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Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School
2008
Reading Silk: England's Search for aNational Identity, 1590-1630Emily Elizabeth Rendek
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FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES
READING SILK: ENGLAND’S SEARCH FOR A NATIONAL IDENTITY, 1590-1630
BY
EMILY ELIZABETH RENDEK
A Thesis submitted to the
Department of English
In partial fulfillment of the
Requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts
Degree Awarded:
Spring Semester, 2008
II
The members of the Committee approve the Thesis of Emily Elizabeth Rendek defended on
December 13, 2007.
_____________________________
Bruce Boehrer
Professor Director Thesis
_____________________________
Anne Coldiron
Committee Member
_____________________________
Daniel Vitkus
Committee Member
Approved:
_______________________________
Ralph Berry, Chair, Department of English
The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members.
III
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Dr. Bruce Boehrer for his support, guidance, and patience
throughout this project. His insights and encouragement were integral throughout this process. I
would also like to thank the members of my committee, Dr. Daniel Vitkus and Dr. Anne
Coldiron, for their generous input and willingness to be a part of this project. Also, I want to
thank the members of the Renaissance Group for their invaluable critiques and suggestions for
the first two chapters of my thesis. And finally, I would like to thank my friends and family
without whom this project would never have been completed.
IV
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
INTRODUCTION:
“THE GREATEST WORTHS IN SMALLEST THINGS
APPEARE:” THE EMERGING POWER OF SILK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
CHAPTER ONE:
“THE WORLD NEED KNOW LITTLE
OF MY SILK HOSE:” THE RISING IMPORTANCE OF
SILK IN ENGLAND . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
CHAPTER TWO:
“THE PHANTASTICALL FOLLIE OF OUR
NATION:” THE FOREIGN AT WORK IN ENGLAND
AS SEEN IN THOMAS DEKKER’S THE SHOEMAKER’S
HOLIDAY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
CHAPTER THREE:
SPLENDID SPECTACLES: SILK’S SUBVERSION OF
POWER AND AUTHORITY IN RENAISSANCE
COURT MASQUES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
EPILOGUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
NOTES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
WORKS CITED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
ABSTRACT
In this thesis, I explore the relationship between the silk industry and England’s search
for a national identity as seen through the theater of 1590-1630. I have decided to focus on these
years because of the exponential growth in the number of people who worked in London with
foreign raw silk; in doing so, I have chosen plays which show the progression of the power of
silk—from initially creating conflicting desires both to reject all things foreign and yet to
emulate foreign fashions to eventually uniting the country through the quest to form England’s
own silk industry and in turn lay the foundation for an empire. In this project, I interrogate the
relationship between silk and the formation of a national identity for England through the dramas
of Thomas Middleton, Thomas Dekker, and James Shirley. In Middleton’s Michaelmas Term I
focus on class anxieties and the manner in which the play reflects the decline of the
landed gentry and the rise of the merchant class. Satin, a type of silk, plays a large part
throughout the play; it in fact creates a problem in the transmission of identity as certain
characters forget their original stations and ancestry. In Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday I try
to demonstrate how this play promotes English nationalism by subordinating the foreign
and advocating unity amongst the peoples of England regardless of social status. Theatergoers
are given the chance to see what England as a nation is capable of if it bands together against
the (idea of the) foreign. The formation of nationhood centers around trade in luxury items and
matters of apparel. In Shirley’s The Triumph of Peace, the most expensive court masque ever
staged, I explore the form of the court masque and show how Shirley’s masque enables the
lawyers of the Inns of Court to usurp the power of the monarchy through ostentatious display in
the form of silks. The Inns of Court use the medium of luxury as a signal to the King that the
throne could not rule without law. This project aims to demonstrate that silk becomes a tool for
nation building for England.
2
INTRODUCTION
“THAT GREATEST WORTHS IN SMALLEST THINGS APPEARE:” THE EMERGING
POWER OF SILK
From small beginnings how brave noble things1
Have gathered vigor and themselves have rear’d
To be the strength2 and maintenance of Kings
That at the first but frivolous appear’d
So may the Silk-wormes happily increase
From sea to sea to propogate their feed
That plant still nourish’d by our glorious peace
Whose leafe alone, the laboring Worme doth feed
And may thy frame perpetually advance
Rich when by thee, thy country shall be made
Naples, Granado, Portugale, and France
All to sit idle, wondering at our trade
The tree acquainting with the British soyle,
And the true use unto our people taught
Shall treble ten times recompence the toile
(From forraine parts) of him is hither brought,
In spight of them would rob thee of thy due,
Yet not deprive us of thy noble skill,
Still let faire virtue to her selfe be true
Although times ingratefull be and ill
--Michael Drayton in “To Master Nicholas Geffe” from The Perfect Use of Silke-
wormes and Their Benefit by Nicholas Geffe
3
Drayton’s poem, written roughly half-way into the period that I am focusing on (1590-
1630), captures the changing sentiments of England’s people toward silk. Previously thought to
be merely a luxury item and a sign of lust and wastefulness—as Drayton states it, “at the first but
frivolous appear’d”—silk’s connotations can be seen to begin to change in the eyes of many
Englishmen. Here, silk is acknowledged as being “the strength and maintenance of kings.” At
the time this poem was written, silk’s powers began to be acknowledged more extensively so that
England’s appropriation of the silk-weaving industry from its continental counterparts enables
the country the ability to form its own national identity in order to lay the foundation for its
eventual empire.
In this thesis, I plan to demonstrate that silk becomes a tool for nation building. While at
first the English peoples’ insatiable appetite for silk creates an identity crisis of sorts for England,
with the conflicting desires to emulate foreign practices and also to remain steadfast to the
nation, silk is eventually recognized as a material that has the power to unite the English people.
Silk has the power to make other nations envy and want to emulate England: “And may thy fame
perpetually advance/Rich when by thee, thy country shall be made/Naples, Granado, Portugall,
and France/All to set idle, wondering at our trade.” Here, the student is envisioned as becoming
the teacher.
England greatly depended on its foreign immigrants for the transference of knowledge of
various technologies, this project will focus on the transmission of textile technologies, and the
creation of jobs for its people. In 1593, a list of trades practiced in the liberties of London and its
adjoining parishes shows silk workers to be in the overwhelming majority (out of 1,862
individuals 355 were silk workers [Goose 142]). England’s cold, dreary climate made it
unsuitable and indeed unable to become a rival in the sericulture competition; yet, by the mid-
seventeenth century, England was able to create a sustainable silk-weaving industry—several
regions such as Macclesfield and Spitalfield become major centers for silk weaving—one which
helped the country gain the power and wealth it needed to be deemed an “empire” when the
Union occurred in 1707 (Vitkus 6).
A critical point for England in the development of a national identity came during the
1530s when the ties between the English church and Rome were severed, and the king was
declared the “supreme head” of church and state, which created a “growing, widespread anxiety
about English cultural identity,” further complicated by the fact that even England’s name
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remained unfixed by its authors (Helgerson 4).3 Ben Jonson’s poem “On English Monsieur”
demonstrates in its title alone the complicated nature of England’s attempts at establishing a
national identity. The poem points to England’s prescribed identity as one obsessed with ever-
changing fashions. The domestic market in foreign clothes is perpetuated by the English
Monsieur’s “daily turn in Paul’s” (Hentschell 50). Jonson also points to the ability of foreign
clothes to contaminate, a common trope used in early modern England with regards to luxury
materials: “Or had his father, when he did him get,/ The French disease with which he labours
yet?” (9-10). To continue the disease metaphor, the fear of being infected reflects the fear of not
being able to create a national self-hood; it is only in succumbing to the disease and surviving it
that England as a nation comes out stronger and better—able to compete with the foreign
markets in trade. Jonson may at first seem to be showing what appears to be a confused identity
created by clothing, but he may perhaps also be signaling what is truly “English”—the ability to
adopt other countries’ mannerisms, fashions, business practices, etc. and (eventually) make it
better and their own, as demonstrated by the silk-weaving industry.
As Richard Helgerson states, “self definition comes from the not-self, from the alien
other”; in order to create a nation-state a community must both separate itself from its
neighboring countries and from its past self (22). England’s separation from the “other” took
several decades, and was further sped up with the creation of an English silk-weaving industry.
An example of the nostalgia for a community’s past self can be seen in such works as Robert
Greene’s Quip for an Upstart Courtier, in which an account of a debate between cloth breeches
and velvet breeches occurs. Cloth breeches, however, is deemed to be worthier and more
virtuous than velvet breeches because of an association with “ancient” England. The conflicting
ideologies that take place here are physically realized when the reader considers the audience to
whom Greene is writing. Most people who read this tract are in fact the very people who Greene
was critiquing. In fact, in The Repentance of Robert Greene, Greene admits to have “ruffeled
out in my silks, in the habit of Malcontent” (C2v); he himself was reliant upon the “vicissitudes
of the city’s economy and the public’s taste for sartorial literature” (Hentschell 62).
England derived its independence by incorporating the foreign into its own body and
making it its own. In Hic Mulier, the Englishman stands naked and “had liberty with his Sheeres
to cut from every Nation of the World, one piece of patch to make up his garment,” and thus
forms his own unique garment (identity) (C4v). This idea is similarly discussed in Dekker’s The
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Seven Deadly Sinnes of London: “Wittie was that Painter therefore […] because [none] could cut
out his fashions but himselfe” (31). Ostensibly the problem here is that “apparel” should
“distinguish […] one Nation from another,” as Prynne states in Histriomastix (207). Later in The
Seven Deadly Sinnes, Dekker associates the donning of foreign clothing as a treasonous act: “For
an English-mans suite is [li]ke a traitors bodie that hath beene hanged, drawne, and quartered,
and is set up in se[v]eral places” (32). The answer to this traitorous act was to make the foreign
native—to become the other, adopting what the nation calls for and outsmarting competitors in
trade. The ready attribution for England as a nation of people known for their ever-changing
fashions—“England is a field of change where foreign modes are put on and off with vertiginous
speed” (Helgerson 14)—can in fact be a source of pride. Clothing incorporates a complicated
signifying chain; while style may denote a particular geographical area, the material it is made
from signifies another and the body which wears it yet another (Hentschell 49). The increase in
the power silk is awarded with in England corresponds with the number of costume books in the
latter half of the sixteenth century as well as the rise in the number of chorographies produced at
the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Both costume books and cartographic publications follow a structure from a geographical
order, and in costume books, a depiction of dress from higher to lower rank. This demonstrates
an attempt to impose order amongst the threat of disorder—it is a fiction, an ideal. Dress is often
shown to represent nation and thus indicates costume books’ insistence of the “readability of
dress as a sign language” (Ilg 37-8, 43). Looking at chorographies, in both Speed’s Theater of
the Empire of Great Britain (1611) and Drayton’s Poly-Olbion (1612), “dynastic insignia” are
erased and are replaced instead by the land and people of Britain (Helgerson 115-118). This
shift reflects England’s need to recognize the common desires of its people and its need to fulfill
them as the “national autonomy of the land... [the] chorographers represented menaced the king’s
claim to absolute power” (Helgerson 128).
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
It is interesting to note some of the numerous accounts or legends about the origins of
sericulture and the silk industry in order to appreciate England’s notions of silk and to see the
industry’s eventual migration into England. The idea of transforming cocoons into threads of
silk is attributed to Siling, the wife of the “Yellow Emperor,” Huang-ti, who apparently dropped
a cocoon into her tea, and after seeing it unravel thought of forming it into threads of silk
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(Kolander 2). Around 300 B.C., Aristotle gives the first mention in western literature about the
source of silk, a “curious horned worm,” and attributes the first weaving of silk to Pamphile, a
Phoenician princess on the island of Cos (Kolander 2). Silk had become so abundant by the Han
dynasty (c. 200 B.C. –A.D. 200) that it had become part of a soldier’s wages in China, and by
around 140 B.C., the Silk Road was established (Kolander 2).
The dissemination of silk from China also has several stories or legends behind it. By
200 A.D., the white silk-producing caterpillars of China had been introduced into India; it is said
that a Chinese princess who was married off to a distant king smuggled out silk worm eggs in her
headdress (the secrets behind sericulture were closely guarded in China and numerous
checkpoints were set up around the borders to prevent people from smuggling eggs over the
border, and anyone found to be doing so was often killed immediately). Knowledge of
sericulture apparently reached Constantinople when two monks, formerly from China, agreed at
the request of the Emperor Justinian to smuggle out silk worm eggs and white mulberry seeds;
until the 1700s all races of European silk-worms were descendants of those first eggs (Kolander
3).
The connection between silk and bloodshed can be seen when looking at the migration of
silk into Europe. The Crusades brought Europeans into contact with the vast wealth of the
civilizations of the Middle East; Europeans used the pretext of recovering the Holy Land as an
attempt to gain access to all of this wealth. In the eleventh century, when the Normans invaded
Sicily, the gateway between East and West was further opened; however, nearly a hundred years
later the Easter Monday uprising forced many Muslim silk weavers to flee Sicily and instead
move to Almeria, Spain and Lucca, Italy.
With this forced migration came the rise of new silk capitals. The phrase, “good silk is
Lucca silk” shows how prominent and well respected Lucca was in terms of its silk production
by the end of the thirteenth century (Anquetil 29). As stated earlier, the spread of the silk trading
industry is marked by violence and religious persecution, and Lucca was not immune to this. In
1314, pro-imperialist forces caused all papal supporting weavers to flee; most settled in Venice
and Florence. Venice was the European capital of the Silk Road. It had close ties with the
Orient (several Venetian-owned silk weaving workshops were located in Byzantium and Syria),
and served as a commercial intermediary, receiving goods from the East and then transporting
7
these commodities to Western Europe. Florence, too, by the end of the fourteenth century,
attracted artisans from all over the Orient.
