E-Book Overview
In this book Bryan Reynolds argues that early modern England experienced a sociocultural phenomenon, unprecedented in English history, which has been largely overlooked by historians and critics. Beginning in the 1520s, a distinct ''criminal culture'' of beggars, vagabonds, confidence tricksters, prostitutes, and gypsies emerged and flourished. This community defined itself through its criminal conduct and dissident thought and was, in turn,officially defined by and against the dominant conceptions of English cultural normality.
Examining plays, popular pamphlets, laws, poems, and scholarly work from the period, Reynolds demonstrates that this criminal culture, though diverse, was united by its own ideology, language, and aesthetic. Using his transversal theory, he shows how the enduring presence of this criminal culture markedly influenced the mainstream culture's aesthetic sensibilities, socioeconomic organization, and systems of belief. He maps the effects of the public theater's transformative force of transversality, such as through the criminality represented by Shakespeare, Jonson, Middleton, and Dekker, on both Elizabethan and Jacobean society and the scholarship devoted to it.
E-Book Content
becoming criminal
Becoming Criminal Transversal Performance and Cultural Dissidence in Early Modern England Bryan Reynolds
the johns hopkins university press baltimore and london
© 2002 The Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2002 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363 www.press.jhu.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reynolds, Bryan (Bryan Randolph) Becoming criminal : transversal performance and cultural dissidence in early modern England / Bryan Reynolds. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8018-6808-4 1. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and criticism. 2. Criminals in literature. 3. Literature and society—England—History—16th century. 4. Literature and society—England—History—17th century. 5. England—Social conditions—16th century. 6. England—Social conditions— 17th century. 7. Crime—England—History—16th century. 8. Crime—England—History—17th century. 9. Romanies in literature. 10. Crime in literature. I. Title. pr428.c74 r49 2002 820.9′35206927—dc21 2001001332 A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Frontispiece: Image of “The Roaring Girle or Moll Cut-Purse,” from T. Middleton and T. Dekker, The Roaring Girl, 1611. Courtesy of the Harvard College Library.
In loving memory of Dede and for Kim without whom not
contents
Preface Acknowledgments one
two
three
four
five
ix xiii
State Power, Cultural Dissidence, Transversal Power
1
Becoming Gypsy, Criminal Culture, Becoming Transversal
23
Communal Departure, Criminal Language, Dissident Consolidation
64
Social Spatialization, Criminal Praxis, Transversal Movement
95
Antitheatrical Discourse, Transversal Theater, Criminal Intervention
125
Notes Bibliography Index
157 197 209
preface
m y f a s c i n a t i o n with criminals began long ago. I was unusually mobile for a kid living in the New York City suburb of Scarsdale, riding my Honda SR75 (minimotorcycle) pretty much anywhere I pleased on quiet roads, bicycle paths, and horse trails—and, of course, ditching the cops whenever necessary. Mobility meant freedom, and for a curious adolescent with a penchant for everything transgressive, such freedom meant exposure to exciting new people: small-time criminals of all sorts. I found these people not in the v