SOURCE: “Brome's Comedy of Types and Inversions,” in Professional Playwrights: Massinger, Ford, Shirley, & Brome, The University Press of Kentucky, 1992, pp. 155-96.

In the following essay, Clark detects a strain of sociopolitical criticism running throughout Brome's body of work but notes that the playwright offers no solutions to the problems he identifies.

The Revisionary Potential of Brome's Backgrounds

There is even less information about Richard Brome and his acquaintances than there is about his colleagues and theirs. Apart from evidence about his theatrical associates, few traces of his background remain. Compared to that loyal son of the adviser and agent of noble patrons, Massinger, that genteel son placed at the inns of court by his well connected family, Ford, or that ambitious son of a moderately prosperous merchant, Shirley, we have scant knowledge of Brome's family, schooling, or friendships. So his attitudes remain even more open to conjecture than...