New Places and New Manners in Vogue. Richard Brome’s The New Academy or the New Exchange (1635?)
p. 75-87
Résumé
The New Academy est le reflet des nouveautés qui marquent l'Angleterre avant la fermeture des théâtres en 1642. L'arrivée d'Henriette-Marie de France, en 1625, donne le signal d'innovations théâtrales. La reine, qui n'hésite pas à jouer elle-même, renforce le goût de la préciosité et du néo-platonisme dans les masques et le théâtre à la cour de Charles Ier. Les compagnies françaises se font plus nombreuses et le mariage royal n'y est sans doute pas complètement étranger. Brome et ses contemporains, Shirley et Massinger, abordent d'ailleurs la question de la présence des femmes sur scène. Le goût de la nouveauté se fait sentir dans les noms des lieux (the New Exchange sur le Strand), aussi bien que dans les innovations architecturales d'un Inigo Jones auxquelles les pièces de l'époque font souvent allusion. L'attrait de la nouveauté n'est pas seulement présent dans le titre de la pièce, ou dans la satire des Anglais désirant s'instruire des manières et modes françaises. À travers la création de la nouvelle académie, Brome a recours au métathéâtre. Enchâssant les espaces, le dramaturge — si souvent comparé à Ben Jonson — anticipe déjà un nouveau genre théâtral, le théâtre de la comedy of manners, qui connaîtra son essor à la Restauration en 1660.
Texte intégral
1From the outset of The New Academy, Erasmus announces that Matchil has not seen his son, “these dozen years, since he sent him a little Lad into France, to be bred there”(1.1). Valentine also adds: “I heard he did so; and that in lieu, by way of Exchange, he brings up the daughter of the Parisien that breeds his sonne” (1.1.)1. As the dramatic action of the play unfolds, Matchil's new spouse Rachel makes the first allusions to the new academy. In the presence of Erasmus and Valentine who are courting her, she acquaints her husband with her desire to go to the academy:
[...] my friend, and my servant have promis'd to carry me abroad, to this town, and to that town, [...]. And my servant will have me to Hide Park, [...]. And my friend will carry me to a what dee-call, a new Academy, where I shall see the rarest musick and dancing, he sayes, and learn the finest Complements, [...] and such instructions for the newest fashions. (3.1.)2
2Why does Brome create an academy à la française in 1635? Why this new invention? In order to seek a response to these questions, a brief glance at the social and historical context of Caroline England is required. Does Henrietta Maria's arrival at Charles's court in 1625 influence the aesthetical and ideological modes of Caroline London?
3Following this historical survey, the vogue of creating and representing new spaces within the drama of the Caroline period shall be analysed with particular emphasis placed upon their binary nature, that is, real and fictitious.
4Consideration shall then be given to the theatrical devices that Brome uses to create the space of the new academy. By referring to those who profess the art of French fashions and to its subsequent followers, Brome's satirical portrayal of the English neophytes and the new French fads they want to espouse is aimed more at the former than the latter group. To what extent does Brome's portrayal of the foreigner in London provide the audience or reader with new perspectives regarding the images of the self and of the other between, the auto-images and the hetero-images3?
5When Henrietta Maria arrived in England in 1625, she also brought with her the fashions of préciosité and the cult of Platonic love that had developed in France during the opening years of the seventeenth century. These fashions originated in the Parisian salons whereby the manners and literary tastes that evolved in this private space where led by distinguished women. Madame de Rambouillet was one of the best known and Henrietta Maria was certainly familiar with her notoriety: “Although not herself a frequenter of Madame de Rambouillet's chambre bleue, Henrietta could hardly have escaped a social influence so diffusive”4.
6Inherited from the genre of pastoral which was extremely fashionable in early seventeenth century France, these fashions stemmed from Honoré d'Urfé's L'Astrée, five volumes centred upon the cult of Platonic love. Consequently, this occasioned a new vogue in the dramatic production of the Caroline period. In a letter to a friend in Paris written in 1634, James Howell records the principal evidence of this fashion at Charles's court:
The Court affords little News at present, but that there is a Love called Platonic Love, which much sways there of late; it is a Love abstracted from all corporeal gross Impressions and sensual Appetite, but consists in Contemplations and Ideas of the Mind, not in any carnal fruition. This Love sets the Wits of the Town on work; and they say there will be a Mask shortly of it, whereof Her Majesty, and her Maids of Honour, will be part.5
7It is therefore not fortuitous on Brome's behalf to have named the new place an academy as opposed to a lyceum, further enhancing its Platonic heritage and contemporaneous connection. Yet as Howell reveals in his correspondence, perhaps one of the most important things that Henrietta Maria brought with her to England was her passion for the realm of spectacle and performance, the part that she was to play in both its figurative and literal sense6.
