A Mad Couple Well Matched
Textual Introduction1The first extant printed version of A Mad Couple Well Matched was printed soon after Brome’s death in an octavo collection of plays published in 1653 by Alexander Brome entitled Five New Playes.n10315 A Mad Couple Well Matched is the first play appearing in the volume and, unlike the other four plays (The Novella, The Court Beggar, The City Wit and The Demoiselle), lacks a title page. Instead, Act One Scene One appears on B1 and is headed by the following title:HT] [rows of ornaments] A | MAD COUPLE | VVELL MATCH’D.||2On the facing page is the prologue, a list of ‘The Persons of the Comedy’, the scene location (London) and a curious list of the first three plays in the collection bracketed together. W. W. Greg suggests that these three plays (Mad Couple, Novella and Beggar) are the work of one printer, while another press had to complete the job by printing the last two plays and providing the preliminaries of the collection and Mad Couple’s Prologue and list of characters (which were missing either because they were omitted or lost).n10316 Hence, the bracketed list of plays is evidence of the second printer differentiating between his work and that of the first.3The title page of the collection announces that it was ‘Printed for Humphrey Moseley, Richard Marriot, and Thomas Dring, and are to be sold at their Shops, 1653’. The title pages for The Novella and The Court Beggar both add the detail that the shops of Marriot and Dring were in Fleet Street;n10317 those for The City Wit and The Demoiselle additionally state that the plays were printed by T. R., who is generally held to be Thomas Roycroft.n10318 A fleeting reference by Plomer suggests that Roycroft had a printing house in Charterhouse Yard, i.e. in the immediate environs of Brome’s location in Charterhouse Hospital for the last two and a half years of his life. Despite searching through parish records and Roycroft’s will and inventory, I have not found evidence to support Plomer’s claim, although later Roycroft did live in nearby Bartholomew Close. Since some of Plomer’s other claims regarding Roycroft have been revealed as inaccurate I have not pursued this point further, but it would be interesting to think of the printer living very close to Brome’s lodging, and begs the question as to whether Brome had an active role in the printing of his work.4Greg suggests that Moseley came late into the process, since his name is only mentioned on the general title page, and not on any of the individual title pages.n10319 The collection was reissued in 1654, but a cancelled title page now announces the printer to be ‘J. F.’ (Greg suggests James Fletcher) ‘and are to be sold by J. Sweeting, at his Shop at the Angel in Popeshead-Alley’. The 1659 publication of Five New Playes contains five different Brome plays.5A Mad Couple Well Matched is printed on signatures A5v-H2 in five acts (with scenes marked only in Acts Four and Five), with verse prologue and epilogue. There are currently 29 known extant copies of the play in the 1653 collection at the following locations [* indicates copies consulted]:n10320UK libraries
British Library *[E. 1423] *[G. 18535]; MCWM [161.a.18]
Bodleian Library, Oxford *[M. 38 Art.] *[Douce B 333]
Dyce Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum
Eton College
National Library of Scotlandn10321
University of Kent at Canterbury Library
University Library, Cambridge
Worcester College, Oxford
US libraries
Boston Public Library, Boston, Mass.University of Chicago [3 copies]
Library of Congress, Washington D.C. *
Cornell University Library
Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D.C. *[B4870 Copy 1] *[B4870 Copy 2] *[Copy 3]
Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Mass.
Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California
Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City
Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois
New York Public Library, New York City
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.
Carl H. Pforzheimer Collection, New York (transferred to Austin, Texas)
Princeton University, Princeton, N.J.
