City, Commerce, and Identity: Urban Consciousness in Restoration London
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Research Question
How did the urban environment of Restoration London, particularly its rapidly expanding commercial and social structures, influence the formation and literary representation of identity during the period (1660-1700)?
Hypothesis
This paper argues that in Restoration literature, London emerges not merely as a passive setting but as an active, character-like force that shapes the identities of its inhabitants. This new "urban self-consciousness," built on the twin foundations of global commerce and public "social theatre," created a new form of identity that was no longer fixed by lineage but was fluid, performed, commodified, and publicly contested.
Abstract
This paper investigates the representation of London in Restoration literature as a central force in the formation of new social, economic, and personal identities. The Stuart Restoration (1660–1700) is conventionally treated as a distinct literary "landmark," yet this periodization is subject to scholarly debate, with some historians pointing to significant cultural and economic continuity with the 1650s. This analysis argues that while continuity existed in certain print genres, the era's unique "urban self-consciousness," particularly as articulated in Restoration comedy, marks a significant cultural shift.
Drawing on analysis of the period's social geography, its mercantile economy, and the new material "split between page and stage" in dramatic publishing, this paper posits that London emerges as more than a mere setting: it is an active, theatricalized character. The city's specific, named locations (the New Exchange, St. James's Park, Covent Garden, and the Chocolate-house) function as sites of "social theatre" where identity is no longer fixed by lineage but is performed, commodified, and contested. This new urban consciousness, mapped by dramatists like Etherege, Wycherley, Behn, and Congreve, reveals a society grappling with the rise of global commerce, the anonymity of the crowd, the performance of credit, and the complex spectacles of modernity.
Introduction: The Contested Landmark
The Stuart Restoration of 1660, which brought Charles II to the throne and reopened the theaters after an eighteen-year interregnum, is conventionally held as "one of the most significant" and "conspicuous landmarks in the history of English literature" (Zwicker 427, 428). This event is often framed by literary historians as a radical and immediate "rupture," a moment that decisively "marks the decisive birth of the new world" (Zwicker 427). This new world is characterized as one of lewdness, wit, and libertinism, a stark and self-conscious "repudiation of the 1650s in all of that decade's supposed primness and piety" (Zwicker 426). This perceived break is perhaps most visible in the rise of a new, cynical, and geographically-specific form of drama: the Restoration comedy.
Figure 1 :The Restoration playhouse as a "theatre of social display".
However, this clean narrative of radical transformation has been compellingly challenged by revisionist historians. Steven N. Zwicker, using quantitative evidence from print history, directly questions "if the chronology of high politics ought to be read into other chronologies" (Zwicker 425). His research demonstrates a remarkable continuity in the print market across the 1660 divide. For example, Zwicker notes that the publication rates of religious texts, the very material supposedly repudiated by the libertine age, remained almost identical in proportion. In the 1650s, 1,168 sermons were published; in the 1660s, the number was 950, representing "within a tenth of one percent, the same proportion" of the total print population. The publication of bibles and psalters also remained numerically stable (Zwicker 429). This data suggests that the "rage for order" or the "triumph of modernity" was, at the very least, not an overnight revolution that displaced the nation's underlying cultural and spiritual concerns.
Yet, to dismiss the Restoration as an indistinct period is to ignore the unique cultural products that did emerge. As Zwicker's own data reveals, while the publication of tragedies as playbooks showed little change (50 in the 1660s vs. 40 in the 1650s), the number of comedies published or reprinted doubled, from 43 in the 1650s to 86 in the 1660s (Zwicker 429). This statistical spike points directly to the era's signal innovation: a new kind of social drama. Historian Tim Harris argues that the period was defined by "new (post-1660) developments and changes" that created "new sets of problems for the restored monarch." Among the most important of these, Harris identifies the "rise of the public sphere," the "growing importance of opinion out-of-doors," and the emergence of new "social, cultural, and ideological forces" (Harris 201).
This paper argues that this distinctiveness, this "newness," is found precisely in the new drama's intense focus on London. While Zwicker's data on print genres is persuasive, it does not fully account for the content and focus of this new, exploding genre of comedy, which was, as Darryll Grantley observes, "intimately concerned with the urban culture of the growing metropolis of London" (Grantley 1).
