The Northern Lass
Textual Introduction1The Northern Lass was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 24 March 1632 [i.e. 1631 old style dating] as ‘a Comedy called the Northerne Lasse by master BROOME’.n10149 It was published later that same year in quarto form with the following titlepage:THE / NORTHERN / LASSE, / A / COMOEDIE. // As it hath beene often Acted with good / Applause, at the Globe, and Black-Fryers. By his / Maiesties Servants. // Written by RICHARD BROME. // Hic totus volo rideat Libellus. Mart. // LONDON: / Printed by AVG; MATHEVVES, and are to / be sold by NICHOLAS VAVASOVR, dwelling / at the little South dore of St. Pauls Church. / 1632.2The epigram is from Martial’s Epigrams 11.15 and translates: ‘I wish this little book to laugh from end to end, and be naughtier than all my little books.’n101503It is this edition that has been used as the copytext for the modern edition provided here, with Huntington Library copy 60497 as the base reference text (i.e. that available through Early English Books Online).4The collation is as follows: Quarto, A-L4, and M2 (with B3 misprinted as A3), 46 leaves, unnumbered. The Title is on A1r; ‘The Persons in the Comedie’ are listed on A1v. On A2r-A2v appears the dedication ‘TO THE RIGHT WORTHY AND NO LESSE IVDI-cious then ingenious Gentleman RICHARD HOLFORD Esquire’, signed ‘RIC. BROME.’. Three pages of commendatory verses follow. The text of the play starts on B1r with the head title THE NORTHERN LASSE.5Fried speculates that the running titles which exist in two forms - The Northern Lasse from B1v-F4v and The Northerne Lasse from G1r-L4v - indicate the presence of at least two compositorial hands in this quarto, possibly even using the different spellings to differentiate their work.n101516There are extant copies of the 1632 quarto identified in the following libraries and archives (abbreviations are provided where these texts have been collated or are referred to in the body of this essay]: British Library - 3 copies - 644.d.31 [BL1]; 643.6.18(6) [BL2]; Ashley 148 [Wise] [BL3]
Bodleian Library, Oxford - 2 copies - Mal. 167 (2) and Quarto, T 38 (3) Art.
Dyce Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum - 26 Box 50/9
National Library of Scotland - H.28.e.q.(6)
Worcester College, Oxford
Chapin Collection, Williams College, Massachusetts [WC]
Library of Congress - PR2439.B5.N5 [LC]
Folger Shakespeare Library - cs1279 [F]
Houghton Library, Harvard - STC 3819 [H]
Huntington Library, California - 2 copies - Rare books 60497 [HL1] and 60498 [HL2]
Newberry Library, Chicago - Y 135. B7837 [N]
Firestone Library, Princeton - Rare Books, RHT Collection 17th-48 [P] Texas [T]
Beinecke, Yale - 2 copies - 1977 2708 [Y1] and B787 632 [Y2]7NB: It is not clear which of the two Yale copies Fried consulted for this purposes of his Garland edition.8For the purposes of this edition 10 copies have been collated. I consulted the following: British Library - 2 copies - 644.d.31 [BL 1] and 643.6.18 (6) [BL2]
Beinecke, Yale - 2 copies - 1977 2708 [Y1] and B787 632 [Y2]
Chapin Collection, Williams College, Massachusetts [WC]
Huntington Library - 2 copies - 60497 [HL1] and 60498 [HL2]
Firestone Library, Princeton - Rare Books, RHT Collection 17th-48 [P]
Library of Congress - PR2439.B5.N5 [LC]
Folger Shakespeare Library - cs1279n10152 [F]9This work has been checked and cross-referenced against Harvey Fried’s work in the Garland edition, for which purposes he consulted the following US copies: the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Library of Congress, the Houghton Library, Harvard University, the Chapin Collection at Williams College, the Sterling Memorial Library at Yale, and the Newberry in Chicago. No differences were found in the processes of cross-checking and therefore Fried’s initial findings were deemed absolutely sound, although I have supplemented and supported them with reference to copies in the British Library and the Huntington Library.10While there are several stop-press variants between these copies, few are substantive. The majority of stop-press corrections appear in the outer forme of K. It is here, particularly in the final act, that all the extant copies consulted for this edition have incorrect scene numbering. Brome apparently preferred the ‘classical’ numbering of scenes in printed versions