8With the change of scene it was as early as 1626, on Shrove Tuesday, that Henrietta Maria and her French retinue, her demoiselles, performed a French pastoral before Charles and the English court. Sophie Tomlinson writes:
The gesture was arresting, at once cultural intervention—an assertion of a different heritage—theatrical innovation, for until this moment formal acting by women had not been witnessed, either on the English public stage, or in court entertainment [...]. The theatrical coup by England's new Queen Consort mark[ed] the beginning of an alteration of language taking place in the Caroline period.7
9The theatrical innovation initiated by Henrietta Maria and the linguistic alteration that Tomlinson refers to were subsequently discussed among the queen's detractors who did not gloss over her part as thespian:
[...] the Queene and her women had a maske or pastorall play [...] wherin herself acted a part, and some of the rest were disguised like men with beards. I have knowne a time when this would have seemed a straunge sight, to see a Queene act in a play but tempora mutantur et nos.8
10The emerging innovations and mutations—tempora mutantur et nos—were also staged by Brome and his brothers, the Sons of Ben, as most critics have dubbed them9.
11In addition to the cult of platonic love introduced via French romance and pastoral drama which placed women at the locus of the stage as embodiments of ideal beauty, Henrietta Maria's penchant for acting also manifested itself in the regular and new arrivals of French companies that performed at the English court and at London's indoor theatres. It is thus through Henrietta Maria's importance as theatrical patron and the French companies' appearances that the French element in Brome's The New Academy becomes intelligible.
12French companies were in town as early as 162910. The important year to note, however, regarding the arrival of a French company under the auspices of Henrietta Maria was in 1635. Sir Henry Herbert's account describes the event:
On tuesday night the 17 of February, 1635, a Frenche company of players, being approved of by the queene at her house too nights before, and commended by her majesty to the kinge, were admitted to the Cockpit in Whitehall, and there presented the king and queene with a Frenche comedy called Melise, with good approbation.11
Having attained high favour at court, the company was granted permission by Beeston to use the Phoenix theatre for performances on Wednesday and Friday nights during Lent. The troupe also performed at a riding academy in Drury Lane owned by Monsieur le Fevure.12
13Given the advent of the French troupe in London, the performances staged at the Phoenix theatre and at Le Fevure's riding academy both R.J. Kaufmann and C. Shaw, the principal critics of Brome's sixteen extant plays, attribute 1635 as the year in which the play was composed. Moreover, it was written under Brome's first contract which he signed in July 1635 with one of the most fashionable theatres of Caroline London, “the late erected new Play-house,”13 the Salisbury Court theatre. Even though this is a conjectured date, the analogies that can be made between the above-mentioned events and Brome's own creation of a gallicised academy do seem plausible.
14This new influx of French migration to England in the mid 1630s also sheds light on Matchil's initial francophobic remarks. In Act 1 Scene 1, incriminating the “false Frenchman” with his child's loss, he decides to “[...] Hang his French friendship” and orders Gabriella “the French-born damsel” to “[...] leave my house. / There's French enough in town, that may befriend you. / To pack you o're to Paris Moreover, the play's second title, The New Exchange literally refers to the New Exchange in the Strand14, a fashionable place in the 1630s where Hannah and Rafe Camelion's shop is located (2.1.). It is also the place that will harbour the subsequent locality of the new academy. The relevance of the new exchange resides in the marital exchanges that take place in the final act of the play. The topographical title is misleading and is perhaps used by Brome as part of a vogue regarding the “place-realism” comedies that were staged in the early 1630s.
