SOURCE: Jankowski, Theodora A. “Historicizing and Legitimating Capitalism: Thomas Heywood's Edward IV and If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody.” Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 7 (1995): 305-37.

[In the following essay, Jankowski explores the role of Heywood's texts in validating the relationship between mercantile interests and the English monarchy in the development of industry and trade at home and abroad.]

I

                                                            But now behold
In the quick forge and working-house of thought,
How London doth pour out her citizens!
The mayor and all his brethren in best sort,
Like to the senators of th'antique Rome,
With the plebeians swarming at their heels,
Go forth and fetch their conqu'ring Caesar in;
As by a lower but loving likelihood,
Were now the general of our gracious Empress,
As in good time he may, from Ireland coming,
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword,
How many would the peaceful city quit
To welcome him! Much more, and much more cause,
Did they this Harry.

(Henry V, V. Prol. 22-35)¹

This section of the chorus's speech just before Act 5 of Shakespeare's Henry V negotiates with at least three different moments of history: the imminent return of Henry V from France and Agincourt in 1415, a moment between April and September 1599 when England awaited the much bruited successful return of Essex from Ireland, and some unspecified ancient Roman past when Caesars could look forward to enthusiastic welcomes from the populace after presumably remarkable conquests or further expansions of the Roman empire. The rhetoric of the speech is of empire and conquest, no matter how “un-historical” or anachronistic the empire or the conquests it suggests. The Roman allusion is, of course, nonspecific yet, being Roman, could remind an English audience of their national connection to Rome via Brut, legendary founder of Britain and great-grandson of Aeneas, founder of Rome.² This speech from Henry V thus depends on the “general” acceptance of the “fact” of the Roman empire rather than upon any specific identifications of actual Caesars or their particular conquests. The specificity of the Chorus's speech refers to two moments when England was on the brink of achieving an empire similar to the legendary Roman model: the first moment is the Battle of Agincourt—though more specifically, perhaps, the Treaty of Troyes that ended it and named Henry V heir to the throne of France—which seemed to assure English acquisition of a geographically large realm on continental soil; the second moment lauds Essex's presumed conquest of Ireland which would also have led to the acquisition of a substantial piece of real estate, this time containing a wild and barbarous population that would (more easily than the French) fit the notion of those subhuman peoples empires are always at pains to subject.

Neither of these particular dreams of empire materialized for the English. Initial victories over the French in what would come to be called the Hundred Years' War turned to defeats through mismanagement of campaigns and the civil war (of the Roses) at home. Essex was equally unsuccessful in Ireland, for Tyrone and his supporters managed to keep control of the island; by September of 1599 Essex returned, unlike Harry, defeated and demoralized and was shortly after placed under house arrest. In a further lack of similarity, the earl led a rebellion against his own country, was defeated, and executed (1601). The hope of empire reflected in the words of Henry V quoted above never materialized—at least not in 1599, and not that kind of empire. Interestingly enough, 1599 also seems to mark the zenith of the history play as a genre with the production of this same Henry V.

The first English history play, John Bale's Kyng Johan, was written circa 1539, though the vogue for such plays is generally acknowledged as running from 1579 to about 1608. Although Shakespeare's last history play was written circa 1613, Henry VIII—and quite a number of post-1608 history plays by other authors—was considered “historical [romance] rather than history per se” (Rackin 11, 15, 30-31. Quote 31). The fact that the history play ceased being popular after Shakespeare's “abandonment” of it in 1599 adds to the evidence that the “genre is largely Shakespeare's creation” (Rackin 31). Although critics like James Winny have insisted that the histories “have been found to embody Shakespeare's considered views on government, order and degree” (9), and that they are of “an indeterminate [literary] kind, capable of extension towards either the comic or the tragic” (10), he also indicates that Shakespeare's histories present the king as an “archtypal figure” which is “not a political concept,” but an imaginative one, whose most persistent issue is “individual identity” (44-45).

Winny's preference for seeing the hero of the history play as an “individual” rather than a “political” figure is not so very different from the preferences of other critics who see the history play as a genre that reinforces a “providentialist” or “Tillyardian” view of Tudor history as governed by “divine providence.”³ It is against this providentialist view of history that Phyllis Rackin structures her definition of Shakespeare's history play genre in her recent work. Tudor theories of history, she indicates, saw the necessity of such study as a means of avoiding the mistakes of the past and preserving the peace and stability of the present (3). Further, in a time of changing dynasties and emerging nation states, the study of history could also “stabilize and legitimate … new identities” (4) both of rulers and states. Since chronicle histories—like Holinshed's and Hall's—were organized according to the reigns of the various kings, and therefore told the history of England through its monarchs (24-25), it is not surprising that the Shakespearean history play was organized according to monarchs and generally focused on how any given king achieved, expanded, or lost his kingdom, sometimes by clever diplomacy, but often on horseback at the head of his armies. Consequently, even though the character of the king may have been a political representation, it is easy to see why such critics as Winny valorized him as archetypally heroic.

An important part of Rackin's analysis of the history play is her examination of how both history/historiography and drama exist in ideology. She reminds us that “in the light of the contemporary revolution in historiography, the old positivist claims about an objectively ‘true’ history beyond the reach of ideology seem impossible to sustain” (x). This lack of an “ahistorical vantage point” allows us as readers and critics to focus more easily upon the “discursive exclusions of an elitist, patriarchal culture that marginalized the roles of women and of common men in Shakespeare's historical sources [and which] helped to transmit a legacy of oppression that can still be seen in contemporary histories” (Rackin xi). Thus, given his position as a subject interpellated within ideology, Shakespeare wrote history plays that reproduced his own sixteenth-century culture rather than the fifteenth-century past in which his plays were chronologically situated (Rackin 36). Yet to say that Shakespearere reproduced his own society is only part of the explanation of just how the/his history play(s) “worked.” As we, and Shakespeare's Tudor audience, recognize, history was/is “a field of ideological contention” (Rackin 59, n. 29) upon which hegemonic forces could/can project the vision of the past that most suit(ed) their purposes. That view is both the Tudor government's recasting of a medieval past to suit its own dynastic interests, as well as our own twentieth-century recasting of the “aims” of the sixteenth-century history play to suit our own notions of history and the hegemonic uses of drama as a means of control.⁴

Yet while Shakespeare abandoned the history play genre in 1599, Thomas Heywood began his playwriting career in that same year with the history play King Edward IV, Parts I and II.⁵ While many of the questions regarding history/historiography that Rackin raises in terms of Shakespeare are also valid as regards Heywood's plays—such as his reproduction of sixteenth-century culture in a play set in the fifteenth century—Edward IV is quite different from Shakespeare's histories in its refusal to focus upon the issues of rulership, battle, and conquest that are so important to a play like Henry V. While it does contain the obligatory battle and court scenes, this play differs radically as a history from Shakespeare's plays, which are often used as a “benchmark” of the genre. Yet despite its overall differences, which I will explore in detail below, it does address issues of “empire,” though also in a much different way than a play like Henry V. What I want to argue here is that the kind of “empire” Heywood visualizes in Edward IV is an internal empire of trade rather than a colonialist empire of conquered lands. It is an empire that requires the use of other lands as sources of raw materials and markets, rather than their acquisition, and the use of merchants and tradesmen, rather than soldiers, as the king's “army of conquest.” Heywood's later play If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Parts I and II⁶ further develops the notion of merchants as true “conquerors,” valorizes those merchant adventurers who expand trade and capital beyond England's boundaries, and shows how the rise of capitalist society eliminates social ills at home and supports the government economically while providing financial reward to the adventurous capitalists themselves. Further, it is a play that expands the connections only hinted at in Edward IV between government and capital that are necessary for establishing an empire of trade and, eventually, a full-scale colonialist/imperialist enterprise. In these two works, Heywood modifies the genre of the history play to show the seamless connection between capitalists and hegemonic powerbrokers and the interconnectedness of capital and government. In this essay I will negotiate between the three works I have already mentioned—two written in 1599 and one in 1605—to explore just how Heywood modified the history play—an elite genre—to record and validate the actions of an initially nonelite group of people who became inextricably bound up with the sources of hegemonic power at court.

II

Various political and social events of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries are reflected in Heywood's plays. While some events seem to be related to Essex's campaign in Ireland, valorized in Henry V, others reveal a more prevalent problem—the endemic and widespread poverty of the later sixteenth century (Hoffer and Hull 115; Underdown 1985a, 34).⁷ G. B. Harrison's Elizabethan Journal entry for 21 January 1599 indicates that many troops awaiting passage to Ireland from Bristol have deserted, “so that the Mayor of Bristol is commanded to supply their defective numbers from among the very many loose and idle persons in and about the city” (83). No actual number of deserters is given, but “very many” would indicate a substantial population of homeless and unemployed in that city. While it might make sense to recruit troops from among the poor—“taking the king's/queen's shilling” (or enlisting in the U.S. Army) being an almost proverbial way for poor men to earn a living—an entry for 18 February of the same year specifically militates against just such recruiting:

Notwithstanding that 3,000 men were of late demanded from the counties for service in Ireland, there are now to be levied a further 2,000. The choice is to be made of sufficient and serviceable men, not admitting any rogues or other idle and loose persons, wherein extraordinary pains are to be taken by the Justices to attend the service in person, and not to commit the charge (as the usual manner is) to the constables and other meaner officials.