of his plays; that is, a new scene number was given when a new character made an entrance in the scene. However, in practice, in Brome’s flowing, highly populated plays, this could make acts look quite confusing to the eye on the page with rapid scenes sometimes consisting of just a few lines or even a speech. As a result it also led to confusion in the printing house and numbers got confused here as well as in other quarto printings of his plays: The Sparagus Garden (1635) exhibits similar problems, again in the final act or outer forme. Because this edition, in preference for a version of the plays that reflects their flowing dramaturgy rather than classical printing conventions, has opted to delete all these scene numbers, they have been silently removed in the edition proper, although comparison with the quarto edition is possible for users to make simply by calling up the quarto alongside the modern text on the screen.11Many of the other examples of stop-press corrections on K in The Northern Lass are instances of substitutions of upper case for lower case letters or alterations to the punctuation, though Fried discusses a particular instance on K3r where the compositor has been careful to make sure the last lines and catchword on a page match to avoid confusion even though the stop-press corrections might have altered that final line. Fried records that in the Yale and Williams College copies (both consulted for this edition), part of a speech appears thus:slip away with her in your Coach, where
Master Tridewell hath appointed, till the Euening; and let me
alone to scuffle with the old man the while. And then I doubt
not12whereas in the Harvard copy it reads:slip you away with her in your Coach,
where M. Tridewell hath appointed, till the Euening; and let me
alone to scuffle with the old man the while. And then I doubt
notn1015313The subtle addition of ‘you’ could have impacted on that crucial final line so an experienced compositor contracts Master to M. accordingly. Fried suggests an authorial hand could be read into this but his narrative of an experienced proof reader is equally viable.14There are several stage direction variants on the outer forme of K. On K4v, Fried observes that one stage direction survives in three states:Act. V. Sce. V.
Enter Squelch to Fitchow. [H, F, BL1, HL1, HL2]Act. V. Sce. VI.
Enter Squelch. [Y, WC, N, and BL2]Act. V. Sce. V.
Enter Squelch to Holdup. [LC]15The unique third state in the Library of Congress copy is simply erroneous since Holdup does not appear in this scene. A fuller record of these SD variants on the Sig. K appears below. Fried’s conjecture is that ‘when a second compositor loosened the furniture to make his corrections in the text of both K1r and K3r the stage directions in the outer forme were misplaced, or jarred loose, and then incorrectly replaced.’n10154 Alternatively, he suggests that these variants may just indicate haste on the part of the compositor in identifying scene numbers. The relative minor variations between copies which makes it impossible to identify certain ones as early or late in the print-run would seem to endorse the ‘loosening’ idea and that an ongoing process of correcting that problem took place.16Whatever the full story of these particular instances, this is a relatively clean printing of the play (as is the case with many Caroline playtexts) and I have opted as editor to treat collation notes within the edition itself with a relatively light touch, providing a fuller list of the stop-press variants here.E1v line 8
‘insuing Intertude’ is a compositorial error and appears in all copies of Q checked.E4v line 4
‘lately’ is wrongly printed as ‘latyel’ with the final ‘el’ upside down in all copies of Q checked.G2r
line 10 ‘Song’ appears at the end of the first line of the song in H, BL1, WC, and HL2. In Y1 and Y2, BL2, and HL1 it appears at the start of the first line.H1r lines 2-3
‘my Lady Fidle- / dees Butler.’ in all copies checked. Fried notes the exception of H, which reads, ‘Lady Fidle- / dets Butler.’ [a straightforward compositor’s error rather than a significant variant]K1r 9SD
Enter Squelch to Holdup. [F, H, HL1, HL2, BL1, BL2]
Enter Squelch. [WC, LC, N, Y]K1r lines 11-12
‘a Man of Authori- / ty,’ [HL1, HL2, H, BL1, BL2];
‘a Man of authori- / ty,’ [Y, WC]K2v line 34SD
Act. V. Scene II.