15This vogue of topographical comedy or “place-realism” is something that Brome and his contemporaries also staged. Not only did the “place advertise the play”15 but it also reflected the new fashionable haunts of Caroline Londoners and enabled Brome and his contemporaries to comment upon the architectural innovations and transformations of their city. In the opening act and scene of The Covent Garden Weeded (1632), Cockbrain a Justice of Peace modelled on Jonson's Justice Overdo and Rooksbill a “great builder in Covent Garden” comment upon and scrutinise the topography of the new architectural evolutions in Westminster:
Cockbrain: |
[...] These appear like buildings! Here's architecture expressed indeed! |
Rooksbill: |
[...] When it is all finished, doubtlesse it will be handsome. |
Cockbrain: |
It will be glorious; and yond magnificent piece, the piazza, will excel that at Venice, [...] I like your row of houses most incomparably [...] How even and straight they are! [...] How [the architect] has wedded strength to beauty; State to uniformity; commodiousness with perspecuity! AU, all as t should be!16 |
16Moreover, when Crosswill, a country gentleman, arrives in London to lodge at Rooskbill's new buildings, he also comments upon Inigo Jones balconies, that which jets out so on the forepart of the house and manages to espy “the little Crosse upon the new Church yond” (1.1.). The description of the new square, the novel balconies introduced from Italy by Inigo Jones and the architectural innovations of St. Paul that he was commissioned to complete, as Wenceslaus Hollar's etching of Covent Garden later reveals, emanated from the obsession that Charles I had with uniformity and harmony, ideologically portrayed in the court masques staged at Whitehall during his reign17.
17Yet Brome and his contemporaries did not only delight in reproducing the place-realism of London locales in their dramatic works. They also created fictional spaces as an innovative way of staging Caroline fashion-seekers. Prior to Brome's The New Academy in 1635, other dramatists also alluded to academies18 or created schools to stage fashion-sick Londoners. In 1616, Fitzdotterrel in Jonson's The Devil is an Ass enquires about an “academy for women” so that his wife may learn how to “comport herself”. Jonson does not create an academy proper, but has Mrs. Tailbush and Mrs. Eitherside two fashion seekers introduced to Spanish novelties through the disguised Wittipol, alias “the Spaniard”. In the early 1620s, Thomas Randolph composes The Drinking Academy. The space of the drinking academy as a school that instructs young gentlemen in the fashionable vices of gaming, drinking and quarrelling is once again only alluded to and the entire action of the play takes place near or in front of the academy but never inside it. In c. 1625, James Shirley's Love Tricks or The School of Compliment devotes an entire scene to the bogus school of compliment fabricated by Master Gasparo “the star of eloquence” and by his gentleman-usher the “hypodidascal” Gorgon. Providing instruction in eloquent speech and compliment, Shirley satirises books of polite instruction which often provided the reader with formulae of the most preposterous and fustian sort19. Even though Shirley stages the school throughout Act 3 Scene 5, the scene provides diverting relief and is not essential to the dénouement of the play.
18With The New Academy, however, Brome represents and creates a place of instruction and learning as an essential part of the play. The dramatic action shifts from Matchil's and Lady Nestlecock's respective abodes, to the household of Hannah and Camelion Rafe a uxurious citizen, a “Wittal” who practically coerces his wife into adultery through his foolishness. As Footpost discloses, “If all husbands in the City were of his minde, / it were a Forrest of fooles indeed” (2.1.). Brome's forest of fools inevitably recalls Jonson's own. Yet Brome does not condemn and his discourse is not didactic20.
19The academic scenes commence in Act 3 Scene 2 and are situated within a two-storied house which the audience determines from Strigood's remark to Hannah to, “[...] bid the Girles corne down / To practise” (3.2.). Brome's technique of a space within an existing space or an embedded space is a dramatic device that he also stages in two later comedies: The Antipodes (1636) and The Damoiselle or The New Ordinary (1638)21.
20Relying on “internal stage directions”22, it is via the verbal mode, within the spoken text, that the reader discerns the spatial change. In order to create the academy, Brome's first transformation requires a change in costume. The stage directions read: “Enter Strigood, Cash, disguiz'd in bravery”. Cash, Matchil's runaway servant “a brave gallant, one o'the Alamodes, / Nothing but French all over” (5.1.) who attends to Strigood exclaims:
Cash: |
But you in this disguise, None but the devil himself [...] devis'd it. |
Strigood: |
No, you are short. |
21In his Histrio Mastix, printed only two years before The New Academy, Prynne openly censures the Jesuit practice of shaving one's crown and beard. He considers these practices as, “[...] Heathenish, and absurd [...] innouation[s] [...] as Effeminate Vnnatural [...]” and goes on to write: “[...] our Nation, our times, which Proteus-like are alwayes changing shape and fashion, and like the Moone, appeare front day to day in different formes”23. Prynne's damnation of the stage and the protean times also extends, however, to dancing and dancing schools which he considers to be among, “[...] the adjuncts, [...] the Concomitants which usually attend [...] [Stage-playes]” judging them as “[...] the Devils procession [...]”24.
