General Introduction and User Guide
Welcome to the Online Edition of the Collected
Plays of Richard Brome, the outcome of a four-year project
funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. All fifteen of
Brome’s extant plays are included in the edition, together with his
collaboration with Thomas Heywood, The Late
Lancashire Witches. Beyond making the canon of Brome’s plays
available to readers, scholars and theatre practitioners (they were
last presented as a collection in 1873), there was the further aim of
exploring the resources of the internet to facilitate wholly new modes
of editorial practice. What the user will find here are period texts
of the sixteen plays alongside annotated modernised versions; these
may be read separately or alongside each other on the screen, allowing
readers immediately to perceive editorial interventions. The ambition
of the panel of editors throughout has been to render the editorial
process as transparent as possible. For the first time ever the
editors are visible presences in the edition.
An exciting aspect of this edition made possible by the potentials
of online presentation is the inclusion of enacted sequences from
all the plays, which are explored in workshop with professional actors
and a director (himself a former academic and scholar of renaissance
theatre). Passages chosen for such treatment frequently incorporate
in the recording discussions between editors and performers and many
editorial decisions were informed by this interaction between scholars
and theatre personnel. This is a point worth stressing for users
approaching the site. Like his mentor, Ben Jonson, Brome was himself
a professional man of the theatre and his plays, again like Jonson’s,
take on a vigorous life once their theatrical potential is realised
through performance.
Our aims are:
- to appeal to a range of potential readers: literary scholars,
theatre historians, theatregoers and above all theatre
practitioners, actors and directors (no hierarchy is intended
in this listing);
- to produce an edition that may answer the varying needs of
this range of readers and, perhaps more importantly, to arouse
sufficient interest and excitement in Brome’s dramaturgy to
begin to promote new stagings of his plays. (All but a few
have been absent too long from the repertoire of our theatres;
working together on the edition actors and scholars alike
quickly developed a profound respect for Brome’s artistry,
for the integrity of his comic vision, his politics and his
theatrical expertise.)
The remainder of this introduction is designed to guide readers to
make best use of the edition, as the site is large and incorporates
much information.
- Sixteen plays are presented in period and modernised
formats, which may be read singly or in conjunction. Each
period text has been edited in terms of its status as an
extant printed book and work of seventeenth-century
literature in dramatic form; the modernised text is edited
in each case as a play for performance.
- The modernised texts are extensively annotated with glosses,
notes and commentaries, which incorporate recordings of the
workshopped sequences referred to above, bibliographical
data and some images (the glosses may be accessed additionally
as a complete alphabetical glossary which offers a dictionary
of Brome’s linguistic usages; a full bibliography and galleries
of the recorded workshop extracts and of the images may also be
independently accessed).
- Each play is accompanied by a general critical introduction
and a textual essay.
- Five further essays are included investigating a range of
issues concerning the plays from specialist, largely
theatrical perspectives.
· - A search engine will allow for detailed private explorations.
Each of these component features is now commented on in greater
detail.
The original text, by which we mean either the original quarto or
octavo text of each individually edited Brome play, has been
provided to give users a point of comparison with the modern
edited text. The original texts can be viewed in isolation, or
next to the modern text. The original text provided is not a
photo-facsimile (the expense of obtaining copyright clearance
eliminated this option), however interested users can access
images of the original via Early English Books Online (EEBO),
if required.
The original texts presented are instead in the form of a
transcription, which aims to be as accurate as is possible, given
the technical and visual differences between Early Modern and
21st-century typography. Each text
was scanned (from Pearson’s 1873 edition of Brome’s plays)
using optical character recognition and basic TEI markup applied by the
Centre for Data Digitisation and
Analysis, Queen's University Belfast; this text
was proofread by its respective editor against a chosen copy
(base or master) text and further extant copies, initially those
copies located on EEBO, but also those extant texts visited in
person in various research libraries.
Editors worked individually with members of the team at the HRI,
negotiating how to replicate various features of the original quarto
and octavo texts, for example the use of long brackets which cover
several lines, or the layout of marginal stage directions. We have
endeavoured to create transcriptions that are as close to the
original copies as possible, but inevitably there have been some
features which are impossible to replicate, given the exigencies of
computer formatting. Thus the original texts give the user the ‘feel’
of how Brome’s plays are presented in print; those readers who have
a specific interest in seeing the exact features are advised to
consult copies on EEBO, in the first instance.
