SOURCE: Bonahue, Edward T., Jr. “Social Control, the City, and the Market: Heywood's If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody.” Renaissance Papers (1993): 75-90.

In the following essay, Bonahue discusses the role of Heywood's play in providing a forum for debate on the more controversial aspects of the changing culture of the city in early modern England.

Until recently, scholars describing the economic and social history of early modern London assessed the dominant cultural paradigm as one of continual “crisis,” a series of political, economic, and social problems that grew more and more volatile until they finally launched the civil war.¹ Focusing on those cultural forces that provided some measure of stability, however, revisionist historians within the last decade have demonstrated that despite its succession of so-called “crises,” early modern London in many ways prospered. The city increased dramatically in wealth, and sanitation and public works were improved...