Mother Bombie

[1] Mother Bombie was entered into the Stationers' Register on 18 June 1594, and was published later that year, in a quarto printed by Thomas Scarlet for the bookseller Cuthbert Burby.

Commonalities with the contemporary Italian novels that supplied so much plot material to English Renaissance drama are too vague and general to support direct linkages.

Set in Rochester in Kent, the play's plot turns on the marital fortunes of two young couples, and the complicating opposition of their four respective fathers.

A pair of young lovers named Candius and Livia are the closest the play offers to a hero and heroine; their love is true, but their marriage is opposed by their fathers, Sperantus and Prisius, who want to arrange more lucrative matches for their children.

Sperantus, in fact, wants his son Candius to marry the wealthy Silena, while Prisius wants his daughter Livia to wed the rich heir Accius.

Each of the wealthy fathers tries to hide his child's foolishness by disguising them as their poorer but more sensible counterparts – Accius as Candius, Silena as Livia; but the plan falls through and the mutual folly of the two young people is exposed.

Mother Bombie, the local cunning woman, functions rather like a dramatic chorus in all this; characters consult her for advice and she predicts the outcomes of particular situations in doggerel verse.