THE SHORT OXFORD HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE

Since its awkward beginnings in plays such as Ralph Roister Doister, non-romantic comedy had made rapid
advances in theatrical sophistication and topical cross-reference. The Old Wives’ Tale (c. 1590, published 1595) is a
dislocated medley of Plautian and modern English folk elements and an intermixture of the Roman and the rustic,
presented by its author, George Peele (1556-96), as a satirical comment on escapist ‘pastoral’ fashions. Thomas
Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, or A Pleasant Comedy of the Gentle Craft (1599, published 1600) is both more
shapely and more specifically a relocation of the ancient Roman urban comedy in commercial modern London.
Dekker (?1570-1632), like Deloney before him, is equally specific in his presentation of honest toil and honourable
trade as the keys to the health of a modern commonwealth. The play, set at the time of Henry V’s French wars,
stresses what many Elizabethan merchants would have taken as a self evident, but none the less revolutionary, social
truth, the equal dignity of the gentleman and the skilled craftsman. Simon Eyre, the hero of The Shoemaker’s
Holiday, rises to the essentially bourgeois dignity of the Lord Mayoralty of London but his daughter Rose marries a
kinsman of the Earl of Lincoln. If, however, the King is prepared to recognize that ‘love respects no blood’, to Eyre
the alliance between the court and trade is an unequal one. ‘Those silken fellows are but painted images, outsides,
outsides’, he tries to insist to his socially mobile daughter, ‘What? The Gentle Trade is a living for a man through
Europe, through the world!’
Professional pride, the pushiness of the arriviste, and the comic conflict between generations and classes also
figure in three of Thomas Middleton’s London comedies, A Mad World, My Masters (c. 1605-7, printed 1608), A
Trick to Catch the Old One (1605, printed 1608), and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside (1611). For Middleton, however,
social anomalies, new mercantile value-systems, and the equation of money and sex suggest the corruption of urban
society. In each play foxes have to be outfoxed and the old who lack both spritely wit and integrity are successfully
outwitted by the young. Ingenuity proves to be the best defence against arbitrary oppression. In A Trick to Catch the
Old One Middleton (1580-1627) shows Theodorus Witgood (whose name implies that his quick intelligence is a
divine gift) getting the better of two ‘old ones’, his usurious London uncle, Pecunius Lucre, and the miserly
Walkadine Hoard. From the first he regains his lost inheritance, from the second a bride. If the plot of A Chaste Maid
in Cheapside depends less on wit, it shows an equal concern with money, sex, and rank. A London goldsmith,
appropriately named Yellowhammer, and his wife Maudline attempt to secure their new position in society by
marrying off their daughter to Sir Walter Whorehound, a man of greater social, if not (as his name suggests) moral,
standing. Moll Yellowhammer finally manages to trounce them by eloping with an impoverished gentleman of her
own choice. At the same time, the Yellowhammers determine that their undergraduate son should be allied to a
wealthy Welsh widow (‘Yes, sure’, Maudline insists, ‘a huge heir in Wales, | At least to nineteen mountains, | Besides
her goods and
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cattell’). The widow, it unfortunately transpires, is no more than Sir Walter’s whore. Throughout the play Middleton
exposes pretension, false estimates, and idle expectations. His middle-class Yellowhammers err in their vulgar
snobberies (they have, for example, sent a silver spoon to their son in Cambridge ‘to eat his broth in the hall amongst
the gentlemen commoners’) while his gentlemanly Whorehound lacks both honour and scruples. The happy
denouements of the plays may allow for the triumph of young lovers, but they also revel in the discountenancing of
pretenders, fools, and villains.
Philip Massinger (1583-1640), a regular collaborator of Fletcher’s from c. 1616, moderated much of Middleton’s
harsh irony in his own later citizen comedies by informing them with his own distinctly gentlemanly prejudices. A
New Way to Pay Old Debts (c. 1625, published 1633) and, to a lesser extent, The City Madam (1632, published 1658)
follow the precedent of A Trick to Catch the 0ld One in contrasting gentlemanly wit and prodigality with bourgeois
hypocrisy and mean-spiritedness. In the long-popular A New Way to Pay Old Debts the flamboyantly rapacious Sir
Giles Overreach is tricked into restoring his nephew Wellborn’s fortunes and reputation. The play is effectively
shaped around a struggle between the well-born and the ill-gotten. Wellborn’s restored social status is confirmed by
his being given charge of a company of soldiers; his new patron, Lord Lovell, marries Lady Allworth, while the
tricked parvenu Overreach is driven into a despairing madness and is forcibly removed to Bedlam. The traditional
order of things also triumphs in The City Madam. Luke Frugal, given charge of his brother’s extravagantly ambitious
household when that good-natured brother is supposed to have retired to a monastery proves as monstrous an
oppressor as Shakespeare's Angelo (Massinger probably knew Measure for Measure). Luke serves his turn in bringing
the family back into line, however, and the true master is welcomed back as a deliverer and an exposer of hypocrisy.
For Sir John Frugal this restoration of order implies that members of his family should henceforth know their place in
the social, sexual, and economic hierarchy, and his wife is told to ‘instruct | Our city dames, whom wealth makes
proud, to move | In their own spheres, and willingly to confess | ... A distance ’twixt the city, and the court’. For
Massinger tidy comic endings seem to require a return to the status quo ante. The patriarch reassumes command over