Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- PART I THE INHERITED PAST
- Prologue
- 1 The Historical Context
- 2 The Elizabethan World Order: From Divinity to Dust
- 3 Sin, Death and the Prince of Darkness
- 4 The Seven Cardinal Virtues
- 5 Kingship
- 6 Patriarchy, Family Authority and Gender Relationships
- 7 Man in His Place
- 8 Images of Disorder: The Religious Context
- PART II THE JACOBEAN PRESENT
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - Man in His Place
from PART I - THE INHERITED PAST
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 June 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- PART I THE INHERITED PAST
- Prologue
- 1 The Historical Context
- 2 The Elizabethan World Order: From Divinity to Dust
- 3 Sin, Death and the Prince of Darkness
- 4 The Seven Cardinal Virtues
- 5 Kingship
- 6 Patriarchy, Family Authority and Gender Relationships
- 7 Man in His Place
- 8 Images of Disorder: The Religious Context
- PART II THE JACOBEAN PRESENT
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
First walk in thy vocation,
And do not seek thy lot to change
By God's will you were born into a particular rank (your lot in life). You were expected to know your place, keep it and work at whatever calling came within the scope of your family's position. Each family might rise, through hard work and God's grace. Small status rises were not too disturbing for one's neighbours, but great success provoked envy, jealousy and suspicion of overreaching ambition. Doubts about the honesty of the means by which you rose might arouse accusations of magic and devilish assistance. People would be all too ready to credit the Bible's view: ‘he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent’ (Proverbs 28:20). The industrious, careful man, slowly improving his station, was safe from negative gossip, for ‘wealth gotten by vanity shall be diminished: but he that gathereth by labour shall increase’ (Proverbs 13:11). Rapidly increasing bourgeois wealth created an interplay between envy, condemnation of luxury, suspicion of avarice and dishonesty and fears of an upstart, ambitiously aspirational group rivalling the traditional ruling class.
Jacobeans were suspicious about social movement. If God made the world, putting each man in his place, was it not countering God's will to change your social status? A poor man becoming poorer was thought punished for some unnamed sin, but a man going up in the world was usually not thought of as being rewarded for virtue, but rather guilty of ambition, arrogance and using sinful means. Some argued that God gave men abilities or talents, expected them to be used and rewarded hard work. If that meant you could climb out of your birth rank, bettering yourself, then you could be said to be doing God's will and worshipping him by developing the talents he gave you. This was a popular view among Non- Conformists for whom the work ethic was central. They believed in industry, thrift and found the idea of making money acceptable. The age saw huge fortunes made. A rise in wealth, place and public status should not be accompanied by complacently making money at any cost. The means had to be ethical, the amounts within reason.
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- Information
- Volpone' in ContextBiters Bitten and Fools Fooled, pp. 157 - 164Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2016