The English Moor
Textual IntroductionThe octavo1The English Moor is the first of five plays in the octavo collection Five New Plays (1659), printed by Henry Brome. It is preceded, in that volume, by commendatory poems and other prefatory material. It possesses its own title-page, and its signature sequence and page numbering appears independent of the rest of the volume, but its final page contains a catchword with "The", this being the first word of the title-page of the succeeding play. Hence, it does not appear to have been designed primarily as a stand-alone publication, even though some Henry Brome advertisements from the next decade, and specifically the years 1664-67, seem to offer it for sale as an individual item.n108262The title-page of The English Moor exists in two states. The first bears the date 1658; includes the publishers’ names but not that of Richard Brome; and bears a garbled sentence of Latin, innocens permitte jocos cur ludere nobis Non liceat? misquoted from Martial’s Epigrams, 3.99.3-4. The second bears the date 1659, and includes Brome’s name but not those of the publishers. It corrects the Latin quotation to Innocuos permitte jocos, cur ludere nobis Non liceat? [permit innocuous jokes, why should we not be permitted to be playful?]. It is generally agreed thatAlthough the existence of the two title-pages suggests that the publishers may have intended to publish the play separately in 1658, this is not necessarily the case — the mistakes in the motto and omission of the author’s name would, in themselves, have been sufficient grounds for the printing of the cancel.n107823The printers of Five New Plays made a specific claim about the nature of their copy. "As for the stationers, they bring these poems as they had them from the author: not suffering any false or busy hand to add or make the least mutilation".n10783 Taken at face value, this is a claim that lying directly behind O is a manuscript formerly owned by (and in some sense authorized by) Brome himself. By 1659, Brome had been dead for over six years, so one must either suppose that the stationers had possession of the manuscripts for all that time, or that there was an intermediary. Significantly, one of the commendatory verses accompanying the publication congratulates Alexander Brome, poet and friend of his namesake, for his role in "setting forth" the plays in the volume. This detail suggests that Alexander Brome is likely to have been the intermediary, retaining manuscripts that had belonged to Richard Brome, and helping to organize their publication in 1659.n10784 What can be deduced about the exact nature of the manuscript underlying O will be discussed later in this Textual Introduction.Press-variants in O4In her edition of The English Moor, Sara Jayne Steen collates thirty-one print copies of the play, all of them occurring within the volume Five New Plays (1659).n10785 The following is a brief summary of the press-variants presented by Steen, and the overall number of copies she finds in each category: to which is added information about the press-variants in a singleton copy of The English Moor in this editor’s personal collection, identified below as WR. No new press-variants were noted.Sheet A (inner forme)
Uncorrected: 1
Corrected: 30, WR
Sig. A5v
Who, the] Who the
prithe.] prithe
married? quickly] married, quicklySheet A (outer forme)
Uncorrected: 1
First stage corrected: 2
sig. A6v
Theoph. ] Theo.
Second state corrected: 1
sig. A3r
me I must. I must.] me I must.
Third state corrected: 27, WR
sig. A3r
me. I must.] me I must. I must.
sig. A4v
here, by] here by
Do, and] Do andSheet B (outer forme)
Uncorrected: 27
Corrected: 4, WR
sig. B1r
Quic. Is] Quic IsSheet F (outer forme)
Uncorrected: 22
Corrected: 9
Not present: WR (cropped by the binder)
sig. F3r
(catchword) Hoping] HopinThe manuscript5In addition to the octavo (O), The English Moor also survives in Lichfield Cathedral Library: MS 68, referred to throughout what follows as MS. The following discussion of aspects of the manuscript builds on the excellent semi-diplomatic edition of it by Steen, to which the reader is referred for a full description, and for more detail about the manuscript’s provenance and history.n10786 If the account presented here seeks, cautiously, to modify some of Steen’s conclusions, it is able to do so only because it can make use of what Steen discovered. In particular, this introduction focuses on three issues that are of particularly immediate interest in preparing the ground for consideration of the manuscript’s relationship to O: these are the dedicatee, the handwriting, and the date. The dedicatee6The manuscript bears a signed dedication to William Seymour, Marquis of Hertford (1588-1660), as part of whose large personal collection of books and manuscripts it came directly to Lichfield Cathedral Library on the death of Seymour’s widow in 1673.7Wealthy and unimpeachably blue-blooded, William Seymour was one of the leading aristocrats of Caroline England. A rash and clandestine first marriage to King James’s cousin, Lady Arbella Stuart, continued to hamper his court career long after Lady Arbella’s death in 1615, as did his somewhat oppositional stance to James’s successor, Charles. In political terms, Seymour’s family was allied with those of Rich and Devereux, in what Martin Butler has characterized as an alliance of "immensely prestigious and noble dynasties tied by blood but also by common contempt for Charles’ government". It is true that Seymour went on to serve the king in the Civil War, but by no means should he be seen, in the 1630s, as a slavish supporter of the monarch. At a broad level, then, the fact that Seymour appears to have been a patron for Brome seems to fit with a picture of Brome as not merely an apologist for royal absolutism but as a politically engaged, oppositional writer.n107878"By nature and habit a scholar", Seymour