RUGGLE, George. Ignoramus, comoedia coram regia maiestate Jacobi regis anliae etc.

RUGGLE, George. Ignoramus, comoedia coram regia maiestate Jacobi regis anliae etc.Such Vice the King Saw It Twice RUGGLE, George. Ignoramus, comoedia coram regia maiestate Jacobi regis anliae etc. London: [Thomas Purfoot for] I. S[pencer]. 1630. 12mo. Contemporary English sheep, spine gilt ruled in compartments, boards filleted in gilt with gilt floral centrepiece, preserved in a modern clamshell book form burgundy morocco box (upper cover lettered Phillip C. Broughton 21. 9. 80 in gilt; pp. [iv], 187, [1], with copper engraved

Such Vice the King Saw It Twice

RUGGLE, George. Ignoramus, comoedia coram regia maiestate Jacobi regis anliae etc. London: [Thomas Purfoot for] I. S[pencer]. 1630.

12mo. Contemporary English sheep, spine gilt-ruled in compartments, boards filleted in gilt with gilt floral centrepiece, preserved in a modern clamshell book-form burgundy morocco box (upper cover lettered ‘Phillip C. Broughton | 21.9.80’ in gilt; pp. [iv], 187, [1], with copper-engraved frontispiece depicting the titular Ignoramus; typographic headpieces, woodcut and typographic head- and tailpieces, woodcut labore et constantia device to title; somewhat rubbed and worn, a few slight abrasions to upper board, small loss to headcap; gift inscription in violet pencil to front free endpaper dated 2 October 1882, contemporary ownership inscription to title, ‘?J Nicholls’, contemporary annotation to rear free endpaper and pastedown (see below); a very good copy.

First edition of the celebrated early Stuart Cambridge comedy, ‘by some distance the most successful of all the university plays’ (D. K. Money).

The literary reputation of George Ruggle (bap. 1575, d. 1621/2), Latin playwright and fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, rests on this virtuoso college farce, which was performed to great success at Trinity College during James I’s visitation in March 1615. The production was staged at considerable expense, with seating fitted in the hall to accommodate a large audience of courtiers and academics, reportedly as many as two thousand people. The contemporary letter-writer John Chamberlain reported that ‘the thing was full of mirth and varietie, with many excellent actors…but more then halfe marred with extreme length’ (Nelson, pp. 539–41). Despite its five-hour length, the play was enthusiastically received by the king, who requested a repeat performance at Royston on 13 May 1615. Less enthusiastic, however, was the actor Samuel Fairclough, who in the first performance refused to wear women’s clothes for the part of Surda, the old woman; as his biographer noted, ‘Thus did this youth choose to lose the smiles of the Court, and to bear the frowns of the Vice-Chancellour, rather than to hazard the loss of the light of Gods countenance’ (ibid., p. 543).

Written in Latin, with passages in English and French, Ruggle’s college farce is based on the comedy La Trappolaria by Giambattista Della Porta (1535–1615), itself an adaptation of Plautus’ Pseudolus with additional elements drawn from several other Roman comedies. Satirising common lawyers, the subject was allegedly prompted by a local Cambridge dispute in 1611–12 which had led to friction between Francis Brakin, the town recorder, and the university. Brakin, evidently an unpopular figure, had previously been ridiculed in the third of the Cambridge Parnassus plays (1602). Ignoramus’ titular character is a blustering lawyer whose mangled learning, professional arrogance, and misuse of barbarous law-Latin make him both fool and target. The play’s frontispiece depicts Ignoramus with his law books and manuscripts declaring ‘Currat lex’ (the law will run its course). Ruggle’s work provoked much resentment among lawyers, who retaliated with numerous rhymes and ballads in their defence; Chamberlain wrote that the play ‘hath so netled the Lawiers that they are almost out of all patience’ (p. 542). Subsequently the poet Abraham Cowley warned poets not to quarrel with scholars, ‘lest some one take / Spleene, and another Ignoramus make.’

Ruggle’s hero Ignoramus is often credited with popularising the English noun for an ignorant person, a meaning recorded almost immediately after the Cambridge performances. It appeared in two editions in 1630 (of which this is the earliest), and these were followed by a total of eleven subsequent editions throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was first translated into English by Fernando Parkhurst in 1660, followed by Robert Codrington in 1662, and was adapted for the stage by Edward Ravenscroft in 1678.
Ruggle was a major donor of books, over three hundred of which survive at the fellows’ library at Clare College, including many scarce French, Spanish, and Italian plays, and Latin treatises.

Provenance: the front pastedown of our copy is inscribed by a contemporary reader ‘I know’, perhaps a playful rejoinder to the title’s Latin Ignoramus (‘we do not know’).

ESTC S116280; Greg II, L8(a). See Nelson ed., Cambridge (Records of Early English Drama) (1989).

SKU: 2125023