SOURCE: Sonnenshein, Richard. “Critical Introduction.” In A Fine Companion by Shakerly Marmion (1633): A Critical Edition, pp. 1-68. New York: Garland Publishing, 1979.

[In the following excerpt, Sonnenshein summarizes the action of Marmion's major plays, discusses the dramatist's literary influences, and assesses his position in Caroline theater.]

THE COMEDIES: SYNOPSIS OF PLOTS

Each of Marmion's comedies reveals a notable advance in the use of plot devices and the capabilities of the theater. In just three plays he moved from the diffuse, often static, sometimes hard to follow Holland's Leaguer to the skillfully integrated different levels of action in The Antiquary. Such progress indicates that Marmion was not a careless gentlemanly dilettante on the order of Suckling but a serious craftsman dedicated, to some extent at least, to the mastery of the difficult art of playwrighting.

Holland's Leaguer has some of the characteristics of a pièce d'occasion. It is named after a notorious brothel located in Paris Island, Southwark, and run by a woman named Elizabeth Holland. Early in 1631 this woman was having troubles with the law. On January 26 she was summoned to appear before the Court of High Commission under pain of the forfeiture of one hundred pounds.¹ Again on February 9, “Elizabeth Holland was called but appeared not, it was said she was gonne away from her house against shrovetyde:² and that the tenant had petitioned the B[ishop]. of Winchester that the house might be garded for feare of pulling downe.”³ After this notation Mrs. Holland is not heard of again, and her Leaguer, a once proud fortress and law unto itself, apparently fell victim to the double onslaught of the legal authorities and the wild justice of the apprentices.

In the same year that Marmion's play was published there appeared both a prose pamphlet⁴ and a ballad on the same subject. The prose work, by an otherwise unknown Nicholas Goodman, tells the story of how the celebrated procuress Dona Britanica Hollandia establishes her notorious institution, fortifies it well, and from her safe haven proceeds to flout the law. The narrative is chauvinistically anti-Catholic, is told in the form of an allegory, and takes place in a mythical country called Eutopia. The ballad “News from Holland's Leaguer” by Lawrence Price⁵ is a recounting of the manner in which the Leaguer fell before its enemies, an event not discussed in either the prose tract or the play. The crude level of its verse can be seen in the clumsy inversions of grammar and the tautology found in this recurring couplet:

This of a certaine for truth it is spoken,
That Hollands Leager, up lately is broken.

Sue Maxwell, after a close comparison of the three versions, concludes that both Marmion and Price read the Goodman pamphlet and used it as a source for a few details and incidents and occasionally for close verbal paraphrases.⁶ Dean Stanton Barnard, Jr., the editor of the Goodman work, agrees.⁷

The Leaguer is pictured in a woodcut at the front of the Goodman tract with its own moat, drawbridge and portcullis. The capitulation of this unusually well-fortified house of ill fame apparently captured the imagination and sense of humor of the London populace. The appearance of three works on the subject within such a short period of time⁸ indicates an attempt to capitalize upon an interest which was widespread but would probably be ephemeral. Marmion, therefore, is likely to have written his play in some haste.

Holland's Leaguer, like most Renaissance English plays, has a double plot. The first concerns a self-infatuated young lord, Philautus, who spends all his time admiring himself or listening to the fulsome praise of his parasite Ardelio. Philautus's friend Fidelio cures him of this self-love by introducing him to Faustina, a chaste and intelligent woman who succeeds in making the young lord see the viciousness of his useless and effeminate life. Faustina, as Philautus learns to his joy, is both his own long-lost sister and Fidelio's betrothed. Now fired by enthusiasm for the heroic life, he leaves for the wars and soon returns, victorious and covered with glory.

The secondary plot is concerned with the machinations of the impostor Agurtes, who preys upon the greedy and the credulous. Forceful and bombastic language and a mind skilled at concocting swindles are his two chief assets. Agurtes and his henchman Autolicus connive to trick the fatuous young gallant Trimalchio and his inexperienced pupil Capritio into marrying Agurtes's daughter Millescent, a supposed heiress, and her maid Margery. This plot also provides the action at the Leaguer: Trimalchio, Capritio, Miscellanio the boy's tutor, and the parasite Ardelio all put in an appearance before the well-guarded gate of the brothel. Agurtes and Autolicus, aided by a malcontent named Snarl, don the guise of law officers, apprehend this crew, and fine them. Agurtes's victims are spared anticipated further punishment by a letter from Millescent pleading for clemency. Both story lines are brought together at the close of the play by Philautus's attendance at the marriage which Agurtes has engineered.

For a neophyte effort, and one probably written hastily to take advantage of a current sensation, Holland's Leaguer does not come off badly. Philautus's shallow, unjustified self-esteem is forcefully portrayed in the early scenes, and the background of a society in which ruinous ostentation was common is adroitly suggested. The brothel scenes—the bawds and whores getting the verbal best of every wit-combat with their crestfallen customers, the contrast between the swaggering approach of the men and their slinking departure—possess a measure of genuine comic spirit.

Marmion's next play, A Fine Companion, begins with its subsidiary action: young Aurelio has been eliminated as a fit suitor for the love of Valeria because his father, a rival for Valeria's love, unjustly disinherited his son just before dying. In the opening scene Aurelio insists that, now being a pauper, he will give up his beloved for her own sake. Valeria's father, the usurer Littlegood, appears and sends him on his way with some gratuitous abuse for the financial plight which is not of his own making. Spruse, an affected young gallant with many traits similar to Trimalchio's but drawn with a deep streak of vindictiveness lacking in the earlier portrait, makes trouble for the idealistic young lovers. He warns Littlegood that he saw Valeria send a note to Aurelio. Spruse's motive is his desire to win the lady for himself. Using all the proper words and gestures, congratulating himself in asides while admitting that the girl means nothing to him, he woos her with fashionable grace and insincerity—but unsuccessfully.

As Act III begins, Valeria and her sister Aemilia exchange views on how to deal with men. Valeria reaffirms her eternal devotion to Aurelio. To Aemilia, however, the spice of the game is to gain one's own will while making no significant concessions in return.

Spruse comes back, again speaks of his love in orotund phrases. Repulsed once more, he decides upon revenge. The best way to accomplish this, he decides, is to poison Valeria's good name. Aurelio, meanwhile, tells his loyal friend Fido that, for reasons to be explained later, he plans to ask Valeria to feign madness. It is Aurelio who almost goes mad, however, when Spruse accuses Valeria of infidelity and shows Aurelio a token, which Valeria has lost, in proof. The young lover immediately goes into a wildly misogynistic tirade which Fido, ever the true north of ethics and rationality in this play, reproves. His faith in Valeria's constancy, unlike Aurelio's, is unshaken.

A few scenes later Aurelio confronts Spruse with a sword, hoping that he cannot stand fast if his accusation is false. Spruse not only admits that he maligned Valeria, but repents his past behavior and promises to help Aurelio win her. The two lovers are reunited by a ruse in the final scene. Aurelio, disguised as a doctor who specializes in the treatment of madness, spirits Valeria off to a church and marries her.

The main story line of the comedy deals with the peccadillos of Aurello's younger brother Carelesse, who has inherited the patrimony denied the rightful heir. Carelesse's chief faults are that he is a profligate and that he keeps company with a group of scoundrels whose behavior he admires and emulates. He pays court to Littlegood's younger daughter Aemilia, but the relationship is on a very different level from the selfless devotion of Aurelio and Valeria. When he first mentions Aemilia it is to observe casually, “She will glance sometimes affectionately upon me,” and to ponder the material advantages of getting a usurer's daughter pregnant. And in the chief scene which they have together (II, v), Carelesse is thoroughly drunk.