spent a good deal of time and energy cultivating his personal library.n10788 The Lichfield collection does contain other manuscripts presented to Seymour by their authors, such as a collection of poetry by the aristocratic poet Sir William Kingsmill: Seymour evidently valued such manuscripts as a tangible product of the patronage he gave.n10789 It does not contain any other evidence of Seymour taking an interest in contemporary British drama, nor is there any other evidence from other sources to suggest Seymour took such an interest (with the single exception of Brome). To Brome, though, Seymour does appear to have been not merely a dedicatee but also an active patron. Aside from the wording of the dedication of The English Moor, to be discussed below, there is the dedication of the 1640 quarto of The Antipodes. In it, Brome addresses Seymour in terms which do not merely canvass him as a prospective benefactor, but rather seem to thank him for some specific, tangible support in the past.The long experience I have had of your Honour’s favourable intentions towards me hath compelled me to this presumption... the declaration of your gracious encouragements towards me, and the testimony of my gratitude.n107909It appears, then, that Seymour had provided, at some date rather before 1640, tangible "encouragements" of some sort to the playwright.10Similarly, the dedication of The English Moor seems to refer to already-existing experience of some sort of support from Seymour. Your candour and your judgement have never used to conster a duty a presumption: on confidence of both, I am emboldened to offer this issue of some leisurable hours to the justice of your mercy. This English Moor (my good lord) is but an unperfect copy, the original itself being the heart of the presenter. Mean presents from men of low fortunes to personages of your inclination find sooner an entertainment of charity than contempt; by which favour, the neglected Muses gather room to breathe in.n10791
(Dedication, 9-20)11Nothing is known about the nature or extent of Seymour’s support of Brome, but these two dedications suggest that there was some such support. 12Finally, there is one much more speculative observation to make about why The English Moor, in particular, may have connected to Seymour’s interests. The Seymours had long had trading interests in Africa, starting in the time of William Seymour’s father Edward.n10792 What is more, uniquely among the top tier of British aristocracy in the seventeenth century, there is a scrap of evidence that a family member had a personal connection with a black African. The scrap of evidence takes the form of a damaged document, from 1673, which shows Seymour’s son John Seymour, fourth Duke of Somerset, settling a considerable amount of property on one "Alice Long (daughter of a blackamoor, Britannia, a daughter of the King of Morocco)".n10793 Many questions remain about this interesting but fragmentary record. Imtiaz Habib notes the process of Anglicization implicit in Alice’s mother’s given name: and comments of this record that it appears to suggest John Seymour felt some responsibility for mother and daughter. It may, indeed, even be considered evidence for "the sexual exploitation of a black woman directly by a member of the English nobility itself". It would be foolish, of course, to make too much of a record from well after William Seymour’s death and from almost forty years after the play in question, but one may tentatively say that a play about black people living in Britain may have had particular interest for Seymour, whose family, in the long perspective, can be linked to Africans displaced to Britain both on a commercial and on a personal level.n10794Handwriting13The whole manuscript, including a dedication to Seymour with the signature "Richard Brome" at the bottom, is written in a single hand which mixes italic and secretary forms. The hand is almost certainly that of Richard Brome himself. This had long been suspected, on the grounds that a scribal copy would have been inappropriate for a gift to such a prestigious dedicatee, and certainly Kingsmill’s presentation manuscript to Seymour - also in the Lichfield collection - is autograph. But previous scholars, up to and including Steen, have lacked a clear example of Brome’s handwriting to use as a control.n10795 In 2007, Eleanor Lowe discovered undoubted examples of Brome’s signatures in the archives of Charterhouse Hospital, and they bear a satisfactory resemblance to the handwriting and signature on the manuscript.n10796 Already rare, as a specimen of an early modern play manuscript which can be compared to a printed version, the MS of The English Moor becomes even rarer and more interesting by virtue of also being (almost certainly) autograph, and as such it also provides an excellent window on Brome’s particular handwriting and compositional practice.Date14Assuming that it is indeed autograph, and barring special pleading, the range of possible dates for the manuscript runs from 1636-7, the probable date of composition of the play, to 1652, the date of Brome’s death. Within this range, Steen favours a date in "the late 1630s or early 1640s", and in particular, raises the possibility that the manuscript dates from around 1643, when Seymour was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford. Here she is building on the work of John P. Cutts, who conjectured that an entertainment, Times Distractions, which Cutts attributes to Brome, might have been performed in the besieged Oxford in 1643.n1079715This edition believes that the manuscript is early, possibly coeval with the composition of the play in 1636/7. The form of address of the Dedication, to William, Lord Seymour, Earl of Hertford, seems decisive in ruling out a date after Seymour’s elevation to Marquis of Hertford in 1640.n10798 In this connection, the wording of the