<DIV><i>A Jovial Crew</i>, or the<i> Merry Beggars</i>, is a comedy about four noble lovers who join the beggar community for a pastoral life of dance and song. Or is it? Whilst maintaining its unremitting good humour,<i> A Jovial Crew </i>shows that the literary depiction of beggar life, and real beggar life, are profoundly different. Daily aspects of life in the beggar world – poverty, dirt, licentiousness – come as a surprise to the well-born, who are ultimately led to question their own values.<br/><br/>The last production mounted before theatres were closed for the English Civil War, <i>A Jovial Crew</i>’s exploration of class, commonwealth, kinship and kingship shows an intense engagement with contemporary politics. This edition, with dedicated sections on music and language in the play, argues that <i>A Jovial Crew</i> also offers a nostalgic farewell to English theatre. It explores Brome’s attitude to performance and print, and follows <i>A Jovial Crew</i> from its first, Caroline staging, to its later manifestations as a Restoration comedy, an eighteenth-century opera, and a twentieth-century proto-Marxist tragicomedy.</div>