Many silk workers that resided in Italy left for France because of chronic political and
religious problems. France’s first success in the silk industry occurred during the reign of
François I (1515-47) who issued an edict inviting foreign weavers to settle in Lyon. A decade
after this edict was issued, François I wanted Lyon to become the silk weaving center and so
declared it the sole depository for all silks entering the kingdom (Anquetil 57). Henry IV
encouraged the development of French sericulture by having more than 60,000 mulberry
seedlings planted in various regions throughout this country. By the time of Louis XIV’s reign,
Lyon had become the silk capital of the western world. However, in 1685, France lost a
multitude of skilled artisans when Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, causing numerous
French Protestants to flee the country, many of whom settled in England. Other immigrants, a
number from the Southern Netherlands, had also fled to England to escape religious persecution
in the mid-sixteenth century, bringing along with the influx of people a great knowledge
concerning the production of silk into England.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
When looking at silk and its portrayal in dramas, it is important to look back at the
general attitudes towards the theater and luxury materials in order to appreciate the particulars
regarding silk. The most common objections to theater often involved an attack on the outward
spectacles produced by the acting companies. Costumes were in fact the greatest expenditures
for a production: a play cost approximately £6 while a single black velvet coat cost £21 10s 6d
(Stallybrass 290). The theater was a visible manifestation of the ease with which “the
counterfeitability of social identity” could be achieved, and many such as Philip Stubbes, in his
Anatomie of Abuses remarked on this (Howard 31). By only allowing the nobility to wear such
luxury fabrics as silk, sumptuary laws sought to protect the native cloth industry. Although
sumptuary legislation, which lasted until the beginning of James’ reign, was not strictly enforced
when part of the law, its most blatant threat to its own enforcement was found in the theater and
among the actors who dressed out of their station; a complaint against the actors can be seen with
Stephen Gosson’s Plays Confuted in which he blames the actors for forsaking their calling
because “they desire to walke gentleman like in sattine & velvet” (60r). Indeed, for the audience
members, many found it only possible to dress outside of their station when attending the theater
8
because of the greater ease with which they could be prosecuted if they were to do so at work or
church. In the Homily Against Excess of Apparel ornate and rich clothing is viewed as the
“outward mark of the sin of lechery” (MacIntyre 52-3).
England’s obsession with spectacle can be seen when looking at the engraving entitled,
The Funeral Obseques of Sir All-in-New Fashions which was published in the late 1620s. All of
the fashions that proceed Sir All-in-New Fashions are “lately brought from forreyne Lands”;
these fashions are said to “ebb and flow as doth the Tyde,” and Sir All-in-new-fashions’ things
“hange as Trophies of his Pride” (British Printed Images from 1700). Here, clothes make the
man. Clothing is imbued with the person’s identity. The deceased Sir All-in-new-fashions is
shown between the procession of clothing and the procession of the producers of the
commodities that he wore—four taylors are labeled in this procession as well as a haberdasher, a
shoemaker, and a merchant—demonstrating “a reverse chain of consumption” (Ravelhoffer 123).
Muriel Byrne states that “In no age, perhaps, has there been seen in this country greater
extravagance of apparel than in the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign” (36). Indeed many living in
the early modern period noted England’s insatiable appetite for luxury items such as silk.
Edmund Howes described London as a “citty filled more abundantly with all sorts of silks […]
and all costly ornaments and curious workmanship, than any other province, so as London well
deserves to beare the name of the choicest storehouse in the world” (qtd. Orlin Material
Londoners 175). By some, however, the “excess of silk […] [and] of wyne and spyce” and any
promotion of these materials is viewed as a “consent to the robbery of the realm” (Tawney and
Power 2:124-27). Foreigners like Jacob Rathgeb, visiting London in 1592, “were impressed by
the ‘exceedingly fine clothes’ of London women of relatively meager means, for they ‘give all
their attention to their ruffs and stuffs to such a degree indeed that…many a one does not hesitate
to wear velvet in the streets, which is common with them, whilst perhaps at home they have not a
piece of dry bread’” (Orlin 185). This statement also points out that many were willing to spend
above their means in order to appear to be in “fashion” and to appear above their own God-given
station.
Silk became such a popular commodity in England that it was able to appear in some
form among all classes4. The lower classes were able to buy ribbons and other small pieces of
silk to incorporate into their wardrobes. The consumption of luxury goods by English people can
9
be seen in Thomas Lodge’s Wits miserie, and the worlds madness discovering the devils incarnat
of this age which states:
The Plowman that in times past was contented in Russet, must now adaies have
his doublet of the fashion with wide cuts, his garters of fine silke of Granado to
meet his Sis on Sunday: the farmer that was contented in times past with his
Russet Frocke & Mockado sleeves now sels a Cow against Easter to buy him
silken geere for his credit. Is not this Fashions a jolly fellow that worketh this?
(14)
The farmer has neglected his work because of his desires to both obtain luxury goods and to be
in fashion. Yet, these desires do harm to the English economy because they detract from native
industry.
In 1592-3 over 20,000 lbs of organzine, long raw, short raw, and silk nubs were brought
into the port of London alone; the total subsidy was over £2,250 (Linthicum 112). Raw silk
became the largest of English raw material imports: 1560-11,904 lbs; 1621-117,740 lbs; and
1669-357,434 lbs (Davis 125). From 1560 to 1669, there was a 2,902% increase in the import of
silks into England. Breaking it down further—from 1560 to 1621, just over sixty years, there
was an 889% increase, and from 1621 to 1669, just under 50 years, there was a 203% increase in
the imports of silk. It can be argued that the significantly lower percent change for the rise in
imported silk materials from 1621 to 1669 was because of the mounting efforts of England to
form its own sericulture industry. Jan van der Streit’s engravings of silk production show the
increased desires of many to create a sericulture industry for England; the engravings illustrate
how silk was produced: “adult men brought in the mulberry branches, women and children
tended the worms and pulled the thread from the cocoons, and aristocratic women embroidered
silk textiles” (Peck 87). Sericulture was not a gender-discriminating, nor as the aristocratic
embroidering women demonstrate, a class-discriminating industry; one of its greatest appeals
was its ability to bring England’s people together for the common goal of being superior in trade,
particularly with regards to cloth.
While not the sincerest of apologies for silk, Thomas Moffet’s The Silkewormes and their
flies (1599) also demonstrates the rising importance of silk in England. Moffet makes the call
for silk to become the native industry of England:
Up Britaine blouds, rise hearts of English race,
10
Why should your clothes be courser then the rest?
Whose feature tall, and high aspiring face,
Aime at great things, and challenge ev’n the best.
Begge country men no more in sackcloth base,
Being by me of such a trade possess:
That shall enrich your selves and children more,
Then ere it did Naples or Spaine before. (2: 70)
Echoing Drayton’s sentiments, the adoption of the silk industry in England will allow the
country to outdo its competitors and to make England a nation to be emulated and not the other
way around. Despite his mocking of silk’s benefits—“For what is silke but ev’n a
Quintessence,/Made without hands beyond all humane sense?” (2: 67)—Moffet’s work
demonstrates the changing notions of silk amongst England’s peoples. Moffet in fact points out
what many proponents of the silk industry claimed England’s adoption of the industry would do
for the country: “What neede I count how many winders live,/How many twisters eke, and
weavers thrive,/Uppon this trade? Which foode doth daily give/To such as else with famine
needs must strive:/What multitudes of poore doth it relieve,/That otherwise could scarce be kept
alive?” (2: 69). Silk has the power to feed and employ the poor, putting idle hands to work, and
to bring wealth to the nation like it has never seen before. This is an important benefit as
England had just gotten out of a four year famine (starting in 1594), which was then promptly
followed by an outbreak of the plague in 1598 (Stevenson 180).
Silk’s popularity is also acknowledged in Samuel Hartlib’s The reformed Virginian silk-
worm (1655):
O precious fleece! Which only did adorne
The sacred loins of Princes heretofore:
But our proud age, with prodigall abuse
Hath so profan’d the old honorable use:
That Shift[e]rs now, that scarce have bread to eat
Disdain plain Silk, unless it be beset
With one of those brave Metals, whose desire
Burns greedy soules with an impartiall fire. (40)
11
Hartlib implies that plain silk has become so commonplace that adorned silk is now more
desirable. Notice that the words “precious fleece” are used to describe silk. Here, silk has
replaced the native industry of wool—the sheep has been replaced by the worm.
The monarchs’ propensity for ostentatious displays of wealth can be appreciated when
looking at their fondness for silk. In 1521, Henry VIII had 60 gowns valued at £6,140—thirty-
three of these pieces of clothes were lined with silk—the most expensive item was a purple
velvet gown furred with sable, valued at £430 (Hayward 166). Henry VIII used the gift of
clothing as a sign of his favor and patronage; these gifts were “spread widely between 86 men
and 5 female recipients” (Hayward 174). The only way in which Queen Elizabeth knowingly
allowed Cecil to increase his income from official sources was by granting him the farm of
customs on imported silks (Stone, “The Fruits of Office” 94). In 1612 the value of the farm had
increased so much that the sub-contractors agreed to pay Cecil £7,000 a year (worth
approximately £1 million) (Stone, “The Fruits of Office” 95).
King James was obsessed with establishing England as a center of silk production. In
1609 he sent letters to the Lord Lieutenant of all Shires giving instructions for the planting of
mulberry trees and the rearing of silkworms (Linthicum 113). Between 1610 and 1613 James
“fanatically pursued the establishment of a domestic silk industry, with trial silkworm rooms,
and mulberry tree plantations at Whitehall, Oatlands, and Greenwhich and a special keeper;
allegedly staff had to carry insects wherever he went” (Ravelhofer 128). Munton Jennings,
“Keeper of the Garden of Theobalds,” was granted £50 “for making a place for the silkworms
and for providing mulberry leaves;” Richard Lecavill, Groom of the Chamber, received three
months’ expenses “whilst travelling about with the kings silkworms…wither soever his Majesty
went” (Peck, Consuming Splendor 87, 91). James’ obsession with silk is again shown when in
1609 he made a special plea on behalf of Robert Thiery to be admitted into the freedom of the
city because of his extraordinary skills and inventions, being the first in England to weave
material from the silk of silkworms nourished in England (Luu 62). James puts his own interests
before the concerns of his subjects. While these actions can be viewed as an attempt to reduce
the amount of silk importation, James’ own personal silk fetish, and the example that he thus
puts forth—King James himself was accused of wasteful extravagance: “over a period of five
years from 1608 to 1613 he bought a new cloak every month, a new waistcoat every 3 weeks, a
new suit every 10 days, a new pair of stockings, boots and garters every four or five days and a
12
new pair of gloves every day” (Stone 257-8)—placed his efforts at creating a domestic industry
in jeopardy.
There is also a portrait of Queen Anne in a gown embroidered with silk worms, painted
by Pugh in 1609. In 1616 Anne commissioned Inigo Jones to design an “elegant silkworm
house” at Oatlands that was “two stories high, had four small rooms downstairs, and a 400
square foot room above with shelves for silkworms;” John Bonseil, the royal gardener was
keeper of the vines and silkworms at Oatlands—his post was later taken over by John Tradescant
who received a salary of £100 per year—by 1640 this post was worth £1000 per year (Peck,
Consuming Splendor 91-2).
William Stallenge, called “the first great author of making silk in our land” by Henry
Peacham, was given a seven year grant by James to import mulberry seeds and set them in any
part of the realm; he received £259 for his expenditures and that year produced nine pounds of
silk (Peck, Consuming Splendor 98-99). His Instructions for the Increasing of Mulberie Trees
(1609) used woodcuts to show readers how to cultivate mulberries, raise silkworms, and spin
silk. James tried to promote English sericulture several times (but failed each time):
In 1608, borrowing French policy, the King ordered all those of ability: “to
purchase and plant 10,000 mulberry trees at the rate of six shillings the hundred
containing five score plants. There shalbe published in print a plaine instruction
and direction for the increasing of the said mulberry trees, the breeding of the
silkworms, and all other things needful for the perfecting of a work every way so
commendable and profitable.” (qtd. Peck, Consuming Splendor 1)
But perhaps the most popular and greatly printed of images related to sericulture were Letellier’s
woodcuts of 1603 which appeared in “every major English tract on silk between 1607 and 1655”
(Peck, Consuming Splendor 95). With the failure of English sericulture, hopes were passed onto
Virginia with the announcement that Virginia soil naturally produced mulberry trees. James
proclaimed that silk would be a profitable industry for the colonists and should be pursued over
the “despised” tobacco.
The change in perception of silk as a luxury good to one as a source of money or profit
can be associated with the shifting practices and associations of silk weaving. In the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries, silk weaving was a prestigious art form practiced by many aristocratic
women; however, by the middle of the seventeenth century, silk weaving was performed by
13
those of lower status—aliens, women, and children—due to the emergence of capitalism. As
Christopher Berry argues, a demoralization of luxury took place in the second half of the
seventeenth century; as luxury loses its immoral overtones, “luxury and fashion are acceptable
because they stimulate consumption which in turn generates trade and employment,” and as Peck
acknowledges, some luxury imports are re-labeled as staples of English economy instead of
foreign commodities (Berry 104, 112; Peck, Consuming Splendor 9). In fact, Thomas Roe’s
speech to parliament demonstrates this assimilation of foreign goods and turning them into
native practices when he states that “nothing exported of our owne growth hath balanced our
riotous consumption at home, but those forraine commodities, which I call naturalized, that is the
surplus of our East-India trade, which being brought home in greater quantity than are spent,
within the Kingdome, are exported againe, and become in value and use as naturall
commodities” (5). England’s fanatical propensity for ornate display through the medium of
luxury goods has enabled them to appropriate foreign products as their own and to their own
benefit.
In his dedicatory poem “To his owne, Worthy Master Geffe,” Robert Goodwin claims
that with Nicholas Geffe’s The Perfect Use of Silke-wormes and Their Benefit “our populous
land is free from forraigne broile, These iron times but little business give,/Yet now the
discontents his head may toyle,/And learne a quiet virtuous life to live,/A blessed med’cine faire
Imployment is,/Curring sicke minds that else would do amisse” (4v). Silk is seen as a curative
for the idleness that supposedly strikes England’s poor; it is placed in positive moral terms and is
associated with being able to create a virtuous life for its producer. Goodwin uses medicinal
language to convey to the reader that England is struck with a disease that can only be cured by
the adoption of Geffe’s proposal to make silk a native industry for England.