manuscript’s dedication is also significant: in particular, the phrase quoted above about the manuscript being a product of "leisurable hours". Steen sees this phrase as referring to some period where Brome had time on his hands, perhaps such as after the closure of the theatres in 1642. But one could and perhaps should read it as a reference to leisure in the form of Virgilian otium, time for creativity made possible by financial relief given by a patron. Already confident in his patron’s constancy, Brome is thanking Seymour for having paid for the time in which he has completed this work.16The English Moor is one of two plays known to have been composed by Brome during the fifteen-month plague closure of 1636/7, a period which also saw him in dispute with his theatrical company, who stopped his wages. According to Brome’s own account, he was "put to his shifts in that hard, sad, and dangerous time of the sickness, both for himself and his family".n10799 In considerable short-term financial distress, Brome would have been very grateful for financial help of any sort. The other play which was certainly composed during the plague closure is The Antipodes, which, as we have seen, is also the other play in the Brome canon with a clear connection to Seymour. When Brome printed The Antipodes in 1640 — a move which seems to be linked to the final collapse of his contractual relationship with Salisbury Court, the terms of which forbade printing his plays without their consent - he dedicated the play to Seymour. The dedications of The Antipodes quarto and of The English Moor manuscript, taken together, seem to suggest that Seymour’s help to Brome, whatever its nature, was provided during the period of composition of these two plays, that is, the 1636-7 plague closure. Given this; given that The English Moor manuscript almost certainly dates to no later than 1640, because of the form in which Seymour’s titles are recited; and given that the manuscript, as argued below, seems to represent a first-performance state of the play; the manuscript could well, then, date from as early as 1636-7, seemingly the period when Seymour was actively helping a playwright who was unable to earn money by conducting his usual business at the playhouse. The two versions of the play17O and MS differ in hundreds of respects. The manuscript has some material not in O at all: principally the Dedication to Seymour, a different prologue, and the lyrics of the song "Love, where is now thy deity" which is sung in Act Four.n10800 It also lacks some material, most notably O’s prologue and epilogue. There are hundreds of minor differences in the dialogue, and some reordering of scenes. This edition will argue that MS represents the play as first performed, and that O represents a revised state of the play, possibly associated with an otherwise unknown revival in 1641 or 1642. The key to this argument lies in the differing prologues and epilogues of the two versions. 18In a seminal article on the prologues and epilogues of early modern drama in general, Tiffany Stern identifies the following traits as typical of prologues written to accompany the first performance of a new play. Primarily, they "dwell on the freshness, youth, and novelty of the play they are presenting; ’new’ is the word they fixate on."n10801 They speculate about what the audience will say about it; they fear that the audience will condemn it as unentertaining; and they worry about whether it will even get a second performance. Bringing this model to the MS prologue to The English Moor, one finds it fits the criteria perfectly, most obviously and unambiguously in its opening reference to "our new play", and in its closing hope that the audience will "grace it, and us, another night".n1080219O’s prologue, on the other hand, does not do many of the things that Stern suggests might be expected of a first-performance prologue. For instance, it does not actually specifically state that the play that follows is new or untried: an important divergence from Stern’s criteria. Instead, it marks an occasion: the first performance of a theatre company after a period of closure, during which they have been "so long and pitiless unheard, unseen". It asks the audience to intercede on behalf of the company with "those high powers whom we / Submit to", lest the company "fall into a new restraint", and promises that the company will be very careful when it comes to political reference: "We will as well look to our necks as climb". Previous scholars, mostly unaware of the MS prologue, have tended to work on the unexamined assumption that the O prologue was spoken on the first performance of the new play. Working from this premise, they took the "restraint" to be the 1636-7 plague closure — although plague is not alluded to at any point in the prologue — and noted with puzzlement the apparent references to controversial material, which would make little sense given that the theatres had been closed for reasons of plague rather than for unacceptable political content.n1080320But now one can see that the MS prologue, not the O prologue, seems to have the better claim to be the play’s first-performance prologue. Given which, there is no longer a compelling reason to assume the O prologue must be read in terms of the 1636-7 plague closure at all. One would more naturally take the O prologue to be what its internal references appear to indicate it to be: a prologue written to accompany a return to playing for a company which had been in political trouble.21The epilogues of the two versions cast further doubt on the idea that O’s prologue should be associated with a first performance. The epilogue in the manuscript consists, simply, of a marginal annotation, "epilogue", accompanying the last two lines of the play itself. Quicksands accepts his fate and turns to the audience: I yield to fortune with an humble knee.
