ABSTRACT
Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and The Winter's Tale, and Jonson's Bartholomew Fair highlight connections between carnival, economics, and social mobility in urban and rural settings. Dekker's rhetorical emphasis on orality and excessive consumption befits such a holiday work that begins and ends with feasting. Shakespeare's tragicomedy offers literary impressions of the increasing remoteness of rural indicators of the passage of time with the growth of an urban, market economy as well as characters who experience nostalgia and melancholy for seasonal, festive pastimes that are often recounted in retrospect. The prefatory material to Bartholomew Fair attests to Jonson's vast awareness of and fondness for elite and popular festive elements at the heart of spectacular holiday celebrations in London. Jonson's festive comedy begins at the house of John Littlewit, whose middle-ranking family and friends consume material goods at a furious rate. Befitting the centrality of clothing in Bartholomew Fair.
