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Fat King, Lean Beggar : Representations of Poverty in the Age of Shakespeare / William C. Carroll.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]Copyright date: ©1996Description: 1 online resource (256 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781501722486
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 822.3/3 23
LOC classification:
  • PR3069.P67 C37 1996eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ILLUSTRATIONS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- ABBREVIATIONS AND DOCUMENTATION -- Introduction -- PART I. Vagrancy and Marginality in the Tudor-Stuart Period -- 1. Discourses of Poverty -- 2. Thomas Harman and The Caveat for Commen Cursetors -- 3. Bedlam and Bridewell -- PART II. SHAKESPEAREAN INSCRIPTIONS -- 4· "The Perill of Infection": Vagrancy, Sedition, and 2 Henry VI -- 5· "Would Not the Beggar Then Forget Himself?": Christopher Sly and Autolycus -- 6. "The Base Shall Top th'Legitimate": King Lear and the Bedlam Beggar -- 7· "Is Poverty a Vice?": The Disguise of Beggary -- Works Cited -- Index
Summary: Investigating representations of poverty in Tudor-Stuart England, Fat King, Lean Beggar reveals the gaps and outright contradictions in what poets, pamphleteers, government functionaries, and dramatists of the period said about beggars and vagabonds. William C. Carroll analyzes these conflicting "truths" and reveals the various aesthetic, political, and socio-economic purposes Renaissance constructions of beggary were made to serve.Carroll begins with a broad survey of both the official images and explanations of poverty and also their unsettling unofficial counterparts. This discourse defines and contains the beggar by continually linking him with his hierarchical inversion, the king. Carroll then turns his attention to the exemplary case of Nicholas Genings, perhaps the single most famous beggar of the period, whose machinations as fraudulent parasite and histrionic genius were chronicled by Thomas Harman. Carroll next assesses institutional responses to poverty by considering two hospitals for the destitute, Bridewell and Bedlam, and their role as real and symbolic places in Elizabethan drama.Fat King, Lean Beggar then focuses on dramatic inscriptions of poverty, primarily in Shakespeare's plays. Carroll's analysis of The Taming of the Shrew and The Winter's Tale links the tradition of the merry beggar to the socioeconomic forces of the day; and his reading of King Lear makes a case for the uniqueness of Edgar, the Bedlam beggar, in the history of drama. Carroll also considers later plays such as Fletcher and Massinger's Beggars' Bush and Richard Brome's Jovial Crew to show how idealizations of the beggar ironically equate him with a monarch in his supposed freedom.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781501722486

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ILLUSTRATIONS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- ABBREVIATIONS AND DOCUMENTATION -- Introduction -- PART I. Vagrancy and Marginality in the Tudor-Stuart Period -- 1. Discourses of Poverty -- 2. Thomas Harman and The Caveat for Commen Cursetors -- 3. Bedlam and Bridewell -- PART II. SHAKESPEAREAN INSCRIPTIONS -- 4· "The Perill of Infection": Vagrancy, Sedition, and 2 Henry VI -- 5· "Would Not the Beggar Then Forget Himself?": Christopher Sly and Autolycus -- 6. "The Base Shall Top th'Legitimate": King Lear and the Bedlam Beggar -- 7· "Is Poverty a Vice?": The Disguise of Beggary -- Works Cited -- Index

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http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

Investigating representations of poverty in Tudor-Stuart England, Fat King, Lean Beggar reveals the gaps and outright contradictions in what poets, pamphleteers, government functionaries, and dramatists of the period said about beggars and vagabonds. William C. Carroll analyzes these conflicting "truths" and reveals the various aesthetic, political, and socio-economic purposes Renaissance constructions of beggary were made to serve.Carroll begins with a broad survey of both the official images and explanations of poverty and also their unsettling unofficial counterparts. This discourse defines and contains the beggar by continually linking him with his hierarchical inversion, the king. Carroll then turns his attention to the exemplary case of Nicholas Genings, perhaps the single most famous beggar of the period, whose machinations as fraudulent parasite and histrionic genius were chronicled by Thomas Harman. Carroll next assesses institutional responses to poverty by considering two hospitals for the destitute, Bridewell and Bedlam, and their role as real and symbolic places in Elizabethan drama.Fat King, Lean Beggar then focuses on dramatic inscriptions of poverty, primarily in Shakespeare's plays. Carroll's analysis of The Taming of the Shrew and The Winter's Tale links the tradition of the merry beggar to the socioeconomic forces of the day; and his reading of King Lear makes a case for the uniqueness of Edgar, the Bedlam beggar, in the history of drama. Carroll also considers later plays such as Fletcher and Massinger's Beggars' Bush and Richard Brome's Jovial Crew to show how idealizations of the beggar ironically equate him with a monarch in his supposed freedom.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Apr 2024)