Material London, ca. 1600.

Lena Cowan Orlin, ed., Material London, ca. 1600

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. ix + 52 illus. + 384 pp. $65 (cl), $26.50 (pbk). ISBN: 0-8122-3540-1 (cl), 0-8122-1721-7 (pbk).

Material London, ca. 1600 is a collection of sixteen original essays first presented at a conference held at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1995 with an introduction by the editor. Although 1600 marks the close of Elizabeth's long reign and the midpoint of Shakespeare's career, these giants are virtually absent from these essays. Instead the subject is the city itself, and what was most remarkable about London was its extraordinary growth in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In 1500 it was only one of several large English cities, by 1700 it was the largest in Europe, and the consequences of this remarkable growth are the starting point for many of these essays.

Another persistent theme is that while 1600 was not a significant date in London's history, it was, as Derek Keene demonstrates, a turning point. John Schofield shows that while London's architecture was still medieval in 1600, it soon caught up with its continental rivals. Linda Levy Peck uses Lionel Cranfield's building practice to illustrate this idea. In 1603 Cranfield was content to have a local builder construct a dwelling near his business in Cheapside; but in 1621, only the new International style would suffice for an addition to his newly acquired mansion in Chelsea. The new designs set the fashion for country houses (Alice T. Friedman) and even changed the patterns of rural production for both town and country (Joan Thirsk). Jane Schneider and Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass point out that fashion, too, became more international as English dyers acquired the skills and materials to make bright colors; and with a Scottish king, Englishmen adopted the Irish cloak and colors of formerly assoc iated with poverty and subversion. Gail Kern Paster points out that even consumption patterns of medical treatment changed in the Stuart era. Essex's failed rebellion is symbolic of the transition (David Harris Sacks): traditional loyalties would not suffice in the new age.

Another theme stressed in many of the essays is that the increased size and wealth of London were accompanied by increased tension and conflict. The editor demonstrates that London's four "Viewers" were kept busy adjudicating disputes between neighbors over boundaries, cesspits and the like; while Peter W. M. Blayney reveals that the dispute over a proposed bookshop was really a dispute over jurisdiction between the City and the Church. Andrew Gurr finds conflict between the City and Court in his study of theater design. City officials wished to ban or at least control theaters as a matter of public order, while the Lord Chamberlain needed to protect the companies in order to have a supply of performers for Court revels. Construction of the Globe and the Fortune theaters in Southwark put them under control of the Lord Chamberlain not the Lord Mayor. Ironically, the choice of the now familiar design was a "distinctly retrograde step" from the view of the players (252), who would have preferred an enclosed the ater.

The population explosion heightened tensions between rich and poor, old and young, and high and low, themes examined by Ian W. Archer, Gail Kern Pastor, Patricia Fumerton, Jean E. Howard, and Alan Sinfield. Archer stresses that the increase of trade and rising demand for property caused apprehension about the new acquisitiveness and anxiety about the position of women and the young, while Howard, and to a lesser extent, Pastor, show how new forms, specifically the "City Comedy," were invented to control the "fears of foreign encroachment in the form of people, goods and costumes" (164). Citizens complained about the large number of "masterless" usually lumped together as "youth" or "vagrants," but Fumerton demonstrates how necessary this underclass was for the elite to live lives of comfort.

Space does not permit further analysis of these important essays, which fit together surprisingly well considering the variety of disciplines represented by the authors. Individually and collectively they are significant contributions to our understanding of London's material culture.