If you be pleased, your pleasure shall please me.22Again, Stern’s work is helpful here, since she observes that first-performance epilogues, in general, are humble and enquiring in their address to the audience, hoping to obtain the all-important approval that will gain the play a second performance. The MS epilogue, though minimalist, fits the bill well enough in that respect. But compare the epilogue of the play as it appears in O. Quicksands has his last lines, as before, and then follows a longer and more aggressive epilogue, looking to set the terms of reference for the audience:The poet in hope of favour doth submit
Unto your censure both himself and it,
Wishing that as y’are judges in the cause
You judge but by the ancient comic laws,
Not by their course who in this latter age
Have sown such pleasing errors on the stage,
Which he no more will choose to imitate
Than they to fly from truth, and run the state.n1080423The most obvious difference, perhaps, is that this is much more belligerent than the MS epilogue in its directions to the audience on how to judge the play (which, as in the O prologue, is not referred to specifically as "new"). And, like the O prologue, the O epilogue does not seem appropriate for a first performance after a seventeen-month drought of drama. The complaint here about the "pleasing errors" of other current drama, implying that there is some current other drama, is reinforced when, in a subsequent section, Brome goes on to list the cheap tricks that the author will not stoop to in his epilogue: it implies an audience exposed to a number of poor epilogues, rather than one starved of any drama at all. 24The dispraise of other dramatists’ "pleasing errors" is, in context, an attack against a new factor in the Caroline theatre: courtier dramatists writing for reputation rather than for money. Brome complains about these in several prologues and epilogues, one play, The Court Beggar (1640), and the verse satire "Upon Aglaura in Folio". In particular, I would suggest, the lines above about enemies who are unlikely to "fly from truth, and run the state" read like a dig at Brome’s greatest bête noire, the courtier playwright John Suckling.25Suckling, the author of Aglaura, was personally satirized by Brome in The Court Beggar, as was Suckling’s friend and ally William Davenant. Later that same year, Davenant, apparently using as a pretext the controversial content of The Court Beggar, managed to gain permission to take over the playhouse at which the play had been staged, expelling Brome’s then-employer William Beeston. But in May 1641 both Suckling and Davenant became involved in the Army Plot, an unsuccessful attempt to mount a coup d'état against the king’s enemies. The plot was exposed, Davenant and Suckling were disgraced, and Suckling went into exile. At this point, it appears that Brome and Beeston regained control of their theatre at last.n1080526In 1641, then, Brome’s enemy Suckling met both parts of the description Brome offers in this line, becoming caught up in a treasonous plot — perhaps the ultimate in "flying from truth" - and having to flee the country, going into exile on the continent.n10806 If O’s epilogue is alluding, in these lines, to Suckling’s fate in 1641, then the lines become a sharp, sarcastic, and appropriate insult against courtier dramatists. This is a reason to suspect that the O epilogue may date from 1641, and that, by extension, O’s prologue might be from the same date. The story O’s prologue seems to tell — of controversial political references followed by a long silence — would fit with the fragmentary evidence of the events of 1640-1, and the O prologue and epilogue would fit well with a hypothetical performance of The English Moor in 1641 or 1642.27The suggestion of a hitherto unattested 1641-2 revival, commemorated in O’s prologue and epilogue, is offered tentatively. Nor does the overall argument proposed here about the relationship of O and MS rely on positing such a hypothetical revival. All one has to establish, for the argument immediately at hand, is that the O prologue and epilogue were written for performances later than the first performance for which the MS prologue was apparently written. This is enough to establish that O is associated with paratexts "later" than those of MS. Tiffany Stern suggests the possibility that playtexts were potentially fluid between the first and second performance; indeed, some texts that survive in more than one version could be showing the result of speedy first- to second-performance ‘revision’.n1080728 Even if O’s prologue and epilogue merely belong to a second performance, rather than to a revival four years later, they establish a "direction" between O and MS: they suggest that O is not, as Steen tends to assume, an earlier state of revision than MS, but vice versa. MS is a version of the play which appears to be associated with the first performance, and O is a version of the play which appears to be associated with a later performance. This is the basis for the conclusion that O’s text is basically a revision of that offered in MS, a conclusion which informs the discussion offered here of differences between the two versions. The differences are categorized here in terms of restructuring of passages and scenes; additions and deletions; stage directions; and textual corruptions.Restructuring of passages and scenes29There are two changes in O which might be called structural. One of them is the sole instance in the two versions of entire scenes being reordered. In MS, the scenes in Act Three run as follows:3.1Quicksands expels his servants; paints Millicent black; and hires Phillis.
3.2At Theophilus’ house, Theophilus and Lucy discuss events; Arnold riles Theophilus; and Theophilus sacks him.
3.3At the Devil Tavern, Nathaniel and his friends get Buzzard drunk.
3.4In the street, Nathaniel finds the dejected Arnold and recruits him.
3.5Dionysia adopts the disguise of a young man.
-End of Act Three-30In O, the sequence runs differently:3.1Quicksands expels his servants; paints Millicent black; and hires Phillis.
3.2At the Devil Tavern, Nathaniel and his friends get Buzzard drunk.
3.3At Theophilus’ house, Theophilus and Lucy discuss events, sack Arnold, and exit; seamlessly, the scene becomes the street outside Theophilus’s house, where Nathaniel finds the dejected Arnold and recruits him.