Littlegood is determined to marry Aemilia to a rich old citizen named Dotario. Instead of pleading with her father for the right to follow her heart, Aemilia gives him a spirited argument over what constitutes the proper duties of a child to the parent. When Littlegood leaves her alone with Dotario she launches into an unrestrained attack upon his person that leaves him breathless.

You are an old doting foole, one that twenty yeares since, has drunke the Lethe of humanity, and forgot of what sexe thou wert, worne out of all remembrance of thy selfe, thou hast a body, that a feaver cannot heat, nor poyson worke upon, a face more rugged then winter, thy beard is mosse, and thy skin so hard, that the perpetuall dropping of thy nose cannot soften it.

(II, iv, 54-60)

After this assault she proceeds to tell him what he can expect after their marriage: she will squander his money on expensive trifles, fill his house with noisy gossips, cross his will out of sheer perversity, and only sleep with him once a quarter. Finally, she will cuckold him. Reeling from this unrelenting attack, Dotario runs back to Littlegood.

One would naturally expect Dotario to give up his suit to such a termagant, however potentially lucrative it may be, but in the artificial world of Caroline drama Aemilia easily convinces him, when it suits her purpose, that he misunderstood her. He not only accepts her explanation but also agrees, with no indication that he suspects a ruse, to an elopement. Aemilia insists this is necessary because of a “solemn oath” she has made to be wed in no other way.

When Carelesse is not pursuing his somewhat desultory courtship of Aemilia, he is seen in the company of his disreputable friends. From Spruse he learns to place enormous emphasis upon such externals as dress and style of speech and upon popular fashions like taking tobacco or using a toothpick properly. Vain young Spruse is simply incapable of recognizing the value of a sincere human relationship. This is admirably brought out by the device which he shows Carelesse in I, v: a box of love letters written in resplendent turns of phrase and only lacking a name, which he will fill in when any lady catches his passing attention. Carelesse admits to a temporary financial embarrassment; Spruse commiserates but confesses that he cannot at the moment help him. He leaves, explaining that he is on his way to dazzle the ladies with the sight of him.

Carelesse's favorite group of cohorts is a crowd of sponging, tavern-dwelling swaggerers led by a Captain Whibble, one of a type fairly common in London at the time of Charles I's nebulous and indecisive foreign manipulations—the officer who has lost his position and pay because his company has been retired. Naturally, in addition to the genuine ex-officers, there were many who had never seen service but affected the rank in order to benefit from its prestige. The entire group did not have a particularly good reputation, since even many of the real officers chafed under the restraints imposed by idleness and peace. Captain Whibble seems to be one of the impostors. At any rate he is an unfailing source of bad advice and worse example. He tells Carelesse to sell his land and spend the money on his friends. He is also a coward. When Fido, to test his mettle, deliberately jostles him, Whibble attempts to blast him into an apology with noisy threats and oaths. As this fails to move Fido he then tries to win his friendship by heartily congratulating him for his bravery. The captain does not escape the threat of Fido's sword, however, until he has promised to leave off swearing and has invited Fido and his friends to dinner.

Fido decides to reveal to Carelesse what a worthless person Whibble is. He introduces the captain to a disguised Carelesse, then tells him that Carelesse has chosen him as patron in a quarrel. Whibble talks his way out of accepting the challenge by characterizing the young heir as “a pitiful, drunken, shallow coxcomb” whom he has already extracted from many such scrapes. Infuriated, Carelesse throws off his disguise and beats Whibble soundly.

Littlegood's son Lackwit, a lout of almost beatific imbecility, is another young man who seeks admittance to the select company of Captain Whibble and his friends. Lackwit affords this crew a further chance to show some of their rascality: they build up a huge bill at a tavern and leave him to pay it. He is also used by Carelesse as a dupe in his plot to kidnap Aemilia. In the guise of Dotario, Carelesse successfully spirits her away and marries her before the real Dotario can stop him.

In the long final scene which concludes A Fine Companion Marmion gradually and plausibly brings all his major characters together for final confrontations and an easy-to-follow unraveling of the plot complications. First, Aurelio in his guise of a doctor takes Valeria away from her worried parents and returns later in his own person and as her spouse. The fatuous Lackwit arrives to announce triumphantly the marriage of Aemilia to the supposed Dotario. The real Dotario then enters and reveals how he has been duped, thus annihilating Lackwit's coup. The irrepressible Whibble appears to announce that since a military career has proved unprofitable he has become host of an inn, with his lieutenant as his tapster. The suggestion of hospitality, ale, and easy companionship which this new host brings with him caps the previous speeches, in which general reconciliation has been achieved. Carelesse has vowed to forsake his reckless ways and Dotario has promised to settle an allowance upon Aurelio and make him his heir. The play ends on a note of cheerful harmony, with Carelesse announcing the general view, “Now I percieve that we must all keep holiday.”

Marmion chose an Italian setting for The Antiquary, his last comedy, perhaps because the idea of a duke moving incognito among his own subjects suggested an Arabian Nights atmosphere which required a more exotic setting than London. Allardyce Nicoll observes that, “The disguising of the Duke reminds us of the adventures of a Haroun al-Raschid.”⁹ The movement of the Duke among his subjects provides a framework for the customary double plot.

The subplot centers around Veterano, an antiquary inordinately devoted to the distant past and too infatuated with it to discriminate false from true antiques and artifacts. He plans to disinherit Lionell, his nephew and heir presumptive, for such crimes as once promising his uncle to become a “new man” and for having mailed letters back from Europe dated stilo novo. Partly because of his uncle's unreasonably attitude, partly out of youthful mischievous spirits, Lionell decides to use subterfuge to wrest some money from him. In a well-written scene Veterano lists and describes his “treasures,” a motley collection of obvious frauds. Disguised as a scholar, Lionell easily palms off two illegible manuscripts as rare books from ancient Rome. The antiquary, almost anxious to be gulled, declares one to be the work of Cicero, the other of Ptolemy.

The main plot revolves loosely about the rich but foolish Petrutio who, like Joseph Hall's Cosmius,¹⁰ has used his devoted father's money to learn the ways of the court and now scorns the father as an unsophisticated simpleton. Lionell, who practices chicanery in both plots with equal gusto, makes an effort to ingratiate himself with this coxcomb. When the man fails to respond Lionell turns his thoughts from flattery to revenge. Petrutio is equally indifferent to the overtures of elderly Lorenzo when that gentleman offers the young man his daughter Lucretia in marriage.

Lucretia has two suitors, doting old Moccinigo and impetuous young Aurelio, both of whom she scorns. Moccinigo hires a bravo, a professional murderer, to rid himself of this rival. He imprudently tells Lucretia what he has done. Frightened by this development, she finds the bravo and dissuades him from the bloody act.

Lorenzo's troubles with women are not confined to his intractable daughter. His wife Aemilia finds herself attracted to Angelia, who is disguised as Lionell's page. She attempts to seduce the “gentle boy” and Lorenzo overhears. Lionell's revelation of Angelia's true sex saves Aemilia from complete ignominy. Angelia seems to exist chiefly in order to link the two plots together. In her own person she is later wedded to Petrutio, who believes her to be the Duke's daughter.

