Working Subjects in Early Modern English Drama investigates the
ways in which work became a subject of inquiry on the early modern
stage and the processes by which the drama began to forge new
connections between labor and subjectivity in the period. The
essays assembled here address fascinating and hitherto unexplored
questions raised by the subject of labor as it was taken up in the
drama of the period: How were laboring bodies and the goods they
produced, marketed and consumed represented onstage through speech,
action, gesture, costumes and properties? How did plays participate
in shaping the identities that situated laboring subjects within
the social hierarchy? In what ways did the drama engage with
contemporary discourses (social, political, economic, religious,
etc.) that defined the cultural meanings of work? How did players
and playwrights define their own status with respect to the
shifting boundaries between high status/low status,
legitimate/illegitimate, profitable/unprofitable,
skilled/unskilled, formal/informal, male/female, free/bound,
paid/unpaid forms of work? Merchants, usurers, clothworkers, cooks,
confectioners, shopkeepers, shoemakers, sheepshearers,
shipbuilders, sailors, perfumers, players, magicians, servants and
slaves are among the many workers examined in this collection.
Offering compelling new readings of both canonical and lesser-known
plays in a broad range of genres (including history plays,
comedies, tragedies, tragi-comedies, travel plays and civic
pageants), this collection considers how early modern drama
actively participated in a burgeoning, proto-capitalist economy by
staging England's newly diverse workforce and exploring the subject
of work itself.
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