Englishmen for My Money, or A Woman Will Have Her Will is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy written by William Haughton that dates from the year 1598. Scholars and critics often cite it as the first city comedy. [1] Indeed, the play inaugurated a dramatic subgenre that would be exploited and developed by Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, and others in the following years and decades.
The records of theater manager and impresario Philip Henslowe show that Haughton received payment for his work on the play between February and May 1598. The play is thought to have been premiered onstage, by the Admiral's Men at the Rose Theatre, before the end of that year.
The work was entered into the Stationers' Register on 3 August 1601, but no published edition survives from before 1616 (which may indeed be the first), when the first known quarto edition was issued by the stationer William White. A second quarto appeared in 1626, printed by John Norton for bookseller Hugh Perry, and a third in 1631, printed by Augustine Matthews for Richard Thrale. [2]
The play is set within the contemporary merchant class of London, the men who dealt on the Royal Exchange founded by Sir Thomas Gresham. The Portuguese-born merchant and moneylender Pisaro has three half-English daughters, Laurentia, Marina, and Mathea. The daughters face two trios of suitors, one foreign and one domestic. The foreigners are Delion, a Frenchman, Alvaro, an Italian, and Vandal, a Dutchman. Also a foreigner, Pisaro favours these candidates because of their wealth, but his daughters prefer their English suitors, Harvey, Heigham, and Walgrave. The play is rich in linguistic play, courtship scenes, and disguises and cross-dressing, and includes abundant comic material from the clown Frisco. In the end, as the title indicates, the Englishmen win their brides (which importantly helps to cancel the debts they owe to Pisaro).
The play displays a popular dislike of Englishwomen being courted by foreigners that is also expressed in Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor , which was written and acted at about the same time (c. 1597–99). Critics have studied the play for its attitude toward, and treatment of, foreigners in England. [3] Some critics have interpreted the character Pisaro as a Jew; though the word "Jew" is never used in the play, Pisaro compares himself to Judas and is called "Signior Bottle-nose," [4] which has been read as an expression of the anti-Semitism endemic in English and European culture in the period. [5] The most recent edition of Englishmen for My Money presents it as a "usury play" on account of its financial themes. [6]
The Merchant of Venice is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. A merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan taken out on behalf of his dear friend, Bassanio, and provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock, with seemingly inevitable fatal consequences.
William Haughton was an English playwright in the age of English Renaissance theatre.
Love's Labour's Won is a lost play attributed by contemporaries to William Shakespeare, written before 1598 and published by 1603, though no copies are known to have survived. Scholars dispute whether it is a true lost work, possibly a sequel to Love's Labour's Lost, or an alternative title to a known Shakespeare play.
Every Man in His Humour is a 1598 play by the English playwright Ben Jonson. The play belongs to the subgenre of "humours comedy", in which each major character is dominated by an over-riding humour or obsession.
Every Man out of His Humour is a satirical comedy play written by English playwright Ben Jonson, acted in 1599 by the Lord Chamberlain's Men.
The Merry Devil of Edmonton is an Elizabethan-era stage play; a comedy about a magician, Peter Fabell, nicknamed the Merry Devil. It was at one point attributed to William Shakespeare, but is now considered part of the Shakespeare Apocrypha.
Fair Em, the Miller's Daughter of Manchester, is an Elizabethan-era stage play, a comedy written c. 1590. It was bound together with Mucedorus and The Merry Devil of Edmonton in a volume labelled "Shakespeare. Vol. I" in the library of Charles II. Though scholarly opinion generally does not accept the attribution to William Shakespeare, there are a few who believe they see Shakespeare's hand in this play.
Valentine Simmes was an Elizabethan era and Jacobean era printer; he did business in London, "on Adling Hill near Bainard's Castle at the sign of the White Swan." Simmes has a reputation as one of the better printers of his generation, and was responsible for several quartos of Shakespeare's plays. [See: Early texts of Shakespeare's works.]
Thomas Creede was a printer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, rated as "one of the best of his time." Based in London, he conducted his business under the sign of the Catherine Wheel in Thames Street from 1593 to 1600, and under the sign of the Eagle and Child in the Old Exchange from 1600 to 1617. Creede is best known for printing editions of works in English Renaissance drama, especially for ten editions of six Shakespearean plays and three works in the Shakespeare Apocrypha.
A Looking Glass for London and England is an Elizabethan era stage play, a collaboration between Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene. Recounting the Biblical story of Jonah and the fall of Nineveh, the play is a noteworthy example of the survival of the Medieval morality play style of drama in the period of English Renaissance theatre.
Peter Short was an English printer based in London in the later Elizabethan era. He printed several first editions and early texts of Shakespeare's works.
Richard Hawkins was a London publisher of the Jacobean and Caroline eras. He was a member of the syndicate that published the Second Folio collection of Shakespeare's plays in 1632. His bookshop was in Chancery Lane, near Sergeant's Inn.
Andrew Wise, or Wyse or Wythes, was a London publisher of the Elizabethan era who issued first editions of five Shakespearean plays. "No other London stationer invested in Shakespeare as assiduously as Wise did, at least while Shakespeare was still alive."
Edward Allde was an English printer in London during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. He was responsible for a number of significant texts in English Renaissance drama, including some of the early editions of plays by William Shakespeare.
Thomas Pavier was a London publisher and bookseller of the early seventeenth century. His complex involvement in the publication of early editions of some of Shakespeare's plays, as well as plays of the Shakespeare Apocrypha, has left him with a "dubious reputation."
The Blind Beggar of Alexandria is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy written by George Chapman. It was the first of Chapman's plays to be produced on the stage; its success inaugurated his career as a dramatist.
The Three Ladies of London is an Elizabethan comedy about usury that was probably first performed in 1581; it was published in a quarto edition in both 1584 and 1592. The play is unusual and noteworthy as a philo-Semitic response to the prevailing anti-Semitism of Elizabethan drama and in contemporaneous English society more generally.
The True Tragedy of Richard III is an anonymous Elizabethan history play on the subject of Richard III of England. It has attracted the attention of scholars of English Renaissance drama principally for the question of its relationship with William Shakespeare's Richard III.
The Downfall of Robert Earl of Huntington and The Death of Robert Earl of Huntington are two closely related Elizabethan-era stage plays on the Robin Hood legend, that were written by Anthony Munday in 1598 and published in 1601. They are among the relatively few surviving examples of the popular drama acted by the Admiral's Men during the Shakespearean era.
Augustine Matthews was a printer in London in the Jacobean and Caroline eras. Among a wide variety of other work, Matthews printed notable texts in English Renaissance drama.