Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on texts and dates
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Work in sixteenth-century England
- Chapter 2 ‘Vpon the weke daies and worke daies at conuenient times’: acting as work in Elizabethan England
- Chapter 3 ‘Though he be a king, yet he must labour’: work and nobility in Shakespeare's histories
- Chapter 4 ‘We may shut vp our shops, and make holiday’: workers and playhouses, 1599–1601
- Chapter 5 ‘Work upon that now!’: labour and status on the stage, 1599–1610
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 1 - Work in sixteenth-century England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on texts and dates
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Work in sixteenth-century England
- Chapter 2 ‘Vpon the weke daies and worke daies at conuenient times’: acting as work in Elizabethan England
- Chapter 3 ‘Though he be a king, yet he must labour’: work and nobility in Shakespeare's histories
- Chapter 4 ‘We may shut vp our shops, and make holiday’: workers and playhouses, 1599–1601
- Chapter 5 ‘Work upon that now!’: labour and status on the stage, 1599–1610
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
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:
This envisaged society as a static hierarchy of estates, fixed in occupations which were organically related, mutually beneficial, harmonious and divinely ordained. Society was often presented as a human body, with head and hands as king and nobility, feet as peasantry, and so on. As common was the tripartite division into those who pray, those who fight and those who labour to maintain fighters and praysters.
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- Information
- Work and Play on the Shakespearean Stage , pp. 11 - 25Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008