Aurelio appears one morning to friends at Lucretia's balcony and announces that they are married. By this ruse he forces her actually to marry him to save her reputation. Lucretia then tells her parents of Moccinigo's plot to murder his rival. The bravo appears and pretends that guilt has driven him mad. He terrifies Moccinigo into signing over all his goods, in order to escape probably capital punishment, to whomever Lucretia chooses for a husband.

Again all the major characters gather for the final outcome of the plot entanglements. The “slain” Aurelio removes the officer's disguise he has assumed; Veterano forgives Lionell and reinstates him as his heir; the Duke reveals his true identity and gives all his subjects a general pardon for their follies.

PLOTTING, CHARACTERIZATION, USE OF SETTING

A great many, probably even the majority, of Renaissance English plays take their main plot from a single source such as a novella, historical account, or another earlier drama. Marmion's borrowings do not follow this prevailing trend. Instead he creates his own plots, although they are built of stock situations and familiar character types. No one major source has been found for any of his three comedies and none need really be sought, since piecemeal acquisitions adequately explain the origin of Marmion's ideas.

In the case of Holland's Leaguer the original inspiration was undoubtedly the actual historical event itself, that is, the notoriety that seems to have been attendant upon the downfall of the infamous and once well-fortified brothel which gives the play its name. A visit to this brothel is the almost inevitable way to bring the dwelling into the drama, and this in turn naturally suggests a crew of scapegraces and sinners as its customers.

Holland's Leaguer was one of a type of play which had something of a vogue in the first half of the 1630's. Theodore Mills has given it the name, “place-realism” play.¹¹ Realistic use is made of a specific geographical area and numerous concrete details about it are given, but the place chosen does not significantly affect the mood or action. There are usually only a few place-realism scenes in each play; they have an intrinsic appeal to audience interest or curiosity, but they interrupt the forward movement of the plot. Other place-realism plays are Shirley's Hyde Park (1632), Nabbes's Covent Garden (1632), Tottenham Court (1633), Brome's Covent Garden Weeded (1633) and The Sparagus Garden (1635).

It is easy to see these generic place-realism traits in Marmion's comedy. The visit to the brothel is poorly motivated and not really related to any of the other skeins of action. The timely and amusing elements of the brothel scenes are exploited for their own sake, with little or no regard for the contribution which they make to the play as a whole.

Not much effort is expended, in fact, to draw the two plots together at any point in the play. Trimalchio, who travels between the two sets of characters in the first three acts, is their chief link. A gallant like Philautus, he pays court to Triphoena, a figure from the first plot, and plays into the hands of the swindler Agurtes, a major figure in the second plot. Two more small links between the two story lines are provided by Capritio, who joins the other rogues in their nocturnal visit to the brothel, and Snarl, who is a friend of Philautus and who also poses as one of Agurtes's constables. Otherwise, the two groups scarcely ever meet. Even in the final scene, where a general massing of characters and an unraveling of plot threads is usually expected, neither Fidelio, Faustina, nor Triphoena is in evidence. Only Philautus appears to greet the newly wedded couples whose marriages are the result of Agurtes's manipulations, and by this time his presence on stage seems largely irrelevant to anything that is happening.

An equally serious fault in this play is that promising plot complications are allowed to wither away for lack of exploitation. For example, Philautus's self-love is expatiated upon at some length by his friends and further shown in two scenes in which he heaps compliments upon himself. The expectations which are raised that this humour will be pursued and developed are never realized. Instead an almost spontaneous cure is effected in III, iv. Similarly, when Triphoena meets Trimalchio she remarks to herself,

I neuer saw a man in all my life
I so affected on the sudden, sure
There's some Nobility does lurke within him.

(II, v, sig. F1)

At the end of this scene she says, “I shall mourne, / And be melancholy, till his returne.” The intrigue thus clearly foreshadowed could have proved very useful to Marmion's dramatic aims. It might have developed these two characters more fully, helped to underscore the theme of the duplicity behind fashionable court manners, and at the same time drawn the strands of the two plots closer together. Triphoena never appears in the play again, however, and the promised intrigue goes nowhere.

In the writing of his second comedy Marmion took a considerable step forward as a practicing dramatist. Here he exploits the capabilities of the stage and copes with its limitations with a visibly greater ease and authority. When the “place-realism” scenes occur in Holland's Leaguer the main plot halts completely for a full act, and when it is picked up again some strands are left to atrophy. In A Fine Companion the progression of the two stories is much more evenly balanced; in every act there are scenes dealing with both narratives, a major step in keeping attention focused adequately on all important characters. Numerous plausible links prevent the stories from drifting apart. The suitor in one action is the brother of the suitor in the other action. The two mistresses of the young men are sisters; thus, both Littlegood the harried father and Crochet the crafty servant can move equally readily in either plot.

A close reading of this comedy conveys the impression that Marmion constructed it merely by throwing together a number of stock social types and observing the results of their interacting. Their counterparts could doubtlessly have easily been found in the streets of early seventeenth-century London, but they are more directly indebted to Jonson and his comedies of humours than to life observed at first hand. We have the avaricious usurer whose greed tends to make him susceptible to swindlers; the overbearing, garrulous and socially ambitious citizen's wife; the cowardly yet arrogant military man; the clever, sarcastic, and scheming servant.

Marmion liked to economize by borrowing from himself, even to the point of reusing names in a later play, and he probably owes the idea of the lovers Aurelio and Valeria to his own Fidelio and Faustina in Holland's Leaguer, as well as the foolish young gallant Spruse to Trimalchio, and—to a lesser extent—the semi-senile old suitor Dotario to Miscellanio. With the further aid of such old plot devices as mislaid love letters, disguises, messages and notes, he was able to work up a fairly creditable comedy.

In his last play, as in his first, Marmion's real interest appears to be in the subplot, the antiquary's total gullibility regarding false antiques and his nephew's exploitation of this foible, even though this subplot constitutes less than half the action of the play. Apparently Marmion was the first to introduce the character of an antiquary on the English stage, although he was already known in non-dramatic literature. John Earle included among his Characters “An Antiquary,”¹² from which the playwright drew several hints for the sketching of Veterano. Like Earle's antiquary, Veterano admires the very dust of old monuments, is willing to make a long pilgrimage to see a valued antique, and loves old coins for their age rather than their current value. Both dote on illegible old manuscripts, especially of works by Tully.¹³ While Earle speaks more in generalities, Marmion fills out his characterization by having Veterano mention the works of specific writers, painters and sculptors as being among his treasures.

For his main plot Marmion was content to fall back once again upon a gallery of stereotyped characters and situations. The machinations of the suitor in near dotage, the vain courtier, the unfaithful wife, seem all the more threadbare by contrast with the comparative originality of the underplot. The framework device of the disguised Duke's moving among his unsuspecting subjects, similar to that used by Shakespeare in Measure for Measure and by Middleton in The Phoenix, helps to hold the various groups of characters in proper perspective. Hence, the progress of the plot, though it has its dull patches, is always coherent.

Portraying a character by means of direct dramatic action seems to be difficult for most dramatists who are not greatly talented. Exposition, talking about a person, is often used to convey an author's point when it becomes too difficult to demonstrate through the character's own conduct. In these three comedies one can see developing in Marmion a pattern or set of more or less fixed habits of character revelation. One recurring habit is to have an individual described in a brief vignette by an acquaintance or friend. If the person is important enough, he often appears and gives a similar speech of his own. In Holland's Leaguer Snarl gives this account of Philautus:

                              … the most besotted on his beauty;
He studies nothing but to court himselfe;
No Musicke but the harmony of his limbes;
No worke of art but his owne symmetry,
Allows his sense to admiration.

