도시희극 속 위기의 청년들: 크레딧 경제의 틈새 찾기

Abstract

This paper aims to define and analyze young men’s credit crisis and their differentiated strategies in rebuilding their damaged credit by reading closely the two city comedies, Eastward Ho and A Trick to Catch the Old One. Theoretically, the early modern credit economy was based on the harmonious correspondences between moral credit and economic credit, thus orienting toward a “moral economy.” However, as moral credit could be constructed by performance or deceit, the credit economy based on the moral credit could also be manipulated to one’s interest by the clever use of the loopholes inherent in the credit economy. In Eastward Ho, Quicksilver, a “bad” apprentice, ruins his credit and is locked up in the Counter, a debtor’s prison, by his master and creditor, Touchstone. To get released from prison and to regain his credit, Quicksilver must receive a pardon from his former master. For that purpose, Quicksilver performs the role of a penitent prisoner and becomes an icon of penitence in the prison. Golding, a “good” apprentice, silently joins him in the plot as the director of Quicksilver’s performance, thus constructing his own credit as a merciful administrator. Touchstone, a shrewd merchant, also agrees to become a spectator of the show and admits Quicksilver as his apprentice again, thus helping to construct the moral economy of the world in the play. In A Trick, Witgood, a bankrupt prodigal, cannot rebuild his career so easily, because he has multiple creditors and his own uncle, Lucre, is the one who confiscated his land. As his credit cannot be easily rebuilt by mere performances and role-playing, Witgood appropriates the lusty widow stereotype and uses the marriage with a rich widow as leverage to get the assistance of his uncle. He also needs the power of papers and legal contracts, along with cunning manipulation of the hostility and rivalry between Lucre and Hoard, to navigate through the hostile world of London and retrieve his land and reputation. Quicksilver and Witgood, the young men in credit crisis, reveal the loopholes and dilemmas of the credit economy, and show how moral credit and economic credit defined and negotiated each other in the early modern England.