SOURCE: “Gatherings of ‘Naughty-packs,’” and “Generic Inversion: ‘The Choice Dainties of His Theatre,’” in Richard Brome, Twayne Publishers, 1980, pp. 75-92; 118-35.

In the first excerpt below, Shaw examines “topographichal references” to specific London locations in several of Brome's plays. In the second excerpt, she analyzes three plays in which Brome satirizes conventional forms.

The Weeding of Covent-Garden (1632), The Sparagus Garden (1635), The New Academy (1625-35), and A Mad Couple Well Match't (1637-39) are all comedies of manners; social satires exposing particular humors or the strivings of various characters for falsely affected pseudograces. In these plays the London citizen does not come off nearly so well. In almost every instance he is either the gull or the guller who becomes the main target of the ridicule for his foolishness and his aspirations. He is rendered laughable, however, and not socially castigated as he might be in a Jonsonian satire.

In...