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William Rowley (c. 1585-1626). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05

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William Rowley (c. 1585-1626). Library of Literary Criticism. 1901-05 Dictionary Biographies Literary Criticism Welcome Terms of Service ⧏ Previous Next ⧐ Contents Bibliographic Record Charles Wells Moulton, ed.  Library of Literary Criticism.  1901–05. William Rowley (c. 1585–1626) William Rowley, 1585 (?)–1642 (?). Born, 1585 (?). For many years an actor and dramatist. Collaborated frequently with Middleton. Probably retired from stage about 1630. Married Isabel Tooley, 1637. Died 1642(?). Works: “The Travailes of the Three English Brothers” (with Wilkins and Day), 1607; “A Search for Money,” 1609; “A Fair Quarrel” (with Middleton), 1617; “A Courtly Masque: the device called, The World Tost at Tennis” (with Middleton), (1620); “A Farewell Elegie on the Death of Hugh Atwell,” 1621; “A New Wonder: a Woman Never Vext,” 1632; “All’s Lost by Lust,” 1633; “A Match at Midnight,” 1633; “A Shoemaker a Gentleman,” 1638; “The Changeling” (with Middleton), 1653; “The Spanish Gipsy” (with Middleton), 1653; “Fortune by Land and Sea.” (with Heywood), 1655; “The Excellent Comedy called the Old Law” (with Massinger and Middleton), 1656; “The Witch of Edmonton” (with Dekker, Ford, and others), 1658; “A Cure for a Cuckold” (with Webster), 1661; “The Thracian Wonder,” 1661; “The Birth of Merlin” (pubd. as by Shakespeare and Rowley, but written by Rowley alone), 1662.—Sharp, R. Farquharson, 1897, A Dictionary of English Authors, p. 242.    

1 Personal

  An Author that flourish’d in the Reign of King Charles the First; and was sometime a Member of Pembroke Hall in Cambridge. I can say nothing further of his Life or Country; but as to his Poetry, and his intimate Acquaintance with the prime Poets of that Age, I can speak at large. He was not only beloved by those Great Men, Shakespear, Fletcher and Johnson; but likewise writ with the former, “The Birth of Merlin.” Besides what he joyned in writing with Poets of the second Magnitude, as Heywood, Middleton, Day and Webster; as you may see under each of their Names; our Author has four Plays in print of his own Writing.—Langbaine, Gerard, 1691, An Account of the English Dramatick Poets, p. 428.    

2 General

  That a writer who was deemed a worthy assistant in such plays as “The Witch of Edmonton,” “The Thracian Wonder,” and “The Spanish Gipsey,” must have possessed no very inferior abilities, can admit of little doubt, and is confirmed indeed by his own exclusive compositions; for “A Match at Midnight,” and “All’s Lost by Lust,” the former in the comic, and the latter in the tragic, department of his art, evince, in incident and humour, in character and in pathos, powers which repel the charge of mediocrity. Upon the whole, however, we consider him as ranking last in the roll of worthies who have thus far graced our pages.—Drake, Nathan, 1817, Shakspeare and His Times, vol. II, p. 570.    

3   Though his name is found in one instance affixed to a piece conjointly with Shakespeare’s, he is generally classed only in the third rank of our dramatists. His Muse is evidently a plebeian nymph, and had not been educated in the school of the Graces. His most tolerable production is the “New Wonder, or a Woman never vext.” Its drafts of citizen life and manners have an air of reality and honest truth—the situations and characters are forcible, and the sentiments earnest and unaffected.—Campbell, Thomas, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.    

4   Rowley and Le Tourneur, especially the former, have occasionally good lines; but we cannot say that they were very superior dramatists. Rowley, however, was often in comic partnership with Massinger.—Hallam, Henry, 1837–39, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, pt. iii, ch. vi, par. 103.    

5   He has his share of the cordial and straightforward manner of our old dramatists; but not a great deal more that is of much value. Of the style of his comedy a judgment may be formed from the fact, recorded by Langbaine, that certain of the scenes of one of his pieces, “A Shoemaker’s a Gentleman,” used to be commonly performed by the strolling actors at Bartholomew and Southwark fairs.—Craik, George L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. I, p. 598.    

