Early Modern England Research Articles

Shakespeare’s Epistemology and the Problem of Truth

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines epistemology as “the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and limits of human knowledge.” What, according to Shakespeare, was the origin of human knowledge? Various critics have attempted to understand Shakespeare’s epistemology, but most have ignored the blatant evidence in the plays that Shakespeare was, in fact, somewhat obsessed with epistemology. Digging deeper, it would seem that his attitude to the subject was informed by his readings of obscure Greek and Roman philosophers, especially Gorgias. But given that the man from Stratford apparently could not read Greek (it was not taught in 16th-century provincial schools), how could he have been able to read these theoretical and scholarly works? In this essay, I argue that the first Greek sophist, Gorgias, whose work is often associated with the skepticism delivered to early modern England by Sextus Empiricus, was a huge influence on the true author. I show that during the Enlightenment, there was an intellectual war between early scientists who studied nature and the ancient faithful who studied God. Shakespeare neatly skirted this dilemma by focusing on the possibility that art might itself created its own reality — one that was not immutable ‘truth’ in the traditional sense but rather a very mutable fiction that must always necessarily be viewed with suspicion. In the modern world, with the advent of ‘fake news’ — and a new and unsettling relativity concerning facts — Shakespeare’s bold experiment in epistemology becomes startlingly relevant.

Experiencing God in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. By David J. Davis

Experiencing God in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. By David J. Davis

Consuming China in Early Modern England and Beyond: A Survey and Reexamination

Abstract If we traveled back in time to the first half of the eighteenth century, we might notice that the cargo aboard an East Indiaman was rather diversified. But of these different products from different countries, a sizable number of them were manufactured in and originated from China. Why was China, alone among many other countries, able to secure its place as a world factory at the time? In this paper, I will suggest that we could not possibly understand how tea and porcelain became synonyms for China without tracing their histories back to the early modern world. We would not be able to deepen our understanding of Anglo-Chinese relations without taking into consideration the flow and circulations of goods between the two powers. My purpose here, therefore, is to outline these very connections throughout the early modern era, roughly from the late seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, based on the fascinating studies conducted by pioneering historians in the field over the past few decades. If we follow the life histories of some of the Chinese commodities, can we determine the ways in which those imported items interacted with the European market in general and the British in particular? Other than treating these commodities as marketable goods, are there any other intellectual perspectives available to help us better comprehend their associations with the early modern world?

Harry R McCarthy. Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre

<scp>Harry R McCarthy</scp>. <i>Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre</i>

Comfort Eating: Food, Drink and Emotional Health in Early Modern England

Abstract This article explores early modern practices of ‘comfort eating’, arguing that they represent a crucial dimension of early modern preventative healthcare. The article argues that ideas of comfort eating were shaped not only by medical understandings of the composition of foods and their impact on the body, particularly on the levels of the four humours, but also by the cultural and social significance of certain foods, along with when, where, and with whom they were eaten. For early modern people, whether a food could provide comfort depended on its perceived medical properties, the quantities in which it was eaten, its social capital, and its use in other areas of daily life that were known to promote cheerfulness such as sharing meals and gift-giving. Focusing on this more holistic approach to emotional healthcare reveals how practices that have normally been defined as largely social in nature, such as gift-giving and hospitality, were viewed and performed through a medical lens, while also demonstrating how techniques for managing the passions seeped into everyday experiences of food consumption and culture. Practices of comfort eating represented a critical tool with which early modern people could manage their emotional health and the health of their wider communities, empowering them to adapt their diets where necessary, create medicines that could cure diseases of the passions, and consider how everyday social codes of hospitality and commensality could have medical implications for the health of their passions.

Work, Gender and Witchcraft in Early Modern England

AbstractThis article revisits a question with which historians of early modern European witchcraft have long grappled: why was the average percentage of male suspects so small (approximately 10–30 per cent), and the percentage of female suspects so large? Drawing on recent studies by economic historians, it argues that this skewed gender ratio can be explained, in part, by the gendered patterns of work which obtained in early modern Europe. Focusing on England, it shows how four key variables – gender divisions of labour, occupational hazard, contact frequency and workplace sociability – combined to increase or decrease workers’ vulnerability to witchcraft accusation.

