Relevance
While Brome's A Jovial Crew had links with the theatre and literature of its period, the play also drew upon actual events and the social realities of its era. The tumultuous years leading up to the start of the Civil War saw some significant economic dislocations; local authorities in England complained of "the great number of rogues and vagabonds and sturdy beggars wandering and lurking in the country, to the great trouble and terror of the same." Brome's play provided at least a limited recognition of this socio-economic underside of Caroline England.
A Jovial Crew incorporates the type of political satire that is not unusual in dramas of its era. Justice Clack is portrayed as a dictatorial windbag. His "rule" is "to punish before I examine," by the mere facial expressions of the unfortunates brought before him —
- I have taken a hundred examinations i' my days of felons, and other offendors, out of their very countenances; and wrote them down verbatim, to what they would have said. I am sure it has serv'd to hang some of 'em, and whip the rest.
Yet Brome goes farther in A Jovial Crew than most dramatists of his era ever dared. His genteel characters find their comfortable lives intolerably oppressive, and long for liberty and freedom, even that of beggars. The references to the Adamites, and to a Utopia of a new social order, seem to presage the radical social movements of the coming Commonwealth era, the Levellers and Diggers and others. The idealization of the beggars' life, as unrealistic as it is, appears to point to a profound social dissatisfaction.
How much of this came through during stage performances of the play? Perhaps not much, especially after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The second of the performances noted by Pepys, on August 27, 1661, was attended by both King Charles II and his brother the Duke of York, eventually to reign as James II. The version of the play they saw most likely had any political rough edges smoothed away.
Read more about this topic: A Jovial Crew
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