-End of Act Three-4.1Dionysia adopts the disguise of a young man.31One effect of O’s reordering is to slightly reduce the prominence of Theophilus, as Steen notes: but surely more germane is that a scene-break is saved, and that the two big set-piece scenes of Act 3 — Millicent’s blackening and the scene at the Devil Tavern — are now ironically juxtaposed in a shorter and punchier third act.32O’s other major architectonic change, although relatively slight in terms of actual textual alteration, is to reduce the role of the lustful servant Rafe. In both O and MS, Rafe is prominent in pushing Dionysia’s intentions along in the early scenes of the play; in both, Rafe accompanies Dionysia to the tavern and sees her dress up as a man; and in both, Rafe is instrumental in saving Dionysia from herself, by warning her father of her intentions. All the same, there are some important differences in the scenes in which Rafe appears later in the play. In MS, Dionysia and Rafe have a sexually charged dialogue at the tavern in the course of which she beats him. O’s version of the scene, however, cuts some of the dialogue and the rowdy stage business. n10808 In MS, in 5.2, Rafe comes in with the other rescuers; is present for the dénouement in which Dionysia is humiliated; and then accompanies Dionysia offstage when she leaves, commenting that "Now will she beat me even to death in private", a line which gains a laugh at the expense of conceding that neither Rafe nor (by implication) Dionysia are at all chastened by their experiences.n10809 In O, although Rafe still enters with the other rescuers, his line — his only speech in the scene - is cut, and he does not apparently exit with Dionysia, but instead with everyone else. The way is open to taking more seriously not just Dionysia’s reformation, manifested in her speech in the closing scene of the play as a whole, but the whole emotional impact of the climactic episode of the Dionysia-plot.Additions and deletions33O and MS differ in hundreds of minor verbal details. Lines and half-lines are omitted and added; phrases are replaced; and speeches are reassigned. It is surprisingly difficult, though, to identify overarching patterns underlying these choices.34One moderately consistent difference between O and MS relates to expository passages spoken by Edmund and Vincent, the two minor characters who are allies of Nathaniel and who function, almost exclusively, as a double-act. Some of the longest passages which appear in O but not in MS are dialogues between these two characters which serve an expository or choric function. Examples include [EM 1.2.speech54-58] where Edmund, Vincent, and Nathaniel outline again Quicksands’ crimes and speculate on the fates that he deserves; [EM 3.3.speech556-564], where Edmund and Vincent point the moral by summarizing what they believe to be the story so far; and [EM 4.5.speech846], where Edmund is given a single extra line to spell out an otherwise rather subtle irony.n10810 None of these are in MS. To borrow a term from information theory, what is said in these exchanges is strictly speaking redundant, in that the action of the play is intelligible without them, for an attentive observer. Nonetheless, O adds them in, and the effect is to make the play generally easier to follow. Having said which, even this rule has exceptions: MS, for instance, gives Edmund and Vincent one brief piece of expository dialogue which does not appear in O.n1081135Also interesting is that, as Steen observes, the characters Edmund and Vincent really are "as interchangeable as Tweedledum and Tweedledee", with lines frequently reassigned between them.n10812 One example which shows this effect in action, and which may also serve as a synecdoche for the wider difficulties of comparing the two versions, is the following: MS (4.1.108-118, spelling modernized):Nat.’Twould be a rare addition to his mirth,
For us to bring our antic in betwixt ’em,
I mean his changeling bastard, if he should
Marry some jealous hilding.
Vin.Howe’er, we’ll grace his feast with our presentment.
Nat.Where’s the Buzzard?
Ed.We left him with his foster father, Arnold,
Busy at rehearsal, practising their parts.
Nat.They shall be perfect by to morrow night,
If not unto our profit, our delight.O [EM 4.2.speeches641-646]:Nat.Zooks, would he had some devilish jealous hilding,
’Twould be a rare addition to his mirth,
For us to bring our antic in betwixt ’em
Of his changeling bastard.
Vin.Howe’er, we’ll grace his feast with our presentment.
Nat.Where’s the Buzzard?
Vin.We left him with his foster father, Arnold,
Busy at rehearsal practising their parts.
Ed.They shall be perfect by tomorrow night.
Nat.If not unto our profit, our delight.36O’s version of the first four lines is perhaps a little clearer than MS’s, and it freely reassigns lines in the second half of the exchange. But workshopping of this passage, in isolation, did not lead to a clear conclusion that O was a superior version overall.n10813 Both are intelligible, and each offers different clowning opportunities to the trio of actors. Similarly, across the play as a whole, lines and scenes are seemingly quite randomly rewritten in forms that are neither obviously improved nor obviously worse. 37Another category of change may be briefly handled here: possible self-censorship. O alludes to the possibility of Quicksands being called before the Court of High Commission for his crimes; O’s epilogue alludes to bad writers who might "fly from truth, and run the state". The High Commission allusion is missing in MS, as is the entire O epilogue, and Steen raises the possibility that these are cuts made so as not to offend the dedicatee, William Seymour.n10814 However, this edition does not necessarily accept that idea, since Occam’s Razor would suggest that the lines are more likely to be later revisions. The thesis that O is later than MS would seem to render unnecessary this idea of MS being, in effect, a politically blunted text. 38However, and finally, there are two details of addition and deletion that offer an awkward challenge to the straightforward thesis underpinning the above discussion that O is simply and always a revised version of MS. One is the fact that O also introduces a patina of textual corruptions, which will be discussed in more detail in a later section. The other, and perhaps more troubling exception is MS 5.3.203-5, where Dionysia announces her reformation. In MS this reads:Sr take no thought for me
Till my strict life, by mak
