Apprentice's Prize

Richard Brome and Thomas Heywood (c.1634)

Historical Records

Stationers' Register, 8 April 1654:

M^r. Mosely. Entred for his Copies Two plaies called. The Life and Death of S^r. Martyn Skink. w^th y^e warres of y^e Low Countries. by Rich. Broome. & Tho: Heywood. & The Apprentices Prize, &c.

(Bentley, 3.76)

Theatrical Provenance

King's Men?

Probable Genre(s)

Apprentice play (Butler)

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

None known

References to the Play

None known

Critical Commentary

The record is generally interpreted as indicating, firstly, that The Apprentice's Prize was a play; and, secondly, that Brome and Heywood wrote it. However, it should be borne in mind that the wording is not entirely conclusive on either of these points. In particular, if, as has been suggested, The Life and Death of Sir Martin Skink was a two-part play, then the status of The Apprentice's Prize becomes very unclear.

The date of the play, if play it was, is usually conjecturally ascribed to around 1634, the date of Brome and Heywood's one surviving collaboration The Witches of Lancashire, written for the King's Men. Bentley notes that F. G. Fleay, in his Biographical Chronicle of English Drama, argued that all three plays of the Brome-Heywood collaboration were rewrites by Brome of much earlier plays by Heywood. However, this is definitely untrue in the case of the one surviving play, which removes any basis for thinking it might be true of the lost ones. Bentley, accordingly, dates this play to c.1634. The nature of the collaboration between Brome and Heywood has been studied most recently by Heather Hirschfeld.

Martin Butler contextualizes the play in terms of 1630s populist drama, noting in particular a contemporary interest in the role of the apprentice represented by plays such as Thomas Thomas Rawlins' The Rebellion.

Works Cited

Butler, Martin. Theatre and Crisis 1632-1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Hirschfeld, Heather. "Collaborating across generations: Thomas Heywood, Richard Brome, and the production of The Late Lancashire Witches". Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30.2 (2000): 339-74.

Site created and maintained by Matthew Steggle, 30 November 2009.