Vagrancy in Early Modern England Vagrancy in Early Modern England Author Madisen Crandall Author Kate McPherson Supervising Editor Kate McPherson Editor Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Early Modern England Encyclopedia EMEE

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.

 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a

 University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform

Unless otherwise noted, intellectual copyright in EMEE Anthology pages is held by Kate McPherson on behalf of the contributors. Copyright on the TEI-XML markup is held by the University of Victoria on behalf of the LEMDO Team. The content and TEI-XML markup in this file are licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. This file is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and /or data; (2) this availability statement must remain in the file; (3) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except for quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (4) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the authors, EMEE, and LEMDO. Neither the content nor the code in this file is licensed for training large language models (LLMs), ingestion into an LLM, or any use in any artificial intelligence applications; such uses are considered to be commercial uses and are strictly prohibited.

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Madisen Crandall and Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Document Types All documents in LEMDO are either born-digital documents or primary documents. Within those two general categories, LEMDO offers additional ways to categorize a file. Born-digital Born-digital documents are anything other than primary texts Critical Critical material, such as a general introduction or a textual introduction. Responsibilities Responsibilities Author A person, family, or organization responsible for creating a work that is primarily textual in content, regardless of media type (e.g., printed text, spoken word, electronic text, tactile text) or genre (e.g., poems, novels, screenplays, blogs). Use also for persons, etc., creating a new work by paraphrasing, rewriting, or adapting works by another creator such that the modification has substantially changed the nature and content of the original or changed the medium of expression. LEMDO uses the term author in two contexts: (1) to indicate the author of a primary work or document (such as Hamlet), and (2) to indicate the author of a secondary text (such as the Critical Introduction to <title level="m">Hamlet, by David Bevington). Editor A person, family, or organization contributing to a resource by revising or elucidating the content, e.g., adding an introduction, notes, or other critical matter. An editor may also prepare a resource for production, publication, or distribution. For major revisions, adaptations, etc., that substantially change the nature and content of the original work, resulting in a new work, see author. LEMDO uses the general term editor only in edition metadata and only to indicate when a person is responsible for editing all parts of an edition. Otherwise, use the more granular terms to describe the precise nature of the editorial role. Supervising Editor An editor who supervises the work of a student editor. Copy Editor LEMDO uses the term owner for the person who checks facts, quotations, and citations; may make formatting changes; may convert from one citation style to another; may suggest wording changes; and enforces conformity with the project style guide. Markup Editor A person or organization performing the coding of SGML, HTML, or XML markup of metadata, text, etc. Gloss needed. Copyright Holder A person or organization to whom copy and legal rights have been granted or transferred for the intellectual content of a work. The copyright holder, although not necessarily the creator of the work, usually has the exclusive right to benefit financially from the sale and use of the work to which the associated copyright protection applies. Normally the editor is the copyright holder for an LEMDO edition. EMEE Keywords Culture Learn about the customs, beliefs, and daily lives of people in early modern England. Daily Life Crime Punishment Social Order Gender Men Published file. Updated metadata proofed Created File. Michael Best Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

 Madisen Crandall Madisen Crandall

Madisen Crandall was a student at Utah Valley University.

 Leah Hamby Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

 Navarra Houldin Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

 Kate McPherson Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

 LEMDO Team The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors. University of Victoria https://www.uvic.ca/
Masterless Men

Vagrants, often referred to as travelers, wanderers, or vagabonds, are defined by being rootless and roofless, a phrase coined by modern scholar Robert Humphreys in his 1999 book, No Fixed Abode.

In early modern England, as today, people lived in a context defined by their social and economic status. The wandering poor, often called masterless men, caused significant worry in the period. These were commoners who had no allegiance or ties to the ruling classes and thus had both less supervision and less social support. One surprising fact is that actors were considered vagrants unless they had the patronage of a master over the rank of baron, hence the sponsorship of acting companies by noblemen and by monarchs.

Strict laws against vagrancy were enforced only sporadically. Able-bodied men over age fourteen who had no visible means of support, often dispossessed farm laborers, were punished with public whipping and a hole burned through their right ear on a first offence; they could be hanged for a second offense. Unemployed people were shunted from parish to parish until they could find someone willing to give them work.

Who Were Vagrants?

These masterless men (and women) were seen as a serious threat to the stability of society, largely because they were perceived as potential criminals. Who were the largest groups of people most likely to be vagrants or beggars? Veterans: Many soldiers returned from fighting overseas injured, possibly lacking a hand, arm or leg, and thus unable to work. Genuine beggars—the people with permanent disabilities who could not work for a living—were able to get a license to beg and did receive some support from local almshouses and Justices of the Peace. The rural poor: These were mainly widowed women with no trade or means of support, but a significant number were common farm laborers who were often without work during the winter. Local eccentrics: These were unusual people, many of whom we could now characterize as intellectually disabled or mentally ill. They were tolerated in some communities and driven out of others. Occasionally, the local Church of England parish supported them or helped their families support or guide them. The urban poor: In growing cities, and especially in London, the poor were a significant public welfare problem. As the Elizabethan economy destabilized in the 1590s, they became even more of a problem. City authorities tried to prevent both begging and the subdivision of houses into small one or two room tenements that landlords rented to the poor. Then, as now, overcrowding in poorer neighborhoods was a problem.