Certain features of the original printed texts have been retained,
such as the long ‘s’. Each page of text is presented as a discrete
unit online: pages are segregated by a horizontal line for clarity,
and each page displays its running title, catchwords and signatures
(which appear in bold to distinguish them from the text). As is the
practice in the printing of Early Modern texts, some pages do not
display signatures (usually sigs 5-8 in the Octavo and sigs 3 and 4
in Quarto); these have been added within square brackets for the
user’s ease of reference and navigability through the pages.
Pictorial material, such as printer’s ornaments, has not been
replicated.
Each period text deploys individual line numbering (as opposed to
the modern edited texts, which have speech numbers). When users are
viewing both versions of the text side-by-side, the texts can be
aligned by clicking on any speech prefix; this speech will then
be displayed at the top of the page for each text. Where speech
prefixes exist in the modern text but not in the original text
(for example, where the lines of one character’s speech in the
original text have been allocated to a different speaker in the
modern text), a LINK will appear.
All prefatory materials (dedications to patrons, poems, letters of
praise) are included in the textual introduction for each play
(along with a full discussion of the preparation of the original
text for modernisation and any specific textual issues). The textual
essay also contains information regarding library holdings and
press variants.
There are no annotational notes accompanying the original text.
These are included amongst the annotations to the modern text,
where textual notes record deviations from the original text and
textual points of interest. They also include references to previous
editions of play texts where relevant (in place of a historical
collation).
These observe the original division into acts but new scenes are
determined by a general quitting of the performing space by all
characters previously onstage. (Brome’s practice varies regarding
scene divisions: sometimes he follows the “classical” tradition,
which was much favoured by Jonson, of creating a new scene whenever
a fresh character entered the stage; sometimes he follows the more
modern format, which this edition observes throughout. The textual
notes indicate wherever a change has been made to the provision of
scenes in the period text.) It is especially to be noted that the
modernised texts have speech numbers rather than line numbers (this
is partly the result of the computerised processes involving the
search engine and partly the result of the modern texts often
relineating prose as verse and vice versa). Consequently references
in the annotations and essays that follow the format (3.1.line1234)
refer to the period text (line 1234 of the first scene of act one),
whereas those relating to the modernised text will read differently
(3.1.speech 406); by clicking on the speech prefix, one may bring
the two texts quickly into alignment if cross-referencing is
required.
Punctuation has been effected lightly for
rhythm and sense (editors were particularly encouraged to pay
attention to the dramatic potential of the original punctuation)
. British spelling is observed throughout the edition in line
with the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Certain silent
emendations, such as ‘then’ for ‘than’, have been carried out,
as is the custom in the editing of early modern plays.
Stage directions have again been handled
lightly with editorial interventions being signalled by the use of
square brackets, particularly in respect of asides; discussion of
such interventions is to be found in the annotations and textual
notes. In all stage directions the Latin usages of the period text
have been translated for clarity (ambo – both; solus – alone; manet –
[s]he remains; exit – [s]he exits; exeunt – they exit). Several
editors in their textual essays and annotations have questioned
whether Brome had a hand in the printing of his works or whether the
plays were printed from copies close to Brome’s original drafts, since
in several texts there occur a number of unique punctuational devices
(rounded brackets; series of dashes of varying lengths), which seem
to indicate specific performing practices (the interruption of one
character by another; the need for a pause) which would affect the
pacing of a scene. Wherever possible, these devices have been reproduced
in the modernised text.
The layout of shared lines between two
or more speakers is somewhat different from the format
conventionally followed in printed modernised texts. This edition
has a slight indentation to signify a shared line, which completes
a verse line started by the previous speaker.
Character names appear in capital
letters for speaking characters in entrance and stage directions (but
not exit directions). Cast lists have been based on the original text
with additional notes of explanation. ‘Persons of the Comedy’ is used
if no cast list is printed in the original. Capital letters in the cast
list indicate how a character will appear in speech prefixes: for
example in the cast list for The Queen and Concubine, the following
appears:
Prince GONZAGO [Son of King
Gonzago and Queen Eulalia]
KING Gonzago King of Sicily
The capitals indicate that, although both characters are called Gonzago,
only one will be referred to by this name (the Prince), while the other
will be designated throughout the text as ‘King’.
German, Italian, Dutch and French words
have been translated in the annotations as have Latin tags and quotations,
but they have been left in the original language in the text and may
occasionally be modernised in the spelling. Dialect which occurs in a
number of Brome’s plays is retained; if the spelling has been modernised,
it is to make the passages more accessible to the reader; the original
has not been sanitised.
