Sick Economies: Drama, Mercantilism, and Disease in Shakespeare’s England

272 Pages·2003·17.805 MB·English

by  Jonathan Gil Harris

Sick Economies
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Sick Economies
Drama, Mercantilism, and Disease in
Shakespeare's England
Jonathan Gil Harris
PENN
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia
Copyright © 2004 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10987654321
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harris, Jonathan Gil.
Sick economies : drama, mercantilism, and disease in Shakespeare's England I Jonathan Gil
Harris.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN o-8122-3773-0 (acid-free paper)
1. English drama-Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1700-History and criticism.
2. Economics in literature. 3. Mercantile system-Great Britain-History-16th century.
4· Mercantile system-Great Britain-History-17th century. 5· Shakespeare, William,
1564-1616-Knowledge-Economics. 6. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616-Knowledge-Medicine.
7. English drama-17th century-History and criticism. 8. Great Britain-Economic conditions-
16th century. 9. England-Economic conditions-17th century. 10. Economics in literature.
11. Diseases in literature. I. Title.
PR658.E35H37 2004
2003055561
for my sister Naomi Harris Narev
(1968-2003)
-b'a hava raba
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Contents
1 The Asian Flu; Or, The Pathological Drama of National
Economy 1
2 Syphilis and Trade: Thomas Starkey, Thomas Smith, The Comedy
ofErrors 29
3 Taint and Usury: Gerard Malynes, The Dutch Church Libel,
The Merchant of Venice 52
4 Canker/Serpego and Value: Gerard Malynes, Troilus and
Cressida 83
5 Plague and Transmigration: Timothy Bright, Thomas Milles,
Volpone 108
6 Hepatitis/Castration and Treasure: Edward Misselden, Gerard
Malynes, The Fair Maid of the West, The Renegado 136
7 Consumption and Consumption: Thomas Mun, The Roaring
Girl 163
8 Afterword: Anthrax, Cyberworms, and the New Ethereal
Economy 186
Notes 191
Bibliography 235
Index 253
Acknowledgments 261
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1
The Asian Flu; Or, The Pathological Drama
of National Economy
At the end of 1997, newspaper readers around the world were treated
to a striking journalistic diptych. Alongside reports of the outbreak of a new,
possibly lethal strain of chicken influenza in Hong Kong, there appeared the
first articles detailing the turmoil and collapse of East Asia's "tiger" economies.
The juxtaposition proved quite suggestive. Although the new strain of influenza
turned out to be relatively innocuous, the language it generated was altogether
more contagious: in a matter of days after the Hong Kong outbreak, Anglo
phone reporters had dubbed the economic ills afflicting nations such as In
donesia, Thailand, and Korea the "Asian flu:' or, with greater euphony, the
''Asian contagion:' The tigers were thus transmuted into morbid chickens,
threatening to infect the economies of the West.
The ''Asian flu" metaphor reveals a great deal. First, it bears witness to the
constitutive role played by the body in shaping Western perceptions of the eco
nomic. One might think also of eighteenth-century French Physiocrat theories
of the blood-like circulation of wealth; the word "inflation:' which was origi
nally a specialized medical term for "swelling"; the pathological connotations of
"consumption"; Adam Smith's "invisible hand" of the market; or the organic et
ymology of "capital" itself.1 Metaphors of infectious disease like the ''Asian flu"
similarly disclose the corporeal images that, even in an age where the archaic
logic of resemblance between microcosm and macrocosm no longer holds sway,
continue to organize popular understandings of the economic.
Just as strikingly, the metaphor lends expression to deep-seated fears about
the vulnerability of national markets within larger, global networks of com
merce. In these fears lurks an intriguing paradox. Fundamental to the notion of
the nation's commercial health is an ambivalent conception of transnationality
that works to naturalize the global even as it stigmatizes the foreign. The ''Asian
flu" metaphor embodies this ambivalence particularly clearly. By troping eco
nomic illness as a communicable condition that transmigrates across oceans,
the metaphor attributes the cause of plunging stocks and evaporating capital
around the world to specific foreign bodies rather than to global commerce it-