Enter Traynewell and Lucklesse to them. [H, F, LC, BL1, BL2, HL2]Act. V. Scene II.
Enter Traynwell and Lucklesse. [Y, WC, HL1, N]K3r
‘slip away with her in your Coach, where /Master’ [WC, Y];
‘slip you away with her in your Coach, / where M. [H, HL1, HL2]K4r
Act. V. Sce. V.
Wrongly numbered - should be V.iv.K4vAct. V. Sce. V.
Enter Squelch to Fitchow. [H, F, BL1, HL1, HL2]Act. V. Sce. VI.
Enter Squelch.[Y, WC, N, and BL2]Act. V. Sce. V.
Enter Squelch to Holdup.[LC]L1vAct. V. Sce. VII.
Wrongly numbered - should be V.vi.L2vAct. V. Sce. VIII.
Wrongly numbered - should be V.vii.17The textual history of The Northern Lass is relatively quiet. Having enjoyed a reasonably clean 1632 printing, the play was reprinted in quarto versions in 1663 (published by A. Moseley in London) and 1684 (published by D. Newman in London). In the eighteenth century, as a direct result of its popularity on the stage in versions with additional music and song, the play went through a series of editions: in 1706 being published in London by ‘H.N.’ as ‘The Northern Lass, Or, The Nest of Fools, A Comedy, As it is now Acted by Her Majesty’s Servants at the Theatre-Royal in Drury Lane’; and again by that title by ‘E.P.’ [no date] and by A. Bettesworth ‘As it is now acted by His Majesty’s Servants’ in 1717. The eighteenth-century subtitle is intriguing and suggests that some of what also contributed to the play’s commercial success at that time were the comic scenes involving Wigeon and Anvil (they proved equally popular with the Globe Theatre audience for the staged reading in 2008). There was a further edition in 1726 in Dublin by S. Powell and the play was included in what is called the ‘Pearson edition’ of Brome’s Dramatic Works published in three volumes in 1873. The Pearson edition is relatively faithful to the 1632 quarto, which is notable for its detailed stage directions, meaning that there was no need for heavy editorial intervention with this text, which is more usually the case with nineteenth-century editions of Caroline drama. The few specific changes that were made I have tended not to adopt, preferring either the quarto readings or newly modernized versions of the text (as recorded in the textual notes to the play).18It is necessary here to note treatment in the edition of Brome’s phonetic representation of the Yorkshire dialect of Constance, the Northern lass. I have only modernized where there is no possible impact upon pronunciation or metre. This is directly comparable to my practice in The Sparagus Garden, where large swathes of dialect appear, and the work of my fellow editors in this edition on plays such as The Late Lancashire Witches, which have a high proportion of dialect speech.19Fried’s Garland edition offers a historical collation tied to the early quarto editions,n10155 but other than his own very thorough 1980 edition, The Northern Lass has not enjoyed a scholarly or acting edition until this point in time. It is hoped that with the provision of a less cluttered text, freed of the heavy apparatus of classical scene division, and with the minor printing errors quietly tidied up, a rich and lively performance text may once again come into its own on the stage where it belongs.Preliminary and paratextual materials to the 1632 quarto20The paratextual materials to the 1632 quarto of The Northern Lass are intriguing indicators of Brome’s professional status at the time when the play went into print. The success of the play on the stage in 1629 has already been noted and was initially the cause of considerable professional rivalry between Brome and his former mentor, Ben Jonson. In his dedicatory poem here, however, Jonson makes up for some earlier more grudging comments in manuscript versions of his ‘Ode to Himself’, acknowledging the proper ‘apprenticeship’ that his servant ‘Dick Brome’ served under his guidance and distinguishing him from other amateur courtly playwrights of the Caroline era. Thomas Dekker, another great Elizabethan playwright, makes similar pains to separate Brome from other lesser writers in his poem. It is not certain that the ‘John Ford’ who also contributes a poem to the volume is the Caroline playwright, although the connections between his and Brome’s work at this time are worthy of mention - both this play and Ford’s The Lover’s Melancholy are deeply indebted to Robert Burton’s 1621 prose text The Anatomy of Melancholy. Other contributors have not been firmly identified, though earlier critical suggestions that ‘St. Br.’ - whose contribution refers to Brome as a ‘brother’ - was ‘Stephen Brome’, an otherwise unlocatable family member have now been squarely refuted. Matthew Steggle’s recent analysis of the dedicatory material to the play asserts that ‘St. Br.’ is unlikely to be a blood relative and proposes instead Stephen Bradwell, a physician and friend of Brome’s collaborator Thomas Heywood.n10157 This theory raises intriguing links to the quasi-medical themes of the play.21The patron appealed to in the dedicatory letter is Richard Holford, a Grays’ Inn lawyer, and this is interesting not least because it positions Brome as part of the highly theatrical circle revolving around Gray’s Inn networks in the 1620s and 1630s and which also involve Jonson, James Shirley, and Thomas Randolph.DedicationTo the Right Worthy and no less judicious than ingenious gentleman, Richard Holford, Esquire.n10158Sir, rich friends may send you rich presents, while poor ones have nothing but good wishes to present you. Though I be one of the last rank, and therefore cannot do like the first, yet it is my ambition to bring more than bare wishes with me, to one of whom I have received real favours. A country lass I present you, that Minerva-like was a brain-born child,n10159 and jovially begot, though now she seeks her fortune. She came out of the cold north, thinly clad: but wit had pity on her, action apparelled her, and plaudits clapped her cheeks warm.n10160 She is honest, and modest, though she speak broad;n10161 and though art never strung her tongue, yet once it yielded delightful sound, which gained her many lovers and friends, by whose good liking she prosperously lived, until her late long silence, and discontinuancen10162 (to which she was compelled) gave her justly to fear their love, and her own decay. Wherefore she, now, desirous to settle herself in some worthy service and no way willing (like some of further breed) to return from this southern sunshine, back to her native air, I thought it might become my care (having first brought and estranged her from her country) to sue, with her, for your noble patronage; of whom, she hears, (if flattery abuse her not) she hath, heretofore, gotten some good opinion. Your love to witty and pleasant recreations of this nature hath brought her on, and northern spirits will soon wax bold. If you be pleased to accept of her, she will travel no further, but, together with myself, remain ever at your service
RIC[HARD]. BROME.Dedicatory PoemsTo my old faithful servant: and, by his continued virtue, my loving friend: the author of this work, Master Rich[ard] Brome.I had you for a servant once, Dick Brome;n10163
And you performed a servant’s faithful parts,
Now, you are got into a nearer room,
Of fellowship, professing my old arts.
And you do do them well, with good applause,n101645
Which you have justly gainèd from the stage,
By observation of those comic laws
Which I, your master, first did teach the age.
You learned it well, and for it served your time
A prenticeship,n10165 which few do nowadays.10
Now each court hobby-horse will wince in rhyme;n10166
Both learnèd, and unlearnèd, all write plays.
It was not so of old: men took up trades
That knew the crafts they had been bred in, right:
An honest bilbo-smithn10167 would make good blades,15
And the physician teach men spew, or shite;
The cobbler kept him to his nall;n10168 but, now
He’ll be a pilot, scarce can guide a plough.
BEN. JONSON.
To his approved friend Master RICHARD BROME on his Northern Lass.What! wilt thou prostitute thy mistress, friend,
And make so rich a beauty common?n10169 What end
Dost thou propose? She was thine own, but now
All will enjoy her free: ’tis strange that thou
Canst brook so many rivals in thy lady,5
Whose wit and beauty does her sex surpass.
I’ve learnt it; Thou hast tried her, found her chaste,
And fear’st not that she’ll lewdly be embraced.
