The Elizabethan age was one of unbounded vitality and exuberance; nowhere is the color and action of life more vividly revealed than in the rogue books and cony-catching (confidence game) pamphlets of the sixteenth century. This book presents seven of the age's liveliest works: Walker'sManifest Detection of Dice Play; Awdeley'sFraternity of Vagabonds; Harman'sCaveat for Common Cursitors Vulgarly Called Vagabonds; Greene'sNotable Discovery of CozenageandBlack Book's Messenger; Dekker'sLantern and Candle-light; and Rid'sArt of Juggling. From these pages spring the denizens of the Elizabethan underworld: cutpurses, hookers, palliards, jarkmen, doxies, counterfeit cranks, bawdy-baskets, walking morts, and priggers of prancers.
In his introduction, Arthur F. Kinney discusses the significance of these works as protonovels and their influence on such writers as Shakespeare. He also explores the social, political, and economic conditions of a time that spawned a community of renegades who conned their way to fame, fortune, and, occasionally, the rope at Tyburn.
ARTHUR F. KINNEYis Thomas W. Copeland Professor of Literary History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and founding editor ofEnglish Literary Renaissance.
Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggarscollects significant rogue books and cony catching pamphlets. Given the renewed interest in such texts in recent years, their availability in a modern edition is a considerable boon to Renaissance scholarsespecially in an edition enhanced by Kinney's thorough and informative introduction. Steven Mullaney, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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