(I, i, sig. B1^v)

On his first appearance Philautus further rounds out the picture, from his own point of view, of course.

This building, Nature has solemnized
With such Magnificence, to which I owe
The loves of Ladies, and their daily presents,
Their hourely solicitations with letters,
Their entertainments when I come, their plots
They lay to view me, …

(I, iv, sig. C1^v)

Fidelio gives Philautus a long description of Faustina in order to entice the self-enamored young man to meet her; then Faustina in her first scene delivers a set piece on her steadfast chastity and constancy. In A Fine Companion Aurelio delivers a fourteen-line sketch of his profligate younger brother, and in the same act Carelesse characterizes himself in a prose passage of about the same length.

This method is used in a remarkable variety of circumstances. When Lionell offers his friendship to the frivolous Petrutio, the gallant asks, “A friend, what's that? I know no such thing” (I, sig. B2^v), and receives in reply a little speech which might be called “The Character of a True Friend.” Lucretia, describing Aurelio, lists the many external trappings required of the unrequited lover: disordered dress, wan countenance, pitiful sighs (II, sig. D2^v). Marmion resorts to this Overburian method even in the course of a heated argument between Littlegood and his wife as to the proper way to raise their son. Wishing him to be a reliable merchant, Littlegood cries, “Do, make a gallant of him, or a gull,” and in a long prose speech sets forth the excesses of the citified dandy. Not to be outdone, Fondling retaliates with an even longer speech (II, vi) ridiculing the country clown who gapes at fine lords and ladies. Indeed, Marmion's use of this technique is so pronounced in some places that A. W. Ward claimed some of his work “resembles an attempt to bring a few chapters of Theophrastus or of one of his modern imitators on the stage.”¹⁴

Both the strengths and the one fatal weakness of this method can clearly be seen in the two speeches in which Fido summarizes Captain Whibble's duplicity.

Sir, this is Captain Whibble, the Towne stale
For all cheating imployments, a parasite
Of a new sect: none of your soothing Varletts,
But a swearing Sycophant, that frights a man
Into a beliefe of his worth; his Dialect
Is worse then the report of a Cannon,
And deafes a stranger with tales of his valour,
Till his conclusion be to borrow money.
His company is a Cipher in the reckoning,
That helpes to multiply it …
…
He is either trudging now vnto a broaker,
Or to invite some new heire to a breakfast,
To seale for the commodity; or else
Wandring abroad to skelder for a shilling
Amongst your bowling alleyes; most commonly
There lyes his scene: or perhapps man some whore,
A province that he vsually adornes.

(III, iv, 2-11; 16-22)

This is good satire. It impales a well-known type of scoundrel by hitting upon his most typical failings and citing them in trenchant and forceful verse. Whibble's insubstantial self-praise, financial chicanery, casual lechery are all here, and add up to a potentially dangerous buffoon. The lines, “his Dialect / Is worse then the report of a Cannon, / And deafes a stranger with tales of his valour,” build neatly to the deliberately flattening effect of “Till his conclusion be to borrow money,” a conclusion which, like the man himself, is deflated and anticlimactic. The vitiating weakness of this method is, of course, that the speech is not dramatic. Marmion would have improved his comedy greatly had he been able to give us a short scene in which the captain actually invited an heir to a breakfast, with ulterior motives, or in which he “skeldered” for that elusive shilling.

In other scenes Marmion portrays well Whibble's personality in action. The man is always untrustworthy, yet his wits rise to the demands of any situation and he puts as good a face as possible on the worst of circumstances. The ghastly moment when his hostess refuses to prepare a meal for Carelesse and Fido is one example. After Fido has revealed Whibble's craven nature to Carelesse and taken his hat and cloak, the captain consoles himself with the irresistible statement, “Well, those good qualities that are bred in a man, will never out of him, that's my comfort.” This disparity suggests that Marmion may not have been shirking his duties as a dramatist so much as failing to realize that mere verbal satire is not an adequate vehicle for true dramatic action. Certainly, he could appeal to the precedents of many long and static scenes in some of Jonson's comedies, such as Every Man Out of His Humour, The Poetaster, and Cynthia's Revels.

Marmion's characterization, like his plot construction, improves noticeably in A Fine Companion. In Holland's Leaguer a breech of plausibility is sometimes caused by the sudden revelation of a piece of information for which the audience is totally unprepared. When Philautus learns that Faustina, his newly rediscovered sister, is betrothed to “one Fidelio,” he asks, “Where is hee?” and is astonished when Fidelio replies, “My name's Fidelio” (V, i, sig. K1^v). This comes as an unexpected shock, since Fidelio is portrayed in the first act as knowing Philautus well enough to criticize his faults with severe candor. The spectator or reader is forced to make a mental readjustment and conclude, somewhat uncertainly, that Philautus had formerly known Fidelio under an assumed name—a fact never previously hinted at. Again, in order neatly to round out the number of couples to be married in the last act, Marmion informs us for the first time in V, iv, that Capritio's tutor Niscellanio was once engaged to Triphoena's maid Quartilla and has now decided to right the old wrong he had done her.

In A Fine Companion Marmion avoids the sudden, gratuitous revelation. Moreover, he has learned to prepare the reader for changes in a character's conduct by giving hints of these coming changes at earlier points in the play. When Carelesse is aping Spruse and admiring Whibble for his excessive wit, he looks all but lost to reason. But then he gives Fido a substantial sum of money, explaining that he is embarrassed because he knows well he is breaking the custom of the true gallant by giving money to a worthwhile person rather than to a parasite or a whore. Fido observes, “I see yet in his good nature a reluctancy against ill courses, he has not quite shak'd off his humanity, there are hopes to reclaime him.” (I, iii, 60-62). Later, when Spruse displays his unaddressed love letters, Carelesse is unwilling to criticize openly the invention of a gallant but shows his innate disapproval of this cold-blooded scheme. Spruse demands, “How do you like it?” and Carelesse answers, “Admirable good. Put them up again.” The reader is now prepared for the discovery of Carelesse's long-submerged common sense when Fido finally opens his eyes to his fair-weather friends. Similarly, Fido's suggestion in I, vi that Dotario make his nephew Aurelio his heir helps to give credibility to the final scene of the play, in which Dotario actually does so.

Efforts at psychological verisimilitude were also made in The Antiquary. When Lucretia exhorts Moscinigo's bravo to give up his life of crime she argues, threatens, and pleads eloquently, but the bravo holds out for quite a while. Allowing for the necessary telescoping which the dramatic form demands, his ultimate capitulation and insight into his own evil ways is much more fully prepared for than many Elizabethan conversions which, like that of Philautus in Holland's Leaguer, are often precipitate.