“I Do Love / To Note and to Observe”: The Pleasures of Surveillance and Resistance in the Work of Ben Jonson

Poet, playwright, religious dissident, and collaborator with the state surveillance apparatus: Ben Jonson experienced a long and tortuous relationship with surveilling in late-Tudor/early-Stuart England. The cultures of surveillance he encountered extended beyond espionage to social and religious surveillance, which in early modern England often bled into and facilitated the workings of the state’s network of informants. His literary output and unusually detailed (for the time) biographical information combine to give us a complex picture of his engagement with surveilling, secrecy, and resistance. Jonson’s experience of surveillance involved incarceration and the threat of corporal punishment, but in his writings, he associates surveilling and being surveilled with pleasure in the context of his Humanist education, his conversion to Catholicism at a time when the Protestant English state had outlawed such worship, and his work as a satirist, playwright, and poet. Using Freud’s notion of unheimlich, or the uncanny, I argue that Jonson demystifies surveilling, but approaches his critique from two directions simultaneously: he interrogates and encourages resistance to state violence and coercion while highlighting his own acquiescence to the pleasures of voyeurism and exhibitionism, suggesting that surveilling is seemingly irresistible, as in both overpowering and appealing. Because he centers the uncanny in his writings, Jonson may be a useful guide for those theorizing and navigating the complexities of surveillance. He exemplifies how resistance to asymmetries of power persists through time and despite outward conformity to a regime of surveillance, which itself may be unheimlich.

The Rise of Majority Rule in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire by William J. Bulman, and: Trading with the Enemy: Britain, France, and the 18th-Century Quest for a Peaceful World Order by John Shovlin (review)

The Rise of Majority Rule in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire by William J. Bulman, and: Trading with the Enemy: Britain, France, and the 18th-Century Quest for a Peaceful World Order by John Shovlin (review)

«I will make no speeches; I come to die»: the duke of Monmouth execution – a simple of Jacobite propaganda, 1685

The article analyzes a document testifying to the last moments of the Duke of Monmouths life. The eldest illegitimate son of Charles II, Monmouth rebelled against his Catholic uncle James II. The rebel militias were defeated by the royal regular army and the Duke was captured. The defeated bastard of royal blood tried to save his life by begging forgiveness from the king, but was executed. Government propaganda used the plot of the dukes execution, showing him as a weak and weak-willed traitor. The text of the article analyzes a pamphlet describing the various stages of preparation for the execution of the duke. The pamphlet shows Monmouths behavior before his death. His dialogue with the priests is given. The attempt of the royal power to force Monmouth to repent is shown. The documents included in the appendix are also being examined the dukes letters to King James and his declaration, in which the rebel is blamed before the Crown. The Duke of Monmouth was the last rebel of royal blood in the history of England to claim the throne of the Three Kingdoms. It is concluded that the rebellious duke has no support from the general population and the popularity of his business. The importance of mass media in early Modern England is shown.

Diabolical or Masculine Men? Opposing Views of Male Witches in Early Modern England

Diabolical or Masculine Men? Opposing Views of Male Witches in Early Modern England

Facial Disfigurement, Madness, and the Royal Touch in Early Modern Britain: Reconsidering Arise Evans

No abstract available.

Fictions of Consent: Slavery, Servitude, and Free Service in Early Modern England. By Urvashi Chakravarty

Fictions of Consent: Slavery, Servitude, and Free Service in Early Modern England. By <scp>Urvashi Chakravarty</scp>

Wedding Sermons in Early Modern England

This article draws on wedding sermons published in England between the 1580s and the 1740s. The main interest of these sermons lies in the ways in which doctrine based on the scriptural texts, especially those cited in the Form of Solemnization of Matrimony, was refracted through the prism of the various concerns and priorities of preaching clergy. Their exposition of marriage duties was often enriched by personal experience. Yet the number of wedding sermons published in England between the 1580s and the 1740s was small compared with the quantity of those reaching print after delivery at a funeral, another of the foremost rites of passage. It seems likely that many fewer of them were preached at weddings in the first place. Wedding congregations probably made a less receptive audience. The already limited publication of wedding sermons underwent a long-term eighteenth-century decline.

Playing and Playgoing in Early Modern England: Actor, Audience and Performance. by Simon Smith and Emma Whipday, editors.

Playing and Playgoing in Early Modern England: Actor, Audience and Performance. by Simon Smith and Emma Whipday, editors.

Thinker, Gaoler, Soldier, and Spy: Sir John Peyton (1544–1630) and Early Modern Intelligence‐Brokering in the Tower of London

AbstractThrough analysing local administrative records, state administrative records, and personal correspondence, this article demonstrates how Sir John Peyton's role as Lieutenant of the Tower of London (1597–1603) provides us with a hitherto unexamined opportunity for commissioning, extracting, brokering, and obtaining intelligence. In doing so, it makes the case for re‐examining the often‐overlooked contribution of Elizabethan and Jacobean administrators to the history of intelligence‐gathering in early modern England, here focussing on the position of the Lieutenant of the Tower of London.

