I suggested in the Preface to this book that as a way of categorising behaviour, work is both fluid and ambiguous. Activities that might be designated work in one historical or social context might not in another; thus, the meaning of work is something that changes between times and places. In this chapter, I want to suggest that work meant something different in the early modern period to what it had during the Middle Ages. I shall argue in subsequent chapters that this change of signification had important implications both for the status of acting and for the way the idea of work was used in the drama. Before going on to do so, however, it will be necessary to address some methodological questions about how criticism of the drama might relate it to the broader ideological and social developments I discuss, and this will be the focus of the second part of the current chapter.

WORK AND SOCIAL THEORY: MEDIEVAL TO EARLY MODERN

In his essay, ‘Imagination and Traditional Ideologies in Piers Plowman’, David Aers identifies what he calls ‘the major social ideology’ of the late Middle Ages: