The Sparagus Garden
Textual Essay1On 20 July 1635 Richard Brome signed a three year contract with the Salisbury Court Theatre company to provide three plays a year including prologues and epilogues in return for a salary of fifteen shillings a week plus the first day’s profits from performances of the plays themselves.n10246 The Sparagus Garden was one of those plays and proved to be a huge success. We know about the play’s large profits in 1635 because they became a key factor in a lawsuit pursued by the Salisbury Court Theatre company against Brome when he failed to fulfil the terms of his contract in full and they in turn refused to renew their relationship with him. The suit implies that the profits from the play had amounted to as much as a thousand pounds, although Matthew Steggle implies that this is ‘legal hyperbole’ on Brome’s part.n10247 It is intriguing that this is the exact sum of money that is bandied about on stage in Act 5 of the play, when Sir Arnold Cautious seeks to free himself from marriage to Annabel Striker who he assumes not only to be ‘soiled goods’ as a wife, but heavily pregnant into the bargain. All this in a play deeply aware of the significance and yet essential adaptability of legal contracts — the side-switching figure of Ambodexter Trampler, the lawyer, is suitable testimony to this fact. Was this loaded amount made such a focus of the play’s denouement in the copy provided to Okes for printing in 1640 in order to remind those in the know of the legal dispute with the Salisbury Court Theatre? Certainly it is a huge sum for Cautious to be offering in context. The possible link to the legal suit is an intriguing if ultimately unprovable point, although 1640 is the date of Brome’s deposition concerning the contract. The play was entered on the Stationers’ Register on 19 March 1640 (new style dating).2What is certain is the 1638 renewal of Brome’s contract with the Salisbury Court went unsigned and in that year, following a period of closure for plague, the company found itself incorporated into William Beeston’s Queen’s Majesties Servants at the Cockpit Theatre on Drury Lane. Beeston appears to have persuaded Brome to make the move with them, despite the obvious falling out that had taken place. These protracted legal wranglings may explain why this play was not printed until some five years after its first performance which is not usual practice with Brome plays (and indeed Caroline plays by James Shirley and others) which tend to come into print quite soon after being performed.3The titlepage of the 1640 quarto reads as follows:THE / SPARAGVS / Garden: // A COMEDIE. // Acted in the yeare 1635. by the then Company of Revels, at Salisbury / Court. // The Author Richard Brome. // Hic totus vole rideat Libellus. Mart. // LONDON: / Printed by J. Okes, for Francis Constable, and / are to be sold at his shops in Kings- / street at the signe of the Goat, / and in Westminster-hall. 1640.4The 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.’ The same epigramn10248 appears on the 1632 titlepage of The Northern Lass suggesting that Brome came to enjoy the particular association it had with his plays in print.5In its 1640 printed version, The Sparagus Garden is made up of 47 scenes. This is because it has been set out according to ‘classical’ conventions whereby a new scene indicates the entrance of a new character. On the page this starts to look very busy to the eye, especially in the context of Brome’s plays which tend to have a high number of characters and flowing dramaturgy within each act, which leads to a large number of new character entries. An historicist reading of this tendency towards a high number of characters making entrances in a single act might also suggest that this dramaturgic practice reflected something of the genuine life and rhythm of life in the capital city, which plays such as The Northern Lass, The Sparagus Garden, and others sought to reflect and reflect upon. What we cannot deduce from the elaborate scenic division of The Sparagus Garden in print is any dramatic development by Brome as a practitioner of theatre. While it is true that The Antipodes, also published in 1640, adheres to classical scenic divisions, the ‘classicizing’ approach could be as much the method favoured by the particular printers involved — in the case of The Sparagus Garden ‘J. Okes for Francis Constable’. For modern editors the simpler version as deployed in the quarto of The Weeding of Covent Garden (which has, by comparison, only 11 scenes) is far more preferable, allowing that aforementioned flowing choreography of scenes to appear on the page without all the complicating furniture of scene numbering and divisions. Here in The Sparagus Garden this is most notable in the third act, which I have rendered as one single flowing scene rather than the ten scenes it appeared as in the 1640 quarto. 