9 - The gentle craftsman in Arcadia

Summary

In the last decade of Elizabeth's reign the audience that witnessed the emergence of the businessman in armour also saw the development of a hero appealing to lesser men of trade – the gentle craftsman. Like the businessman in armour, the gentle craftsman was a replacement for earlier stereotypes of men of his kind. He was a fit companion for kings and princes, not a member of the ‘fourth sort of people’; he was a chivalric hero, not a coward or a rebel. No longer a creature of appetite, he became the contented denizen of a golden-age world in which good always triumphed over evil, food and drink were always plentiful, pretty maidens were never coy, and poverty was unknown.

It is ironic that the gentle craftsman appeared just when he did, for the political and economic climate of the 1590s certainly did not warrant the optimism that danced on the surface of his story. To be sure, the expansion of internal trade in Elizabeth's reign had allowed some urban craftsmen to become prosperous, and their prosperity had enabled them to educate their sons. At the same time, rural craftsmen had been able to eke out a more comfortable living than their fathers had enjoyed by putting their wives and children to work spinning, woad-gathering, or stocking-knitting. In Elizabethan England, however, prosperity relied on two elements beyond the control of man – the weather and good health.