22Consequently, Matchil's initial comments to Strigood of being able to “daunce” of having “quick hands” and “airie heels” (1.1.) become clearer. Strigood's role in the new academy is that of “Mr. Lightfoot the nimble dancing master” (4.2.)25.
23Brome's portrayal of the dancing master, the school of dance and the numerous inset dances do not function therefore as frivolous entr'acte entertainments, but enable the dramatist to choreograph a kinetic defence of dance through the medium of the “stage-playe”.
24In the new academy, disguise is also essential to performance. When Gabriella and Joyce behold Cash's disguise, Gabriella cries out, “Blesse us! what Metamorphosis is this?” (3.2.). She enhances the fact that Strigood's new academy is nothing more than a bogus academy and a fake. Blurring the boundaries between reality and illusion, the reader is constantly made to question who is really French and who is not26.
25The new academy therefore becomes a place of disguises and masks par excellence. When Hannah acquaints Strigood with the arrival of, “[...] a Reverend Lady / Of fifty five; and a Knight of threescore / And upwards, [who have] come hither to learn fashion” (4.2.), the nimble dancing master orders his assistants: “On with your Masques Maids”. The mask27 is not only a form of disguise, but also becomes an integral part of the overall scenes of compliment and dancing that are staged within the academy.
26The fictitious space of the academy incites fictitious identities. Playing a new role, hiding behind masks and wearing new costumes all become part of the histrionic performance that in fact enables the academy to have some semblance of credibility. Identities, however, are not only concealed but are also mistaken. When Papillion and Galliard, alias Young Matchil and Young Lafoy arrive at the new academy, they introduce themselves as “the French Gallants”, as a “paire of delicate young Monsieurs [...]” (3.2.). Their arrival creates a quiproquo of identities as each one almost weds his respective sister. Incest is, however, avoided. Hardiman reassures them: “Be not dismay’d. / These marriages are none. / The errour of the persons nullifies / The verbal ceremony”(5.2.). The absence of spatial unity, the creation of an embedded space, metamorphosis, disguise and mistaken identities are all thematically associated with the aesthetics or sensibility of the baroque period that Brome, like his predecessors and European contemporaries, also reflected in several of his plays.
27Along with the physical transformations and the change of names, Brome also modifies the linguistic mode. Not only does he play on and transform the codes of dress and identity, but he also transforms those of language. With the arrival of the two young men, “[...] [who will] joyne with [Strigood] in Academick fellow-ship [...] as The heads of [the] chief Arts [...]” (4.2.). Brome begins a series of verbal exchanges in which he plays upon the Frenchman speaking broken English or what can be termed as franglais. Strigood who only has “a devil of French to entertain” (3.2.) the newcomers, one of whom is a native speaker, a point which further emphasises Strigood's and the academy's fraudulent nature, gives Galliard and Papillion their cue: “[...] I would be glad to heare you speak the language / I better understand, and that is English” (3.2.).
Galliard: |
I tanck you, sir. |
Joyce: |
I understand you not |
Galliard: |
You no understand me, |
28Brome was neither a novice in linguistic play nor in double-entendre. Mimicry of foreign and or regional accents on stage was also something he mastered. As Hoenselaars explains, “The Caroline dramatist who presented more foreigners in an English setting than any of his contemporaries was Richard Brome”28.
29In addition, impersonation is also something that the frequenters of the new academy attempt. In Act 4 Scene 1 after several unsuccessful attempts at court-ing Blithe Tripshort who has, “a preventing and preoccupying wit in all things” (4.2.) her uncle, “a Lover of Arts and Exercises” (4.1.) suggests that Nehemiah, who is referred to throughout the play as “a foole [...] an asse; an Ideot [...] and [whose] mother's milk drops at his nose”(1.1), see the new academy. Nehemiah responds with enthusiasm: “[...] for I mean to perfect my dancing there; and to learn French there. For I mean when I am married to travel into France [...] Pray let us go th' Acomedy, what dee call it” (4.1.), a linguistic slip on Nehemiah's behalf that Sir Swithin corrects with, “The Academy” (4.1).
