Wit in a Madness
Richard Brome (?1623-40)
Historical Records
Stationers' Register
19 March 1639/40. Entered to 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.
9 September 1653. Entered to 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)
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.
Works Cited
Site created and maintained by Matthew Steggle: updated 4 December 2009.