Like a tennis player whose backhand is stronger than his forehand, Marmion is occasionally able to characterize his heroes, villains, and clowns more successfully by indirection or implication. In A Fine Companion, after we have seen Aemilia's character revealed in her unsparing attack on Dotario, he is later mollified in part but still demands, for his emotional security, that she subscribe to a list of preposterous articles which would try a Griselda. As she listens to these demands in what can only be simmering silence, Littlegood observes blandly, “You can see by her silence she will consent to anything” (III, v, 80). Even in the study Aemilia's mute exasperation seems to leap from the printed page. Again, when Lackwit confronts what he believes to be the false Dotario, he begins by asking the kind of inane questions that might remind the modern reader of G. B. Shaw's Newspaper Man in The Doctor's Dilemma: “What errant knight are you, sir, and whither do you travel with that damoiselle?” Crochet, no doubt leaning towards him conspiratorially, urges, “Press that point home” (V, i), and this simple remark greatly sharpens our awareness of how dense Littlegood's son and heir is.

All three of Marmion's plays are City comedies. His Italian city, whether it be Pisa or Venice, is actually London in spirit and mores, despite its occasional Mediterranean references. Dedicated to Jonsonian dramatic precepts in theory, as indicated by his association with the poet of the Apollo Room and more explicitly by his statements in the elegy which he wrote for Jonsonus Virbius, he appears also to have been content to follow the literary master in practice, especially in the creation of characters whose conduct is motivated in great part by their dominating humour—whether it be superficial gallantry, avarice, social ambition or lust—and also by his partiality to scenes which show citizens in bustling attitudes of work or play. These naturally afford opportunities for heightened emotions of joviality and camaraderie, posturing and affectation, anger and querulousness, all of which are more quickly generated in public gatherings or crowds.

Hence, we have in Holland's Leaguer an assemblage of shallow social sycophants to trade and display their vanity (II, v), a scrambling group of self-seekers who each jockey to best the others (II, iii), and of course the raucous scenes in front of the brothel in Act IV. In A Fine Companion there are scenes of Carelesse's receiving a group of tailors and other merchants (I, iv), a roisterous scene of song and dance at an inn (IV, i), and the clustered final reconciliation scene (V, ii). With Lionell hastening between the characters in both plots to practice cozenage, with the Duke appearing frequently to observe his diverting subjects, The Antiquary gives an equal impression of activity and bustle, although the characters in each scene seldom exceed four in number.

INFLUENCE OF EARLIER PLAYWRIGHTS ON MARMION

In general subject matter, locale, use of classical allusions, and use of the theory of humours—in all these things Marmion is as true a son of Ben as any of the younger playwrights (Randolph, Glapthorne, Nabbes, May) who were proud to be considered disciples of the great master. In the choice of models for specific characters or scenes, however, he borrows from a number of playwrights. No individual in any of his comedies is based wholesale upon a character in an earlier play, and he could not be accused of plagiarism, even by the stricter standards of the twentieth century. His frequent practice is rather to build up a character or situation by taking hints from a number of sources, like an artist creating a mosaic or a bird building a nest. The final result, none the less, still carries his own stamp.

This eclecticism is discussed by Joe Lee Davis,¹⁵ who holds, for example, that “Jonson's Asper, Crites and Truewit all contributed to [Marmion's] conception” of the censorious Snarl in Holland's Leaguer. An examination of the two relevant comedies by Jonson in the light of this assertion reveals several suggestions for traits of Snarl which Marmion most likely found in Jonson. Asper-Macilente, in Every Man Out of His Humour, criticizes the typical flighty court gallant (“After the second Sounding,” ll. 158-167) and decries “these mushrompe gentlemen / That shoot up in a night” (I, ii, 162-163).¹⁶ Like Snarl, who condemns Philautus's unbalanced preoccupation with such externals as ostentatious clothing, fashionable gait and posture (I, i, sig. B1^v), Macilente is enraged to see that Fastidious Brisk can simply “purchase but a silken couer” and as a result “not only passe, but passe regarded” (III, ix, 12-13). Snarl's exposure of the parasite Ardelio's rapture over Philautus's every act (I, i) is reminiscent of Crites's running commentary upon Asotus and Amorphus's infatuation with one another in Cynthia's Revels (I, iv). Truewit's harsh censuring of citified affectations (Epicoene, I, i) offers thoughts which parallel some of Snarl's opening comments in I, i.

After one grants the evidence already noted, he will see that the differences between Jonson's three gadflies and Marmion's critic are in each instance more striking than the similarities. Snarl demonstrates none of Macilente's general aversion to the advancement of the unmeriting. Macilente can get furious at Sogliardo, whom he hardly knows. Snarl is moved to combat the self-love of Philautus more out of interest in the moral welfare of a friend than hatred of the abstract vice. He shows little of Crites's altruistic zeal for honesty; he participates in the fraudulent arraignment of Trimalchio and his friends (IV, iv), an act which Crites would never have countenanced. Neither does he demonstrate, unfortunately, any of the deft skill at phraseology which Truewit, when exposing sham and hypocrisy, often reveals.

Davis also states (p. 170) that Marmion's Agurtes and Autolicus “resemble” Meercraft and Everill in The Devil is an Ass. While it is no doubt true that all subsequent projectors owe something to Meercraft, as Felix Schelling insists,¹⁷ the resemblances are limited to a few specific items. Meercraft ticks off a list of projector's schemes in II, i (recovery of drowned lands, selling of dog's skins, bottling ale with hollow corks) which in their visionary impracticality are echoed in Agurtes's ideas for getting cheap salt from the sea, building water works, drying fens and marshes (I, v, sig. C4^v). But Agurtes is only a projector en passant. This aspect of his life gets lost in his subsequent marriage plots and legal disguises. Meercraft, by contrast, continues his projecting with elan throughout the entire comedy. In IV, ii, it is a method for cornering the market in that fashionable product, toothpicks. In V, iv, his enthusiasm has transferred, undiminished, to the newfangled utensil, forks. As for Everill, he ably assists Meercraft in gulling Fitzdottrell out of one hundred gold pieces just as Autolicus helps Agurtes dupe Trimalchio into marrying his daughter. But his relationship with his mentor differs sharply from that existing between Marmion's two swindlers. Autolicus, not a carefully drawn figure, is always a willing stooge. Everill is more independent. At one point (III, iii) he argues with Meercraft over his share of the spoils; in another hoax (V, vii) he takes the initiative by persuading Fitzdottrell to speak Greek and Spanish in a fit of pseudo-madness.

A more convincing case for significant influence can be made regarding Sir Amorous La-Foole and Lackwit. That Marmion knew Jonson's Epicoene is a matter of established fact, for the younger playwright mentions both La-Foole and Jack Daw in A Fine Companion. Lackwit's boasting about his ancestors is very similar to La-Foole's genealogical claims (see note on p. 278 of the present edition). Lackwit's reluctance to employ his sword (V, 1) was probably also suggested by Sir Amorous's notorious cowardice (Epicoene, III, iii and IV, v).

Since Lackwit is clearly indebted to La-Foole, Davis feels that Dotario “may owe something to Morose” (p. 165). The dependence, if there is any of moment, is slight.¹⁸ Morose, apart from his quirk of detesting noises, is portrayed as an alert, fairly capable person. Dotario is the slow-witted, easily hoodwinked dotard which his name implies. The only truly noteworthy thing which they have in common is the ultimate fate of their wealth: Dotario is forced to make a settlement upon Aurelio and designate him as heir; Morose consents to give his nephew Dauphine £500 a year and will his estate to him.

