The Play
The play is much more than a simple satire on a contemporary subject; its cast includes "a Puritan named Gabriel, a scarlet woman supposedly from Venice, various irate fathers and disguised lovers, and a group of hooligans known as 'The Brothers of the Blade,' whose expulsion gives the play its title." In shaping this confection, Brome presents a closely observed slice of contemporaneous London life in a realistic setting. The play has attracted critical comment for directing its satire both at fashionable society and at Puritans, and for the unusual scene of two prostitutes fighting each other with swords (Act IV, scene i). Some critics have complained of the play's "looseness of structure," even asserting that it "has no main plot."
Read more about this topic: The Weeding Of Covent Garden
Famous quotes containing the word play:
“He was high and mighty. But the kindest creature to his slaves—and the unfortunate results of his bad ways were not sold, had not to jump over ice blocks. They were kept in full view and provided for handsomely in his will. His wife and daughters in the might of their purity and innocence are supposed never to dream of what is as plain before their eyes as the sunlight, and they play their parts of unsuspecting angels to the letter.”
—Anonymous Antebellum Confederate Women. Previously quoted by Mary Boykin Chesnut in Mary Chesnut’s Civil War, edited by C. Vann Woodward (1981)
“Let me play the fool,
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)