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n5081   5.1 Act 5 begins by returning the audience to an almost-forgotten facet of the plot: the loss of Matchil's son. Old Lafoy, the Frenchman who had raised young Matchil, has arrived in London and is seeking his own son who had travelled back to England with his boyhood companion. He is accompanied by Captain Hardyman from the Isle of Wight, who happens also to be Hannah Camelion's father. Hardyman is attempting to restrain Old Lafoy's fury at Matchil's conduct in banishing and then losing Lafoy's daughter, Gabriella. Despite Matchil's earlier recognition of his own folly and propensity for needless and abrupt reactions, he again has to be talked down into reasonableness, and still he seems unable to step out of his sense of his own victimhood. Fortunately, Cash arrives to make his peace with his master, using his knowledge of the whereabouts of Joyce and Gabriella as a means of deflecting Matchil's ire at his servant's dishonesty. Reassured that they will be able to find their daughters, all the characters set off for the New Academy. [go to text]

n5019   [MATCHIL's house] There is no indication of location in the original, but the setting is clear from the dialogue. [go to text]

gs610   unknown strange, unfamiliar, and, with a sense of reprobation, 'uncouth', alien and distasteful [go to text]

gs611   advertisement being informed, having one's attention called to something [go to text]

gs695   unadvised imprudent, rash [go to text]

n5069   I ha’ lost my wife too, there’s a second comfort. Matchil is being ironic: his wife is 'lost' in the sense that she has embarked, he fears, on a life of adultery. But his speech shows him still callous, self-centred, and self-pitying. [go to text]

n5128   I ha’ lost a son too, a wild roaring lad Har. I ha' lost a son too, a wild roaring lad, A duplicate Speech Prefix has been removed. The ms. annotator of Newberry Library Y135.B779 notices the duplication and reassigns this speech to Lafoy; but it is Hardyman's step-son who has gone missing and turned wild. Throughout this act, the only one in which Hardyman appears, the speech prefixes are variously 'Har.' and 'Hard.'. 'Har.' is predominant until Hannah enters, with her speech prefix 'Han.'. At this point, with few exceptions, 'Har.' gives way to 'Hard.'. Perhaps the copyist or the compositor became aware of the likelihood of confusion. [go to text]

n5203   your bill for my discharge Matchil has a receipt that proves that he dispensed the money to Hannah. [go to text]

n9038   Enter SERVANT This stage direction has been moved up one line. [go to text]

n5070   She has found, then, some good exercise, I doubt not, Matchil is again ironic, implying that the 'exercise' that holds Joyce is anything other than good. [go to text]

gg3425   Alamodes fashionable young men, from the French 'a la mode' [go to text]

n5204   Nothing but French all over As on several occasions in the play, it is not the French themselves who are represented adversely, but the English who adopt their fashions and manners.
Brome's representation of the French and the Frenchified Englishman resembles, but is not identical with, that of William Cavendish, earl of Newcastle, who was probably Brome's patron to some degree, especially later in the decade. In his comedy The Variety Newcastle has a French dancing master, Galliard, who comments on 'de Courtier Alamode' (p. 17). Newcastle's Galliard is the subject of keener criticism than that to which Brome subjects his character so named. [go to text]

n5205   mine own heart Matchil suddenly uses the phrase associated with his daughter Joyce and her companion Gabriella. [go to text]

n4883   I’m grown a proper man. Ironically, when he sees the fashionably dressed Cash, his thieving servant, and mistakes him for the son he has not seen for many years, Matchil takes pride that his boy has grown into a fine man. As well as making a poor judgement founded purely on externals, Matchil's manner of speaking displays his continuing self-absorption. One ms. annotator amends to read 'He's grown a proper man', but this misses the point: Matchil's vanity. [go to text]

gg1290   spark young foppish man (gallant) (OED n2. 2a) [go to text]

n4884   Set clothes and fashion by allowing for the differences over time in fashions and clothing; or perhaps that Matchil was, at his son's age, a working man and so had no fine clothes. [go to text]

gg1932   try test [go to text]

gg1616   fit (v) punish accordingly (OED v1. 12) [go to text]

gg3760   collect recollect, remember [go to text]

gg41   bravery 'finery, fine clothes' (OED 3b); showy attire (worn with an air of bravado) [go to text]

gg455   laid up imprisoned [go to text]

n5139   [Aloud] Cash A duplicate Speech Prefix has been removed. The National Art Library Dyce 25.E.45 ms. annotator deletes this duplicate Speech Prefix. [go to text]

