Reading Silk: England’s Search for a National Identity, 1590-1630
Emily Elizabeth Rendek (Florida State University)
Master of Arts, The Florida State University, Paper 1894 (2007)
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.
