Thomas Randolph

THOMAS RANDOLPH'S SALTING

1627

a synoptic, alphabetical character list

Note: Information and text taken from Roslyn Richek, "Thomas Randolph's Salting (1627), its Text and John Milton's Sixth Prolusion as Another Salting," English Literary Renaissance 12 (1982) 103-131. Text at pp. 113-126. The text, incomplete, is found in Beinecke Osborn MS b65. Richek gives pp. 138-146, Bowers, who first notes the MS in Modern Philology 39 (1942), 275-80, records that the text starts at f. 65v. The volume is a small octavo miscellany of 264 pp, provenance Trinity College, Cambridge, 1630s-1650s. The title in the MS is "Thom Randolfs Salting." Scribe unknown, but not autograph. Rhyming couplets throughout. No character/speaker is indicated, but his role is as "Father" to his freshmen "sons" for the duration of the feast.

A "Salting" ceremony was a college conviviality, older undergraduate members welcoming freshers with an entertainment, part scripted, part improvised. The festivities were helped along, and presumably largely defined, by quantities of salted beer administered to the newly-matriculated members on their initiation, held to be complete when each named fresher had made his impromptu response to the presiding Fathers' address. No idea how salty said beer must have been, but suspect that it wasn't the only beer available in Hall on the night. We're very near to Animal House territory here, and the text as it stands may not qualify as 'drama' within the strictest meaning, but it is good fun to read and imagine the student body in action.

Richek glosses "tee" at l.310 as "tea":
A piece of beefe t'wixte foure, t'is quickly gone By tee or Dick eates twice as much at home...

She notes that the word is not clearly written, but if she has deciphered accurately, Randolph has pre-dated the OED's first usage of 'tea' for a meal by more than a century. MS c.1627, OED's first listing 1738. Tea as a drink is only in use c. 1650-55.

FATHER

Thomas Randolph. The speaker introduces himself as one of the two Fathers of the feast. The other is a witty "Key" (Thomas Kay), whose lines do not survive, assuming his role was as second speaker at the point Randolph's section breaks off. The Second Father's role, of course, may have been stage-managerial, presenting and "salting" the participants in turn as the first Father pronounced his roll-call. Randolph announces this to be first salting in a long time at Trinity and suggests that the timing coincides with the British fleet capturing the Salt Islands. His task is to name his boys. He does not plan to half-hang them with ill names and rejects several naming schemes: neither to name them for metals, body parts, nor books. He decides to name them as foods in a great feast, as many tutors have grown fat on their students before now. He describes his invisible table, well-laid and promising good cheer. Even better, there is no wife cluttering up the table as hostess, or a simpering bride to mince words. The feast is extra-ordinary, not the usual stale pies of college fare. He greets his Fellow Commoners, gentlemen all, who are excluded from the ordeal to come. They have promising futures at the "Councill Table," and like the luxurious, too dainty foods served to Tantalus, are exempt from tasting. He begins his list of candidates with his son Priest, who would obviously be Chaplain and say grace at the feast, but who is absent. He pronounces a satirical grace himself. Clark and Whithorn come next. They are Randolph's schoolfellows (from Westminster) and he calls them his chief dishes, brothers not sons. Coming from the same alma mater, to call them sons would be incestuous. Graunt is a stewed chicken, Ashton (a notable scholar) is that landlord of meats, a sirloin of beef. Gamble (gambol) is named a calve's head, the musical Rodes, a swan. Manvell (not, apparently "Marvell" as has been thought) is a sour sauce and Evans the "kitt-plaier," a goose to entertain them with his pocket-violin. Heggin-bottom's name reminds him of the character Higgen in Fletcher's Beggar's Bush, the king of crutches. He is also absent, and the suggestion is to cut off one of his limbs. Nelson, a scholar of Hebrew, is named for Jerusalem artichokes. The final fresher named is Foster. He is not named in the surviving text, but Father recites a letter from Foster to his mother, complaining about the bad food at college and the MS abruptly ends.

THOMAS KAY

The second of the two fathers. Also spelled Key. His part may have been lost or never scripted.

THOMAS RANDOLPH

The first of the two fathers.