Labor and Writing in Early Modern England, 1567-1667 by Laurie Ellinghausen

Abstract

i68 Reviews foolishness of Miso andMopsa iscontrasted with Wroth's skilledfemalerhetoric. The final essayinthesection, by HenkDragster, dealswithJohn Aubrey'sreframing of thetalestoldhimbyhis nurse in a historical context, thereby reasserting the classicaldivision of male/written/scholarly versusfemale/oral/fiction. The fascinating essaysinPart IIcombine path-breaking research intothe way fe male identity was fashioned byoral tradition withperceptive closereading, thereby demonstrating thecloseengagement betweenliterary and socialdiscourses. Diane Purkiss'sessaysetsa 1673witchcraft depositionbyAnne Armstrong alongside Shakespeare'sTheWinter'sTale inorder to showhow adolescent womenwere obsessedwith food.Similarly, FionaMcNeill demonstrates that Orsino's flippant demandsfor musicalentertainment inTwelfth Nightcallupon the balladssungabout impoverished women labourers-maids,lace-makers, and thosesenttoserve, and starve, inVirginia. Natasha Korda also looks at the earlymodern femaleworkforce inheressayon street vendors, showing how they weremockedwhile trying toearn a livinginLondon'snewcapitalist markets.The finalessay, byLaRue Love Sloan, demonstrates theentrenched positioning ofgendersinoral tradition bylinking the curtain lecture inwhich a shrewish wife harangues her husband with the final tragic pillowsceneinOthello. The essaysinPart iII tendtobolsterand confirm theblurring ofgeneric boun dariesdiscussedbyLamb, withcontributions on libellous poetry byC. C.McGee, on Margaretand WilliamCavendishbyJames Fitzmaurice, onmultiplesexchanges by ReginaBuccola,onhumanist verbalperformance andTwelfth NightbyEric Mason, andon theassociation betweenfemale practice, oral tradition, andCatholicismby ClareKinney. However, whatmakes thiscollection notonlyinformative buthugelyenjoyable are the depictions of thewomen themselves: the imaginative 'Lucy'who wished to eat 'boyled capon with silver scrues'; 'Fair Winifright, and Bridget bright' who were treated like slaves; thewomen who, as theypawned theirpetticoats and prostituted themselves, were 'creatures soonevp,& soonedowne'; Marie Perman who 'showes herarsse';and, finally, the'Spinsters [. . .] [and]Huswifes'describedby Margaret Cavendish who sat on 'Cold Winter Nights' spinning their 'flax',weaving their 'Web', and-of course- singing 'ballads' (pp. 64, 112, 125, 140, 144, and 164). UNIVERSITY OF SURREY MARION WYNNE-DAvIES LaborandWritingin Early ModernEngland, 1567-1667.ByLAURIE ELLINGHAUSEN. Aldershot: Ashgate.2008. x+156 pp. ?45. ISBN978-0-7546-5780-4. Itisa notableparadoxthat despiteinhabiting a culturein whichmanualworkwas considered socially degrading, early modernwriters from ThomasSmithtoBen Jon sonused images ofphysicallabouras awayoffiguring their ownoccupation. Laurie Ellinghausen's argument in this book is thatforsomeauthors, presenting oneself as a worker was a way of laying claim to a surprisingly enabling marginal status: 'positing oneself on thedownsideofhierarchy, while suggestive ofoppression, can result inpayoffs fortheauthoraswell' (p.4). MLR, 104.1, 2009 169 For Isabella Whitney, onepayoff was self-legitimization as apublished authorina society where tobe public,professional, and female was potentially compromising. In A Sweet Nosgay Whitney presents her own labours as a writer and reader as responsestounemployment and economicdeprivation, thereby creating an image of thewriter as solitary and impoverished that recurs in thework of other authors consideredinthis volume.In the writings ofThomas Nashe, forinstance, thefrus trations of theunemployed university graduateare channelledintoan authorial identity predicated on resentment. The gapbetweentheprofessional expectations of theeducatedgentleman and thereality of life onGrub Street producesa sense of exclusionsimilarto Whitney's,butwhich hereprovidesthesatirist with the authority of theoutsider. Outsiderstatusisnotsomething onewould straightforwardly grant Ben Jonson, poet laureate inallbutname.He does,however, frequently represent hisauthorial laboursinterms ofsocially compromising manualwork,evenasheuses thetrope of manualwork todisparage otherssuchas InigoJones. Ellinghausenisnotthefirst to make this point, but shedoesprovideawide-ranging survey ofJonson's use of the ideaofwork,and a sensitive reading ofhis ambivalent treatment of theblacksmith godVulcan. (Indeed,I couldwish shehad examined Nashe'swritingsinsimilar depthinstead ofdigressing intoa study of the Parnassus plays.) One of thestrengths of thisbook is theunusual selection ofwritersonwhich itchooses tofocus:itissalutary, forexample,tobe alertedtotheextenttowhich the'Water Poet' John Taylordrawson Jonson as a 'modelfor non-elite authorship' (p. 93), even as Taylor's stress on his extra-literarywork aswaterman (not tomen tion hisrelatively enthusiastic embrace ofthe marketas a test ofcharacter) contrasts with Jonson's senseofpoetryas a vocationand his uneasyrelationship with the commercial theatre. Again, theideaofvocationlinksJonson withGeorge Wither, and the 'famousWorkes' alluded to in one of theverses inA Collection ofEmblemes (quotedp. 127)mightbringJonson tomind; however, thenotionthat onemight write them 'by composing but each Day a Line' takes us away from Jonson into a distinctively Protestant 'sense of time as a finite set of blocks [. . .] to be used forfulfilling divinepurpose' (p. 127).The chapters on thesethree writersare the most sustained partofEllinghausen's book,perhaps becausetheinfluential figure of Jonson helps her to draw thematerial together.However, thebook as awhole gives a strong sense of the changing ways inwhich authorship was constructed in early modernprintculture, aswell as highlighting theextenttowhich theideaofwork could be used tovalidate as well as to demean. SHEFFIELD HALLAM...