A Jovial Crew

A Jovial Crew, or the Merry Beggars is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by Richard Brome. First staged in 1641 or 1642 and first published in 1652, it is generally ranked as one of Brome's best plays, and one of the best comedies of the Caroline period; in one critic's view, Brome's The Antipodes and A Jovial Crew "outrank all but the best of Jonson."

The play was first published in 1652, in a quarto printed by James Young for the booksellers Edward Dod and Nathaniel Ekins. The volume contains Brome's dedication of the play to Thomas Stanley. The quarto also features prefatory verses composed by James Shirley, John Tatham, and Alexander Brome among others. The play was Brome's most popular work during its own historical era, and was reprinted in 1661 (by bookseller Henry Brome), 1684 (by Joseph Hindmarsh), and 1708 (C. Brome).

The title page of the first edition states that the play debuted at the Cockpit Theatre in Drury Lane in 1641. That theatre had recently returned to the management of Brome's friend and colleague William Beeston, after a period under the control of their rival Sir William Davenant. In his dedication to Stanley in the 1652 quarto, Brome states that A Jovial Crew "had the luck to tumble last of all in the epidemical ruin of the scene" — which has been interpreted to mean that the play was the last work acted before the Puritan authorities closed the London theatres on 2 September 1642, at the start of the English Civil War.

The play was revived early in the Restoration era, and proved an enduring favourite with its audience. Samuel Pepys recorded seeing multiple performances of the play in his Diary – twice in 1661, and again in 1662 and in 1669. The play remained in the active repertory when the King's Company and the Duke's Company joined to form the United Company in 1695. The publication of the play's fourth edition in 1708 was motivated by a revival at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane that year.

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