ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the dramatic genre of the London city comedy in the context of new credit relations, both at court and among a broader English population. It argues the credit in Middletons city comedies depends on intrapersonal trust and strategies of observation by which creditors determined the true worth of others. The chapter suggests that, in an era of religious uncertainty, Middletons exploration of credit relations also drew on a Calvinist notion of reclamation that framed financial relationships as both spiritual and material. Middletons plays stage a historical dialectic between belief and distrust that emerges from early modern economies of credit. Though an ancient convention, the letter of credit became subject to new rules and modes of economic investigation in the period. Middletons A Mad World, My Masters also links character and credit in the context of belief. Commerce in Middleton is so broadly dispersed among the population as to be as natural as breathing.