And now thou send’st her to be seen, and see
If any be like fair, like good as she.10
F. T. Mag. Art. Oxon.n10170
To his ingenious brother,n10171 Master Rich[ard] Brome, upon this witty issue of his brain, the Northern Lass.Although I call you by a brother’s name
I must confess (nor do I fear the shame)
I am in love with your fair daughter, this,
As fair conditioned as her father is.
Well met abroad, blithe, bonny Northern Lass:5
Thy natural beauties others far surpass
That are enriched with fucusesn10172 of art,
Thy witty sweetness bears so fair a part.
Not a good woman, nor a girl worth gold,
Nor twenty such (whose gaudy shows take hold10
Of gazing eyes) shall in acceptance thrive
With thee, whose quaintness is superlative.
Dick may be proud she’s daughter to no other;
As I am proud that I have such a brother.
St. Br.
Of Master Richard Brome his ingenious comedy, the Northern Lass: To the reader.Poets and painters curiously compared,
Give life to fancy and achieve reward
By immortality of name: so thrives
Art’s glory, that all what it breathes on lives.
Witness this northern piece. The court affords5
No newer fashion, or for wit, or words.
The body of the plot is drawn so fair,
That the soul’s language quickens, with fresh air.
This well limbed poem, by no rate, or thought
Too dearly prized, being orn10173 sold, or bought.10
John Fordn10174
To my son Brome and his lass.Which, then of both shall I commend?
Orn10173 thee (that art my son and friend)
Or her, by thee begot? A girl
Twice worth the Cleopatrian pearl.
No; ’tis not fit for me to grace5
Thee, who art mine; and to thy face.
Yet I could say, the merriest maid
Among the nine,n10176 for thee has laid
A garland by and jeers to see Pied idiots tear the Daphnean tree;10
Putting their eyes out with those boughs
With which she bids me deck thy brows.n10177
But what I bring shall crown thy daughter
(My grandchild) who (though full of laughter)
Is chaste and witty to the time;15
Not lumpish-cold, as is her clime.
By Phoebus’ lyre, thy northern lass
Our southern proudest beauties pass:
Be jovial with thy brains (her mother)n10178
And help her, Dick, to such another.20
Tho[mas]. Dekkern10179
To his known friend Master Richard Brome, on his Northern Lass.My love may wrong thee, friend; and, should I praise
Thy book, I fear ’twould stain the wreathing baysn10180
That crowns thy head; no, they that know, can tell
This piece craves not a bribing prayer to sell.
Here’s beauty, wit, and language in a glass.5
Who would not have a copy of this lass?
F. T.n10181
n10149 The Northern Lass was entered in the Stationers’ Register on 24 March 1632 [i.e. 1631 old style dating] as ‘a Comedy called the Northerne Lasse by master BROOME’.
n10150 The epigram is from Martial’s Epigrams 11.15 and translates: ‘I wish this little book to laugh from end to end, and be naughtier than all my little books.’
n10151 possibly even using the different spellings to differentiate their work.
n10152 Folger Shakespeare Library - cs1279
n10153 not
n10154 then incorrectly replaced.’
n10155 Fried’s Garland edition offers a historical collation tied to the early quarto editions,
n10157 Stephen Bradwell, a physician and friend of Brome’s collaborator Thomas Heywood.
n10158 To the Right Worthy and no less judicious than ingenious gentleman, Richard Holford, Esquire.
n10159 A country lass I present you, that Minerva-like was a brain-born child,
n10160 plaudits clapped her cheeks warm.
n10161 broad;
n10162 discontinuance
n10163 Dick Brome;
n10164 And you do do them well, with good applause,
n10165 A prenticeship,
n10166 Now each court hobby-horse will wince in rhyme;
n10167 An honest bilbo-smith
n10168 The cobbler kept him to his nall;
n10169 And make so rich a beauty common?
n10170 F. T. Mag. Art. Oxon.
n10171 To his ingenious brother,
n10172 fucuses
n10173 or
n10174 John Ford
n10173 Or
n10176 Among the nine,
n10177 With which she bids me deck thy brows.
n10178 Be jovial with thy brains (her mother)
n10179 Tho[mas]. Dekker
n10180 the wreathing bays
n10181 F. T.