n4885   That may endear a son, sir, to your comfort. Cash hopes that he will become Matchil's son-in-law by marrying Joyce, and that the new relation will make Matchil forgive and forget. [go to text]

n5140   Of If. The National Art Library Dyce 25.E.45 ms annotator also makes this emendation. [go to text]

n5206   I know not him Unlike Matchil, who has not seen his son for many years, Old Lafoy has witnessed him grow up and they have only parted a few days earlier. He therefore knows that Cash is not Matchil's son and is mystified by the conversation. [go to text]

n4886   a judge’s hearing Matchil responds to Cash's request to be allowed to explain by saying that he will be taken directly to a court of law to be arraigned as a thief. [go to text]

gg1199   roundly plainly (OED 3a); completely, fully (OED 2) [go to text]

n5082   5.2 The play concludes with all characters arriving at the New Academy. First, Erasmus persuades Blith that her only escape from marriage to Nehemiah lies in her contracting a union with him; and in this he is assisted by Camelion. The representation of Blith's predicament is both sophisticated and stark; and the risk she is taking becomes all the more clear when, concealed, they witness a conversation between Hannah and Valentine, and then Camelion's fury at what he supposes to be his wife's infidelity. Hannah manages to reveal that Valentine's power over her is not sexual but sisterly; and the arrival of Captain Hardyman enables the confirmation of her story and her chastity. Hardyman also agrees to assist his ne'er-do-well son to achieve an advantageous match with Lady Nestlecock.
Concealed, Matchil, Hardyman, and Lafoy witness Strigood's plotting; but they also witness Lady Nestlecock and Rachel arriving on the stage in apparent and elaborate harmony, when we had last seen them furiously engaged in dispute. As elsewhere in the play, Brome challenges us to acknowledge that the New Academy, and the arts it represents, are not susceptible of simple judgement. While it acknowledges through Strigood's conduct that such establishments could be little more than a cover for depravity, and by extension that the arts taught and practised there could themselves be little more than ways to enable vice, the play also suggests that these arts, however artificial and exaggerated, can have a positive effect in the new urban society of London. However insincere Lady Nestlecock and Rachel are, their performance of the art of compliment has indeed deflected their antagonism, or at least the display of that antagonism in public.
Camelion spirits Erasmus away for his clandestine marriage with Blith, Whimlby arrives distraught at his inability to find his niece, Lady Nestlecock reveals the transference of her affections from him to Valentine, Rachel realises that her apparent power over Valentine has evaporated, and Strigood begins to realise that all his enterprises in the New Academy are about to crumble about him. His escape is prevented by the emergence from concealment of Matchil, Hardyman, Lafoy, and Hannah.
Matchil reconciles Whimlby to his niece's marriage to Erasmus, Hardyman makes the financial assurances that will enable the marriage of Lady Nestlecock and Valentine to take place, and all that is left is to achieve the cross marriages of Matchil and Lafoy's children. They arrive having apparently contracted incestuous marriages; but the marriages are not yet legally valid, the unions not having been consummated. In any case, although sexual union could occur, marriage could not, since the sibling couples are within the bounds of consanguinity and therefore they are ineligible for marriage. In a series of abrupt and, frankly, unconvincing exchanges the young people then reveal that they had come to know that they were brothers and sisters, and that the marriages were pretended in order to bring Strigood to justice in some way. The exchange of partners takes place and cross marriages are agreed.
The play ends with another dance. In this instance however the dance is clearly not a sophisticated import from France but a vigorous English country dance. Brome seems to be associating the comedic restoration of harmony with a more local, simple, and primitive form of festivity, whereas the French dances we have seen taught in the Academy hitherto have been associated with the kinds of negotiations that are necessary to maintain civility in an urban society that is somewhat disconnected from the elemental impulses of traditional comedy. [go to text]

n5047   [Inside CAMELION's house] No location is given in the original printed edition. [go to text]

n6829   Enter ERASMUS, BLITH, and CAMELION [carrying a key] Video This brief interchange between Erasmus and Blith, with Camelion in attendance, is a moment of quiet intensity as the play draws to a conclusion; and it demands a series of decisions by the actors. Camelion is something of a grotesque, comedic figure, complacent and forever repeating his tag, 'Honi soit qui mal y pense'. Blith has been characterised principally up to this point by raucous laughter at the folly of her prospective husband, Nehemiah, with only hints that she is conscious of the awfulness of her marital fate. Erasmus seems almost to come from a different play: reflective and with a nuanced sense of morality.
In this passage, however, Blith reveals herself Erasmus's equal in recognition of the implications of the choice she is about to make. In exploring the scene, actors and the director, Brian Woolland, questioned first the degree to which it was 'appropriate to see a psychological struggle in a play like this', posing a problem not unique to The New Academy among Brome's plays, where clear genre boundaries frequently disappear. It rapidly became clear that the focal point was Blith and her perspective as manifested in her lines (which are not many) and actions, and the audience's relationship with her. Her eye contact with Erasmus and with the audience was crucial. [go to text]