Nicholas Geffe’s The Perfect Use of Silke-wormes and Their Benefit conflates England’s
native wool industry with the foreign silk industry. Geffe’s argument for a domestic silk
industry links “consumption to production and emphasize[s] the creation of a disciplined labor
force” (Peck, Consuming Splendor 97). Pointing out the disproportionate amount of money
England’s people spend on silk, Geffe writes:
we are not ignorant of the store of silk continually used in this realm, amounting
yearly to a mass of money in which strangers fleece from us, that within a small
time we may keep in our purses, by having silk sufficient here at home…we may
14
as well be silke-masters as sheepe-masters…Let us therefore turn our idle wastes
and lost grounds into woods of mulberries, let us plentifully plant them with trees,
as we are so abundantly filled with people.
(qtd. Peck, Consuming Splendor 1)
England’s native industry, wool, is exchanged for the (foreign) industry it demands to take part
in—silk. The peoples of England purchase so much silk that they might as well be experts on
the industry, and because even farmers have begun to ignore their agricultural duties in order to
satisfy their desires to comply with the latest fashions, England “may as well be [made up of]
silke-masters as sheepe-masters.” Geffe calls for the nation to capitalize on its consumers’
demands.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that silk served as a formative nation-building
tool for England. I begin with my first chapter by looking at the rising importance of silk in
England, and the dissemination of silk to the masses. With the spreading influence of silk
throughout the country, silk begins to become a more popular means of discourse in drama.
Thomas Middleton’s Michaelmas Term serves as a starting point for my exploration into the
power of silk. This play allows me to examine the class anxieties that were prevalent throughout
England during this time period. Satin, a type of silk, plays a large role in the treatment of class
in Michaelmas Term, and by focusing on this aspect I am able to demonstrate the power that silk
exerts as it has the ability to make people forget their own ancestry.
Moving from the native to the foreign, I analyze Thomas Dekker’s play The Shoemaker’s
Holiday in my second chapter to reveal the anxieties exhibited toward the threat of the foreign.
Instead of merely using the play as a forum to denigrate the foreign, Dekker uses his play as a
platform to advocate unity amongst the peoples of England without regard to one’s social status.
This matter is more complex than it may first appear on the surface in that the Dutch share a
rather unique relationship with the English because not only do they often find themselves
bouncing back and forth between being enemies and allies, but the Dutch are largely responsible
for providing the English with knowledge about the silk industry.
In my final chapter I have chosen to examine the structure of the court masque, and in
particular James Shirley’s The Triumph of Peace. Costumes play a large role in any drama, but
particularly in court masques, which were entirely about display. Shirley’s masque differs from
15
other court masques because, as the most expensive court masque ever staged, Shirley’s masque
utilizes the medium of luxury (in the form of silks) to signal to the king that he could not rule
without law. The costumes of Peace, Justice, and Law serve in The Triumph of Peace as a
marker for the masque’s audience of the trouble that is to come with the impending Civil War.
My thesis concludes as I look further into the seventeenth century and into the beginning of the
eighteenth in order to show the increased support for a silk industry in England that paved the
way for the nation’s ability to become an empire.
16
CHAPTER ONE
“THE WORLD NEED KNOW LITTLE OF MY SILK HOSE:” THE RISING IMPORTANCE
OF SILK IN ENGLAND
Valerie Cumming states that Tudor sartorial grandeur consisted of “bulky, swaggering,
and highly decorated clothing” and although “many luxury goods were imported […] the English
people assimilated without losing their own strong sense of identity” (20). However, while this
was most likely true for Henry VIII’s reign, where such luxury cloths as silk were rare and
mostly seen only at court masques, by Elizabeth’s reign one can see more of a desire for foreign
materials. In 1590, John Stow wrote that “there were more silk shops in Cheapside during the
latter years of Elizabeth than there had formerly been in all England” (qtd. Peck, “Creating a Silk
Industry” p2). Further demonstrating silk’s popularity is a petition sent to the Queen on behalf
of the Skinners’ Guild stating: “the usual wearing of furs is utterly neglected and eaten out by the
too ordinary lavish and unnecessary use of velvets and silkes” (qtd. Grass 111, emphasis added).
Even some several decades earlier, in 1574, William Camden wrote:
In these times, the superfluity of Apparell so prevailed in England, (by a Vice
peculiar to the Nation, which pleaseth it selfe by imitating others) that the ancient
fashion fell in such disgrace, that the men, by a new fashion of habit and too much
bravery, made manifest the filthinesse and insolency of their spirits, swaggering
every where, covered with silke, gold, and silver, pure and mingled. (346)
Over a sixty-year period, imports of silk fabrics increased by 55%; even more remarkable was
the rise in raw silk imports which increased nearly 600%.5 Not only had luxury materials
become more popular and more readily available to the rising middle class, London itself, by the
end of Elizabeth’s reign, had risen high up in the silk industry.
Elizabeth’s introduction to silk was the beginning of the monarchy’s obsession with the
luxury material, which soon transferred to the people of England. In 1560, Elizabeth’s silk
woman, Mrs. Montague, presented Elizabeth with a pair of silk stockings. Elizabeth thought
they looked too soft and frail and so asked Lords Leicester and Burghly for their opinions.
Although written a century and a half after the actual event, John Alexander’s account of
Elizabeth’s first encounter with silk, Ye Historie of Ye First Paire of Silke Stockings Made in this
Country and Worn by Elizabeth, shows the importance of memorializing such an instance, as it
17
was the burgeoning silk-weaving industry at the beginning of the seventeenth century that laid
the foundation for the empire that England had become and which Alexander writes from.
Leicester reportedly replied that “they are fit for the fairies to wear, and as your Gracious
Majestie is all beautiful, in fact a Fairie Queene, wanting but this gossamer-wear to perfect your
attire” (qtd. Grass 102). Lord Burghley, however, tried to appeal to Elizabeth’s concern for the
commonweal as well as remind her of the sumptuary laws she herself had passed forbidding
common people from wearing expensive dress, said that cloth hose were good enough for
everyone and to wear silk hose “would upset the cloathe hose trade” (qtd. Grass 102). At work
here are the conflicting desires to appeal to one’s own vanity while also trying to think of the
good of others; during this time period in early modern England, luxury items were constantly at
odds with native goods. Sumptuary laws themselves show the growing contentions between
foreign and domestic industries. Although the sumptuary laws were not strictly enforced, the
lower classes were told to wear plain clothing—from domestic cloth, while only those at or
above the degree of a Baron or a Baron’s son (or a gentleman attending the Queen) could wear
silk stockings.6 Elizabeth reportedly addressed Burghley’s concern with the reply that “the world
need know little of my silk hose” (qtd. Grass 102), reflecting her acknowledgement of the
heightened anxieties about the foreign at the beginning of her reign. This comment also
demonstrates Elizabeth’s willingness to allow her insatiable appetite for new clothing to overrule
her concerns for England. Elizabeth’s first encounter with silk stockings was not the only
occasion in which she tried to keep the increase of foreign influence and goods a secret; in 1567,
the Queen attempted to recruit a Parisian tailor without others finding out (including the French
queen herself) (Schneider 115). Some thirty years after Elizabeth’s first encounter with silk
stockings, silk no longer needed to be hidden from the masses. Indeed, it would have been hard
to take the fabric away from the peoples of England by that time. By the end of Elizabeth’s reign
and into the beginning of James’, silk had become a means for England to create a national
identity. England’s burgeoning silk industry became a way of proclaiming “victory” over
foreign industries and showed, as capitalism emerged in early modern England, that the nation
could be a formidable competitor. Although England exported vast amounts of wool and was
indeed the foremost producer of the material, wool did not hold the promise of wealth and power
that silk did. England’s desires to emulate foreign practices, not only in terms of clothing but
18
also in terms of business, often overrode the country’s supposed allegiance to its own native
industry.
The deception that Elizabeth initially intended to maintain when she reportedly replied
that “the world need know little of [her] silk hose” reflects the hypocrisy of the monarchy and
how the native cloth industry began to be undermined from the very top of society. Because the
clothing industry employed more people than any other, it was one of the earliest places where
technological progress was discouraged: “any ‘ingine’ which through its operation took the bread
out of the mouth of some handicraft man” was greatly opposed (Grass 88). An example of this
opposition can be seen with William Lee, an inventor, who approached the Queen in hopes of
getting a patent on his knitting loom; however, his loom would have taken jobs from hundreds
working in the knitting industry. When he was finally granted audience with Elizabeth she told
him that patenting his loom would make her people beggars. Although this may have been a
valid point, it is also worth considering that Elizabeth had expected a device that created silk
stockings and not the wool stockings that Lee presented, which she now viewed as insulting
(Grass 103). Native industry becomes subordinate to both the foreign and personal desire.
While silk was a luxury item, it also had some practical qualities, at least in terms particular to
England. Silk is very elastic and in fact will stretch 10-20% over its length without breaking,
and because of this stretch it is possible to knit with silk in the same way as wool (Kolander 12).
This quality enabled England to more quickly form a silk industry. Silk also has the ability to
feel both cool and warm depending on temperature so that one would be kept cool in the summer
and warm in the winter.7
Obviously, Elizabeth’s wishes to keep her silk stockings a secret did not hold for long.
The desire for silks grew immensely at the end of the sixteenth century into the seventeenth
century. Fashions set by the queen were emulated by courtiers who were in turn copied by the
rising middle class; many who objected to such ornate display in clothing thought that the
queen’s own excessive dress served as an encouragement for others to fashion themselves in the
same manner. Montaigne writes that to ban the lower classes from wearing silk (and other such
luxury fabrics) is to incite desire, because one wants most what one cannot have: “to let none but
Princes eate dainties, or weare velvets, and clothes of Tissew, and interdict the people to do-it,
what is-it but to give reputation unto those things, and to encrease their longing to use them?”
(145). The demand for silk amongst the people of England is seen when looking at the number
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of people employed in working with the fabric from 1590 to 1630; the number of people
employed in work with foreign raw silk, just in the city and suburbs of London alone,
skyrocketed from only 300 to over 14,000 (Maclean 11).
The growing influx of foreign, luxury goods into England was met with resistance and
criticism; many objections were similar to that of Crosse who states, “everyman has fallen in
love with himself…his mind is set on fashions” (qtd. Schneider 118). Phillip Stubbes, in The
Anatomie of Abuses, claims that clothes made of “silk, velvet, taffetie, and such like” are
wasteful, and remembers “the day hath bene, when one might have brought two clothes for lesse
tha[n] now he can have one” (81). The court was not the only place that served as an
encouragement to commoners’ increasing desires for luxury imports; the theater served as the
exemplar for extravagant clothing worn by those who dressed outside their station. In a 1577
anti-theatrical tract, John Northbrooke writes, “I am persuaded that Satan hath not a more
speedie way and fitter schoole to work and teach his desire, to bring men and women into his
snare of concupiscence and filthie lustes of wicked whoredome, than those places and playes,
and theaters are” (59-60). Silk was viewed by many as a wasteful extravagance and was often
associated with lust and described as a source of contamination. The theater enabled people
from all classes to come to the same venue at the same time; as Jean Howard states, “People at
the theater […] are released into a realm of Protean shapeshifting with enormous destabilizing
consequences for the social order” (27). The theater turns into a site of cross-contamination
where the upper class encounters the lower class, and the non-nobility and lower classes are then
infected with the desire to dress above their station, not only by the upper class that they see but
also by the actors that appear before them on stage.
The theater becomes a place where one can forget his or her identity, either literally by
dressing above one’s station or by viewing actors on stage who do so: “the theater radically
displaced memory by translating the rituals of court and city alike from their ‘proper’ locations
to the liberties to the north and south of London” (Stallybrass 305). The ease with which such
deceptive practices could take place was a source of anxiety for city officials. The risk taken on
by dressing out of one’s station at church or in the work place was too great because these places
were most likely to be watched by the authorities; however, in the theaters it was nearly
impossible to regulate who was wearing what, and “audiences use[d] the liberty of theatrical
space to rival the actors themselves in their dress” (Jones and Stallybrass 190). During Queen
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Elizabeth’s reign, more royal orders having to do with dress were issued than at any other time in
England’s history (Garber 26). In response to this, and as the previous quotation from
Montaigne demonstrated, it would seem not to be a coincidence that Elizabeth’s reign was also
the point for the greatest increase in luxury items in England. William Camden, writing further
about the “superfluity of Apparell” writes:
The Queene marking that this superfluity drew every yeere out of the Kingdome
(to the dammage of the publike) great quantity of money, for the buying of silke
and other strange Merchandizes, and that many Gentlemen, who might doe good
service to the Publike, and others, to seeme to be He, did not onely consume their
demeanes, to their particular dammage, but also increased their debts, used
deceits, and by this meanes fell into the nets of the Law, and after they had
prodigally lavisht their goods, studied to make a change, she endevoured to
provide a fit remedy for it. And although by the Lawes of HENRY the Eighth and
MARY, she could prevaile against them, and draw from it great summes of
money, neverthelesse she rather lov'd to prevent it by a simple commandement.