6As in the textual essay to The Northern Lass (first published in quarto in 1632) the comparatively fussy scenic numbering encouraged by ‘classical’ practice regularly led to confusion among the compositorial team, especially when furniture for formes became knocked or dislodged for some reason. The numbering of scenes in the fifth act of The Northern Lass is erratic and often erroneous across the various extant copies consulted for the purposes of collation of that play and The Sparagus Garden extant quarto copies share similar problems in the arrangement and presentation of the fourth and fifth act, where scene numbering is sometimes squeezed into the right margin almost as an afterthought and some mis-numbering enters into the sequence, presumably as a result.7The collation is: Title page on A1r, blank verso; Dedication on A2; commendatory verses on A3; Prologue on A4 (plus Epilogue in 15 extant copies, see below for details); B-L4 bears the text with the Epilogue on L4v below the play’s conclusion.n102498Greg identified only two distinct states of the variants in the 1640 edition of the play and this is largely dependent on the setting of the Epilogue, which in some copies appears not only at the end of the volume as would be traditional but also directly underneath the Prologue on A4r. What seems clear from this is that in the early period of the play’s setting in formes, the printer was initially unsure about the play’s length and the page space required. He hedged his bets, according to McClure, by printing both Prologue and Epilogue on A4.n10250 Then as the setting moved on and it appeared that there would be room on L4v for the Epilogue without beginning another forme, the Epilogue was removed from subsequent printings of A4. 15 of the 25 extant copies have the A4 occurrence of the Epilogue and therefore can be regarded as the earlier copies from the run. Related anxieties about available space on the forme explains the tightly compressed lines that occur in the latter pages of Act 5 and the pushing of scene numbering there (quite elaborate in this volume as already mentioned) into the margins to save wasting line space. These are the practical effects of a working print-room and, exciting access though these variants give us to the quotidian culture of printing, stop-press variants of these kinds do not give any insight into authorial practice or intention.9Extant copies of the 1640 Q have been identified as follows: Bodleian Library, Oxford — 3 copies — Douce B subst. 260 [Bodl 1]*; Mal. 166 (7) [Bodl 2]*; Mal. B 165 (5) [Bodl 3]*
British Library — 5 copies — 643.c.57 [BL1]; 162.c.22 [BL2]; 1473.bb.4 [BL3]*; Ashley 149 [BL4]; Ashley 150 [BL5]
Boston — G.3810.63 [Bos]
Cornell University — Kroch PR2439.B5 S7 [Corn]
Eton [E]*
Folger Shakespeare Library — cs392 [F]*
Harvard, Houghton Library — 2 copies — STC 3820 (A) [H1]*; STC 3820 (B) [H2]*
Huntington Library — 2 copies — 60502 [HL1]*; HL 60503 [HL2]
Library of Congress — PR 1241.L6 [LC]*
National Library of Scotland — 3 copies — H.28.e.q.(5) [NLS1]; Abott.52 [NLS2]; Bute.51 [NLS3]
Newberry Library, Chicago — Y 135 B7838 [N]
Pennsylviania — EC6.B7877.640s [Penn]
Texas — 2 copies — no shelfmarks [T1]*; [T2]*
Victoria and Albert Museum, Dyce Collection — Dyce 25.A.51 [V&A,]*
Williams College, Chapin Library — 1 copy STC 3820 [WC]
Worcester College, Oxford [W]*
Yale, Beinecke — Ih B787 640s [Y]*NB: a * indicates that they bear the two impressions of the Epilogue on A4r and L4v. There are 15 such copies, confirming McClure’s statistics. All others which it was possible to check contain a single impression of the Epilogue on L4v suggesting these occurred later in the print process. The abbreviated forms provided in square brackets are used henceforth in this essay to refer to specific copies.10A Dyce copy in the Victoria and Albert Museum is mentioned by McClure but he was unable to locate it and this is no longer listed by the V&A, although there is no record of its sale. I have therefore not included this in the list provided above. McClure also noted that the Pennsylvania copy was not locatable. I have however been able to consult the Williams College, Chapin library edition which McClure was unable to see at the time of his edition, which did not reveal any new variants but does confirm that the copy is a second state version, with the Epilogue appearing only the once on L4v. It would also appear that he did not consult the copy identified as HL1 (Huntington Library) since this shares a number of variants with the V&A, Dyce copy which McClure marks as unique. For the purposes of this edition I have collated 7 copies of the 1640 Q, as follows: BL1, 2, and 3 [this latter was W.W. Greg’s edition]; HL1; LC; F; and WC. The only substantial differences to McClure exist in the ability of this edition to confirm the particular state of the WC copy and the addition of the record of the rare occurrence of specific variants in HL1.11As McClure records, the D gathering is a site of a particular clustering of press variants in the extant copies but only one of these is substantive. So, as seems particularly common with Caroline drama, the 1640 quartos, even in their slightly variant states, represent a relatively clean version of the play and for these reasons the quarto has been used as the copytext for this edition, with particular reference to the Huntington Library copy HL1 (available on Early English Books Online, though with the early sections of the play missing) as a base