The Northern Lass is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy by Richard Brome that premiered onstage in 1629 and was first printed in 1632.
Holford was a member of Gray's Inn, and owned land next to the site of the Cockpit Theatre, where future Brome plays would be produced.
The first edition contains prefatory verses praising the play and its author, written by Ben Jonson, John Ford, and Thomas Dekker among others.
[5] Triedwell is concerned that such a woman, who might be a suitable match for "some hard-bred citizen, crafty lawyer, or country justice", is inappropriate for a "tender nurseling of the Court" like his cousin.
Sir Philip is also approached by an unknown gentlewoman called Mistress Trainwell, who speaks to him about a promise of marriage and presents him with a letter signed "Constance".
Hers is not the only dialect material in Brome's text: the minor comic character Sir Salomon Nonsense is from Cornwall and speaks with a Cornish accent.)
Sir Philip's cousin Triedwell tries to break off Luckless's engagement with Mrs. Fitchow; he goes to the widow to tell her "How lewd and dissolute he is", and how his fortunes have suffered by his extravagances.
Constance, feeling that Sir Philip has repudiated her, falls into a melancholy, in which she talks distractedly; her uncle characterises her state as "direct lunacy and idiotism".
The later scenes of the play are occupied with complex plotting, disguises, and busy comings and goings among humorous servants and justices and constables.
Sir Paul Squelch, exasperated at the disorder around him, decides to indulge himself and take a mistress; he settles on the same Constance Holdup who figured in Luckless's confusion.
He barks at her, she snaps at him; she breaks his wine glass, he her looking glass; she puts away his servants, he turns away hers; she locks her chamber door, he bolts his, begetting nothing but a world of strife and disorder.Mistress Fitchow, the play's stereotypical wealthy widow and a "threatening embodiment of dominance",[8] delivers a vivid expression of her side of the marital contest, in her itemised list of things to do "for after marriage" — To have the whole sway of the house, and all domestic affairs ... To study and practice the art of jealousy; to feign anger, melancholy, or sickness, to the life ...
Besides, in all, to be singular in our will; to reign, govern, ordain laws and break 'em, make quarrels and maintain 'em; profess truths, devise falsehoods; protest obedience, but study nothing more than to make our husbands so; control, controvert, contradict, and be contrary to all conformity ... Then does a husband tickle the spleen of a woman, when she can anger him, to please him; chide him, to kiss him; mad him, to humble him; make him stiff-necked, to supple him; and hard-hearted, to break him; to set him up, and take him down, and up again, and down again, when, and as often as we list.The bond between Constance and Sir Philip Luckless is presented in more conventionally idealised romantic terms; but Constance disappears from the play well before the final scene, while Mrs. Fitchow is present to the end.