She commanded therefore, that within 14. dayes, every one should forme his
apparell to the prescribed fashion, if he would not incurre the severity of the
Lawe, and shee herselfe began this reformation in her court. (346)
Here, Elizabeth is depicted as trying to protect native industry over the foreign. Silk, however,
once introduced into the mainstream, could not be made to disappear. Instead of trying to fight
the English peoples’ desires to own and wear silk, by the end of Elizabeth’s reign, silk began to
become assimilated into England’s culture.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Michaelmas Term is a play about inheritance, pitting stranger against citizen and country
against city. Set in Jacobean England during Michaelmas term—a time associated with clothing
in the play: “the drapers’ harvest for footcloths, riding-suits, walking-suits, chamber gowns, and
hall gowns” (2.3.191-192)—the play depicts the changing landscape of England from that of a
feudal society to a capitalistic society, from the decline of the landed gentry to the rise of the
merchant class. In Middleton’s plays, descriptions of clothing abound not only in characters’
speeches but in the stage directions as well. Part of the appeal of Michaelmas Term when
looking into the silk industry in Renaissance England is that one of the central occurrences in the
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play revolves around the donning of a satin gown (by the Country Wench). Valued most for its
“mirror” quality, or ability to show off silk’s luster, satin was one of the most expensive and
desired of the sixteenth century silks, showing up frequently in Elizabeth’s wardrobe accounts
(Linthicum 123). Satin in fact plays a large part throughout the play, from the aforementioned
gown, to the white satin suit of Quomodo, to the set of disguises worn by Shortyard and
Falselight (they go through a total of four different disguises during the course of the play).
Middleton continues to point to the significance of silk with the reference to Master
Gum—whose name refers to the silk industry—in Act 2, Scene 1. As it comes from the cocoon,
raw silk is coated with a protective layer called silk gum, or seracin. Raw silk is silk with all of
its gum, which is silk in its strongest and most elastic and durable state (and shouldn’t be
confused with the fashionable “raw silk” fabric, woven from noil silk) (Kolander 16). Gum also
could be deceptively applied to silk to make it seem glossier. In this scene, Shortyard asks his
boy to get 200-300 pounds for him on credit from the mercer, which shows that one’s first
thought of where to get such a store of money is relegated to those most readily associated with
the silk trade. In 1567-8, fifty-three mercers imported 7,000 ells, 2,000 yards, 60 pieces, and 380
pounds of silk (Sutton 471). Mercers often made their profit by undervaluing their imports,
sometimes by as much as 50%, and would conceal the real price and quantity of goods by
smuggling; imported goods, once in London, were often marked up to the ideal of 70% (Sutton
465). The problem of goods being smuggled in to England, and creating a loss of income for the
monarchy, can be seen in many documents of the time period, such as the “Ordering Declaration
of Goods Seized upon the Sea” where prizes from ships were pirated and not reported to the
Queen:
all such persons as have bought, exchanged, or have any ways received […] any
foreign coin, bullion of gold or silver, jewels, pearls, stones, musk, wrought or
raw silk, cochineal, indigo, or any other merchandises […] and do not bring in
and deliver [them] shall be held and taken as felons and abettors to pirates.
(Tawney and Power 3. 742)
Interestingly, out of all the merchandise mentioned, silk is the only cloth specifically mentioned
by name, thereby emphasizing the growing importance silk had in England.
In the introduction to Michaelmas Term, the allegorical Michaelmas term, coming from
the country, exchanges his white cloak, a “weed […] for the country” for his “civil black” gown
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because “we must be civil now, and match our evil” (Ind. 4, 5). This black and white imagery
sets up the pitting of country (innocence and purity) against city (evil and corruption); the shift
from white to black is seen particularly in the parallel figures of the Country Wench and Richard
Easy, as they both have left the country (and their simple, virtuous lives) for the city. Modeling
this transformation is a “fellow poor” brought in with the other three terms to Michaelmas Term
who gives him “rich apparel, a page, and a pander” and wraps him in “silk and sliver” (Ind. 29.1-
3; 32). The ease with which the “fellow poor” receives such goods suggests the ever-growing
availability to city-dwellers of such luxury fabrics as silk.
What was previously only available to the noble, aristocratic classes (luxurious clothes,
foreign commodities) soon began to trickle down to the lower classes with the spread and
development of capitalism. Although those from the lower classes could not afford silk apparel,
in terms of skirts, breeches, etc., some were able to buy such accoutrements as ribbons. Ideally,
sumptuary laws not only enabled the monarchy to ensure that there would be a need for native
cloth but also served as an easy visual marker to establish who belonged to which class; in reality
the sumptuary laws were hard to enforce and eventually were abandoned at the beginning of
James’ reign. In Michaelmas Term, the rising middle class (the citizens) want land like the
landed gentry, and just as they wear clothes “outside of their station,” the citizens desire land
outside of their birthright.
This desire for land outside of the citizens’ birthright can be correlated with England’s
desire for a luxury material that they were unable to produce (until nearly half a century later) on
their own. England’s appropriation and incorporation of the foreign (through both language and
dress) is echoed in early modern drama—remember Portia’s description of the English suitor in
The Merchant of Venice, he’d “bought his behaviour everywhere” (1.2.72-73), and Easy’s asking
Shortyard if he “like[s] my Roman hand, i’faith?”8 The English were a society of “mimic-men”
imitating alien models of power, wealth, and luxury (Vitkus 9). Yet Englishmen took this one
step further by being not only mimickers of other countries but “mimic-men” moving between
classes. The nation’s simultaneous desires to both uphold native industries and to imitate foreign
fashions, commodities, and even business practices creates conflict, which in turn forms the
milieu out of which England’s national identity merges.
A reflection of this conflict in national identity is seen with Andrew Lethe (Gruel) and
the Country Wench’s forgetfulness of their original stations and ancestry. Rearage comments on
23
Lethe, saying, “H’as forgot His father’s name, poor Walter Gruel, that begot Him, fed him, and
brought him up” (1.1.144-146), and a few lines later:
‘Mongst strange eyes
That no more know him than he knows himself
That’s nothing now, for Master Andrew Lethe,
A gentleman of most received parts,
Forgetfulness, lust, impudence, and falsehood,
And one’s special courtly quality,
To wit, no wit at all. (1.1.148-154).
Although “his assumed name […] may involve a pun on the Scotch city of Leith, [while] its
primary reference is to the river of forgetfulness in Hades” Rearage’s comment points out the
tendency of the social climber to forget and deny his origins (Brown xvi). Later in the same
scene, Lethe himself says, “I must be forgiven. Acquaintance, dear society, suits, and things/ Do
so flow to me, That had I not the better memory, ‘Twould be a wonder I should know myself”
(1.1.167-171). Here, clothing seems to be a part of the problem in the transmission of memory—
it stands as an obstacle for Lethe to remember or acknowledge his heritage, and this therefore in
some ways aligns him with England’s own struggle to form a national identity. Country Wench
shows this same lack of understanding herself when Hellgill asks her if she thinks her own father
would recognize her in her newly attired state, to which she replies: “How can he know me,
when I scarce know myself?” (3.1.30-1). Foreign, luxury materials are depicted as having the
ability to overpower and eclipse the native.
Unlike the Country Wench, Lethe knowingly denies his parentage: “My mother! Curse
of poverty! Does she come up to me to shame me, to betray my birth, and cast soil upon my new
suit? Let her pass me, I’ll take no notice of her. Scurvey murrey kersey!” (1.1.236-239).
Murrey kersey was a mulberry-colored coarse cloth (Levin 19n). Most interesting in this excerpt
is Lethe’s attention to clothing, taking notice of Mother Gruel’s dress and associating her with a
base, native cloth. This attention to clothing and appearances is echoed by Mother Gruel when
Lethe asks her if she knows him and she replies: “Alas, an’t please your worship, I never saw
such a glorious suit since the hour I was kersen’d” (1.1.263-264); also striking is the repetition of
“kersey” with the similar sounding “kersen’d” (christened). Lethe plans to employ his mother as
his servant in hopes that she will “ne’er be noted mine, to shame my blood, And drop my
24
staining birth upon my raiment” (1.1.270-271). What unites these two passages is the idea of
one’s birth or heritage having the ability to taint one’s physical appearance while clothes have
the ability to conceal essential flesh and blood. Here, “blood” has the ability to “stain” Lethe’s
appearance.
With the rise of the merchant class and the continued disregard for the sumptuary laws,
the non-nobility were able to appropriate the clothing of those beyond their stations. An
acknowledgement of their “real” heritage would mean the acceptance of the fact that they were
“pretenders”; their birth would stain their raiment. This idea of the fear of being soiled by one’s
ancestry is reminiscent of Thomas Giles, who implies that clothing can be dishonored (as if a
person) by circulation: he argues that the clothes have suffered from “the soyll of the wereres
who for the most parte be of the meanest sort of mene”—this soiling was “to the grett dyscredytt
of the same apparel” (Jones and Stallybrass 191). Here, Jones and Stallybrass’ concept of the
“materials of memory” is contradicted when the donning of clothes in Michaelmas Term leads to
forgetfulness or a denial of memory—clothing holds no memorial value in this play. And what
is even more interesting is that not just any type of cloth causes such forgetfulness, but luxury
cloth—here satin (silk)—demonstrates the power the foreign has to eclipse the native. By
denying luxury clothing the ability to retain memory, Middleton places an emphasis on the
material itself. Clothes are not able to become people or “ghosts” of their previous wearers; the
audience is instead forced to become aware of the power of an industry rather than make a
certain association between one outfit and a particular person.
Although clothing holds no memorial value in Michaelmas Term, clothing, specifically
satin, is instead assigned a moral value with a negative connotation9. Thomasine describes her
husband Quomodo “when his white satin suit’s on, but like a maggot crept out of a nutshell, a
fair body and a foul neck; those parts that are covered of him looks indifferent well, because we
cannot see ‘em” (2.3.12-15). This statement demonstrates the ability of fine clothing to hide foul
insides, much as in King Lear, when the title character says, “Through tattered rags small vices
do appear/ Robes and furred gowns hide all” (20.158-9). As Quomodo suggests when he says,
“shift thyself speedily into the shape of gallantry” (1.1.118), clothing (like putty) easily shapes a
persons’ appearances and the perceptions others have of them. Clothing obscures the wearer’s
heritage: “Remember a loose-bodied gown, wench, and let it go; wires and tires, bents and bums,
felts and falls, thou shalt deceive the world, that gentlewomen indeed shall not be known from
25
others” (1.2.12-15). Luxury cloths, in Quomodo’s case satin, have the ability to disguise the
“foul” lower class, which in turn suggests the power that has been unwittingly handed over to the
lower classes—the ability to imitate (and thereby contaminate) the upper classes.
The temptation of material goods proves too much for the Country Wench, who readily
exchanges her chastity for a satin gown:
COUNTRY WENCH: If I had not a desire to go like a gentlewoman, you
should be hang’d ere you should get me to’t, I warrant you.
HELLGILL: Nay, that’s certain,
Nor a thousand more of you;
I know you are all chaste enough,
Till one thing or other tempt you!
Deny a satin gown and dare you now?
COUNTRY WENCH: You know I have no power to do’t, and that makes you so
willful; for what woman is there such a beast that will deny
any thing that is good?
(1.2.27-36).
This dialogue between Hellgill and the Country Wench suggests that material goods in particular
easily sway women, and interestingly enough the Country Wench associates satin with “the
good,” contrary to others’ opinions of the material. A few lines later Hellgill says: “How easily
soft women are undone. So farewell wholesome weeds, where treasure pants, and welcome
silks, where lies disease and wants” (2.1.50-52). The idea that there is a price to be exacted for
this excessive apparel (and in particular that silks bring on lust, lechery and disease) is echoed
throughout many sermons of the time period, including the homily entitled “Against Excess of
Apparel,” but also, because silk is a foreign commodity, it is sometimes associated with evil, as
in “A Petition from the Merchant Adventurers to the Privy Council to Suppress Interlopers.”
Hellgill ultimately asserts the power attributed to clothing: “You talk of an alteration; here’s the
thing itself. What base birth does not raiment make glorious? And what glorious births do not
rags make infamous?” (3.1.1-3).
While Michaelmas Term pits citizen against stranger, upper against lower class, by the
end of the play everything is righted—like stays with like. Instead of marrying Susan, Lethe
marries the Country Wench, a woman of his own station, and as Easy says; “the lands know the
26
right heir” (5.3.76). In the end, Lethe is forced to acknowledge his heritage and admit that he is
the son of Mother Gruel, whose closing speech sums up the play rather nicely:
How art thou chang’d!
Is this suit fit for thee, a tooth-drawer’s son?
This country has e’en spoil’d thee since thou cam’st hither;
But now whole clothes, and ragged manners.
It may well be said that truth goes naked,
For when thou hadst scarce a shirt, thou hadst
More truth about thee.
(5.3.157-163).
It is not only the city, but the clothes that have corrupted Lethe’s morals; it is as if fine clothes
and good morals are incompatible. Clothes cannot change a person’s innate status; they only
change society’s perceptions. Michaelmas Term perpetuates the idea of a divided nation; one
that in pieces cannot overcome the threat of foreign industry against native practice. Thomas
Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday proposes a new and radical idea—that of a united nation—
one where class lines have been erased and which therefore allows England to assume its own
culturally diverse identity and begin its steps towards nation-building. It is only when England
comes together and begins to actively erase visual class markers (i.e. the termination of the
sumptuary laws in 1604) that England begins to form its own native silk industry, which leads to
its future capacity to become an empire.
27
CHAPTER TWO
“THE PHANTASTICALL FOLLIE OF OUR NATION:” THE FOREIGN AT WORK IN
ENGLAND AS SEEN IN THOMAS DEKKER’S THE SHOEMAKER’S HOLIDAY
The theater served as a place where the anxieties of the foreign could become tangible.
England’s conflicting desires both to reject all things foreign and also to emulate foreign fashions
are evident in early modern drama: “Drama was an important medium through which the
different appearances, behaviors, and beliefs of other cultures were imported, distorted,
mimicked and displayed” (Vitkus 29). The concern with the foreign is also evidenced by many
documents from the time period that deal with complaints against strangers and foreign goods.
In a 1563 Act concerning “forreyne wares” it is stated that:
Divers Cities and Townes within this Realme of Englande [are] muche thereby
impaired, the whole Realme greatly endomaged, and other Countreys
notablye enriched, and the People therof well set on Woorck to theyre
Commodities and Lyvinges […] to the greate discorage of the skillfull
Woorckemen of this Realme, being in verye deede nothing inferiour to
any Stranger in the Faculties aforesaid
(Tawney and Power, I, 126-7).
