The English Moor

The English Moor, or the Mock Marriage is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by Richard Brome, noteworthy in its use of the stage device of blackface make-up. Registered in 1640, it was first printed in 1659, and, uniquely among the plays of Brome's canon, also survives in a manuscript version.

The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 4 August 1640, along with five other Brome plays, by Andrew Crooke; but it was not printed for another two decades. The title page of the 1659 first edition states that The English Moor was acted by Queen Henrietta's Men. Brome began writing for that company in 1637, once the London theatres had re-opened after a long closure during the bubonic plague epidemic of 1636–37. The English Moor may have been the first play that the Queen's Men staged in their new venue, the Salisbury Court Theatre, when they debuted there on 2 October 1637. Though this is not an absolute certainty, it is plausible; since Brome's previous play, The Sparagus Garden, had been one of the great theatre successes of the era, the company would sensibly have opened with a play by the most popular dramatist of the moment.

The English Moor is the first of the five plays included in the 1659 octavo collection of Brome's works called Five New Plays (not to be confused with the 1653 Brome collection that bore exactly the same title). The 1659 collection was published by the stationers Andrew Crooke and Henry Brome (the latter is believed to have been no relation to the playwright). The 1659 text had two different title pages:

Copies of the 1659 volume exist with the first title page, or the second, or both. The play was not reprinted until the nineteenth century.

The manuscript text of the play is in the collection of Lichfield Cathedral Library, where it is designated Lichfield MS. 68. The manuscript is a presentation copy of the play, sent to Brome's patron William Seymour, 2nd Duke of Somerset. (Brome also dedicated his play The Antipodes to Somerset upon its 1640 publication.) The MS. dedication is signed by Brome; both the dedication and the play itself appear to be in the same hand as the signature, indicating that the MS. is an authorial holograph – which would make sense in a presentation MS. to a noble patron. Watermarks in the paper suggest a date around 1640. The MS. text is not identical to the printed text; it shows a range of differences, minor and major, including the omission of politically sensitive material present in the printed version. In the octavo, for example, a speech in the second scene suggests that being called before the "High Commission" is worse than cutting one's throat or swallowing poison; since Somerset was a member of the Court of High Commission, the MS. tactfully leaves this passage out.

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