C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage: Richard Brome’s A Jovial Crew (1641/ 2) at the Dawn of the English Civil War 1. Introduction In the early modern period, the generic system and its values looked completely different from the one we are now familiar with; drama and theatre were immensely popular, to an extent that is difficult to grasp today. It seems pertinent to revisit this period in the context of discussing the changing relations between literature and culture from a historical perspective. Plays were so widely received that - when it comes to combining entertainment and information - they can arguably be compared to media formats and products of today, such as television or the internet. Theatre was the popular medium and institution in the seventeenth century, vividly bringing to life current anxieties, hopes, and desires; and it also served the dramatic enactments of political struggles, power shifts, and regime changes. 1 In this article, I would like to focus on a less well-known Caroline play that addresses changing power structures at the time of the English Civil War. Since discussions of early modern English drama tend to focus almost The potential impact of theatre on large crowds in London and the provinces is reflected in frequent attempts, by Puritan preachers and city magistrates, to suppress it. Playhouses were frequently closed during outbreaks of the plague, but also in times of political insecurity. 1 Literary historical works that have discussed (early modern) drama and politics in an intriguing manner include (parts of) books, e.g., Simon Sheperd’s and Peter Womack’s English Drama: A Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), and articles, e.g., David Scott Kastan’s “Performances and Playbooks: The Closing of the Theatres and the Politics,” Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England, eds. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), 167-184. Even though those works have perhaps not or only marginally been influenced by New Historicist concerns, the latter seem as relevant as ever. There is an ongoing trend to read plays but also other kinds of literary texts in their historical contexts and politically (cf. fn. 12-14). This trend has been informed by Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980), in which he analyses Renaissance literature in political terms and frames it as cultural product that resonates with its culture of origin. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 146 exclusively on Shakespeare, this is also intended as a contribution to broadening the literary canon of English Renaissance studies. 2 Richard Brome’s A Jovial Crew was penned around 1640, at a time of social crisis and instability and with a government in transition. The kinds of cultural change that I will zoom in on and that are imagined in the play concern shifts and transformations in at least three areas that can be considered parts of (Caroline) culture: firstly, politics and (state) philosophy; secondly, society and social power structures; as well as, thirdly, economics. My article is based on the assumption that the intricate relationships between literature and culture - in any of culture’s dimensions just mentioned - come especially clearly to the fore at times of cultural crisis and subsequent change. 3 In times of socio-political struggle, “drama itself becomes the site of […] [cultural] debate [; it] indicates cultural change and a new engagement of playwrights with the question of how good governance could be established.” With Brome’s comedy, my focus is on dramatic production at this time of sociopolitical change and instability. 4 2 Critics have become increasingly aware of this problem. At the same time, opening up the Renaissance canon seems to be a challenge. Noting that “Shakespeare has formed the pivot of the relationship between drama and culture for several centuries,“ Matthias Bauer and Angelika Zirker have still presented their scholarly audience with a volume in which eight out of twelve articles focus on the very playwright. See Matthias Bauer, Angelika Zirker, “Preface,” Drama and Cultural Change: Turning around Shakespeare, eds. Bauer and Zirker (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009), 1-4, 1. Richard Brome’s A Jovial Crew, or The Merry Beggars is such a play. It can be considered a site of social, political, and/ or economic debate which 3 The concept of the ‘turning point’ as framed by Ansgar Nünning and Kai Marcel Sicks is certainly related to this understanding of change; cf. Ansgar Nünning and Kai Marcel Sicks, “Turning Points as Metaphors and Mininarrations: Analysing Concepts of Change in Literature and Other Media,” Turning Points: Concepts and Narratives of Change in Literature and Other Media, eds. Ansgar Nünning and Kai Marcel Sicks [Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012], 1-28). While the socio-cultural changes and the changing mentalities of the English people during the reigns of James I and Charles I that led to the Civil War might be rightfully conceptualised as “cultural transformation,“ i.e., as retrospectively “constructed” processes (Nünning/ Sicks 2) that were to describe and explain people’s changing mind-sets, the change in the form of government can be framed as a historical turning point par excellence: with the execution of Charles I and the establishment of a commonwealth the turning point from one form of government to the other is actually and objectively given (even though, admittedly, Cromwell’s ‘reign’ qualitatively did not differ much from the previous monarch’s). 4 Bauer/ Zirker 3. See also Joerg O. Fichte, “The Appearance of the Commonwealth and the People in Tudor Drama,” Drama and Cultural Change: Turning around Shakespeare, eds. Matthias Bauer and Angelika Zirker (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009), 5-22, here, 22. For other forms and functions of drama and other literary genres as sites of cultural debate and discursive negotiation, see, e.g., Ingo Berensmeyer and Andrew Hadfield, “Mendacity in Early Modern Literature and Culture: An Introduction,” European Journal of English Studies 19/ 2 (2015): 131-147. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 147 deals with - then topical - questions of good government. Written around 1640, 5 it emerged when England found itself in a state of political turmoil and just before an imminent power shift: the nation was split over the politics of King Charles I and the English Civil War, the beheading of Charles, and the institution of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, were events that followed. 6 Using the term mediation, I would like to stress the importance of cultural artefacts, such as plays, written or performed, as instruments for sensemaking. They can give events, mind-sets, and power structures that occur in history a literary shape; they can creatively express them and/ or artistically process them. Artefacts like plays are able to select, emplot, contextualise, and remediate (parts of) factual worlds in fiction and, thus, mediate between individuals and their historical contexts and between the experience of individuals and groups of people. Richard Brome’s play engages with the different political opinions and varied viewpoints on government and administration which were part of the public debate at the time of the struggle between the king, the parliament, and other agents. As such, I argue, the play can be said to, firstly, mediate prevalent cultural concerns and conflicting ideas on politics, economics, and social hierarchies; secondly, it serves as a thought experiment, imagining alternative societies and different governments; and in so doing, it can be thirdly said to prefigure both alternative societies, such as commonwealths, and political change itself. 7 It is important to add, however, that plays, just like literature in general, not only process and remediate existing worlds and mind-sets; they also offer alternative options; they may serve as thought experiments, as an “imaginative exercise designed to determine what would happen if certain conditions were met.” 8 5 The publication history of A Jovial Crew also indicates how closely the play is involved in its historical context: it was first performed in 1641 or 1642, i.e., before the English Civil War. See Tiffany Stern, “Introduction,” A Jovial Crew, ed. Tiffany Stern (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). 