic religion.
[68]
Apart from his Catholicism and the parallel with Banquo in
Macbeth, Anthynus is also associated with the Stuart royal couple by virtue
of his links with notions of Britain (as opposed to a separate England and Scotland).
Anthynus is a curious name, like the Italian-sounding
Alberto, to be found in Saxon England.
It is an adaptation of 'Antony', the name of
the famous son of Rome, notable as a central character in Shakespeare's
Julius Caesar and
Antony and Cleopatra.
As has
already been discussed, there is a strong link between early modern ideas of
Britishness and the founding of Rome.
Indeed,
Segebert, Anthynus' father, echoes Antony's speech from Act III Scene ii of
Julius Caesar twice in Act I: 'King
and country, neighbours, friends, / And sometimes enemies (I.ii.11-2); 'That
it falls not upon me like a curse, / For wronging crown or country, neighbours,
friends, / Or you my dearer children' (I.ii.106-7).
Furthermore, associations between Anthynus and
the Roman Brutus, the legendary founder of Britain, are evident in the play.
Among several allusions to Greek mythology, one in particular stands
out.
When Anthynus is helping his father,
he likens himself to Brutus' great-grandfather, Aeneas:
Aeneas, that true Trojan
son, whose fameFor piety ever crowns
his name,Had not a will (although
my means be poor)Exceeding mine to answer
nature more. (II.iii.86-89) There are other references
in the play to Troy, from where Aeneas fled, and, in parallel with Brutus, Anthynus
is accused, albeit falsely, of committing patricide. Anthynus is associated with both Britain
and Catholicism, and he marries Bertha, who, as has been shown, has much in
common with Henrietta Maria. Together
the West Saxon royal couple can most certainly be seen as representing the seventeenth-century
British royal couple. It is worth noting
that, in this light, even though the kingdoms of Bertha and Osric do not unite,
the happy ending to The Queen's Exchange
does not signal joy in separatism. However,
this interpretation does not mean that the play is uncritical of Charles' rule.
Indeed, as Ira Clark observes, both monarchs in the play do exhibit a
form of '[w]illful tyranny'.
[69]
A good deal of the critical appraisal of The Queen's Exchange focuses on the arbitrary
use of authority by the rulers in the play, and it is perhaps Charles' personal
rule that is Brome's target. Hence, by
establishing the correspondence between the two royal couples as I have done,
I have exposed something of the nature of Brome's sophistication in achieving
that aim. Brome did have associations
with elements in 1630s England that were critical of Charles.
He dedicates The Antipodes to William Seymour, Earl
of Hertford, who was a member of 'one of several noble families that found themselves
at odds with Charles I's government',
[70]
in the 1630s. And,
in a particularly cryptic stroke, begins The
Queen's Exchange with the epigraph: 'Regia
res amor est',
[71]
which is an adaptation of a line from Ovid, (
Fasti, vi.595:
'Regia res scelus
est').
Translated, the line from
Ovid means 'Crime is a thing for kings', or more poetically, 'Crime is the mark
of a king'; in the case of Brome's adaptation, it translates as 'Love is the
mark of a king'.
[72]
Arranged in the form of a syllogism, the resulting
third line would read 'Love is a crime'.
It is possible to see this as also directed
towards Charles I, whose crime is loving his Catholic queen.
6. Editorial ProceduresThis edition is a modern spelling edition. It has been edited from the text available through
Literature Online (http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk),
and with reference to the 1657 quarto of
The
Queen's Exchange, with the kind co-operation of the staff at The Special
Collections Department in the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds.
In rekeying the text, I have modernised spelling
and punctuation, with particular exceptions
where the old spelling is important to meaning, metre or the maintenance of
the idiosyncrasy of a character's speech or the nature of the text as a whole.
The use of capital letters has been modernised and regularised, such
that direct references to the monarchs, and the other usual proper names (for
example, Heaven), are the few instances that remain.
Most elisions remain, except where modern convention indicates a change,
the most common example being the change from '-'d' to '-ed' in the case of
an unstressed ending; stressed endings are signified by '-èd'.
Speech headings have been silently regularised in accordance with the
policy of using the character's name rather than position.
