Chapter 2 - Service

Summary

Chapter 2 explores the recurring dramatic stereotype of the hungry servant in plays such as John Lyly’s Campaspe, Massinger’s The Bashful Lover and The Picture, and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. It argues that the representation of hungry servants mystifies the conditions of the average servant’s existence, representing hunger resulting from deprivation as an insatiable appetite. It emphasises that this process of mystification is comic in function, binding the audience together through the production of normative laughter. But it also demonstrates that the servingman’s appetite could be deployed as a means to explore England’s nascent capitalist system. Lastly, the chapter considers the relationship between the hungry servant and gender. Although female servants are rarely driven by appetite, the representation of hungry male servants constitutes a significant means through which the theatre explored the complex relationships between husbands, wives and their servants.