A droll is a short comical sketch of a type that originated during the
Puritan Interregnum in
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
. With the closure of the theatres, actors were left without any way of plying their art. Borrowing scenes from well-known plays of the
Elizabethan theatre
The English Renaissance theatre or Elizabethan theatre was the theatre of England from 1558 to 1642. Its most prominent playwrights were William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson.
Background
The term ''English Renaissance theatr ...
, they added dancing and other entertainments and performed these, sometimes illegally, to make money. Along with the popularity of the source play, material for drolls was generally chosen for physical humor or for wit.
Francis Kirkman
Francis Kirkman (1632 – c. 1680) appears in many roles in the English literary world of the second half of the seventeenth century, as a publisher, bookseller, librarian, author and bibliographer. In each he is an enthusiast for popular liter ...
's ''The Wits, or Sport Upon Sport'',
1662, is a collection of twenty-seven drolls. Three are adapted from
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
:
''Bottom the Weaver'' from ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream
''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a Comedy (drama), comedy play written by William Shakespeare in about 1595 or 1596. The play is set in Athens, and consists of several subplots that revolve around the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta. One s ...
'', the gravedigger's scene from ''
Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play. Set in Denmark, the play (the ...
'', and a collection of scenes involving
Falstaff called ''The Bouncing Knight''. A typical droll presented a subplot from
John Marston's ''
The Dutch Courtesan''; the piece runs together all the scenes in which a greedy vintner is gulled and robbed by a deranged gallant.
Just under half of the drolls in Kirkman's book are adapted from the work of
Beaumont and
Fletcher. Among the drolls taken from those authors are ''Forc'd Valour'' (the title plot from ''
The Humorous Lieutenant''), ''The Stallion'' (the scenes in the male
brothel
A brothel, strumpet house, bordello, bawdy house, ranch, house of ill repute, house of ill fame, or whorehouse is a place where people engage in Human sexual activity, sexual activity with prostitutes. For legal or cultural reasons, establis ...
from ''
The Custom of the Country''), and the taunting of Pharamond from ''
Philaster''. The prominence of Beaumont and Fletcher in this collection prefigures their dominance on the early Restoration stage. The extract from their ''
Beggar's Bush'', known as ''The Lame Commonwealth'', features additional dialogue, strongly suggesting it was taken from a performance text. The character of Clause, the
King of the Beggars in that extract, appears as a character in later works, such as the memoirs of
Bampfylde Moore Carew
Bampfylde Moore Carew (1690-1758) was an English rogue, vagabond and impostor, who claimed to be King of the Beggars.
Life
Baptized at Bickleigh, Devon, on 23 September 1690, Bampfylde Moore Carew was the son of Reverend Theodore Carew, rec ...
, the self-proclaimed King of the Beggars.
Actor
Robert Cox was perhaps the best-known of the droll performers.
References
* Kirkman, Francis. ''The Wits, or Sport Upon Sport''. ed. John James Elson (Cornell University Press, 1932)
* Baskervill, C. R. "Mummers' Wooing Plays in England." ''Modern Philology'', Vol. 21 No. 3 (February 1924),pp. 225–272; see pp. 268–272,
folkplay.info
History of theatre
Theatre of the United Kingdom
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