The Weeding of the Covent Garden, or the Middlesex Justice of Peace, alternatively titled The Covent Garden Weeded,[1] is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by Richard Brome that was first published in 1659. The play is a noteworthy satire on the emerging ethos of Capitalism as reflected in real estate and urban development in the early modern city.
Richard Brome ; was an English dramatist of the Caroline era.
The precise dates of authorship and first performance of the play are not known with certainty; but it must have originated c. 1632, when the development of Covent Garden was a public controversy. The play may have been staged by the King's Men.[2]
Covent Garden is a district in Greater London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between Charing Cross Road and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and with the Royal Opera House, which is also known as "Covent Garden". The district is divided by the main thoroughfare of Long Acre, north of which is given over to independent shops centred on Neal's Yard and Seven Dials, while the south contains the central square with its street performers and most of the historical buildings, theatres and entertainment facilities, including the London Transport Museum and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
The King's Men was the acting company to which William Shakespeare (1564–1616) belonged for most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, they became The King's Men in 1603 when King James I ascended the throne and became the company's patron.
The Weeding of Covent Garden was first published in the 1659 octavo volume Five New Plays, a collection of Brome's dramas issued by the booksellers Andrew Crooke and Henry Brome.
The size of a book is generally measured by the height against the width of a leaf, or sometimes the height and width of its cover. A series of terms is commonly used by libraries and publishers for the general sizes of modern books, ranging from folio, to quarto (smaller) and octavo. Historically, these terms referred to the format of the book, a technical term used by printers and bibliographers to indicate the size of a leaf in terms of the size of the original sheet. For example, a quarto historically was a book printed on a sheet of paper folded twice to produce four leaves, each leaf one fourth the size of the original sheet printed. Because the actual format of many modern books cannot be determined from examination of the books, bibliographers may not use these terms in scholarly descriptions.
Andrew Crooke and William Cooke were London publishers of the mid-17th-century. In partnership and individually, they issued significant texts of English Renaissance drama, most notably of the plays of James Shirley.
Covent Garden
Even in the first half of the 17th century, major urban developments were subjects of intense dispute. In both the Elizabethan and the Jacobean eras, regulations had been promulgated to control the urban sprawl that was then uniting London with nearby Westminster. The last open spaces between the two were under pressure in the early 17th century: the area of Lincoln's Inn Fields was partially developed, leaving Covent Garden – the former "convent garden" attached to Westminster Abbey — as the next obvious target for exploitation.
The Elizabethan era is the epoch in the Tudor period of the history of England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603). Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history. The symbol of Britannia was first used in 1572, and often thereafter, to mark the Elizabethan age as a renaissance that inspired national pride through classical ideals, international expansion, and naval triumph over Spain. The historian John Guy (1988) argues that "England was economically healthier, more expansive, and more optimistic under the Tudors" than at any time in a thousand years.
The Jacobean era refers to the period in English and Scottish history that coincides with the reign of James VI of Scotland (1567–1625), who also inherited the crown of England in 1603 as James I. The Jacobean era succeeds the Elizabethan era and precedes the Caroline era, and is often used for the distinctive styles of Jacobean architecture, visual arts, decorative arts, and literature which characterized that period.
The City of London is a city and county that contains the historic centre and the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London from its settlement by the Romans in the 1st century AD to the Middle Ages, but the agglomeration has since grown far beyond the City's borders. The City is now only a tiny part of the metropolis of London, though it remains a notable part of central London. Administratively, it forms one of the 33 local authority districts of Greater London; however, the City of London is not a London borough, a status reserved for the other 32 districts. It is also a separate county of England, being an enclave surrounded by Greater London. It is the smallest county in the United Kingdom.
In January 1631, the land's owner, Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford, obtained from King Charles I the waiver of the legal restrictions on new building that he needed for a large building project centred on a Continental-style piazza. (The waiver cost Bedford £2000; Charles had dismissed Parliament and begun his eleven-year period of personal rule, and needed the money.)
Francis Russell, 4th Earl of Bedford PC was an English nobleman and politician. He built the square of Covent Garden, with the piazza and church of St. Paul's, employing Inigo Jones as his architect. He is also known for his pioneering project to drain The Fens of Cambridgeshire.
Charles I was the monarch over the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649.
The Parliament of England was the legislature of the Kingdom of England, existing from the early 13th century until 1707, when it merged with the Parliament of Scotland to become the Parliament of Great Britain after the political union of England and Scotland created the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Inigo Jones
While Isaac de Caux was the architect for the row houses on the north and east sides of the square, Inigo Jones designed St. Paul's Church on the square's west side. Moreover, Jones was then the King's Surveyor General, and must perforce have been involved in the overall design of the project.[3]
Inigo Jones was the first significant English architect in the early modern period, and the first to employ Vitruvian rules of proportion and symmetry in his buildings. As the most notable architect in England, Jones was the first person to introduce the classical architecture of Rome and the Italian Renaissance to Britain. He left his mark on London by his design of single buildings, such as the Queen's House which is the first building in England designed in a pure classical style, and the Banqueting House, Whitehall, as well as the layout for Covent Garden square which became a model for future developments in the West End. He made major contributions to stage design by his work as theatrical designer for several dozen masques, most by royal command and many in collaboration with Ben Jonson.
For this reason, Brome chose to concentrate on Jones when crafting his satire on the greed of real-estate development and speculation. Brome, a longtime follower of Ben Jonson,[4] must also have been influenced by the fact that Jonson's long-running battle of egos with Jones, in their unhappy partnership as masque makers for the Stuart Court, had come to a head in 1631 with Jones's victory and Jonson's defeat.[5] Brome focuses his satire on two figures, Rookbill the architect and Cockbrain the justice of the peace; both represent Inigo Jones, who at the time also served as a justice of the peace for Westminster and Middlesex.[6]
Place realism
Brome was not the only playwright of his day to be attracted to this subject; Thomas Nabbes wrote his own Covent Garden, which was acted in 1633 and printed in 1638. Plays exploiting "place realism," connections with real London landmarks and institutions, were common in the early 1630s, with Shackerley Marmion's Holland's Leaguer (1631), James Shirley's Hyde Park (1632), and Nabbes's Tottenham Court (1634) being good examples. Other of Brome's plays also participate in this theatrical fashion.
The play
The play is much more than a simple satire on a contemporary subject; its cast includes "a Puritan named Gabriel, a scarlet woman supposedly from Venice, various irate fathers and disguised lovers, and a group of hooligans known as 'The Brothers of the Blade,' whose expulsion gives the play its title."[7] In shaping this confection, Brome presents a closely observed slice of contemporaneous London life in a realistic setting.[8] The play has attracted critical comment for directing its satire both at fashionable society and at Puritans, and for the unusual scene of two prostitutes fighting each other with swords (Act IV, scene i). Some critics have complained of the play's "looseness of structure," even asserting that it "has no main plot."[9]
Notes
↑ Modern usage often drops the definitive article before "Covent Garden."
↑ Brome makes his allegiance and his debt to Jonson clear in Covent Garden Weeded: Cockbrain cites Adam Overdo from Bartholomew Fair as his "reverend ancestor."
↑ Jones continued to design masques for the Court through the remainder of Charles's reign, but Jonson never wrote another for royalty. See: Chloridia.
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