30When the foursome arrive at the new academy, the assistants and professors of court discipline fall into immediate practice. The first instruction that is presented to those who are yet “raw in courtship” is a scene of compliment in which Brome recreates and reconstructs Neo-Platonic love conventions that are to be instructed to the novices. The most comic exchange, however, occurs when Nehemiah ventures to court Gabriella. Upon hearing Papillion's example of court-ship, Sir Swithin Whimbly reveals, “tis the best that I ever heard, since I woo'd my Grissel” and proceeds himself to play the part of professor:
Sir Swithin: |
[... ] put off your hat and say— |
Nehemiah: |
What! and her masque on? |
Lady Nehemiah: |
That was well said [...] |
Nehemiah: |
What should I say to one I never saw. |
Sir Swithin: |
When I was young and bold, I would have said, Lady you are most auspiciously encountred. And speak it boldly. |
Nehemiah: |
Lady, you are most suspiciously accoutred, I speak it bouldly. |
Sir Swithin: |
Auspiciously encountred man. |
Nehemiah: |
Auspiciously encountred woman, I say. |
Gabriella: |
I commiserate your encounter. Tis a most hungry, verminous, impoverish't word sir. It seems you are a stranger by't, to the Innova Tion of courtship. |
Nehemiah: |
What should I say now? |
Lady Nestlecock: |
He's a weak scholar forsooth, and would be glad to learn. |
Gabriella: |
The acknowledgement of his weaknesse is the first greece of gradation to perfection, and his gladnesse the scaling-ladder of resolution. (4.2.) |
31The metaphor of the “scaling-ladder” which represents social ascension for Brome's aspiring gull, a stranger to the innovation of courtship, and Brome's satirical portrayal of the scramble for status that is featured in the linguistic parody that he stages is, in this moment of the play, blatantly pointed at the Englishman. Nehemiah's failure to reproduce Verbatim Sir Swithin's “complemental” language is even more ridiculous as the extemporaneous instruction that Sir Swithin provides for him is in his mother tongue. The quandary of linguistic learning is tackled by Brome in the same act and scene. Having been instructed by Galliard in, “[...] the due carriage of the body” and having been given “rules for the more graceful wearing / Of (their) Apparel” (4.2.) Nehemiah continues to question his French professor:
Nehemiah: |
[... ] And to speak French, do you think sir, you can bring |
Lady Nestlecock: |
He's apt to learn Sir, I can tell you that. |
Galliard: |
Yes, I shall bring his Mout to it. But his Mout is yet a leetel too wide. |
Valentine: |
I wonder sir, 'Mongst all your arts and Sciences |
32In this moment of the play, Brome's ridicule is targeted once again at the Englishman and not at the foreigner. Nehemiah is doubly ridiculed by his compatriot and remains oblivious to Valentine's satirical remarks. If Nehemiah's mouth cannot handle the English tongue handsomely, as seen in his failed attempt at courtly compliment, the chances of his “wide mouth” handling the French tongue are naught. Years later, in no 45 of The Spectator, Addison tackles this very question of unnatural behaviour29:
A natural and unconstrained Behaviour has something in it so agreeable, that it is no wonder to see people endeavouring after it. But at the same time, it is so very hard to hit, when it is not born with us, that People often make themselves Ridiculous in attempting it.30
33In The New Academy, the ridiculous dwells in the Englishman's31 self whose affected and strained endeavours to impersonate the other miscarry terribly. The false pretenders to compliment and manners in Brome's The New Academy, a prototype of the comedy of manners, prefigure the fops and fools that will storm the stage in the comedies of the Restoration. Blithe Tripshort, “a witty wag” who scorns to “follow the fashions” (2.2.) of even her own country, voices one of the most revealing comments in the play. In Act 2 Scene 2 she pleads:
Love, as I shall adore thee for a deity,
Rid me of this ridiculous society.