This paper will argue that in Restoration literature, London emerges not merely as a passive setting but as an active, character-like force that shapes the identities of its inhabitants. This new "urban self-consciousness" was built on two interconnected foundations: first, London's explosive growth as the "hub" of global commerce, which created new wealth and a new cultural "hero," the merchant; and second, the city's development of new public spaces (parks, squares, and exchanges) that functioned as a literal "form of theatre" for social performance (Grantley 2; Zahedieh 143-144). Drawing on the social geography of Restoration comedy, the history of Atlantic mercantilism, and the new material conditions of the press, this analysis will demonstrate that Restoration writers used the map of London to explore the anxieties and opportunities of modernity. In this new urban world, identity was no longer a fixed given, but a fluid performance defined by commerce, spectacle, and a crucial "split between page and stage" (Walker 205).
The Mercantile Engine: Commerce and Credit as Social Identity
The engine of London's new urban consciousness was commerce. In the late seventeenth century, economic writers almost universally agreed that "foreign trade underpinned the wealth, health, and strength of the nation." In this new national narrative, the merchant was elevated to the status of a "hero," described as "the steward of the kingdom's stock" who circulated treasure, the "vital blood of the common weal" (Zahedieh 143). As historian Nuala Zahedieh details, the Restoration government actively consolidated this economic power through protectionist legislation like the Navigation Acts. This "mercantile system" was designed to funnel all colonial trade through England, excluding rivals like the Dutch, and it successfully established London as the undisputed "hub" of a burgeoning Atlantic trade in sugar, tobacco, textiles, and slaves (Zahedieh 144).
This new global commerce was structurally different from the old, guild-dominated systems. The Atlantic trade, Zahedieh notes, was largely "open to all" English subjects, not just restricted to chartered companies. This openness created a dynamic, highly competitive, and exceptionally risky environment. Thousands of individuals participated, but "most of the entrants were involved in a small way" (Zahedieh 145-146). Success and survival depended on navigating a new set of social and financial challenges, chief among them the problem of trust.
Because the colonial trade "was based on a long chain of promises" stretching across the Atlantic, it required a vast infrastructure of credit (Zahedieh 158). In this system, "reputation" became a merchant's most valuable form of capital. As one contemporary, Nicholas Barbon, defined it, credit was "'the value raised by opinion'" (Zahedieh 150). This "opinion" was built and maintained through a strict "code of conduct" that combined "rules of reason and religion." A merchant had to be a "paragon of prudence, wisdom, and justice," projecting diligence, caution, and, above all, "'justice' or fairness in his dealings." In a very real sense, Zahedieh concludes, "a man's reputation was his capital" (Zahedieh 150-151).
This new equation, where financial worth was identical to social performance, was fundamental to the new urban consciousness. The primary stage for this performance was the "Royal Exchange," which merchants visited daily. It was here, in the buzz of conversation, that "each man's credit was determined by talk" (Zahedieh 153). Information and gossip were the currency that backed the entire mercantile system. This created a high-stakes social world where every action was subject to scrutiny and interpretation, a world ripe for the dramatist's pen.
Figure 2 : The New Exchange, a public hub for commerce, gossip, and social intrigue.
Restoration comedy seized upon this new reality, transferring the logic of the mercantile world directly onto the stage. The "New Exchange," built in the Strand, becomes a frequently named location in the plays, a prime example of what Darryll Grantley calls the "social geography" of the era. This was not simply a generic shop but a specific, fashionable, and socially complex space. Unlike the male-dominated Royal Exchange, the New Exchange was a public sphere where "women played a powerful role, as they were frequently the shopkeepers." It was a "venue for general public meeting" and, precisely because of this social admixture, an ideal location for "sexual trysts," assignations, and the "retail of gossip," as seen in plays like Etherege's 'She Would If She Could' (Grantley 17-18).
Dramatists explicitly linked the mechanics of commerce with the strategies of social and amorous intrigue. The city itself is a marketplace, and identity is a commodity. In Wycherley's 'The Country Wife', the character Harcourt makes a direct and cynical analogy "between amorous strategies of women and the commercial tactics of the saleswomen of New Exchange," who "enhance the price of their commodities, report to their fond customers offers which were never made 'em." Here, love, sex, status, and wit are explicitly commodified. They are "commodometries" to be traded, priced, and consumed as part of the "pleasures of the town." This consumerist impulse, fueled by new mercantile wealth, becomes a defining feature of the "town" identity. The merchant's careful performance of credit at the Royal Exchange is mirrored and satirized in the fop's performance of wit at the New Exchange; both are staking their "capital" in a competitive public market (Grantley 18-19).
