Thomas Nabbes

Thomas Nabbes (1605 – buried 6 April 1641) was an English dramatist.

He was born in humble circumstances in Worcestershire, was educated at as a King's scholar at the King's School, Worcester (1616–1620), and entered Exeter College, Oxford in 1621. He left the university without taking a degree, and in about 1630 began a career in London as a dramatist. He was employed at some point in the household of a nobleman near Worcester, and seems to have been of a convivial disposition. He had at least two children, Bridget and William, both of whom died within two years of his death.

Works About 1630 Nabbes seems to have settled in London, resolved to try his fortunes as a dramatist. He was always a stranger to the best literary society, but found congenial companions in Chamberlain, Jordan, Marmion, and Tatham, and was known to many "gentlemen of the Inns of Court" (cf. Bride, Ded.) About January 1632–1633 his first comedy, Covent Garden, was acted by the queen's servants, and was published in 1638 with a modest dedication addressed to Sir John Suckling. In the prologue he defends himself from stealing the title of the piece—in allusion doubtless to Richard Brome's Covent Garden Weeded, acted in 1632—and describes his "muse" as "solitary". His second comedy, Totenham Court, was acted at the private house in Salisbury Court in 1633, and was also printed in 1638, with a dedication to William Mills. A third piece, Hannibal and Scipio, an hystorical Tragedy, in five acts of blank verse, was produced in 1635 by the queen's servants at their private house in Drury Lane. Nabbes obviously modelled his play upon Marston's Sophonisba. It was published in 1637, with a list of the actors' names. A third comedy, The Bride, acted at the private house in Drury Lane, again by the queen's servants, in 1638, was published two years later, with a prefatory epistle addressed "to the generalty of his noble friends, gentlemen of the severall honorable houses of the Inns of Court". One of the characters, Mrs. Ferret, the imperious wife, has been compared to Ben Jonson's Mistress Otter.

Gerard Langbaine, in his An Account of the English Dramatic Poets (1691), places Nabbes among the poets of the third rate. The author of Theophilus Cibber's Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland, to the Time of Dean Swift (1753) declares that in strict justice "he cannot rise above a fifth." This severe verdict is ill justified. He is a passable writer of comedies, inventing his own plots, and lightly censuring the foibles of middle-class London society. Samuel Sheppard in the sixth sestiad ("The Assizes of Apollo") of his Times Display'd (1646), associates Nabbes's name with the names of John Davenant, James Shirley, Francis Beaumont, and John Fletcher, and selects his tragedy of Hannibal and Scipio for special commendation. Nabbes displays a satisfactory command of the niceties of dramatic blank verse, in which all his plays, excluding the two earliest comedies, were mainly written. Although he was far more refined in sentiment than most of his contemporaries, he is capable at times of considerable coarseness.

Burial For centuries there was uncertainty about Nabbes' fate and burial. In a 1628 poem he expressed hope that one day he would be worthy of entombment at Worcester Cathedral in his native Worcestershire, while an 18th-century theatre historian insisted he was interred at London's Temple Church. There were no records for him in either place.

Selected works Covent Garden (acted 1633, printed 1638), dedicated to Sir John Suckling; a prose comedy; Tottenham Court (acted 1633, printed 1638), a comedy set in a holiday resort for London tradesmen; Hannibal and Scipio (acted 1635, printed 1637), a historical tragedy; The Bride (1638), a comedy; The Unfortunate Mother (printed 1640, acted 2013); this play, described by the Dictionary of National Biography as "an unreadable and tedious tragedy", was published in 1640, but not performed in Nabbes's lifetime. Microcosmus, a Morall Maske (printed 1637); two other masques, The Spring's Glory and Presentation intended for the Prince his Highness on his Birthday (printed together in 1638); and a continuation of Richard Knolles's General History of the Turks (1638).