Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 06.djvu/407

 Brome 'Court Beggar '), and perhaps knew a little German. In the 'Novella' a leading incident is borrowed from an Italian novelist, or his French translator (see Collier's note to J. Killigrew's 'Parson's Wedding' in 's Old English Plays, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, xiv. 480). But, at least after his great master had 'made him free o' the trade,' his powers seem to have been completely absorbed by his profession as a playwright. As to this profession or craft he had, as Jonson wrote,


 * A prentiship, which few do now adayes ;

he was content to be called a playmaker, instead of author or poet (see prologue to the 'Damoiselle') ; on the other hand he had a genuine, unsophisticated love of a good play and a good player (see a capital passage in the 'Antipodes,' i. 5), and was so ready to encourage anything making for theatrical success, that he could not even bring himself to disapprove of effective 'gag' (see ib. ii.1). Delighting in his line of work, but neither able, nor as a rule willing, to go beyond it, Brome exhibits a characteristic mixture of self-consciousness and modesty (see the prologues to the 'Northern Lass' and the 'Queen's Exchange'). He lays claim to 'venting none but his own' (epilogue to the 'Court Beggar') ; he merely pretends to mirth and sense, and aims only to gain laughter ; so that those who look for more must go among the classicising 'poet-bounces' (prologue to the 'Novella') ; what he has to show is a slight piece of mirth ; 'yet such were writ by our great masters of the stage and wit,' before 'the new strayne of wit' and gaudy decorations came into fashion (prologue to the 'Court Beggar'). 'Opinion' is a thing which he cannot court (prologue to the 'Antipodes') ; yet at another time he is ready to take the judgment of the public (epilogue to the 'English Moor'), and can appeal to his 'wonted modesty' (prologue to the 'Sparagus Garden'). All this need not be taken very literally, more especially in one whose ideas were not always quite large enough for the spacious phrases of Ben Jonson. But (and this is the interesting feature in Brome) he was really a conscientious workman who achieved such success as fell to his lot by genuine devotion to his task. Most certainly he was not a poet, though on one occasion he bursts forth into a praise of poetry which has unmistakable fire and distantly recalls a famous passage in Spenser ('Sparagus Garden,' iii. 5). Nor can he even be called an original writer. To Jonson he owes his general conception of comedy, his notion of 'humorous' characters (such as Sir Arthur Mendicant in the 'Court Beggar,' 'Master Widgine, a Cockney Gentleman,' in the 'Northern Lass,' the pedant Sarpego and the female characters in the 'City Wit,' Crossewill in 'Covent Garden weeded,' Garrula and Geron with his 'whilome' citations in the 'Love-sick Court'), and his profuse display of out-of-the-way learning or knowledge (see the vagabond's argot in the 'Jovial Crew,' the military terms in 'Covent Garden weeded,' v. 3, and the enumeration of dances in the 'New Academy,' iii. 2). He naturally here and there refers to favourite Jonsonian characters (to Justice Adam Overdo in 'Covent Garden weeded,' i. 1, and to 'Subtle and his lungs' in the 'Sparagus Garden,' ii. 2). It would be unfair to say that he owes anything of much importance to any other writer, unless it be to Massinger, who may have influenced his graver efforts (e.g. in the 'Love-sick Court' and the 'Queen and Concubine'). With Thomas Heywood he was associated in the authorship of the 'Late Lancashire Witches,' printed 1634, and written in connection with a trial for witchcraft held in 1633 in the forest of Pendle in Lancashire, already notorious for witchcraft (see the play in 's Dramatic Works (1874), vol. iv. ; and cf. 's English Dramatic Literature, ii. 121-3), and perhaps of other dramas. He twice alludes to Robert Greene, but not as a dramatist. Among the plays of Shakespeare (who is mentioned with others by name in the 'Antipodes,' i. 5), 'A Winter's Tale' and 'Henry VIII,' perhaps also 'King Lear,' contributed hints for the 'Queen and Concubine ;' and 'King Lear' and 'Macbeth' for the 'Queen's Exchange.' The 'Two Noble Kinsmen' cannot have been out of Brome's mind when he wrote the 'Lovesick Court,' which has a romantic, monarchical flavour and contains some curious allusions to the politics of the period preceding the civil war ; while the 'Beggar's Bush' of Fletcher is most likely to have suggested the notion of the 'Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars.' (To the 'Knight of the Burning Pestle' Brome refers in the 'Sparagus Garden,' iii. 2.) He is at times an effective constructor of plots, but this he owed to long experience and to excessive pains (see the 'Love-sick Court,' the 'New Academy,' and more especially the 'Queen and Concubine' and the 'Queen's Exchange').

Of his plays some may be described as comedies of actual life, moulded in the main on the example of Jonson ; others as romantic comedies, in which the interest chiefly