His comedy differs from that of the postRestoration period.

His morality likewise

differs from

that of his

successors.

of observation which displays itself in many lifelike sketches
of contemporary foibles and follies, he possessed a consider-
able amount of humour, and is not devoid of occasional
flashes of wit. In no respect, however, is the change from
the
pre- to the post-Restoration drama more marked than
in the contrast observable between the dialogue of the comic
dramatists who wrote in the reign of Charles II, and that of
the last of the more eminent dramatic authors belonging
to the previous generation. Passages might be quoted to
show that, had Shirley after the Restoration cared to resume
his labours for the stage, it would not have been difficult for
him to train himself to the conversational brilliancy and the
flash of repartee in which Congreve and his contemporaries
excelled. But the traditions of a stronger and more mas-
culine style of comedy are still perceptible in the last great
writer of our old drama. Shirley, though not with uniform
success, still sought to conceive comic characters standing
on a broader and more solid basis, and to furnish types of
human nature, not mere conventional representatives of the
society which filled Hyde Park, or which flitted round the
lady president of a fashionable Ball.

And, as I have referred to the comparison which inevitably suggests itself between the last of our more eminent preRestoration dramatists and the successors whom we cannot call their equals, I may advert in conclusion to another point, of greater importance, though it may be dealt with in a very few words. It has been asked, What real difference is there between the morality of a Congreve and that of a Shirley? Is not sin equally rampant in the pages of both? Is there any necessity to draw nice distinctions between degrees of licentiousness, when the greater and the less degree (supposing a difference to exist) are equally intolerable? In answer to such questions, I can only say that Shirley seems to me less amenable than other and earlier writers to the charge of habitual grossness and licentiousness, and less prone to the exhibition of these qualities for the sake of the applause awaiting them. And above all, he differs from the comic dramatists of the postRestoration period, or at least from some of the most

prominent among them, in this all-important point, that his purpose is almost without exception moral. I can call to mind no play of his in which the victory of vice over virtue is represented in an attractive, or even in a ludicrous, light; he is no disciple of the social heresy that the pleasures of one class have a right to pollute the morals of another; he believes in the beauty of purity, and does homage to its inborn strength. His plays are not fit reading for the young and inexperienced; neither are those of Massinger or Thomas Heywood, whose moral tendency few will be found to dispute; but, so far as I can judge, not one of our pre-Restoration dramatists, save Shakspere and again good Thomas Heywood, deserves less than Shirley to be singled out for condemnation as an offender against principles which in his generation and with his lights he sought to honour and uphold1.

dramatists

A considerable number of authors remain to be briefly Minor noticed as having contributed, each after his kind, to the of this dramatic literature of the reigns of James I and Charles I. period. To group these together on any strict principle of sequence is, except here and there, impossible; nor are the dramatic works of many among them of sufficient importance to make it worth while to engage in any such attempt. A large proportion of these dramatists belonged to the circle which acknowledged Ben Jonson as its chief; and among these the precedence may be given to one who, in spite of the well-known proverb, had the best reason for recognising the pre-eminence of his master.

Of RICHARD BROME (already mentioned 2 as joint author Richard with Thomas Heywood of The Late Lancashire Witches, Brome (d.1652-3).

1 The following quotation from the lines addressed to Shirley by the dramatist and historian May, which I borrow from the Quarterly Reviewer, may seem to go further than is strictly warrantable; but it shows that the impression made by him upon his contemporaries was not very different from that which I have attempted to convey :

we possess not less than fifteen independently written plays1. We know nothing about his life, except the significant fact that in his earlier days-at all events from 16142-he was servant to Ben Jonson, and apparently remained so till his master's death in 1637. In a eulogistic parody on the indignant Ode addressed by Jonson to himself on the failure of The New Inn in 1629, Randolph refers to 'what Brome swept from' the Master; and in an edition of the Ode published three years after his death the reading 'Brome's sweepings' was introduced into its text. In some very characteristic, and not very refined, verses in commendation of Brome's first extant play, The Northern Lass (printed in 16323), Jonson addresses the author as 'my faithful servant, and (by his continu'd virtue) my loving friend,' and, after explicitly referring to their domestic relation and Brome's faithful service, goes on to state that the applause bestowed on his play was just, inasmuch as it exhibits

'observation of those comick laws,

Which I, your master, first did teach the age.
You learnt it well, and for it serv'd your time,-
A 'prenticeship, which few do now-a-days.'

John Hall, too, in his commendatory verses on Brome's last play, The Fovial Crew, says that Brome was 'by great Jonson once made free o' the Trade'; and Brome

1 They have been republished, among Pearson's Reprints, in 3 vols., 1873. -Five of Richard Brome's plays were posthumously printed (in 1653) by Alexander Brome, others were printed by a 'stationer' Henry Brome; but he was related to neither.-As to Richard Brome see also a careful dissertation by Dr. E. K. R. Faust (Halle, 1887), and a notice of him by me in vol. vi of The Dictionary of National Biography (1886).—An article on Brome's plays by the late J. A. Symonds was printed in The Academy for March 21, 1874.