6   William Rowley, like certain other authors of merit in other departments or periods of our literature, seems to have cared but little for the kind of reputation which is made by the arts of réclame. No doubt there is justice in the demand:“In full recompensacioun Of good worke, give us good renoun.” But William Rowley would seem to have been one of that minority among men of letters to whom, even before the days of journalism and its compensations, a personal literary reputation has always been more or less a matter of indifference. At all events, he cared little or nothing for the undivided empire of a title-page…. This comedy [“A New Wonder”] was evidently intended to appeal to the sympathies of the sort of audience for whom plays dealing with traditions of the City of London were as a rule, primarily at all events, designed. It is, however, a noteworthy play, which would of itself prove its author to have been a dramatist deficient neither in skill nor in power…. The pathos is by no means deep, and the humour the reverse of refined; while the change in the disposition of the scapegrace uncle is too sudden to leave any moral impression. But the action as a whole is brisk, the tone healthy, and the writing vigorous.—Ward, Adolphus William, 1875–99, A History of English Dramatic Literature, vol. II, pp. 540, 543, 544.    

7   In the underplot of “A Fair Quarrel” Rowley’s besetting faults of coarseness and quaintness, stiffness and roughness, are so flagrant and obtrusive that we cannot avoid a feeling of regret and irritation at such untimely and inharmonious evidence of his partnership with a poet of finer if not of sturdier genius…. But here [“The Honest Whore”] we may assert with fair confidence that the first and the last scenes of the play bear the indisputable sign-manual of William Rowley. His vigorous and vivid genius, his somewhat hard and curt directness of style and manner, his clear and trenchant power of straightforward presentation or exposition, may be traced in every line as plainly as the hand of Middleton must be recognized in the main part of the tragic action intervening. To Rowley therefore must be assigned the very high credit of introducing and of dismissing with adequate and even triumphant effect the strangely original tragic figure which owes its fullest and finest development to the genius of Middleton.—Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 1886, Thomas Middleton, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 19, pp. 145, 152.    

8   It is very difficult to form an opinion with regard to his talent. He is a kitchen-maid rather than a cook, and it is impossible to be certain what share he has had in the preparation of any comic feast that is set before us. So far, however, as we are able to form an opinion, we are apt to consider that the influence of Rowley upon Middleton was an unwholesome one. Middleton was strangely compacted of gold and clay, of the highest gifts and of the lowest subterfuges of the playwright. In Rowley, all that was not clay was iron, and it is difficult to believe that he sympathized with or encouraged his friend’s ethereal eccentricities. That Rowley had a hand in the underplot of several of Middleton’s noblest productions does not alter our conviction that his own sentiments were rather brutal and squalid, and that he cared for little but to pander to the sensational instincts of the groundlings. The mutual attitude of these friends has been compared to that of Beaumont and Fletcher, but it is hard to think of Middleton in any other light than as a poet unequally yoked with one whose temper was essentially prosaic.—Gosse, Edmund, 1894, The Jacobean Poets, p. 131.    

9   A tradition handed down by Langbaine records that Rowley was beloved by those great men, Shakespeare, Fletcher, and Jonson; while his partnership in so many plays by a variety of writers has been regarded as proof of the amiability of his character. As a useful and safe collaborator he seems to have been only less in demand than Dekker. His hand is often difficult to identify, though his verse may generally be detected by its metrical harshness and irregularity. His style is disfigured by a monotonously extravagant emphasis, and he is sadly wanting in artistic form and refinement. He had, however, a rare vein of whimsical humour (cf. the episode of Gnotho in the “Old Law,” iii. 1), and occasionally he shows an unexpected mastery of tragic pathos. Drake ranks him in the same class with Massinger, Middleton, Heywood, Ford, Dekker, and Webster, but puts him last in this category.—Seccombe, Thomas, 1897, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. XLIX, p. 363.    

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