Stage directions have been silently added and modified to make the action
more explicit or where slight emendation is necessary on grounds of textual
error. The exceptions to this policy
are noted in the commentary. Only one
change of the original Act and Scene divisions has been made, in Act III, the
justification for which is given in the commentary. Line numbers have been added. Several characters missing from the dramatis
personae have been added and, as noted
in the commentary, the names of several lords have been clarified, and so replace
the original numerical speech headings. The
numerical speech headings for the outlaws have been regularised to distinguish
between characters with patently different roles in the play. Alberto and the hermit are thought to be the
same character, but for the sake of 'maintaining the mystery', and leaving the
text more open to other interpretations, their textual separation is maintained. The commentary, besides the entries already
mentioned, explains the meaning of unfamiliar words and provides aids to interpretation
where it has been decided the reader would find this helpful.
Richard Brome's versification provides numerous difficulties for a modern
editor. The text has been relineated to take account
of lines of verse divided between different speakers, and occasionally to fit
the supposed metre. More frequently,
it has been necessary to relineate what appears to be verse, but is in fact
prose. Problems arise when Brome's verse
is at its most irregular, and it is difficult to decide whether this is prose
or very irregular verse. Brome's metrical
sense and fondness for half-lines, enjambment and, occasionally, lines consisting
of a single metrical foot make for numerous hard choices. Nevertheless, the task has been approached with
a consistent method, and, ultimately, has been highly instructive in the vagaries
of early modern texts. 7. Works CitedWithin the commentary for the play the following abbreviations
apply:Crystal David Crystal and Ben Crystal. Shakespeare's
Words: A Glossary and Language Companion.
London: Penguin, 2002. OED
Oxford English Dictionary Online:
http://dictionary.oed.com All
references to the plays of William Shakespeare are from:William
Shakespeare. Complete Works,
revised edition. Edited by Richard Proudfoot, Ann Thompson and David Scott Kastan.
London: Arden Shakespeare, 2001. Works cited in Introduction and CommentaryAndrews, Clarence Edward. Richard Brome: A Study of his Life and Works. New York: Yale University
Press, 1913, reprint Archon, 1972. Bede, The Venerable, Saint. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Edited by Roger
Collins and Judith McClure. 731, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, reprint,
1999. Bentley, Gerald Eades. The Jacobean and Caroline Stage: Plays and Playwrights, volume III.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956, reprint Oxford University Press, 1967. Brome, Richard. The
Antipodes in Three Renaissance Travel
Plays. Edited by Anthony Parr. Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1995. —. The City Wit.
Edited by Katherine Wilkinson (2004). An online edition: http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/teaching/lh/renplays/witindex.htm —. The Queen
and Concubine. Accessed via Literature Online:http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk —. The Queen's
Exchange. London: Henry Brome, 1657. Butler, Martin. Theatre
and Crisis 1632-1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Clark, Ira. Professional
Playwrights: Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome. Lexington: Kentucky University
Press, 1992. Cressy, David. Bonfires
and Bells: National Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart
England. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989. Davis, Joe Lee. The
Sons of Ben: Jonsonian Comedy in Caroline England. Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1967. Donaldson, Ian. The
World Upside-Down: Comedy from Jonson to Fielding. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1970. Duffy, Eamon. The
Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Ford, John. 'Tis
Pity She's a Whore and Other Plays. Edited by Marion Lomax. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1995, reprint, 1998. Hannay, Patrick. 'A Happy Husband'. Accessed via Literature
Online:http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk Hibbert, Christopher. Charles I. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968. Holinshed, Raphael et al. The first and second
volumes of Chronicles. London: 1587. Accessed via Early English Books Online:
http://eebo.chadwyck.com Hopkins, Lisa. 'We were the Trojans: British national
identities in 1633'. Renaissance Studies
16 (2002): 36-51. Horace, 'Ars Poetica or Epistle to the Pisos'. In Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica. Translated
by H. Rushton Fairclough, 478-9. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1926, revised, 1929, reprint, 1961. Jonson, Ben. Ben
Jonson: Five Plays. Edited by G. A. Wilkes. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1988, reprint 1990. —. Ben Jonson,
volume VI. Edited by C. H. Herford, P. Simpson, and E. Simpson. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1938. Kaufmann, R. J. Richard
Brome: Caroline Playwright. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. Marlowe,
Christopher.