1-68, 13. However, it was only in 1652, i.e., after the War, that the play was first printed. See Klaus Stierstorfer, “Richard Brome: A Joviall Crew, or the Merry Beggars,” Kindlers Literatur Lexikon Online, ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold (2009; https: www.kll-online.de; last retrieved 12 April 2015). In imagining, narrating, and per- 6 If not in consequence, at least in temporal sequence. For a historical interpretation of the events, see John Morrill, “The Causes and Course of the British Civil Wars,” The Cambridge Companion to Writing of the English Revolution, ed. N. H. Keeble (Cambridge: Cambridge Unversity Press, 2001), 13-31. 7 My use of remediation and mediation corresponds with Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney’s use in “Introduction: Cultural Memory and its Dynamics,” Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, ed. Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney (Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter, 2009), 1-11. They have built their theory upon Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin’s Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999). 8 Catherine Z. Elgin, “The Laboratory of the Mind,” A Sense of the World: Essays on Fiction, Narrative, and Knowledge, ed. John Gibson, Wolfgang Huemer, and Luca Pocci (New York: Routledge, 2009), 43-55. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 148 forming worlds and governments that differ from the real ones, plays might be even able to premediate future worlds and governments. 9 Using the term premediation, I would like to stress that artistic products, such as plays, which circulate in a given culture, provide categories for new experience and its representation. 10 If one studies A Jovial Crew in context and against the backdrop of the assumptions just made, the following questions arise: firstly, how does Brome relate to matters pertinent to the cultural context in which it arose; i.e., how does he emplot political, social, and economic questions; how does he deal with questions of government? Secondly, to what extent does Brome’s play function as a thought experiment and in which ways does it imagine alternative cultures? And thirdly, to what extent might A Jovial Crew even prefigure (some of) the political events that shaped the early modern society and its culture? Accordingly, the representations of thought experiments in plays may not be only indicative of desires and concerns given in a certain society, they may also anticipate this society’s future. They may prefigure the experience of cultural change, of new power structures, and future mind-sets. At this point, I had better concede that the contextual argument I will make is by no means uncontested. The pastoral romance that deals with gentry becoming beggars (and vice versa) has been discussed controversially before: some critics hold it is a play on politics, others say that if it is political, it is just incidentally so, while others, again, think it escapist and evasive of the current political situation. 11 If, however, with Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer, one assumes that literary - including dramatic - texts can always be read as forms of cultural self-perception and self-reflection, 12 9 See also Julie Sanders, who states that “with Parliament inactive, London theatres constituted alternative spaces and talking-shops for ideas. Julie Sanders, “Beggar’s Commonwealths and the Pre-Civil War Stage,” Modern Language Review 97.1 (2002): 1-14, 4. Brome’s A Jovial Crew, with its social conflicts and solutions, its gentry and beggars, and its reflections on kingships and commonwealths, presents a certain atmosphere of insecurity and instability. And even though contextual arguments are notoriously difficult to prove, it can be assumed that literary texts - especially as popular ones as seventeenth-century plays - are, indeed, ‘articula- 10 On the concept of premediation see Richard Grusin, “Premediation,” Criticism 46/ 1 (2004): 17-39 and Astrid Erll, “Remembering across Time, Space, and Cultures: Premediation, Remediation, and ‘The Indian Mutiny,’” Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory, ed. Astrid Erll and Ann Rigney (Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter 2009), 109-138. 11 See Stern 13-16. 12 Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer, „Kulturwissenschaftliche Literaturwissenschaft: Disziplinäre Ansätze, theoretische Positionen und transdisziplinäre Perspektiven,“ Kulturwissenschaftliche Literaturwissenschaft: Disziplinäre Ansätze - Theoretische Positionen - Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven, ed. Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer (Tübingen: Narr, 2004), 9-29, 20. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 149 tions of a change,’ 13 widely perceived thought experiments that deliberate ongoing cultural transformations, which, by way of their storytelling, might even prefigure on stage what is about to happen outside the theatre: 14 a change in the form of government. 15 My analysis will focus in particular on the play’s aesthetic and formal aspects. Oscillating between different dramatic modes - narrativity and theatricality - and featuring stark thematic contrasts, the play’s aesthetics certainly reveal much of the position of drama and theatre within and towards its time of production and first reception. I am going to ask how the pastoral romance digests the cultural facts of its times (be they economic, political, and/ or social) and how it is indicative of these times and dimensions; and I am going to discuss the functions A Jovial Crew might have had for its contemporary audiences. Tracing the aesthetic modes between which the play oscillates, especially its heightened degrees of narrativity and theatricality, and its reversal of these modes, I will try to capture not only the play’s ambivalences but also the cultural circumstances which it reveals - and probably even prefigures. I will begin by examining A Jovial Crew’s story level (section 2.1). Here, I will ask in which ways Brome stages the differences and analogies between those classes in power and those not in power, and in which ways he conceptualises the world and society of a play which, as the prologue says, was produced (and first performed) in “sad and tragic days” (A Jovial Crew, ‘Prologue,’ l. 3). I will continue by studying the ways in which A Jovial Crew’s topics are presented and organised. I will, firstly, explore the ways in which Brome employs narrative to challenge both existing power relations and (maybe all too) idealistic narratives of change (section 2.2). Secondly, I will analyse the ways in which Brome theatrically configures and, possibly, prefigures regime change (section 2.3). In my conclusion (section 3), I will, on 13 See also Albrecht Koschorke, who understands literature, especially narrative literature, as a cultural practice that ‘articulates change’: Koschorke, Wahrheit und Erfindung: Grundzüge einer allgemeinen Erzähltheorie (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2012), 25. 14 According to Manfred Engel (whose thoughts parallel Grusin’s concept of premediation; see fn. 9), one can even go further: understanding literature as a substantial part of a culture, he argues that literature contributes to the construction of a culture’s semiotic systems, its mentalities, practices, and - maybe even - political organisation. Thus, it helps constituting, perpetuating, and transforming the very culture it is a constituent of. Manfred Engel, “Kulturwissenschaft/ en - Literaturwissenschaft als Kulturwissenschaft - kulturgeschichtliche Literaturwissenschaft,” KulturPoetik 1/ 1 (2001): 8-36, here, 21. 