The New Claret-Club: Advertising, Self-Fashioning, and an Addition to the Canon of Scottish Restoration Theatre


 The traditional view of theatre in Restoration Scotland is that Presbyterian disapproval all but suffocated anything akin to the revival of playwriting and playgoing witnessed south of the border. This article highlights an addition to the slim canon of seventeenth-century Scottish theatre that provides nuance to this picture. The New Claret-Club: or, The Entertainments of Jack Jolly, Tam True-Wit, Peter Prudence, Symon Scruple, and Frank Furthy (1669) was until recently unknown to the field and contains hitherto forgotten details about theatre culture in Restoration Scotland. This article argues that The New Claret-Club was written by the founder of the first commercial theatre in Scotland following the Restoration, Thomas St. Serfe (or Sydserf) in order to advertise that theatre and increase his own celebrity through self-fashioning. It then provides a full annotated edition of The New Claret-Club.