SOURCE: “The Caroline Editorial Page,” in Richard Brome: Caroline Playwright, Columbia University Press, 1961, pp. 47-66.

In the following essay, Kaufmann explores topical allusions and references to contemporary events in four of Brome's plays, characterizing these works as the “newspapers” of the day.

Because the Caroline realistic comedy is artistically tentative, its playwrights are experimenting with possible ways of digesting urgently needed corrections for social abuses without losing the advantage of a matured formal structure for their plays. They wanted to be contemporary without becoming trivial. When reading the comedies of this time, one is astonished at the function the drama is performing. The plays do the work of newspapers! They report, they advertize, they protest, they deplore, they frame social questions, they editorialize. This chapter will show how Brome created “newspapers” with four of his plays. There is probably no quicker way to distinguish the intimate—almost familial...