ABSTRACT
In sixteenth-century drama, the event that single-most determined the tone and tenor of representations of the Flemish was Ill May Day; in seventeenth-century drama, that determining event was the Amboyna massacre of 1623. These contrasting events are indicative not only of profound shifts in Anglo-Dutch relations but also of the extent to which the world had changed in a century. Franceschina's lack of stereotypical Dutch characteristics appears odd when one considers that the play is filled with "extremely flat characters tending to caricature". Sixteenth-century Flemish immigrants to England endured many hardships, not the least of which was the daily animosity they faced on the streets, in the playhouses, even, at times, in Parliament. Yet the immigrants quietly persevered, entering English society so gradually but so completely that the contributions they made and the controversy their presence generated four hundred years ago have faded nearly into illegibility like the manuscript of Sir Thomas More.
