ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Thomas Middleton's A Mad World My Masters participates in the examination of the financial contract in the early modern family. Understanding the relationship between class and apprenticeship reveals why youth at various levels of society shared similar frustrations and goals; looking at home as well as in the workshop reveals the importance of reevaluating the relationship between the master-apprentice model and the familial model of youth-elder relations. The Touchstone suggests that he understands the familial in contractual terms. Comparing a pair of good subordinates to a pair of bad subordinates, Touchstone moves in the opposite direction most scholars do regarding the relationship between master-apprentice and parent-child interactions. Financial inheritance in families was akin to the training of apprentices as both were vehicles for youthful independence. In each context, elders attempted to suppress the contradictory nature of inheritance by bearing down hard on the young.