In expiation of my late transgression...39Where by mak is clearly the stub of the line present in the print version, "By making man, and the world mere strangers to me".n10815 In this instance, at least, MS is seemingly caught in the act of selecting out material from a longer version. To borrow the terminology of Andrew Gurr, this example raises the spectre of a hypothetical lost "maximal" ur-text of which both surviving versions are merely condensations. This edition resists that conclusion, seeing O, with its extensive and minute changes from MS, as by and large a revised and improved version rather than a parallel one. But the example of MS 5.3.203-5 reminds us that this is only a convenient overview, and the full reality may be more complex.Stage directions40A special category of additions and deletions relates to the stage directions in O and MS. Throughout Renaissance drama, stage directions, being strictly speaking paratextual, are unusually mutable between different versions of the same play. The stage directions of The English Moor do indeed diverge particularly widely in the two versions, and yet, as with the variants in the text proper, it is surprisingly hard to reduce the differences to simple general principles. The following examples demonstrate the nature of the differences.Enter the masquers. A lawyer with stags’ horns, followed by a courtier. A country chuff with rams’ horns, and a soldier. An usurer with goats’ horns, and a scholar. A spruce citizen with ox horns, and a butcher. (MS)Enter four masquers with horns on their heads: a stag, a ram, and goat, a an [sic] ox followed by four persons, a courtier, a captain, a scholar and a butcher. (O, unemended)n1166541MS provides a little more detail overall, and although O seems to suggest a slightly different order for the characters to enter in, the two descriptions are clearly similar. On first appearances, the example of this stage direction might appear that O is a shortened and rearranged version of MS. The problem is that other stage directions exhibit just the opposite properties. For instance:Ent. Millicent white, as at first (MS)Enter Millicent, white-faced and in her own habit (O)n1166642Here, on the other hand, O provides information not made explicit in MS, by referring specifically to her costume. To take another, and more extreme example: Enter 6 blackamoors. Dance. (MS)Enter the rest of the moors. They dance an antic in which they use action of mockery and derision to the three gentlemen (O)n1166743Here, the two stage directions each provide information which is not in the other. O provides a detailed description of the nature of the dance, missing in MS, while MS provides specific information missing from O on the number of moors required. 44Editorially, there are two approaches one could take to the problem of handling these overlapping and complementary stage directions. The first would be the strictly version-based approach: since this is an edition of O, and since O, unlike MS, maintains silence about how many moors there are in the dance, one has no particular grounds for supposing that six moors are required (although, in fact, the exigencies of the overall cast size make it unlikely that the number should be significantly larger than six). This edition takes the other, more pragmatic approach, assuming that, in most cases, the stage directions of O and MS can be thought of as two complementary retellings of the same story. MS’s stage direction is good evidence that there were probably six moors involved in the dance described by O. 45One further illustration may be given of the way in which the stage directions of O and MS can be reliably differentiated neither in terms of the sort of information they provide, nor in the sort of reader they imply. The following is a table of the stage directions in the two versions of 2.3.
| Speech (O number) | MS | O |
| [EM 2.3.speech350] | Dionisia. Rafe. | Dionisia. Rafe. |
| [EM 2.3.speech358] | a paper | gives her a paper. |
| [EM 2.3.speech370] | She strikes him | He offers to kiss her, she strikes him. |
| [EM 2.3.speech373] | She sitts | |
| [EM 2.3.speech375] | Enter Arthur. | |
| [EM 2.3.speech376] | Ext. Ent: Arthure. | Exit. |
| [EM 2.3.speech377] | She sits. | |
| [EM 2.3.speech401] | Aside | |
| [EM 2.3.speech406] | She rises | |
| [EM 2.3.speech410] | She tears & throws the paper to him. | |
| [EM 2.3.speech410] | Ext. | Exit. |
| [EM 2.3.speech411] | Ext. | Exit. |
46First of all, MS lists Arthur’s entrance before Rafe’s exit, and O lists them the other way round. But it would be rash to identify this as necessarily a highly significant change, since, as Mariko Ichikawa has demonstrated, on the early modern stage entrances and exits are processes rather than instantaneous things, best thought of as taking up about the same time as two blank verse lines.n10819 Clearly, in either version, the point is that Arthur’s arrival coincides with Rafe’s exit. Secondly, there appears to be one genuine difference of staging. O seems to make a definite change to MS by delaying the moment at which Dionysia sits on the chair, perhaps so as to make a more striking instant transition from feistiness to (feigned) sickness: an effect found to be striking when the passage was workshopped
. 47All the rest of the two sets of directions in this scene, though, seem entirely compatible with one another. O adds some details not in MS, including the helpful stage direction about the attempted kiss (which is suggested, but not quite required, by the dialogue); MS adds some illuminating details not in O (such as Dionysia’s rising, again suggested but not required by the dialogue). It is hard to construct two "implied readerships" whose different requirements can explain these differences in teleological terms. The omission of "She rises" in O could, for instance, be explained in terms of the requirements of a prompter, who might not care about the blocking; but then neither would a prompter require the extra information about the attempted kiss. Conversely, the addition of "She rises" would certainly be helpful in a "reading copy" of the play, to enable the reader to imagine the action: but then why not include the equally important detail of the attempted kiss?48In the light of examples like this, Steen’s contention that the differences between the two sets of stage directions can be explained in terms of O deriving from a "theater text" rather than a reading copy seems hard to sustain.n10820 Indeed, as Paul Werstine has argued, the whole assumption that in early modern drama there is a clear distinction between non-theatrical and theatrical — between "foul papers" and "playhouse copy" - might perhaps be wishful thinking on the part of modern editors.n10821 The stage directions alone offer few means of distinguishing the provenances of O and MS.49All the same, the two sets of stage directions can, and I argue should, be seen as complementary and (in general) capable of being conflated into an unusually rich and helpful set of stage directions for the play. Accordingly, in around seventeen instances, this edition imports into its text an entire stage direction which only occurs in MS.Corruptions50Finally, textual corruption in the two versions