(86)

(Presumably because, like Falstaff the recruiter in I Henry IV, they would take the unhealthiest and most destitute, those who could not pay for the privilege of not being pressed.)

Alan G. R. Smith sees “war, famine and plague” as the “three great scourges of early modern European society and England had to endure all three together during the 1590s” (234). A major outbreak of plague occurred in 1592-93 (Slack 226), which remained a serious problem, at least in Kent, until 1595. A more violent attack occurred in 1603 (Smith 235). These attacks disrupted economic activity and forced “hundreds of victims onto parish relief” (Slack 226). Exacerbating the poverty caused by the plague was the four-year run of very bad harvests from 1594-1597.⁸ Food prices rose from a composite index of 389 in 1581-90 to 530 in 1591-1600 while the purchasing power of agricultural laborers dropped from an index of 57 in 1580-89 to 49 in 1590-99. Purchasing power of building craftsmen dropped from 57 to 47 during the same periods (Smith 436-37).⁹ Generally, “food prices rose by over 35 per cent during the 1590s” (Smith 235) and, in the worst years, food riots occurred in many parts of the country.

This sudden, severe, and prolonged succession of bad harvests touched all sectors of English society, but those whose livings were already marginal or precarious obviously suffered the worst. Farmers with small holdings suffered more than owners of large farms; those with low-paying jobs were less able to bear rising food costs. These marginal folk were most apt to take to the roads as vagrants, that growing army of the unemployed and destitute poor, as times became harder and the years of dearth continued. These vagrants, like the current homeless population in the U.S., became a visible reminder of the failure of the economic system to accommodate them. Their numbers stretched to the limit—and eventually exceeded—the community and parish social welfare schemes that had previously been able to deal with smaller numbers of the poor. And, again like their twentieth-century homeless counterparts, the vagrants needed to be controlled/punished because they were a visual representation/reminder of the evils that should not be part of an ordered, (proto-)capitalist society.¹⁰

Throughout the Tudor period, “Poor Laws” were passed (1563, 1572, 1576, 1598, 1601) which aimed both to punish vagabonds and “regulate the lives and behaviour of the ‘commons’” (Slack 221). Clearly this legislation was geared towards making it appear that English society was ordered, was capable of controlling its unruly members. The basic Poor Law had three features: the first—“An Acte for the Reliefe of the Poore” (39 Eliz., c.3), also called the “poor rate”—was a compulsory assessment of each parish which was used to finance “deserving” indigent households.¹¹ These rates were not willingly paid, however, and provisions for collection had to be strengthened in the 1572 legislation. By 1598 the responsibility for collection was shifted to the churchwardens and overseers of each parish. The second feature of the Poor Law—“An Acte for punyshment of Rogues Vagabonds and sturdy Beggars” (39 Eliz., c.4)—was a specific attempt to control vagrancy and begging. It was not until the 1598 act that “vagrants were to be summarily whipped and returned to their place of settlement by parish constables” (Slack 222). The third feature—“An Acte for erecting of Hospitalle or abiding and working Houses for the Poore” (39 Eliz., c.5)—was an attempt to provide work for the poor in each parish—by providing flax, hemp, or other materials upon which the poor could be employed—as well as houses of correction for those who refused to work (McDonald). Slack indicates that “in practice little was done before 1603” (223). Thus the Poor Law itself attempted to provide the legal mechanism for distinguishing between the impotent, or “deserving,”poor and rogues and vagabonds, who needed to be controlled/punished. Discharged soldiers, capable of being either deserving poor or vagrants, were considered a special category, and their problems were dealt with in a separate act (39 Eliz., cc. 21,17) (Smith 235). A special tax for the relief of maimed soldiers and sailors was levied in each parish. Discharged soldiers and sailors who had become vagrants were subjected to severe penalties. They were ordered to settle down to honest work and, if they did not, were subjected to execution. “The ferocity of this provision, so much harsher than that against ordinary rogues, clearly indicated the extent of the problem which former soldiers and sailors were posing to law and order”(Smith 235).

The Poor Law was only one of the often hideous legal attempts to “control” the victims of war, crop failure, and plague. In the parliamentary sessions of 1597-98, there were at least seventeen bills on poverty; thirteen bills on drunkenness, inns, and alehouses between 1576 and 1601; six bills on profanation of the sabbath between 1584 and 1601; and a bill on bastardy in 1597 (Slack 225). Records of Bridewell (in London) show that the number of vagrants punished there rose from 69 per year in 1560-61, to 209 in 1578-79, to 555 in 1600-1601. The migration of the poor generally from the northwest to the southeast (Underdown 1985a, 34-35) meant that London's population tripled during that period (Slack 229). Although poverty was not “an exclusively urban problem, … it was more visible and threatening in the towns” (Underdown 1985a, 36). In the early 1560s, only 16 percent of all offenders at Bridewell were vagrants; by 1600-1601; 62 percent were vagrants. These statistics could be (and were) made to show that the behavior of the lower classes was urgently in need of correction because of the “ineradicable commonplace prejudice that the mobile poor were a wilfully idle, deceitful and criminal class” (Slack 230). Yet it is important to remember, as Slack indicates, that many of the vagrants “had once been apprentices or servants; sometimes they had trades after their names” (230). Ultimately, Slack sees these effects resulting from an economy unable to employ a growing population (230).

III

The fact that the protagonist of the traditional history play is a monarch and its subject the deeds of the aristocracy would seem to preclude using this particular genre to record the deeds of, at best, members of the middle class. Yet Heywood's radical move in Edward IV, Part I is to use this elite genre (Rackin 218) to valorize (and validate) the deeds of men who would generally be considered far from elite—lacking the noble birth and blood that guarantees such a definition—in an attempt to create a new “aristocracy” based solely on capital or trading ability and vitally necessary to expanding the financial (if not directly political) aims of the English nation state. In Edward IV, Part I, the monarch is still the ostensible hero but, as Shakespeare did with Henry V, Heywood presents his kingly protagonist as a ruler beloved by the common people whose concern for them is paramount and often placed above his own pleasures. In so showing Edward, Heywood uses the tradition of the disguised king that Shakespeare would make much of before the Battle of Agincourt (IV.1) when his “mirror of Christian kings” tries to take the pulse of his troops as the commoner “Harry le Roy” (Rackin 226; Baines 17).¹²

Out hunting, Edward meets John Hobs, the Tanner of Tamworth (scene 11) and begins an extended acquaintance with the commoner that spans four scenes (11, 13, 14, 23). The interactions between the two are fairly predictable. Hobs does not recognize the king in his hunting clothes and accepts Edward's self-identification as “Ned, the king's butler.” “Ned” is remarkably unable to draw Hobs into treasonable utterances, since the tanner is quite happy to owe his allegiance to two kings, Edward IV, currently upon the throne, and the deposed Henry VI. While he has no use, generally, for kings or idle court hangabouts, Hobs extends hospitality to Ned and Tom (Lord Thomas Sellinger). Though he does not think much of people who are in service, Hobs proposes a marriage between his daughter, Nell, and Ned, implying that the latter could go into business with Hobs and learn to be a tanner. Although Hobs refuses Ned's offer to visit him in London, they part on good terms with Hobs remaining unaware of the true identities of his guests.

These scenes reveal Hobs as a blunt and outspoken but hard-working and essentially honest tradesman. Even though Hobs does not know that Ned is the king, his loyalty to his monarch is demonstrated when he comes to the king's financial aid. In scene 18, two justices out on a tax collecting mission to raise money for Edward to reclaim sovereignty in France meet with minimal success until Hobs helps. The tanner, knowing the financial circumstances of his neighbors, urges them to give what he knows they can afford and then himself gives “Twenty old angels and a score of hides; if that be too little, take twenty nobles more. While I haue it, my king shall spend of my store.”¹³ His ploy is successful, for after Hobs's gift Grudgen exclaims, “What giues the tanner? I am as able as he” (p. 72). This scene does not simply show the consequences of being a well-loved monarch, but serves the more important purpose of showing people how to be good subjects. The point is not that the monarch may well deserve the taxes he asks for, but that it is the duty of each citizen to give ungrudgingly whenever asked. Clearly government cannot function unless there is a useful working relationship between those who need money—the government—and those who have it to give—merchants and tradesmen. Yet I would go further to say that what this play is about is the necessary interconnectedness between the Crown and the major source(s) of revenues within the realm, the merchants and tradesmen. Thus the play, supposedly the history of a king, works to validate not only the sovereign, but those producers of capital who are necessary for maintaining the governmental status quo.

This incident with Hobs is even more interesting when read in connection with an entry from the Elizabethan Journal for 6 January 1599 which points out that

There is much backwardness amongst the citizens that have been nominated to furnish the money required at this time by her Majesty, and amongst them divers of good and sufficient ability which by their example of undutifulness do make others the more perverse. These are now summoned to make their appearance before the Council.

(80)

This is the kind of unwillingness to be taxed that is characteristic of the tradesmen approached by the justices in Edward IV, Part I. Presumably, had these subjects of Elizabeth been as willing to serve her as Hobs Edward, there would be no necessity for summoning them before council. We can thus see in scene 18 a public representation of the appropriate attitude of a citizen to Crown appeals for funding. Heywood makes this point even more strongly in his play about Elizabeth's reign, If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part II.