Here, the English people are threatened not only in terms of religion or the possibility of war, but
by the harmful effect of foreign goods on the English economy. By the 1590s, “trade interests
were national interests and merchants worked for the good of England”; trade had reached such a
level of importance that any threat to its safety was seen as a way of waging war with England
(Fleck 8-9). Although immigrants claimed that they escaped to England to avoid religious
persecution, many of the English feared that these immigrants merely sought better economic
opportunities. England therefore had to assert its ability to compete in the market of material
goods—England’s people are “in verye deede nothing inferiour to any Stranger.”
Eight years after the 1563 Act, in “A Complaynt of the Cytizens of London against the
great number of strangers in and about this cytty,” six complaints are drawn against the
“straungers”: that they should not “take any lodgings or houses within the citty”; that they should
sell their merchandise within six weeks after landing in London; that they “ought not to sell any
merchaundizes by Retayle”; that they ought to put back the money taken for their commodities
28
into the commodities of England; that they not buy and sell merchandise to one another; and
finally that they not “bee in companies or Societyes” (Tawney and Power, I, 308-9). In 1593, the
anonymous ‘Dutch Church Libel’ warns the Dutch to “conceit it well for savegard of your
lyves/Your goods, your children, & your dearest wives/Your Machiavellian spoyles the
state,/Your usury doth leave us all for deade” (l.3-6).10
Reasons for the abundance of such acts can be connected to the fact that there could have
been as many as 24,000 aliens in England at the end of the sixteenth century (Goose 18). During
Elizabeth’s reign, aliens were not allowed to display their merchandise openly; only closed shops
were permitted. Foreigners were no longer able to make a profit since aliens in England could
not sell their goods directly to customers – instead they were forced to sell their goods wholesale
to English retailers (Luu 64). In 1593, a London census found 5,545 “straingers” living in
London, 1,089 of whom were Dutch (Fleck 3). The English and Dutch had a love-hate
relationship. Since the Middle Ages the Dutch had prospered by importing English wool, turning
it into finished cloth, and then exporting it back to England (McCluskey 43). The two either
found themselves as allies in the joint cause of fighting against Spain as Protestant countries or
as rivals fighting over trade and the true form of religion (Light 161).
During the sixteenth century London received the majority of its goods from Antwerp
rather than from their places of origin: “For Londoners, Antwerp and then Amsterdam served as
successive gateways to new worlds” (Keene 64). At the beginning of the sixteenth century
Antwerp replaced Venice as the center of trade in Europe. As Antwerp-made silks began to
become more highly valued in the 1550s, and specialized crafts therefore moved more closely to
London, the English began to engage more forcefully in competition with their close neighbor.
England tried to compete by importing highly skilled Italian craftsmen in order to help establish
London in the manufacture of broad silk textiles, but both times this venture was attempted it
failed (Keene 66). It was not until a decade or two later that a large group of craftsmen forced to
migrate to London from the Southern Netherlands that England began to manufacture cheaper
silken mixed textiles, which met a distinct local need but could not compete with the fine silks
from Italy and Antwerp (Keene 66).
The 1550s and 1560s were a time of great instability in the cloth trade. When depression
struck in the 1550s, the Antwerp entrepôt closed (Goose 139). The development of the silk
weaving industry in London is attributed to the surge of Dutch and French immigrants – between
29
1567 and 1586 the number of cloths produced by aliens rose from 1,200 to 38,700 (an increase
of 3,225% in 20 years) (Goose 141). Because of the collapse of the London-Antwerp axis
England began to search elsewhere for the imports previously supplied by Antwerp as well as
new markets for English cloth: “The repression of Antwerp’s freedoms by the Counter-
Reformation armies enlarged the possibility for London to shed its satellite status vis-à-vis this
important port city, above all in the textile field” (Schneider 120). Many, including Walter
Raleigh, did not like the Dutch because of the way that they continued to trade with their Spanish
enemy; in a commons debate in 1593 it was stated, “The nature of the Dutchman is to fly to no
man but for his profit, and they will obey no man long”(Goose7-8)—language that is in fact
echoed in the ‘Dutch Church Libel’ (1593), when the foreigners are told to “Fly, Flye, & never
returne” (l. 54). Thomas Mun, in England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade, declares that the
Dutchmen “do not onely in these Kingdoms, encroach upon our livings, but also in other foraign
parts of our trade (where they have power) they do hinder and destroy us… hereby taking the
bread out of our mouth” (29).
England was known as being an inhospitable place for strangers or travelers, as the
Italian proverb, “England is a good country, but the people are bad,” provided in D.N.’s Londons
looking-glasse (written to the apprentices of London), attests (6).11
Appalled by the recent
actions of London apprentices toward foreigners, D.N. writes a letter to his fellow Englishmen
asking them to reconsider their behavior. The English traveler D.N. went to Germany, Italy,
Spain, and France, and ended up writing this letter from Rouen after having dinner with
“Gentlemen of different nations” (5). These gentlemen ask the Englishman if he has been treated
badly in his travels, to which he replied that he had not. D.N. then recounts each of his men’s
horrendous ordeals in London. The Italian gentlemen says there are a kind of people in England
“who hold quarrelling as a thing of necessity… these men-beasts[…] kill one another, without
any cause of quarrel”(15-16). The German gentlemen relates a story he heard about a fellow
German man being beaten by young London apprentices; angered by this injustice, he decided to
take out his revenge on the next Englishmen he met (pushing two men who barely escaped
drowning into the river). The French gentleman does not understand why the London apprentices
dare to “attempt such outrage in a citty” where there are such severe punishments; he has never
seen any other city but London that “had more prisons in and about it” (22). Englishmen appear
30
to more strongly condemn those whom they are imitating, but because England has adopted the
style and practices of the foreign they are in fact condemning themselves.
This paradox contributes toward the increased anxieties about forming a national identity.
Attitudes toward foreign goods were an excellent forum for voicing these anxieties. England’s
perceived attitude toward foreigners also seeped into attitudes about foreign goods. In early
modern England, foreign clothing was seen “as a symptom of vanity and presumption, but also
of a more deadly disease, that of placing private prerogative above the commonwealth,” as is
seen with Elizabeth in my previous chapter (O’Neill 167). The desire to buy foreign materials,
particularly luxury goods, was viewed as a contagion threatening to infect its inhabitants and the
good of the nation. The use of foreign goods was thought to be detrimental to the national
economy, and “native cloth was defended for its wholesomeness and sturdiness against rival and
more sophisticated importations” (O’Neill 169). Yet, in England’s emulating of practices and
fashions that are seen in other countries it seems hard to deny that silk is viewed as a way
towards nation-(and in turn empire) building.
Thomas Dekker’s play The Shoemaker’s Holiday promotes English nationalism by
subordinating the foreign (in this case the Dutch) and advocating unity among the peoples of
England regardless of social status. Although Lacy disguises himself as Hans, a Dutchman, the
audience is aware that he is really an Englishman; therefore, the play does not promote the idea
of a union between the Dutch and English. Instead, the English audience sees how the nation
benefits from all classes working together. Despite the play taking place during Carnival, a time
for misrule, disguise, and role reversal, Dekker utilizes this festival as a means to put forth a
more subversive ideology: “Carnival was not merely a satirical and purely temporary reversal of
the duel social order … [rather] it was a way to action, perhaps modifying the society as a whole
in the direction of social change and possible progress” (Ladurie 292). Dekker strays from his
source, Thomas Deloney’s12
The Gentle Craft, with his creation of the subplot (Rafe), and it is
here that the play becomes truly subversive. Carnival could also pose a real danger, as
exemplified by the “isolated” incident that occurred in 1580 in the town of Romans, where a
genuine “people’s uprising” occurred (Bristol 49). Both sides had used the cover of the previous
year’s Carnival to plot out their courses of action, demonstrating that Carnival was not simply a
festive “safety valve.” The popularity of the play’s message is also evidenced by the number of
editions that it went through, a total of five. The interplay between the “safe” message of the
31
play, that this is merely a topsy-turvy time that will result in the returning of everyone’s proper
roles when Carnival is over, versus that of the more radical message, that this calls for the
English people to erase class lines in an effort to unite against the foreign, also points to the
double audience this play was performed for (at both the court and public theaters).
The play’s first scene opens with a focus on the anxiety that is created by the idea of
joining two different classes with the acknowledgement that Lacy, Lincoln’s nephew, is in love
with Oatley’s daughter, Rose. Oatley feels that the two should not be together: “Too mean is my
poor girl for his high birth/ Poor citizens must not with courtiers wed/ Who will in silks and gay
apparel spend/ More in one year than I am worth by far” (1.11-14). With this statement, Oatley
shows that the nobility’s frivolity and wasteful spending on luxury items such as silk would be
detrimental and perhaps “contaminate” his daughter by making her become extravagant in her
spending as well and also expresses the notion that the various classes are so different that they
are unable to unite. Lincoln expresses his own sentiments to Lacy several lines later: “I would
not have you cast an amourous eye/ Upon so mean a project as the love/ of a gay, wanton,
painted citizen/ I know this churl, even in the height of scorn,/ doth hate the mixture of his blood
with thine” (1.75-79).
By the time this play was first performed (1599) the availability of silks had become
widespread enough that even if the working classes could not afford silk garments they could
instead afford to purchase such things as ribbons and scarves made from the luxury material
(Berger 9). Silk’s popularity among the English can be seen in the demand for certain texts
published during this period. Leonard Mascall’s Remedies, to take out spottes and staines, in
silkes, velvets, linnen and wollen clothes with divers clolours how to die velvets and sylkes linnen
and woollen, fustian and threade went through four editions in only seventeen years, which
shows how the foreign (silk) had become popular enough in everyday life for people to need to
know how to take care of the material.
In The Shoemaker’s Holiday, the tension between classes is mirrored by the tension
between the foreign and the domestic. Dekker presents romantic notions of love and the
idealistic/feudal idea that the classes should be kept seperate through characters like Oatley,
Lincoln, and Hammon. Oatley tries to get Hammon to take Rose, but Hammon insists that
“Enforcèd love is worse than hate to me […] Old love for me; I have no luck with new” (9.50,
55). Eyre himself promotes the idea of keeping inside one’s class when giving advice to Rose on
32
whom she should marry: “A courtier? Wash, go by! Stand not upon pishery-pashery. Those
silken fellows are but painted images: outsides, outsides, Rose. Their inner linings are torn […]
Had I a son or daughter should marry out of the generation and blood of the shoemakers, he
should pack” (11.41-44, 46-8). Yet for all of Eyre’s claims to be happy with his station and
remarking on his wife’s pretentiousness for wanting to rise above his class, he still dons the
clothes of the foreign. As Eyre gets ready to meet the Dutch captain, he sends for “a guarded
gown and a damask cassock” (7.107-8). Damask was a very expensive silk of a floral or
geometric pattern; its price often made it too difficult for the people who were allowed to wear it
according to sumptuary laws to be able to purchase the cloth (Linthicum 120). Eyre’s display of
such ostentatious wealth seems to disagree with Eyre’s claims to want to maintain his humble
background; he uses silk to not only display his wealth and superiority to the Dutch captain, but
also to demonstrate his awareness of the need for show.
Firk tells Eyre that he “looks like a threadbare cloak new turned and dressed. Lord, lord,
to see what good raiment doth!” (7.121-2). This demonstrates the transformative power clothing
has over its wearer which is also echoed by Hellgill in Michaelmas Term13
. Margery tells Eyre
that she has “never liked [Eyre] so well in all [her] life” and that she “warrant[s] there be many
women in the city have no such handsome husbands, but only for their apparel” (7.125-128).
Margery’s jibe at Eyre echoes his own comments a few scenes later to Rose when he tells Rose
that courtiers are merely empty vessels; silk is only a covering for their empty shell. While he
may proclaim sentiments of disdain for the frivolity of the nobility, he himself engages in many
of the same practices. Not only does he dress outside of his station, which goes against his desire
for classes to stick with their own, but he uses deceitful practices to get what he wants – both
when duping the Dutch captain and when he boasts to his fellow brothers of the gentle craft that
he will buy “ a dozen cans of beer for [his] journeymen” and then he tells the boy, “an the knave
fills any more than two, he pays for them” (7.74-5, 77-8). Eyre may want to appear generous but
he is instead cheap and deceitful, not exactly the honored qualities of someone from the “Gentle
craft.” Eyre’s duplicitousness embodies the struggle England itself was going through – trying to
maintain an honest, “noble” appearance by supporting native crafts, but also realizing that in
imitating and echoing foreign practices, and taking on many of their industries, England could
compete with other countries and support itself as a nation by adopting foreign crafts and trades.
Adopting foreign products in hopes of making them domestic for a profit outside of the country
33
can be seen with the Dutch themselves by importing English wool and then re-exporting it back
to England.
Although Eyre’s wife, Margery may take on an affected air while wanting to rise above
her station, she seems more honest in her agenda in that she does not deny her aspirations as
Eyre does. Eyre asks Margery if she will rise from bed and she replies: “I hope ‘tis time enough;
‘tis early enough any woman to be seen abroad. I marvel how many wives in Tower Street are up
so soon?” (4.30-32). She is obvious about her desire to rise above her station, while also echoing
a popular idea of the time that it is women who drive the market for luxury items at the cost of
the nation’s native industries. Thomas Scott addresses women in his Belgicke Pismire as he tells
the ladies to
blush for shame, (if your sophisticate and adulterate beauties, in compounding
whereof you only use diligence, will suffer you to blush) blush I say, whilst you
eate the bread of Idlenessse, and toote in every basket like Flyes, for the first
blossomes, to satiate your longing and lusting pallats, that would devoure all the
increase & store of nature at a mouthful; blush, wihilst you are clothed with the
forraine labours of the silly Silke-worme; neglecting in the meane time, the more
commodious clothing of your Contriman the Sheepe, whose fleece, with artificiall
fingers, might be made fit to be worne, both in the heate of Summer and in the
colde of Winter. (42-43)
Scott emphasizes the supposed importance of placing native industry over foreign. Yet what is
interesting in Scott’s commentary is his use of the term “bread of idleness”; just a few decades
later England’s obsession with silks no longer creates idleness, it instead transforms into a way in
which Englishmen can adopt the silk-weaving industry and thereby stop idleness. Margery
further demonstrates her concern with fashion in scene 10 when she asks Hodge if he is
acquainted with a farthingale maker or French hood maker. While others, such as Eyre, are able
to maintain the masquerade of dressing outside of their station, Margery wonders how she would
look in a hood: “Perdie, oddly, I think,” to which Hodge replies, “As a cat out of a pillory”
(10.39-40, 41), again acquainting women and foreign fashion with wantonness and as a sign of
contamination. Women and their “lustful vanity” were often regarded on the same level as
foreigners as further evidenced by Hodges’ association between fashion and wantonness.
