As scholarly interest in popular culture has grown, more and more British and American universities have been introducing courses in popular culture, now seen as an essential aspect of historical investigation. This volume answers the need for a book focusing on England (unlike Peter Burke's Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1978), and over a broad time period (unlike Barry Reay's Popular Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (1985)), which will fulfil it's aim of appealing both to specialists and students coming new to the subject. Tim Harris has assembled a very strong team of contributors who will ensure a very lively and interesting collection of essays.

Events such as the Fire of London and the Plague, and historic locations like the Globe Theatre, are part of London's heritage. Yet until recently, the history of the city between 1500 and 1750 has been little studied. During this period, London's population soared from around 50,000 to nearly half a million--the demographic explosion transformed the city to a metropolis. London became a center of new social and sexual identities and a solvent of older, more hierarchical forms of social organization. The essays in this volume cover the themes of polis and the police, gender and sexuality, space and place, and material culture and consumption. Within these themes are thieves, prostitutes, litigious wives, the poor, disease, “great quantities of gooseberry pye,” and the taxing question of fresh water.

Breaking new ground by considering productions of popular culture from above, rather than from below, this book draws on theorists of cultural studies, such as Pierre Bourdieu, Roger Chartier and John Fiske to synthesize work from disparate fields and present new readings of well-known literary works. Using the literature of Shakespeare, Spenser and Jonson, Mary Ellen Lamb investigates the social narratives of several social groups – an urban, middling group; an elite at the court of James; and an aristocratic faction from the countryside. She states that under the pressure of increasing economic stratification, these social fractions created cultural identities to distinguish themselves from each other – particularly from lower status groups. Focusing on Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night's Dream and Merry Wives of Windsor, Spenser's Faerie Queene, and Jonson's Masque of Oberon, she explores the ways in which early modern literature formed a particularly productive site of contest for deep social changes, and how these changes in turn, played a large role in shaping some of the most well-known works of the period.

While much has been written on Shakespeare's debt to the classical tradition, less has been said about his roots in the popular culture of his own time. This is the first book to explore the full range of his debts to Elizabethan popular culture. Topics covered include the mystery plays, festive custom, clowns, romance and popular fiction, folklore and superstition, everyday sayings, and popular songs. These essays show how Shakespeare, throughout his dramatic work, used popular culture. A final chapter, which considers ballads with Shakespearean connections in the seventeenth century, shows how popular culture immediately after his time used Shakespeare.

An analysis of later Stuart economic culture that contributes significantly to our understanding of early modern society. The English economy underwent profound changes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, yet the worldly affairs of ordinary people continued to be shaped as much by traditional ideals and moral codes as by material conditions.This book explores the economic implications of many of the era's key concepts, including Christian stewardship, divine providence, patriarchal power, paternal duty, local community, and collective identity. Brodie Waddell drawson a wide range of contemporary sources - from ballads and pamphlets to pauper petitions and guild regulations - to show that such ideas pervaded every aspect of social and economic relations during this crucial period. Previous discussions of English economic life have tended to ignore or dismiss the influence of cultural factors. By contrast, Waddell argues that popular beliefs about divine will, social duty and communal bonds remained the frame through which most people viewed vital 'earthly' concerns such as food marketing, labour relations, trade policy, poor relief, and many others. This innovative study, demonstrating both the vibrancy and the diversity of the 'moral economies' of the later Stuart period, represents a significant contribution to our understanding of early modern society. It will be essential reading for all early modern British economic and cultural historians. BrodieWaddell is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge. He has published on preaching, local government, the landscape and other aspects of early modern society.

This analysis of the secular impact of the Reformation examines the changes within English towns from the mid-16th to the mid-17th century.

An edited collection examining the construction of popular culture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.