In this play, a Pursevant comes to the merchant Hobson with the “fauour” that the queen has “sent to borrow a hundred pound” (sc. 7, p. 287). Hobson is completely surprised by the request, but at the same time delighted to be of service:

How! bones a me, Queene know Hobson, Queene know Hobson?
And send but for one hundred pound? Friend come in;
Come in, friend; shall haue two; Queene shall haue two.
If Queene know Hobson once, her Hobsons purse
Must be free for her; shee is Englands nurse.
Come in, good friend. Ha! Queene know Hobson?
Nay, come in, John; we'le dine together too.

(sc. 7, p. 287)

It is a well-known fact that Elizabeth borrowed often from her sometimes unwilling merchants. Here Hobson, like Hobs, represents the ideal subject, not only delighted to give, but willing to give twice what was requested. In focusing upon the merchants in both plays, Heywood flatters a group of men who were necessary for the economic support of Elizabeth's reign. Yet the character Hobson points out that the connection between the Crown and the merchants was a reciprocal one. He names Elizabeth “Englands nurse” (sc. 7, p. 287), the implication being that capitalism can only flourish in a country as carefully tended as the England of Elizabeth. A good nurse produces good, healthy, capitalist offspring who should be more than willing to demonstrate their devotion to their nurse should she ask for it.

In Edward IV, Part I, Heywood uses the traditional hero of the history play, the king, to introduce the commoners who will become the heroes of his “new” history plays. Hobs may be a blunt tradesman, but his innate honesty, loyalty, and willingness to pay taxes are the qualities that Heywood will continue to validate in his middle-class characters over the rank derived purely from birth that is the quality usualy validated in historical personages. That high birth is not necessary to a man's ultimate importance to the state is stressed in Heywood's portrait of Sir John Crosbie, the lord mayor of London. Before the king's formal thanks to the merchants of London for their help in defending the city, Crosbie describes his background and history in a soliloquy. Found by a poor shoemaker at Cow Crosse near Islington and “Calld … according to the place … John Crosbie, … [because he was found] so by a crosse” (sc. 16, p. 57), Crosbie was fostered at the Hospital of London. He was apprenticed by the Hospital Masters to a grocer and, once knowing this trade, was able to improve himself. He has “well requited” the shoemaker who found him and has made a perpetual gift of one hundred pounds per annum to the hospital. “All this,” states Crosbie, “declares I boast not of my birth; / But found on earth, I must returne to earth” (sc. 16, p. 57).

According to the sources I examined in Part 2 of this essay, legislation did nothing to eliminate the poor or raise their standard of living. Little opportunity existed for work, and when that was missing, the poor had to continue those illegal activities they could be prosecuted for—begging, stealing, whoring, for example—in order to eat. The presence of bastardy legislation within the Poor Laws—that is, legislation that made it illegal for a woman to produce a bastard child—led to infanticide (Hoffer and Hull, chapters 1-5) and also, most probably, to the abandoning of illegitimate children like John Crosbie. The future lord mayor of London was lucky that he was found by a man with charity in his heart—and probably also a job so he would not be placed under suspicion himself when he took the foundling to the Hospital of London. Crosbie was lucky also that he was apprenticed as a child and given the wherewithal to earn his living and eventually rise in his profession.

Heywood is careful to let this Horatio Alger story retain its magical properties of luck and Christian charity. The reason for Crosbie's abandonment goes unmentioned, as does the money that would necessarily have to be present if Crosbie were to pursue the life he details. In a country with more paupers than it knew what to do with, the chances of a foundling finding a place gratis at an overcrowded London hospital were slim. The Christian shoemaker probably had to pay for lodging his foundling. Also, no one became an apprentice without payment of a fee. Where did the young John Crosbie's fee come from? the hospital? his early benefactor? the government? The answer is suggested by Crosbie himself as he reveals that he has done his Christian duty by the hospital through a sizable endowment. Perhaps he, as a child, was the beneficiary of just such an endowment by another lucky boy who “made good.”¹⁴

Yet Heywood does not simply erase the poverty surrounding the character John Crosbie's beginnings, he erases the actual beginnings of the real John Crosby.¹⁵ The Dictionary of National Biography provides a history for Sir John Crosby (d. 1475) that is quite different from Heywood's (211-12). Instead of being a foundling, Crosby was probably the grandson of a Sir John Crosby, who may have been an alderman of London. Like his father and grandfather, Crosby held the manor of Hanworth—rather a different beginning from the man found at Cow Crosse. Thus, the three shillings four pence that was paid to the grocer's company upon Crosby's “being sworn a freeman of the company” (DNB, 5.211) most likely came from his family and not a foundling hospital or a charitable benefactor. Crosby was elected member of Parliament for London in 1466 and alderman of Broad Street ward in 1468. By the time of Falconbridge's attack he was sheriff, but was never to hold the office of mayor. Knighted in 1471, he also built the “sumptuous mansion in Bishopsgate Street”—Crosby Place—“which has chiefly made his name famous. … Besides many other legacies for pious and charitable purposes, Crosby left the large sum of 100 l. for the repairs of London Bridge, a similar sum for repairing Bishop's Gate, and 10 l. for the repairs of Rochester bridge” (DNB, 5.212).

We can speculate endlessly as to why Heywood chose to make his Crosbie begin life as a foundling when, historically, he came from a family of some substance. It seems to me, however, that the reason for the change lies in Heywood's desire to validate capitalism and the rising merchant/trading class. But capitalism could not be so completely validated if the lord mayor of London began life as the son of a man of property. The distance the historical Crosby traveled from privileged child to sheriff was not far and was almost inevitable. But if such a man began as a foundling and then became lord mayor, he not only validated his own attributes and hard work but also the economic system that gave him the wherewithal—fostering, apprentice fees, etc.—to achieve so much. It is not surprising, then, that Heywood both changes the historical background of Crosby and obscures aspects of the fictional background he gives his character.

The playwright's refusal to explain why John Crosbie came to be abandoned erases the entire economic situation of the late sixteenth century—a situation that led to such widespread poverty and the abandonment (and often murder) of poor children. Heywood's refusal to consider the financial arrangements necessary to foster children also erases the complicated—and unsuccessful—system of Poor Laws and social control legislation to which paupers were subjected. Christian charity is validated in the helpful shoemaker and the master of the hospital as well as in the helpful, successful merchants, like Crosbie himself, who have continued to endow the hospital. Erasing law, economy, and government make charity the operative motive for poor relief—even though it was often quite difficult to get solvent citizens to pay any of their assessments (Slack 222, 234; Harrison 80)—and grants the “greatest” of Christian virtues to the merchant/capitalist class. This class is shown to have no part in causing the poverty that exists; yet it charitably provides foundations to support the victims of economic disaster who fall through the cracks of governmental social welfare schemes.

Heywood develops this examination of mercantile charity further in the episode of Tawnie-coate the peddler in If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody. Tawnie-coate purchases goods from Hobson on credit, but the merchant's inept clerks do not record the debt correctly. When Tawnie-coate arrives to pay it, he is assured by the clerks that he owes nothing. His innate honesty makes him insist upon paying, and the resultant clamor brings Hobson in to collect his money and rebuke his lazy clerks. Later in the play, Tawnie-coate is unable to pay Hobson for merchandise he has had upon credit because business is so bad. Hobson agrees to call off the legal case against the peddler and loans him additional merchandise to tide him and his family over until better times. This charity is well placed, for Tawnie-coate is able to recover financially and ultimately becomes master of the hospital. Like Tawnie-coate, John Crosbie also goes on to become a valued member of society. As lord mayor of London, he organizes the defenses of the city against the rebel Falconbridge—the bastard who, interestingly, stresses his noble connections through his battle cry “A Neville!”—who poses a direct threat to government (the deposition of Edward) and an indirect threat to capital (the sacking of the merchants' shops). Although Crosbie claims a royal mandate for his defence of the city—

Nay, then, I tell thee, bastard Falconbridge,
My lord Maior bears his sword in his defence,
That put the sword into the arms of London,
Made the Lord Maiors for euer after knights,
Richard, depos'd by Henry Bolingbroke,
From whom the house of Yorke doth claime their right

(sc. 4, p. 5)—

his symbolic/actual position as leader of the merchants both reinforces the intrinsic power of the merchants/capitalists of London as well as the close connection between government and capital. That connection is further naturalized through the comment of the First Apprentice:

Nay, scorn vs not that we are prentices.
The Chronicles of England can report
What memorable actions we haue done,
To which this daies achieuement shall be knit,
To make the volume larger than it is.

(sc. 5, p. 18)

As Phyllis Rackin has cogently argued, history only records the deeds of men with a “name,” members of the noble, elite clases (esp. ch. 5). Yet this apprentice, a (literally, in this case) nameless commoner, claims that his participation in this defense will gain him a mention in the chronicles. What Heywood seems to be doing here is naturalizing an aristocratic power struggle by indicating that ordinary citizens, “everymen,” can inscribe themselves in it and, ultimately, in history. They may not be the “great men” that royalist (and, later, capitalist) history is about, but the presence of their names attached to deeds that are “great” in themselves, or that support those of “great men,” will guarantee them the kind of immortality reified by the power structure and usually completely out of their reach. Thus, supporting the power structure gives the normally voiceless/nameless members of the lower ranks of capitalism—the proletariat—the means by which they can achieve the recognition their class position necessarily denies them.

