A Fine Companion

A Fine Companion is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by Shackerley Marmion that was first printed in 1633. It is one of only three surviving plays by Marmion.

The play was published in 1633 in a quarto printed by Augustine Matthews for the bookseller Richard Meighen. The title page of the first edition states that the play was performed by Prince Charles's Men at the Salisbury Court Theatre, and that the work was acted before King Charles I and Queen Henrietta Maria at Whitehall Palace. The original production most likely occurred in the 1632–33 period. The same company had staged Marmion's first play, Holland's Leaguer, in 1631.

Marmion based his drama on one of the popular stories in Barnabe Rich's Farewell to the Military Profession (1581). Like Marmion's other plays, A Fine Companion shows the clear and abundant influence of Ben Jonson's style of comedy. Marmion was one of the Sons of Ben, self-professed admirers and followers of Jonson.

In the 1633 first edition, the play is prefaced by a Prologue featuring an Author and a Critic, in which Marmion defends his practice of satire.

The play opens with its lovers, Aurelio and Valeria. Aurelio is a worthy son who has been disinherited by a capricious father, in favour of his wastrel younger brother Careless (the latter is the "fine companion" of the title). The lovers' plans to marry are frustrated by Aurelio's lack of means; and they are separated physically by Aurelia's father, the usurer Littlegood.

His own father being deceased, Careless is determined to spend and enjoy his patrimony. He mortgages his lands to Littlegood and wastes his funds on high living; his tailor, sempster, and haberdasher wait upon him faithfully. He is surrounded by a set of questionable friends. Spruce is a would-be lady's man who carries a box full of pre-written love letters, only the names left blank. Captain Whipple and Lieutenant Stern are cashiered soldiers who mooch what they can.

...
Wikipedia