A Jovial Crew Hardback
by Richard Brome
Edited by Dr Tiffany (The Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham, UK) Stern
Part of the Arden Early Modern Drama series
Hardback
Description
A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars, is a comedy about four noble lovers who join the beggar community for a pastoral life of dance and song. Or is it? Whilst maintaining its unremitting good humour, A Jovial Crew shows that the literary depiction of beggar life, and real beggar life, are profoundly different.
Daily aspects of life in the beggar world – poverty, dirt, licentiousness – come as a surprise to the well-born, who are ultimately led to question their own values. The last production mounted before theatres were closed for the English Civil War, A Jovial Crew’s exploration of class, commonwealth, kinship and kingship shows an intense engagement with contemporary politics.
This edition, with dedicated sections on music and language in the play, argues that A Jovial Crew also offers a nostalgic farewell to English theatre.
It explores Brome’s attitude to performance and print, and follows A Jovial Crew from its first, Caroline staging, to its later manifestations as a Restoration comedy, an eighteenth-century opera, and a twentieth-century proto-Marxist tragicomedy.
Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:328 pages
- Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication Date:30/01/2014
- Category:
- ISBN:9781408130018
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Information
-
Out of stock
- Format:Hardback
- Pages:328 pages
- Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication Date:30/01/2014
- Category:
- ISBN:9781408130018