The laws of early modern England were expressed in terms of the employment of men, but there were as many women and children who suffered from poverty due to economic disadvantages. Similar to the present day, many women turned to prostitution to support themselves or their children when they had no other option for work.

Vagrancy and the Players of Early Modern England

The type of lifestyle correlated with vagrancy mimics that of players in and around the 16th century. Players often travelled vast distances looking for work or touring with theatrical shows, meaning they were often the strangers coming into towns and cities around the realm. As scholars Katie Sambrook and John Wilby observe: The inclusion of unpatronised players within officially proscribed vagrant groups was not only to prevent professional beggars from disguising themselves as actors, but also reflected unease at the politically and socially subversive potential of unlicensed performance itself. In the febrile atmosphere of the Tudor period, with its religious upheavals and political instability, the state sought to control criticism and dissent in public performance with a steadily hardening approach to players and companies.

Only their connection to a playing company, such as The Lord Admiral’s Men or The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, kept actors from being arrested for vagrancy by suspicious officials in country towns. A 1572 law, the Acte for the Punishment of Vagabonds and the Relief of the Poor and Impotent declared actors vagabonds and masterless men and hence were subject to arrest and imprisonment. A 1597 law, An Acte for Punishment of Rogues, Vagabonds and Sturdie Beggers continued to exempt members of licensed playing companies from any sanction, although it did not exempt them from suspicion.

Potentially Vagrant Characters in Shakespeare’s Writing

Shakespeare wrote often about vagrancy with both disapproval and curiosity. Some of the most notable examples of characters with vagrant characteristics in Shakespeare’s works range in importance and social status, which reflects the very nature of vagrancy and its multifaceted presence in society during Shakespeare’s times.

Falstaff in King Henry IV: One of Prince Hal’s (the future King Henry V) oldest friends is a knight in rank but a vagrant in actions who pulls Hal into his wandering and often criminal ways. Falstaff is unburdened by the societal pressures that plague Prince Hal, but ultimately, he is rejected for his failure to conform.

Fool in King Lear: Lear’s Fool has a traditional aspect of vagrancy in his arsenal: mobility. The Fool moves between social groups throughout the play, adjusting his sociability for each person and maintaining a high amount of involvement among several different layers of the classes depicted. He ultimately suffers alongside Lear during his madness in the storm but disappears from the play after that point.

Autolycus in The Winter’s Tale: Autolycus is a jack-of-all-trades character who has traveled the world with a monkey, teaches clowns their tricks, and often relieves them of the gold in their pockets. This rogue shows the charms and downsides of his itinerant life.

Key Print Sources Beier, A. L., and Paul Robert Ocobock. Cast Out: Vagrancy and Homelessness in Global and Historical Perspective. Ohio University Press, 2008. Dunne, Derek. <q>Rogues</q> License: Counterfeiting Authority in Early Modern Literature. Shakespeare Studies vol. 45, Jan. 2017, pp. 137–143. Humphreys, Robert. No Fixed Abode: A History of the Responses to the Roofless and Rootless in Britain. Palgrave McMillan, 1999. Nesvet, Rebecca. Vagabonds, Players and Shakespeare. Literature Compass vol. 1, no. 1, 2004, pp. 1–12.
Key Online Sources 1572 Vagabonds Act. UK Parliament. https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/coll-9-health1/health-06/. Accessed 30 Jun. 2025. Best, Michael. Beggars as Criminals. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, 4 Jan. 2011. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/history/crime%20and%20the%20law/beggars.html. Best, Michael. Begging and Vagrancy. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, 4 Jan. 2011. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/society/city%20life/begging.html. Kim, Mi-Su. Men on the Road: Beggars and Vagrants in Early Modern Drama (William Shakespeare, John Fletcher, and Richard Brome). Texas A&M University. Doctoral Dissertation, 2006. The OAKTrust Digital Repository. https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/items/f3a752d9-46e3-4575-b5a4-9345d9af3e64. WSB bbm1077. Sambrook, Katie, and John Wilby. Act of Parliament Against Vagrancy. <q>The Very Age and Body of the Time</q>: Shakespeare’s World. Exhibition at King’s College London. 16 Jun.–24 Sep. 2016. https://kingscollections.org/exhibitions/specialcollections/the-very-age-and-body-of-the-time-shakespeares-world/%E2%80%98to-try-their-fortune-there-from-the-town-to-the-city/act-of-parliament-against-vagrancy..