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Beggars and Vagrants in Early Modern Drama

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Beggars and Vagrants in Early Modern Drama View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Texas A&M University MEN ON THE ROAD: BEGGARS AND VAGRANTS IN EARLY MODERN DRAMA (WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, JOHN FLETCHER, AND RICHARD BROME) A Dissertation by MI-SU KIM Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2004 Major Subject: English MEN ON THE ROAD: BEGGARS AND VAGRANTS IN EARLY MODERN DRAMA (WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, JOHN FLETCHER, AND RICHARD BROME) A Dissertation by MI-SU KIM Submitted to Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved as to style and content by: ______________________________ ______________________________ James L. Harner Douglas A. Brooks (Co-Chair of Committee) (Co-Chair of Committee) ______________________________ ______________________________ Howard J. Marchitello James M. Rosenheim (Member) (Member) ______________________________ Paul A. Parrish (Head of Department) May 2004 Major Subject: English iii ABSTRACT Men on the Road: Beggars and Vagrants in Early Modern Drama (William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and Richard Brome). (May 2004) Mi-Su Kim, B.A.; M.A., Seoul National University Co-Chairs of Advisory Committee: Dr. James L. Harner Dr. Douglas A. Brooks This dissertation examines beggars, gypsies, rogues, and vagrants presented in early modern English drama, with the discussion of how these peripatetic characters represent the discourses of vagrancy of the period. The first chapter introduces Tudor and early Stuart governments’ legislation and proclamations on vagabondage and discusses these governmental policies in their social and economic contexts. The chapter also deals with the literature of roguery to point out that the literature (especially in the Elizabethan era) disseminated such a negative image of beggars as impostors and established the antagonistic atmosphere against the wandering poor. The second chapter explores the anti-theatrical aspect of the discourses of vagrancy. Along with the discussion of early playing companies’ traveling convention, this chapter investigates how the long-held association of players with beggars is addressed in the plays that are dated from the early 1570s to the closing of the playhouses in 1642. In the third chapter I read Shakespeare’s King Lear with the focus on its critical allusions to the discourses of vagrancy and interpret King Lear’s symbolic experience of vagrancy in that context. The chapter demonstrates that King Lear represents the spatial politics embedded in the iv discourses of vagrancy and evokes a sympathetic understanding of the wandering poor. Chapter IV focuses on Beggars’ Bush and analyzes the beggars’ utopian community in the play. By juxtaposing the play with a variety of documents relating to the vagrancy issue in the early seventeen century, I contend that Beggars’ Bush reflects the cultural aspirations for colonial enterprises in the early Stuart age. Chapter V examines John Taylor’s conceptualization of vagrancy as a trope of travel and free mobility, and discusses the “wanderlust” represented in A Jovial Crew: Merry Beggars as an exemplary anecdote showing the mid seventeenth century’s perceptions on vagrancy and spatial mobility. Thus, by exploring diverse associations and investments regarding vagrants, this study demonstrates that the early modern discourses of vagrancy have been informed and inflected by shifting economic, socio-historical, and national interests and demands. In memory of my father, Chul-Sik Kim (1938-2000) vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation could not have been completed or imagined without the support of my committee. I would like to thank Dr. James L. Harner for his consistent encouragement and guidance. From my first year as a Ph.D. student until now, he has watched me go through all the different stages and helped me step forward with wisdom and humor. The scholarly diligence I learned from him enabled me to develop my primary idea into this dissertation. I am grateful to Dr. Douglas A. Brooks for his willingness to discuss the subject of vagrancy and for his steady interest in my work. I feel gratitude to Dr. Howard J. Marchitello for giving me inspiration on spatial issues and to Dr. James M. Rosenheim for his insightful and knowledgeable comments. I do thank the Department of English and the Center for Humanities Studies at Texas A&M University for offering me travel grants, which I used to present my papers on King Lear and A Jovial Crew. I wish to express my gratitude to the late Dr. Helen Barthelme and Dr. Lynne Vallone, whose friendship and motherly care I feel privileged to enjoy in this foreign country. I reserve my special thanks to my parents-in-law