High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! 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."