Gender, Class, and the Social Order in Late Elizabethan Drama

Social historians of Tudor and Stuart England have described a notable social mobility during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, a mobility of which contemporary Englishmen, such as William Harrison and Thomas Smith, were deeply aware.' During this period of particularly intense economic and demographic change, social movement went in both directions, downwards as well as upwards, leading to unrest and conflict in the social order. Precisely because this movement was particularly apparent and significant between the gentry and the rest of the society, making distinctions between the two became of pressing importance. While largely agreeing on the prevalence of mobility between classes, historians of this period-both contemporary and modern-appear less able to agree about relations between genders.