15 In this it seems to be similar to the Restoration plays David Roberts deals with in Restoration Plays and Players (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2014). On the basis of “the genre of regime change fiction” (6), he discusses select plays, e.g., Dryden’s The Conquest of Grananda (1670/ 1), in relation to contemporary politics and as examples of “regime change theatre” (1-28). C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 150 the basis of my findings, reconsider the relation between A Jovial Crew as a literary work and the cultural context from which it emerged. 2. Between Theatricality and Narrativity - Dramatic Mediations of an Ambivalent Time Inquiring into the ways in which Brome mediates, remediates, or even premediates cultural change in the above-mentioned sense (i.e., cultural change as a complex of shifts and transformations in the realms of Caroline politics, economics, society and social power structures), one has to examine, first and foremost, the dramatic strategies that predominantly characterise his play. On its story level, A Jovial Crew is arguably characterised by stark contrasts and remarkable ambivalences on various levels: concerning the construction of individual characters, the play’s character constellation, plot, topics, and the ways in which all of these aspects are assessed within the characters’ world (and by recipients). Discursively, the play’s most conspicuous feature is its salient use of two generic modes which are often seen as contrasting and usually not considered together: ‘theatricality’ and ‘narrativity.’ 16 2.1 Sketching the Image of a Complex Society: Power Relations and the Entanglement of Classes in A Jovial Crew As a story and in its foregrounding of practices of narration, Brome’s play counters the existing form of government and its distribution of power; it imagines alternative systems and their possible benefits. At the same time, the play advertises no simplistic judgement of these narratively constructed alternatives: it also challenges and questions their benefits. In its theatricality and its meta-theatricality, A Jovial Crew self-referentially reflects upon Renaissance theatre as an institution of cultural mediation and revelation, which has the power to anticipate, visualise, and take part in processes of cultural and political change. With A Jovial Crew, Brome compares the beggars and gentry of the Caroline era by tracing parallels and contrasts. In doing so, he sketches a picture of a society in which nothing is as it first appears and in which links between seemingly different classes are highlighted to minimise the importance of experienced and imagined distinctions. The notion that all humans are equal 16 For a review on how these concepts have been dealt with separately and some theses on how they can be brought together, see Ansgar Nünning and Christine Schwanecke, “The Performative Power of Unreliable Narration and Focalisation in Drama and Theatre: Conceptualising the Specifity of Dramatic Unreliability,” Unreliable Narration and Trustworthitness: Intermedial and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Vera Nünning (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015), 189-219. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 151 in both their merits and their faults as well as the stock figure of the beggar and his/ her entanglements with higher classes are stage matters that are not particularly novel: Richard Brome’s story of an old squire, Oldrents, and his relatives refers to at least two important dramatic traditions and combines them. First, links to beggar masques can be traced, such as Ben Jonson’s The Gypsies Metamorphosed (1621) or Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher’s Beggars’ Bush (1622); they, too, discuss ideas of alternative commonwealths by playfully drawing parallels between very different social ranks and by exploiting their perceived differences. This is combined with a second tradition of earlier plays; plays that decidedly reflect the idea of a commonwealth, such as Nicholas Udall’s morality Respublica (first staged in 1553) or John Bale’s history King Johan (possibly first staged in 1539), the Tudor plays which Joerg O. Fichte discusses so fruitfully. 17 Yet, in making use of these traditions, combining them, and staging them in a politically troubled period (it is even the last play to be staged before the theatres were shut down by order of Parliament in 1642), 18 the author of A Jovial Crew expressly draws attention to issues of class difference, equality, hypocrisy, and freedom. In his specific consideration of these matters, Brome actually uses his play to engage in contemporary political debate - and this on various levels. Martin Butler emphasises A Jovial Crew’s close historical proximity to major transformations in England’s culture - pertaining to the stage and the government; and, accordingly, he frames A Jovial Crew as a “truly national play written at a turning point in the history of the English stage and the English nation”. 19 Denys Van Renen’s argument, which pays particular attention to matters of space, goes in a similar direction. He holds the opinion that Brome’s representations of towns and town gentry are informed by current political power struggles. And he substantiates his assumption by showing that the playwright’s emplotments of spatial configurations and practices (also in other plays) serve to remediate European models of “internal colonialism,” 20 a colonialism which appears in an early modern colonial discourse, rooted in domestic issues, which references aspects of class and capital. Even though Brome himself can be understood to have consciously veiled the subversive potential of his play, 21 17 See Fichte 15-22. these scholars 18 See Denys Van Renen, “A ‘Birthright into a New World’: Representing the Town on Brome’s Stage,” Comparative Drama 45/ 2 (2011): 35-63, 58 f. 19 Martin Butler, Theatre and Crisis, 1632-1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984), 275. 20 Van Renen 35, 39-51, 54. 21 In his dedicatory preface to Thomas Stanley, Brome characterises A Jovial Crew as “harmless” and underlines its harmlessness by comparing it to a handicapped person, “limp[ing] […] with a wooden leg”; A Jovial Crew, ‘To the right noble […] Thomas Stanley, Esq.,’ l. 32, 37). C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 152 advocate and promote the notion of Brome being a “politically audacious” 22 playwright who is keen on “[dramatising] social dynamics”. 23 And they call attention to yet another quality of Brome that goes hand in hand with his plays’ politics: his particularity in terms of class perspective. As Matthew Steggle emphasises, “very few early modern writers represent servants from a position of first-hand experience; ” 24 but Brome does. And in dealing with national atmospheres, mind-sets, class conflicts, power hierarchies, and government, this informed take on both worlds, that of the gentry and that of the lower classes, and on these worlds’ conflicts comes prominently to the fore in Brome’s oeuvre. 25 Although one of Brome’s main heroes, Oldrents, belongs to the landed gentry, he is, in many ways, entangled with the world of beggars: he supports the beggars who live close to his estate; he regularly gives his steward Springlove some time off so he can live his preferred life as a free beggar; and he loses his own two daughters to beggardom. Rachel and Meriel are not willing to bear the restrictions of their household and the sadness of their father any longer; so they decide, together with their suitors, Vincent and Hilliard, to seek freedom and happiness elsewhere. They run away to live in the beggar commonwealth, a state which they romanticise and imagine as a pastoral idyll, which becomes palpable in a dispute between the girls and their - doubting - suitors: H ILLIARD Why, ladies, you have liberty enough […]. M ERIEL Yes, in our father’s rule and government […]. What’s that to the absolute freedom the very beggars have, to feast and revel here today and yonder tomorrow […]? There’s liberty! The birds of the air can take no more. (A Jovial Crew, 2.1.17-25) 26 What stands out in this dialogue is the narrative opposition between a current state (“the father’s rule and government”) and a future, longed-for state 22 Christina Paravano, “The Space of Identity and the Identity of Space in The City Wit by Richard Brome,” Sederi 21 (2011): 71-90, 71. 23 Ibid., 74. 