Early Theatre

Editorial

Helen M. Ostovich et al. — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 15:56:33 PST

Imported Popular Song in The Humorous Magistrate: 'The Noble Acts of Arthur of the Round Table' and 'Come heare, Lady Muses'

Paul L. Faber — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:13:27 PST

In the anonymous Caroline comedy The Humorous Magistrate, characters make references to two popular songs. In act 2, Mistress Mumble sings a snippet of 'The Noble Acts of Arthur of the Round Table' at the approach of the wooing lawyer, Strife. In act 5, a group of fiddlers make reference to a manuscript ballad beginning, 'Come heare, Lady Muses', infamous for its attack on George Villiers, duke of Buckingham. This note examines the sources and traditions informing these songs and offers a musical setting for Mistress Mumble's line. I then illuminate an intriguing connection via 'Come heare, Lady Muses' between The Humorous Magistrate and another anonymous play entitled The Emperor's Favourite, considered by many to have been written by the same playwright. Finally, I consider the implications of the two songs, as they exist in their plays, with regard to author and audience.

John Newdigate III, Gilbert Sheldon, and MS A414 106r

Owen Stockden — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:13:24 PST

Among its numerous revisions, the Arbury version of The Humorous Magistrate bears a rare editorial note on page 106r: 'Dr S. this speach not so cleare & perspicuous'. With Johnstone and Inglis’s conclusive attribution of the manuscript to John Newdigate III, the doctor in question is almost certainly Gilbert Sheldon, Newdigate’s long-time friend and confidant. Though Sheldon would one day go on to become Archbishop of Canterbury, I here concentrate on his earlier correspondence with Newdigate to examine the context and scope of his potential involvement with the manuscript and its revisions. Topics analysed include Sheldon’s role as a literary mentor to Newdigate, the texts he proffers corresponding to Newdigate’s interests, and whether he could have been directly involved in editing the Arbury MS. By conclusion I suggest that Sheldon’s influence on Newdigate is a valuable lens through which to analyse his writings and career as an amateur dramatist.

Trying to be Diplomatic: Editing The Humorous Magistrate

Margaret Jane Kidnie — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:13:21 PST

This essay reflects on the resistances manuscripts present to diplomatic editorial procedure. Taking as its example the Arbury text of The Humorous Magistrate, it analyses the interpretive restrictions imposed by the transfer from manuscript to print, especially when working with documents that show extensive correction and amendation. The editor is forced to choose between introducing to the print edition ambiguities that are not features of the manuscript, or shaping the reading experience in light of one’s critical interpretation of the manuscript evidence. 'Accuracy' is thus less an absolute criteria one meets, than a subjective set of procedures one defines for the purposes at hand.

Events and Texts: The Prologues and Epilogues of the Arbury Plays

Amy Scott — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:13:19 PST

‘This rare Poetesse’: the Remains of Lady Jane Burdett

Mary E. Polito — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:13:16 PST

The Magistrate — and Humorous Magistrates — in Early Seventeenth-Century England

Louis A. Knafla — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:13:14 PST

The article on ‘Master Thrifty’ explores his character in The Humorous Magistrate, and places him as a JP within the context of the magistracy of the English West Midlands c 1640. The essay accounts for author John Newdigate’s description of Thrifty, and the ways in which he portrays Thrifty’s interaction with his clerk Mr Parchment, and other characters with whom he interacts in his judicial capacity. The larger vision of the essay is to explain how JPs and legal officials were viewed in English society generationally from the late sixteenth to the mid seventeenth century, and how the play would have been ‘read’ by viewers in the years of 1639-42. I place the play within this contemporary context, and conclude with an assessment of how and why Newdigate — sympathetic to the growing law reform movement — used this entertaining format to question the state of magistracy in these years.

Jockeying Jony: The Politics of Horse-Racing and Regional Identity in The Humorous Magistrate

Vimala C. Pasupathi — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:13:10 PST

In their discussion of the two manuscript versions of the amateur household play, The Humorous Magistrate, Mary Politio and Sebastian Windle briefly note the playwright's omission of one character from the Arbury copy in the Osborne version of the play, a 'Scottish Jony, a horseman' with a strong dialect. This essay takes up some of the questions raised by the apparent erasure of this character, focusing primarily on the role Jony’s dialect and his profession might have played in his removal. In light of Polito and Windle’s assessment of the two manuscripts’ dates of composition after 1630 and 1640, respectively, my discussion considers shifts in Anglo-Scottish relations as well as cultural perceptions of horse-racing within that period as factors that speak to the potential complexity behind the deceptively simple solution of cutting Jony out.

Politics, Poetry, and Performance: The Miscellaneous Contents of Arbury Hall MS 414

Laura Estill — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:13:07 PST

While recent scholarship has focused on the four full-text plays in Arbury Hall MS 414, I concentrate on the manuscript itself and examine the historical and cultural forces that led to its creation. The miscellaneity of this composite volume represents the social and collective nature of textual transmission in the early modern period; Arbury Hall MS 414 offers insight into the Newdigate family as readers, writers, and participants in manuscript culture. Although, at first glance, the disparate texts in this volume seem to be unrelated, I suggest that they are bound by more than their covers: the poems, plays, and prose pieces in this manuscript are also yoked together by their readers’ interests in theatre and politics. This research reveals that the Arbury plays should be read not only in relation to their original composition, but also with regards to later readers from the civil wars to the glorious revolution.

Staging Roman History, Stuart Politics, and the Duke of Buckingham: The Example of The Emperor’s Favourite

Siobhan C. Keenan — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:13:05 PST

Recent years have seen growing interest in the literature of early modern favouritism and the poetry inspired by, and for, one of the period’s most infamous royal favourites, George Villers, duke of Buckingham. This essay explores one relevant text that has received comparatively little attention: The Emperor’s Favourite is an anonymous seventeenth-century manuscript tragedy preserved in the library of the Newdigates of Arbury Hall (MS A414). Probably written between 1627-1632?, and based on the playwright’s reading of classical authors such as Juvenal, Suetonius, and Tacitus, The Emperor’s Favourite superficially dramatizes the tragic rise and fall of Crispinus, corrupt favourite of tyrannical Roman Emperor Nero, but a series of contemporary parallels makes it clear that the play offers an oblique critique of the career of Buckingham and the Stuart court, thus tapping into topical anxieties about Buckingham’s influence and the effects of royal favouritism more generally.