Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1913 edition. Excerpt: ... SOURCES AND INFLUENCES Langbaine, who did very creditable work for a pioneer in literary criticism, says of Brome: ' His plots were his own, and he forged all his various Characters from the mint of his own experience, and judgement. Tis not therefore to be expected, that I should be able to trace him, who was so excellent an imitator of his master, that he might truly pass for an original.' This easy way of dismissing the whole matter of literary influence will unfortunately not satisfy the demands of modern scholarship. There are but two plays for which undoubted sources for the main idea of the plot have been discovered--the Jovial Crew and the Queen and the Concubine.1 The Jovial Crew has its source, as Dr. Faust has shown,2 in Middleton and Rowley's Spanish Gipsy. He proves that Brome did not go back to the original sources of his story--two novels of Cervantes, La Gitanilla and La Fuerza de la Sangre--but worked from the English play founded on them.3 The treatment of this plot shows much originality. The atmosphere, motives, characters, and conclusion are completely changed. The source of the Queen and Concubine is followed much more closely. Professor Koeppel discovers this to be Greene's Penelope's Web 4 (1587). Brome has enlarged upon the simple plan with additional characters and much romantic decoration, but he has kept not only the kernel of Greene's plot, but also in several places his actual wording.1 1 I do not include the Lancashire Witches, because the principal share is due to Heywood. See above, pp. 48 ff. 2 Op. tit., p. 85. 3 He adds an important suggestion from the Gipsies Metamorphosed, and gives a list of six plays in which scenes of the forest and fields occur. Quellen und Forschungen (1897) 82. 209. The sources...