n6937   Be fearless, lady, and upon my life, Video Erasmus's first line displays the formality and seriousness that will characterise the exchange between him and Blith. Her response, two sentences in nine lines, is complex in clause structure and latinate in diction: 'liberally', 'censure', 'supposition', 'protestation', 'enthralled'. These are examples from Blith's speech alone, but Erasmus matches her in formality. The speech requires a slow pace, as does Erasmus's careful response, a single seven-line sentence in which he diplomatically balances his personal motives and an altruistic pity for her circumstances.
Both Erasmus and Blith carefully deploy balanced words and phrases, revealing that each is fully aware of the choice Blith faces. One result is that near-dead metaphors and dormant symbolism are vivified by the characters' own consciousness. When staging the scene in workshops the actors experimented with differing degrees of emphasis, probing the degree to which an audience would respond to the implied meaning without open elaboration.
The effect of this exchange is somewhat paradoxical, and its paradox goes to the heart of the issues of politeness and civility in the play. Erasmus and Blith's diction seems both authentic to their situation and circumstances and akin to the formal and performed polite speech being taught in the academies and in contemporary books of good manners. The audience experiences this intense moment having already seen the explicit performances of polite compliment and speech in Act 4 and shortly before witnessing Lady Nestlecock and Rachel use a highly-artificial linguistic style to navigate around their hostility. Brome's contemporary audience may recognise the verbal manner advocated in such works as The Mirrour of Complements (1634). [go to text]

gg3426   liberally without restraint [go to text]

n6938   Bless me from being fool-clogged. Video Blith's exclamation could be made to Erasmus or it may be to herself. In exploring the staging of the scene the actor performed this line in several different ways. Noticeable in them all was the contrast between the Anglo-Saxon diction -- 'fool-clogged' -- and her latinate diction in the previous speech, to Erasmus. [go to text]

gg3427   fool-clogged encumbered with an idiot-husband [go to text]

n4887   Now you are free, If you can think yourself so, and but yield Unto my present counsel. Video Erasmus wrestles here with one of the play's central questions, already seen in the relationship between Matchil and Rachel: does marriage for a woman represent the acquisition of freedom? Or is it 'enthrallment', entering into a different servitude? For Blith, the advantage is that she would escape the control of her uncle (and guardian), Whimlby, with his willingness to marry her to a wildly inappropriate husband in order to secure his own bride. But escaping that fate requires her to enter a marriage with Erasmus. Who knows how that bargain will turn out?
Both Erasmus and Blith use terms common in poetic love discourses (the description of the lover as the beloved's prisoner, for instance); but these are rendered newly vivid by the sense that bad marriages in this play are like a permanent incarceration, till death do them part.
Erasmus's first two line-endings neatly capture Blith's dilemma: 'free', 'yield'. They surround the need for her to interpret marriage to him as freedom, despite the legal position of married women: 'if you can think yourself so'. [go to text]

n4888   closet, And here’s the key Video The key and closet are real but they are also figurative: will she have the power represented by the key if she really goes through with the marriage? They are also anatomical: the 'key' in this period frequently represented the penis. It is a reference that continues even in Jane Austen: Maria Bertram says of her tedious, soon-to-be husband, 'Mr. Rushworth is so long fetching this key!' (Mansfield Park, chapter 10.)
In exploring the staging of this moment, the key as a property became a centre of attention, understood by the characters as both literal and figurative. Camelion gives Blith the key; the actors experimented with it being received and further given as visible confirmation of the transaction between Blith and Erasmus.
The interchange between these three characters raises insistently questions of manipulation. What is Camelion's role and motive, as he stage-manages Erasmus's successful proposition? How morally reprehensible is Erasmus's use of the situation to manipulate Blith? Erasmus repeatedly emphasises the transparency of his dealings , but the audience must wonder whether this too is rhetorical, building pressure on Blith, like a stage magician assuring an audience that there is no trickery. [go to text]

