The Importance of Equilibrium in Thomas Dekker’s A Worke For Armourers (1609)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the importance of economic and social equilibrium in Thomas Dekker’s prose allegory, A Worke For Armourers (1609). I investigate the intersection between economics and literature during a period of profound economic growth and social upheaval when the seeds for capitalism were laid. I discuss how Dekker’s allegory grapples with the possibility for radical change but confronts an equally strong desire for balance and stability. Early modern dramatic writers rarely used single terms to convey concepts like change, balance and equilibrium. Instead, Dekker used allegorical situations, complex allusions and metaphors to explore how economic and social change could be achieved. A reading of Dekker’s text shows that he created an allegorical world turned economically and socially upside down before providing a resolution that returns the world to its previous state of equilibrium.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Merridee L. Bailey http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7322-648X

Notes

1 Thomas Dekker, A Worke for Armourers: The peace is broken, Open Warres likley to happen this year 1609: God help the Poor, the Rich can Shift (London: Nathaniel Butter, 1609), G3^v.Subsequently referred to as A Worke for Armourers. Spelling and punctuation are left in their original throughout the article.

2 Clark, Elizabethan Pamphleteers, 127; Twyning, 198. See also Rhodes, 31.

3 Some of the most exciting work interpreting historic economic structures has been occurring at the intersection between literary criticism and economic history. Shakespeare studies have become a focus for how early modern drama can be read to understand the development of economic practice; see e.g., the edited collection by Woodbridge; and Hawkes. Also in the vein of bringing literary criticism to exchange practices are Bruster; Dowd and Korda, eds.; and Landreth.

4 For example, Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday reworks Thomas Deloney’s The Gentle Craft (1597?).

5 Bruster, xii–xiii, 12–15; Heller.

6 Twyning, 6.

7 Bucholz and Ward, 65.

8 Ibid., 277.

9 Muldrew, 20.

10 See Wilson, ed.

11 Bruster.

12 Clark, “A Crisis Contained?,” 44–66.

13 Archer, Pursuit of Stability.

14 Bayman discusses Dekker’s collaborations as well as the nature of the relationships between early modern playwrights. Bayman, 40–2.

15 Ibid., 29–34.

16 Ibid.

17 Parrott and Ball. See also, Bradbrook; Daiches, 327; Price.

18 For example, Sandra Clark has reassessed Dekker’s literary abilities, Anna Bayman has examined Dekker’s pamphleteering career, Julia Gaspar has focused on Dekker’s religious leanings, Susan E. Krantz has examined Dekker’s political intentions and John Twyning, Dekker’s astute commentary on poverty and dispossession. See, Clark, Elizabethan Pamphleteers; Bayman; Gaspar; Krantz, 271–91; Twyning.

19 See e.g., Smith, Strier and Bevington.

20 Although Gaspar views Dekker as religiously polemical, others have downplayed his religious leanings as a factor influencing his writing. See particularly Krantz.

21 Morrow assesses the play as a critique of war’s impact on Londoners rather than a mercantile tale. Bartolovich, ‘Mythos of Labor,’ analyses the historical relationship between labour, money and social mobility

22 Twyning, 97.

23 Bayman, 41.

24 Dowd and Korda, 3.

25 See Bayman, 103–4.

26 Dekker, B4^r.

27 Bucholz and Ward, 1–2.

28 Dekker, B4^r–v. The marginal gloss summarises this as: ‘The chiefe Cities of Christendome’, B3^v.

29 Rubright, 44–7.

30 Bartolovich, ‘London’s the Thing.’

31 Twyning, 3.

32 Dekker, C1^r.

33 Ibid. The bracket is left open in the text, most likely a result of a typesetting error.

34 Gasper, 24. On the Dutch in The Shoemaker’s Holiday see Archer, ‘Citizens and Aliens,’ 37–52.

35 Dekker, F3^r.

36 Ibid., B3^r.

37 Rowlingson and McKay; Uslaner, 4, 162. Fairbrother and Martin qualify some of the recent data on this.

38 Dekker, C3^v. On contested views about charity in Catholic and Protestant England see Jackson, 14–54, 204–34. See also Archer, ‘John Stow’s Survey of London.’

39 Twyning, 193; Berlin, 276.

40 Twyning,194.

41 Dekker, C1^r.

42 Ibid., C1^r.

43 39 Eliz.I.c.4.

44 Dekker, C1^r. I am grateful to Nicholas Brodie for this insight into Tudor vagrancy laws.

45 Attitudes towards the poor in the post-Reformation world were a tangle of competing views (in fact, they had also been this way in Catholic England and remained so in Catholic Europe); however, the act of giving charity undeniably took on different expressions and social functions in post-Reformation England. Brigden; Archer, Pursuit of Stability, 163–82.

46 Dekker, B2^r.

47 Engrossing involved buying up and controlling the supply of a commodity before it arrived at the market to create artificial scarcity; forestalling, buying up goods before the opportunity for common access to them then selling on at a higher cost—literally, buying up goods “before the stall”; regrating, buying goods and selling at a higher price without having done anything to add value or justify the increased price. Regrating originally related to hucksters and was therefore often directed at women before the types of activities that fell under it broadened. See Wood, 139–40.

48 Dekker, F1^r.

49 Ibid.

50 Since E. P. Thompson’s “Moral Economy” was first published in 1971, moral frameworks have dominated most of the scholarship on this topic. John Bohstedt has argued for the recognition of political forces and market transitions in triggering food rioting as a corrective to the focus on the moral dimensions of food shortages. See also Lee.

51 Dekker, F1^v–F2^r.

52 Tatlock and Martin, 120.

53 Dekker, F1^r–v.

54 Clark, Elizabethan Pamphleteers, 172.

55 Dekker, F2^r.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid., F3^v.

58 Ibid..

59 Ibid., E4^r and D3^r.

60 Ibid., E4^r.

61 Ibid., E4^r–v.

62 Twyning, 193–201. See also Berlin.

63 Dekker, F4^v.

64 Ibid., G1^r.

65 Ibid., G1^v.

66 Ibid., G3^r.

67 Kendrick, 266.

68 Clark, Elizabethan Pamphleteers, 127; Rhodes, 31; Twyning, 198.

69 Some European astronomers aligned views about the cyclical nature of the cosmos with philosophical and humanist ideals about the cyclical nature of human culture. Newton believed in the cyclical process of decline and renewal, related both to human history and to motion in the cosmos. Brotóns, 36; Kubrin.

70 Berlin.

71 Dekker, C1^r.

72 Ibid., F2^v .

73 Ibid., G3^r .

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, 1100-1800 (project number CE110001011).