In the same way, a hard-working, honest peddler like Tawnie-coate can rise to an important, “named” position as master of a large hospital. And a foundling, John Crosbie, can, through luck and charity, lead a successful defense against a noble (though bastard) foe in support of his monarch. Unlike the apprentice, Crosbie and his supporters are, indeed, rewarded with “names” as they are knighted for their efforts. Yet the goldsmith Matthew Shore, also offered a knighthood for his pains, avoids reward by saying, “I haue enough, and I desire no more” (sc. 9, p. 33). Thus while there is clearly a symbiotic relationship between the Crown and the merchants, Shore's independence serves to deny that connection by presenting the wealthy merchant as a man who needs nothing from his sovereign because he does not serve him for gain.

Yet just as Heywood has obscured the “real” background of the historical John Crosby to present the merchant class as saviors of the poor, he also obscures the fact that these same merchants contributed directly to exacerbating the poverty they are so charitably shown to “eliminate.” I would like to examine briefly two areas in which mercantile capital directly contributed to increasing the poverty of citizens: starchmaking and the cloth trade. Starch was an important commodity in an age that set great store by ruffs and various other kinds of starched collars and cuffs. But starch, unfortunately, was made of grain. The use of grain to manufacture starch only becomes problematical during a time of bad harvests when a source of food is turned into a nonedible nonessential which both reduces the supply of food and raises the price of the amount remaining. Thus in October 1595, a disturbance occurred at the corner of Milk Street and Cheapside when a crowd forced a carman to unload a barrel of starch (Rappaport 13). This seemingly unimportant incident shows that capitalists do not necessarily have the interests of the people generally (and the poor in particular) at heart if a profit can be made.

A similar, though more dire, example of just how capitalism profits over time at the expense of workers can be seen in the legislation regarding cloth finishing. The export of cloth was one of the major sources of mercantile wealth in England. The 1530s began auspiciously with an export of 80,700 cloths¹⁶ per year, double the average for the last decade of the fifteenth century. This number increased by 34 percent to 108,100 cloths in the 1540s to reach a high of 133,000 cloths at the beginning of the 1550s. A 1551 glut on the Antwerp market led to a fall in exports, yet by 1554, a record 136,000 cloths were exported. The Antwerp market was again glutted by 1556 and by 1558 the boom had passed (Rappaport 89-90).

Although little cloth was woven in London, most finishing was done there and 90 percent of all exported cloth passed through the capital. However, finished English cloth was not highly regarded on the continent, so most cloth was shipped unfinished, a circumstance that led to unemployment in the cloth finishing industries. By 1536 there was a ban against the export of unfinished cloth worth at least four pounds, but merchants easily obtained licenses exempting them from the provisions of the statute. In 1566 the Privy Council passed an act stipulating that every tenth cloth exported must be finished. Oviously the act was not successful, since by 1568 the clothworkers complained of violations and in 1575 they petitioned the Privy Council again (Rappaport 93-100). The council agreed to hire searchers to inspect all packets of cloth to be exported. This measure seems pointless as individual merchants could obtain Crown licences which allowed them legally to export unfinished cloth—often in huge amounts. Such licences were also granted to courtiers who then transferred the license to the Merchant Adventurers, “who monopolised much of England's cloth export trade” (Rappaport 101), making their own arrangements with the merchants for remuneration. As an example, in 1578 Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I's secretary of state, was given a license to export 30,000 unfinished cloths per year.¹⁷ At this time, the average number of cloths exported per year was 103,600 (Rappaport 101), making Walsingham's license good for about 29 percent of the entire yearly cloth export at that time.

Complaints against the Merchant Adventurers concerning the export of unfinished cloth were still being made in May of 1599. The specific “mischiefs to clothworkers” resulted from the fact that, in exercising their license to ship 30,000 undressed cloths annually, the Merchant Adventurers exported 56,000 cloths, of which only 300 were “dressed”/finished (CSP-D 204). The lord mayor of London, Sir Stephen Soame, intervened with the Merchant Adventurers to try to persuade them to accept more finished cloths, “but they refused, wanting liberty of trading themselves” (204). In fact, the Adventurers applied to the council to continue to ship as much unfinished cloth as they wished, and were allowed to, “so that clothiers, dyers, and dressers are now like to perish, for want of work” (CSP-D 205).

Two points need to be made here. The first is that the continual export of unfinished cloth contributed to unemployment among cloth workers in London (Rappaport 105). Thus the merchants who are represented in Heywood's plays as helping the poor out of poverty are, in fact, contributing, for their own profit, to an economic situation guaranteed to keep certain segments of the population in poverty, or at least unemployed in their own trades.¹⁸ The second point is that the licenses granted by the Crown to export unfinished cloth, in spite of the 1566 act restricting the amounts of such exports, show clearly how capital and government are joined. That the queen's secretary of state is a beneficiary of this exception demonstrates how participation by a representative of government in mercantile capitalism fosters unrestrained trade at the expense of the proletariat—here represented by the craftsmen of the cloth-finishing guilds. Not only does Heywood erase the collusion between government and capital, but also the price paid by the workers in the advancement/expansion of trade.

IV

The imperialist enterprise in Ireland was not the only one the English state was engaged in at the end of the sixteenth century, and the failure of Essex does not represent the failure of the state to impress itself—as did that earlier Harry—upon other nations. However, unlike Henry V, the English state often chose not to impress itself upon other countries by means of military power. The political, economic, and social situation around 1599 was changing England irrevocably into an absolutist state, yet this transformation could only occur as a result of uniting state and capital by privileging the earned “nobility” of the bourgeoisie and trade over the inherited nobility of the feudal aristocracy.

The European absolutist state of the sixteenth century was seen by Engels as the result of a class equilibrium between the old feudal nobility and the new urban bourgeoisie (cited by Anderson 15). In fact, as Perry Anderson indicates, “the classification of absolutism as a political balancing-merchanism between nobility and bourgeoisie frequently glides toward an implicit or explicit designation of it as fundamentally a type of bourgeois state as such” (16).¹⁹ These monarchies are characterized by their introduction of standing armies, permanent bureaucracies,²⁰ national taxation, codified laws, and “the beginning of a unified market” (17). Anderson sees this type of state beginning to develop in England under Henry VIII with the increase of the “state apparatuses of repression”—the Star Chamber (to prosecute riot and sedition) and increased treason legislation—and the development of the navy—a permanent Navy Board was created in 1546. The navy was vital to the expansion of the absolutist state, and its development points out the alliance necessary between state and mercantile capital for the development of this particular political configuration.

As a result, the 1590s saw the development of a privateering “industry,” financed by the merchants, of anywhere from one hundred to two hundred voyages per year (Wernham 61),²¹ which can be regarded as both military and commercial. The privateers harried Spanish shipping from the New World (Quinn and Ryan 84), capturing or destroying ships that could be used against the English during hostilities. However, the privateers also relieved the Spanish ships of their cargoes, which proved an important source of wealth to the English exchequer. These cargoes brought in between 100,000 and 200,000 pounds per annum as compared to the pre-1588 trade with Spain worth between 100,000 and 120,000 pounds per annum. Additionally, this expansion of the English merchant marine—the building of new ships as well as the experience in seamanship gained in the North Atlantic—was essential for launching such large-scale trading ventures as the East India and the Virginia companies (Smith 236; Quinn and Ryan 86, 148).

Hence, the privateering enterprise was at least as much commercial—despite the fact that the English did not establish markets in the traditional way—as it was military. Privateering reinforces the fact that, throughout the sixteenth century, the English navy “remained merchant ships temporarily converted for battle by the addition of cannon” (Anderson 134). It was these same commercial/war vessels that had destroyed the Armada, a situation which not only insured England's insular security, but laid the foundation for an imperialist future (Anderson 134). This interesting connection between the navy and trade reinforces Hecksher's argument that the “object of mercantilism was to increase the ‘power of the State’ rather than the ‘wealth of nations’, and that this meant a subordination … of ‘considerations of plenty’ to ‘considerations of power’” (cited in Anderson 35, n. 34).

Another manifestation of the close connection between the state and capitalism was the formation of the Chartered Companies (Anderson 36), essentially monopolistic colonial enterprises created with government approval to regulate trade in different regions such as the Muscovy Company (chartered 1555), the Eastland Company (1579), the Levant Company (1581), the Barbary Company (1585), the East India Company (1600), and the Virginia Company (1606) (Smith 178; Anderson 40). It may seem, initially, that the Crown had little to do with these private, speculative trading ventures that would eventually secure an empire in India and the Western Hemisphere. Yet from the first, the Crown and mercantile capital were even more inextricably connected than they were in privateering or the export of unfinished cloth. In 1566-67, for example, Humphrey Gylberte was engaged in trying to discover a route to Cathay (China). The Calendar for State Papers, Colonial Series for these years outlines the various negotiations between Gylberte and the Crown for the expedition. In 1566 Gylberte petitions the queen for permission “at his own cost and charges” (6) to try to reach Cathay. It may seem odd that Gylberte had to petition for this privilege and that the government might care about whether or not he went. Yet in that same petition, Gylberte askes as his reward “to have to his own use, for 99 years, a fifth part of the customs of merchandise returned by means of this discovery” (CSP-C 6). Here the true worth of such an enterprise reveals itself. Not only will Gylberte profit from whatever merchandise he brings out of China, but he will also profit—through customs duties—from all merchandise any merchant brings out of the country. And, if a fifth of all customs duties is a large enough amount to be negotiated, presumably the four-fifths the governement will take is an amount well worth the “support” of merchants exploring far-flung markets.²² Gylberte was to gain even more in the 1566 bill establishing the Corporation for the Discovery of New Trades, such as the use of two of the queen's ships for the first four voyages along with “commission to press mariners” and his own appointment to the government of all countries and territories discovered with the power to name a deputy (CSP-C 7). Obviously, the Crown stood to gain much revenue if it were willing to grant such powers to the discoverers of new lands.