n6940   presently The sense of immediacy and urgency is powerful throughout this act, in which the word 'presently' occurs four times, this being the first. Here, Camelion moves from Blith's hesitant acceptance of a risky course of action to immediate fulfilment. [go to text]

n4891   yet I yield Video Blith shows herself fully aware of the paradox of her situation and the perils she runs: Erasmus tells her he gives her power and liberty, she responds by saying that to escape one cage she must enter another, as the property of a husband.
In this crucial moment the actor must decide the degree to which to portray Blith as undergoing an interior debate. Exploring the scene, the actor, Hannah Watkins, experimented with turning from Erasmus and delivering her line facing the audience, with him seeing her face only partially and obliquely. [go to text]

n4892   In. Somebody comes. She will be yours. And let me tell you, sir, I wish you as much joy with her, as I Camelion's complacency is highly ironic, as will be seen in a few moments. [go to text]

n6939   your Cock you so rejoice in. Video At this point the tension of the interchange between Erasmus and Blith is released as the scene turns back to the more-obviously comedic character of Camelion. The turn to comedy is signalled by Erasmus's sardonic use of Camelion's singularly inappropriate epithet for his wife: 'your Cock you so rejoice in'. Exploring the scene, the actors themselves found this line sufficiently bizarre to cause laughter, as it surely would in the theatre. [go to text]

gs608   short failing to reach some standard or objective (OED short III) [go to text]

gg3761   boggle to raise scruples, hesitate, demur, stickle (at, occas. about, over, etc., or to do a thing) (OED boggle v, 2) [go to text]

gg3428   horn-maker a man who seduces other men's wives, making the husbands cuckolds and thus wearers of horns [go to text]

gs696   journey-work used figuratively, one who performs some action, apprentice-like, for another [go to text]

n5207   under’s antlers In Camelion's own house and therefore beneath the cuckolded husband's own horns. [go to text]

gg3762   fagaries a departure or straying from the ordered, regular, or usual course of conduct, decorum, or propriety; a frolic or prank, esp. one of a freakish nature (OED vagary 3a); a capricious, fantastic, or eccentric action or piece of conduct (OED vagary n, 4a); the spelling is a variant [go to text]

n4893   you must yield supply or lose a friend Either Hannah must give Valentine the money he demands or he will cease to be her lover. The irony is that she will not take him for a lover; Valentine, as ever, seems unable to recognise that she has resisted him. [go to text]

n5071   stick close to thee too, Valentine resorts to blackmail without hesitation or compunction. [go to text]

n5208   Your credit’s breach, when you respect not mine Valentine plays on credit as social reputation and possessing the trust of others in terms of money and debt. [go to text]

n4894   too open Camelion plays on the use of 'close' in Valentine's speech, where the latter meant staying in physical proximity, to mean that the affair between Valentine and Hannah is now 'open', no longer 'close', meaning secret. But he then applies a physical meaning: his house, purse, and wife's legs have been all too open and accessible. [go to text]

n4894   too open Camelion plays on the use of 'close' in Valentine's speech, where the latter meant staying in physical proximity, to mean that the affair between Valentine and Hannah is now 'open', no longer 'close', meaning secret. But he then applies a physical meaning: his house, purse, and wife's legs have been all too open and accessible. [go to text]

gs609   close secret, covert (OED adj. 4a) [go to text]

n4895   open Valentine mocks Camelion, deliberately misinterpreting the various meanings of 'close' and 'open'. [go to text]

n5209   I know – At least I think This sudden acknowledgement of the slender evidence for his wife's adultery suggests a hesitation in Camelion. And he is hoist with his own petard: evil to him who evil thinks, his catchphrase. [go to text]

n5210   I dare not look on her, lest I be tempted To yield unto my shame and my undoing. Is Camelion saying that he would behave in an unmanly way, breaking down emotionally? Or does he mean that he might attack her violently, which he might think a manly response? [go to text]

n5072   stood held to, taken her stand immovably. See OED stand v 77 f c [go to text]

n4896   full weight, and truly told Hannah literally means that the coins have not been shaved and have been scrupulously counted out; but there is also a sense that she is drawing attention to Valentine's falsity through the contrast between that and the inert but undisputed integrity of the money he is extorting. [go to text]

gg3430   countenance give sanction or credit to [go to text]

gg3431   blew you up shattered, destroyed (OED blow v1, 24a) [go to text]

n4907   Being so good i’ th’ house. This appears to mean, 'being of such good standing in the house'. Hannah's phrase is shot through with irony, but Valentine misses it entirely. [go to text]

