ISSN 2279-7149 (online)
www.fupress.com/bsfm-jems
2015 Firenze University Press

Journal of Early Modern Studies, n. 4 (2015), pp. 7-8
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.13128/JEMS-2279-7149-15742

Contents

Editorial 9
William C. Carroll

Part One

General Overview

Service and Servants in Early Modern English Culture to 1660 17
Elizabeth Rivlin

Good to Th ink With: Domestic Servants, England 1660-1750 43
Jeanne Clegg

Part Two

Case Studies

Cultural Services

‘I keepe my watche, and warde ’: Richard Robinson’s Rewarde of Wickednesse (1574) 71
Emily Buff ey

William Basse’s Polyhymnia and the Poetry of Service 99
Ben Crabstick

Household Scribes and the Production of Literary Manuscripts in Early Modern England 133
Marcy L. North

Servant Advisers: Th e Curious Memoirs of the Duc de Sully 159
Michelle Miller

Servants on Stage

All’s [Not] Well: Female Service and ‘Vendible’ Virginity in Shakespeare ’s Problem Play 187
Emily C. Gerstell



contents8 

Tranio Transformed: Social Anxieties and Social Metamorphosis  
     in The Taming of the Shrew 213 
Sonya L. Brockman

‘Servant obedience changed to master sin’: Performance and the Public Transcript  
     of Service in the Overbury Affair and The Changeling 231 
John Higgins 

Regulating Service 
 
‘Humblewise’: Deference and Complaint in the Court of Requests 261 
Liam J. Meyer 
 
Power, (Im)Politeness and Aggressiveness in Early Modern  
     Master-Servant Relations (1660-1750) 287 
Stefania Biscetti 
 
Tell Your Story to No One: ‘Re-Servicing’ Virtue in the Magdalen House 315 
Sylvia Greenup

A Comparative Perspective

‘The Purgatory of Servants’: (In)Subordination, Wages, Gender and Marital 
Status of Servants in England and Italy in the Seventeenth  
and Eighteenth Centuries 347

Raffaella Sarti 

Appendix

Servants: for, about, and by 375
Jeanne Clegg, Paola Pugliatti

 
Contributors  399