Richard Brome - Canon

Canon

The plays Brome wrote were certainly, and strongly, influenced by Jonsonian comedy (Brome was not a tragedian). He was, admittedly and unambiguously, one of the Sons of Ben. The canon of his extant plays includes:

• The City Wit, c. 1629?, revived 1637, printed 1653
• The Northern Lass, performed 1629, printed 1632
• The Queen's Exchange, c. 1629–30?, printed 1657
• The Novella, performed 1632, printed 1653
• The Weeding of Covent Garden, performed 1633?, printed 1659
• The Sparagus Garden, performed 1635, printed 1640
• The Damoiselle or the New Ordinary, c. 1638?; printed 1653
• The English Moor, or The Mock Marriage, performed 1637, printed 1659
• The Antipodes, performed 1638, printed 1640
• A Mad Couple Well-Match'd, performed 1639?, printed 1653
• The Lovesick Court, or The Ambitious Politic, registered 1640, printed 1659
• The Court Beggar, ?1640, printed 1653
• The New Academy, or The New Exchange, registered 1640, printed 1659
• The Queen and Concubine, c. 1635–39?, printed 1659
• A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars, performed ?1641, printed 1652.

The English Moor also survives in a manuscript version.

Brome collaborated with Thomas Heywood in The Late Lancashire Witches, which was acted by the King's Men and printed in 1634. The play was based on contemporary events of 1633–34.

Brome plays that have not survived include: The Lovesick Maid (1629); Wit in a Madness (?1637); The Jewish Gentleman (registered 1640); A Fault in Friendship (1623), perhaps with Jonson and another collaborator; two more collaborations with Heywood, The Life and Death of Sir Martin Skink (c. 1634) and The Apprentice's Prize (c. 1633–41); and Christianetta, or Marriage and Hanging Go by Destiny (registered 1640), possibly a collaboration with George Chapman.

Alfred Harbage has argued that two of John Dryden's plays, The Wild Gallant (1663) and The Mistaken Husband (1674), are adaptations of otherwise-lost plays by Brome, based on the plays' internal evidence of plot and style.

In an active playwriting career of not quite fifteen years, 1629 to 1642, Brome produced about two plays a year. Judging by the overall productivity of dramatists in English Renaissance drama, this appears to have been the pragmatic long-term maximum for a playwright who worked primarily as a solo artist (which in turn illustrates the impracticality of Brome's attempt to produce three plays a year).