Hard Shift for Husbands, or Bilbo’s the Best Blade: Difference between revisions
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==For What It's Worth== | ==For What It's Worth== | ||
"Hard shift for husbands" | "Hard shift for husbands" wouldn't mean "Hard work inflicted on husbands". An EEBO-TCP search collects twenty examples of the phrase "hard shift for", and in almost all of them it is clear that the "for" means "in order to gain" rather than "inflicted upon". The same applies to the results of an EEBO-TCP search for the phrase "hardship for" - it tends to mean "hardship for the sake of", rather than "hardship inflicted upon". | ||
Thus, whatever reading one makes of the original words, this seems to have been a marriage comedy. It featured at least two witty women, who had to adopt desperate measures to obtain husbands. | Thus, whatever reading one makes of the original words, this seems to have been a marriage comedy. It featured at least two witty women, who had to adopt desperate measures to obtain husbands. | ||
"The Damosel's Hard Shift for a Husband" (1675) is a broadside ballad recorded in Bruce Olsen's ''Broadside Ballad Index'', http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/ballads/17thc_index.html. It sounds like a possible intertext for this play, but I have not yet seen the ballad itself. | "The Damosel's Hard Shift for a Husband" (1675) is a broadside ballad recorded in Bruce Olsen's ''Broadside Ballad Index'', http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/ballads/17thc_index.html. It sounds like a possible intertext for this play, and one with possible implications for the choice of words for the title, but I have not yet seen the ballad itself. | ||
Bilbo blades are swords made in Bilbao, Spain, prized in the seventeenth century for their excellence. At the moment, one cannot guess how this phrase relates to the action of the play. | Bilbo blades are swords made in Bilbao, Spain, prized in the seventeenth century for their excellence. At the moment, one cannot guess how this phrase relates to the action of the play. | ||
Revision as of 10:21, 21 December 2010
Historical Records
29 October 1623:
- For the Palsgrave's Players: a new Comedy, called, Hardshifte for Husbands, or Bilboes the best blade, Written by Samuel Rowley.
(Adams, Herbert, 26; Bentley, 5.1011).
Theatrical Provenance
For the Palsgrave's Company.
Probable Genre(s)
Comedy (per Herbert's record); marriage comedy
Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues
Anon., The Damosel's Hard Shift for a Husband (1675).
References to the Play
None known
Critical Commentary
This play is only known from the entry in the Office-Book. The first part of its title has been given in at least three substantively different forms in different sources. Earlier sources tend to modernize to "Hard Shift for Husbands"; Bentley consistently refers to it as "Hardshifte for Husbands"; and Bawcutt, re-editing the record, prefers "Hardshipe [i.e. Hardship] for Husbands" (Bawcutt, 146). He also adds the descriptive phrase "containing 13 sheets", omitted by Adams.
It was one of at least fourteen new plays licensed by Herbert between July 1623 and November 1624 for the Palsgrave’s Company, whose writers included Samuel Rowley, Dekker, Ford, Gunnell, and Drew. This concentration of new writing for one company, unparalleled in Herbert's record, is plausibly linked by Bentley to the Fortune Theatre fire of 1621, which may have destroyed the company’s existing stock of playbooks. It would be a repertory worthy of study in its own right, but unfortunately fourteen of the fifteen are lost.
In particular, two of the other plays in this group were written by Samuel Rowley: Richard III, or the English Profit (July 1623)and A Match or No Match (April 1624). In her Oxford DNB article on Samuel Rowley, Susan Cerasano notes that these are dates of licensing, and that in all three cases "their dates of composition are unclear".
For What It's Worth
"Hard shift for husbands" wouldn't mean "Hard work inflicted on husbands". An EEBO-TCP search collects twenty examples of the phrase "hard shift for", and in almost all of them it is clear that the "for" means "in order to gain" rather than "inflicted upon". The same applies to the results of an EEBO-TCP search for the phrase "hardship for" - it tends to mean "hardship for the sake of", rather than "hardship inflicted upon".
Thus, whatever reading one makes of the original words, this seems to have been a marriage comedy. It featured at least two witty women, who had to adopt desperate measures to obtain husbands.
"The Damosel's Hard Shift for a Husband" (1675) is a broadside ballad recorded in Bruce Olsen's Broadside Ballad Index, http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/ballads/17thc_index.html. It sounds like a possible intertext for this play, and one with possible implications for the choice of words for the title, but I have not yet seen the ballad itself.
Bilbo blades are swords made in Bilbao, Spain, prized in the seventeenth century for their excellence. At the moment, one cannot guess how this phrase relates to the action of the play.
Works Cited
Cerasano, S. P. ‘Rowley, Samuel (d. 1624)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Sept 2010 accessed 21 Dec 2010
Site created and maintained by Matthew Steggle, Sheffield Hallam University; updated 21 December 2010.