Stasis and insularity in The merchant of Venice and Twelfth night -- The voyage out: Pericles -- Poverty, surplus value, and theatrical investment in The winter's tale -- Captivity and "free" trade: Fletcher's The island princess and English commerce in the East Indies in the early 1600s -- Balance, circulation, and equity in the "prosperous voyage" of The renegado -- Webster's The devil's law-case, the limits of tragicomic redemption, and tragicomedy's afterlife
Summary
Valerie Forman contends that three seemingly unrelated domains--new economic theories and practices; the discourses of Christian redemption; and the rise of tragicomedy as the stage's most popular genre--were together crucial to the formulation of a new and paradoxical way of thinking about loss and profit in relationship to one another
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 251-261) and index