But enterprises like the search for the Northwest Passage did not happen overnight. The Calendar for State papers, Colonial Series records the almost endless proceedings from the first notion to the final voyage. Each was an “adventure” on paper almost as exhausting as the actual adventure with ships. Those persons engaged in “venturing” capital in the enterprise were themselves called “adventurers,” and the status of and amounts ventured varied greatly from speculation to speculation. By April of 1579, the queen herself was an adventurer in one of the Northwest voyages to Cathay (CSP-C 54). Two other adventurers were Philip Sidney (who was 77 pounds in arrears as of 25 April 1579) and Martin Frobisher (270 pounds in arrears) (CSP-C 55).

The year 1599 marked the beginning of the largest venture so far—the East India Company. Its long list of adventurers begins with the lord mayor of London and includes several aldermen. The majority of adventurers are clearly merchants and the sums they venture range from a high of 3,000 pounds to a low of 100 pounds for a total of 30,133 pounds 6 shillings 8 pence (CSP-C 99-101).²³ The charter of incorporation of the East India Company proposed to grant a “privilege” for fifteen years “to certain adventurers for the discovery of the trade for the East Indies” (CSP-C 115) and, like the North-West Company Charter, shows the mutual benefits accruing to the Crown and the company. The company was to be exempt from customs duties for the first four voyages with further privileges of customs to follow, and “[n]one of the Queen's subjects, but the Company, their servants, and assigns, [were] to resort to India without the Company's licence upon pain of forfeiting ships and cargoes, half to the Queen and half to the Company, with imprisonment till the offenders give 1,000 l. bond not to trade thither again” (CSP-C 117-18). This last provision again demonstrates how much the Crown had to gain from granting what was, essentially, a monopoly to the East India Company. In addition to customs and license to trade fees, both Crown and company stood to gain fines and merchandise from anyone who violated the monopoly—a rather large financial gain compared to the expenditure of time and money needed to establish the company itself, especially on the part of the government.

V

Thomas Heywood's later history play, If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, continues the generic development begun with Edward IV and can be seen as a work that glorifies English capitalism and especially the movement of mercantile capitalism toward colonialism. The three main characters in the play are the merchants Gresham, Hobson, and Sir Thomas Ramsey, the lord mayor of London. Important secondary characters are John Gresham, the merchant's nephew, and Tawnie-coate, the peddler. The plots involving these characters all focus on trade, yet, as was evident in Edward IV, all point out the necessity for charity and cooperation between the merchants (Baines 32, 36). Charity is seen as something that allows trade to progress—Hobson's helping Tawnie-coate when he is down on his luck—as well as a necessary concern of wealthy merchants for their less-fortunate brethren. As in Edward IV, the importance of charity, as well as the charitable dealings of Gresham and Hobson, manages to naturalize the more rapacious aspects of mercantile capitalism and make it socially as well as economically desirable.

Gresham's nephew, John, is a combination prodigal son and con artist. Bailed out of one scrape by his uncle at the beginning of the play, he is given a position as Hobson's factor. Before he embarks upon his truly disastrous career in France—a career that involves buying the wrong goods, making bad deals, and spending most of his time in a bawdy house—John steals one hundred pounds from his uncle and places the blame on Gresham's honest servant, Tim. Even though Tim narrowly escapes hanging, John is pardoned by his uncle and his employer and even manages to get Lady Ramsey to pay his debts. Thus, despite his unfortunate career as a capitalist, the charitable camaraderie of the merchants saves him from personal ruin.

The inclusion of the character John Gresham, and his disastrous career as factor, might seem like an odd episode in a play whose characters are so strongly interpellated within the capitalist/mercantile system. Heywood's audience would know what a “factor” was—an agent for a particular merchant or mercantile enterprise who often lived in a foreign country where the merchant's (or enterprise's) major trade occurred. Yet while the audience might know this “definition” of the job, they might not know how the factor often worked to tie the government and capital together. The Calendar for State Papers, Colonial Series documents the process of one company's obtaining factors.

Early chartering arrangements for the East India Company indicate that factors had to abstain from private trade while they were employed by the company (CSP-C 112). Four grades of factors were determined of which three “principal” factors were of the first grade. The earnings of all factors were proportional to their rankings and the specific factors were elected, presumably based upon the candidates' experience, by a committee for that purpose (CSP-C 111-12). However, not everyone agreed with the elections. Exception was taken to William Brend (or Brund) being made a factor of “the second sort” for, “he being a grave and discreet merchant, and acquainted with the Arabian, Spanish, and Portuguese languages … better deserves to be a principal factor” (CSP-C 113). Brend/Brund himself refused to accept the position as second factor. The election was reexamined and he was made principal factor of the Ascension (CSP-C 114).

There were also men who were not elected to any position among the sixteen factors, and Roger Style was one of these. Consequently, on 22 November 1600 he asked to be employed—without salary—to succeed to a position should an elected factor die during the voyage. He further agreed “to be left in the East Indies until the return of the second voyage where he will apply himself to learn the language” (CSP-C 112). On 13 December 1600, Walter Poynter and William Martin also asked to be employed without salary and left in the Indies as resident factors (CSP-C 114). By 17 December 1600, a total of seven factors had been admitted to go without salary, to replace the deceased or to be left as resident factors. Roger Style was not one of these seven, for by 24 December 1600 he was made a factor of the third sort in place of Richard Collymore (CSP-C 115). This determination to be a factor even without salary—and the resolution not to settle for a position less than one was qualified for—indicates that the position of factor, despite its dangers, was an ultimately lucrative one to the individual concerned. However, the position of factor was also important to the government as well.

Although the point is not raised by Heywood in If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, the historical Thomas Gresham—a merchant on the continent—often acted very much as a “factor.” He was involved with government from as early as 1545, when mercenaries at Calais were paid off with money “received from Gresham” (DNB, 8. 586). By June of 1548 he was acting for the king in the Low Countries and by December 1551, or the following January, was “royal agent or king's merchant” (586). Residing at Antwerp, his chief duties

were to negotiate loans for the crown with the wealthy merchants of Germany and the Netherlands, to supply the state with any foreign products that were required, especially with military stores, such as gunpowder, saltpetre, and arms, and to keep the privy council informed of all matters of importance passing abroad.

(586) (Emphasis added)

Consequently, Gresham kept agents who sent him intelligence from many parts of Europe. He also was able to raise the rate of exchange for the pound to its advantage (586). On friendly terms with Cecil, the secretary of state, Gresham suggested to Elizabeth I plans to improve royal finances. He remained in Antwerp for nine years into Elizabeth I's reign and continued to send Cecil letters full of political intelligence (588).

The merchant Gresham's “intelligence activities” were not unique, since apparently the Crown expected Englishmen abroad to serve the government while they were serving capital. The Calendar for State Papers, Domestic Series for 24 February 1599 records that William, earl of Bath, sent Cecil a letter written by “Thomas Bradshaw, an English lieger at St. Jean de Luz, saying that the King of Spain is preparing a great fleet against April. The writer seems to have a regard to his duty in discovering things concerning the Queen and State” (164). Yet Englishmen abroad did not simply pass on intelligence that came their way. The queen kept few ambassadors abroad—probably for reasons of economy—yet the government representative at Constantinople was paid from 1583 by the Turkey Company and from 1592 by the “then newly amalgamated Levant Company” (Wernham 58).

Thus factors were both mercantile agents and spies, often employing “agents” (in both areas) at their own expense. Thomas Gresham, both before and after he was employed by the Crown, and Thomas Bradshaw easily fit military/political intelligence into their need for economic/trade intelligence and passed necessary and important information back home to the queen. The connection between mercantile and political intelligence is even stronger (if possible) in the example of the “ambassador” at Constantinople financed entirely by Chartered Companies. It seems to me that these political/mercantile connections represent yet another degree of collusion between Crown and capital different from that between the Crown and the Chartered Companies examined above (see Part 4).

