| This project contends that the late sixteenth-century emergence of London artisans, shopkeepers and merchants as a powerful cultural and political force was accompanied by a significant change in the way these "middling" citizens read, interpreted and reimagined a history of their own city. Historical works by sixteenth-century chroniclers, especially Holinshed, and the history plays of Shakespeare, which follow the chronicles closely, concern themselves mostly with aristocratic feuds, the monarchy and affairs of state, and they largely neglect urban affairs and the urban commercial classes in spite of London's phenomenal and self-evident growth. In contrast, "citizen history" devotes sustained attention to London history, and especially to urban geography, the city population and commercial exchange. In non-fictional histories such as John Stow's Survey of London, the prose fictions of Thomas Deloney and the plays that dramatize citizen history (e.g., Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday, Heywood's 1 & 2 If You Know Not Me, a new history of London was emerging, a celebratory vision of civic tradition and urban legitimacy that afforded the city more and more prestige and cultural authority.;This study shows, however, that each celebratory representation of London's commercial history is ultimately conflicted. Although citizen history sometimes panders to the interests of a citizen audience, these texts nonetheless employ a variety of strategies in order to address the problems associated with London's growing commercial culture. John Stow, for example, detects commercial greed and civic decline everywhere he looks. Thomas Deloney addresses the issue of social mobility by idealizing his wealthy weavers and shoemakers into a world of romanticized fantasy. Thomas Heywood actually rewrites London history in a way that occludes economic conflict and recuperates the very idea of commercial exchange under the auspices of royal approval. This project, then, considers the social problems lying beneath citizen celebration, as well as the potential political effect of such texts on London's commercial community. Moreover, in chapters devoted to Shakespeare, Dekker and Heywood, this study shows how citizen history plays help to revise our critical definition of the English Renaissance history play. |