The appearance of Captain Bobadill infused new life into the character of the miles gloriosus, and Marmion's conception of Captain Whibble is deeply indebted to Jonson's brilliantly executed character. They have a common love of resounding and impressive oaths (such as Bobadill's “by the heart of valour”, Whibble's “by the faith of a souldier”). Both are chronically in need of money, and both brag of their past exploits (Bobadill's prowess among the Moors, Whibble's on the high seas). Downright beats and disarms Bobadill, revealing his craven nature (IV, vii) in much the same way that Carelesse throttles Whibble (IV, v). Both cowards are branded with the epithet kestrel. In addition, they share other distinctly similar mannerisms. Bobadill haughtily informs Edward Knowell that he deigns to speak to him only for Wellbred's sake (III, i, 80-83); Whibble agrees to address Lackwit because he is a companion of Carelesse (IV, i, 17-21). Bobadill scorns to have anything to do with Cob because of his mean-spiritedness (III, v, 127-129); Whibble advances the identical excuse to avoid having to fight for Carelesse (IV, v, 88-91).

Marmion is obligated to Shirley's The Witty Fair One for the name of Whibble itself, and he owes some aspects of the characterization to Beaumont and Fletcher's Traveler in The Scornful Lady. In this play the Traveler “has plough'd up the sea” (I, ii, p. 22), as Whibble also boasts (III, iv, 48), while the Captain leads a group of revelers and wenches in a carouse of dancing and drinking (II, ii) that is highly reminiscent of the scene in the inn which opens Act IV of A Fine Companion.

In the creation of his devil-may-care wastrel Carelesse, Marmion also drew upon The Scornful Lady. Like Carelesse, Beaumont and Fletcher's younger Loveless mortgages his lands to a usurer. He has a crowd of disreputable associates of which his elder brother's steward voices, as does Fido, strong disapproval. The steward complains of their volleys of oaths, whoring, and thieving.

For portions of several scenes of his last comedy Marmion turned not to Jonson but to Jonson's old rival Shakespeare. These borrowings are cited by Fred L. Jones, who finds them extensive enough to maintain that “few later Elizabethan plays show more clearly than The Antiquary the popularity of Shakespere's plays and poems.”¹⁹ Jones finds all of the first scene of Act II of this play to be “an unmistakable take-off on the famous balcony scene (II, 2) of Romeo and Juliet.” He cites four separate speeches by Aurelio which are derived from speeches by either Romeo or Juliet.

AURELIO.
What more than earthly light breaks through that window,
Brighter than all the glittering train of Nymphs
That wait on Cynthia, when she takes her progresse
In pursuit of the swift enchased Deer,
Over the Cretan or Athenian hils,
Or when, attended with those lesser stars,
She treads the azure circle of the heavens?
ROMEO.
But soft! what light through younder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.
…
AURELIO.
Shine still, fair Mistris,
And, though in silence, yet still look upon me;
Your eye discourses with more Rhetorick
Than all the guilded tongues of Orators.
ROMEO.
She speaks, yet she says nothing; what of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.—
…
AURELIO.
Oh that I were a vail upon that face,
To hide it from the world.
ROMEO.
O, that I were a glove upon that hand,
That I might touch that cheek!
…
AURELIO.
                                                                                          … your promises
Are all deceitfull; and that wanton love,
Whom former Ages, flattering their vice
And to procure more freedom for their sin,
Have term'd a god, laughs at your perjuries.
JULIET.
Thou mayst prove false. At lovers' perjuries,
They say, Jove laughs.

Jones also finds that Lorenzo's speech ordering Lucretia to marry the suitor chosen for her (II, sig. E1) is similar in thinking to Old Capulet's outbursts against Juliet.

The first scene of Act IV, the conversation between Lorenzo's wife Aemilia and Angelia disguised as a page, is shown to be drawn in part from Venus and Adonis, especially stanza thirty-nine. And a final borrowing, this time from Julius Caesar, has Aurelio paraphrasing Brutus.

AURELIO.
There is, Sir, a criticall minute in every mans wooing, when his Mistris may be won, which if he carelesly neglect to prosecute, he may wait long enough before he gain the like opportunity.

(IV, sig. H2)

BRUTUS.
There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

(IV, iii, 218-221)

Marmion's debt is in every instance very specific and very limited. He did not draw upon Shakespeare for anything of wide or pervasive influence, such as a method of characterization or a pattern of imagery. Still, these numerous Shakespearean echoes reveal that Marmion had the critical breadth to appreciate the achievements of both of the two greatest luminaries of the Elizabethan-Jacobean stage.

.....

A CHANGING DRAMA REFLECTS A CHANGING SOCIETY: MARMION'S POSITION

The minor Caroline dramatists were often conscientious craftsmen and playwrights of creditable if not spectacular talent. They are no longer being summarily dismissed from critical attention. Nevertheless, their chief importance now as in the past remains historical rather than literary. Caroline drama represents a weak period in the national literature of England for many reasons, one of them being the profound and basic sociological changes which were taking place during this era. These changes were very confusing to this group of playwrights, whose predecessors had the advantage of a more static society to study and portray. During the years when Charles I occupied England's throne, underlying assumptions about the relation of drama to society as a whole were being significantly modified. One fruitful way to shed light on these changes is to make a brief examination of the connection between ethical purpose and dramatic practice in some plays of the Jacobean-Caroline period.

That Ben Jonson had a strong ethical purpose in all his comedies is evident to anyone who reads the plays. Helena Watts Baum has shown, through specific studies of the individual comedies, that “Jonson's didactic theory is more philosophical than moral, more literary than monitory.”²⁰ “The point which perhaps deserves most emphasis is that Jonson's standards for truth and goodness are intellectual and social rather than religious or more narrowly moral.”²¹ Miss Baum concludes that all of Jonson's early comedies were to a great extent experimental efforts “to fuse perfectly heavy satire, serious content, and comedy” (p. 137), that in the great comedies—Volpone, The Alchemist, Bartholomew Fair—he succeeds in this aim. One aspect of Jonson's art, in her opinion a major source of its continuing power through the centuries, is his dual fidelity to the didactic (as she defines it) and the aesthetic demands of the drama. When he does not reconcile these two elements it is because of an honest failure of ability and not because of a compromise.

His own theory was neither narrow nor strictly moralistic in the usual sense. One sees that Jonson would have condoned occasional drunkenness or lechery, but that he would not condone mental and moral vacuity. The poet he thought was a man of great intellectual and moral attainments, able to purify and interpret all knowledge. Poetry was the eternal voice of man's best visions, and acted positively and directly upon society as the most powerful force for its betterment.

(p. 184)

Miss Baum demonstrates that the term didactic cannot be understood in a too restricted or conventional sense without both distorting Jonson's intentions and lessening the value of his art. She herself contends, however, that among Jonson's critics, “the general assumption is that the motive behind his comedy is conventional morality” (p. 23). It is easier for men to grasp didacticism of the “more narrowly moral” sort than that which is grounded in philosophy and intellectualism. If most critics have misconstrued Jonson's aim, there should be little wonder that many of his contemporaries, including his fellow playwrights, seem to have done so also.

As a “tribe of Ben” dramatist to compare with the master, Richard Brome is the most logical choice. Jonson's artistic influence is pervasive in all his plays. He shared many of Jonson's presumptions about society and the good life. And he produced a large enough canon, fifteen plays, to allow a fairly wide base of particulars from which to make generalizations about his art. After a close study of this canon, R. J. Kaufmann observes that what was left of the medieval synthesis was virtually in its death throes during Brome's career and that “what Jonson … thought were aberrations or temporary failures to acknowledge the moral standards he believed in were in reality the beginnings of a complete loss of faith in those standards.”²² Being Jonson's servant and a member of his household for many years, Brome was in a position, unique among the sons of Ben, to be exposed constantly to the older playwright's deep and dogged commitment to the support and propagation of the attitudes he believed would ultimately prevail. Like Jonson, “Brome's point of view is conservative. … He is genuinely and deeply concerned to preserve the values of the older ‘Tudor culture’ which is being subverted before his eyes” (p. 3). But, possessing a much smaller talent than Jonson, Brome seems to have been a shrewder political and social analyst.