34
While silk eventually managed by the end of the seventeenth century to rise above its
original lewd and lecherous connotations, tobacco was continually viewed as a filthy and
infectious habit. When Hodge asks Margery if she will “drink a pipe of tobacco,” she replies,
“Oh, fie upon it, Roger! Perdie, these filthy tobacco pipes are the most idle, slaving baubles that
ever I felt. Out upon it! God bless us, men look not like men that use them” (10.57-61). Margery
implies that tobacco creates monsters out of its users. Some ten years later, King James I, who
wanted to grow silk instead of tobacco in the New World, echoes this same sentiment. Samuel
Hartlib’s The reformed Virginian silk-worm is addressed to those of Virginia who he hopes will
take up “the breeding of silk-worms, for the making of silk in this Nation” because “no part of
the World is more proper for Silk than Al-sufficient-Virginia” in order “to encourage both [the
planters of Virginia] and others to set upon this work, to benefit themselves and the Nation
thereby” (19). If the people of Virginia take his advice they would “surpass all those Countreyes
in that rich commodity, and you all become with great speed and small cost or li[t]tle labour one
of the happiest, wealthiest people that the World affords,” which points to the English fantasy of
being able to end their dependence on foreign luxuries and becoming a silk producer (19).
While over half a century after the publication of Shoemaker, Hartlib’s sentiments can be
traced to other authors who wrote decades earlier, such as George Carr in his dedicatory poem to
Nicholas Geffe for The Perfect Use of Silke-wormes and Their Benefit who states that “The
Merchant shall not need so farre to rome,/Since thou hast shewen a short and cheaper way/By
silly wormes, which ever heretofore/The use to keep with us hath bin unknown/ To draw that
great abundant fleece of store/From them” (3r). Both Carr and Hartlib use the word “fleece” in
regards to silk—and not the typical trope of English wool—demonstrating the continuity in
sentiments throughout the seventeenth century regarding the potential of silk to provide a
powerful nation and empire for England.
Hartlib also includes a section discussing a “comparison between the gain and labour of
Tobacco and Silk.” Tobacco requires nine months time, “and a mans crop is commonly 15
hundred weight of tobacco and this at two pence a pound is 14 the number pound gained,” while
silk requires only six weeks time where 60 pounds of silk are produced which “at 20 shillings a
pound, yields 60 pounds in ready money” (39). This is a difference of 46 pounds profit, a
considerable sum. The comparison continues: “Tobacco, leaves a man but 3 moneths in the year
for other business. Silk leaves a man ten moneths time in the year, for any other imployments”
35
(39). In Hartlib’s “A Loving Advertisement to all the Ingenious Gentlemen-Planters in Virginia
now upon the Designe of Silke” (a chapter of Hartlib’s Silk-worm), tobacco is portrayed as an
agent that has blinded the English from realizing the true power of silk:
you may no longer live in gross darkness and ignorance of so great a treasure that
you are possessors of, and may now have and enjoy the full use and benefit of,
which hither unto hath most straingely been hidden from the eyes of the body and
mind[…] the chief cause thereof hath been the pernicious smoak of Tobacco, that
thus hath dimmed and obscured your better intellectuals; but when you begin to
put these ways and means in practice, they say you will bl[e]sse yourselves (as
they do) that you have not in this long time discovered the infinite wealth and
happiness that will arise unto you out of silk. (19-20)
Tobacco is viewed as a contaminate to the mind, a product that hinders England from
recognizing its potential to wield silk as a tool for gaining the power of its competitors in trade.
Silk is no longer viewed as a superfluity now that England has the means to produce its own
luxury material. Silk has become a means to empire and nation-building.
Despite Dekker’s characters promoting the separation of the classes throughout the
course of the play, in the end Lacy, a person of nobility, has worked with Eyre, a person of the
merchant class, against the threat of the foreign. Lacy and Rose end up together demonstrating a
union between two classes, “the way for a united England to face a foreign enemy” (Fleck 10).
Instead of seemingly promoting feudal ideals, Dekker is instead proposing the idea of a unified
nation, through the coupling example of Lacy and Rose who serve as a model for the rest of the
classes, that acknowledges no class boundaries. Eyre’s catch phrase, “Prince I am none, yet am I
princely born!”, indeed attests to this fact, and “imagines the erasure of class lines that have been
evident throughout the play” (Fleck 11). With the erasures of class lines, England could focus on
overcoming obstacles placed by foreign competition.
Eyre’s acknowledgement of the Dutchman’s help recalls for the audience not only the
fact that it was really a fellow Englishman who helped Eyre, but also the Antwerp axis, upon
which as recently as some forty years earlier England was reliant for many of its luxury items.
Eyre recognizes this when he tells Margery:
think you Simon Eyre can forget his fine Dutch journeyman? No, vah! Fie, I
scorn it. It shall never be cast in my teeth that I was unthankful. Lady Madgy,
36
thou hadst never covered thy Saracen’s head with this French flap, nor loaden thy
bum with this farthingale—‘tis trash, trumpery, vanity—Simon Eyre had never
walked in a red petticoat, nor wore a chain of gold, but for my fine journeyman’s
portagues. (17.13-20)
Even while promoting English unity against the foreign, Dekker recognizes that without the
previous alliance with the Dutch, the English may not have been able to have become a producer
of luxury items as soon as they did.
Adding to the conflicted relationship between the Dutch and the English is Dekker
keeping Lacy in Hans’ clothing, even though his identity has already been discovered. Eyre calls
him both Hans and Rowland Lacy in this scene. This confusion of the English and Dutch again
recalls England’s indebtedness to the Dutch for the ability to learn the silk craft and other
luxuries. The Dutch pose a special case in that they are different from their Continental
counterparts because they embody competing elements of England’s national identity (Fleck 11).
As mentioned earlier, the English realize their status as “mimic-men” as they take on a Dutch
industry (silk) in hopes of re-exporting the product for a profit, which the Dutch did with English
wool.
Some twenty years after this play was first performed, Thomas Scott calls for the English
to unite with the Dutch and forget past injustices in The Belgicke Pismire. Scott acknowledges
that “as there are many of those who labour to effect a division betwixt us, and to this end, revive
old grudges, and provoke new quarrels” he writes in hope “to make both sides more confident of
each others love, more retentive and sparing of their censures” (A3v). While Scott may call for
the union between the two, he still finds fault with the Dutch and further perpetuates the
conflicted emotions towards them. Scott advocates England using its own wares instead of other
countries’; yet one thing he forgets to acknowledge is that England’s desire for the foreign and
luxurious was in part fed by the Dutch. England’s “dependence” on Dutch led to a self-
sufficiency in luxury goods after the Dutch stopped trading with them during the trade
depression of the 1550s: “We have gone to the Silkeworme, and learned there to waste and spin
out our owne bowels, to make our backes brave […] we have made our selves fantastique,
dissolute, deboshed, prophane, prodigall and ridiculous fooles” (Scott 48). This image also
implies a duality in that the image signifies both a waste of England’s resources on luxury goods
37
as well as the associations of the silkworm and autonomy which served as a hope for a nation
desiring to create its own silk industry and create an empire.
One thing the audience must acknowledge is the fact that the hero of the play, Lacy, is
really a draft dodger. Dekker may have been writing in response to such sentiments as are
echoed in the ‘Dutch Church Libel’ where it is said “our [England’s] pore soules, are cleane
thrust out of dore/And to the warres are sent abroade to rome,/ To fight it out for Fraunce &
Belgia, And dy like dogges as sacrifice for you” (l. 31-34). He escapes going to war (his duty to
his country) and instead disguises himself in order to be close to Rose. Lacy attempts to justify
his (unpatriotic) actions by proclaiming the power of love:
How many shapes have gods and kings devised,
Thereby to compass their desired loves?
It is no shame for Rowland Lacy, then,
To clothe his cunning with the Gentle Craft;
That, thus disguised, I may unknown possess
The only happy presence of my Rose…
O Love, how powerful art thou, that canst change
High birth to bareness, and a noble mind
To the mean semblance of a shoemaker! (3.1-6, 10-12)
Lacy’s actions are even forgiven by the king, who pardons him with the idea that no one
can be punished for being in love. “‘Twas not a base want of true valor’s fire/ That held him out
of France, but love’s desire” (21.58-9). Love cancels out his bad judgment and lack of
patriotism. As stated earlier, Dekker’s creation of the subplot is where the “darker themes of
social injustice” are incorporated (Stevenson 202). The disparity in the consequences that Lacy
and Rafe face seems to point to the fact that the upper classes are able to manipulate and take
advantage of the lower. The audience must also remember, however, how Lacy demonstrated
the idea of an erasure of class lines, ironically while dressed as a foreigner in order to avoid a
foreign war. The ship the Dutch captain brings in is laden with luxury goods—Firk claims that
the cargo is worth £200-300,000. Lacy/Hans is a key factor in Eyre’s ability to obtain the Dutch
captain’s cargo. When Lacy/Hans lends Erye twenty Portagues he creates a fantasy and
metaphorically suggests that cooperation between England’s aristocratic and merchant classes
can lead to commercial primacy over the Dutch (McCluskey 47). Yet, one cannot ignore the
38
fact that the original money is raised by obtaining the Dutch skipper’s cargo through shady
dealings.
Throughout The Shoemaker’s Holiday, the foreign (which for the characters of the play
also includes Lacy/Hans) is disparaged in favor of promoting an English unity. The greatest
example of this is Firk, who makes fun of Hans’ speech: “‘Nails, if I should speak after him
without drinking, I should choke” (4. 77-8). Firk asks Erye to hire Lacy/Hans because “He’ll
make me laugh so that I shall work more in mirth than I can in earnest” (4.88-9). Here, the
foreigner is seen as a source of entertainment, not as a source of work or help. Firk constantly
pulls rank with the addition of Lacy/Hans: “Oh, he’ll give a villainous pull at a can of double
beer, but Hodge and I have the vantage; we must drink first, because we are the eldest
journeymen” (4.97-100).
The foreign is again subordinated when Firk tells Eyre he is making a pair of shoes for
Sibyl, the maid, and Eyre tells Firk, “Fie, defile not thy fine, workmanly fingers with the feet of
kitchen-stuff and basting ladles. Ladies of the court, fine ladies, my lads, commit their feet to
our appareling. Put gross work to Hans” (7.89-92)—with the threat of the foreign England’s
people must band together. Dekker also manages to point out England’s own hypocrisy when
the shoemakers celebrate and get so drunk “that they can stand no longer…they have drunk so
much they can eat nothing” (20. 21, 31-2). The English were often accused by other nations of
not only constantly changing their fashions but also of being a nation composed of drunks (a
characteristic often attributed to the Dutch). Henry Butte’s Dyets Dry Dinner discussed an
“English Foole” and his penchant for foreign habits, “wanton Italianly; Go Frenchly; Duchly
drink; breath Indianly” (122r). William Harrison states in The Description of England that “the
phantasticall follie of our nation, even from the courtier to the carter is such, that no forme of
apparell liketh us longer than the first garment is in the wearing […] nothing is more constant in
England than inconstancie of attire” (172).
“The most popular means of expressing a merchant’s beneficence was to show that a
merchant could give a feast which was literally fit for a king” (Stevenson 116); Dekker does this
with the feast Eyre holds for his apprentices and the king. The familiar language with which
Eyre speaks to the king serves to bring the king down to his own level—they are equals. As will
be seen in my final chapter, such ideas can be can be connected to the Inns of Courts’ proposing
the idea that the king could not rule without law (Parliament—the body of the people) in the
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masque The Triumph of Peace. Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday points at the beginning of a
solidification of what it means to form a national identity for England. Theatergoers are given
the chance to see what England as a nation is capable of if it bands together against the (idea of)
the foreign. Most importantly this development centers around trade in luxury items and matters
of apparel (particularly concerning silk), which both helps to create a sense of an English
national identity and also manages to create conflict because England’s practices are built upon
mimicry of the foreign. By the time Samuel Hartlib writes The reformed Virginian silk-worm,
(1655) it becomes apparent to readers that silk is viewed as an industry that England can be
associated with. Silk is no longer a material imbued with associations of wantonness and
lechery; it is instead a source for England to dominate other countries through the riches
achieved by the promise of forming a Virginian sericulture and creating a powerful English silk
industry. England has taken greater strides toward empire-building because of the silk worm.
40
CHAPTER 3
SPLENDID SPECTACLES: SILK’S SUBVERSION OF POWER AND AUTHORITY IN
RENAISSANCE COURT MASQUES
The Triumph of Peace, written by James Shirley, was the most expensive court masque
ever performed. Financed by the Inns of Court, it cost over £21,000. A huge portion of the
amount of money that the Inns of Court spent on this masque went to costumes, and one of the
most commonly used masque cloths was silk. In this chapter I argue that the Inns of Court used
the medium of luxury and the ostentatious display of money and wealth as a signal to the King
that the throne could not rule without law. As Roy Strong notes, “with the exception of The
Triumph of Peace all Carolinian masques propound the same principles of absolutist rule; power,
they say, is love; opposition and rebellion are unleashed passion both human and cosmological,
the king is order, gentle, civilized, nature and peace” (232). By putting on the most expensive
court masque, the Inns of Court are able to demonstrate (through the display of luxury) to the
court and the monarch the power that they have as they challenge Charles’ claim for the Divine
Right of kings. With less than a decade before civil war ensued, the subversive ideology that the
Inns of Court puts forth serves as a signal to the court of the troubling times to come.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Masques themselves are originally a foreign entertainment; the French ballet is perhaps
the closest in form to the English court masque. The word masque was originally of Arabic
origin, but came into England through the French early in the sixteenth century (Evans x-xi).
