Brome

Brome, RICHARD, a minor dramatist, of whose life but little is known save that he was of humble origin, having been in his earlier days servant to Ben Jonson, that he lived in familiar friendship with Dekker, Ford, and Shirley, wrote as many as twenty-four popular plays, was a devout believer, though a hater of Presbyterians and Puritans, and died about 1652. His best plays are The Northern Lass, a comedy, written mostly in prose, and The Jovial Crew. The revival of the latter in 1819 delighted Charles Lamb, who speaks with enthusiastic warmth of this 'protest in favour of air, and clear liberty, and honest license, and blameless assertion of man's original blest charter of blue skies, and vagrancy, and nothing-to-do.' Other plays are The Lancashire Witches, written in collaboration with Heywood, The Court Beggar, and The Queen and Concubine. Brome was a poor poet, and the lyrics interspersed in the plays are very indifferent verse; some fair lines of his in memory of Fletcher are in the 1647 folio of Beaumont and Fletcher. Brome's dramatic works were reprinted in 3 vols. in 1873. See vol. ii. of Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature (1875).