But how does Heywood's John Gresham—that inept merchant whose mind is more firmly occupied with bawdy houses than balance sheets—fit into this world of capitalist agents I have sketched above? Clearly not very well. This young Gresham would have a difficult time figuring out what “intelligence” was, much less devising a way to communicate it to his queen. So why include him in a play full of much more successful merchants? The foreign factor/agent was a very important figure to both government policies and the expansion of trade—and he was useful to them both as the protocapitalism of this period became inextricably entwined with government policy. Government was necessary to support trade just as trade was necessary to provide the financial support for the government. If the Tudor state wished to expand its political influence to other countries, it needed the “imperialist” mercantile desires of its traders and merchants to finance that move. Neither expansion could profit without the protection/support of the other. Imperialism cannot occur unless both government and capital are engaged in its pursuit—as I indicated in my earlier examination of the Merchant Adventurers and the East India Company. Historical Thomas Gresham, as well as historical Sir Francis Walsingham, were necessary for the imperial enterprise of England. Yet what was John Gresham doing pretending to be an agent in that enterprise? I would argue that this character is not there truly to represent what capital was up to in his period, but to reassure people that capital was not up to anything dangerous. No one in his/her right mind would take John Gresham seriously as a factor; therefore, no one would view him as a threat. No merchants (or politicians) concerned about free trade or worried about the growing monopolies of the Chartered Companies could view the inept John with anything but scorn. John may not be a character who valorizes the emerging capitalist class, but I would suggest that he is a character designed to take the heat off of it.

But the most important capitalist enterprise represented in this play is Thomas Gresham's building of the Royal Exchange. The event is valorized in the subtitle of Part II and leads to Gresham's being viewed as the “princely” (Cromwell 113) and “patriotic” (Boas 19) merchant who Ribner feels is the true subject of the play (210). As the building progresses, various lords comment upon it and exclaim that no other country has one to equal it. Interestingly, one of the lords reveals Gresham's plans for decoration that include the placing of pictures of “all the English kings” (sc. 9, p. 296) in the empty rooms. As if this form of interior decoration did not sufficiently make the point about the close connection between capitalism and government as I have already shown it to exist in the Chartered Companies, the second lord makes the connection even clearer:

I heard my Lord of Lecester to the Queene
Highly commend this worke, and she then promist
To come in person, and here christen it:
It cannot haue a better godmother.

(sc. 9, p. 296)

From being the monarch Hobson sees as England's nurse, Elizabeth becomes the godmother of capitalism.

The fact that the Chartered Companies were royally sanctioned monopolies posed various problems, as I indicated in my consideration of the problems arising between the cloth finishers and the Merchant Adventurers Company. But monopoly itself was not the only problem; many objected to the fact that England's overseas trade was centered on London, thus allowing “a small oligarchy of well-to-do … Merchant Adventurers” not only to dominate trade, but “to have a say” in matters of foreign policy (Wernham 15; Quinn and Ryan 145). Aware of the company's critics, John Wheeler, the secretary, published in 1601 A treatise of Commerce which was, essentially, a defense of monopoly trading companies that argued that they were beneficial to the state:

Since the erection of the company of Merchants Adventurers, and of other companies … the navigation of the realm is marvellously increased in number of good shipping, and of able and skilful masters and mariners, insomuch that whereas within these threescore years there were not above four ships, besides those in her majesty's navy royal, above the burden of one hundred and twenty tons within the river of Thames, there are now at this day to be found pertaining to London and other places lying upon the said river, a great number of very large and serviceable merchant ships, fit as well for the defence of the realm (if need be) as for traffic, whereof a good part are set to work by the said company of Merchant Adventurers.

(Cited in Quinn and Ryan 146)

Wheeler's point that the ships of the company are also “fit as well for the defence of the realm” reinforces Anderson's point regarding the interconnectedness of the navy, mercantile capitalism, and the absolutist state. The Levant Company was another monopoly trading company that increased fairly rapidly, growing from fifteen ships in 1595 to twenty by 1599. Like the ships of the Merchant Adventurers Company, those of the Levant Company were well-armed and built to withstand attack—this time by Algerian and other corsairs plying the Mediterranean—and, when sailing together, were “more than a match” for their potential enemies (Quinn and Ryan 147).

Like the Merchant Adventurers, both the Levant and the East India companies were organized and directed “by a small overlapping group of increasingly rich and powerful merchants” (Quinn and Ryan 158). Even though the Levant Company had to deal with pirates and phases of political unrest in the Levant (Quinn and Ryan 157), it still was exporting goods worth some 150,000 pounds by as early as 1587, six years after it was chartered (Quinn and Ryan 147). The East India Company proved to be a highly profitable concern whose annual imports were worth about 300,000 pounds by 1613 (Quinn and Ryan 158). The sheer amounts of goods brought into England through London by such companies caused outbursts of various sorts among other merchants. Port cities other than London felt the merchant cliques in the capital were depriving them of prosperity and “free traders”²⁴—merchants who were not members of the Chartered Companies—felt they were being deprived of profitable trading opportunities (Quinn and Ryan 158). All of the trading companies ultimately came under attack by one or another of these factions and in 1604 there was a major “free trade” debate in the House of Commons (Smith 179).

The primary conflict within the trading world at the end of the sixteenth century was between the merchants who were members of the Chartered Companies and the so-called “free traders” who tried to make a profit on the edges of the monopolistic mercantile activities sanctioned by the Crown. Heywood's character Thomas Gresham represents a negotiation between the two positions. There is no evidence in the play (or in the Dictionary of National Biography) that Gresham was a shareholder in a chartered company. In fact, the only company in operation during the time the historical Gresham conceived the idea of the “bourse” (January 1564-65) to the time it was dedicated and named (January 1570-71) was the Muscovy Company (1555), operating in an area the character Gresham is not shown to trade in. However, the character's personal wealth—a wealth that allows him to build the Royal Exchange almost exclusively with his own funds—could suggest to an early seventeenth-century audience that he was a shareholder in one of the companies. Indeed, the incident in scene 10 where Gresham loses sixty thousand pounds as a result of a change in the Barbary government would also imply that the character is a member of either the Barbary Company (founded in 1585) or the Levant Company (founded in 1581), each of which traded with the north coast of Africa. Yet another incident in the scene—Gresham's purchase of the pearl costing fifteen hundred pounds and thus beyond the Russian ambassador's means—could suggest that Gresham's wealth is not tied to trade.

Both incidents, it seems to me, are designed to defuse any threat implicit in Heywood's representation of Gresham. The merchant may be politically and financially powerful, but he is also vulnerable to the loss of capital in his mercantile ventures. Consequently, Heywood seems to be demonstrating that the powerful mercantile interests of London are vulnerable and, as vulnerable, are not the sources of monopolistic/hegemonic power that the “free trade” debates in the House of Commons would suggest they are. Heywood's picture naturalizes the threat of capital by showing how vulnerable it is to loss or disaster. Thus Gresham's cavalier destruction of the costly pearl in a toast to Elizabeth—“his Queene and mistresse” (sc. 10, p. 301)—renders him a heroic figure under pressure. Also, pictured here as an individual capitalist, this character helps to erase the threat of organized companies of merchants constructing the economic and political destinies of England and reinforces the fact that individuals acting alone have the power to raise themselves to such financial heights as he has attained.

Gresham's grand gesture with the pearl also recalls Bassanio's technique of hazarding all for love of Portia in The Merchant of Venice (Moisan 195-96). And as Bassanio's gesture wins him Portia and her fortune, Gresham's insures him the concern of his mistress, the queen. Thomas Moisan raises many of the same questions regarding the interrelationships between the state and capitalism and capitalism and Christianity that this play does. According to him, Shakespeare's play “establishes the merchant in the figure of Antonio as a friend of the state …, it trots out a biblical precedent for the association of profit by ‘venture’ with the blessings of divine providence …, [and] it might well appear to subscribe to the notion that ‘Godlinesse is great riches’” (192). The above description of Antonio could just as well be applied to Gresham. Elizabeth I does, in fact, “reward” Gresham by knighting him during her dedication of the Royal Exchange (sc. 13).

Sir Thomas Gresham represents the “new man” who came to power as a result of the rise of capitalism. As Barbara J. Baines rightly indicates,

Gresham embodies the wealth, power, and growth of the middle class through prudent use of capital in trade and industry. Clearly Heywood's play is a celebration of this social and economic change; but it is also an affirmation of the medieval Christian values [like charity] that are endangered by the new profit motives of capitalism and the great wealth of the financiers.

(35)

I would go further and state that Gresham's building of the Royal Exchange not only symbolizes his charitable concern for other merchants that is not mitigated by his great wealth (a concern he shares with Crosbie and, to a lesser extent, with Hobson and Tawnie-coate), but also symbolizes the necessary symbiotic relationship that must exist between government and capitalism if both are to succeed and profit the state and all her citizens—capitalist and proletariat alike. All the capitalists portrayed in Heywood's plays are patriotic, charitable, and benevolent. They are either successful or unsuccessful capitalists, but they are not rapacious. John Gresham may be useless and cost Hobson money, but his personal charm allows him to escape serious punishment even though he almost gets Tim executed for his own theft. Hobson's servants are inept, but never threatening. The community Heywood represents in both plays is one of self-made men who give all they can to/in charity while they can and are often given to grand gestures such as Gresham's drinking the pearl. Such gestures may not be financially justifiable, but, like Bassanio's hazarding all for Portia or the English “sea dogs” privateering or searching for rich colonies in new worlds, they may just as easily prove successful as not. And the English government needed the steady financial gains of its new merchants while both needed the surprising discoveries of its explorers. The alliances between the Crown and the Chartered Companies were, after all, the first steps in empire building.

