The rapid urbanization of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century London had a transformative impact on the relationships, interactions and everyday experiences of life in the early modern city. Economic and demographic growth, characterized by an influx of migrants from the continent and increasingly complex networks of trade, commerce and credit, were changes that were not only experienced on the streets and in the marketplace, but also simultaneously performed – or ‘practiced’ – on the stages of London's playhouses. Nina Levine's Practicing the City combines an analysis of early modern dramatic texts with non-dramatic source material in order to provide a new perspective on topics from credit and citizenship to political protest and the act of playgoing itself. Her argument is that early modern theatre allowed Londoners to experience and interrogate some of the pivotal new modes of association, belonging and exchange that they encountered in an increasingly commercial and fast-changing urban environment.
The first chapter pairs Shakespeare's Henry IV plays with a discussion of credit relations. Levine argues that the representation of credit in these plays diverts authority away from the crown, relocating it in the everyday business and commercial practices of the city. While much of the discussion here will be familiar to early modern historians, Levine is setting the stage for her main argument: that although credit relations may have allowed for interactions across rank and status, constituting a ‘widening of the political community’ (p. 37), this did not extinguish social or economic difference. Rather, credit was based on unequal relationships. The chapter concludes with a reminder that playgoing itself constituted a contractual relationship between authors, actors and audience: just as Londoners watched credit relations being enacted on stage, they were aware of their own participation in networks of commercial and material exchange both within and beyond the walls of the theatre.
The second chapter analyses the play Sir Thomas More with reference to citizenship and the dynamics of urban protest. Here, Levine draws parallels between the collaborative authorship of Thomas More (originally written by Anthony Munday and revised by five different hands) and the production of political libels. Both the play and libels represent the combined views of multiple individuals, rather than one author. This multivocality is compared to the nature of citizenship: although citizens did not speak with one voice in this period, being divided by factors such as social status, occupation and age, they were linked through shared interests and a sense of common fellowship. This notion of shared identity cutting across difference could be mobilized for political ends, for example to defend the freedoms of the city against the monolithic authority of the crown. In this sense, citizens formed an individuated collective, and their collaboration could be a powerful tool of resistance. However, Levine also shows that these kinds of collective associations could also have negative outcomes, with citizens joining together to exclude non-citizens, as in the acts of violence against aliens represented in Thomas More.
The third chapter further explores the boundary between inclusion and exclusion, in this case the interplay between English and foreign identities. William Haughton's Englishmen for My Money (1598) is analysed in relation to foreign-language manuals, particularly those published by Claudius Hollybrand around the turn of the century. Although Englishmen for My Money ostensibly mocks the foreign accents and broken English spoken by strangers, Levine points out that the urban population in this period was increasingly engaged in linguistic exchange, characterized by a growing fashion for language-learning that was both prompted and facilitated by everyday encounters with strangers for trade and commerce. Thus, although London's institutions may have been based on rough divisions between citizens and aliens, the common practice of ‘trading in tongues’ allowed city residents to work out new forms of sociability that cut across national and linguistic boundaries.
The fourth chapter explores notions of time and temporality in Middleton and Dekker's The Roaring Girl (1611), a play based on current events and real characters. Levine draws parallels between this explicitly contemporary drama and the weekly publication of London mortality bills, a practice which she argues constitutes a similar kind of news reporting. Both the play and the mortality bills brought the metropolitan community together in a social imaginary based on ‘new ways of experiencing and understanding urban time’ (p. 111). This reflects a more general shift away from ‘pastoral time’ to the phenomenon of ‘merchant's time’: from ‘natural’ cycles and rhythms to a time that was measurable and exact, driven by the growing demands of trade and commerce.
In a book that will appeal to historians and literary scholars alike, Levine's close readings of dramatic and non-dramatic material combine to create a colourful picture of everyday life during a period of transformation and change in early modern London.