n4908   your father-in-law? their. However, there are no plural step-children to call Captain Hardyman 'their' father-in-law. The ms. annotators of Folger Shakespeare Library B4872 and National Art Library Dyce 25.E.45 also see the problem and emend. My emendation agrees with Folger Shakespeare Library B4872. [go to text]

gg3432   father-in-law step-father [go to text]

n4909   On Salisbury Plain else. The meaning is clear: you need certain skills, not to be an innocent abroad, to travel on Salisbury Plain. This reads like a proverbial saying. Though no exact equivalent has been found, there is a contemporary proverb: 'Salisbury Plain is seldom without a thief or twain'. [go to text]

n5211   O, y’are a great good husband Hardyman mocks Valentine for being a spendthrift, but Valentine shrewdly takes the word 'husband' and reuses it in the more limited sense of 'a married man'. [go to text]

n5073   brother Valentine means his brother-in-law, Camelion. [go to text]

gg3763   furtherer one who helps, promotes, or supports a person or action [go to text]

n4910   In that I’m partly satisfied. The audience here comes in upon a conversation between Erasmus and Matchil, in which Erasmus has been assuring the merchant that his wife has not yet gone through with her adulterous intentions. Erasmus has been explaining that his own role was to appear to be involved, but actually to act as something of a chaperone, ensuring that Valentine was unable to achieve his end. [go to text]

gg3448   by-room a side or private room [go to text]

n5141   Within The Speech Prefix in 1659 is Within Strigood. [go to text]

n4911   upon discovery in order to make the discovery [go to text]

n6930   [Exit CAMELION] Camelion reenters later in this scene and must exit here. [go to text]

n6935   HANNAH, HARDYMAN, MATCHIL, and LAFOY [conceal themselves] In the 1659 text these characters exit: 'Ex. Han. Hard. Mat. Lafoy.' [go to text]

n4912   been by th’ ears engaged in heated argument [go to text]

n7769   deep in compliment. Strigood's description alerts the audience to the coming set-piece of good manners and mannered compliment. Lady Nestlecock and her new sister-in-law Rachel were last seen indulging in vituperation and insult; now they demonstrate the transformative power of polite language. Although there are no explicit verbal borrowings, this interchange clearly echoes the dialogues in such works as The Mirrour of Complements (1634). [go to text]

n5212   a year and a day A proverbial way of saying 'forever'. [go to text]

n5083   [Rachel] La. This speech is misassigned to Lady Nestlecock in the original printing. [go to text]

n4914   close-stool The very abjectness of the roles Rachel proposes for herself suggests an element of irony: the exaggeration marks the offer as artificial. [go to text]

n4915   savours Valentine puns on 'savour', meaning 'has some connotation', drawing on the idea of the odours emanating from the close-stool. [go to text]

n5213   In sooth, ’tis sooth, forsooth the tale I tell you The repetition of 'sooth' makes the line risible, heightening the sense of Rachel's performance and, perhaps, insincerity. [go to text]

gg3449   Nant a familiar version of 'aunt' [go to text]

n4916   am no pope Rachel picks up the word 'pardon', by which Lady Nestlecock means simply 'excuse', but wrenches it to refer to the papal power of issuing pardons and indulgences. [go to text]

gg3433   whatsicomes something for which one has forgotten the correct word [go to text]

n6171   But I ha’ lost my mistress To compliment withal. Nehemiah means that having lost sight of Mistress Blith he cannot engage in games of compliment. But the audience recognises another meaning also: it was Erasmus's linguistic skill, itself evidence of a subtle and empathetic mind, that persuaded Blith to throw her lot in with him. Nehemiah, in that sense, lost his prospective bride to compliment. [go to text]

n4917   out-striped There are two possible meanings. In the 1659 text the word is printed 'out-stip't'. Read as 'out-striped' it would mean 'defeated me in a contest of beating, the giving of stripes'; and this has been characteristic of the combative interactions of Nehemiah and Blith. Alternatively, it could be read as 'outstripped', meaning that Blith has won a figurative race with Nehemiah. [go to text]

n4918   careless curate Two meanings may be present here: that the curate is none too careful about the ceremonies at which he officiates; and that he is without a parish or position, that he is care-less or cure-less, and so will perform such ceremonies for necessary money. [go to text]

n4919   too loose It is possible that this should read 'to lose', meaning that the curate has little to lose so is prepared to act in ways that may not be strictly lawful. However, 'too loose' suggests that he is hungry and thus lean, and that his coat is literally too loose. [go to text]