VI

I began by invoking one aspect of James Winny's definition of the history play genre; I end by invoking another. The critic maintains that the later history plays use “the image of King to embody the natural sovereignty which Renaissance man believed himself to possess, and the chronicler's records as a dramatic field where this exalted identity could be put to the test” (47). By recalling this aspect of Winny's notion of the history play I do not wish to deprivilege any of the more contemporary notions of history (or genre) that Phyllis Rackin articulates. What I do wish to do with this somewhat reactionary critical notion is to look at it in light of the history play as a genre that records the deeds of capitalists, not traditional sovereigns. Winny's notion that the king was a man who embodied a “natural sovereignty” can easily be applied to the history play genre as Heywood uses it in Edward IV and If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody. The capitalist/merchant can easily be seen to be an “economic monarch” or “mercantilist prince” whose “natural sovereignty” is played out in the field that is most conducive to his abilities—trade.

The history play in the hands of Heywood, then, becomes rewritten as a genre to accommodate capitalists as heroes, as the “monarchs” whose deeds these plays are meant to chronicle. As the history play often records the efforts of sovereigns to obtain a throne, Heywood's histories record the Horatio Alger-like rise of merchants like John Crosbie or Thomas Gresham to quasi-governmental positions that are founded upon their mercantile skill. Yet while the traditional history play only records the deeds of men with “names” who are part of the historical record, this new genre records the deeds of merchants, traders, and apprentices whose names rarely appear on the historical record. And the capitalists Heywood creates act in “kingly” ways to better the lot of their fellow humans/“subjects” through extended examples of charity and philanthropy.

In order to present his merchant heroes in such an acceptable light, Heywood had to erase or severely downplay the ways that capitalism is complicitous with the government and exploits the poor worker. The philanthropic and charitable attitude of capitalism that allowed John Crosbie to rise to his position as lord mayor must be stressed and the deeds of starchmakers and cloth traders erased. Also, the collusion between government and the monopolistic Chartered Companies—that led to imperialist expansion and riches for a small percentage of London merchants—must be shown to profit all Englishmen. Hobs is used to show how necessary proper and timely contribution of taxes is to government and Gresham shows how the merchant—allied with government—serves all through his building of the Royal Exchange.

Finally, the collusion between government and capital can be seen in the production of Heywood's plays themselves. Steve Rappaport bases his entire analysis of the economic situation of Tudor London upon the fact that no major riots occurred there. Yet one can argue that the lack of major riots was due to the fact that some of the ideological state apparatuses—such as the theater—worked so well that the people did not feel they could riot, or that the whole notion of rioting was somehow “impossible.” The very sophisticated “selling” of the recent Gulf War to large segments of the U.S. population (many of whom should have realized how egregiously they were being manipulated) presents a parallel example of how valid reasons for protest and rebellion (even economic ones not directly related to the war) can be easily coopted by means of stringent governmental management of ideological apparatuses—network television as well as the news media—as sources of “truth.” Although Rappaport may deny that economic reasons for riot existed in Tudor times, many of the authors of antitheatrical tracts present a society that is disordered in some very essential way. Whether the tract writers were disturbed about the idle and vagabonds (Northbrooke), excesses in apparel that allow people to transgress the social order (Gosson and Stubbes), or independent women (Stubbes), the tracts as a whole “construct a picture of a beseiged society threatened by an array of groups and practices perceived as disturbing of the established order” (Howard 164). While Rappaport would use the lack of riot within London to disprove the picture of a “beseiged society” the various tract writers present, I would argue that his analysis refuses to consider the very things that prevent the occurrence of riots and attacks by the poor and dispossessed in Tudor England as well as in our current society—the power of ideological state apparatuses. By refusing to consider the existence (and effectiveness) of the theater as a means of social control, Rappaport becomes complicitous with Tudor ideology in presenting the period as one of stability and—if not plenty—at least adequacy.

It is this power of ideology to control the populace that I would argue is strongly in operation in Heywood's plays. In fact, in his An Apology for Actors (1612), Heywood defines the chronicle history play as one designed

to teach the subiects obedience to their King, to shew the people the vntimely ends as such as haue moued tumults, commotions, and insurrections, to present the[m] with the flourishing estate of such as liue in obedience, exhorting them to allegeance, dehorting them from trayterous and fellonious strategems.

(F4v. Cited in Baines 10)

Yet even if Heywood had not so obviously recorded his views that the history play should teach its audience to be “good” (that is, “obedient” and “law-abiding”) subjects, Jean Howard reminds us that the plays of the public theater were censored and that theater itself “constituted one of the chief ideological apparatuses of Elizabethan society, … [and] provided a popular institutional site for the dissemination of images and narratives through which imaginary relations to the real were represented and playgoers positioned in ideology” (164).²⁵ I would argue that the power of the theater as an instrument for managing ideology can be seen very clearly in the two Heywood plays examined above. These plays represent the ideal relationship of rulers and merchants, capitalists and the poor. They show that poverty is something that can easily—and almost magically—be overcome and that the highest positions in City government or the mercantile world belong to those who work—and work hard—for them. Heywood's plays show that the capitalist world provides a place for all men who are willing to work for it. Those who remain poor do so at their own stubborn insistence, despite the potential riches to be found in both domestic and foreign trade. The government enters Heywood's plays as the organ that provides the “opportunity” for prosperity and wealth, rather than the legal means of control and punishment. Thus, what I see in Heywood's two plays is a sophisticated erasure of both the grinding poverty of the Tudor period and the complicity between government and capital that led to the beginning of England's mercantile empire. Erasing poverty allows Heywood to focus on the deeds of domestic merchants—such as John Crosbie—and validate their development of home industries and trades. Erasing the inextricable connection between capital and government allows Heywood to present the development of English imperialism as the amazing deeds of one or two “heroes”—like Thomas Gresham—whose personal wealth is used to reinforce the political glory of England at home and abroad.

Notes

1. Shakespeare, 907. All further references to Shakespeare's plays will be to the edition in the bibliography.

2. Rackin points out that the inclusion of the legendary founding of Britain by Brut was “standard practice among earlier Tudor historians” and that Henry VII used descent from Brut to justify his claim to the English throne while Henry VIII used it to justify his break with Rome (21).

3. Rackin lists quite a number of providentialist critics, among them Lily B. Campbell, Irving Ribner, Andrew S. Cairncross, Robert B. Pierce, and Robert R. Reed, Jr. (40n1).

4. The Tudors “used” the medieval past of England from Richard II to Richard III to “justify” their own claims as the dynasty that successfully unified the warring factions of Lancaster and York and achieved domestic harmony. One twentieth-century recasting of history could be the dichotomy between the Tillyardian/providentialist view of “true” history and the contrary view that acknowledges the impossibility of an “ahistorical” viewpoint. Another could be the dichotomy between the new historicist and cultural materialist reactions to the role of transgression/subversion on the stage and whether—and to what degree—it is produced or contained by the dominant discourse (Rackin 42). Slightly removed from a direct consideration of the history plays, though not of the drama itself, is the question of just how and to what degree works like the antitheatrical tracts reinforced hegemonic discourse. (See Howard, esp. 163-72.) I will have more to say about the antitheatrical tracts in my conclusion.

5. Although Boas dates Edward IV as 1600 (17), Clark points out that it appears in the Stationers' Register—listed under its two subtitles—for 28 August 1599 (15-16). Baines also accepts the 1599 composition date.

6. Part I was licensed on 5 July 1605. Part II appeared in the Stationers' Register on 14 September 1605 (Clark 32-34). Baines gives 1604-5 as a composition date for both parts (26). Though both parts of both plays were printed anonymously, they are generally accepted as Thomas Heywood's work (Boas, Clark, Baines).

7. “Poverty was not a creation of the sixteenth century, but the scale of the problem intensified dramatically during the period. The drastic decline of real wages was not reversed until after 1600, and even then the improvement was slow and slight” (Amussen 25-26). “The sixteenth century as a whole was an unhappy time for the poorer members of society and one set of figures suggests that during the last decade of Elizabeth's reign the standard of living of working men in town and country reached its lowest level in the whole of recorded English history” (Smith 235).

   Steve Rappaport's recent study challenges the economic picture of England generally and London specifically put forth by such scholars as David Underdown, Paul Slack, Alan G. R. Smith, W. G. Hoskins, and A. L. Beier. Rappaport's work is particularly disturbing because it does not simply opt for that view of Tudor England as a “Golden Age” lauded by Tillyard and Laslett. Rather, it is a work that very skillfully uses many of the statistics generated by Hoskins, Slack, et al. to re-enforce a reactionary opinion that the poor were not “really” poor and that, despite drops in both real wages and purchasing power, they were able to get by quite well. Rappaport does acknowledge that the last years of the sixteenth century—from the bad harvest of 1594 on—had particularly devastating economic effects: the price of flour more than doubled and food prices generally rose by 50 percent, conditions which led to food riots in Gloucestershire, Somerset, Oxfordshire, Kent, Essex, and other parts of England. “Because of a decline in real income of nearly 25 per cent, the gap between rich and poor must have widened considerably …” (379). Yet while these above remarks are in line with the other critics I have examined, Rappaport is out of line when considering the economic situation during the Tudor period as a whole as it relates to London.

