Existing scholarship on Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker’s The Roaring Girl, or Moll Cutpurse primarily focuses on the title character and her unconventional gender presentation. This highlighting of Moll deemphasizes the other intriguing aspects of the play, including its thematic concerns involving issues of prejudice, reputation, gender, class, marriage, and sexuality. This thesis takes the spotlight off of Moll and shines it instead on a selection of other significant characters—including Sir Alexander Wengrave, Sebastian Wengrave, Mary Fitzallard, and a grouping of minor characters who have earned this play its designation as a city comedy: Laxton, Goshawk, the Openworks, and the Gallipots.

This dissertation’s aim is to reveal how essential economic mechanics were to playwrights when it came to depicting agency. Rising commercialization in the seventeenth century prompted playwrights to appropriate market behaviors in London as a new discourse for agency. Commerce serves as a metaphor for every part of daily life, and a new kind of “commercial” agency evolves that predicates autonomy upon the exchange networks in which a person participates. Initially, this new agency appears as a variation on the trickster. By the end of the century, playwrights have created a new model for autonomy and a new kind of hero to employ it: the entrepreneur. My chapters chart the defining points in the development of commercial agency, each with a representative text or texts. In chapter II, I analyze how the Jacobean gallant, a variation on the trickster, sells himself as a desirable commodity to gain wealth and influence, the conditions he needs to liberate himself and control his own destiny (Eastward Ho). Chapter III examines characterizations of businesswomen in seventeenth century drama, one of the primary shifts in tone that accompanied the development of commercial agency as playwrights became more skilled in its portrayal (Antony and Cleopatra). Frequently regarded as prostitutes in Elizabethan plays, entrepreneurial women are often seen in later periods as dramatic, even tragic, heroes. When the stage closed during the years of 1642-1659, the print market was playwrights’ main source of income, and it was soon adapted to promote drama and ensure its future production. Chapter IV suggests that the success of William Davenant’s The Siege of Rhodes was due to how its preface implicated customers of the print edition in its stage production. Chapter V marks the emergence of the entrepreneurial rake as a romantic and comic hero. The chapter argues that the egalitarian haggling that ends The Man of Mode and The Rover, which is conspicuously absent from The Country Wife, is presented as the ideal basis for any loving, successful, and profitable marriage.

本論文視莎士比亞的《量罪記》為詹姆士王朝城市喜劇。這齣喜劇勾勒出城市的郊區下流地圖誌。過去的批評家在討論此劇時，要不將此劇視為迎接英國新國王詹姆士一世的奉承之作，就是將此劇解讀成對新來統治者的政治批評。本論文試圖超越過去論述的簡單二元對立，以城市喜劇的角度重新切入《量罪記》，分析莎士比亞如何透過戲劇再現城市下流文化，以及此舞台再現如何連結台下底層市民，形成大眾展演政治。 論文第一部分分析《量罪記》與城市下流文化的再現。本劇將維也納城作為「崩壞之身」拉開序幕，此隱喻一方面沿襲自文藝復興時期的身體政治學，一方面又挑戰了它，因為此「崩壞之身」直到劇終仍然維持其「病態」。本劇讓觀眾體驗漫布於城市各個角落的下流文化，包括郊區的妓院群與監獄中的娼寮。本劇表面上似乎在鞏固文森提歐公爵對城市空間的掌控與管理權，另一方面卻又透過「下流」角色的身影，提供觀眾另類的閱讀，揭露城市下流文化的延續與崛起。 論文第二部分探索詹姆士王朝的城市慶典與本劇饒富興味的最後一幕之間的關係。最後一幕中，公爵的皇家入城儀式與詹姆士一世的王室慶典有許多相似之處。城市慶典許久以來便是君王用來展示自我權力的工具之一，詹姆士一世對於自己的王室慶典之抗拒，卻流露出他對公眾討論的恐懼與對自我名譽的管理。他對公眾形象的細心掌控也被再現於此劇的最後一幕中。不過，即使在這最後一幕，嫖客盧求不僅讓公爵淪為眾人笑柄，毀了他的聲譽，更勾起觀眾對城市下流文化之記憶。因此，觀眾目睹的反而不是一個可敬王者的回歸，反而是一個淫亂嫖客之崛起。 論文第三部分將本劇放置在原本的文化、社會與歷史背景中 。《量罪記》屬於1603年後冒出的一波「偽裝國王劇」，這一波戲劇風潮呼應伊莉莎白一世去世、詹姆士一世繼位的關鍵歷史時刻，反映出的是當時人民對於新王來臨產生的焦慮。《量罪記》特別之處在於呈現了城市「下流」人物對於未來生存與否的焦慮。