Like many other commodities that were foreign in origin, England made the court masque its
own. The amount of money spent by the various monarchs on court entertainments increased
from one reign to the next. Elizabeth was a bit frugal with the amount of money spent on her
court masques, especially compared to her successors James, and in particular Charles, who had
no problem with spending exorbitant amounts of money on court entertainments: “as early as
1604, members of the Privy council urged James to economize on festivities given that his
predecessor Elizabeth had never spent so much money on ephemera” (Ravelhoffer 151). James,
as well as Charles, saw extravagance in rulers as not a vice but a virtue, an expression of
magnamity (Orgel 38). Masques make the hierarchy visible; they are displays of power.
41
Jonson believed that the masques were not only for amusement but for instruction (Evans
xxxix). Masques were a medium in which the monarch could display his or her power over the
court. As Orgel states, “what the spectators watched was not a play, but the queen or king at a
play, and their response would have been not simply to the drama but to the relationship between
the drama and its primary audience, the royal spectator” (9). The king himself becomes a stage
watched (Fumerton 143).
The only perfect place to sit at the masque (called the state) was occupied by the king.
Seated there, the monarch became “at once audience, participant, and theme” (Waith 319). With
this perspective, the closer one sat to the monarch the “better” one’s place was, which created an
index to one’s status (Orgel 11). It seems to be no coincidence that perspective stage scenery was
used for court performances only and that its introduction into England coincides with the
serious promotion of the theory of the Divine Right (Strong 218). Court masques tried to
enforce and idealize the role and power of the monarch.
The movement towards autocracy can be seen when looking at the masques of James I
and Charles I. Caroline masques all relate to the years of Charles’ so-called ‘Personal Rule’;
“those 11 years between 1629-1640 in which he ruled without Parliament and a period
subsequently branded by the opposition as the 11 Years’ Tyranny” (Strong 224). This fact points
to the power of the masque. It was here that the king could truly revel in his own power and see
his subjects worship and obey him as he felt they ought to. Yet, masques were not simply a
sounding post for the monarchy; they were also a place where the court could put forth
transgressive ideologies. Shirley’s Triumph of Peace capitalizes on this possibility: the king (in
this masque represented as peace) is shown to be incapable of ruling effectively without law and
justice. It is also interesting to note that from James’ reign to Charles’ reign there is an
increasing number in the amount of anti-masques included in court masques. This would seem
to reflect the growing tension between the monarch and his subjects—the jockeying for control
between public and private, the commoners and the king.
One way to demonstrate power and status was through displays of wealth, particularly in
terms of clothing. Sebastiano Serlio, an important architectural writer, in his Architettura sates:
“the more such things cost, the more they are esteemed, for they are things which stately and
great persons do”; spectacle alone is one way of arousing the highly desirable response of
admiration (qtd. Waith 318). If spectacle arouses admiration then court masques were some of
42
the greatest sites for engendering this devotion. These excessive displays of luxury were
overwhelming populated by foreign cloths such as silk. In Ben Jonson’s Hymenaei (1606),
Hymen appears in a “saffron coloured robe [with] a yellow veil of silk on his left arm” (32).
Juno’s attire is “rich, like a queen, [with] a white diadem on her head, from whence descended a
veil, and that bound with a fascian of several-coloured silks” (36). The Queen and her ladies
were costumed lavishly in Samuel Daniel’s Tethy’s Festival (1610): “their upper garments had
the bodies of sky-coloured taffetas for lightness, all embroidered with maritime invention […]
Their shoulders were all embroidered with the work of the short skirt of cloth of silver, and had
cypress spangled [and] their shoes were of satin” (109). In Tempe Restored (1632) Thomas
Killigrew’s debut costume on the courtly stage is described as “a doublet, of white satin,
Breeches of carnation satin cloake of the same coloured satin lined with carnation coloured plush
trimmed with silver lace: silke stockins of perale colour white shoes Roses and garters of
Carnation; A hatt of a feather A falling band with lace of the newest fashion Gloves Girdle and
pointes suitable” (Ravelhoffer 139). The abundance of silks in these masques can also be related
to the rising number and value of silk imports between 1603 and 1640. In 1622, London
imported silk was worth £118,000; by 1640, £175,000 and by the end of the century £344,000
amounting throughout the century to 23-29% of the total value of imports (Peck, Consuming
Splendor 85).
Before delving into The Triumph of Peace it would seem appropriate, if not important, to
look at a portion of Jonson’s Neptune’s Triumph for the Return of Albion, as it focuses on aspects
of trade. Nearly a decade before The Triumph of Peace was written, Neptune’s Triumph
celebrated the return of Prince Charles from Spain (though it was roughly a year after his return).
This masque, though it is not certain which, if any, parts were performed, is interesting in its
portrayal of trade, in particular with regards to the East India Company, which was often accused
of being the cause of England’s sluggish economy. The antimasque scenes with the Cook and
the Poet present consumption, both literal and figurative, to the reader. Trade is seen as a
barbarous act—and is indeed equated with cannibalism—“the home ‘body’ becomes a body-
against itself or body-eating itself” (Fumerton 192). The Cook literally incorporates the foreign
by making a Spanish olla podrida. The Cook talking to the Poet states: “a dish of pickled sailors,
fine salt sea-boys, shall relish like anchovies or caveare, to draw down a cup of nectar in the
skirts of a night” (184-5). The cook satirizes the middle class—the bankers, traders, and other
43
cannibal profiteers of “eating interest” who were themselves cannibalistically consumed
(Fumerton 197). By making this foreign dish, a cannibal stew, the masque acknowledges the fact
that “the spices needed for banqueting stuffs came from Eastern trade” (Fumerton 201). This
incorporation of the foreign into native practices again speaks to the notion that England built its
own success upon its competitors’ previous successes. England was capable of becoming the
world power that it eventually did in part because of its ability to successfully naturalize the
foreign luxury goods it so prized.
Neptune’s Triumph focuses on the trade in luxury items, which can be associated with the
East India Company, when Portunus and Proteus share the following exchange:
PORTUNUS: Your dressings do confess,
By what we see so curious parts
of Pallas’s and Arachne’s arts,
That you could mean no less.
PROTEUS: Why as you wear the silkworm’s toils,
Or glory in the shell-fish’ spoils,
Or strive to shew the grains of ore
That you have gathered on the shore,
Whereof to make a stock
To graft the greener emerald on,
Or any better-watered stone? (184).
Here, the luxury items are described in indirect terms, which force the reader to think about the
producer before thinking of the material produced. This in turn requires the reader to consider
where these items originated, and since they were not native products of England this
demonstrates the opinion that England’s appetite for luxury items has done damage to its
economy: “England lacked ‘vent’ for the ‘superfluity’ of its home goods (primarily woolen
cloths), and what made such constipation especially and literally-‘strange’ was the fact that the
country was at the same time consuming foreign imports to excess” (Fumerton 173-4). Yet this
consumption of foreign goods is what eventually enabled England to create its own silk industry,
and it is through the use of such displays of luxury that people began to make assertions of
power.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
44
Shirley’s The Triumph of Peace was created at the request of the King after the
publication of William Prynne’s Histrio-Mastix, which defamed, among other things, female
actors, calling them “notorious whores” (203). Prynne also attacks dancing, one of the key
elements of the masque—a learned art form that distinguished the nobility from the rest of the
people of England—and as Orgel notes, “dancing [was] the prerogative of every lady and
gentlemen” (8). Although deemed a noble talent amongst the aristocrats, Prynne, however, calls
it “the vilest vice of all” (238), and later goes on to say that:
Dancing, (say they) as now it is used, is an occasion of much wantonnesse,
lewdnesse, and lasciviousnesse; of much riot, epicurisme, effeminacy,
voluptuousnesse; of much prodigall expence, much losse of time, much
superfluity, costlinesse, and new-fanglednesse in apparell, much pride and
haughtinesse, much impudency and immodesty, especially in the female sex;
whom dancing doth of all others least beseeme. (240)
Prynne could just as easily be attacking the use of silks as he is dancing, since many of the terms
he uses—“wantonness, lewdness, and lasciviousnesse”—were often applied to objections to
consuming luxury goods. This therefore shows the interconnectedness of the dance (the masque)
and silk (or luxury goods). From this quotation it is apparent that Prynne is not only attacking
the heart of the masque, but the extreme spending habits of the nobility (and ostensibly the king),
as well as the acting habits of women. This last detail is probably of the most significance since
it was what landed Prynne in jail. By insinuating that the Queen, who often participated in the
masques along with her ladies, was a “notorious whore” for violating God’s will, Prynne was
sentenced to “life imprisonment, fined £5,000, pilloried, expelled from Lincoln’s Inn, deprived
of his academic degree, and his ears were cut off by the public executioner” (Orgel 44-5)14
.
Charles, trying to combat any sort of backlash from Prynne’s Histrio-Mastix ordered that the
Inns of Court create a masque that praised the King and acknowledged the Divine Right. This
masque would serve “as an expression of their love, and duty to their Majesties” and “would
manifest the difference of their opinion from Mr. Prynne’s new learning, and serve to confute his
Histrio Mastix against enterludes” (Whitlocke 18).
The Inns of Court spent more than £21,000 on this masque, and it was the most expensive
court masque ever staged (Ravelhoffer 153). The £4,000 James devoted to a single production in
1618 seems paltry when compared to this (Nicoll 29). When thinking about the extreme amounts
45
of money that are spent on costumes alone it is important to note that according to Barbara
Ravelhoffer “no documents pertaining to masque productions of the early Stuart period indicate
that costumes were routinely used” –references to mending are absent and according to wardrobe
bills, literary texts, and performance reports, the material seems always to have been genuinely
new (143). However, Ravelhoffer later notes that it is possible that masque costumes could
eventually have been turned into regular outfits, which would account for the lack of evidence
for storage etc. Even if this is true, it demonstrates the significance and importance of the court
masques to deem such exorbitant spending over buying new clothes for oneself. The display of
one’s personal wealth at court is subordinated to the “staging” of one’s wealth and power at the
masque. Again, this relates to O’Neill’s statement that the donning of foreign clothing was a
“symptom […] of a more deadly disease, that of placing private prerogative above the
commonwealth” (167), which is even further amplified when the vast expenditures are for show.
To give one an idea of how much a single costume could cost, Charles’ masquing suit for
Coelum Britannicum (where he appeared as an ‘ancient hero’) was £121.8s.7d; in 2002, the
costume’s value was approximately £4,467 (Ravelhoffer 150, 153).
What does this spending of extreme amounts of money say to the court and the masque’s
audience? It demonstrates power and wealth, and in the case of The Triumph of Peace particular
case places power in the hands of the lawyers. If conspicuous displays of wealth are supposed to
be virtuous in the hands of kings and queens then the Inns of Court are trying to take hold of the
power and esteem placed upon the monarchy in order to bestow admiration and power on
themselves, which again relates to Serlio’s previously stated quote that “the more such things
cost, the more they are esteemed” (qtd. Waith 318).
If luxury was the King’s prerogative, then the Inns of Court challenge the King’s
authority with The Triumph of Peace through the discourse of luxury, and an affront to Charles’
desire for an absolute monarchy is created. Most of the budget was spent on costumes which
were made of rich materials, most often silks. The overwhelming parade of ostentatious display
places silk as a tool of subversion. The luxury materials imbue power onto the Inns of Court—
the law—and highlight the power struggle between parliament and the king, which only a few
years later leads to civil war. The Triumph of Peace is important because it shows the beginning
steps of luxury being used as a tool of power between commoners and the monarch (especially
ironic in conjunction with a monarch deemed so “wasteful”).
46
In his Memorials of English affairs, Bulstrode Whitlocke details the parade of costumers
from Chancery-Lane to Whitehall as well as the masque itself inside Whitehall, calling it the
“most glorious and splendid shew that ever was beheld in England” (19):
On Candlemas-day in the Afternoon, the Masquers, Horsemen, Musicians,
Dancers and all that were Actors in this business […] set forth down Chancery-
Lane to Whitehall. Every one of these hundred Gentlemen were in very rich
Clothes, scarce anything but Gold and Silver-lace to be seen of them […] The
richness of their Apparel and Furniture glitter[ed] by the light of a multitude of
torches attending on them […] In the first Chariot of the Grand Masquers […]
sate the four Grand Masquers of the Grays-Inn, their habits, Doublets, Trunk-
hose, and Caps, of most rich cloth of Tissue15
, and wrought as thick with silver
Spangles as they could be placed, large white silk Stockings up to their Trunk-
hose, and rich sprigs in their Caps. (19)
This excerpt gives an understanding at how spectacular the costumes and pageantry were for this
particular masque. Indeed, according to Whitlocke, “the Clothes of the Horsemen, and the
Liveries of their Pages and Lacquies […] amounted to ten thousand pounds”—roughly half the
amount of money spent on the masque and does not include all the participants in the masque
(21).
The Triumph of Peace was first performed on February 3, 1634 at Whitehall. In the
antimasque the characters Fancy and Opinion demonstrate that being ruled only by peace breeds
corruption:
OPINION: Are these effects of peace? Corruption rather.
FANCY: Oh, the beggars show The benefit of peace.
OPINION: Their very breath Hath stifled all the candles, poison’d the Perfumes:
beggars-a fit presentment! how They cleave still to my nostril! I must tell you,
I do not like such base and sordid persons, and they become not here. (214)
Fancy’s comment about the beggars points to the fact that the lower classes are most harmed by
the monarch’s wasteful spending, especially pertinent (and perhaps pointing a finger at, the
court) with the ostentatious display of wealth at the masque itself. A bit later on, a merchant on
horseback is attacked by two thieves, who are later apprehended by a constable and his officers:
“the analogous scene with the nymphs and satyrs makes this problem [that law enforcement is
47
not very effective in the provinces] even worse by hinting that rural crime is never solved in
reality, only in pastoral romances” (Venuti 193). This shows the necessity of law, without which
the country would descend into chaos.
