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Allusions to James I and his Court in Marston's Fawn and Beaumont's Woman Hater

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Albert W. Upton
Albert W. Upton*
Affiliation:
Whittier College
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Extract

Detailed study attendant upon the preparation of a critical edition of the Woman Hater has led me to the conclusion that the play is not an unsuccessful juvenilium in the Jonsonian “humour” school, as it has often been described, but is rather indebted to the evil influence of the outlawed satirist, John Marston, and identifies its author as one of a group of daring young comedists who took for their common subject the crimes and follies of the Court of James I. The purpose of the present paper, however, is not to discuss the evidence of this satirical cabal of which Marston was unquestionably the arch-conspirator, but to point out several topical allusions to the King and his court in Marston's Fawn and Beaumont's Woman Hater.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1929 , pp. 1048 - 1065
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

* This paper will be discussed at the meeting of the English Drama group, at Cleveland, December 31.

Note 1 in page 1048 Winwood's Mem., Vol. II, 54, in Nichols, Progresser, Lond. 1828, I, 500.

Note 2 in page 1049 It may be noted here that Fleay regarded Day's Isle of Gulls as “certainly one of the series in which royalty was satirized” because it was surreptitiously published with titles of King and Queen incompletely altered to Duke and Duchess.

Sir E. K. Chambers cites a letter of Edward Hoby, 7 March, 1606 (Birch 1, 59) to the effect that there “was much speech of a play in the Black Friars, where, in the Isle of Gulls from the highest to the lowest, all men's parts were acted of two diverse nations” and therefore agrees with Fleay. Chambers, however, (III, 286), scouts Fleay's conjecture that Daniel was lampooned in the character of Dametas and suggests that Carr was the intended butt. I think Sir Edmund would be hard put to it to explain why “Damoetas, the royal favorite . . . . inevitably suggests Sir Robert Carr.” The Isle of Gulls by Chambers' own dating is too early for Carr, and the character of Dametas does not exhibit his known traits.

As for the Isle of Gulls, it will be the unpleasant duty of the next editor of Day to decide whether the common predilection of James and his wife for beautiful young men is there satirized. Certainly the political satire is plain enough.

Note 3 in page 1049 Bullen, Marston, Introd., I, xliii. My recognition was independent of Bullen's and is therefore corroborative.

Note 4 in page 1050 I, ii, 127.

Note 5 in page 1050 Trans. by Lucy Aikin, I, 333. Memoir of the Court of King James the First, London, 1822.

Note 6 in page 1051 McIlwain, Pol. Wks. of Jas. I, Cambridge 1918, 284.

Note 7 in page 1052 Gerard, What was the Gunpowder Plot, 141.

Note 8 in page 1052 Cf. Gardiner, What Gunpowder Plot Was, 125.

Note 9 in page 1054 Act I, sc. i.

Note 10 in page 1054 Cf. The Fawn, III, i, 171.

Note 11 in page 1054 D. N. Smith, Characters of the 17th Century, 8.

Note 12 in page 1055 I, ii, and I, iii.

Note 13 in page 1055 King's Favorite, 4. The Countess wrote:

“We all saw a great change between the fashion of the Court as it was now, and yt in ye Queene's, for we were all lowzy by sittinge in Sir Thomas Erskin's chamber.”

From Lady Anne's Diary in Nic. I, iii. Cf. also the Diary of Lady Anne Clifford, Lon. 1923, 6.

Note 14 in page 1056 England Under the Stuarts, I, 57.

Note 15 in page 1058 Nugae Antiquae, II, 271.

Note 16 in page 1058 Nic. I, 508 and II, 95. The quip is from Sharpham's Fleire.

Note 17 in page 1059 Nic. I, 247.

Note 18 in page 1059 The Court and Times of James I, citing Birch, I, 26.

Note 19 in page 1059 Calendar of Domestic State Papers, 1603-10, p. 88.

Note 20 in page 1059 Nic. II, 39.

Note 21 in page 1060 Cf. Dict. Nat. Biog. for resumé of Herbert's troublous career. There are thirteen satires on Montgomery collected by Geo. Thomason. Vid., Catalogue, Thomason Tracts, II, 593.

Note 22 in page 1060 II, i.

Note 23 in page 1060 The Life and Death of Philip Herbert. Lond. 1649 (?).

Note 24 in page 1060 Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, II, 53-4.

Note 25 in page 1061 Lodge, Portraits, IV, 339.

Note 26 in page 1061 I, iii.

Note 27 in page 1061 History of the Rebellion, ed. Oxford, 1839, I, 97.

Note 28 in page 1061 $pD1000, Jan. 1606, and $pD750, Jan. 1607. Nic. I, 47, and II, 162. Cf. also D. N. B., V. 26, 208,

“The distinction which he gained when accompanying the king . . . . gave new currency to the old lines:

The Herberts every Cockpitday

Doe carry away

The gold and glory of the day.“

Note 29 in page 1062 Nic. I, 463.

Note 30 in page 1062 Nic. 470, Vol. I.

Note 31 in page 1063 II, i.

Note 32 in page 1063 Cf. Middleton, Family of Love, II, 164, ed. Dyce:

Lypsalve. Hadst thou heard the protestations the wife of a bellows-mender made but yesternight against gallants, thou hads't for ever abjured crimson breeches.

Note 33 in page 1064 Somers's tracts, ed. Scott, p. 146.

Note 34 in page 1064 Hist. of the Reb., I, 102. Cf. also D. N. B., XXV, 265.

“Satirists, perhaps with some exaggeration, delighted to tell of his unbounded extravagance. One particular freak, that of the double suppers, was remembered against him. The invited guests would, it is said, find themselves in the presence of a cold supper composed of the greatest rarities. Before they had time to help themselves, it was snatched away and replaced by a hot supper of equal costliness.—(Osborne, Traditional Memoirs, in The Secret History of the Court of James I, 270.

Note 35 in page 1064 Osborne's Traditional Memoirs, p. 468, quoted by Scot in Somers's Tracts, p. 146.

Note 36 in page 1065 Both Nichols and the D, N. B. spell the name “Honora” but the “Epistle Dedicatorie” to a sermon by Robert Wilkinson called “The Merchant Royall, a Sermon preached at White Hall before the King's Majestie, at the nuptials of the Right Honorable the Lord Hay and His Lady, upon the Twelfe day last, being Januar. 6, 1607,” reads “to Lord Hay and his late espoused the Lady Honoria.” (In Nic. IV, 1075.)