Lodowick Carlell

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Lodowick Carlell (1602—1675), also Carliell or Carlile, was a seventeenth-century English playwright, active mainly during the Caroline era, 1625–42.

His ancestry was Scottish. He was the son of Herbert Carlell of Bridekirk in Dumfriesshire, and the third of four brothers. He was not educated at University, though he did produce translations from French and Spanish during his lifetime; he probably had the informal though not always contemptible education of a courtier, which he was from about the age of 15. Carlell married a Joan Palmer on July 11, 1626; they had two children, John and Penelope (later Mrs. John Fisher, her husband a lawyer of the Middle Temple).

Carlell began his dramatic career by the late 1620s. His early plays were acted by the King's Men and Queen Henrietta's Men. Thomas Dekker dedicated his Match Me in London to Carlell in 1631.

In his extra-literary life, Carlell was a courtier and functionary; he held the offices of Gentlamn of the Bows to King Charles I, and Groom to the King and Queen's Privy-Chamber. He was also Keeper of the Great Forest at Richmond. In the latter post, he assisted the King in his frequent hunts, and throughout the 1630s he lived in the lodge in the deer park at Richmond. In this same period he accomplished most of his dramatic authorship — and his plays are notable for their forest scenes.

Interestingly, he maintained his post at Richmond Park throughout the English Civil War, down to 1649. In this period he may have acted as a sort of undercover agent for the Royalist cause; he is thought to have sheltered Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle during this time.^[1] During the English Interregnum he is thought to have remained the Keeper both of Richmond Park and St. James's Park.

His extant plays (followed by date of publication) are: The Deserving Favorite (1629), Arviragus and Philicia, parts 1 and 2 (1639), The Passionate Lovers, parts 1 and 2 (1655), The Fool Would be a Favorite, or The Discreet Lover (1657), Osmond the Great Turk, or The Noble Servant (1657), and Heraclius, Emperor of the East (1664), the last a translation of the play by Pierre Corneille.

Some critics have judged his plays to be significant in the evolution of serious drama in the 17th century, from the tragedy and tragicomedy of John Fletcher and his collaborators to the "heroic drama" of the Restoration era. In this view, Carlell is "one of the chief intermediaries between Beaumont and Fletcher, and Dryden and Settle."^[2]

Carlell continued in royal service into the Restoration period. On June 6, 1664, a warrant was issued to pay him £150, three years' back pay as Keeper of His Majesty's house and walk at Petersham in Richmond Park.

Carlell was buried on August 21, 1675, in the Church of St.-Martin-in-the-Fields in Petersham in Middlesex.

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Margaret Toynbee and Giles Isham, "Lodowick Carlell," Notes and Queries 2 (1955), p. 204.
2. ^ Allardyce Nicoll; quoted in: Terence P. Logan and Denzell S. Smith, The Later Jacobean and Caroline Dramatists, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 1978; p. 229.

[edit] References

• Charles Henry Gray, Lodowick Carlell: His Life, A Discussion of His Plays, and "The Deserving Favorite", Chicago, Universiity of Chicago Press, 1905.
• Alfred Harbage, Cavalier Drama, New York, Modern Language Association of America, 1936.

[edit] External Link

Carlell Works Online.