24 Matthew Steggle, Richard Brome: Place and Politics on the Caroline Stage (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2004), 1. Brome was not only the pupil of Ben Jonson, but also his servant; the various evaluations by literary history which were caused by this fact are also sketched by Steggle, 2-5; as is the fact that economic want provided a frame for Brome’s life (cf. Steggle187 f.), who came “[p]oor […] into the world, and poor went out” (Alexander Brome; qtd. in Steggle188). 25 For a review - both comprehensive and up-to-date - of scholarly work on Brome’s oeuvre and its political implications, see Stern 13-16. 26 All text passages taken from A Jovial Crew are cited according to A Jovial Crew by Richard Brome, based on the Arden Early Modern Drama edition, ed. Tiffany Stern (London: Bloomsbury, 2014). Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 153 (the lives of beggar crews). Since the space within the confines of this article does not suffice to detail the political complexities of the 1630s and early 1640s, and because of the ambiguity of Brome’s play, I would like to suggest two readings of A Jovial Crew and the dialogue above, which arguably stands metonymically for the whole play. As a father figure whose “rule and government” is perceived to be restrictive and absolutist (within his house), Oldrents might allegorically stand for Charles I and his Personal Rule, which shunned Parliament and, thus, was of a paternalistic, absolute quality 27 and which had been increasingly questioned and criticised since the late 1630s. 28 At the same time, Oldrents is characterised as a benevolent employer, as someone who is trusted by his long-serving loyal employees (cf. A Jovial Crew, 1.1.69-79); thus he can be understood as a contrast to the Caroline Personal Rule, “[whose] self-serving policies […] threatened […] the stability and loyalty of traditional […] communities of the kind depicted in the play.” 29 Yet, if one takes these two conflicting interpretations seriously, what, then, do Oldrents’ daughters compare and contrast? Wherein lies the opposition between the “father’s rule and government” and the beggar’s “liberty”? Do they promote an impairment of the tyrant’s, i.e., the father’s rule? Are they in favour of their being included in decision-making processes, which might be paralleled to an inclusion of Parliament in the governing of England and, consequently, to an (at least partial) modification of power relations? Is the world of the beggars comparable to those state philosophies which are in line with republican political thought? 30 27 See Sanders 5. Or does the beggar’s life that Rachel and Meriel imagine serve as a thought experiment, inviting audiences to compare and contrast two forms of government or two forms of existence? Is the girls’ celebrated liberty to be seen as a freedom from perceived parental 28 Cf. ibid. 4. 29 Ibid. 5. 30 In A Jovial Crew, the beggars can be said to be linked to the royal opposition, i.e., a prorepublican front. I thank Ingo Berensmeyer for pointing out the manifold, sometimes contradictory ways in which the beggar-imagery is used elsewhere: throughout literary history and also in the 17th century, the symbol of ‘the beggar’ was also often linked to the other side, i.e., in the form of the ‘beggar king’ or ‘the royal beggar.’ Both images, the ‘beggar commonwealth’ and the ‘beggar as king,’ have in common that they do not engage with the realities of actual beggars’ lives. Used as symbols, they “enable dramatists to practice a particular kind of social investigation.” (Sanders 1) In the first half of the 17th century and especially in “the highly specific context of Charles I’s nonparliamentary rule (1629-40),” however, the idea of ‘the beggar’s commonwealth’ is the image preferably used. Within its historical context, it can even be said to have “acquired particular force and impact” (ibid.; cf. also Rosemary Gaby, “Of Vagabonds and Commonwealths: Beggar’s Bush, A Jovial Crew, and The Sisters,” Studies in English Literature 34.2 [1994], 401-424). C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 154 restrictions that can be compared to the administrative burdens of Caroline England? All of these questions - and maybe even additional ones - are (at least partly) valid and, at the same time, competing with each other. Even though this conflicting polysemy might not be satisfactory to the recipients of the play, it may be exactly its strength. It invites the conclusion that A Jovial Crew does not attempt to provide definite solutions to current social and political, i.e. cultural, problems; rather, it “offer[s] its audience a skewed reflection of their own situation, part mirror, part inversion”. 31 Yet, be that as it may, with their stories, the girls certainly idealise this state of beggardom (cf. also A Jovial Crew, 2.1.196-205), of freedom that seems to be the hope of those who are, around 1640, discontented with their government (and maybe even in favour of a commonwealth). At the same time, when Meriel and Rachel actually experience this longed-for state, i.e. a beggar’s life, it falls short of any festive character and of the lightness of flying birds and their song. Dressed as beggars and living amongst them, they have difficulty sleeping in the flea-ridden straw; they are not very successful in begging for food; and, at one point, they are nearly raped. Yet, despite all the dangers to their lives and bodies, the sisters are not wholly without some of the ludic pleasures they had narratively anticipated before joining the beggars. Having lived among beggars for a while, real and counterfeit ones, the sisters, together with the beggars, rehearse a play called The Merry Beggars; a play within the play, a utopia to be performed in front of the girls’ father and other gentry, which features a state in which the beggars rule. By way of Meriel and Rachel’s narrative imagination and their playful disguise, Brome realises different forms of government. At the same time, he reveals their pitfalls. And he cautions against the idealisation of alternatives in which liberty and equality seem more easily realised, but which might entail economic and physical hazards. The oscillation between hopes of change, realisations of change, and their disproval, is repeated in the play’s second part - with the utopia, the play within the play, which is being prepared by the characters. At this point, however, the story takes some unexpected - and, in comparison to contemporary plot patterns, maybe even unlikely - turns: in their theatrical disguise, the ‘beggars’ Meriel and Rachel reveal their true identity and resume their old lives. In addition, the performance of the play is given up in favour of some surprising revelations about Oldrents’ and Springlove’s lives, which put the various entanglements between beggars and gentry presented so far on yet another level. And, finally, it is revealed that Oldrents, who has been 31 Sanders 6 f. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 155 praised throughout the play for his exceeding kindness towards the poor, 32 In establishing such a character constellation, Brome can be said to discuss not only Caroline changes in particular, but the general nature of cultural change in its social, economic, and political dimensions. Brome does not provide us with one definite, monolithic solution to asymmetric Caroline politics and power hierarchies. He does not draw the picture of an impeccable alternative form of society. Although he could have clearly favoured one form of society and government in his play over the others - e.g., by realising the utopia, by presenting us with a more definite, unambiguous plot development, or by being more finite and clear-cut in the play’s closure -, he chose not to mark one of the presented options as the best one. He provides recipients with different versions of society. He constructs a play full of ambiguity and polysemy. In consequence, he enables and maybe even invites the interpretation - at least in contemporary reception - that social progress seems to be a constant negotiation of better forms of life and a constant struggle between the classes; classes which turn out to be more closely and intimately related than they are at first presented (both literally and metaphorically, when it comes to the characters’ deeds and their desires). And, thus, Brome appears to question not only possible alternative societies and governments but also the nature (and maybe even possibility) of cultural change in general. has come by his estate through a case of fraud: his father had tricked another gentleman out of his fortune and, in consequence, exposed the latter and his offspring to a life of poverty. With this, not only questions of original sin but also of economic inequalities and power hierarchies are raised. It is also asked to what extent the gentry’s wealth depends on and exploits the poverty of others. Moral and ethical questions get even more complicated when Oldrents’ character itself becomes questionable: the son of the man who was deprived of his fortune by Oldrents’ father, and who is present at the scene, reveals to Oldrents that Springlove is not only Oldrents’ steward but also his son; an illegitimate son whom he had together with the beggar’s sister. The poor become rich at the expense of other rich people who then become poor; yet rich and poor are interrelated and have, like Oldrents and Springlove, their individual virtues and faults. 