n4920   And give him but a piece, he’ll fear no cannon. Camelion puns on 'piece' as money and 'piece' as a gun or other firearm; then on 'cannon' as military ordinance and 'canon' as church law. [go to text]

n4921   t’untruss Valentine's throw-away line would matter a great deal if it were true, since it would suggest that Erasmus has gone away to fornicate with Blith. [go to text]

gg3434   t’untruss to undo the fastenings of a garment [go to text]

n5129   [Ephraim] Whim. Misassigned in the original to Whimlby. The ms. annotators of National Art Library Dyce 25.E.45, Folger Shakespeare Library B4872, and Newberry Library Y135.B779 all make this emendation. [go to text]

n4922   He cannot see. Whimlby is back to weeping and so cannot see. [go to text]

n4923   That has no moisture in him but for tears. Lady Nestlecock mocks Whimlby savagely, saying he has only moisture for crying and, by implication, is impotent or perhaps incapable of producing sperm or seminal fluid. [go to text]

n4924   [Aside]That is my cue. Valentine in an aside uses the language of the theatre. Brome regularly introduces theatrical terminology toward the ends of plays, reminding the audience of the artificiality of what they see and the parts being played. Here the character recognises that Lady Nestlecock's allusion to Whimlby's age-related impotence opens the door to a virile, younger man. [go to text]

gg3764   stout proud, defiant, obstinate [go to text]

n5214   broadside Lady Nestlecock has turned to talk to Ephraim and thus away from Valentine. [go to text]

n5084   [Ephraim] There is no speech prefix before this line; it is run on as part of Nehemiah's previous speech. But not least from Ephraim's next line, in response to Lady Nestlecock, it is clear that he speaks at this point. [go to text]

n4925   What a foul house these washing days make! Washing day was regarded as rendering houses 'foul' (Samuel Pepys writes of avoiding his 'foul house' on such days [27 October 1663]). However, the use here suggests a proverb. [go to text]

n4926   We’ll make bold with Strigood intends to commandeer Lady Nestlecock's coach in order to make his escape with Cash, Joyce, and Gabriella. [go to text]

n6936   MATCHIL, HARDYMAN, LAFOY, and HANNAH [reveal themselves] In the 1659 text these characters enter: 'Enter Matchil, Hardy, Lafoy, Hannah' [go to text]

n4927   I’ll take a course to hang the rest o’thee. Matchil threatens legal action that might result in Strigood's execution. [go to text]

n5074   charwoman Matchil refers disdainfully to his wife, Rachel. [go to text]

n5075   I thank your love. But sir, ’tis your consent We only seek The only consent we [Erasmus and Blith] seek is that of her uncle, Whimlby. [go to text]

n5130   This is the gentleman I would have spoke for: Mat. This is the gentleman I would have spoke for: A duplicate Speech Prefix has been removed. The ms. annotators of Folger Shakespeare Library B4872 and Newberry Library Y135.B779 make this emendation. [go to text]

n5076   Your brother knows me Lady Nestlecock's brother, the merchant Matchil, can vouch for Hardyman's ability to make good on his financial commitment. [go to text]

n5077   Yes, I assure you, I saw their hands joined, and I heard ’em both Answer the priest. Though theirs was a conventional marriage, they were eligible and their commitment was immediate, mutual, voluntary, and seen and heard by a witness, Camelion. It was therefore valid. Following the Reformation, two versions of conventional marriage contract were acknowledged: 'sponsalia per verba de praesenti', verbal commitment with immediate effect; and 'sponsalia per verba de futuro', with the marriage to be effective at some future point and when consummated. The legal forms of marriage were contested throughout this period and later, as both state and state church sought to achieve greater control; however, such conventional marriage contracts remained potentially valid in England until the 1753 Marriage Act, and in Scotland arguably until the Scottish Family Law Act of 2006. [go to text]

