Course information

Comic depictions of everyday life had long been common in English plays such as 'Gammer Gurton's Needle' (pub. 1575), but from 1598 onwards there was a marked geographical shift from the countryside towards the capital as a significant number of comedies set in London began to be performed and subsequently published. From William Haughton's 'Englishmen for my Money' (perf. 1598, pub. 1616) to George Farquhar's 'The Constant Couple' (1699), seventeenth-century London comedies offered playgoers and readers in the capital the opportunity to see and read heightened reflections of their own city and lives by staging action in real-world locations well-known to Londoners at the time. In studying four such plays, we will examine these important literary and theatrical depictions of London as it grew to become Europe's largest city over the course of a turbulent century, while at the same time discussing questions related to topics such as nationalism and immigration, family and gender politics, love, desire, and what it may have meant to be a Londoner. By reading the four plays covered in the course, which also include Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton's 'The Roaring Girl' (1611) and Richard Brome's 'The Weeding of Covent Garden' (perf. c1633, pub. 1658), participants will have the chance to engage with some lesser studied but highly important dramatic works as part of the broader corpus of seventeenth-century London comedies.