Overview

The book investigates the issue of multilingualism in the Caroline age through the lens of Richard Brome's theatre. It analyses Brome's multilingual representation of early modern London between 1625 and 1642, a multilingual and cosmopolitan city, a pole of attraction, a crossroads of religious, linguistic, political, and cultural experiences in a national and European context.The interaction between English and foreign languages has always been a sort of obsession for early modern England but, in this specific period, its role becomes increasingly important: interpreting this delicate, and unjustly labelled as decadent, phase of English drama through the lens of multilingualism generates a new perspective on the social dynamics, and on contemporary political events in domestic and foreign politics, while casting new light on a relatively neglected playwright. Taking a multifaceted approach, the book discusses the recourse to three types of language found in Brome's plays, namely modern languages other than English, classical languages, and dialects, and explores the relationship between the use of one or more languages in a play and the contemporary early modern context. The book also analyses the implications of such use, since it allowed the playwright to dramatize social dynamics, while commenting on contemporary political events in England.

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9781527505933

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Reviews

Performing Multilingualism on the Caroline Stage in the Plays of Richard Brome, by Cristina Paravano, is a rare single-author study of a dramatist who is not Shakespeare. Paravano begins her book by admitting that Brome is not the only dramatist who comes to mind for a treatment of the polyglot stage. Jonson, Brome's quondam mentor and master, flaunts his erudition by lacing his plays with foreign phrases; Shakespeare, Ford, and Robert Davenport make their own uses of linguistic difference. The distinction in Brome's case is his depiction of linguistic variety as a feature of contemporary English life, similar to and often set off by England's many dialects, which Brome likewise sharply imitates. Over the course of her book's four chapters, Paravano demonstrates Brome's increasingly sophisticated treatment of England's absorption within a multilingual world. One of the juicier possibilities Paravano posits is that Brome, who lacked any formal education, picked up his foreign languages while attending and performing his contemporaries' plays (p. 9). His comedies therefore both record and extend a multilingualism and multiculturalism produced at the public playhouse .Professor Ellen MacKay, SEL Spring 59, 2019

Author Information

Cristina Paravano is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Milan, Italy, having received her PhD in English Studies with a dissertation on the theatre of Richard Brome. She has published in the areas of early modern drama, modern-contemporary theatre and young adult fiction.

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