Francis Kirkman - The Wits (Drolls)

The Wits (Drolls)

Also significant in the history of theatre was Kirkman’s collection of drolls, The Wits, or Sport for Sport. The first part was published by Henry Marsh in 1662, but seems very likely to have been prepared by Kirkman before they fell into dispute and litigation. Marsh was a member of the Stationers’ Company, and seems to have acted as printer and bookseller, with Kirkman acting as publisher and editor. It was described as Part I, but Part II did not appear until after Marsh had died and Kirkman had taken over his business. In 1672 Kirkman re-issued Part I, and issued Part II in 1673.

Kirkman said, disingenuously, that the pieces were “written I know not when, by several persons, I know not who”, though he included items such as the gravediggers' scene from Hamlet, and the bouncing knight from The Merry Wives of Windsor, the authorship of which cannot have been unknown either to him or his audience. He attributed some to an actor, Robert Cox, who had published his own drolls, and probably performed them at the Red Bull Theatre, and outside London.

The Wits went through many editions in the next two decades. Kirkman described the contents as : -

Selected pieces of drollery, digested into scenes by way of dialogue; together with variety of humours of several nations, fitted for the pleasure and content of all persons, either in court, city, country, or camp . . . presented and shewn for the merriment and delight of wise men, and the ignorant, as they have been sundry times acted in publique, and private, in London at Bartholomew in the countrey at other faires, in halls and taverns, on several mountebancks stages, at Charing Cross, Lincolns-Inn-Fields, and other places, by several stroleing players, fools, and fidlers, and the mountebancks zanies, with loud laughter, and great applause.

Kirkman said the pieces were selected because of their popularity during the Commonwealth between 1642 and 1660, when the theatres were officially closed: -

When the publique Theatres were shut up... then all that we could divert ourselves with were these humours and pieces of Plays, which passing under the name of a merry conceited Fellow, called Bottom the Weaver, Simpleton the Smith, John Swabber, or some such title, were only allowed us, and that but by stealth too, and under the pretence of Rope-dancing, or the like; and these being all that was permitted to us, great was the confluence of the Auditors; and these small things were as profitable as any of our late famed Plays. I have seen the Red Bull Play-House, which was a large one, so full, that as many went back for want of room as had entered; and as meanly as you may think these Drolls, they were then acted by the best Comedeians then and now in being; and I may say, by some exceeded all now living ...

He recommends the work for those reading for pleasure, fiddlers, mountebanks seeking a crowd, those undertaking long sea voyages, and strolling players, as “a few ordinary properties is enough to set them up, and get money in any Town in England”. The extent to which these drolls were performed is almost impossible to tell. Some of the contents of The Wits were almost certainly edited by Kirkman from the many play scripts he owned. However, some of the drolls are known from versions that date before 1620. This suggests that, like so many plays, they existed in manuscript for many years before they were published. One droll, The Lame Commonwealth, a canting interlude extracted from The Beggars Bush, includes an additional section which seems to record stagecraft. Another droll from The Wits, Daphilo & Granida, is based on the play Granida by P.C. Hooft. Baskervill (1924) notes that a Christmas play collected from Keynsham, Somerset in 1822 contains a passage exhibiting a striking similarity to a passage from Daphilo & Granida, which suggests the text of Kirkman's droll was adapted for use in the folk play.

The Wits is also known for the frontispiece by John Chantry. This is often assumed to represent the Red Bull Theatre, although this is disputed as being unlikely; it is not described as such before 1809, and is not consistent with what is known of it. It is one of the earliest illustrations of a theatre interior, showing chandeliers and lighting at the front of the stage, a curtained entrance, which may be genuine representations. However, the various characters shown are a catalogue, not an example of a scene as staged. They include Falstaff (by far the most popular theatrical character of the seventeenth century), a hostess, (perhaps Mistress Quickly), Clause (from The Lame Commonwealth), French Dancing Mr, (a dancing fiddler), The Changeling, and Simpleton, a character played by Cox.