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.
[2] 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...."[3] The Garden acquired a reputation as a place of romantic assignation.
The Sparagus Garden belongs to a group of plays that reflect a trend of the 1630s, in which playwrights exploited "place realism," linking their dramas to actual locations and institutions of their contemporary world.
James Shirley's Hyde Park (1632) is an obvious example, as are Shackerley Marmion's Holland's Leaguer (1631) and Thomas Nabbes's Covent Garden (1633) and Tottenham Court (1634).
And later plays, like William Wycherley's Love in a Wood (1671) and Thomas Shadwell's Epsom Wells (1672) and Bury Fair (1689) among other examples, continued the subgenre of "topographical comedy".
When Touchwood discovers this fact, he forbids their marriage, and insists that Sam inflict some serious injury on the Striker family to stay in his father's good graces (and his will).
Sir Hugh Moneylack also is part of a group of charlatans; with his confederates Springe and Brittleware, he targets a naive countryman named Tim Hoyden who longs to be made a gentleman.
The tricksters take every advantage of the man, physically abusing him with "bleeding" (bloodletting), "purging" (vomiting and enemas), and a starvation diet, and cheating him of £400 as they pretend to teach him the ways of fashionable society.
The young conspirators manipulate Walter's ridiculous uncle Sir Arthur Cautious, a confirmed bachelor, into an arranged betrothal with Annabelle.
Tom Hoyden has presented documents to the justice, to prove that foolish brother Tim is the long-lost son of Touchwood and Striker's late sister.