Politics, the Citizens, and History Plays: Representation of London in Sir Thomas More and Edward IV

• In Event: Representing Cities in Early Modern Literature

Abstract

During the heyday of history plays in the late 1590s, the early modern English theatre audiences also witnessed a rise of genre of city comedies. The theatrical successes of The Shoemaker’s Holiday and Englishmen for My Money seem to have been coincided with the triumph of history plays on stage. In this presentation, I’d like to address how the genre of history plays responded to the ever-more expanding city and its formidable growth in wealth and political significance which were, quite often, the main topics of city comedies. In the context of two competing genres, I will investigate The Book of Sir Thomas More in terms of the charismatic More as a citizen hero in the national politics and Thomas Heywood’s Edward IV, Parts 1 & 2 in terms of how the lives of Londoners, particularly with Shore’s wife, are turned into a nodal point of early modern nationalistic politics.

Author

• Tai-Won Kim, Sogang University