   Several critics, in fact, take Rappaport to task for various aspects of his position. Ronald Berger sees Rappaport's study as containing four major weaknesses:

   First, an explanation of social and political relations in sixteenth-century London society should not rely almost entirely upon a small sample of the City's freemen. … Second, Rappaport underestimates the ability of monarch, priest, and gildmaster together to reduce that hegemony which he confuses with harmony. Third, because of its robust and diversified economy London cannot be used as a yardstick to measure the English urban experience. Enclosure riots, religious conflicts and wage disputes, while seldom resulting in open hostility, produced instability in many towns. Fourth, Rappaport's reliance on a sociological model limits the scope of his research. … [Various other research choices further allow him] to neglect the working class and to minimize evidence of class conflict.

   (458-59)

   Keith Lindley feels that Rappaport

   is insufficiently critical in his use of sources, and too ready to evade or underestimate evidence of conflict or tension in London society, for his conclusions to command complete confidence. … [He has a tendency to caricature his opponents' case] while at the same time he can be accused of being too partisan in the way in which he assembles evidence of harmony and consensus. … Moreover, Dr. Rappaport's sights are set upon the upwardly mobile and the successful while those who failed to reach the starting line or dropped out of the race are given scant treatment. … The fact that Tudor London was not rocked by instability is not at issue but that is not to deny that there was the potential for conflict and there has to be a more convincing explanation of how it was contained than that offered by this book.

   (986-87)

   And Ian Archer indicates that

   Rappaport is also misleading about the quality of social relations in the Elizabethan metropolis because he underestimattes the extent to which the escalation of disturbances alarmed the elite, and contributed to a sense of perceived crisis. … Rappaport's preferred view of stability as lying in the opportunities for social mobility makes his analysis of the responses of company rulers to the demands of artisans somewhat superficial.

   (8, 16)

   Archer also takes issue with Rappaport's analysis of statistics (ex. 152, 208, 243). Since a major goal of his book is to “prove” statistically that Tudor poverty was not as overwhelming as had previously been computed, Archer's astute questioning of Rappaport's use of statistics must be considered in deciding whether—and to what degree—to accept his overall analysis.

   While Rappaport does agree that the late 1590s were a time of economic crisis and, as a result, accepts most “given” statistics for this period alone, his analysis overall must be regarded as, at best, dubious for the reasons indicated above. It is important to remember, though, that his work as a whole is based primarily upon previously unexamined-in-detail London guild records. There seems no reason to question the “factual” incidents he mentions, especially when they are along the lines of other scholars. I will have occasion to turn to some other aspects of his study later.

8. W. G. Hoskins defines the 1596 and 1597 harvests as “dearth” with wheat prices 82.9 percent above the norm in 1596 and 64 percent above the norm in 1597. Using a price based on the average of three grains—wheat, barley, and oats—C. J. Harrison does not list 1597 as a year of “dearth” since prices were only 34 percent above the norm. Both Hoskins and Harrison list the years 1591-93 as having harvests that were good or better than average (cited in Smith 433-34). Slack lists 1595-97 as years of “harvest failures” (226) and even Rappaport indicates that the price of flour tripled from 1593 to 1597 (137).

9. Food prices rose 700 percent in the 140 years between 1500 and 1640. In the same period, prices for industrial goods increased just over 300 percent. Between 1500 and 1650, the wages of agricultural workers were halved (Smith 168-69). The price of a composite unit of foodstuffs were set at 100 pounds for 1451-1475. The purchasing power of both agricultural laborers and building craftsmen in the south of England was set at 100 for 1450-1499; “… the purchasing power of a building craftsman's wage reached its lowest annual level during the whole period between the mid-thirteenth and the mid-twentieth centuries in 1597, when it stood at 29” (Smith 436-37. Quote 437).

10. Several scholars have examined the “crisis of order” prevalent in late sixteenth-century society. Underdown challenges Laslett's view that English society of the period was stable and quotes Philip Stubbes (The Anatomie of Abuses [1595]) as an example of a contemporary writer who recorded the social anxieties he saw around him (1985b, 116). Underdown further indicates that “by the early seventeenth century … the orderly, vertically integrated society assumed by Tudor theorists was seriously diverging from reality” (1985a, 28). Because “dearth” led to vagrancy, an increase in crime, and grain riots, Amussen sees it as “one of the major problems faced by English governments … until after the Reformation. … Poverty was associated with disorder …” (31).

11. “Deserving poor” were defined as “the aged and infirm poor and pauper children” (Smith 186).

12. Baines maintains that Heywood chose to write of Edward IV “because he was traditionally associated with the middle class and with its achievement of a place in English history” (10). The focus on such middle-class characters as Hobs and the Shores reinforces the play's concern with the middle class and its values, heritage, and aspirations that Heywood upheld in this play and throughout his career (Baines 10-17).

13. Heywood, sc. 18, p. 71. All further references to Heywood's plays will be to this edition. My references will be to Part I of Edward IV and Part II of If You Know Not Me. … I have added scene numbers and changed long “s” to conventional “s.”

14. Rappaport has cited records from various guilds indicating that they often made provision for orphaned children of guild members. These children were sometimes put out to foster parents, had their living expenses provided, and often had their school fees and apprentice fees paid. Rappaport's point is that there was a safety net of charity ready to catch the destitute within London and that the guilds were often the source of the money necessary for that charity. I do not doubt his factual evidence; however, it does seem to me that the recipients of this charity were most often people who had some connections with the guilds themselves: unemployed and destitute members, widows and orphans of members (198-200).

15. To minimize confusion, I will refer to the historical figure as “Crosby” and to Heywood's character as “Crosbie.”

16. A “cloth” is a measure of cloth being exported and represents a constant amount.

17. “… there was a new willingness to risk capital in novel projects which had at least a moderate chance of success. … Courtiers, encouraged by royal favour and the monopoly grants through which they battened on private industry, gentlemen and provincial merchants who had accumulated fortunes in privateering and war-contracting, along with a vigorous class of small investors, were all prepared to venture sums, small or large, in new ventures” (Quinn and Ryan 154). By 1579 much energy was directed toward a series of voyages to the East Indies, and Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, contributed greatly to the fitting out of three ships (CSP-C 98).

18. The Levant Company (chartered 1581) was successful in selling “finished” English cloth in Asia Minor and Persia “and so helping greatly the fortunes of the troubled textile industry” (Quinn and Ryan 158-59).

19. Althusser indicates that “the political regime of the absolutist monarchy is only the new political form needed for the maintenance of feudal domination and exploitation in the period of development of a commodity economy” (cited in Anderson 18-19). This capitalist state could, for the first time, become a “nation state.” Since capital is “internationally mobile,” its holders could be nationally fixed. In contrast, under feudalism, “land is nationally immobile, and nobles had to travel to take possession of it” (Anderson 32).

20. Marx saw the absolutist state as particularly bourgeois and maintained that “under the absolute monarchy, bureaucracy was only the means of preparing the class rule of the bourgeoisie” (cited in Anderson 16). Monarchies in the absolutist state also “integrate[d] a growing number of arriviste bourgeois into the columns of State functionaries, which became increasingly professionalized, and … reorganize[d] the links between the nobility and the State apparatus itself” (Anderson 51). Interestingly, these arriviste functionaries can be seen throughout Henry VIII's reign. One could also make a case that Francis Walsingham fits this category in Elizabeth's reign, especially given his financially remunerative license to export unfinished cloth (see part 3).

21. Wernham sees these “royal privateering” ventures as, mainly, a “commerce-destroying operation. … By the end of [this] war Spain's merchant navy—apart from the convoyed and protected American fleet—was virtually destroyed, and Spain's overseas trade, at least its trade to continental Europe, was increasingly in foreign hands” (63).

22. Anderson indicates that English princes, because of their insular situation, “relied mainly on customs duties” as a source of revenue (45).

23. Quinn and Ryan indicate that the merchants got together “an unprecedented capital” of 60,000 pounds in 1599 to launch the company (151).

24. Naturally enough, the members of the chartered companies called the free traders “interlopers” (Quinn and Ryan 158).

25. I do not mean to deny the arguments of such critics as Jean Howard, Jonathan Dollimore, Phyllis Rackin, and others that the Elizabethan theater does become a site of contestation and that the subversive elements of individual plays are never totally contained. This is a position I agree with. I simply want, in this essay, to argue that, instead of being viewed as ineffectual history plays by a minor dramatist, both Edward IV and If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody can be viewed as works that clearly reinforce state ideologies regarding the way out of poverty and the importance of mercantile capitalism to all members of the Elizabethan state. In this connection—and regarding Rappaport's reading of Tudor poverty and economics—it is important to call attention to Lynda Boose's recent commentary on ideology—“in the particular types of malfeasance that this society or any other seeks to proscribe and the specific groups it thereby implicitly seeks to stigmatize, one may read its ideology” (195)—and its repercussions—“in the twentieth century the social offenders who had four centuries earlier been signified by whoring, witchcraft, scolding, and being masterless men and women have been replaced by those whose identity may be similarly inferred from the fetishized criminality the state currently attached to abortion, AIDS, street drugs, and, most recently, subway panhandling (read homelessness)” (195n41).

This essay began as a paper for the 1991 Shakespeare Association of America seminar “1599” chaired by James Shapiro. I would like to thank participants of that seminar for their helpful comments which I used in revising this essay for publication. I would particularly like to thank Jim Shapiro and Peter Stallybrass for their helpful suggestions for background reading. A shorter version of my analysis of If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody appears in Chapter 7 of my book Women in Power in the Early Modern Drama, University of Illinois Press, 1992.

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