34With The New Academy, Brome demonstrates the way in which the Englishman's self-image and his “ridiculous society” is at the basis of him creating an “A comedy”:
When he strook vice, he let persons go,
Wounded not men [...] so he with gentle hand
Did heal the wound, and yet conceal the man.32
35The metaphor of the dramatist as physician pervades several of Brome's prologues. The way in which he achieved “comic-catharsis”33 was primarily through the device of the play within the play34. Even though there is no play within the play per se, through the invention of the embedded space and the creation of the academic scenes, through disguise, role manipulation and extempore acting, Brome provides the “A comedy” that Nehemiah announced. Launching the reader into the realm of metadrama, Brome “ridicules the social aspirants into reality”35 before finally unmasking the pseudo-academy through the introduction of a deus ex machina, a device that he also uses to unravel the numerous cross-intrigues. Moreover, the way in which he plays with and manipulates the notion of space foreshadows his next play, The Antipodes, composed in 1636 in which he combines both the embedded space and the play within the play. Yet most importantly, by alluding to and staging the innovations of his time, Brome's contribution to the theatrical canon of the Caroline period provides a modem reader with a vision of the mutations and innovations that were taking place during the dramatist's epoch. In this respect, Brome may be considered as the stage's Wenceslaus Hollar in his own right.
Notes de bas de page
1 All quotations concerning Bromeh 's plays are taken from The Dramatic Works of Richard Brome Containing Fifteen Comedies in Three Volumes, London, John Pearson, 1873. The New Academy or The New Exchange appears in volume 2. It was originally published in 1659 under the title of Five New Playes.
2 In the same act and scene, Erasmus also familiarises Valentine with the new academy: “Tis but of two or three dayes standing yet [.] / It carries a love-found; but I am told / It is but private lodgings kept by / Both men and women, as I am inform'd, after the French manner. / That professe Musick, Dancing, Fashion, Complement –”(3.1.)
3 See A J. Hoenselaars, Images of Englishmen and Foreigners in the Drama of Shakespeare and His Contemporaries. pp. 13-25.
4 Kathleen Lynch, The Social Mode of Restoration Comedy, p. 44. In her revisionist study, Erica Veevers rectifies and adds to the belief that, “[...] Henrietta's version of [préciosité and Platonic love] [...] was not acquired directly from the Hôtel de Rambouillet, but from circles at the French court dominated by her mother, Marie de Medici [...] [and] also by the religious enthusiasms of the Counter-Reformation, in particular the Devout Humanism of St. Francois de Sales”. See Erica Veevers, Images of Love and Religion. Queen Henrietta Maria and Court Entertainments. p. 2.
5 Quoted in J.B. Fletcher, “Precieuses at the Court of Charles I”, Journal of Comparative Literature I (1903), p. 129. ‘The Mask” to which Howell alludes is probably Sir William D'Avenant's The Temple of Love. It was set by Inigo Jones and acted by the queen and her ladies at Whitehall on Shrove-Tuesday in 1634. According to D'Avenant, this Masque, “for the newness of the invention, variety of scenes, apparitions, and richness of habits was generally approved to be one of the most magnificent that hath been done in England”.
6 See Jean Jacquot, “La Reine Henriette-Marie et l'influence française dans les spectacles à la cour de Charles Ier”, Cahiers de l'Association Internationales des Études Françaises no 9, juin 1957.
7 Sophie Tomlinson, “She That Plays the King: Henrietta Maria and the Threat of the Actress in Caroline Culture,” The Politics of Tragicomedy: Shakespeare and After, p. 189.
8 Quoted in Readings in Renaissance Women's Drama. Criticism, History and Performance 1594-1998, ed. S.P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies, London and New York, Routledge, 1998, p. 38. William Prynne's vitriolic remark of “Women-Actors, notorious whores” in his Histrio Mastix also comes to mind. It was published in 1633, within a few days of yet another chief part played by Henrietta Maria in Walter Montague's The Shepherd's Paradise.
9 In James Shirley's (1596-1666) The Ball (1632) the demand for women-actors provides fashionable conversation. In Act 5 Scene 1, Jack Freshwater, a pretended traveller explains: “But there be no such comedians as we here; yet the women are the best actors, they play their own parts, a thing much desired in England by some ladies, inns o'court gentlemen and others;” Brome also addresses the question of women actors in The Court Beggar (1640) via Lady Strangelove: “[...] his mother can play her part; women-Actors now grow in request.” (5.2.)
10 For the dates of the French companies' arrival, see The Control and Censorship of Caroline Drama: The Records of Sir Henry Herbet, Master of Revels, 1623-73, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1996, p. 169.