2.2 A Jovial Crew as a Counter-Narrative to Existing Governmental Distributions of Power and Idealistic Narratives of Change As the analysis of the plot has shown, A Jovial Crew constructs a world in which beggardom and gentry are entangled on various levels, and in which 32 “[Oldrents] keeps a guesthouse for all beggars, far and near, costs him a hundred a year […]” (A Jovial Crew, 4.1.78 f.; cf. also 1.1.140 f., 4.1.189-194). C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 156 social transgressions, unexpected narrative turns, 33 and fissures 34 Taking the relationship between literature and culture into the equation again, one can say, with Fritz Breithaupt, that storytelling begins in exactly such situations that allow for more than one version of the facts. in both play world and character development create situations in which alternative worlds and different, competing versions of society become thinkable. Against this backdrop, I will examine to what extent A Jovial Crew, also on its formal level, can be seen as a counter-narrative to existing power relations and to possibly all too optimistic fantasies of cultural change. 35 The concurring narratives are staged in A Jovial Crew in at least three ways: there is, firstly, narrative as ‘fantasy and fiction,’ as it is diegetically constructed The play itself and the stories within it function as a means of negotiating multiple versions of reality: the worlds created and questioned in the story of Oldrents and his family are presented and reflected from different angels; as are, in consequence, Caroline realities - as they were in 1641, before an imminent power shift, and as they might be after it. This is not only illustrated by the storyline that follows characters climbing down and up the social ladder (even though this is - admittedly - only a privilege of a certain class, the drama’s gentry), but also by the discursive means of showing parallels and contrasts of different narratives, i.e., versions of reality. 36 33 E.g., by first celebrating beggars’ lives in Rachel and Meriel’s verbalised fantasies and then reversing them, showing the poverty and hardship beggars are faced with; or by building up an opposition between a father’s rule and a seemingly less hierarchical distribution of power in a beggar crew only to show that there is also a head of the crew; or by showing how a utopian play is planned and how the performance begins only to, unexpectedly, be prematurely interrupted and left a fragment. in the dialogues of Rachel and Meriel. The two sisters, who suffer from their “father’s rule and government” (A Jovial Crew, 2.1.19), spin narratives of alternative forms of life, dream themselves into a beggars’ world, and imagine beggars as “[t]he only free men of a commonwealth […] that observe no law, | Obey no governor, use no religion | But what they draw from their own ancient custom” (A Jovial Crew, 2.1.198-201). In times in which social discontent smoulders, in which different forms of government and power distribution seem graspable, Brome presents sisters who - in the 34 With fissures, I am referring to the gaps between the different ontological levels on stage (the scenes behind the scenes) and to the inconsistencies in some characters; e.g., on the one hand, there is Oldrents’ kindness towards beggars; on the other hand, his fortune is built upon the deprivation of those who were made beggars by his father. One the one hand, Springlove is a servant to Oldrents; one the other hand, he is the king of the beggars and, thus, also rules over Oldrents’ daughters. 35 Fritz Breithaupt , Kultur der Ausrede (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2011), 12: “Eben hier […] beginnt Narration: dort, wo es mehr als eine Version eines Sachverhalts gibt.” 36 ‘Diegetic’ is used here in its original Greek meaning and refers to the act of ‘making a verbal utterance.’ Diegetic narrativisation concerns, thus, the (staged) act of storytelling. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 157 laboratories of their minds - tell each other of societies with different distributions of power; in particular of a society in which people do not have to live according to the will of a sovereign but are “free”. These people can live according to their customary religious beliefs and their own jurisdiction, the jurisdiction of a free society; yet, how this freedom should be realised or what it is supposed to look like is never specified or explained. Julie Sanders speculates that the freedom conceptualised in A Jovial Crew is a freedom “from the administrative burdens of life in Caroline England; ” 37 Secondly, there is the play’s quality that is reminiscent of a particular kind of narrative, the romance. Having been characterised as a pastoral romance burdens which were, at least to some extent, nourished by the king’s Personal Rule. 38 (and this justly so), A Jovial Crew draws heavily on characters, mood, and plot patterns of classical and medieval verse narratives. 39 In moving his drama close to a storytelling tradition that is dominated by a “persistent nostalgia for some other time […] or […] place,“ archetypal plot structures that “involve a series of adventures” and that are “characterised by idealization and wish-fulfillment,” 40 Brome draws on his audience’s knowledge of the wellknown genre of the romance (and modes of the romance, as realised in other plays 41 Yet the story does not end here: there is, thirdly, a narrative of instability as represented by the entire play. Whereas the stories diegetically told build up idyllic pastoral images and, thus, stand in contrast to extra-textual realities and the dominant intra-textual government (namely, Oldrents’ “rule”), the narrative actually presented by the playwright’s pastoral romance captures contemporary moods. The tale that A Jovial Crew in its entirety stages and that is displayed across various ontological levels (as verbalised fantasies, scenes behind the scenes, or a play within the play) visualises an atmosphere of instability and also different possibilities. ). Playing with the recipients’ expectations, which are likely to have entailed a happy or wish-fulfilling ending, the playwright points into the direction that the characters’ dreams of alternative societies and their quest to realise them might be, after all and against all odds (the girls’ dreams being idealistic fantasies), realisable; not only on the story level but, by implication, maybe also in real life. Thus, what can be actually seen by contemporary audiences is less revolutionary in its content than the things that are imagined and verbally pre- 37 Sanders 6. This can be substantiated, for instance, by a look upon Hilliard’s monologue in Act 4, in which he praises the beggars’ society as one that cannot give or take loans and is, accordingly, free of administrative processes (cf. A Jovial Crew, 4.2.105-112). 38 E.g., Stern 11. 39 Or their Renaissance counterparts, e.g., Spenser, Sidney or Shakespeare (As You Like It; The Tempest), who arguably also draw on this narrative tradition. 