A Jovial Crew |
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Author:
| Brome, Richard |
Editor:
| Stern, Tiffany |
Series title: | Arden Early Modern Drama Ser. |
ISBN: | 978-1-904271-77-2 |
Publication Date: | Jan 2014 |
Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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Imprint: | The Arden Shakespeare |
Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $24.95USD $24.95 |
Book Description:
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A Jovial Crew, or the
Merry Beggars, is a comedy about four noble lovers who join the beggar community for a pastoral life of dance and song. Or is it? Whilst maintaining its unremitting good humour,
A Jovial Crew shows that the literary depiction of beggar life, and real beggar life, are profoundly different. Daily aspects of life in the beggar world - poverty, dirt, licentiousness - come as a surprise to the well-born, who are ultimately led to question their own...
More Description A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars, is a comedy about four noble lovers who join the beggar community for a pastoral life of dance and song. Or is it? Whilst maintaining its unremitting good humour, A Jovial Crew shows that the literary depiction of beggar life, and real beggar life, are profoundly different. Daily aspects of life in the beggar world - poverty, dirt, licentiousness - come as a surprise to the well-born, who are ultimately led to question their own values.The last production mounted before theatres were closed for the English Civil War, A Jovial Crew's exploration of class, commonwealth, kinship and kingship shows an intense engagement with contemporary politics. This edition, with dedicated sections on music and language in the play, argues that A Jovial Crew also offers a nostalgic farewell to English theatre. It explores Brome's attitude to performance and print, and follows A Jovial Crew from its first, Caroline staging, to its later manifestations as a Restoration comedy, an eighteenth-century opera, and a twentieth-century proto-Marxist tragicomedy.