''The Soddered Citizen'' is a Caroline era stage play, a

city comedy City comedy, also known as citizen comedy, is a genre of comedy in the English early modern theatre. Definition Emerging from Ben Jonson's late-Elizabethan comedies of humours (1598–1599), the conventions of city comedy developed rapidly in ...

now attributed to

John Clavell John Clavell (1601–1643) was a highwayman, author, lawyer, and doctor. He is known for his poem ''A Recantation of an Ill Led Life'', and his play '' The Soddered Citizen''.John H. P. Pafford, ''John Clavell 1601–1643: Highwayman, Author, La ...

. The play was lost for three centuries; the sole surviving manuscript was rediscovered and published in the twentieth century.

History

''The Soddered Citizen'' was produced onstage, most likely in 1630, by the King's Men at the

Blackfriars Theatre Blackfriars Theatre was the name given to two separate theatres located in the former Blackfriars Dominican priory in the City of London during the Renaissance. The first theatre began as a venue for the Children of the Chapel Royal, child ac ...

. The play was entered into the

Stationers' Register The Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The company is a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including print ...

in 1632, but no edition was printed in the seventeenth century. Thereafter, the play was thought to be lost; it was known only by its title, and widely attributed to

Shackerley Marmion Shackerley Marmion (January 1603 – 1639), also Shakerley, Shakerly, Schackerley, Marmyon, Marmyun, or Mermion, was an early 17th-century dramatist, often classed among the Sons of Ben, the followers of Ben Jonson who continued his style of ...

. The manuscript surfaced in 1932, when its owner, Lt. Col. E. G. Troyte-Bullock, brought it to the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

for examination. It was studied by scholar John Henry Pyle Pafford and published in 1936. The manuscript, now kept in the collection of the Wiltshire Record Office, is written in the hand of a professional scribe, and bears notations in five other hands; one of them is the hand of Edward Knight, the prompter and "book-keeper" of the King's Men. John Clavell's signature occurs twice in the manuscript, providing clear clues to the author's identity; it may have been Clavell's personal copy of the work, though the manuscript also shows signs that it went through at least the initial stages of preparation for use as a theatrical promptbook. Notations indicate the identities of some actors and their roles in the King's Men's staging.

Characters

The play has thirteen speaking parts, four assigned to

boy player Boy player refers to children who performed in Medieval and English Renaissance playing companies. Some boy players worked for the adult companies and performed the female roles as women did not perform on the English stage in this period. Others ...

s in female roles. Clavell, the amateur or neophyte dramatist, helpfully loaded his play with copious stage directions — 80 in the text's 2826 lines. The manuscript also contains a list of ''dramatis personae'', a rare feature in dramatic manuscripts of the era. The actors were:

Andrew Gurr Andrew John Gurr (born 23 December 1936) is a contemporary literary scholar who specializes in William Shakespeare and English Renaissance theatre. Life and work Born in Leicester, Gurr was raised in New Zealand, and educated at the Universi ...

, ''The Shakespearean Stage 1594–1642'', Cambridge, Cambridge University Pressm 2004; pp. 217-46. Additionally, Pollard and Shank doubled small roles, as did

Alexander Gough Alexander Gough ( fl. 1626 – 1655), also Goughe or Goffe, was an English actor in the Caroline era. He started out as a boy player filling female roles; during the period of the English Civil War and the Interregnum (1642–1660) when ...

and Anthony Smith. Sharpe spoke the play's Prologue and Epilogue during performances.

Plot

The play is set in the milieu of London goldsmiths, with characters named Undermine and Mountain. Its protagonist, Wittworth, is a melancholic whose romantic pursuit of the heroine, Modestina, provides the driving force of the plot. Wittworth's physician, Doctor Makewell, treats him with a radical approach: the delirious Wittworth is led on a pretended passage through Hell, in which Modestina acts the ghost of a love-lorn girl and Makewell is a spell-casting devil at Hell's gates. Wittworth witnesses a

masque The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). A masque ...

of seven dancers, "all in Shrowdes," and joins with them to dance in "an antick mockway." Doctor Makewell treats Wittworth with a potion concocted of "an Opiate, of Laudanum, and Diescordium, mixt with Besar stone and Amber." The Doctor's treatment is successful; Wittworth and Modestina are happily united at the end of the play.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Soddered Citizen, The English Renaissance plays 1630 plays