A Mad Couple Well-Match'd - Place Realism

Place Realism

Brome's plays regularly participate in the trend toward "place realism" that was fashionable in the drama of the 1630s; his The Sparagus Garden, The Weeding of Covent Garden, and The New Academy refer to actual, socially significant locations in contemporary London, as do other plays of the period like Shirley's Hyde Park (1632) and Nabbes's Covent Garden (1633) and Tottenham Court (1634). A Mad Couple shows this same tendency toward place realism: in Act II, the protagonist Careless says,

"I need no more insconsing in Ram Alley, nor the sanctuary of Whitefriars, the forts of Fullers Rents and Milford Lane, whose walls are daily batter'd with the curses of bawling creditors."

All of these were locations in the London of Brome's day: Fuller's or Fulwood's Rents and the others were places where debtors could find sanctuary from creditors and bailiffs and the threat of debtor's prison.