1 The Economy of the Drinking House: notions of credit and exchange in the tavern in early modern English drama. Submitted by Charlotte Caroline Campton to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English, August 2014. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature: .................................................................................. 2 Abstract This thesis traces how the drinking house was used by writers of early modern English drama to try to make sense of the period’s culture of exchange. Organised around an examination of five plays, the project focuses on the way in which playwrights engaged with and examined notions of credit, circulation, and the commercialisation of hospitality. By offering close readings through the lens of the drinking house, I make fresh interpretations of the plays. Moreover, I seek to demonstrate the wider literary tradition dealing with this space that, to some extent, has been neglected. With this in mind, I also draw on other popular texts from the period, such as ballads, jest books and rogue pamphlets, which establish certain conventions and narratives that emerge in the drama. In Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV, the reckoning – or tavern bill – is used as an emblem through which Hal negotiates his moral and economic redemption, in the face of Falstaff’s threat to the wider network of credit established in the tavern space. Dekker and Webster’s Westward Ho also stages credit as both a productive and unpredictable force. In the context of its Brentford location, the drinking house in that play is presented as a transformative space that allows for the possibilities of an alternative economic model. Irrepressible forces of commercialism define the Light Heart in Jonson’s The New Inn; forces that effect character transformations and champion a fluid economy in contrast with landed-estate living. In Brome’s The Demoiselle, these conventions are upended, and the commercialism of the New Ordinary is dispensed with in favour of a more settled economy. 3 The thesis testifies to the investment writers made in the drinking house as a dramatic space and as a space to be dramatised, a space through which the possibilities and energies of exchange were staged. 4 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Andrew McRae, for his unstinting support over the course of my studies. I could not have asked for a kinder or more encouraging mentor. I am also extremely grateful for the insights and advice provided by Philip Schwyzer. I have benefited enormously from being a part of the academic community at the University of Exeter, and very much appreciate the financial assistance I was awarded in the form of my doctoral bursary. All of my friends have been stalwart supporters over the last few years, but particular thanks must go to Hannah Ayres, Jennifer Barnes, John and Emma Birkin, Cate Cannon, Demelza Hookway, Hannah Murray, Alex and Rachael Perry, Simon and Viv Thornton Jones, and Mike Evans and Harriet Ziegler. Finally, I would like to thank my whole family, to whom I truly indebted. I am particularly appreciative of the home-from-home my father has provided whenever I stayed in Devon. My dear brother, Harry – always my champion – has cheered me on at every stage, and without him, I would never have started, or finished, this project. I would like to remember my beloved mother, Ruth, whose hand on mine I have felt so often, at the best and worst of times. I know she would have been ever so proud to see me complete a PhD. And it is to my darling husband, Paul, without whom not a single word would have been written, and whose enduring kindness, patience, and belief in me have kept me going, that I dedicate this thesis with love. 5 Contents Title page 1 Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 4 List of contents 5 Note on the Text 7 Introduction 8 Chapters 1. The Drinking House in Early Modern Popular Literature 23 The figure of the host/hostess 32 The reckoning 41 Commercialised sociability 48 Conclusion 56 2. The Tavern, Reckonings and Creation of Credit in William 57 Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV The creation of a tavern economy 63 Falstaff’s bad debts and his destabilisation of the tavern economy 68 Hal’s construction of identity 80 Hal’s pursuit of credit 88 The tavern must be checked – economic impulses and punishment 100 Conclusion 109 3. Lines of Credit in the Fringe Tavern Space: Thomas Dekker 112 and John Webster’s Westward Ho Brentford: locus of the illicit 117 The fringe tavern space 129 Women and diamonds: tokens of exchange 142 Conclusion 160 4. Ownership and Circulation in Ben Jonson’s The New Inn 162 Ownership and transformation 167 In “every cup and company”: Fly as enforcer 181 The owner of the inn? 199 Conclusion 212 5. Value, Cost, and Commercialism: Richard Brome’s The 214 Demoiselle, or The New Ordinary The strange space of the New Ordinary 224 Circulating money 237 The raffle: a model of exchange? 245 6 The Demoiselle, the landed gentry and the loss of estate living 259 Conclusion 270 The Economy of the Drinking House: Conclusion 271 Works Cited and Consulted 277 7 Note on the text All conflations of u/v, i/j and vv/w are routinely modernised. 8 Introduction In John Earle’s 1628 character book, Microcosmographie, we find among the descriptions of various people a short account of “A Taverne”: [It] is a degree, or (if you will) a paire of stayres above an Alehouse, where men are drunke with more credit and Apologie. … The rooms are ill breath’d, like the drinkers that have been washt wel over night, and are smelt too fasting next morning; not furnisht with Beds apt to be defil’d, but more necessary implements, Stooles, Table, and a Chamber-pot. It is a broacher of more newes then hogs-heads, & more jests then newes, which are sukt up heere by some spungie braine, and from thence squeazed into a Comedy. Men come here to make merry, but indeed make a noise, and this musicke above is answered with the clinking below. The Drawers are the civilest people in it, men of good bringing up, and howsoever we esteeme of them, none can boast more justly of their high calling. Tis the best Theater of natures, where they are truely acted, not plaid, and the busines as in the rest of the world up and downe, to wit, from the bottome of the Seller to the great Chamber. (C12r-D1v) This description immediately alerts us to several intersecting ways in which the early modern tavern can be understood. Earle pays attention to its materiality, reaching as it does over several floors, with numerous rooms (some with apparent grandeur), furnished and busy with customers and employees. More importantly, however, he 9 draws out a sense of its productiveness: the tavern emerges here as a dynamic, generative space, that provides “newes” and “jests” for its customers, a hub of communication and sociability. Crucially, it also gives inspiration to writers. Indeed, Earle suggests that the tavern space provides a rich supply of material to those who may absorb the goings-on into a “spungie braine” and thereafter produce “a Comedy”. Bearing in mind that the “tavern is often depicted as a stage” in the early modern period, this particular statement invites the reader of his text to consider the way in which the tavern itself becomes a subject of drama (Smyth 199). While the space is “the best Theater of natures”, here Earle is surely aware of the way it has been staged and interpreted by those writing plays. The depiction also alights – albeit briefly – on what I suggest is a defining characteristic of the way the early modern drinking house is understood in the literature of the period. In the first sentence, Earle writes of the “men [who] are drunke with more credit and Apologie”. Not only does this invite us to consider the complicated relationship between drinking and sociability, where men may find themselves regretful, but, more specifically, I suggest that the privileging of the notion of “credit” in the opening lines also locates the tavern as a potent site for the imagining of the early modern culture of exchange. Indebtedness – or at least the deferral of payment – is the consequence of drinking in such a space. Credit is also evoked when Earle comes to sum up his description: “To give you the totall reckoning of it. It is the busie mans recreation, the idle mans businesse, the melancholy mans Sanctuary, the strangers welcome, the Innes a Court mans entertainment, the schollers kindnesse, and the Citizens curtesie” (D2r-D2v). While of course “reckoning” means an account of something, it also suggests the very emblem of exchange in a tavern: the bill. Earle’s reckoning comprises those characters who 10 frequent the tavern, but it is also a marker of a site-specific act that has resonance for the wider culture of exchange. This thesis is concerned with how certain early modern writers used the staged drinking house space to make sense of this culture. My focus is on early modern drama – Shakespeare’s 1 Henry IV and 2 Henry IV (1597-1600), Dekker and Webster’s Westward Ho (1604), Jonson’s The New Inn (1629), and Brome’s The Demoiselle (1638) – although I also draw from the period’s popular literature in the forms of ballads, jest books and rogue pamphlets.