Edward the Second. Edited by Charles R.
Forker. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994.
Ovid, Fasti,
second edition. Translated by J. G. Frazer, revised by G. P. Goold. Loeb Classical
Library, Volume V. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931, revised, 1989. Page, Nick. Lord
Minimus: The Extraordinary Life of Britain's Smallest Man. London: HarperCollins,
2001, reprint, 2002. Sanders, Julie. Caroline
Drama: The Plays of Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome. Plymouth: Northcote
House, 1999. Steggle, Matthew. Richard Brome: Place and Politics on the Caroline
Stage. Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2004. Webster, John. The
White Devil. Edited by John Russell Brown. London: Methuen, 1960, second
edition, 1966. Wilson, Richard. Secret
Shakespeare: Studies in theatre, religion and resistance. Manchester: Manchester
University Press, 2004.
[1] Joe Lee
Davis, The Sons of Ben: Jonsonian Comedy
in Caroline England (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1967).
[2] Matthew
Steggle, Richard Brome: Place and Politics on the Caroline
Stage
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 1.
[3] R. J.
Kaufmann, Richard Brome: Caroline
Playwright (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961).
[4] Ira
Clark, Professional Playwrights:
Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome (Lexington: Kentucky University Press,
1992), 155.
[6] The
suggestion that he was educated at Eton, made in 'A List of Dramatic Authors
and their Works' in Colley Cibber, An
Apology for the Life of Colley Cibber, Comedian (London: R. & J.
Dodsley, 1756), as cited in Steggle, Richard
Brome, 2, is discredited by Steggle's research.
[7] Ben
Jonson, Bartholomew Fair, Induction
6-7 in Ben Jonson: Five Plays, ed. G.
A. Wilkes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, reprint 1990), 489.
[8] Richard
Brome, The Dramatic Works of Richard
Brome, ed. John Pearson, 3 vols (1873, New York: AMS Press, 1966), 3.[v]
cited in Steggle, Richard Brome, 15.
[9] Steggle,
Richard Brome, 14-5.
[10] Ben
Jonson, 'Ode to Himself', quoted from Horatius
Flaccus: His Art of Poetry Englished by Ben: Jonson. With other Workes of the
Author (London: J. Okes, 1640), 136 cited in Steggle, Richard Brome, 17-8.
[11] A
detailed analysis of the known facts of Brome's career in this period is given
in Steggle, Richard Brome, 43-66.
[12] The New
Globe Theatre staged The Antipodes in
2000.
[13] See
Henry Brome's contribution to the front matter of the play, 'The Stationer to the
Readers', where he records his hope that 'by delighting' the play's readers 'to
profit' himself.
[14] Gerald
Eades Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline
Stage: Plays and Playwrights, vol. III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1956,
reprint Oxford University Press, 1967), 87.
[15] See the
original quarto: Richard Brome, The
Queen's Exchange (London: Henry Brome, 1657); it is also possible to access
images of the quarto via Early English Books Online:
<http://eebo.chadwyck.com>
[16] F. G.
Fleay, A Biographical Chronicle of the
English Drama, 1559-1642, vol. I (London: Reeves and Turner, 1891), 37
cited in Bentley, The Jacobean and
Caroline Stage, vol. III, 87.
[17] Martin
Butler, Theatre and Crisis 1632-1642
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 268.
[18]
Steggle, Richard Brome, 44.
[19] See
this edition: 'Prologue', ll. 5-6.
[20]
Steggle, Richard Brome, 54.
[21] Butler,
Theatre and Crisis, 3.
[22]
Bentley, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage,
vol. III, 87.
[23] Butler,
Theatre and Crisis, 266-7.
[24]
Steggle, Richard Brome, 56-7.
[25]
Kaufmann, Richard Brome, 179.
[26] Davis, The Sons of Ben, 30.
[28]
Clarence Edward Andrews, Richard Brome: A
Study of his Life and Works (New York: Yale University Press, 1913, reprint
Archon, 1972), 85.
[29] Richard
Brome, The City Wit, III.i., ed.
