The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson

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  • From Richard Brome, The Northern Lass (1632), ‘To My Old Faithful Servant ... Master Richard Brome’

From Richard Brome, The Northern Lass (1632), ‘To My Old Faithful Servant ... Master Richard Brome’

[From The Northern Lass, 1632]

 To My Old Faithful Servant,
And (by His Continued Virtue) My Loving Friend
The Author of this Work,    Master  Richard Brome

I had you for a servant once, Dick Brome,

And you performed a servant’s faithful parts:

Now you are got into a nearer room

Of fellowship, professing my old arts.

And you do do them well, with good applause 5

Which you have justly gainèd from the stage,

By observation of those  comic laws

Which I, your master, first did teach the age.

You learned it well; and for it served your time

A  prenticeship, which few do nowadays. 10

Now each  court hobby-horse will  wince in rhyme;

 Both learnèd, and unlearnèd, all write plays.

It was not so of old: men took up trades

That knew the crafts they had been bred in, right:

An honest   Bilbao smith would make good blades, 15

And the physician teach men spew, or shite;

The cobbler kept him to his  nall; but now

He’ll be a  pilot, scarce can guide a plough.

Master Richard] Brome (1632) (M. Rich.)
Master Richard Brome First printed in Brome’s The Northern Lass (1632), sig. A3 (entered in the Stationers’ Register on 24 Mar. 1632). This was Brome’s first printed play, and his ‘master’ here imposes his superior bulk and authority on his young follower. Alexander Brome notes ‘there are a sort . . . who think they lessen this author’s worth when they speak the relation he had to Ben Jonson. We very thankfully embrace the objection, and desire they would name any other master that could better teach a man to write a good play . . . And for this purpose we have here prefixed Ben Jonson’s own testimony to his servant our author; we grant it is (according to Ben’s own nature and custom) magisterial enough’ (Brome, Five New Plays (1653), sigs. A4–A4v). [Editor: Colin Burrow]
Italic in Brome (1632)
0.4 Richard Brome (1590–1652) was, according to this poem, Jonson’s ‘servant’; this probably means ‘menial domestic servant’ rather than ‘literary follower’ (see Bart. Fair, Ind., 6). Kaufman (1961), 19–25 suggests this relationship lasted from 1613 to 1629. For a less complimentary view of Brome, which may reflect the attitudes that make the praise in this poem so guarded and double-edged, see ‘Ode (‘Come, Leave’)', 6.310, line 27n. and collation.
7 comic laws i.e. the unities of time and place.
10 prenticeship This presents Brome’s period in Jonson’s service as a literary apprenticeship, for which no formal arrangements existed. Boy players were routinely bound to an established sharer in the company, although since there was no formal guild of players they did not enjoy the rights which accompanied a formal apprenticeship. The terms of theatrical apprenticeships varied from three to ten years; see G. E. Bentley (1984), 119–22.
11 court hobby-horse amateur poet at court. ‘Hobby-horse’ according to OED does not come to mean ‘a favourite pastime’ until the 1670s; here it connotes amateurish feebleness.
11 wince kick. (The verb is used of horses.)
12–18 Cf. Horace, Epistles, 2.1.114–17: navem agere ignarus navis timet; habrotonum aegro / non audet nisi qui didicit dare; quod medicorum est / promittunt medici; tractant fabrilia fabri: / scribimus indocti doctique poemata passim, ‘A man who knows nothing about ships fears to pilot one; no-one dares give southernwood to the sick unless he has learnt how to administer it; doctors do things that are a doctor’s job; carpenters handle carpenters’ tools; but whether we are skilled or not, we all everywhere write poems.’ For Jonson’s affection for this Horatian poem, and his association of it with Brome in ‘Come, leave’, see Steggle (1998b).
15 Bilbao For the excellence of Spanish swords, see Und. 43.199.
15 Bilbao] Brome (1632) (Bilbo)
17 nall Archaic form of ‘awl’.
18 pilot specialist helmsman.