Refashioning language in Richard Brome’s theatre: Comic multilingualism in action

This paper investigates the way the Caroline playwright Richard Brome used foreign languages and dialects in his works. On the one hand, in each play he re-proposed the variety of language typical of Ben Jonson, though in a personal way, experimenting with languages such as Latin, French and Dutch, while discussing through stereotypes and comic parodies of foreign accents the relationship between England and other European countries. On the other hand, Brome was able to produce convincing imitations of regionalisms, as in The Northern Lass (Yorkshire) and The Sparagus Garden (Somerset), which contribute to the dramatization of social dynamics while offering a vivid and disillusioned picture of the age. Keywords: Caroline theatre; dialects; foreign languages; stereotypes; refashioning