reference point. The cross-checking has confirmed that McClure’s work is thorough and sound and there is little sense in repeating that work here, although his recording of the variants can be a little erratic in terms of detail provided. Users are referred to his edition for a fuller historical collation.12One interesting unique compositorial occurrence not discussed by McClure occurs in the speech prefixes early on, when in the first scene of the play a speech prefix appears as Ambo. This does not recur elsewhere in the play as a speech prefix although ambo does occur in a stage direction at 3.646. Here two characters exit together and referring this instance back onto the speech prefix, this indicates that the usage is from the Latin meaning ‘both’ and that the implication is that Gilbert and Walter should speak this line in unison. (There was a very slim possibility that reference to Ambodexter Trampler, the lawyer, who is more usually referred to as Tram. in the speech prefixes, was occurring but since there is no indication of his presence this early in the play and due to the clear correlation with the later stage direction that possible reading has been discarded). I have reassigned the speech at 1.1.13 accordingly to Gilbert and Walter. There are other slips around speech prefixes in the printed quartos, including the switch mid-scene of Reb. to Wif. in reference to Rebecca Brittleware in Act 3 (from G3v onwards in quarto).13The only unique variants identified by McClure appear in the Library of Congress copy, in one of the Texas copies, and in the lone locatable Dyce copy in the Victoria and Albert Museum.n10251 These appear on C2v, D2r, and D4v respectively — details below. I have been able to add to this information the fact that the D2r and D4v variants also appear in one of the Huntington Library copies — 60502 (HL1) — which McClure did not consult. This strange variation makes it difficult to read the timeline for the production of these copies but would imply that the uncorrected HL1 is earlier than either Dyce or Texas 1 or 2. The variants are as follows: A4r — 15 extant copies have the Epilogue here printed directly below the Prologue [Bodl 1, 2, and 3; BL3; E; F; H1 and 2; HL1; LC; T1 and 2; V&A,; W; Y] C2v — 15SD ‘Scene. Enter Sam’ all copies except LC which has ‘Scene 6. E Sam.’ D2r — line 6 — ‘furnished with’ all copies except T1 or 2(?) and HL1 which read ‘furnished withal’ D4v — line 34 — ‘she as’ in all copies checked except V&A and HL1 which read ‘she was’ [the adopted reading in this edition].14The other interesting features of the 1640 quarto are not variants but particular aspects of the printing process. The anxiety of the printer about the length of the text can be registered, as already noted, in the compression of lines in the outer formes as well as the variation of practice over the Epilogue. The complicated scenic divisions discussed at the outset of this essay also lead to some mis-numbering particularly in the fourth and fifth acts (a common occurrence it seems, since similar problems manifested themselves in Act 5 of the 1632 quarto of The Northern Lass.) From 4.6 onwards (H4v), the printer frequently squeezes in scene references in the right margin, alongside the opening line of that scene and often with an accompanying, heavily abbreviated stage direction (for example here: Scene 6 / Ent. Annab. / and kneels. which is tightly compressed into the right margin over the space of three lines). This is either an indication of the compositor having forgotten this new scene or an additional effort at space saving. But it introduces additional errors. On I2r Scene 8 is wrongly identified as Act 4. Scene 2. in the right margin (again with compressed stage directions) and this leads to subsequent misnumbering of the scenes for the rest of this act (that is, Scene 8 on I2v should be Scene 9 ; Scene 9 on I3r should be Scene 10; Scene 10 on I3v should be Scene 11; Scene 11 on K1r should be Scene 12).15Other observations can be made on the particular contingencies of the printing process — at some point the shop must have suffered a damaged ‘I’ since a replacement ‘J’ is used in many of the formes; some of the confused pointing of the edition may also simply be a product of broken or damaged type although Brome’s plays do exhibit a strange predilection for the colon or semi-colon in preference to the period stop. He also tends to use an exclamation mark as a direct equivalent to the questionmark, not unlike Jonson, his great mentor in this respect. These kinds of details have been silently modernized in this edition. There is the intriguing slip in the middle of Act 3, already mentioned, where the speech prefix for Rebecca Brittleware (usually Reb.) becomes the generic Wif. This may simply signal a change in compositor and the entrance into the process of someone less familiar with the play. The irony is that Rebecca is anything but a generic wife character in this play; her agency along with her speech prefix has been an important part of this edition and its workshopping with actors. It is good to see a modern edition able finally to redress the balance of the scene in her favour!16In the specific instance of phonetic representation of the Somerset dialect of Tom Hoyden and Coulter in this play, I have only modernized where there is no possible impact upon pronunciation or metre (though on the whole their speeches are rendered in prose). This is directly comparable with my treatment of Constance’s Yorkshire dialect in The Northern Lass and the approach of other editors in this edition who are working on plays such as The Late Lancashire Witches which contain a high proportion of dialect speech. 