n6942   Where are they? Video With this question Matchil summons onstage a further five characters, assembling virtually the whole cast for the final sequence in which all the play's plots are brought to a conclusion, families reconciled, rogues forgiven, couples rearranged, and right marriages affirmed.
The stage is crowded and a production needs to achieve utter clarity in order to carry the audience to a satisfying conclusion. Brome includes a humorous glance at the arbitrariness of his own plotting, as he does in other plays, when he makes the Matchil and Lafoy children's cross-marriage partners interchangeable: 'they shall exchange'.
In this play Brome again focuses attention in the end on the male authority figures, particularly Matchil and Hardyman. Each of these takes his turn controlling the final action, in effect directing the denouement. It is striking that Hardyman is left dominating the stage. Though he has appeared only in the final act, his even-temper (contrasting with Matchil's acknowledged intemperateness) gives him the authority to speak the final lines, contradict Matchil, and propel the play into a celebratory meal in honour of the various marriages and reconciliations. Before that it is he who sees through the chaos of apparently incestuous marriages, recognising that they cannot have legal force.
In staging the scene it was found useful to have each father come forward to occupy the most prominent position on the stage, revealing the way in which authority shifts among them, coming to rest on Hardyman. Though the arrangement of actors in this preliminary staging was static, it created a space that was clearly to be the focus of action and the audience's attention. Each significant action resolving a plot strand took its place in that dominant space, giving way to the next after resolution. As the director Brian Woolland said, the overriding requirement of the scene is clarity.
Although the workshop could attempt nothing more than a simple reading, even that showed Brome skillfully switching between plots and characters, bringing each to the fore as the focus of the stage as conflicts are resolved, marriages arranged, villains forgiven, and fools spared. [go to text]

n5562   [PAPILLION, GALLIARD] two sonnes [go to text]

n5131   [Papillion] Mat. Jun. For the remainder of the scene and the play, the young men are identified in Speech Prefixes by their real family names, their disguises being dropped: Matchil Junior and Lafoy Junior. [go to text]

n5133   [Galliard] Laf. Jun. For the remainder of the scene and the play, the young men are identified in Speech Prefixes by their real family names, their disguises being dropped: Matchil Junior and Lafoy Junior. [go to text]

n6961   Mon père, je desire votre benediction pour moi et ma femme. 1659: 'Mon Pere Je desire vetre Benediction Jour / pour moy & ma fennue.' Once more the compositor appears to have struggled with the French. Regularised in this modernised text, it means, 'Father, I ask your blessing for me and my wife'. [go to text]

n5215   Was ever thread By fate so crossly spun, so crossly wed The primary reference is to the classical Fates, the goddesses who spin out mortal life and cut the thread at the point of death. However, there have been a number of different uses of threads and weaving as metaphors in the play. [go to text]

n4928   We have commit noting Once more the French pronunciation of 'nothing' perhaps makes a pun on 'noting' active. [go to text]

gg3765   Begar an intensitive, a variant of 'Begad!', 'By God!' [go to text]

n5564   Be not dismayed. These marriages are none. The error of the persons nullifies The verbal ceremony; and ’tis well They passed not unto further rites. Captain Hardyman is correct. Although the young people claim to have gone through the required steps for conventional marriage 'per verba de praesenti' (declared themselves married immediately in front of witnesses), they were not in fact eligible, because of their status as brother and sister. The marriages are therefore invalid. Incest has been avoided because they have not consummated the 'marriages' - just as well. [go to text]

n4929   they shall exchange As the play draws towards its conclusion, the various meanings and uses of 'exchange' are being marked and rendered prominent. [go to text]

n6962   Prenez, mon frère, la voici, l’une pour l’autre. 1659: 'Prenez mon frere, la voici la' une pour lautre.' The regularised French of this edition is translated here, 'Take [her], my brother, the one for the other'. [go to text]

n6963   Oui, oui, je suis tres bien content. 1659: 'Oui, oui I en suis tresbien contult.' The compositor again seems to struggle with Brome's French: 'Yes, yes, I am very content [or happy]'. [go to text]

n4930   O hell-bred villain. Your brother o’ one side. Matchil again flings devilishness in the face of Strigood, who coolly replies that, if he was bred in hell, then maybe his half-brother, Matchil, was too. [go to text]

n5132   [Papillion] These lines are set as part of Matchil's previous speech, but they clearly belong to his son (he refers to Joyce as his sister). The ms. annotators of National Art Library Dyce 25.E.45, Folger Shakespeare Library B4872, and Newberry Library Y135.B779 make this emendation. [go to text]

n6650   Cash Though part of Matchil's speech, 'Cash' is set as a Speech Prefix in the 1659 text. [go to text]

n8927   counterfeit Cash Although this sounds too modern, both 'counterfeit' and 'cash' were used in their current senses well before the date of Brome's play. Strigood is probably punning on Cash's name to make a sardonic joke. [go to text]

n5078   You shall be then Though the marriages they said they had previously entered into were fake, Matchil now says that, having straightened out the brother-sister relationships, there will be cross-marriages between the young people. [go to text]

n5216   double match It is interesting that Matchil uses a different term and avoids 'cross match' or 'cross marriage', terms associated with the failed negotiations between Lady Nestlecock and Whimlby. [go to text]

