Labor and Cultural Mobility in Three Early Modern City Comedies

Abstract

This dissertation is a critical analysis of the lives of working-class, or as Patricia Fumerton has argued “unsettled” early modern Londoners. Specifically, this dissertation builds on the work of scholars such as Jean Howard in describing the connection between class disparity and mobility both physical and social. The project analyzes how segregating groups of people by neighborhoods, workplaces, and other physical locations is directly tied to social mobility, and how this works to keep some individuals in a disadvantaged position. However, the project also points to places in the plays in which, through various means such as disguising plots or occupation, some characters manage to cross those boundaries and find social mobility. The dissertation begins with a critical reading of Jonson’s The Devil is an Ass, a play which utilizes some of the trappings of medieval morality plays to tell the story of an inept demon who finds himself forced to serve a greedy and foolish master. The demon Pug’s plan to capture a soul for hell is destroyed as he comes to realize that the fate of “strangers” in London is a slow crush of capitalistic greed worse crueler than the devil himself. In studying The Devil is an Ass, my project thus begins with a critical discussion of the importance that was placed upon being connected to a community of some sort for early moderns. The second chapter focuses on another of Jonson’s plays, Bartholomew Fair. Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair is a city comedy which presents its audience with a collection of vignettes in which characters from different occupations and social classes weave in and out of each other’s lives. The play asserts that assumptions about occupation and physical space contribute to and work to blur the boundaries of both physical and social mobility. Finally, the dissertation ends with a reading of Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday [The Gentle Craft]. Shoemaker’s Holiday states a clear message about the value of labor and the message that the way to move past social boundaries is to invest in the community of laborers. Dekker builds a world around guild labor and the solidarity of the working class that emphasizes the meaning of physical labor and the value of working bodies. Utilizing what Matthew Kendrick has called “an artisanal worldview,” Dekker differentiates a framework which centers labor and community from the frameworks of aristocracy and emergent mercantilism/capitalism. City comedy is the genre of drama most capable of representing the actual lived experience of being a working-class person, a category expanded upon in the dissertation as being quite broad and comprehensive, better than any other genre. In this project “working class” or “lower class” refers to those eking out a living day-to-day, those without connections or disposable income to fall back on. The project ultimately finds that “working class” is a broad, dynamic class of individuals whose relationships with community, labor, and sometimes clever manipulations of the system of aristocracy and mercantilism is deeply tied to both their physical and social mobility. Ultimately, the dissertation argues that by better understanding the connection between class dynamics and mobility, it is possible to break through harmful social barriers and achieve a more equitable society.