17The edition of The Sparagus Garden which appears in the 1873 Pearson edition of Brome’s Dramatic Works is the only other edition of the play aside from McClure’s and is reasonably faithful to the quarto. The 1640 edition can easily be read alongside my modernised text in this edition and therefore the textual collations have been kept light throughout, recording only substantial variants or changes. For the most part I have opted for modern versions of words where there is the possibility of obscuring sense — the particular examples here being the rendering of the text’s ‘purslane’ for porcelain (see, for example, the reference in 2.2 (D2r) and the reference by Rebecca in 5.8 to Cautious’ prospective bride, Annabel, being the ‘purest piece of Purslane’ (L1r)). In a text so full of references to foodstuffs and china the possibility of confusing the material object/commodity with the salad leaf was high and I am following McClure’s precedent in making this change. Initially I also updated references such as ‘pompeons’ for pumpkins but reverted back for consistency with other plays in the collection where the retention of the term was vital for reason of metrics. Perhaps one of the most heartfelt discussions that was had around the modernised text of this play was over its title. It is an unusual fact that although Brome opts for ‘Sparagus’ in his title, a common term for asparagus in the 1630s, his preference in the play proper is actually for ‘asparagus’. Jean Howard in her important recent book Theater of a City has opted to fully update the play title accordingly to The Asparagus Garden.n10252 There was good reason to follow suit; however, the arguments eventually weighed in favour of retention of the original. There is the simple case of retaining the lexical variation of a previous age, crucial for a writer like Brome who chooses all his terms so carefully. In addition it has enabled a distinction between the playtext and the ‘Asparagus Garden’ which is the site and setting of so much action in the play. As ever with modernization there are advantages and disadvantages to every decision, but I trust that what results is a highly usable edition of a very remarkable play, the best tribute I can pay as an editor to Brome’s craftsmanship and linguistic and dramaturgic skills.Preliminary and paratextual materials to the 1640 quarto18The dedicatory poems attached to the 1640 quarto publication of The Sparagus Garden are further evidence of the wider networks and grouping with which Brome was associated, not least connected to the Inns of Court. The initials ‘C.G.’ point to an Inner Temple member Christopher Gewen who was of West Country provenance and which may be in part an explanation for the extensive use of West Country dialect in the play in the characters of Tom Hoyden and Coulter, who are from Taunton Dean in Somerset. As with poems attached to plays such as The Northern Lass the authors evidence a firm knowledge of the plays they are writing in praise of, frequently choosing apposite metaphors, such as, here, both C.G.’s and R.W.’s extended use of garden, bower, and labyrinth imagery and C.G.’s intriguing echo of the medical subtexts that this edition has identified in the play and which are discussed at greater length both in the introductory essay and the notes to Acts 2 and 3.19The dedication of the play has been much discussed because it locates Brome as part of the wider literary and possibly political grouping around William Cavendish, earl of Newcastle in the 1630s, a grouping which was headed by Brome’s mentor Ben Jonson. DedicationThe Epistle DedicatoryTo the Right Honourable William, Earl of Newcastle, Governor to the Prince his Highness.n10253My Lord
Your favourable construction of my poor labours commanded my service to your Honour, and, in that, betrayed your worth to this dedication. I am not ignorant how far unworthy my best endeavours are of your least allowance; yet let your Lordship be pleased to know you, in this, share but the inconveniences of the most renowned princes as you partake of their glories: And I doubt not, but it will more divulge your noble disposition to the world, when it is known you can freely pardon an officious trespass against your goodness. Caesar had never been commended for his clemency, had there not occasion been offered, wherein he might show how willingly he could forgive. I shall thank my fortune, if this weak presentation of mine shall any way increase the glory of your name among good men, which is the chiefest aim and only study of your Honour’s devoted servant,
Richard BromeDedicatory PoemsTo his deserving friend Master Richard Brome on his Sparagus Garden, a comedy.
