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What did work mean to Shakespeare? And what does it mean to work in Shakespeare's plays? Work was a quintessential part of early modern society, as it is today. But the meanings attached to different forms of work were changing in important ways during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England. Developments such as the enclosure movement, the growth of venture capitalism, and the diversification of the wage-labour market transformed England's labour economy and helped reshape the everyday lives of men and women in both rural and urban communities. These socio-economic shifts had a direct effect on the professional theatres of Shakespeare's day. The world of work, including the people at all social levels who performed it, was vital to Shakespeare's drama, both because the theatre was a highly successful business enterprise in its own right and because work significantly influences the plots, language, and structures of Shakespeare's plays throughout his career.
Shakespeare and Work introduces readers to the rich working world of Shakespeare's plays. Opening chapters provide an overview of working conditions in Shakespeare's England and in the theatre and discuss Shakespeare's own practices as a working playwright. Subsequent chapters examine a range of plays from multiple genres, including
Twelfth Night, Othello,
The Tempest, Titus Andronicus,
Love's Labour's Lost,
Macbeth,
The Winter's Tale,
2 Henry VI, and
A Midsummer Night's Dream, and consider several types of work that are either staged directly (such as service) or, more frequently, alluded to (such as agricultural work). Offering an accessible and wide-ranging account of how Shakespeare engaged with the working world around him,
Shakespeare and Work demonstrates that we can come to a richer understanding of Shakespeare's dramatic output and cultural legacy if we attend to how the everyday world of work shapes both the action and the language of his plays.
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Michelle M. Dowd is Hudson Strode Professor of English and Director of the Hudson Strode Program in Renaissance Studies at the University of Alabama. She is the author of
Women's Work in Early Modern English Literature and Culture (Palgrave, 2009) and of
The Dynamics of Inheritance on the Shakespearean Stage (Cambridge, 2015). With Lara Dodds, she is co-author of
Early Modern Women's Writing and the Future of Literary History (Oxford, 2025). She also edits the book series, Strode Studies in Early Modern Literature and Culture, published by the University of Alabama Press.
