ABSTRACT
Separating popular from elite culture in the early modern period is rarely straightforward. As Peter Burke observes, despite their gradual disconnection during this era, they remain bonded in a variety of ways.1 This intersection comes under strain as the champions of elite culture increasingly sought to withdraw from participation in popular models, a feature well illustrated by Sir Thomas Bodley’s fear of provoking derision from the learned if English playtexts and other ‘baggage books’ found their way into his Oxford library.2 However, while literary circles intent on raising the status of English writing during the Elizabethan period might formally rail against the rude styles of ballads and plays, many of their members used popular forms in their own creative work. Sir Philip Sidney disparaged a ‘mongrel tragicomdey’ in contemporary drama, but happily employed romance for his Arcadia, a form which straddled the elite and popular divide.3 The issues surrounding connections between popular and elite are complicated by recognising that ‘low’ or ‘vulgar’ literary styles don’t necessarily equate with ‘popular’ any more than employing ‘high’ forms automatically means elite; nor should narrow debates about literary properties in select coteries allow us to overlook that mixed styles, such as those employed in drama, were the norm in English writing during the mid-sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries. Further, beyond the obvious blurring of boundaries between elite and popular, we are also faced with instances where some texts appear to be manifestations of something like the King’s two bodies: that is they appear not only to blend popular and elite manners but to manifest a seemingly high and low form separately but simultaneously. Then, too, there are questions around materials that may look popular but are actually highly
1 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1978) pp. 23-9, 270-81.
