The Weeding of the Covent Garden, or the Middlesex Justice of Peace, alternatively titled The Covent Garden Weeded,[1] is a Caroline era stage play, a comedy written by Richard Brome that was first published in 1659. The play is a noteworthy satire on the emerging ethos of Capitalism as reflected in real estate and urban development in the early modern city.
The precise dates of authorship and first performance of the play are not known with certainty; but it must have originated c. 1632, when the development of Covent Garden was a public controversy. The play may have been staged by the King's Men.[2]
The Weeding of Covent Garden was first published in the 1659 octavo volume Five New Plays, a collection of Brome's dramas issued by the booksellers Andrew Crooke and Henry Brome.