and my mother for their sacrificial love and vigorous support. I want to thank my lovely nine-year-old daughter Yesul, who accompanied me on my trips to the library and showed her curiosity and excitement about writing a dissertation. I owe many things to my eighteen-month-old daughter Yejean, who had to stay apart from me while I finished up writing. My warmest thanks go to my husband Taehoon Kim for his emotional and intellectual vii support. Without his encouragement, I would not have even tried to challenge myself and could not have completed this work. As a critical reader, wise adviser, and sympathetic companion, he accompanied me on this long journey and shared many burdens. viii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………...…… iii DEDICATION ………………………………………………………………….. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ………………………………………………………. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ……………………………………………………….. viii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION …………….……………………….……………… 1 1. Prologue ……………………………………….……………… 1 2. Poor Law and Vagrancy Legislation ………………………… 4 3. The Image of Beggars in the Literature of Roguery ….……… 9 4. A Brief Review of Recent Scholarship and My Approach ...… 18 II BEGGARS, ROGUES, AND PLAYERS ………………………….… 27 1. Traveling Players and Vagabonds ………………………….… 28 2. Roguery and Theatricality …………………………………… 37 3. Reconfiguration of Theatricality, Beggary, and Roguery for Promoting the Acting Business ……………………………… 51 III KING LEAR’S SYMBOLIC EXPERIENCE OF VAGRANCY …… 80 1. A Dialogue with the Literature of Roguery …………..……… 80 2. Vagrancy and Homelessness ………………………………… 95 3. Lear’s Spatial Experience ………………………………….… 104 4. James I and Foresters ………………………………………… 112 IV BEGGARS’ BUSH AND COLONIAL ENTERPRISES …….……… 122 1. A Carnival of Beggars …………………………………….….. 123 2. The Glory of Merchants ………………………….…………… 139 3. The Beggars’ Forest Community and Colonial Green World.… 154 4. England in 1622: the Instability of Colonial Enterprises …….. 163 ix CHAPTER Page V A BEGGAR AS A TRAVELER IN A JOVIAL CREW: MERRY BEGGARS …………………………………….………….… 172 1. Traveling in Early Seventeenth-Century England …………… 174 2. John Taylor’s Self-Representation as a Beggar …………….... 183 3. Diverse Modes of Travel in A Jovial Crew ………………….. 190 VI CONCLUSION ………………………………………………….……. 204 WORKS CITED ………………………………………………………………… 210 VITA ……………………………………………………………………..……… 222 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1. Prologue FOOL. Thou [Lear] wast a pretty fellow then thou hadst no need to Care for her frowning; now thou art an O without a figure. I Am better than thou art now; I am a fool, thou art nothing. (King Lear 1.4.167-69) When the Fool looks at Lear, whose power and authority has become so minimal that he has to beg his daughter for his dinner, the Fool sees in his master the beggared poor who have to depend on charity-givers for their food and shelter. The Fool tells Lear the rule of the world: if you possess nothing, you become nothing. When Lear gives up his throne, the Fool implies, Lear loses his identity, and the right to claim himself as a king. Lear’s “nothingness” bears a close resemblance to the vagrant poor in early modern England, who underwent a turbulent experience of identities when they could not hold onto their occupation, belongings, and their home. Vagrants’ and beggars’ This dissertation follows the style of the MLA Handbook. 2 turbulent experiences of “becoming nothing” will be explored in this dissertation, together with the diverse discourses of vagrancy in early modern England. A variety of polemicists in that period approached the issue of vagrancy from different angles. Some, in discussing the problems of public health and hygiene, attributed the dissemination of the plague to vagrants. On the other hand, nationalists noted vagrants’ potential economic power if they had participated in productive work. Also, some members of the propertied class, fearing the plethora of uprooted poor lingering around their properties, argued that vagrants should be monitored and controlled more thoroughly. In this light, diverse writers voiced their values, interests, and anxiety by discussing the vagrancy issue. In such discursive practices, vagrants were culturally an empty figure (“O without a figure”) whose significance was defined and manufactured by legislators, rogue pamphleteers, nationalists, historiographers and all other kinds of writers. In fact, beggars were discursively monstrous figures whose significance was oversupplied and incongruent. Largely illiterate, beggars were isolated from discursive practices and could not control the cultural manipulation of their images. Some of their images of being idle, roguish, and incorrigible were mainly produced and consumed by relatively upper-class writers and, thus, the discourses of vagrancy
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