What ever walk I in your garden use
Breeds my delight, and makes me love thy Muse
For the designment;n10254 sithn10255 I cannot spy
A prospect, which doth more invite mine eye:
I’m in a maze, and know not how to find5
A freedom that will more delight my mind,
Than this imprisonment within thy bower,
Where hours seem minutes, and each day an hour:
Nor, were my stay perpetual, could I grieve,
Where such rare fruits mine appetite relieve.10
The envious critic would recant to see
How much oppressed is every virgin tree
With her own burthen: leeks and acorns here
Are food for critics; but the choicer cheer,
For those, can relish delicates. I might15
In praising of thy worth, be infinite:
But thou art modest and disdain’st to hear
A tedious, glorious, needless character
Of thee and of thy Muse: Yet I could say —
Give me but leave — it is no common play.20
Within thy plot of ground, no weed doth spring,
To hurt the growth of any underling:
Nor is thy labyrinth confused, but we
In that disorder, may proportion see:
Thy herbs are physical, and do more good25
In purging humours, than some’s letting blood.n10256
C. G.n10257
To the Author on his Sparagus Garden.Friend,What dost mean, that thus thou dost entice
Thy lovers, thus to walk in paradise?
Most skilful artist! that so well dost know
To plant, for profit, as for outward show;5
For on thy sparagus are throughlyn10259 pleased
Our intellects; others scarce hunger eased.
The wisest of the age shall hither come,
And think their time well spent as was their sum.
The squint-eyed criticn10260 that such care does take,10
To look for that he loatheth to partake:
Now crossing his warped nature shall be kind,
And vexing grieve ’cause he no fault can find.
The ignorant of the times that do delight,
Not in a play, but how to waste daylight15
Shall resort hither, still that you descry,
With pleasure, smiling April in each eye.
Alcinous’s garden,n10261 which each day did spring,
And her loved fruit unto perfection bring,
Ought not compare with this: here men did grow:20
Such care thy art and labour did bestow
For man’s well-being, and anew create,
And poise them up above a needy fate.
Is it not pity aught should hurt this Spring?
(A serpent in a garden’s no new thing)25
Yet wisely hath thy goodness took a care,
He should sting none, but who censorious are.
R. W.n10262
n10246 the plays themselves.
n10247 Matthew Steggle implies that this is ‘legal hyperbole’ on Brome’s part.
n10248 The same epigram
n10249 The collation is: Title page on A1r, blank verso; Dedication on A2; commendatory verses on A3; Prologue on A4 (plus Epilogue in 15 extant copies, see below for details); B-L4 bears the text with the Epilogue on L4v below the play’s conclusion.
n10250 He hedged his bets, according to McClure, by printing both Prologue and Epilogue on A4.
n10251 The only unique variants identified by McClure appear in the Library of Congress copy, in one of the Texas copies, and in the lone locatable Dyce copy in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
n10252 Jean Howard in her important recent book Theater of a City has opted to fully update the play title accordingly to The Asparagus Garden.
n10253 To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Newcastle, Governor to the Prince his Highness.
n10254 designment;
n10255 sith
n10256 In purging humours, than some’s letting blood.
n10257 C. G.
n10259 throughly
n10260 The squint-eyed critic
n10261 Alcinous’s garden,
n10262 R. W.