The Figure of the Crowd in Early Modern London: The City and its Double [Hardcover]

The Figure of the Crowd in Early Modern London examines the cultural phenomenon of the urban crowd in the context of early modern London's population crisis. The book explores the crowd's double function as a symbol of the city's growth and as the necessary context for the public performance of urban culture. Its central argument is that the figure of the crowd acts as a supplement to the symbolic space of the city, at once providing a tangible referent for urban meaning and threatening the legibility of that meaning through its motive force and uncontrollable energy.Introduction: Crowded Spaces Imaginary Numbers: City, Crowd, Theatre London's Mirror: Civic Ritual and the Crowd Shakespeare's London : The Scene of London in the Second Tetralogy and Henry VIII Distracted Multitude: The Theatre and the Many-Headed Monster

Ian Munro s clever and informative account of London in the early modern period takes as its focus the dual nature of the growing metropolis - the city and its people - and argues that the two are inseparable but, surprisingly, finally amount to nothing. - Renaissance Quarterly

[A] clever and informative account of London in the early modern period . - Sharon A. Beehler, Montana State University - Bozeman