The Lovesick Court, or the Ambitious Politique is a Caroline-era stage play, a tragicomedy written by Richard Brome, and first published in 1659.
The Lovesick Court was entered into the Stationers' Register on 4 August 1640 by the bookseller Andrew Crooke, along with five other plays by Brome.
In this more modern view, The Lovesick Court relates to the so-called "Second War of the Theatres," a controversy and rivalry between professional playwrights like Ben Jonson and his follower Brome on the one hand, and on the other the amateur dramatists of the royal court of Queen Henrietta Maria, most prominently Sir John Suckling.
Brome saw the courtier drama as deficient regarding human nature and common sense; he judged it a highly artificial mode that perpetrated a "silly distortion of human motive and conduct...,"[7] with exaggerated behaviour and excessive posturing on ideas and ideals of friendship, love, chastity, honour, and self-renunciation.
The more realistic drama that Brome inherited from Jonson and practised in his comedies was inherently hostile to the highly mannered work of Lodowick Carlell and other courtier dramatists.
Eudina faces a choice between Philargus and Philocles, the twin sons of the late general and hero Adrastus; but she finds it impossible to choose between two equally worthy young men.
Eudina is supported by her governess Thymele, the twins' mother, and by the waiting woman Doris and the talkative and often inebriated old midwife Garrula.
Doris, like Eudina, faces three potential suitors – Philargus's tailor Tersulus, Philocles' barber Varillus, and the pompous Geron, the twins' tutor and the son of Garrula (and the play's main clown).
The twins are determined to fulfill at least the first dictate of the Delphic prophecy, and "contend not for the jewel" – each is ready to sacrifice his prospects in favour of the other.
The courtier Disanius, the twins' uncle, has the brothers resolve the conflict by choosing lots; the winner will have Eudina and the succession, while the loser departs for foreign travel.