40 Barbara Fuchs, Romance (New York: Routledge, 2004), 6. 41 Compare fn. 39. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 158 sented by Meriel and Rachel. When the beggars’ community is shown as a hierarchical one, keen on appointing to Springlove the position of their “captain” or “king” (cf. A Jovial Crew, 1.1.492 f.), Meriel and Rachel’s utopian dream narratives are as quickly questioned as they are constructed - by way of the visible realities on stage (the respective realities of Oldrents, the beggars, or Springlove). Becoming beggars, Meriel and Rachel, in addition, subject themselves to the powers of another authority, namely, Springlove’s, who “command[s] | I’th’ beggars commonwealth” (A Jovial Crew, 2.1.315 f.; cf. also 1.1.490-494) and offers them guidance as their leader. In presenting not only Meriel and Rachel’s fantasies of liberty but also juxtaposing them to a commonwealth that seems to be built as a monarchy rather than a republic, the question might be raised - at least by today’s recipients - to what extent there really are alternatives to established systems and whether power within a society can be evenly distributed. And through the closure of the drama’s story, in which the original social order is restored, even more questions arise: if a systemic change based on the ideas of judicial and religious self-determination as outlined in Meriel’s fantasies, in which she describes beggars as “the only free men of a commonwealth […] that observe no law, | Obey no governor, use no religion | But what they draw from their own ancient custom” (A Jovial Crew, 2.1.198-201; emphasis mine), is actually possible, can it be permanent? And is it even desirable? Not so, by the looks of it. A change of government and a change in the distribution of power might be desirable; at the same time, actual changes, which have been narratively prefigured by the young gentry, obviously go together with unanticipated hardships. It is just 456 verses into their new beggar lives that every one of the gentlefolk has screamed in despair. But the notion of wishful thinking and disillusionment does not remain uncontested in Brome’s story of the sisters and their suitors either. As Springlove remarks to the young gentry: “[T]his is your birthright into a new world. And we all know […] that all come crying into the world, when the whole world of pleasures is before us. The world itself had ne’er been glorious had it not first been a confused chaos.” (A Jovial Crew, 3.1.36-41) Worlds and world orders have their origin in - natural or biblical - chaos; sustainable changes need sacrifices. Anticipating or sensing the imminent political change, Brome’s play narrates and negotiates alternative versions of society, presents the story of people changing class and forms of government, and has its characters reflect on the situation of change itself. The latter turns out, more often than not, less ideal than imagined and hoped for. Thus, the play’s medializations of change and (anticipatory) drafts of altered distributions of power within a society are presented in an ambivalent manner: situations and opinions are imagined, introduced, and then immediately contested; and then contested again. Ac- Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 159 cordingly, one can agree to disagree about the political intention of the play and its prefiguration of alternative governments and distributions of power, such as a liberal commonwealth. However, what is hard to disagree with, after an analysis of the concurring narratives in the play, is that the play seems to configure the political turmoil of a society in which different systems are imagined and in which civil war as well as a change of government is latent. 2.3 Theatre as an Institution of Mediation and Revelation: Theatrical Remediations and Premediations of Power Change Besides a salience in different versions of narrativity, Brome’s play displays a heightened degree of theatricality. Even though one has to bear in mind the cultural dependency and, thus, variability of what can be understood as theatrical or theatre-like, one can frame the notion as an aesthetic category 42 that, originally, goes back to practices of human beings on theatre stages. Despite the assumed mutability of theatricality’s cultural and historical emanations and the changing practices of production and reception of theatricality, the concept has, in its essence and in both its theatre and everyday forms, always been tied to at least three notions: embodiment, a purposeful exposure of what is embodied, and the deliberate (haptic, audio-visual) reception of these embodiments. 43 For the Renaissance, Barbara Hardy has also determined further qualities: she conceptualises theatricality as a psycho-social category, which entails affective dimensions, e.g., “emotion” and, in its amplified form, “passion,“ 44 and as a sensorial category, which pertains to the “visual” 45 In the light of these definitions, both some practices of Caroline culture and their representation or embodiment on stage can be considered particularly theatrical; especially when it comes to A Jovial Crew, which, as a dramatic text, pertains to both of these contemporary emanations of the ‘theatrical.’ Brome’s play, firstly, draws on the theatricality of Caroline culture, specifically the theatre-likeness of Caroline politics. Secondly, it heightens drama-specific features of theatricality. In consequence, Brome’s work disand heightened degrees of visuality as realised in the spectacle, for instance. In all definitions, an exorbitance or excess in both expression and experience - be they corporeal, affective, visual - are implied, which seems to make the hyperbolic and the excessive themselves qualities of theatricality. 42 See, e.g., Erika Fischer-Lichte, Performativität (Bielefeld: transcript, 2 2013), 27; cf. also Matthias Warstat, “Theatralität,” Metzler Lexikon Theatertheorie, eds. Erika Fischer-Lichte, Doris Kolesch and Matthias Warstat (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2005), 358-364, 260. 43 See Warstat 258. 44 Barbara Hardy, Shakespeare’s Storytellers: Dramatic Narration (London: Peter Owen, 1997), 26. 45 Hardy 28. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 160 plays - in addition to its enhanced narrativity - salient kinds of theatricality, which, when performed, must have appeared all the more striking; 46 they might even have triggered meta-referential reception and reflection. 47 In the following, I shall investigate three particularly illuminating ways in which A Jovial Crew draws on ‘theatre-likeness’ and the ‘theatrical’ to configure and possibly to prefigure socio-cultural change. Firstly, the dramatist uses the set design to reflect his (changing) society; secondly, Brome makes excessive use of a meta-theatrical form of mise en abyme, the play within the play; and thirdly, he not only combines, but also accumulates two forms of theatrical entertainment that make excessive use of the actors’ bodies: song and dance. Both the combination and accumulation of these theatrical forms counter any possible emergence of realist aesthetics and readings and disguise his play’s political thrust. Through Oldrents’ walls, the jovial crew of the title, that is, a group of beggars, are often heard singing. Even though they are not within Oldrents’ house or on the stage, they are a continuous presence (cf., e.g., A Jovial Crew, 1.1.348, 1.1.361). Repeated acts of ‘opening the scene’ (cf. A Jovial Crew, SD between 1.1.375 and 376, and between 2.2.178 and 179), which discover the “beggars […] in their postures,” (A Jovial Crew, 1.1.375-76) show them as - either latent or visible - presences on the stage. This theatrical opening can be said to foreshadow what the plot will reveal: that the gentry’s style of living is only possible at the cost of others, the beggars, who are a looming presence ‘behind the scenes’ of the theatre. Read allegorically, these openings visualise that the poor, even though ignored by the wealthy, are not only the (back- )ground, but also the backbone of monarchy and those who, within this form of government, occupy a privileged position. Secondly, if one goes on reading the gentry as supporters of