另外，本劇亦與「假國王」的戲劇傳統相關。在此戲劇傳統中，劇作家會透過舞台上的「假國王」來做政治批評，展示適當的統治方式。本論文認為，本劇中影射詹姆士一世的公爵角色也可被視為一個舞台上的「假國王」，崛起的反而是城市「下流」人物。本劇透過丑角盧求邀請觀眾大方嘲弄公爵並且挑戰他早先建立起的權威。最後，盧求成為舞台上的底層大眾化身，透過情色的笑話與不馴的笑聲與台下的觀眾形成「下流」社群，共享大眾歡樂。正是這大眾愉悅的力量，讓此劇不再替統治者的權威背書，反而擁抱了底層下流市民。 / This thesis sees Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure as a Jacobean city comedy that maps an urban vulgar culture. Critics in the past often focused on whether the play should be read as a flattery to the new king, James I, or as a political criticism of the ruler. The thesis goes beyond the simple dichotomy offered by criticism in the past. It reads Measure for Measure as a city comedy and analyzes Shakespeare’s dramatic representation of the urban vulgar culture, which connects the lowlife figures onstage with the audiences offstage, ultimately forming a popular performative politics. The first part of the thesis analyzes Measure for Measure and its representation of an urban vulgar culture. Vienna in the play is represented as a “vile body,” which both confirms and unsettles the early modern body politic, since the vile body stays “ill” till the very end of the play. The play invites the audience to experience how this vulgar culture permeates every part of the city, including the houses of prostitution in the suburbs and a “bawdyhouse” in the prison. While the play seems to confirm Duke Vincentio’s control and regulation of the city, the bawdy figures provide us with an alternative reading of the play, revealing the survival and even the rise of the urban vulgar culture The second part of the thesis relates Jacobean civic pageantry to the play’s intriguing final scene, in which the Duke stages a royal entry that is not unlike James I’s civic pageantry. While civic pageantries had long been used by monarchs to demonstrate their power, James I’s resistance to participating in his own pageantry revealed his fear of public discourses and his careful management of reputation and honor. This careful management of public image is also represented in the play’s final scene. However, even during the final scene, Lucio not only turns the Duke into a mockable figure but also ruins the Duke’s reputation and honor. His stage presence also evokes a suburban vulgar culture. Thus, the audience does not witness the return of a respectable ruler, but the rise of a lascivious whoremaster. The third part of the thesis puts the play into its cultural, social, and historical backgrounds. Measure for Measure belonged to the wave of disguised ruler plays after 1603. The wave of drama was produced during the critical moment when Elizabeth I died and James I came to the throne. It reflected a popular anxiety of the arrival of the new king. Measure for Measure is unique in its dramatization of suburban bawdy figure’s anxiety of their future state. In addition, the play was also closely connected to the “mock king tradition,” in which the dramatists staged a mock king on the stage in order to show the proper way to rule. The thesis argues that Duke Vincentio, who resembled James I in many aspects, could possibly stand for a “mock king.” What the play actually shows is the rise of the suburban vulgar culture. The clown Lucio invites the audience to laugh at the Duke and challenges his authority established in earlier scenes. Lucio eventually stands for the general lowlife public on the stage, forming a “bawdy” community with the audience through bawdy jokes and unruly laughter. It is exactly this power of popular mirth that turns the play from an endorsement of the ruler’s authority to a celebration of the lowlife citizens.