11 Ibid., p. 45.
12 The troupe also performed other plays written by French contemporary playwrights. For a list of these plays see Bentley, Gerald, Eades, The Jacobean and Caroline Stage, vol. 7, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1968. pp. 96-97.
13 William Prynne, Histrio Mastix. The Players Scourge, Or, The Actors Tragedie, London, 1633. p. 142.
14 The New Exchange became fashionable in the 1630s. Yet it was not so new because it was opened by James I and Queen Anne in 1609 and “was erected partly on the pattern of the Royal Exchange, [...] [it] was for milliners, semptresses, and other trades that furnish dresses [...] [and] became fashionable after the Restoration”. Quoted in R. Kaufmann, Richard Brome: Caroline Playwright, p. 53.
15 Theodore Miles, “Place-Realism in Some Caroline Plays”, Review of English Studies 18 (1942), p. 439.
16 The Dramatic Works of Richard Brome. The Covent Garden Weeded, vol. 2.
17 See Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1992. p. 404.
18 Founded in Florence in 1442 by Marcelo Ficino, one of the earliest academies was the Platonic academy. Consequently, literary academies sprang up not only over Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries, but also in France. A historical coincidence thus emerges. Just as Brome writes The New Academy in 1635, the Académie Française is created in France the same year by Cardinal de Richelieu and cornes under direct attack in 1638 by Saint-Evrémond who writes La Comédie des Académistes. Yet unlike the Académie Française that has a specific role, one of sustaining the purity of language, Brome's new academy does not have a performative role based on formai epistemology. The only betterment that Brome's individuals are concerned with is purely social. Innovation is sought so that they may advance or to quote Sir Swithin Whimbly, “[...] so that [they] may all be edified” (5.1.). It does not unite a society of learned individuals for the advancement of art, science, literature, music or some other cultural or intellectual area of endeavour or a group of women as in Margaret Cavendish's The Female Academy (1662) or Moliere's female personages in Les Femmes Savantes (1672).
19 Anonymous, The Academy of Compliments, London, 1639: “Wherein Ladyes, Gentlewomen, Schollers and Strangers may accomodate their Courtly Practice with most Curious Ceremonies, Complementall, Amorous, High expressions, and formes of speaking, or writing”. In Brome's A Jovial Crew or The Merry Beggars (1641) Rachel refers to The Academy of Compliments in Act 2 Scene 1.
20 See Kerr Mina, The Influence of Ben Jonson on English Comedy 1598-1652, New York, Phaeton Press, 1967. pp. 52-76. See also Brome's Prologue to The City Wit c. 1629: “Gentlemen [...] You see I corne unarm'd [...] I corne not hither to be an Instructor to any of you [...] I am no Pedagogus nor Hypodidascalus here. I approach not hither ad erudiendum, nec ad Corrigendum”.
21 In Act 1 Scene 5, Blaze tells Letoy that he knows his, “[...] house in substance is an amphitheatre / of exercise and pleasure”. Letoy's house will provide the stage for the play within the play that will cure Peregrine of his melancholy. In The Damoiselle or The New Ordinary, a sequel to The New Academy, courtly French instruction is provided to infatuated and aspiring Londoners.
22 See Ann Ubersfeld, Lire le Théâtre 1, Paris, Belin, 1996. pp. 17-18.
23 Prynne, pp. 23, 24, 218.
24 Prynne's damnation of dancing is expressed in Actvs 5. Scena Octava, pp. 220-261, 414. It constitutes his 23rd Argument, lt is also necessary to note that during Charles's reign, there were three major proclamations concerning laws and statutes against Jesuits and Popish priests. See Stuart Proclamations Volume II. Royal Proclamations of King Charles I, 1625-1646, ed. James F. Larkin, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1983. If one considers the schools throughout Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries, not only does one find the importance that is placed on the instruction of “Latin eloquence” for its students, but also on that of dancing: “[...] the Jesuit teacher worked eagerly for grace of gesture and carriage, ease and distinction of manner [...] [and] The fact that dancing had a prominent place on the Jesuit stage is perhaps one of the clearest manifestations of this purpose of the Jesuit theatre”. Mc Cabe, S. J. An Introduction to the Jesuit Theatre, ed. Louis J. Oldani, St. Louis, The Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1983, p. 20.