remains to be considered. MS contains a small number of textual corruptions, errors of the sort one might expect in copying an entire play longhand. On fourteen occasions in her edition, such errors lead Steen to make a substantive emendation which brings MS into agreement with O. Most of these are very minor, some being hardly more than eccentric spellings, while five are due to one particular problem, mistakes in speech-prefixes.n10822 O, on the other hand, contains a rather more considerable number of textual corruptions.51This edition is based on O, and its policy is to print the reading of O unless that reading is clearly erroneous. Nonetheless, its apparatus records thirty-six occasions where it concludes that O must be emended into line with MS to correct a substantive transmissional error. In at least five other places, the reading of O, while quite possibly an error rather than a revision, has been given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to stand.n10827 (These figures exclude stage directions, which, as discussed above, are considered in a special category of their own). 52As an illustration of the type of errors introduced, one could consider the Host in Act Five, a minor character whose "humour" consists of an addiction to speaking in rhyme. As well as the comically rhyming speeches he delivers, this fact is pointed up by two allusions in the dialogue. The first, in MS, runs as follows in original spelling: "Thou keepst thy humour still my riming host". The second, occurs when he finally lapses out of rhyme, and promises, "wthout Rime I’ll tell you". In O, "my riming host" was corrupted to "my running Host", and "wthout Rime" to "without ruine".n10824 Evidently there were difficulties interpreting Brome’s minims, and the resulting readings are nonsensical. Given the allegedly excellent provenance of the manuscript used to print O, which would lead one to regard the MS behind O as probably written by the author, it is likely that the thirty-six errors must be laid, by and large, at the door of the compositors.53If The English Moor is typical of the other posthumously-printed Brome plays in its process of transmission from the authorial manuscript to printing; and since, of those plays, only The English Moor can be checked against an authorial manuscript; one interesting conclusion is that each posthumously-printed Brome play might be expected to contain upwards of thirty textual corruptions. This would make them rich fields for conjectural emendation. In 1898, unaware of the existence of the manuscript, the enthusiastic emendator Kenneth Deighton published some conjectural emendations to The English Moor. Two, one may see in the light of the manuscript, were entirely correct, and the others were entirely wrong.n10825 Among its other claims to interest, The English Moor provides a useful sampler of the sorts of corruption one might expect in other Brome texts, and a guide for future emendators.Editorial procedures54The text of The English Moor offered here is that of O, incorporating readings from MS to correct transmissional errors in O. This edition also considers MS an important witness to the stage action of the play, and, in supplementing the stage directions of O, makes use of many stage directions which occur in MS. In accordance with the general principles of the edition as a whole, stage directions which appear in Latin (which for this play means exit and exeunt) are silently translated into English in the modernized text.Appendix[For ease of reference, since both are cited as evidence in the course of the Textual Introduction, this appendix offers modern-spelling transcriptions of the Dedication and the alternative prologue from MS. For full semi-diplomatic transcriptions of these and of the whole manuscript, the reader is referred to Steen’s edition].DedicationTo the thrice honourable
William, Lord Seymour,
Earl of Hertford,
Lord Beauchamp, etc.
My singular good lord:Your noble disposition, your countenance to the freedom of commendable endeavours, do not more add glory to your own greatness than encouragement to my weakness in particular. Your candour and your judgement have never used to conster a duty a presumption: on confidence of both, I am emboldened to offer this issue of some leisurable hours to the justice of your mercy. This English Moor, my good lord, is but an unperfect copy, the original itself being the heart of the presenter. Mean presents from men of low fortunes to personages of your inclination find sooner an entertainment of charity than contempt, by which favour, the neglected muses gather room to breathe in. In this tender of my service to the constancy of your noble nature I am an humble petitioner that your Lordship, according to your wonted virtue, will please to preserve in your good opinion among the faithfullest of your servantsYour Lordship’s
humblest,
Richard Brome.PrologueI come to welcome ye: and not to boast
Our author’s skill, our pains, or any cost
In our new play. Alas, we dare not swell
Above the hope you’ll find it fair and well,
In gentle and ingenious acceptation.
’Tis fair and free from any personation:
No lady great or less, or any lord,
Statesman, or knight, our humble scenes afford.
All sorts may see’t, and not themselves abused
By satire or by fawn: for none are used
As persons here, by whom it can be said
This part by him, or her, was meant or made.
It is no flattering piece, nor is’t a quarrel
Against the times, men, manners, or apparel.
And, for a truth is in’t, as well at Rome
The scene might have been laid, as here at home.
"’Tis nought, then", some might whisper. Is’t not so?
And that "The poet has forgot his old wont." No?
Then I’ll go further: here’s no mirth, no sport,
Or very little - thank somebody for’t
That said he could write nothing else. What now,
The subject of the play too being so low
That lofty language, or the purer gloss
Of poesy laid upon’t, were extreme loss,
Can you expect? I dare not prophesy,
But give us leave to hope (though all this be)
You may find something in’t that may invite
You to grace it, and us, another night.
n10826 seem to offer it for sale as an individual item.
n10782 Although the existence of the two title-pages suggests that the publishers may have intended to publish the play separately in 1658, this is not necessarily the case — the mistakes in the motto and omission of the author’s name would, in themselves, have been sufficient grounds for the printing of the cancel.
n10783 "As for the stationers, they bring these poems as they had them from the author: not suffering any false or busy hand to add or make the least mutilation".
n10784 and helping to organize their publication in 1659.
n10785 In her edition of The English Moor, Sara Jayne Steen collates thirty-one print copies of the play, all of them occurring within the volume Five New Plays (1659).
