Richard Brome: Place and Politics on the Caroline Stage (review)

112Comparative Drama for the study ofproduction and reception ofwork by these playwrights and the type oftheater companies that stage them. Where are the theater scholars who can take up this call to do the deep work of recording this theater practice and reception instead of letting the texts be the privileged record? Griffin is not positioned to do this work, but her fine study paves the way for it. Sara Freeman Illinois Wesleyan University Matthew Steggle. Richard Brome: Place and Politics on the Caroline Stage. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004. Pp. 222. $74.95. Matthew Steggle's RichardBrome: Place and Politics on the Caroline Stage is a welcome addition to the Revels Plays Companion Library. Indeed, this volume solidly lives up to the claim on the back cover as "the authoritative reference work on this appealing and underrated playwright." Steggle organizes the book as a chronological journey through Bromes career, situating his fifteen noncollaborative plays and sole surviving collaborations , The Late Lancashire Witches or The Witches ofLancashire and A lovial Crew, within historical contexts as they relate to the play's date of composition and/or performance. Through impressively controlled readings ofthe plays and other primary source materials, Steggle outlines a thorough—and thoroughly convincing—chronology that corrects some previous attributions and minimizes or eliminates some previously made guesses. In addition Steggle provides a critical companion that meticulously addresses scholarly discussions of Brome and advances that discussion by several giant leaps. In his introduction Steggle clearly foregrounds his argument as he surveys past scholarship on Brome. Steggle challenges outmoded assumptions that Brome's supposed artistic limitations are a reflection of low-class standing; he observes that Brome's obvious success and prominence during his lifetime and afterward belie such narrow thinking. While Brome was indeed Ben Jonson's manservant, Steggle suggests that there is a clear evolution in their relationship, from manservant, to rival, to friend. Clearly Brome was also Jonson's student in many ways, just as he was Shakespeare's; Steggle draws this observation out at several points in the subsequent chapters. At the heart of the introduction is Steggle's principal contention—pursued and buttressed through his subsequent analyses—that Brome is a more interesting, complex, and important playwright Reviews113 than he has previously been acknowledged to be. The sum ofthe evidence that Steggle offers decidedly convinces. Although the body of scholarship devoted to Brome is not vast, Steggle's reading and knowledge is and, as a result, this bookvery effectively explores the political, social, and topical implications of Brome's work. Moreover, Steggle situates, or "places," Brome in far more detailed contexts than has previously been attempted. Indeed, as his book's subtitle (PlaceandPolitics on the Caroline Stage) implies, place or location—in material,cultural,political, economic, geographical , and literary-historical terms—is a central theme in Steggle's study of Brome's life and works. Clearly Martin Butler's Theater and Crisis, 1632-1642 is a crucialworkfor Steggle's arguments here; important as that study is,Steggle's use ofit in delving into more specifics concerning Brome's career from artistic, political, and legal standpoints is compelling. Similarly, Steggle makes effective use of Ralph J. Kauffman's 1961 Richard Brome: Caroline Dramatist, subtly yet steadily revealing the obvious datedness of that work. Politely acknowledging as he does that certain archival materials and scholarly achievements postdated Kauffman's work in no waylessens the extent to which Steggle confidently overgoes Kauffman's critical biography. For nearly all of the plays the central thematic link for Steggle is Brome's manipulation of"place-realism."While this and other elements do indeed show Brome to be a writer who bridges the gap between the earlier plays of Shakespeare, Jonson, Fletcher and others, and the later Restoration Comedy, Steggle is right to assert that there is more to be said. While all of his readings reveal a profound knowledge of the various cultural, physical, geographical, economic, political, and literary intertexts that inform Brome's work writ large, Steggle's reading of The Northern Lass is especially instructive. Perhaps Brome's earliest play, The Northern Lass, as Steggle compellingly reads it, employs place-realism in order to present a protofeminist text...