A Collection of Old English Plays, Volume 2 — Story, Setting & Ideas

Political Speech in <em>Barnavelt</em>

The excerpt from Sir John Van Olden Barnavelt is dominated by a single long speech in which the title character denounces the Prince of Orange and his followers. Barnavelt’s language is consistently martial and self-justifying: he calls himself “a strong demolishd Tower” and threatens that his fall will “fright the neighbour Cuntries with my murmour.” The speech relies on a repeated contrast between his own past service—finding the state “naked, Floung out a dores and starvd”—and the ingratitude of a “wanton State” that now prefers younger favorites. The rhetoric is built on parallel structures and imperatives (“begon and flatter”), and it ends with a refusal to sue for mercy. The scene provides no counter-argument; Bredero’s interjections are brief and lamenting. The play’s political stance is not directly stated, but the excerpt gives Barnavelt an extended, unopposed platform for his grievances.

The Soldier-Author in <em>Dick of Devonshire</em>

Bullen’s introduction to Dick of Devonshire quotes the historical Richard Pike’s own pamphlet, Three to One, in which Pike apologizes for his “rude” style, saying his fingers are “fitter for the pike than the pen.” This self-deprecation is used by the editor to characterize the play’s source material as blunt and unpolished, yet the play itself is described as “well-written” and “the work of a practised hand.” The tension between the plain soldier’s account and the crafted drama is a central editorial observation. Bullen notes that the playwright had “ample opportunities” for “boisterous riot” but chose restraint, producing a style “at once so equable and strong.” The excerpt does not include any of Pike’s own words beyond the quoted apology, so the reader cannot verify the pamphlet’s tone directly from this volume.

Manuscript Provenance and Editorial Labor

The preface and appendix emphasize the material conditions of the edition. Bullen states that “everything has been transcribed by my own hand” and that “tedious delay in publication has been due in great part to circumstances beyond my control.” The plays are drawn from Egerton MS. 1994, described in Appendix I. The editor thanks Robert Boyle for a note on Barnavelt and F. G. Fleay for “valuable help.” These details foreground the work of textual recovery: the volume is not a reading edition but a scholarly transcription of previously unpublished manuscripts. The catalog subjects list the plays as “English drama -- Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600,” but the excerpts show that the editor’s own attributions and the manuscript’s provenance are as much a part of the content as the plays themselves.

Readers approaching this volume should expect to encounter editorial commentary as a primary feature. The plays are presented with attributions that are sometimes speculative, and the preface openly discusses the difficulty of assigning authorship. The excerpts suggest that political rhetoric and the figure of the plain-speaking soldier are prominent, but the incomplete text limits any broader thematic judgment. The edition is best understood as a work of recovery, where the editor’s labor and the manuscript’s history are part of the reading experience.

That rainy afternoon, the cracked spine of A Collection of Old English Plays kept me company while Barnavelt’s political fury rattled against Massinger’s careful notes. Somewhere between the preface’s textual puzzles and Dick’s plain soldier voice, I set it down for no reason at all. My hand found, on the same shelf, King John — A Closer Reading, and the day quietly turned toward another kind of kingship, softer but no less thorny.