Brome seems to have effected a reconciliation between his loyalty to Jonson's very obvious and repeatedly declared aims, and the exigencies of pleasing a restless and diversion-hungry audience, by an avowal of mirth as his aim. By making his primary object the creation of laughter, Brome could then bargain for a certain amount of attention to more serious matters. He adopted numerous versions of the oblique (as opposed to the directly didactic) technique. … Brome had to rely on cunning, good nature and surprise.

(p. 46)

Kaufmann concludes that Brome wisely sacrificed the Jonsonian manner in order to retain the ear of his “restless” audience, but remained throughout his career unswervingly faithful to “conservative values in the family, in the social hierarchy, and in the use of money as an inadequate means of establishing and maintaining public relationships between men” (p. 174). Kaufmann holds that this constant purpose underlies the antics, joviality, and mirth in all Brome's comedies. If one is not aware of it the plays will lose much of their direction and point and often appear merely shallow or conventional.

Kaufmann's explication is a signal help in understanding the generally unanalyzed position of superiority which critics have always granted Brome's work in comparison with the other dramatic sons of Ben. The spokesmen for the older “Tudor culture,” as Kaufmann terms it, were members of an ever-diminishing and beleaguered minority. The humbler sons of Ben were either unable to carry on a continual rear-guard action as Brome did or were not interested in doing so. But with the impressive and no doubt intimidating example of the master always before them, they had to deal with the dilemma somehow. Thomas Nabbes chose to imitate Jonson's methods uncritically (see especially his Tottenham Court [1633] and The Bride [1638]). Possessing neither Jonson's intelligence nor his artistic skill, Nabbes became merely doctrinaire, as Alfred Harbage says.²³

Marmion chose a solution located roughly at the opposite pole from Nabbes. In his three comedies he pays lip service to the didactic element, but concentrates his attention on the customs and manners of his characters. What appears to have genuinely interested him was the behavior of people, particularly when under some sort of stress, either that of scrambling to attain a difficult goal or of trying to avoid an unpleasant set of circumstances. Stress brings out the foibles, ambitions, cowardice, willingness to evade moral duty, and similar character traits which are much easier to conceal under more tranquil conditions.

That Marmion was aware of the moral dimension in art and accepted the prevailingly agreed upon importance of its role in poetry and drama is made clear by the letters and prologues which he affixes to his plays. Quite naturally feeling on the defensive because of the subject matter of Holland's Leaguer, he offers this appeal “To the Reader”:

However, my Muse has descended to this subject; let men esteeme of her, onely as a reprover, not an interpreter of wickednesse: … your former Writers, in their accurate discovery of vice have mingled the precepts of wisedome.

(sig. A3)

In the Prologue to A Fine Companion the Critic complains, “Tis this licentious generation / Of Poets, trouble the peace of the whole Towne.” The Author's answer is to claim that “no impure language … shall ever mixe / With our ingenious mirth … the wise, / Sit to controule and iudge, in whose cleare eyes, / As we deserue, we looke to stand or fall.” Mina Kerr takes these statements at face value, and this undoubtedly contributes to her conclusion that “through all these plays we find that expository satire which so many of his successors learned from Jonson.”²⁴ Such a remark, however, is only true in a carefully qualified sense. Marmion did not always live up to his claims. In spite of a disavowal of “impure language,” the lieutenant's reference to the occupation of pimping in terms of the science of warfare is a sniggering double entendre (I, vi), as are many of Crochet's remarks to Littlegood about Dotario's fitness as a husband for Aemilia (I, ii) and later to Aemilia herself (II, iii).

It is not enough to note the existence of a didactic element in a playwright's work, moreover, if we wish to gain a better awareness of the nature of his art. We must also try to see how that element is handled in the drama, what the author's attitude toward it is.

The most obvious didactic element in Holland's Leaguer is Philautus's pernicious self-love and his upright friend Fidelio's determination to find “a meanes / To cure him of his folly” (I, i, sig. B2). It is enlightening to see what Marmion does with this plot thread. Philautus is carefully introduced, with all the expository paraphernalia that is customarily given to the main character in an Elizabethan drama. Anyone even casually familiar with the conventions of this period would be led to expect that Philautus is to be the mainspring of the play's central action. Soon, as in I, iv, Marmion's treatment of Philautus's affliction becomes more perfunctory. In Act II he drops out of the action completely. In Act III he has one short scene in which his parasite Ardelio heaps fulsome praise upon him. Then, in III, iv, by means of a few speeches filled mainly with ethical commonplaces, Philautus becomes cured of his egotism completely. Part of the reason for this atrophying of a character on which so much initial effort has been expended is Marmion's already cited insecure grasp of dramatic technique. But, seen in connection with certain other trends in this comedy which will be looked at in a moment, we may confidently say that part of the cause is Marmion's lack of interest in the moral issue. His imagination evidently was not capable of being fired by the urgency of an ethical question, as Jonson's so often was.

Other elements of Jonsonian “expository satire” which Miss Kerr finds in Holland's Leaguer are the impossible schemes of projectors for making money, and the false and idle gallant. Once more we must determine how these elements, admittedly suggested by examples in Jonson's plays, function in the Marmion milieu.

Trimalchio is loquacious, free with his compliments both to himself and to others, non-introspective, and immensely satisfied with himself, even though he turns out to be both gullible and cowardly. To contrast him with one of Jonson's dandies such as Fastidious Brisk in Every Man Out of His Humour will illuminate the difference between the methods of the two playwrights. When Fastidious Brisk delivers a discourse on the paramount importance of wearing impressive, ostentatious clothes (II, vi and III, iii) or boasts without justification of his intimacy with many court ladies (II, vi), the tenor of the scene in each case leaves the reader with the impression that we are to draw a lesson from having observed such aberrant behavior. The choral characters Mitis and Cordatus often make the lesson explicit. When we hear Trimalchio claim that seven coaches fought for the honor of his company (II, i) or that he was personally led in to a private masque by a lord whose name he chooses not to reveal (II, v), these remarks are embedded in scenes in which a number of characters are avidly pursuing their essentially foolish aims. Marmion does not slant or direct the course of the action to a didactic conclusion. His interest definitely remains on the manners of his characters, so that the cumulative impression which the reader receives is that Trimalchio is acting vainly and immaturely because that is the way many young gallants behaved. Brisk's crimes catch up with him; in our last glimpse of him he is going to prison for an indefinite but presumably long sentence for his many debts. Trimalchio is gulled, it is true, into marrying the non-heiress Millescent. But she is not really beneath his true deserts, he soon professes himself satisfied with her, and his vanity remains essentially untroubled.

Harbage has observed that Marmion owes the general concept of intrigue in low life to Middleton.²⁵ Perhaps he also got from that author the realistic world-view which recognizes, without too much anguish, that some scoundrels on this earth are punished while others escape almost scot-free. As for the tirade in I, v against the expensive and hopelessly far-fetched schemes of the projectors (private entrepreneurs attempting to gain government support for “projects” to improve the commonwealth), it is made by Agurtes, an impostor and himself a projector. Hence, the seriousness of the indictment is hopelessly compromised.

