| This dissertation examines representations of working men in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century English stage plays. I focus particularly on dramatic representations of the working male body and the discourses of masculinity that are deployed by these representations. An introductory chapter reviews discourses of work and working men available in early modern England and explains the appropriateness of the early modern English theatre as a focus for a study of the masculine identities of working men. Each of the four chapters that follow examines working men as they appear in a specific dramatic genre.; Studies of lower class working men have tended to focus on representations of the male working body as grotesque and socially “low” within a high/low binary of cultural value. I argue that the theatre, as a site of breakdown of traditional forms of social hierarchy, provided a fertile venue for both subtle and explicit reworkings of this equation. In the four chapters of my dissertation, I show that working men of low social estate represented on the stage could and often did exemplify attractive English vitality—working men could and did stand as exemplars of English masculinity. |