monarchy and the beggars as a symbol of alternative versions of society and governments, the theatricalised act of ‘opening the scene’ makes visible that there is only a thin, easily removable line between the class and system now in power and possible new figurations of class and politics - to those in power maybe threateningly so. The act of opening the scene thus not only stages theatre’s potential of showing alternative worlds and, with it, the institution’s potential to cause 46 Scholars have argued that, with A Jovial Crew, “Brome responds to current affairs theatrically rather than politically” (Michel Bitot; qtd. in Stern 16), following the lines of argument that consider the play a-political (cf. Section 1). What is neglected, though, is the acknowledgement that ‘current affairs’ nevertheless seem graspable. Accordingly, quite the reverse is true: the fact that Caroline political realities are dealt with theatrically does not mean that they are not present in the play. 47 On the processes of a meta-referentially informed reception of art, see Werner Wolf, “Metareference across Media: The Concept, its Transmedial Potentials and Problems, Main Forms and Functions,” Metareference across Media: Theory and Case Studies, ed. Werner Wolf (Amsterdam/ New York: Rodopi, 2009), 1-85. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 161 revolts that aim at social change. What is more, the performance of changing scenes eerily foreshadows - and maybe prefigures by implication - what even before the play’s publication in 1652 will have become a reality in the spectacle of a king’s beheading, which in at least two ways can be linked to theatre. The heightened visual theatricality of a historical regime change from monarchy to commonwealth, firstly, took place in front of the Banqueting House, the building in which the court had enjoyed masques and other theatrical entertainments; secondly, the brutal spectacle of 1649 was performed upon a scaffold, i.e. a kind of stage, for all (classes) to see; thirdly, the act of the beheading and its quality lend themselves to a theatrum mundi metaphor: they were about to be compared, in another literary genre, to a spectacular, theatrical act. 48 Coming back to A Jovial Crew’s staging of different societies and forms of government, I would like to point out that, upon the play’s performance, the beggars’ scene, which is behind the stage and at the same time on the stage, is not only the expression of a time which thinks of itself in theatrical terms. It might also self-reflectively characterise theatre as an institution whose agents, e.g. authors and actors, are proud of not only inviting, but also staging and embodying thought experiments. Theatre, in consequence, becomes visible as an institution that mediates (possibilities of) political change by means of staging them. In other words, Brome’s play is part of its culture’s theatricality and, at the same time, shows an awareness of this as well as of theatre’s potential to concretely realise the topical but latent ‘what if’ scenarios at the end of the Caroline era. With its insertions of various kinds of mise en abyme, A Jovial Crew even goes beyond the figuration of national instability as epitomised in the scenery and its theatrical foregrounding. Brome’s play also deals with economic issues and stages the attempt to prefigure a commonwealth as a government operating on the principle of sharing (as a kind of proto-socialism), which, by providing a living for all people, prevents the downfall of a society in which wealth is not equally distributed. When the young gentry put on their beggars’ apparel, they do not only put on an ‘act’ within a performed play, they also experience it (despite its shortcomings) as affectively rewarding. Vincent, sceptic at first, has been convinced by the beggars’ life (A Jovial Crew, 4.2.96) and Hilliard praises a philosophy of giving away possessions: 48 Cf. Andrew Marvell’s “An Horatian Ode: Upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland (1650- 52),” The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. B, eds. Stephen Greenblatt et al. (New York/ London: W.W. Norton, 9 2012), 1806-1811. The ode was written in honour of Oliver Cromwell and describes Charles I as a worthy opponent, as a “royal actor” (Marvell 9 2012 [1650-52]: v. 53; emphasis mine) and his execution as a “memorable scene” (ibid.: v. 58; emphasis mine). This evaluation of Charles I’s execution can be, of course, compared to other high-profile public executions, which were staged and perceived as similarly theatrical. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 162 We have no fear of lessening our estates; Nor any grudge with us, without taxation, To lend or give, upon command, the whole Strength of our wealth for public benefit; While some that are held rich in their abundance - Which is their misery, indeed, - will see Rather a general ruin upon all Than give a scruple to prevent the fall. (A Jovial Crew, 4.2.105-112) The combinations of song and dance, which are even accumulated in the course of the play, highlight theatrical modes of embodied and audio-visual practice. By means of an excess of these theatrical expressions, the show of ‘happiness’ is added to the young folks’ acts of ‘acting as beggars’ and their coming to see not only the pitfalls for the individual but also the potential benefits of sharing for society. Geared towards the entertainment of audiences, the music and lyrics of the songs that invoke the pleasures of beggardom (cf. e.g. 1.1.499-518, 2.2.179-194) seem not only to be employed for their own sake, for the characters, or for the audience’s pleasure. More importantly, A Jovial Crew stages and embodies the beggars’ commonwealth as a utopia in the sense of a ‘good place’ or ‘happy place’ in which there is sunshine, birdsong, food, and happiness in abundance; a place in which people, even the aged, cannot but sing and dance (4.2.171-175). The utopian happiness, which embodied song and dance are to mediate, is witnessed, recognised, and voiced even by the audiences on stage, for instance by Oldrents, who exclaims “how merry they are! ” (A Jovial Crew, 2.2.195) The mise en abyme just outlined, to which Brome adds song and dance and to which the notion of a good or happy place is connected, is complemented by yet another mise en abyme. This second mise en abyme, firstly, thematises changing circumstances and, secondly, casts a different light on possible utopian commonwealths. With The Merry Beggars, A Jovial Crew’s real and imagined beggars intend to perform a utopian play within the play. As the beggar and writer Scribble outlines in a summary, he intends to stage “a commonwealth: Utopia, | with all her branches and consistencies” (A Jovial Crew, 4.2.199-200). It is to be based on the common consent of all people, who will have been “appease[d] and reconcile[d]” by law and divine action. And the story of the establishment of this utopian commonwealth goes like this: after the creation of a peaceful co-existence between different, previously competing social agents (cf. 4.2.230-31), the utopian harmony is shaken by war, personified by a soldier. The soldier, who threatens and destroys utopia, will be overpowered by a beggar in the end; and all will be brought to a safe haven, an even better ‘utopia,’ the “Beggar’s Hall.” (A Jovial Crew, 4.2.239) By repeatedly realising mise en abymes in his play, which variously take the form Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 163 of disguise-acts, mini-performances of song and dance, or a play within a play, Brome stages diegetic transformations of power in a truly ‘theatrical’ fashion, that is, in a hyperbolic, excessive manner. This overabundance and overemphasis of social transformations within the play does not only draw attention to the on-stage changes themselves; it even points beyond them, communicating an awareness of theatre’s potential to not only visualise cultural change, but also to prefigure, to premediate it, to make its audiences think about it, and maybe even trigger it - this time, outside the theatre. But even these meta-theatrical and political statements the play seems to toy with are undermined; even here and yet again, the play remains ambivalent. The