A Fine Companion affords, in the serious and idealized love affair between Aurelio and Valeria, a contrasting example of what takes place when Marmion faithfully follows through on a plot thread with a strong didactic element. The characters orate rather than speak to one another, with little charm or grace. The story moves ahead woodenly, showing no trace of the self-sustaining buoyancy of the scenes involving Whibble and his merry crew of easy-going ne'er-do-wells or of the spice with which Aemilia gamely fends off the power of established authority.

III, iv is especially useful as an illustration of the difference in tone between the partially didactic narrative in the play and the narrative of manners and foibles studied for their own amusing sake. It is the scene where Fido deliberately challenges Whibble in order to expose his strongly suspected lack of valor. Although a main link between the two plots, Fido belongs primarily to the Aurelio-Valeria sequence by virtue of his devoted friendship to Aurelio and even more by the high seriousness which he shares with the two young lovers. Fido jostles the captain, who then spouts dire nautical epithets. One would expect the very excesses of these curses to draw forth a wry, at least mildly amused, response from most adversaries. Fido's response, renewing his original challenge, is totally devoid of a recognition of the humor of the situation (and remains so to the end of the scene). Whibble subsequently offers to shake hands; Fido refuses. Finally, with rather desperate heartiness, Whibble offers to give him a dinner in his lodgings in Southwark. Fido replies, like a schoolmaster, “But I must have you leave your swearing first, / And be temperate.”

In this scene Whibble ultimately elicits our sympathy, partly because all of us are somewhat afraid of a fight, and partly because our natural response to a paragon is distaste. Whibble, for all his faults, is human; Fido is a tin saint. The presence of such a stilted character is often caused by the author's not really being interested in him.

By the time he came to write his third comedy Marmion had surrendered to his obvious primary interest: watching and reporting human behavior, especially in its less edifying moments, while taking little interest in value judgments. The virtuous and faithful young lovers of the earlier plays disappear; there is only a couple who strongly remind us of Carelesse and Aemilia. All the major characters in The Antiquary are unmistakably sons and daughters of the fallen Adam and Eve. Only Leonardo, one of the Duke's courtiers, fails to display a besetting fault, and this is probably due to his not being onstage long enough to reveal it.

Not only does Marmion seem relatively indifferent to the didactic dimension in art, but there is also some evidence that he did not truly understand what it consisted of. In her edition of Cupid and Psyche Alice Jones Nearing points out a striking anomaly (p. 65): the poem itself is lush and Ovidian, light in treatment, pleasantly romantic, sensuous. None of the almost innumerable versions of the legend is freer of ethical implications than Marmion's. Yet in the front of the original edition is placed a prose explanation which Marmion calls “The Mitheology.” By “mitheology” he evidently means the allegory, and in a long paragraph we are given detailed moral interpretations, such as,

By the City is meant the World: by the King and Queene, God, and Nature: by the two elder sisters, the flesh and the will: by the last the soule, which is the most beautifull, and the youngest, since she is infused, after the body is fashioned.

Too little is known of Marmion's personality to hazard a guess whether he actually misconstrued his poem to such an extent or whether he felt that his readers would want and expect an edifying interpretation.

Such apparent confusion between the externalized form and the inner validity of ethical precepts is symptomatic of a more general confusion. The sons of Ben were men defending old principles that were actually in full rout before such irresistible pressures as a greatly increased supply of precious metals, enclosures which threw men off the land, the growth of the cities to which many of these landless men were drawn, the beginnings of a factory system, and all the other social factors which were rapidly establishing a money economy not only as a basis for trade but as a very philosophy of life. Art alone, even consummate art, could never have offered an effective challenge to such forces as these.

Jonson never realized that the battle for “Tudor culture” was already lost. His followers very likely did realize this, at least dimly, but averted their gaze from the truth. In Marmion's case this was made all the more easy by his natural predilection for reporting behavior objectively and his lack of interest in making prescriptive judgments.

Once the old Jonsonian citadels had to be abandoned and long-trusted values were seen to be hopelessly inadequate, a vacuum remained which naturally invited a growing cynicism regarding all values. Here is another indication that the amorality and artificiality of Restoration comedy grew logically out of conditions which existed prior to the Civil War. From this point of view Marmion, primarily a follower in a well-established theatrical tradition, can also be seen as a transitional figure pointing to the next development in English comic drama, a development which was not permanently interrupted despite the shock of the Puritan revolution and the twenty-year closing of the theaters.

Notes

1. Reports of Cases in the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, ed. Samuel Rawson Gardiner ([London], 1886), p. 263.

2. On Shrove Tuesday, by old tradition, roving bands of apprentices attacked houses of ill repute.

3. Gardiner, p. 268.

4. Hollands Leaguer: Or, an Historical Discourse of the Life and Actions of Dona Britanica Hollandia the Arch-Mistris of the wicked women of Eutopia … (London, 1632).

5. This ballad is reprinted in A Pepysian Garland: Black-Letter Broadside Ballads of the Years 1595-1639, ed. Hyder E. Rollins (Cambridge, Mass., 1922), pp. 400-405.

6. Sue Maxwell, Shakerley Marmion, Poet and Dramatist, Unpublished Yale Dissertation, 1941, pp. 171-179.

7. Hollands Leaguer by Nicholas Goodman: A Critical Edition (Unpublished University of Michigan dissertation, 1962), p. 28.

8. Goodman's pamphlet was entered in the Stationers' Register on 20 January 1631/2, Marmion's play on 26 January, and Price's ballad on 24 May of the same year.

9. British Drama (London, 1927), p. 165.

10. Virgidemiae (London, 1598), IV, ii.

11. “Place-Realism in a Group of Caroline Plays,” Review of English Studies, 18 (1942), 428-440.

12. Micro-Cosmographie, Editio Princeps, 1628, ed. Edward Arber (Westminster, 1904), pp. 28-29.

13. Petro's remark that “the dust makes a parenthesis betwixt every syllable” (III, sig. G1^v) is almost identical with Earle's “the dust makes a Parenthesis betweene every Syllable” and must be a direct verbal borrowing.

14. A History of English Dramatic Literature to the Death of Queen Anne (London, 1875), p. xlvi.

15. The Sons of Ben: Jonsonian Comedy in Caroline England (Detroit, 1967), pp. 167-176.

16. All references to Jonson's works are to the text of C. H. Herford and Percy and Evelyn Simpson, eds., Ben Jonson (Oxford, 1925-52).

17. Elizabethan Drama, 1558-1642 (Boston, 1908), II, 276.

18. One direct verbal borrowing has been noted. Morose's “I will not sinne against so sweet a simplicity” (II, iv, 86) and Dotario's “I am sorry I haue sinned against so sweet a simplicity” (III, v, 49).

19. “Echoes of Shakspere in Later Elizabethan Drama,” PMLA, 45 (1930), 791-803.

20. The Satiric and Didactic in Ben Jonson's Comedies (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1947), p. 22.

21. Preface, p. v.

22. Richard Brome: Caroline Playwright (New York, 1961), pp. 44-45.

23. Cavalier Drama (New York, 1936), p. 159.

24. Influence of Ben Jonson on English Comedy, 1589-1642 (New York, 1912), p. 91.

25. Cavalier Drama, p. 157.