:Sweet and Clean? Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England

:<i>Sweet and Clean? Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England</i>

A Case of Adultery in Trinity College Edinburgh, 1638

While the Reformed Church of Scotland worked hard to improve the moral standards of its number, parishioners navigated the kirk sessions (ecclesiastical courts) to advance their own personal interests, embracing and resisting moral reform with varying degrees of enthusiasm. At least such were the experiences of Margaret Ducatt, John Stewart, Alison Miller, and Janet Baxter of Trinity College parish in Edinburgh in 1638, who, variously, engaged in adultery, refused to repent, and attempted to procure an herbal remedy to terminate a suspected pregnancy. This article examines a noteworthy case of adultery involving a number of individuals whose responses to discipline varied according to their age, gender, marital status, and social rank; in turn, each of these factors impacted their access to and expression of power. As Laura Gowing noted for early modern England, patriarchal society was reliant upon the marking out of distinctions, not just between men and women, but among women who expressed power over one another, and indeed, over their male contemporaries. By implementing a strict system of ecclesiastical discipline, the Church created an avenue for women to express power and resist overt authority. This article seeks to place the Trinity College case of adultery within wider discussions of patriarchy, power, and relationships.

The Diva’s Gift to the Shakespearean Stage: Agency, Theatricality, and the Innamorata. By Pamela Allen Brown Boy Actors in Early Modern England: Skill and Stagecraft in the Theatre. By Harry R. Mc Carthy

What accounts for the dazzling virtuosity of roles played by boys on the early modern stage? We have new insight into this question thanks to two compelling monographs by Pamela Allen Brown and Harry R. McCarthy. Both are grounded in close attention to the embodied movement of actors, and both build on recent studies of players’ skill and collaborative action by scholars including Evelyn Tribble. But Brown and McCarthy see the magnetic appeal of the English “boy actress” (as Brown puts it, 153) as emergent from very different locales, and the field will need further work to bring their insights together. The Diva’s Gift takes us through the manifold ways in which the Italian professional theater, particularly its prima donna innamorata or “first woman” playing opposite her lover, influenced and animated English drama. Brown authoritatively puts to rest (we might hope) stubbornly persistent misapprehensions that women and girls were absent from the English commercial stage, showing how divas, including the wildly successful Isabella Andreini, made their presence known. Chapter 1 offers an account of the Italian comici and their travels, including the tour of Drusiano Martinelli’s mixed company to England in 1577–78, with the goal of showing how English playwrights, players, and playgoers encountered them. Fashionable in Elizabeth I’s court and renowned for their skill at improvisation, the Italian players worked less from complete, scripted plays than from “theatergrams,” or recyclable role and plot elements.

Women and Stoic ethics in early modern England

AbstractThis paper provides an overview of women's engagement with Stoic ethics in early modern England (c. 1600–1700). It builds on recent literature in the field by demonstrating that there is a positive gender‐inclusive narrative to be told about Stoic philosophy in this time—one that incorporates women's specific concerns and responds to women's lived experiences. To support this claim, we take an interdisciplinary approach and examine several different genres of women's writing in the period, including letters, poems, plays, educational texts, and moral essays. In these writings, we argue, a distinctive conception of Stoic therapy emerges. Women embrace well‐known aspects of the Stoic philosophy—such as living in agreement with nature, the importance of self‐government, and the ideal of freedom from the passions—but they also allow room for the cultivation of eupatheiai or life‐affirmative feelings, such as feelings of respect, affection, and good will toward other people.

Work and Identity in Early Modern England

AbstractHow did work shape people's identity before industrial capitalism? It is a question that early modernists have never really got to grips with. Thanks to decades of research by social and cultural historians, we now have a much better understanding of how people in the past saw themselves and labelled those around them. But until recently scholars of early modern England have had surprisingly little to say about how a person's working life – their occupation, trade, vocation or livelihood – influenced their social identity. This essay is therefore an attempt to synthesise recent research on the subject into a more explicit historiographical intervention. Early modernists need to broaden their research to consider ‘working identities’ as a whole, rather than merely the narrower concept of ‘occupational identities’. By exploring how work influenced a person's self-image and social role, we can reshape our understanding of broader social relations in this period and challenge some of the ‘grand narratives’ of early modern social and economic change.