These are throughout keyed to the modernised text and take the form
of commentaries, glosses, notes and textual notes. Symbols above a
line of text or adjacent to a particular word or phrase, if clicked on
with the cursor, will call up a box which overlays the text, in which
is offered an explanation or definition of the material so marked.
Glosses offer brief definitions of words,
idiomatic uses etc.. Notes give detailed
explanations or offer discussion of points in the text, comment on the
performance potential or the theatrical context and may give examples
similar usages or devices and conventions within Brome’s works or those
of his contemporaries. Many of the notes also embrace discussion of
the enacted sequences, outlining through the recorded examples the
different approaches to a given scene that were attempted and debating
the outcomes. Textual notes cover all
substantive editorial departures from the copy-text, discuss issues
faced by editors in modernising the given text, outline the reasons
for serious emendation of the period text and, in the case of those
plays where earlier editions exist, may summarise the reasons for
interventions by earlier editors and draw comparisons between them in
terms of their degree of usefulness or insight. In consequence no
separate historical collation of editions is provided.
Commentaries are linked to the heading
for each act of a play; these discuss Brome’s dramatic structuring,
pace, handling of tone. A reader should quickly determine whether to
view all of these or a selection. Given the editors’ aim to render the
plays accessible to a wide range of readers, the glossing in particular
has been thorough. Words are glossed on several occasions within a
scene (rather than just once within an act or within the play overall)
to assist students who may be asked to work in detail on a particular
extract or actors who may select a particular passage as an audition
piece (Brome’s plays yield many speeches that would fit that requirement
admirably). Many of the notes include bibliographical references to
works consulted and a full Bibliography
is provided. Similarly all the glosses are arranged alphabetically in
a dictionary format as a Glossary for
anyone wishing to study Brome’s particular use of language. Editors
have encountered numerous examples where Brome’s usage antedates the
earliest citation in the OED or in some examples postdate what the OED
cites as the latest use (all such instances are recorded and commented
on).
This material is generally to be accessed through the annotations,
where a particular symbol alongside the note symbol indicates that one
or more clips of recorded performance work is included. (The clips may
also be accessed through a distinct gallery where they are stored and
are grouped according to play-title.
Brian Woolland’s essay
on directing
the workshops also includes access to such material for obvious
reasons.)
The enacted sequences deliberately take the form of workshops since
they are intended to be seen as exploratory, not as finished
performances. Performance skirts were donned to indicate female
characters (such roles were sometimes played by men) and the recordings
show performers holding scripts; lines may be muddled and an occasional
expletive may be voiced by an actor frustrated by seventeenth-century
syntax. These episodes are to be viewed as work in progress, a playing
with possibilities in an effort to release the dynamism in the
dramaturgy. It was never intended that a definitive playing style for
Brome’s comedies should be achieved, since that would be too restrictive
of future actors’ and directors’ powers of invention. To avoid the
possibility that a returning group of actors might fall back on a proven
style that had “worked” for them previously, the groups of actors called
to the sessions was regularly changed and no actor was called back on
more than three occasions. Though the Royal Shakespeare Company and
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre have video materials in their archives
relating to Brome’s plays that they have staged in the past two decades
(A Jovial Crew and The
Antipodes respectively), it was decided not to seek permission
to use these, since we did not wish to pursue an inevitable contrast
with “finished” work. All the actors deployed were from the alumni list
of the Royal Shakespeare Company with some who had worked at the Globe.
No one involved had worked on a play by Brome before but all had
developed experience, tried before audiences, of speaking
seventeenth-century verse and a good understanding of the demands of
playing from a seventeenth-century script.
The workshops were held for four days twice
yearly over a three-year period and all the plays were given roughly
similar amounts of playing time. These meetings coincided with the
twice yearly editorial conferences, which allowed editors to view each
others’ work in progress and to contribute to the discussions about the
various scenes being explored through performance. (Such overall
knowledge of the progress of the edition allowed editors confidently to
make comparisons and contrasts within the canon of Brome’s plays.) It
had originally been the plan to involve three actors in each of the
workshop sessions and this was the pattern generally obtaining
throughout the meetings. Early in the history of the edition, however,
the panel of editors became increasingly fascinated with Brome’s ability
frequently through his plays to write “big” scenes involving a large
cast of performers, all or most of whose characters were given good
attention and stage time throughout the sequence. Kindly the AHRC
permitted us to reallocate part of our funding to allow the final day
of the workshop sessions on five occasions to include a cast of ten
performers so that work might focus on such scenes. This allowed us
to illustrate the extraordinary variety of effects Brome can achieve
with what can be a difficult dramaturgical feat to bring off.