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Library
Yale University Library, New Haven, Conn.6Greg lists two copies of Five New Playes in the Dyce Collection; the second cannot be located by V&A staff, but there is no record of sale. The collection is also advertised among plays printed by Humphrey Moseley, 1654-60. It appears in the Stationers’ Register being transferred from R. Marriott to H. Moseley on 11 June 1659.7There are four extant copies of the 1654 reissue of Five New Playes, located in the British Library, Bodleian Library, Folger Shakespeare Library and Yale University Library.8Spove points to several errors in Mad Couple’s dramatis personae which support Greg’s analysis that it was provided by the printer at the end of the printing process (even though the prologue probably is by Brome the playwright): Sir Oliver Thrivewell is named as ‘Valentine’, Fitzgerrard’s name is omitted entirely, Phebe’s name is spelled ‘Phoebe’, and the requirement for ‘Apprentices, Servingmen, and Attendants’ is misleading, since the play requires only one apprentice and one page.n10322 Spove further suggests that some of the original manuscript was missing, implying that the prologue was not Brome’s own work. This assertion is based on the printed evidence: that Mad Couple’s prologue and ‘persons of the comedy’ were added by the printer who produced the last two plays to complete the 1653 collection, The City Wit and The Demoiselle. Certainly, Mad Couple’s dramatis personae is a far cry from the presentation copy of The English Moor, which preserves our only known example of the care Brome took in copying one of his plays by hand as a gift for a patron.n10323 Mad Couple’s list contains errors and omissions, as well as additional material supposedly added by the printer himself. Yet there is nothing obviously out of character within the prologue itself, mirroring as it does the strident, confrontational tone of the play’s epilogue, and preparing the audience for a rakish main character who disregards fashion and manners, unless it can gain him financial or sexual advantage. It also neatly parallels the first known reference to Brome in the Induction to Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, once again lurking backstage, though this time as ‘Our poet’ rather than as Jonson’s ‘man’ (Induction, l. 7).n10324Dating9Steggle suggests Mad Couple was written for Salisbury Court but given to William Beeston at the Cockpit instead, possibly being identified as a near-complete play rejected by Salisbury Court at Easter 1639.n10325 Both Bentley and Steggle are convinced that the inclusion of ‘A mad couple well mett’ amongst a list of plays owned by Beeston dated 10 August 1639 refers to A Mad Couple Well Matched.n10326 Bentley further comments that ‘The number of women and boys in the cast of this suggests, however, that it was written for a boy rather than an adult company, i.e. Beeston’s Boys.’n10327 The reference to sedan chairs in 3.1 implies a date after 1635 (for Brome ridicules this mode of transport in The Sparagus Garden of that year).Copy text provided for the printer10Evidence for the play being printed from authorial papers is presented by Spove, who lists three major categories of inconsistencies. The first category notes the variation of speech prefixes, particularly of Nurse Closet (who appears variously as Nurse [MC 2.1.line1168], Closet [MC 3.1.line1738] and Servant [MC 5.2.line1062] [NOTE n2457]). Confusion is also prompted by the similarity between abbreviated forms of Saveall and Saleware [Al for La.]. There are also various errors where speech prefixes are missed altogether (Thrivewell: compare [MC 4.4.speech912.1] and [MC 4.4.line2641]; [NOTE n2160] or the compositor confuses a speech prefix and part of the text (for example in 1.1. where Careless calling Wat’s name means that a speech prefix is missed [MC 1.1.speech109]).n1032811Spove’s second observation involves errors in stage directions, such as missing entrance and exit directions (for example, see [MC 1.1.speech78], [MC 2.1.speech234], [MC 5.2.speech1065]); Spove also mentions that only two asides are marked ([MC 3.1.line1743] and [MC 5.1.line2839], though there is an additional one marked at [MC 4.1.line2301]), despite the play relying heavily on them. Finally, Spove also points to the mixed and inconsistent use of verse printed as prose, and vice versa, suggestive of foul papers (for example, see [MC 3.1.lines1369-1375] compared with [MC 3.1.speech450], and [MC 4.1.lines2121-2124] compared with [MC 4.1.speech693]).12In addition to this internal evidence, Spove also refers to possible external support referenced in dedicatory verses printed in A Jovial Crew (1652), in which Alexander Brome mentions plays kept by the playwright ‘in store’. Spove interprets this as a direct reference to other plays in Brome’s possession (and contributed to Five New Playes the following year, 1653), presumed to include Mad Couple. The printing of the play indicates that the copy text was not a final draft made ready for the printers, but more likely a pre-theatrical text where entrances and exits have yet to be tested practically, and minor details, such as a character’s