25 Lightfoot is modelled on Footwell, the disguised dancing master enacted by Crasy in Brome's The City Wit and recalls Shirley's own Monsieur le Frisk, a French dancing instructor in The Ball. Mr. Lightfoot also foreshadows yet another French dancing teacher named Galliard in William Cavendish's The Variety c. 1640.
26 Physical change is also accompanied by change in identity. When speaking to Joyce and Gabriella about Strigood having wanted to “bargain with to sell [their] Maidenheads, Cash explains: “[...] Ha'not you chang'd your names / From Joyce and Gabriella to Jane and Frances./ And is not your uncle Strigood now become / Your father, by the Name of Mr. Lightfoot / The nimble dancing Master?”(4.2.).
27 During the Caroline period, it was also customary for women of fashion and rank to wear masks in public places. See Brome's The Northern Lasse (2.1.) and Massinger's The City Madam (1.1.) Moreover, Wenceslaus Hollar's etchings of Caroline women depict this fashion.
28 Hoenselaars, p. 186. Moreover, Brome staged this sort of verbal innovation as early as 1629 with his Cornish Constance in The Northern Lasse, so successful that it was printed in 1632 making him one of the à la modes contrary to Jonson who had become outmoded. Moreover, Thomas Dekker, John Ford and Ben Jonson who wrote commendatory verses for the play approved of Brome's linguistic innovations. This stresses Brome's popularity once again. Linguistic impersonations by foreigners on stage are also portrayed in The Damoiselle whereby Brome puts the Englishman Frank in women's clothing. Frank impersonates a French-born damoiselle Frances whose role is to give instruction to the “Courtliest Dames”.
29 Addison wished to see an “Act of Parliament for Prohibiting the Importation of French Fopperies” installed. In 1622, however, in his chapter on "Of Following the Fashion”, Henry Peacham writes: “I have much wondered why our English above other nations should so much dote upon new fashions, but I wonder at our want of wit that we cannot invent them ourselves, but, when one is grown stale, run presently over into France to seek a new, making that noble and flourishing kingdom the magazine of our fooleries”. Henry Peacham, The Complete Gentleman, The Truth of Our Times, and The Art of Living, p. 202. Given the theme of the conference, Novelty in the Renaissance and for want of space, it has not been possible to address here what may also be on Brome's behalf oblique criticism of Charles's court which became quite ‘Frenchified' following his marriage to Henrietta Maria and which, in any case, the dramatist circumvents in The New Academy. See Martin Butler's Theatre and Crisis 1632-1642, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984.
30 Quoted in R.C. Sharma, Themes and Conventions in the Comedy of Manners, p. 107.
31 Brome renews his satire of the Londoner three years later in The Damoiselle via Mrs. Magdalen Bumpsey. In the closing act of the play the stage directions indicate: “Wine on table”. Throughout the entire scene, the dipsomaniac Mrs. Bumpsey, “de swagbuttok'd wife of de Pesant” who has come to learn French Carriage loosens her tongue by drinking several glasses of wine. As Hoenselaars explains, “Her apparent wish to adopt fashionable French manners involves an act of projection and self-deception as she tries to license native vice with an expedient foreign label”, p. 194. It is not Frances, alias Frank the Englishman, playing the part of the French damoiselle who is satirised, but the fashion-sick Magdalen who once “Maudlin drunke” compares the ordinary to a brothel. Allowing her inbred prejudice of the other to come forth, she considers Frances as a prostitute.
32 Five New Playes, 1659. This edition was set forth by Alexander Brome who considered Brome as “the ages doctor.”
33 See Joe, Lee Davis, “Richard Brome's Neglected Contribution to Comic Theory,” Studies in Philology 40, Oct. 1943, pp. 520-528.
34 Contrary to the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods whereby the play within the play was concerned with revenge or exposure of guilt, the Caroline play within the play underwent change. See Charlotte Spivack, “Alienation and Illusion: The Play-Within-a-Play on the Caroline Stage,” Medieval & Renaissance Drama in England, pp. 195-209. Spivack speaks of “a shift from homiletic to therapeutic, from moral to psychological,” p. 197.
35 See Catherine Shaw, Richard Brome, p. 85.
Auteur
Enseigne l'anglais à l’Université d'Orléans. Elle prépare une thèse (dir. Gisèle Venet) sur Richard Brome. Elle participe à la traduction de The Anatomy of Melancholy de Robert Burton (Paris, Folio/Gallimard).
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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