Research Catalog

Title

Beggary and theatre in early modern England / Paola Pugliatti.

Author

Pugliatti, Paola

Publication

Aldershot ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, c2003.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

vii, 233 p.; 24 cm.

Summary

• "In this new socio-cultural study of the history of the theatre in early modern England, author Paola Pugliatti investigates the question of why, in the Tudor and early Stuard period, unregulated and unlicensed theatrical activities were equated by the English law to unregulated and unlicensed begging."
• "Starting with English vagrancy statutes and in particular from the fact that, from 1545 on, players were listed as vagrants, the book discusses from an entirely new perspective the reasons for the equation, in the early modern mind, of beggary with performing. Pugliatti identifies in players' aptitude for disguise and in the fear raised by their proteiform skills the issues which encouraged the assimilation of beggars and players; she argues that at the core of provisions against vagrancy was an attempt to marginalize people who, because of their instability in location and role (that is, in their theatrical quintessence), were seen as embodying potential for subversion."--Jacket.

Subject

• Traveling theater > England > History > 16th century
• Traveling theater > England > History > 17th century
• Vagrancy > England > History > 16th century
• Vagrancy > England > History > 17th century
• English drama > Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600 > History and criticism
• English drama > 17th century > History and criticism
• Beggars in literature
• Vagrancy in literature

Genre/Form

• Criticism, interpretation, etc.
• History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 197-211) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Part one: The facts -- 1. Vagrancy and beggary in Europe -- 2. The legislation in England -- The repression of vagrancy -- Henry VIII: the interdiction of disguise -- Edward VI: prophecy and sedition -- Mary: 'lewd plays and players' -- Elizabeth: the systematization of control -- James I: the restriction of patronage and the hardening of censorship -- Part two: Philosophical and religious perceptions and representations -- 3. Idleness: pigritia and pervagatio -- 4. Disguise, or, 'the vagrancy of the signifier' -- Apparel as semiotic system -- Disguise in the theatre: impersonation -- Disguise in the theatre: cross-dressing -- The 'depe dissimulation' and the 'sclerous secrets' of beggars -- 5. Plagues and parasites -- Plague carriers and culprits -- Parasitism and language -- Part three: Literary appropriations -- 6. The rogue pamphlets, the conny-catching pamphlets and the picaresque novels -- 7. The European tradition of beggar books -- 8. Theatricality: beggars -- Harman's a caueat: prejudiced authenticity -- The theatricality of Harman's beggars -- Digression: Alexander Iden, alias Thomas Harman -- 9. Theatricality: the conny-catchers -- G.W.: the rhetoric of detection and instruction -- Greene's first discovery and cozenage -- Between plagiarism and hybridization: Dekker's lanthorne and candle-light.

ISBN

075460344X

LCCN

^^2002027907

OCLC

50280022

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library