The Sparagus Garden

The Sparagus Garden is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy by Richard Brome. It was the greatest success of Brome's career, and one of the major theatrical hits of its period.

The Sparagus Garden was acted by the King's Revels Men at the Salisbury Court Theatre in 1635. It was enormously popular, and reportedly earned the company £1000, a tremendous sum for a play in the 1630s. (The sheer magnitude of its success may have contributed to Brome's legal difficulties in the years immediately following: in attempting to reap greater profits from his future work, Brome entangled himself in contract disputes and lawsuits with two theatre organisations, those of Richard Heton at the Salisbury Court and Christopher Beeston at the Cockpit Theatre.)

The play was revived early in the Restoration era, and was acted at the theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields in the 1662–65 interval. It was first published in 1640, in a quarto printed by John Okes for the bookseller Francis Constable. In that volume, Brome dedicated the play to William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, one of the major literary patrons of his generation.

Brome's plays are rich with allusions to contemporary conditions that offer miniature snapshots of London life at the time. The Sparagus Garden contains references to the sedan chairs that were then coming into fashion, and to dromedary rides across the frozen River Thames in winter. (During the Little Ice Age, the Thames repeatedly froze over, so extremely that "frost fairs" were held on the surface of the ice. The river was frozen over in the winter of 1634–35.)

Consistent with this topicality, Brome's play referred to an actual London asparagus garden; it was located on 2 acres (8,100 m²) in Lambeth Marsh near Waterloo — a narrow piece of land running up from the River Thames, roughly opposite the Whitehall Stairs. It was a fashionable destination in its day, "an expensive pleasure ground on the south bank of the river, where asparagus and fresh strawberries were served, with sugar and wine...." The Garden acquired a reputation as a place of romantic assignation. It was still in operation in the 1660s; Samuel Pepys visited in April 1668, hoping to meet Elizabeth Knepp, the actress who had once been his wife's maid. (He was disappointed.)

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