Weaver-Poet and the Plague: Labor, Poverty, and the Household in Shakespeare's London

At the turn of the seventeenth century, William Muggins, a weaver-poet, lived in London and wrote about the plague of 1603. His life and writing reflect the social and economic woes of the city, and his poem "Londons Mourning Garment" reflects on the loss of life and suffering brought on by the plague. This book reconstructs Muggins' household, reading, professional and social networks, and proximity to a culture of radical religion in Southwark, giving agency and voice to a class that is often portrayed as passive and voiceless.

Format: Hardback
Length: 284 pages
Publication date: 14 September 2020
Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press

At the turn of the seventeenth century, when few of his contemporaries could even read, William Muggins, a destitute but highly literate weaver-poet, resided and wrote in London. A Weaver-Poet and the Plague's microhistorical approach utilizes Muggins' life and writing, in which he articulates a radical vision of a commonwealth founded on labor and mutual aid, as a gateway into a broader narrative about London's "middling sort" during the plague of 1603.

In debt, in prison, and at odds with his livery company, Muggins was forced to relocate his family from the central London neighborhood known as the Poultry to the far poorer and more densely populated parish of St. Olaves in Southwark. It was here, confined to his home as that parish was devastated by the plague, that Muggins wrote his minor epic, Londons Mourning Garment, in 1603. The poem laments the loss of life and the suffering brought on by the plague but also reflects on the social and economic woes of the city, from the pains of motherhood and child-rearing to anxieties about poverty, insurmountable debt, and a system that had failed London's most vulnerable. Part literary criticism, part microhistory, this book reconstructs Muggins' household, his reading, his professional and social networks, and his proximity to a culture of radical religion in Southwark.

Featuring an appendix with a complete version of Londons Mourning Garment, this volume presents a street-level view of seventeenth-century London that gives agency and voice to a class that is often portrayed as passive and voiceless.

Weight: 586g
Dimension: 159 x 235 x 26 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780271087153