name, is changed; for example, Sir ‘Oliver’ becomes Sir ‘Anthony’ in Act 5.Press variants13Spove’s list of press variants contains (as feared in her Textual Introduction) several examples of badly inked or damaged type rather than actual examples of variants which might have stopped the press during printing. The best comparison of these press variants was in Washington D.C. where the Folger copies could be compared against the Library of Congress copies.n10329 The comments below refer to observations which depart from Spove’s analysis.B5 Unkle] Unkie Spove records that all three Folger copies are uncorrected, i.e. ‘Unkie’, however the control text does not make it clear that it is definitely an ‘l’ and not simply an over-inked or contaminated ‘i’. The identification of ‘uncorrected’ text is questionable here, as it seems that if the ‘i’ were badly (over-) inked, it could look like an ‘l’ in some copies, therefore rendering the ‘corrected/uncorrected’ distinction redundant. While all Folger copies are clearly ‘i’, the Congress copy is less clear: it could be a damaged ‘l’.B4 curteous] curteou; From consulting the Folger copies against the control text, this does not appear to be a variant, but a badly inked or (more likely) damaged ‘s’, which could look like a semi-colon, but isn’t.C4 but] bu: Again, I don’t believe this to be a variant. According to Spove, a colon is altered to a ‘t’, which is therefore ‘corrected’. However it seems very clear from studying the Folger copies that the ‘t’ present in Fol2 becomes damaged and deteriorates in the printing, becoming more damaged through Fol3 and Fol1 (which actually does look like a colon at first glance).C7 for] fo-r There is some kind of mark which appears in all three Folger copies, however in DFo1 and the Congress copy it is slightly yet significantly lower than in the other two which suggests that it is actually a fleck of dirt rather than a hyphen, however small (and admittedly some of them are very delicate in this text).E6 Lord lik’d] Lord-like’d In correction to Spove, DFo1, 2 and the Congress copies have ‘Lord lik’d’; DFo3 has ‘Lord-lik’d’, the only difference being the hyphen. Although there is no sign of this in the first two copies, it might simply be a case of bad inking, since it seems like a very small thing to stop the press for. However, the ‘d’ of ‘Lord’ is very black in the DFo1-2 & Congress copies. The ‘d’ in the DFo3 copy is damaged in some way, the back of the letter seeming faint and slightly bent; perhaps this was noticed and the hyphen was changed in addition to the ‘d’.F3v open] op n This press variant is actually on E3v (not F3v), where the ‘e’ is damaged on DFo1 and Congress copies, but faintly visible in DFo2 and 3. There are other similar examples on this particular page, for example, ‘i’ in ‘Ladiship’.Composition14Spove identifies two skeleton-formes used for the setting of the play, each with its own compositor, although her study of spelling and punctuation does not provide enough conclusive evidence. Spove notes varied spellings throughout the text: he, hee; me, mee; only, onely; again, agen; praythee, prethee; pieces, peeces. She also notes the italicisation of all proper names, correct Latin quotations and no variance within the printer’s measure which might point to multiple compositors. Shortages of roman ‘I’ are noted, where italic ‘I’ is used in their place. 15Spove bases her assertion that two compositors set the play on the evidence found within the running-titles. Two skeleton-formes were employed as follows: Compositor X (as labelled by Spove) set the inner forme of sheet B, inner C-D,n10330 altered slightly for outer F-G and inner H; Compositor Y: outer B-C, altered slightly for outer D-E, inner F-G and outer H. Spove finds few occasions to differentiate between compositors X and Y, except to comment that Y appears to be less careful in his work.n10331Previous editions16The play is printed in Pearson’s publication of The Dramatic Works of Richard Brome (1873) which appears in three volumes edited by R. H. Shepherd, the first volume reproducing Five New Playes of 1653 (but without notes or commentary). H. R. Walley and J. H. Wilson reproduce this reprint in Early Seventeenth-Century Plays (1930) and the play also appears in A. S. Knowland, Six Caroline Plays (1962) which presents the text based on one of the Bodleian library copies (and again without annotational apparatus). Steen H. Spove’s Critical Old-Spelling Edition of Richard Brome’s A Mad Couple Well Match’d (1973) is a Garland printing of her doctoral dissertation and contains a thorough critical and textual introduction, with full historical collation and list of press variants.n10332 In contrast with this old spelling text, Anton-Ranieri Parra has produced a modern spelling edition of the play with a short introduction and limited annotations which also provides an Italian translation on each facing page of text (1983). Both of these last editions provide the notes at the back, presenting a clean text, but also requiring movement back and forth within the edition. This difficulty is overcome by making the notes more instantly accessible in the new online edition of the play.
