Mother Redcap

Michael Drayton and Anthony Munday (1597)

Historical Records

Henslowe's Diary

F37v / Greg 1.70:

layde owt the 22 of desemb[er] 1597 for a boocke called } iij^ll

mother Readcape to antony monday & m^r drayton . . . . }

Layd owt the 28 of desemb[er] 1597 to antoney monday }

toward his boocke w^ch J delyvered to thomas . . . . . . . } v^s

dowton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . }

F43v / Greg 1.82:

A Juste a cownt of all suche money as J haue

layde owt for my lord admeralles [men] players begynyng

the xj of octob[er] whose names ar as foloweth

borne gabrell shaw Jonnes dowten Jube towne

synger & the ij geffes 1597

_________________________________________

...

layd owt the 22 of desemb[er] 1597 for a boocke called } iij^ll

mother Read cape to antony monday & drayton . . . . . }

layd owt the 28 of desemb[er] 1597 for the boocke called } v^s

mother Read cape to antoney mondaye . . . . . . . . . . . . .}

F44 / Greg 1.83:

layd owt for my lord admeralles meane as foloweth 1597

1597

__________________________________________________

pd vnto antony monday & drayton for the laste .}

payment of the Boocke of mother Readcape the } lv^s

5 of Jenewary 1597 the some of . . . . . . . . . . . .}

Henslowe Papers

Greg, Papers 117:

Under Henslowe's title, "The Enventary tacken of all the properties for my Lord Admeralles men, the 10 of Marche 1598" is:

Item, j syne for Mother Readcap; j buckler

Greg, Papers 121:

Under Henslowe's title, "A Note of all suche bookes as belong to the Stocke, and such as I have bought since the 3d of March 1598" is:

"Read Cappe."

Theatrical Provenance

Henslowe paid Drayton and Munday a total of £6 on behalf of the Admiral's men at the end of 1597 / start of 1598.

Probable Genre(s)

Comedy (?) (Harbage).

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

Greg notes that " 'Mother redd cappe her last will and Testament,' presumably a chapbook, was entered S. R. 10 Mar. 1595." (2.189).

An entry for "Mother REDCAPS will and testament . . . vj^d" in the Stationers' Register for 14 Aug. 1600 amongst the "thinges formerlye printed and sett over to the sayd Thomas Pavyer" (63) is evidently a reprint of this text.

References to the Play

Critical Commentary

For What It's Worth

Genre

Robert Kittowe's 1600 Loues load-starre Liuely deciphered supports Harbage's supposition that this lost play was a comedy. In Kittowe's text, Redcap is cited in the company of two very famous jesters, Will Summers and John Scoggin:

There he made a period to his oblatiue Antheme, the whole summe whereof, séemed as acceptable to woful Katherinas eares, as the talke of Will Summers, to a minde male-content: or the Tales of Mother Redde-cappe, to an heart-sicke Patient: or Scoggins Ieasts related to one meditating on the seuen Sobbes of a sorrowful Soule. (sig.G3)

However, in 1597, the same year as the lost play, in an account of thirteen year old Thomas Darling's strange fits and supposed possession by the devil, the author ("I. D.") of The most wonderfull and true storie, of a certaine witch named Alse Gooderige of Stapen hill relates one of the boy's fits in which Redcap appears to be a witch:

After this falling into a traunce, hee started sodainely and saide, Yonder comes mother Redde Cap, looke how they beate her braines out, see what it is to be a witch: see how the toades gnaw the flesh from her bones. (31)

Item, j syne for Mother Readcap

There was a pub called Mother Red Cap at least as early as 1638, when Richard Brathwaite (1588?-1673) describes passing through Holloway in his Barnabees journall:

Thence to Hollowell, Mother red cap,

In a troupe of Trulls I did hap;
Whoors of Babylon me impalled,
And me their Adonis called;
With me toy'd they, buss'd me, cull'd me,

But being needy, out they pull'd me. (sig.L4)

Pepys visited a pub by this name in Holloway (presumably the same pub) on 24 September 1661:

So we rode easily through and only drinking at Halloway at the sign of a woman with Cakes in one hand and a pot of ale in the other, which did give good occasion of mirth, resembling her to the mayd that served us; we got home very timely and well. (184)

Pepys's editors, Latham and Matthews gloss this pub as "The Mother Redcap; a well-known house on the Great North Road" (184n).

Jacob Larwood and John Camden Hotten, in their History of Signboards, assert (without providing a source) that "Formerly the following verses accompanied this sign":

Old Mother Redcap, according to her tale,

Lived twenty and a hundred years by drinking this good ale;
It was her meat, it was her drink, and medicine besides,

And if she still had drank this ale, she never would have died.

It is presumably in this context of her ale's vivifying quality that Thomas Heywood has Chartley announce (whilst drunk), "Come Haringfield, now wee have beene drinking of Mother Red-caps Ale, let us now goe make some sport with the Wise-woman" (The Wisewoman of Hogsdon, sig.C).

More importantly, Larwood and Hotten's information about signboards may help us make sense of the item in Henslowe's property list,

Item, j syne for Mother Readcap; j buckler.

Was this "syne" a signboard?

Larwood and Hotten also note that "Who the original Mother Redcap was, is believed to be unknown, but not unlikely it is an impersonification of Skelton's famous "Ellinor Rumming," the alewife" (96).

Works Cited

Brathwaite, Richard. Barnabees journall under the names of Mirtilus & Faustulus shadowed: for the travellers solace lately published, to most apt numbers reduced, and to the old tune of Barnabe commonly chanted. By Corymboeus. 1638. Print.

Heywood, Thomas. The vvise-woman of Hogsdon A comedie. As it hath been sundry times acted with great applause. 1638. Print.

I.D. The most wonderfull and true storie, of a certaine witch named Alse Gooderige of Stapen hill, who was arraigned and conuicted at Darbie at the Assises there as also a true report of the strange torments of Thomas Darling, a boy of thirteene yeres of age, that was possessed by the deuill, with his horrible fittes and apparitions by him vttered at Burton vpon Trent in the countie of Stafford, and of his maruellous deliuerance. 1597. Print.

Kittowe, Robert. Loues load-starre Liuely deciphered in a historie no lesse commendable than comfortable, for all those that in their louely affections, haue by the enmitie of their friends, bene molested with the menacing meteors of crossing misfortunes. Leading also all kinde and true louers, that in their choyces are frownd at by froward parents, vnto the portfull paradise of pleasurde patience, and patient pleasures. 1600. Print.

Larwood, Jacob, and John Camden Hotten. The History of Signboards, From the Earliest Times to the Present Day. 2nd edn. London, 1866. Print.

Latham, Robert, and William Matthews, ed. Samuel Pepys. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol.2: 1661. Berkeley: U of California P, 1970. Print.

Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol.2: 1661. Ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews. Berkeley: U of California P, 1970. Print.

Site created and maintained by David McInnis, University of Melbourne; updated 02 Feb 2011.