2 In the Induction to Bartholomew Fair the stage-keeper says: "I am looking, lest the poet hear me, or his man, Master Brome.'

3 A comedy called A Fault in Friendship, written by Brome in conjunction with Jonson's eldest son Benjamin, is stated to have been acted at the Curtain as early as 1623.

He says in the Dedication that this play 'had the luck to tumble last of all in the epidemical ruin of the scene.' Richard Brome therefore was active as a playwright up to the time of the closing of the theatres.

himself was naturally proud of the connexion. Of one of his plays1 he speaks, in the Prologue to it, as

'written, when

It bore just judgment, and the seal of Ben';

and his

sciousness as a

and in the Epilogue to another 2 he appears again to refer His with veneration to the memory of his master. Brome modesty seems to have died in 1652 (in which year his last play self-conaforesaid was published with a Dedication from his own hand) or early in 1653, when Five New Playes by him were dramatist. published by Alexander Brome, who informs the Readers that their author is dead. For the rest, although he seems, besides popular success, to have enjoyed the good-will of several contemporary dramatists of note, including Fletcher, Dekker, Ford and Shirley, he exhibits an amusing mixture of modesty and self-consciousness as a dramatic writer. He repeatedly begs his audience not to expect more than they will find; all he pretends to is ' but Mirth and Sense3'; he is content to term himself a 'Playmaker,' without aspiring as yet to the names of ' Author, or Poet,' any more than to the office of Laureate ; 'a little wit, less learning, no Poetry' is all he dare boast; but though he 'scarce ever durst rank himself above the worst of Poets,' 'most that he has writ has past the rest, And found good approbation of the best "'; and though he only professes to help to keep alive 'the weakest branch of the stage,' i.e. that species of comedy which treats of low and home-bred subjects,' he questions whether it is in truth the weakest, or whether it be not

" as hard a labour for the Muse

To move the Earth, as to dislodge a Star??

Richard Brome appears to have deserved the success that

1 The City Wit.

Prologue to The Novella.

• Prologue to The Damoiselle.

"The Court Beggar.

Prologue to The Love-Sick Court.-The passage in praise of poetry in The Sparagus Garden, act iii. sc. 5, is noteworthy for its generous fire.

6
• Prologue to The Queen's Exchange.

Prologue to The Antipodes.

Brome's comedies of

manners.

fell to his lot by two qualities deserving high respect in a literary man-a knowledge of his own powers and diligence in training them. Of his plays the great majority are comedies, generally well-constructed and not deficient in a certain power of characterisation, dealing with themes from everyday life and illustrating its manners. The plots are rarely novel enough to be interesting; and the characters are the familiar types of later Elisabethan comedy-decayed country-gentlemen, knights contemptible in various ways, gallants and gulls, city usurers, city wives and widows, and so forth. Plays of this ordinary and in the long run wearisome class are A Mad Couple Well-Match'd (printed 1653), The Court Beggar (printed 16531), The City Wit (printed 16532), The Sparagus Garden (acted 1635), The Covent Garden Weeded (printed 16593), The New Academy, or The New Exchange (printed 1659). In The Northern Lasse, already mentioned as Brome's earliest and apparently one of his most popular plays, there is a pathetic character-that of the heroine, a deserted countrygirl, who goes melancholy mad like the Jailor's Daughter in The Two Noble Kinsmen. The character seems to have struck the public as original; but it possesses no exceptional merit. Similar touches of pathos occur in the 'poor wench' Phillis' reminiscences of her unhappy mother in The Damoiselle, or The New Ordinary (printed 1653), but the play is otherwise of a common type.

In others of his works Brome approaches a more ambitious species-that of romantic comedy of intrigue. Of The

1 This is one of Brome's most amusing comedies. The old knight turned speculator, Sir Arthur Mendicant, is a happy attempt in Jonson's manner. The projectors are diverting, with the treasure of the Indies locked up-all in bullion-in their chests at home, and without so much as change for a shilling in their pockets. One of their schemes is a floating play-house. A masque is introduced into this play.

2 In this may be noted the character of Sarpego, the pedant, as quite in Jonson's manner. Pyannet's question about the honesty of London tradesmen is curious: Why are your wares gumm'd; your shops dark; your prices writ in strange characters? What, for honesty?" (Act ii.)

These two plays are in parts extremely coarse. In The Covent Garden Weeded (act iii. sc. 1) will be found the items of a tavern bill of the period, which guests and drawer very realistically go through on the stage.