n10315 The first extant printed version of A Mad Couple Well Matched was printed soon after Brome’s death in an octavo collection of plays published in 1653 by Alexander Brome entitled Five New Playes.
n10316 W. W. Greg suggests that these three plays (Mad Couple, Novella and Beggar) are the work of one printer, while another press had to complete the job by printing the last two plays and providing the preliminaries of the collection and Mad Couple’s Prologue and list of characters (which were missing either because they were omitted or lost).
n10317 The title pages for The Novella and The Court Beggar both add the detail that the shops of Marriot and Dring were in Fleet Street;
n10318 those for The City Wit and The Demoiselle additionally state that the plays were printed by T. R., who is generally held to be Thomas Roycroft.
n10319 Greg suggests that Moseley came late into the process, since his name is only mentioned on the general title page, and not on any of the individual title pages.
n10320 There are currently 29 known extant copies of the play in the 1653 collection at the following locations [* indicates copies consulted]:
n10321 National Library of Scotland
n10322 Spove points to several errors in Mad Couple’s dramatis personae which support Greg’s analysis that it was provided by the printer at the end of the printing process (even though the prologue probably is by Brome the playwright): Sir Oliver Thrivewell is named as ‘Valentine’, Fitzgerrard’s name is omitted entirely, Phebe’s name is spelled ‘Phoebe’, and the requirement for ‘Apprentices, Servingmen, and Attendants’ is misleading, since the play requires only one apprentice and one page.
n10323 Certainly, Mad Couple’s dramatis personae is a far cry from the presentation copy of The English Moor, which preserves our only known example of the care Brome took in copying one of his plays by hand as a gift for a patron.
n10324 It also neatly parallels the first known reference to Brome in the Induction to Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair, once again lurking backstage, though this time as ‘Our poet’ rather than as Jonson’s ‘man’ (Induction, l. 7).
n10325 Steggle suggests Mad Couple was written for Salisbury Court but given to William Beeston at the Cockpit instead, possibly being identified as a near-complete play rejected by Salisbury Court at Easter 1639.
n10326 Both Bentley and Steggle are convinced that the inclusion of ‘A mad couple well mett’ amongst a list of plays owned by Beeston dated 10 August 1639 refers to A Mad Couple Well Matched.
n10327 Bentley further comments that ‘The number of women and boys in the cast of this suggests, however, that it was written for a boy rather than an adult company, i.e. Beeston’s Boys.’
n10328 There are also various errors where speech prefixes are missed altogether (Thrivewell: compare [MC 4.4.speech912.1] and [MC 4.4.line2641]; [NOTE n2160] or the compositor confuses a speech prefix and part of the text (for example in 1.1. where Careless calling Wat’s name means that a speech prefix is missed [MC 1.1.speech109]).
n10329 The best comparison of these press variants was in Washington D.C. where the Folger copies could be compared against the Library of Congress copies.
n10330 Compositor X (as labelled by Spove) set the inner forme of sheet B, inner C-D,
n10331 Spove finds few occasions to differentiate between compositors X and Y, except to comment that Y appears to be less careful in his work.
n10332 Steen H. Spove’s Critical Old-Spelling Edition of Richard Brome’s A Mad Couple Well Match’d (1973) is a Garland printing of her doctoral dissertation and contains a thorough critical and textual introduction, with full historical collation and list of press variants.