The workshops, meticulously recorded by Peter Hulton of Arts Archive,
had a multi-layered purpose: they were a record of the process of
exploration that editors shared with actors; the actors had the
benefit in a situation akin to the rehearsal room of working in the
company of a range of scholars versed in seventeenth-century theatre
and drama; individual editors subsequently had access to all the
material evolved by this means to inform their discussions of their
particular texts so that in their commentaries they can share with
users of the online edition the insights they gleaned from watching
sequences in rehearsal and explain how this dimension of the research
process influenced their interpretation of textual, thematic and
theatrical issues. Always the emphasis was and is on playing with
potentiality, with possibilities and not on reaching for definitive
closure.
When the clips are opened, readers
will see that a Brome copyright banner traverses the screen to
protect the actors’ rights to their performances, while at the close
of each clip act and scene references appear along with a listing
of the actors involved in the sequence and the roles that they
played. It should be noted that editors and/or the director
sometimes asked if they might return to a sequence to pursue
practically their further reflections on a given episode. When this
occurs and is shown within a sequence of clips, the casting is not
necessarily the same as that in the first exploration. On some occasions
where only one or two actors were involved in a scene, the director
explored its potential by changing the casting amongst the pool of actors
then at his command.
Each play is accompanied by two essays: one a general introduction
situating the play in its cultural, political and theatrical
contexts; the other devoted to a discussion of textual and
bibliographical issues relating to the creating of a modernised
text from extant copies of the period text (modernised versions of
the prefatory and paratextual materials where these exist are
included with commentary and annotations in these essays). No set
format has been followed in the writing of the general
introductions: editors possess varying expertise in literary and
cultural criticism, performance and theatre history, theatre in
practice. That they pursue different lines of enquiry with their
particular texts was encouraged to illuminate the rich potential of
Brome’s dramaturgy both for study and for staging.
While the annotations frequently address performance issues, the
architectural features of Caroline playing spaces, and the works of
many of Brome’s contemporaries, certain specialist aspects of
theatre were not covered in as much detail as we deemed worthwhile.
Consequently a number of scholars were invited to contribute papers
in the areas of their expertise to give a fuller picture of Brome’s
place in Caroline theatre practice.
Farah
Karim-Cooper writes on
Brome’s deployment of cosmetics in his
plays with particular reference to The English Moor;
Eleanor Rycroft investigates
Brome’s
extensive interest in the use of beards in a variety of dramatic
contexts;
Eleanor Collins explores
Brome’s contracts with Richard Heton and the company at the Salisbury
Court Theatre from new perspectives;
Kim
Durban, who has recently staged two of
Brome’s comedies for
Australian audiences, assesses the challenges she faced and her
methods of responding to them; and
Brian
Woolland, who directed the workshops that formed a crucial
part of our editorial process, outlines his methodology and examines
the insights into Brome’s artistry that the experience brought him.
All five essays take the impact of Brome’s comedies in the theatre
as their prime focus of attention.
This facility in many ways fulfils the function in computerised
terms of the traditional concordance. It allows readers to pursue
individual lines of enquiry. One may call up the usages that Brome
deploys of a particular word, phrase or syntactical unit, Latin tag
or dialect idiom; the number of lines/speeches assigned to a given
character; the frequency with which a specific property occurs in
stage directions throughout the play and so on. The search engine
is yet a further feature of the site designed to render Brome’s
plays in various ways accessible to a wide readership.
Without exception the editors’ respect for and delight in Brome as
dramatist and man of the theatre grew and augmented with their
continuing involvement in bringing his plays to the awareness of
twenty-first century readers and theatre practitioners. The groups
of actors involved in the workshops shared the editors’ admiration
and were committed to the project wholeheartedly from their first
tentative attempts to shift the texts from page to stage. They
wondered why the plays were not better known or more frequently
performed when they offered such sophisticated and hilarious comedy,
rewarding roles that continually take an audience by surprise, and
potential for directorial invention. The hope of all involved in the
project is that its making Brome’s comedies available in a
contemporary format will stimulate further study of them for
scholarly purposes and stimulate new and regular performance of his
plays onstage. Our aim has been to release the dynamism and vitality
of Brome’s comic vision for audiences as diverse in their
composition as those who applauded the play on their first showing
in the Caroline theatre. In bidding you welcome to the site we are
bidding you welcome to a theatrical feast.
Richard Allen Cave
Eleanor Lowe