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Conclusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 September 2009

Tom Rutter
Affiliation:
Sheffield Hallam University
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Summary

In the last chapter, I identified both continuities and changes in the dramatic treatment of work by the adult and the children's companies after 1601. The adult companies continued to associate themselves (though not exclusively) with London's citizens through depicting manual and commercial work as morally upstanding (The Honest Whore) and compatible with gentle status (The Four Prentices of London), as well as highlighting the perils of idleness and dissolution (The London Prodigal). For their part, the Children of the Chapel satirised the former two claims in Eastward Ho! and rewarded an ostentatiously idle and dissolute character at the end of The Knight of the Burning Pestle. However, the fact that Jasper in the latter play is a paragon of dutiful industriousness and that the eponymous heroes of The Four Prentices of London are sons of the Earl of Bouillon precludes any easy identification of adults or children with particular sectional interests; furthermore, in these years, dramatists began to demonstrate a willingness to question the assumptions on which the companies' divergent treatments of work had been founded. The aristocratic culture of conspicuous leisure comes in for sustained interrogation in A Woman Killed with Kindness, but it is also satirised in Eastward Ho!; conversely, even in The Honest Whore, Candido is as ridiculous as he is impressive.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2008

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  • Conclusion
  • Tom Rutter, Sheffield Hallam University
  • Book: Work and Play on the Shakespearean Stage
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511481451.008
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  • Conclusion
  • Tom Rutter, Sheffield Hallam University
  • Book: Work and Play on the Shakespearean Stage
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511481451.008
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusion
  • Tom Rutter, Sheffield Hallam University
  • Book: Work and Play on the Shakespearean Stage
  • Online publication: 22 September 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511481451.008
Available formats
×