n10786 provenance and history.
n10787 a politically engaged, oppositional writer.
n10788 "By nature and habit a scholar", Seymour spent a good deal of time and energy cultivating his personal library.
n10789 Seymour evidently valued such manuscripts as a tangible product of the patronage he gave.
n10790 The long experience I have had of your Honour’s favourable intentions towards me hath compelled me to this presumption... the declaration of your gracious encouragements towards me, and the testimony of my gratitude.
n10791 Your candour and your judgement have never used to conster a duty a presumption: on confidence of both, I am emboldened to offer this issue of some leisurable hours to the justice of your mercy. This English Moor (my good lord) is but an unperfect copy, the original itself being the heart of the presenter. Mean presents from men of low fortunes to personages of your inclination find sooner an entertainment of charity than contempt; by which favour, the neglected Muses gather room to breathe in.
n10792 William Seymour’s father Edward.
n10793 "Alice Long (daughter of a blackamoor, Britannia, a daughter of the King of Morocco)".
n10794 can be linked to Africans displaced to Britain both on a commercial and on a personal level.
n10795 Brome’s handwriting to use as a control.
n10796 Eleanor Lowe discovered undoubted examples of Brome’s signatures in the archives of Charterhouse Hospital, and they bear a satisfactory resemblance to the handwriting and signature on the manuscript.
n10797 which Cutts attributes to Brome, might have been performed in the besieged Oxford in 1643.
n10798 in ruling out a date after Seymour’s elevation to Marquis of Hertford in 1640.
n10799 "put to his shifts in that hard, sad, and dangerous time of the sickness, both for himself and his family".
n10800 sung in Act Four.
n10801 "dwell on the freshness, youth, and novelty of the play they are presenting; ’new’ is the word they fixate on."
n10802 "grace it, and us, another night".
n10803 reasons of plague rather than for unacceptable political content.
n10804 The poet in hope of favour doth submit Unto your censure both himself and it, Wishing that as y’are judges in the cause You judge but by the ancient comic laws, Not by their course who in this latter age Have sown such pleasing errors on the stage, Which he no more will choose to imitate Than they to fly from truth, and run the state.
n10805 At this point, it appears that Brome and Beeston regained control of their theatre at last.
n10806 and having to flee the country, going into exile on the continent.
n10807 ‘revision’.
n10808 O’s version of the scene, however, cuts some of the dialogue and the rowdy stage business.
n10809 "Now will she beat me even to death in private", a line which gains a laugh at the expense of conceding that neither Rafe nor (by implication) Dionysia are at all chastened by their experiences.
n10810 to spell out an otherwise rather subtle irony.
n10811 MS, for instance, gives Edmund and Vincent one brief piece of expository dialogue which does not appear in O.
n10812 Also interesting is that, as Steen observes, the characters Edmund and Vincent really are "as interchangeable as Tweedledum and Tweedledee", with lines frequently reassigned between them.
n10813 O was a superior version overall.
,; for discussion see [NOTE n3452].n10814 the dedicatee, William Seymour.
n10815 "By making man, and the world mere strangers to me".
n11665 Enter four masquers with horns on their heads: a stag, a ram, and goat, a an [sic] ox followed by four persons, a courtier, a captain, a scholar and a butcher. (O, unemended)
n11666 Enter Millicent, white-faced and in her own habit (O)
n11667 Enter the rest of the moors. They dance an antic in which they use action of mockery and derision to the three gentlemen (O)
n10819 best thought of as taking up about the same time as two blank verse lines.
n10820 In the light of examples like this, Steen’s contention that the differences between the two sets of stage directions can be explained in terms of O deriving from a "theater text" rather than a reading copy seems hard to sustain.
n10821 between "foul papers" and "playhouse copy" - might perhaps be wishful thinking on the part of modern editors.
n10822 mistakes in speech-prefixes.
n10827 has been given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to stand.
[NOTE n2333]; [NOTE n2420]; [NOTE n2426]; [NOTE n2442]; [NOTE n2472]; [NOTE n2524]; [NOTE n2527]; [NOTE n2568]; [NOTE n2569]; [NOTE n2572]; [NOTE n2585]; [NOTE n2799]; [NOTE n3294]; [NOTE n3399]; [NOTE n3401]; [NOTE n3409]; [NOTE n3424]; [NOTE n3433]; [NOTE n3462]; [NOTE n3882]; [NOTE n4284]; [NOTE n4295]; [NOTE n4389]; [NOTE n4427]; [NOTE n4483]; [NOTE n4495]; [NOTE n4507]; [NOTE n4790]; [NOTE n4898]; [NOTE n4899]; [NOTE n5496]; [NOTE n5505]; [NOTE n5540]; [NOTE n5588]; [NOTE n5597]; and [NOTE n6232].
Readings given the benefit of the doubt are discussed in:
[NOTE n3887]; [NOTE n4384]; [NOTE n4561]; [NOTE n5587]; and [NOTE n5599].
n10824 The second, occurs when he finally lapses out of rhyme, and promises, "wthout Rime I’ll tell you". In O, "my riming host" was corrupted to "my running Host", and "wthout Rime" to "without ruine".
n10825 Two, one may see in the light of the manuscript, were entirely correct, and the others were entirely wrong.