Affiliation:
1. University of Tennessee
Abstract
This essay examines Richard Brome’s The Court Beggar (1640), charting
the associative field the play establishes between recreational games,
hunting, financial projects, and the theater. Within this field, itself the
product of the socio-economic and political environment of the 1630s,
predation is never far from the ludic, particularly as it is crystallized in
the play’s proposal for a “floating Theatre.” This semi-serious, semi-parodic
scheme serves as Brome’s unique contribution to ways of thinking about
London entertainment industries, including the theatre, in the years just
before the English Civil War.
Publisher
Amsterdam University Press