The masque also touches on the introduction of the seasons into the city, along with
which comes the fears about the displacement of hierarchy with the rising middle class and
landed gentry. Opinion is actually a country gentlemen who has come into the city with his
family. This journey to the city by the gentry was viewed as a “two-fold threat”: “it could
weaken the ascendancy of the feudal ideology, which justified and reproduced the established
social order and ultimately affect their political power by limiting their control over local affairs”
(Venuti 185).
Throughout the masque the three sisters that represent Peace, Law, and Justice indicate
that it is not possible to rule alone. The three sisters—Irene, Eunomia, and Diche—are shown to
work well only in tandem with each other. Irene, who represents Peace, asks “Wherefore do my
sisters stay? […] I’m lost with them that know not how to order me” (Song II 219). Eunomia, or
Law, tells Irene that “All my blessings spring from thine,” to which Irene replies, “I am but wild
without thee” (Song III 220). And a few lines later, both Eunomia and Irene state that “The
world shall give prerogative to neither; we cannot flourish but together” (Song III 220). It can
therefore be inferred from this exchange that the most effective and most powerful country can
only be ruled by these powers (Peace, Law, and Justice) when they work in conjunction with
each other. This also recalls Dekker’s proposal for a united England—to join all classes to
overcome the foreign threat. Here, the call is for an England ruled both by the king and
Parliament.
The costumes that Irene, Eunomia, and Diche (Justice) wear are also interesting in what
they may suggest to the audience. Irene appears in buskins of green taffeta, Eunomia in a purple
satin robe, and Diche in a white robe and mantle of satin. Taffeta is a thin, fine silk fabric of
even texture; “plain taffeta was not rich enough for Elizabethan taste; it had to be ‘tufted’, woven
with raised stripes or spots” (Linthicum 123). While one can’t assume that just because it is not
indicated that Irene’s dress is tufted that it is actually plain, the omission of any further defining
characteristics of her dress (after being told that she wore a garland of olives on her head and a
branch of palm in her hand) seems to leave enough for the reader to make the assertion that when
compared to her sisters’ clothing, Irene’s costume is not quite as rich, or noble looking.
48
If Irene stands for the King, and his desires to rule only through peace (not law), then the
monarch is subordinated visually by Law (Eunomia) and Justice (Diche). In addition to plain
taffeta being less desirable, the material is also noted for its ability to change its color depending
on the movement of the fabric and the standpoint of the viewer. There were also many deceitful
practices that were used in trying to pass off “fake” taffeta as being of higher quality than it
really was—it could be gummed or glossed to look good. By putting Peace in such a fabric, a
material by its very nature which could change its looks, the king can therefore be connected
with such associations and is thus made to seem “shifty” or deceitful in his ways (as Charles was
by trying to rule alone without Parliament). Also, the color of the costume is indicative of being
immature and undeveloped, according to the OED. Thomas Moffet, in The Silkewormes and
their Flies, states that green “shew[s] a wanton mind and vaine [temper]” (28).
Eunomia (Law) appears in a purple satin robe descending from an orient colored cloud,
which perhaps indicates the source of these foreign cloths. The OED states that purple cloth or
clothing was “especially regarded as a luxury or form of ostentation” and a purple dress was a
“distinguishing dress of emperors or kings.” Law, therefore, has been placed in the manner of
dress of the king, making it appear visually superior to Peace. Satin was also one of the most
expensive and desired of the sixteenth century silks (Linthicum 123). Satin was more desirable
than plain taffeta, and in reference to this masque one could claim that Law (as well as Justice) is
more desirable and valuable than Peace alone.
Diche (Justice) also appears in satin, except that she appears in white. The obvious
connotations of white clothing are that the person is supposed to be “morally or spiritually pure
or stainless; free from malignity or evil intent” (OED). This further supports my claim that
Peace has been usurped by Law and Justice in that the “morally pure” Justice and “kingly” Law
outdo the more soberly and plainly attired (green, taffeta clad) Peace. Justice appears as an
innocent and beneficent character. Whereas the audience has seen that Peace cannot rule without
Law and Justice without chaos ensuing, the two sisters, Eunomia and Diche are shown as being
superior to Irene.
So why would the King and Queen act so positively and enthusiastically towards a
masque that appears to deride their power? Lawrence Venuti poses the idea that the King would
have focused on the more flattering detail of “Eunomia’s status as the divine offspring of Jove.
Seen in this light, she symbolizes not parliament’s legislative function, but an aspect of Charles’
49
absolute power” (202-203). Surely this must have been the interpretation that the King and
Queen made as Whitlocke writes that the King said “we are exceeding well pleased with that
Testimony which they lately gave us, of their great respect and affection to us, which was very
acceptable, and performed with that Gallantry, and in so excellent a manner” (21). The Queen is
also noted as saying that she “never saw any Masque more noble, nor beter performed than this
was, which she took as a particular respect to her self, as well as to the King her Husband”
(Whitlocke 21). The masque in fact was performed a week later, February 11, 1634 at the
Merchant Taylor’s Hall. However, I feel that Shirley’s “triumph” is that his masque serves a
dual message, it could be interpreted as honoring the king while actually putting forth subversive
ideologies. The numerous times that the sisters proclaim they cannot rule effectively without
each other as well as the manner in which Irene is dressed in comparison to Eunomia and Diche
seems to override the fact that Eunomia is the divine offspring of Jove. And thus it seems that it
appealed greatly to the general public (perhaps because of their frustrations with the King’s
proclaimed Divine Right)—several copies had been printed before the performance and it went
through several editions (Venuti 203).
50
EPILOGUE
The demand for the repeal of the theory of the Divine Right of Kings as seen in Shirley’s
Triumph of Peace sets the stage for silk to be utilized in a more widespread manner by people as
a tool for reform and as a means to promote English unity and a prosperous and wealthy nation.
Some fifteen years after Triumph was performed, Edward Williams proclaims in Virgo
Triumphans that silk will bring glory to the nation through the production of silk in Virginia,
which he compares to the great producers of silk in the Orient, China and Persia:
The English name shall keepe company with the Sunne, and those Nations who
owe him a particular adoration shall honour it as the next thing sacred. The
E[a]sterne Nations oppressed with the slavery of those ill[o]ustrious horseleeches
their princes, will come under our shadow, and by a thicke repayre to our most
glorious and happy Mayden, live with us in that liberty, which Nature in their
Creation intended to the noblest of his creature Mankind. (36)
Here silk promotes nation building and provides the means for England to eclipse the suppliers
of luxury goods whom they have emulated for centuries.
While one may at first think that the English Civil War hindered the country’s luxury
consumption, there is evidence to support the idea that the war “made little dent in luxury
consumption and indeed fostered it;” in fact, trade statistics show that between 1640 and 1663
exports doubled (Peck, Consuming Splendor 21). Exports continued to increase in the following
decades. From the period of 1663 to 1669 to the period of 1699 to 1701 there was a 36%
increase in London exports alone (Davis 157).
Although initial hopes of a successful sericulture industry in Virginia in the 1620s were
never fully realized, hopes were renewed in the 1650s (and indeed throughout the rest of the
century and into the next) when Virginia legislature adopted policies reinstating Virginia
Company law that required “the planting of a specified number of mulberries […] and offered
bounties for the production of silk and other crops beside tobacco” (Peck, Consuming Splendor
106). Samuel Hartlib in The Reformed Virginian Silkworm (1655) states that “the silk-trade,
(unless we will be deafe to Reason and Experience) cannot be denyed the precedency of all
Trades that are at this day a foot, in either World: […] in regard of its great and certain gain in so
small a time” (25). In “A rare and new discovered speedie way and easy meanes of keeping of
51
silk-worms” included in The Reformed Virginian Silkworm, it is claimed that “This silken-mine
[Virginia] will be to you of more benefit then a Mine of silver” (9). Silk production is associated
with “incomparable felicity” and will purportedly bring joy to Virginians and ostensibly England
(Hartlib 10).
In the 1660s, the Royal Society was established; it promoted the raising of Silkworms
alongside the development of tobacco in one of its first issues. In this same decade, Rev.
Alexander Morray wrote to the President of the Royal Society informing him that he planned to
plant 10,000 mulberry trees in Virginia (Peck, Consuming Splendor 107). Englishmen
recognized the importance of consuming native industries as is stated in Carew Reynell’s The
True English Interest (1674): “The more goods of our owne we consume, the more we profit
ourselves;” England should learn from the Spaniard who “consumes all the silver he hath from
the Indies on foreign things he hath occasion for” (46, 47). Instead of mirroring its continental
counterparts, England is shown here to be learning to form its own distinct practices and
ideologies.
The decade from 1660 to 1670 has been described as “the formative age of the so-called
‘mercantile system’”; the gentry and merchants growing wealthy from commercial profit began
to overshadow the aristocracy, and it is in this time period that one can see the beginnings of the
transformation of England from a mainly agricultural society to a largely commercial nation
(Gough 35).
In the promotional tract, A Treatise Wherein is Demonstrated that the East India trade is
the Most National of All Foreign Trade, written in 1681, London is shown as having become an
entrepôt for the silk trade:
I am credibly informed the number of families already employed therein in
England doth amount to above 40,000. Now what should hinder but that in a few
years more, this nation may treble that number in such manufactures; since the
East India Company have of late years found out a way of bringing raw silk of all
sorts into this kingdom cheaper than it can be afforded in Turkey, France, Spain,
Italy, or any other place where it is made. In so much as, with East Indian silks,
we serve Holland, Flanders, and some other markets from England.
(qtd. Peck, Consuming Splendor 109)
52
England is now able to produce finished silk goods, and with the second wave of Huguenot
settlers after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, Spitalfields became the center for
silk, “an export community with a special place in French and Italian markets” (Peck,
Consuming Splendor 74). As Defoe states in The Complete English Tradesman, “the rising of
greatness of the British nation […] is all owing to trade” (qtd. Stevenson 129).
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Thomas Lombe and his brother created plans
for a silk factory; the mill was completed in 1721. Although Lombe’s request to have his patent
extended was denied, Parliament offered him £14,000 to provide a model of his machine to the
public: “The Factory Age in Britain may therefore be said to have commenced in the silk
industry with the erection of factories” (Peck, Consuming Splendor 110). What once started out
as a desire for luxury items and the longing to emulate its continental counterparts eventually
became assimilated into English culture as a native industry and a means for power and progress
as achieved by the English empire.
53
NOTES
1 All i’s, u’s, j’s, and v’s have been changed to reflect modern usage.
2 This “strength” can also be related to the fact that although it appears delicate, silk is actually
one of the toughest fibers: a strand of silk is as strong as an iron wire of equal diameter and
stronger than a steel wire of equal weight (Kolander 12).
3 John Speed used the term “Empire of Great Britain”, Camden “Britannia”, Spenser “Britayne
Land”/Faery land,” Warner “Albion,” and Drayton “Poly-Olbion” (Helgerson 8).
4 While recognizing the anachronistic nature of using the term “class” instead of the more
appropriate “degree” or “station,” I will continue to use the term “class,” more identifiable with
modern-day readers, throughout the rest of my thesis to mean “degree” or “station.”
5 “In 1559 silk fabrics had made up 3.3% of the imports to London. By 1622 this had grown to
5.1%. The increase in raw materials was more dramatic. In 1559 1.1% of the imports were silk;
by 1622 this had risen to 7.5%” (Peck, “Creating a Silk Industry” p3).
6 See proclamation #786 in Tudor Royal Proclomations.
7 Silk’s temperature changing ability is due to: hygroscopicity (the ability to absorb moisture
without getting wet); low specific gravity (or density) a low weight for volume; and strength in
fineness (Kolander 10).
8 Native, ‘English’ script was being replaced with the ‘Roman’ or Italian’ style of handwriting
(Levin 54n).
9 Michaelmas Term was not the only play in which Middleton made this association; in his Black
Book, Middleton states: “let Mercers then have conscionable Thumbes, when they measure out
that smooth glittering Divell Sattin, and that old Revell[e]r V[e]lvet in the daies of Mounsier,
both which have devoured many an honest Field of Wheate and Barly, that hath bene
metamorphosed and changed into white money; puh, these are but little w[o]nders, and may be
[e]asily possible in the working” (16-17).
10 Transcribed by Arthur Freeman from Bodleian MS Don. D. 152 in “Marlowe, Kyd, and the
Dutch Church Libel.” ELR. 3:1 (Winter 73), 44-52.
11 Londons looking-glasse was prompted by the attack of the Spanish King’s ambassador in
1621.
12 Thomas Deloney was a silk-weaver by trade.
54
13 “You talk of an alteration; here’s the thing itself. What base birth does not raiment make
glorious? And what glorious births do not rags make infamous?” (3.1.1-3).
14 Both Queen Henrietta Maria and Queen Anne were active participants in the masques. Queen
Anne in fact created much controversy when she performed with her ladies in Jonson’s Masque
of Blackness.
15 Cloth of Tissue is a variety of cloth of gold and sliver, which is made from silk material; in
drama, it often symbolized wealth or extravagance in dress. Tissue can be found in accounts of
all sovereigns from Edward II to Charles III, and was used in abundance at the coronation of
Anne Boleyn (Linthicum 114, 117).
55
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61
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Emily E. Rendek grew up in Orlando, Florida before moving to Pensacola where she
graduated magna cum laude from the University of West Florida in 2005. She moved to
Tallahassee and received her master’s degree in Literature as well as the certificate in Editing
and Publishing from Florida State University in the spring of 2008. Her interests are broadly in
early modern literature, particularly in Elizabethan and Jacobean dramas, and in the history of
the book as well as rhetoric and composition. She plans on continuing her graduate education by
pursuing her doctoral degree.