London, England and Beyond: Social Transformations in Richard Brome's "The Sparagus Garden"
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12797/SH.60.2017.02.03Keywords:
Richard Brome, Caroline drama, The Sparagus Garden, London, London comedy, place-realism, identityAbstract
Richard Brome’s The Sparagus Garden (1635) unfolds against the backdrop of the rapidly transforming urban and social landscapes of Caroline London. This paper argues that this play is deeply implicated in the discursive processes of appropriating and understanding London’s shifting urban and social topographies. Abounding with topical and topographical allusions, the play has long drawn critical interest mainly for its documentary qualities and its exploitation of the short-lived theatrical vogue for ‘place-realism’. Spatial mobility, changes in the city’s urban landscape and the play’s insistent questioning of fundamental categories of social status, belonging and identity have taken centre stage, as critics have acknowledged that the play addresses and negotiates pressing anxieties of a society in flux.
References
Andrews, C.E. (1913). Richard Brome: A Study of his Life and Works. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Bentley, G.E. (1956). The Jacobean and Caroline Stage. Vol. 3. Oxford: Clarendon.
Boulton, J. (2000). London 1540-1700. In p. Clark (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain (pp. 315-346). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brome, R. (1635). The Sparagus Garden, [modern text]. Ed. J. Sanders. Richard Brome Online. Retrieved from http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/brome [accessed 24.02.2017].
Butler, M. (1984). Theatre and Crisis, 1632-1642. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Butler, M. (2006). Exeunt Fighting: Poets, Players, and Impersonators at the Caroline Hall Theaters. In A. Zucker & A.B. Farmer (eds.), Localizing Caroline Drama. Politics and Economics of the Early Modern English Stage, 1625-1642 (pp. 97-128). New York–Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Grantley, D. (2008). London in Early Modern English Drama. Representing the Built Environment. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230583764
Gurr, A. (2004). Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London, (3rd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Howard, J.E. (2007). Theater of a City. The Places of London Comedy 1598-1642. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kaufmann, R.J. (1961). Richard Brome. Caroline Playwright. New York: Columbia University Press.
Manley, L. (1995). Literature and Culture in Early Modern London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mendelson, S. & Crawford, p. (1998). Women in Early Modern England, 1550-1720. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198201243.001.0001
Middleton, T. (2007). A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Ed. L. Woodbridge. In G. Taylor & J. Lavagnino (eds.) Thomas Middleton: The Complete Works (pp. 907-958). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Miles, T. (1942). Place-Realism in a Group of Caroline Plays. The Review of English Studies, vol. 18, no. 72, pp. 428–440. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/res/os-XVIII.72.428
Peck, L.L. (2000). Building, Buying, and Collecting in London, 1600-1625. In L.C. Orlin & L. Cowen (eds.), Material London ca. 1600 (pp. 268-289). Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Porter, R. (1996). London. A Social History. London: Penguin.
Sanders, J. (2010). The Sparagus Garden. Critical Introduction. Richard Brome Online. Retrieved from https://www.hrionline.ac.uk/brome/viewOriginal.jsp?play=SG&type=CRIT [accessed 20.02.2017].
Sanders, J. (2011). The Cultural Geography of Early Modern Drama. 1620-1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511762260. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511762260
Shakespeare, W. (2015). The Life and Death of King Richard the Second. In S. Greenblatt et al. (eds.), The Norton Shakespeare (pp. 885-956). New York: Norton.
Stadtfeld, F. (1977). Die Karolinische Ortskomödie. Studien zur nachelisabethanischen und vorrestaurativen Dramatik. Heidelberg: Winter.
Steggle, M. (2004). Richard Brome. Place and Politics on the Caroline Stage. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Van Renen, D. (2011). A ‘Birthright into a New World’: Representing the Town on Brome’s Stage. Comparative Drama, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 35-63. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/cdr.2011.0000
Zucker, A. (2011). The Places of Wit in Early Modern English Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.