''The Poor Man's Comfort'' is a
Jacobean era stage play, a
tragicomedy
Tragicomedy is a literary genre that blends aspects of both tragic and comic forms. Most often seen in dramatic literature, the term can describe either a tragic play which contains enough comic elements to lighten the overall mood or a seriou ...
by
Robert Daborne
Robert Daborne (c. 1580 – 23 March 1628) was an English dramatist of the Jacobean era.
His father was also Robert Daborne, heir to family property in Guildford, Surrey and other places, including London, and a wealthy haberdasher by tra ...
— one of his two extant plays.
Date, performance, publication
The play's date is uncertain, though it is generally assigned to the 1610–18 era. It was not published until several decades after it was written.
''The Poor Man's Comfort'' was entered into the
Stationers' Register on 20 June
1655
Events
January–March
* January 5 – Emperor Go-Sai ascends to the throne of Japan.
* January 7 – Pope Innocent X, leader of the Roman Catholic Church and the Papal States, dies after more than 10 years of rule.
* Februar ...
, and published in
quarto
Quarto (abbreviated Qto, 4to or 4º) is the format of a book or pamphlet produced from full sheets printed with eight pages of text, four to a side, then folded twice to produce four leaves. The leaves are then trimmed along the folds to produc ...
later that year by the booksellers Robert Pollard and John Sweeting. Both the Register entry and the title page of the quarto refer to Daborne as a "Master of Arts."
In the original text, a stage direction at line 186 reads "Enter 2 Lords, Sands, Ellis." The names refer not to the characters of the play but the actors who played the roles — a feature that occurs on rare occasions in the texts of English Renaissance drama. (See, for example, ''
Sir John van Olden Barnavelt
''The Tragedy of Sir John van Olden Barnavelt'' is a Jacobean play written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger in 1619, and produced in the same year by the King's Men at the Globe Theatre. Based on controversial contemporaneous political ...
''.) The two actors may have been Gregory Sanderson and
Ellis Worth, who played with
Queen Anne's Men
Queen Anne's Men was a playing company, or troupe of actors, in Jacobean era London. In their own era they were known colloquially as the Queen's Men — as were Queen Elizabeth's Men and Queen Henrietta's Men, in theirs.
Formation
The group w ...
.
The title page of the quarto states that the play was performed at the
Cockpit Theatre
The Cockpit was a theatre in London, operating from 1616 to around 1665. It was the first theatre to be located near Drury Lane. After damage in 1617, it was named The Phoenix.
History
The original building was an actual cockpit; that is, a st ...
, which was occupied by the Queen Anne's company from 1617 to 1619. If the title page describes the original production, the most likely single year for the play might be narrowed to 1617, since Daborne is thought to have stopped writing for the stage by 1618.
The drama was revived early in the
Restoration
Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to:
* Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage
** Audio restoration
** Film restoration
** Image restoration
** Textile restoration
* Restoration ecology
...
era, in 1661 — which was its last known stage production.
A manuscript of the work is preserved in
MS. Egerton 1994, an important collection of play manuscripts now in the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...
.
Sources
Daborne based his play on the seventh story in William Warner's ''Pan His Syrinx'' (1584, 1597). Warner's story collection, his "sevenfold history," also served as Thomas Middleton's source for ''
The Bloody Banquet''. The title of the play is proverbial: "Virtue is the friend of life, the soul of health, the poor man's comfort and the rich man's wealth" is one among several versions.
The plot
The play tells the story of Gisbert, an old shepherd whose daughter, Urania, has been deserted by her husband, a nobleman from
Thessaly
Thessaly ( el, Θεσσαλία, translit=Thessalía, ; ancient Thessalian: , ) is a traditional geographic and modern administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, The ...
. Gisbert fails to receive justice from a local court, and leaves his pastoral life to take a journey through a corrupt society. His story involves lovestruck shepherds, shipwrecked princesses, corrupt and venal lawyers, and violent whores. He finally attains justice from his king. Critics have praised the play for keeping Gisbert and Urania as shepherds till the end — not revealing them to be lost royalty or aristocrats in hiding, as is usual in the
pastoral form. For Felix Schelling, the play "is quite enough to raise Daborne, hack-writer though he was, to a respected place among the dramatists of his day."
Philip Massinger
Philip Massinger (1583 – 17 March 1640) was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including '' A New Way to Pay Old Debts'', ''The City Madam'', and ''The Roman Actor'', are noted for their satire and realism, and their polit ...
and
Nathan Field
Nathan Field (also spelled Feild occasionally; 17 October 1587 – 1620) was an English dramatist and actor.
Life
His father was the Puritan preacher John Field, and his brother Theophilus Field became the Bishop of Llandaff. One of his brother ...
my have borrowed from Daborne's play when they wrote their collaboration ''
The Fatal Dowry
''The Fatal Dowry'' is a late Jacobean era stage play, a tragedy written by Philip Massinger and Nathan Field, and first published in 1632. It represents a significant aspect of Field's very limited dramatic output.
Though hard evidence is lac ...
''. Gisbert's confrontation with his daughter Urania and her husband Lucius appears to have suggested the dramatic scene in the later play in which Rochfort confronts his daughter Beaumelle and her husband Charalois.
Modern editions
The play was edited by Kenneth Palmer for
the Malone Society in 1954. A more recent edition of the play was published in 2005.
[Robert Daborne, ''The Poor Man's Comfort,'' Jane Kingsley-Smith, ed. London, Routledge, 2005.]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Poor Man's Comfort, The
English Renaissance plays
1610s plays
Plays in manuscript