Katherine Wilkinson (2004), an online edition:
http://www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cs/teaching/lh/renplays/witindex.htm
[30] Andrews, Richard Brome, 131.
[31] Ben
Jonson, Volpone in Ben Jonson: Five Plays, ed. G. A. Wilkes
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988, reprint 1990).
[32] Ben Jonson,
The Devil is an Ass in Ben Jonson, vol. VI, ed. C. H. Herford, P. Simpson, and E. Simpson
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938).
[33] Richard
Brome, The Queen and Concubine,
I.i.1-4. Accessible via Literature Online: <http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk.>
[34] Richard
Brome, The Antipodes, II.i.69-72 in Three Renaissance Travel Plays ed.
Anthony Parr (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 249.
[35] John
Ford, The Broken Heart, III.ii.26-7
in John Ford, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore and
Other Plays, ed. Marion Lomax (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995,
reprint, 1998), 117.
[36] Marion
Lomax, 'Introduction' in John Ford, 'Tis
Pity She's a Whore and Other Plays, xxi.
[37] All
references to The Queen's Exchange
are to this edition.
[38] Butler,
Theatre and Crisis, 265.
[39] Marion
Lomax, 'Introduction' in John Ford, 'Tis
Pity She's a Whore and Other Plays, xvi.
[40] Butler,
Theatre and Crisis, 7.
[45] Lisa
Hopkins, 'We were the Trojans: British national identities in 1633', Renaissance Studies 16 (2002): 37.
[47]
Steggle, Richard Brome, 56.
[48] Raphael
Holinshed et al, The first and second volumes of Chronicles (London: 1587), 'The
Fift Booke of the Historie of England', Chapter xxiiij; accessed via Early
English Books Online: <http://eebo.chadwyck.com>
[49] Ibid.,
'The Sixt Booke', Chapter xvj.
[50] Ibid.,
'The Sixt Booke', Chapter ii.
[51]
Roger Collins and Judith McClure, 'Introduction' in The
Venerable Saint Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People,
ed. Roger Collins and Judith McClure (731, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1994, reprint, 1999), xv.
[52]
Holinshed, Chronicles, 'The Fift
Booke of the Historie of England', Chapter xix.
[53] The
Venerable, Saint Bede, The Ecclesiastical
History of the English People, ed. Roger Collins and Judith McClure (731,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, reprint, 1999), Book I Chapter 25, 39.
[54] Roger
Collins and Judith McClure, 'Explanatory Notes' in Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, 371.
[55]
Christopher Hibbert, Charles I (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968), 86.
[56] Nick
Page, Lord Minimus: The Extraordinary
Life of Britain's Smallest Man (London: HarperCollins, 2001, reprint,
2002), 3.
[57] See
Kaufmann, Richard Brome, 99n; the
poem is accessible via Literature Online: <http://lion.chadwyck.co.uk.>
[58] Ian
Donaldson, The World Upside-Down: Comedy
from Jonson to Fielding (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 40.
[59] Julie
Sanders, Caroline Drama: The Plays of
Massinger, Ford, Shirley and Brome (Plymouth: Northcote House, 1999), 32.
[60] David
Cressy, Bonfires and Bells: National
Memory and the Protestant Calendar in Elizabethan and Stuart England
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), 93.
[65]
Sanders, Caroline Drama, 32-3.
[67] Robert
Bellarmine, De controversiis christianae
fidei (Ingolstadt: 1601), vol. 2, 826 cited in Richard Wilson, Secret Shakespeare: Studies in theatre,
religion and resistance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004),
190.
[68] See
Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars:
Traditional Religion in England 1400-1580 (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1992) for a detailed discussion of the practices of traditional religion
in England before, during and after the Reformation.
[69] Ira
Clark, Professional Playwrights, 162.
[70] Anthony
Parr, 'Notes' to Richard Brome, The
Antipodes in Three Renaissance Travel
Plays ed. Anthony Parr (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995),
217.
[71] See the
Front Matter of this edition.
[72] Ovid, Fasti 2nd edition, translated
by J. G. Frazer, revised by G. P. Goold, Loeb Classical Library, Volume V
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931, revised, 1989) vi.595.