Satire
In this more modern view, The Lovesick Court relates to the so-called "Second War of the Theatres," a controversy and rivalry between professional playwrights like Ben Jonson and his follower Brome on the one hand, and on the other the amateur dramatists of the royal court of Queen Henrietta Maria, most prominently Sir John Suckling. Brome and Suckling were perhaps the primary opponents in the "second war;" see Aglaura and The Court Beggar.
The satire in Lovesick Court is in some ways more subtle than Brome's comparable satire in Court Beggar, and directed less toward personalities like Suckling and Sir William Davenant than toward the type of drama they wrote. Brome saw the courtier drama as deficient regarding human nature and common sense; he judged it a highly artificial mode that perpetrated a "silly distortion of human motive and conduct...," with exaggerated behavior and excessive posturing on ideas and ideals of friendship, love, chastity, honor, and self-renunciation. The more realistic drama that Brome inherited from Jonson and practiced in his comedies was inherently hostile to the highly mannered work of Lodowick Carlell and other courtier dramatists.
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Famous quotes containing the word satire:
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