Richard Brome

Matthew Steggle (Sheffield Hallam University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.04: English Writing and Culture of the Seventeenth Century, 1625-1688.
Vol. editors: Jennifer Brady (Rhodes College), Daniel Cook (University of Dundee), Neil Forsyth (Université de Lausanne), Claire Preston (Queen Mary, University of London), J A Roe (University of York), Virginia Mason Vaughan (Clark University)

Dates

Born c. 1590
Died 1652
Activity 1628-1652

Places

Born in England
Active in England

Activities

Primary

Playwright / Dramatist

Resources

Brome's Works

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Richard Brome was born around 1590, but nothing is known of his origins. He was a manservant to Ben Jonson, and is mentioned in this capacity in the Induction to Jonson's

Bartholomew Fair

(1614). Almost nothing else is known of Brome's early career, until his name appears in a list of personnel of the Queen of Bohemia's players in 1628.

In 1629 Jonson's play The New Inn was performed on the stage, where it failed. At the same time, a play by Richard Brome, the now-lost The Love-Sick Maid, or the Honour of Young Ladies, achieved great critical and commercial success. Brome followed The Love-Sick Maid with The Northern Lass, a sentimental city comedy, in which the eponymous central character is a country girl brought to London and involved in a web of mistaken identity. Frustrated, Jonson

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600 words

Citation: Steggle, Matthew. "Richard Brome". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 September 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5193, accessed 21 November 2024.]