n4931   I know not how a city Could stand without such prentices, Like Lovewit at the end of Ben Jonson's The Alchemist, Matchil forgives his servant's crimes on the grounds of sheer wit, saying that a successful city needs such inventiveness from its up-and-coming citizens. [go to text]

n5079   one His wife, Rachel [go to text]

n4932   And worthily worth an hundred mark a month Strigood's repentance and brutally honest account of his actions and intentions purchase him the subvention from his brother that he has been hoping for all along. It is interesting, however, that Matchil is paying him off monthly, keeping his brother dependent. [go to text]

gg2889   mark a gold or silver coin equivalent to two-thirds of a pound (of silver or sterling), that is about thirteen shillings and four pence (OED mark, n2, 2a cites J. Norden in 1607 who spells out the equivalence); one such coin in terms of today's spending power would equal £57.20p [go to text]

n4933   I say that I am humbled on my knees. Video Matchil has by this stage thoroughly recovered his position of authority in the play and his own household. Rachel, shamed by the discovery of her intentions and now destitute of young male attendants, abases herself.
Or at least she appears to. Matchil asks her what she says; she replies, 'I say that I am humbled on my knees'. Is this a physical genuflection, as in this edition, or does she stop at 'saying'? Are both Rachel and Strigood doing more than expressing verbal contrition? Will their actions suit their words? [go to text]

n5217   All’s too well, methinks Matchil seems to express a sentiment the audience may well share: even by the standard of this kind of comedy, the loose ends of the play are tied up a little too neatly and perfunctorily. And yet it sends the audience thinking back through the play and its seemingly simple ending. Rachel may here be doing no more than she promised, performing subservience in public. Matchil's wary judgement may mean that he suspects that, in private, his wife will be less docile. His phrase 'All's too well' recalls the title of one of Shakespeare's most discomforting comedies (All's Well That Ends Well); and the scene may even remind the audience of Katherine's performance of abject subservience at the end of The Taming of the Shrew and the replayings of that topic and contest in the various answers to Shakespeare's play. [go to text]

n5563   before you break up school Before the New Academy is dissolved [go to text]

gg3766   careering moving at speed, galloping, used figuratively to mean energetically [go to text]

gg3767   pack up to put (goods or belongings) in a container, pack, or parcel; to put items of any kind into (a suitcase, bag, etc.); (in later use also) to assemble and stow (all the items in a particular place) preparatory to departure (OED pack v1) [go to text]

n6964   [Erasmus, Valentine, Lafoy, Cash, Strigood, Rachel, Ephraim, Papillion, Galliard, Joyce, Gabriella, Camelion, Hannah, Nehemiah, Lady Nestlecock, Hardyman, Whimlby, and Blith] 1659: 'Omn.' [go to text]

n4934   Les tous ensembles The name of a dance tune, unidentified. The French name means 'all together', a suitable dance to conclude a comedy that has resolved conflicts and reintegrated the fools and even the villains into the community. [go to text]

n4935   All-to-mall A dance tune, unidentified. [go to text]

n4936   Omnium Gatherum A popular dance tune, used particularly for country dances. It is striking that at the end of the play the characters participate in a much less courtly dance than those taught at the New Academy. Omnium Gatherum is much more obviously connected to the ancient idea of dance as celebrating and creating community harmony.
The title is Latin, clearly not English, as Nehemiah seems to think. [go to text]

n5080   footing Nehemiah means that everyone can have a place in the dance, but 'footing' also means place in a hierarchy or a society. The play is ending with everything and everyone restored to their proper positions. But it might also mean that, with the right social lubricant -- one of the functions of the civility that the play has been concerned with -- individuality and idiosyncrasy can be tolerated within the larger patterns of a well-mannered society. [go to text]

n8926   My son and daughter Hardyman refers to Camelion and Hannah, in whose house the Academy has functioned. [go to text]

n4937   call their supper mine Video The young couples should host their wedding suppers, but Captain Hardyman asks to be permitted to preside over the feast, to celebrate the restoration of harmony to the whole community of the play. Matchil thinks he is dictating the conclusion, but Hardyman -- the embodiment of calm reasonableness and tolerance at the end of the play -- usurps that position. [go to text]

n4938          Deus dedit his quoque finem, laus Deo. A Latin tag, deriving from Virgil's Aeneid 1.199, meaning here 'God has given an end to these things, praise be to God'. Versions of this tag appear at the end of other texts, so it is likely that the words are those of the printer, not the author. [go to text]

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