TRAGICOMIC REDEMPTIONS

Tragicomic Redemptions Global Economics and the Early Modern English Stage Valerie Forman Tragicomic Redemptions is a book driven by bold arguments that are stated confidently and lucidly throughout, a book whose considerable theoretical sophistication complements its more traditional historical and literary concerns.--Scott Cutler Shershow, University of California, Davis In the early modern period, England radically expanded its participation in an economy that itself was becoming increasingly global. Yet less than twenty years after the highly profitable English East India Company made its first voyage, England was suffering from an economic depression, blamed largely on the shortage of coin necessary to exploit those very same profitable routes. How could there be profit in the face of so much loss, and loss in the face of so much profit? In Tragicomic Redemptions, Valerie Forman contends that three seemingly unrelated domains--the development of new economic theories and practices, especially those related to global trade, the discourses of Christian redemption, and the rise of tragicomedy as the stages most popular genre--were together crucial to the formulation of a new and paradoxical way of thinking about loss and profit in relationship to one another. Forman reads plays--including Shakespeares Twelfth Night, The Merchant of Venice, Pericles, and The Winters Tale, Fletchers The Island Princess, Massingers The Renegado, and Websters The Devils Law-Case--alongside a range of historical materials that provide a fuller picture of Englands participation in a global economy