Wit in a Madness
Richard Brome (?1623-40)
Historical Records
Stationers' Register
19 March 1639/40. Entered to Francis Constable:
- three Playes called. Sparagus Garden. The Antipodes. & Witt in a Madnes. [by Ric deleted].
17 February 1647/8. The administrators of the estate of Alice Constable, widow of Francis Constable, transferred to Richard Thrale twenty copyrights including:
- 14. Sparagus Garden a play.
- 15. The Antipodes a play.
- 16. Witt in a Madnes. a play.
- 17. The Chast maide of Cheapside. a play.
- 18. The Ladies priviledge a play [brace]
- 19. Witt in a Constable. a play [brace] by Henry Glapthorne.
9 September 1653. Entered to Humprhey Moseley, forty-one plays of which the second and third are:
- Witt in Madnesse [brace]
- The Louesick Maid, or the honour of Young Ladies. by [brace] Rich: Brome.
11 April 1681. Dorothy Thrale, administratrix of Richard Thrale, assigned The Sparagus Garden, The Antipodes, and Wit in a Madness, with thirty-nine other titles, to Benjamin Thrale.
(Cited from Bentley, 3.78 and 3.92; S.R.2, 1.289-290.)
Theatrical Provenance
King's Revels/Queen Henrietta's Men?
Probable Genre(s)
Comedy (Harbage)
Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues
None known.
References to the Play
None known.
Critical Commentary
Looking at the records from 1639/40, 1647/8, and 1681, Bentley (3.92) cast doubt on whether Wit in a Madness was necessarily by Brome at all. But the 1653 entry, seemingly overlooked by Bentley in this particular context, seems to resolve that doubt.
Harbage dates it c.1635-40, and accordingly lists it under the year 1637; but "1637" has since been repeated in online sources (such as Wikipedia) as if unqualified fact. Shaw (17-18) prefers the conjectural date 1638-9. Steggle (118-23) notes that a major difficulty with the 1635-40 theory is that in his 1640 legal deposition Brome claimed only to have written seven new plays for the King's Revels/Queen Henrietta's Men in that period. All seven of these seem to be already accounted for.
In "Elizabethan-Restoration Palimpsest", Harbage speculates that Thomas D'Urfey's city comedy The Richmond Heiress, or a woman once in the right (1693), which features a heroine who feigns madness, "levied upon Brome's lost Wit in Madness" [sic] (309).
For What It's Worth
Harbage's idea, regrettably, is pure wishful thinking.
For a discussion of the lost Brome play The Lovesick Maid, registered alongside Wit in a Madness, see here.
Feigned madness, as a device, is present in plays of the period including Hamlet, The Changeling. and Brome's own The Court Beggar.
Henry Glapthorne's Wit in A Constable (1636-8, revised 1639), which appears near Wit in a Madness on the Thrale list, shares the same format of title - wit present where one might not expect to find it. Perhaps one play was cashing in on the success of the other.
Works Cited
Site created and maintained by Matthew Steggle: updated 15 February 2010.