telling name of the state Scribble wants to stage, ‘utopia,’ implies that the beggar-writer knows that his commonwealth is not only a good place but also a non-place. In the theatrical representation of utopia that the beggar characters would like to stage in their play (within the play) this utopia, this commonwealth, in which all people live in freedom, could be actually realised - at least within the play’s world. However, the realisation of the play, the actualisation of utopia on stage (and thus its cultural prefiguration) is not fully realised. The play within a play begins with Oldrents’ story - as a summary of what the audience has already seen and as a revelation of how the old man, at the expense of other people, who have become beggars, has come to be landed gentry. Before the actual utopia is constructed, the play is stopped by Oldrents - by a representative of the gentry, of those who are economically well-off, of those who are in (relative) power. Even though Brome’s play reveals social injustices and indicates the knowledge that theatre has the potential to prefigure alternative worlds, for instance, to realise a utopian commonwealth on stage, A Jovial Crew never actually does this: the play within the play is stopped; and at the end of the play, Oldrents’ children have left the beggar state. In other words, the play indicates to its (contemporary) audiences its potential as an institution thematising and possibly triggering transformations as well as the extratheatrical, real-life possibility of changes in (contemporary) society - without actually realising or prefiguring these transformations. It certainly remains disputable whether this is owed to a kind of (self-)censorship of the theatrepractitioner or whether the playwright expresses his uncertainty regarding the value of change, or criticises those in favour of an all too euphemistic sketch of alternative governments and societies. What has become clear, however, is that - with its different kinds of ‘theatricality’ - A Jovial Crew does not only play with theatre’s role as an institution of cultural mediation and revelation; it also implicitly reflects about its possible power in configuring (i.e., showing) and prefiguring (i.e., proleptically configuring or even triggering) latent cultural and social change. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 164 3. A Jovial Crew as a Drama Penned at a Time of Change and as a Drama Mediating and Prefiguring This Change To conclude, I would like to reconsider my introductory thoughts. After all, if one aims at writing literary history and trying to tease out its specific relation to the history of the culture within which it emerges, one has to ask oneself as meticulously as possible what quality this specific relation might have and which forms it might take. 49 In this, the play, which stages various individual and collective transformations, can be said to remediate its time’s political and social instabilities and an atmosphere of latent change. Playing with different aesthetic modes and topics and then taking them back, A Jovial Crew informs its first audiences about, or helps them to envision, the problems at the heart of the current system; it also invites them to imagine and acknowledge alternative ways of power distributions. These alternatives - and the possible changes towards them - are, however, always problematised: they are subject to constant narrative and ludic negotiation. Accordingly and on the basis of the results of my analysis of A Jovial Crew’s plot and form, I would like to attempt to specify the relations between Richard Brome’s pastoral romance and the culture it emerged from. With its aesthetics that oscillate between narration and theatricalisation, with its strategies of indicating political latencies, half-realising or realising them only to, finally, reverse (some of) the changes made in class and power systems, the play can be said to capture the mood of its time; a time in which different versions of society and forms of government seem possible; a time that is dominated by political debate; and a time of competing opinions on how England is to be ruled. In addition to reflecting culture as politics, as (prevalent and alternative) states and regimes, A Jovial Crew also considers contemporary theatrical culture and its institutions of literary production - and, possibly, power production. With its utopian narratives and their theatrical staging, it highlights theatre’s cultural function as not only an institution of literature and entertainment, but also of information and political investigation. It stages drama and the institution in which it is realised, the theatre, as mediating instances of potential change and, as such, makes latent ambivalences, possibilities, and indeterminacies visible, which otherwise could not (yet) be seen. It points to hidden moods that are there, but which have been contained and not (yet) become obvious (and maybe never will). It stages competing thoughts that have not (yet) been realised and that have not (yet) resulted in 49 Cf. Herbert Grabes, “Literaturgeschichte/ Kulturgeschichte: Gemeinsamkeiten, Unterschiede und Perspektiven,” Kulturwissenschaftliche Literaturwissenschaft: Disziplinäre Ansätze - Theoretische Positionen - Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven, eds. Ansgar Nünning and Roy Sommer (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 2004), 129-146, here, esp. 129-135. Theatre, Narrative, and Cultural Change on the Early Modern Stage 165 perceptible consequences (and maybe never will). It thematises latent cultural and political teleologies that have not (yet) been put into action (and maybe never will). From the play’s bold sketches of utopia in the sense of a ‘good place,’ it can be deduced that playwrights such as Brome knew that they could go beyond the mediation of the status quo, the remediation of current debates, and the imagination of alternative worlds; they could actually prefigure, that is, premediate - and possibly even trigger - social and political transformation (and A Jovial Crew, in retrospect, can be said to have done this eerily, when one considers the ‘peripeteial’ event of Charles I’s beheading). At the same time, Brome’s play does not go through with realising alternatives and reverses the changes it has introduced immediately. In doing so, the theatre performs its cultural role as a site of negotiation and as a point of crystallisation: no matter whether the thoughts, actions, and moods conveyed in the theatre will be culturally realised (or half-realised) and become historical truth or not, Brome’s play shows that theatre can serve as a point at which the latent, the invisible, the possible (thoughts, moods, teleologies, and actions) can become adumbrated, if not materially graspable for historical and, as we can see now, even future audiences. In other words, Brome’s pastoral romance helps literary institutions, such as the theatre, to ‘flex their muscles’ to those in power; but, by reversing changes made and by toning politics down in favour of an exuberance in ‘harmless’ singing and dancing, the pastoral romance refrains from instrumentalising its powers in times of political instability and at the dawn of a war. A Jovial Crew has, thus, a very complex, ambivalent relation to its time and culture: on the one hand, it expresses the real and imagined cultural uncertainty that revolves around potential (and latent) power shifts as well as around potential (and latent) future forms of govenment; on the other hand, Brome’s play is indicative of the knowledge which historical agents share about theatre: its potential to discuss and bring about change. C HRISTINE S CHWANECKE 166 Works Cited Bauer, Matthias, and Angelika Zirker. “Preface.” Drama and Cultural Change: Turning around Shakespeare. Eds. Matthias Bauer, Angelika Zirker. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2009. 1-4. Berensmeyer, Ingo, and Andrew Hadfield. “Mendacity in Early Modern Literature and Culture: An Introduction.” European Journal of English Studies 19.2 (2015): 131- 147. Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Breithaupt, Fritz. Kultur der Ausrede. 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