The City as Stage: Social Geography and Theatrical Performance
If commerce provided the city's economic script, its new public spaces provided the physical stage. Restoration literature is defined by its "urban self-consciousness," which manifested as a pervasive belief that London social life "itself was a form of theatre." In Mary Pix's 'The Beau Defeated' (1700), the witty widow Lady Landsworth famously describes her boredom with the city by collapsing the distinction between audience and actor:
"At the Theatre, am tir'd with the double Acted Farce on the Stage, and in the side Boxes."
This line, Grantley argues, underscores the "theatrical basis of social life" that was central to the Restoration mindset. London's newly fashionable locations were not just settings for plays; they were "a backdrop for the theatre of social display," and social survival required an understanding of both the "signifying potential of London's geography" and one's "own performance within it" (Grantley 2).
This concept is a direct extension of metadrama, the self-reflective use of theater to comment on its own nature. While earlier dramatists like Shakespeare and Ben Jonson used metadramatic devices to explore "philosophical dimensions of truth and identity" or to "critique societal norms" (Bavaliya 3), Restoration playwrights spatialized this concept. The city of London itself became the metadrama.
This theatricalization of the city was amplified by the new material conditions of the Restoration playhouse. The "advent of stage scenery" was a significant innovation, allowing for visual representations of specific locales (Grantley 3). However, as Grantley cautions, this "realism" was limited. The "practice of re-using painted scenes" meant that visual representations of locations like Hyde Park or the Exchange were likely "generic rather than particularized." The true specificity, the thing that made the "stage set" come alive, came from the "verbal reference" in the dialogue and the "nature of the social intercourse" that the audience recognized (Grantley 5).
This highlights a crucial tension of the era, which Katherine Mannheimer terms the inherent "split between page and stage." In her study 'Restoration Drama and the Idea of Literature', Mannheimer argues that drama had become "a medium inherently split," where the "literary tradition" was increasingly "identified with printed books." Restoration dramatists, she contends, "systematically exploited the gap between text and performativity" (Walker 205). The idea of "Covent Garden" or "The Mall" (an idea established in the "page," or the printed text, and reinforced by the audience's real-life experience) was far more potent than any generic backdrop on the "stage." The audience, who "would have frequented these places in real life," was "implicitly offered ownership of the theatrical space," using their own social knowledge to complete the "highly stylized London on the stage" (Grantley 18).
This "social theatre" relied on a shared map of key locations, which functioned as its primary "sets":
Key Locations as Theatrical "Sets"
- Parks (St. James's, The Mall, Mulberry Garden): These were "prominent among" the new public spaces "dedicated places of leisure and social gathering." The Mall, a specific promenade in St. James's Park, was the setting for numerous plays and even the title of one, 'The Mall' (1674). These parks were dramatically potent because they allowed "encounters relatively untrammelled by the social constraints of the drawing room." They offered "privacy or even anonymity" but, crucially, did not "wholly protect from public exposure." This precarity, the chance of both assignation and discovery, made them perfect engines for intrigue (Grantley 13-15).
- Covent Garden: Grantley identifies Covent Garden as the "named location in London that features most in Restoration drama as a setting." Completed in 1639, its grand piazza was "a new kind of urban space in England" and a "fashionable residential address." For playwrights, its primary value was its "dramaturgical convenience." As a large, open, and fashionable "milieu," it "allowed characters to come upon one another by chance" and enabled the "quick traffic of separate but related strands of action" (Grantley 15-18).
- Taverns, Ordinaries, and Chocolate-Houses: These venues, which Tim Harris identifies as central to the "rise of the public sphere" (Harris 201), also became key settings. Grantley notes a clear gendering of these spaces: in contrast to the "female-dominated spaces" of the Exchange and shops, the taverns and ordinaries were "very much masculine ones." The most famous example is the opening of William Congreve's 'The Way of the World' (1700), set in "a Chocolate-house." Congreve uses the entire first act to establish this "semi-public space" as a hub for "conversations between the wits," the "orchestration of stratagems," and the public ridicule of fops (Grantley 18-20). It is the stage on which male social and intellectual status is performed and contested.
Performing Identity: The Town/Country Divide
This highly theatricalized and commercialized urban landscape became the primary measure for defining modern identity. If the city is a stage and its life is a performance, then identity is no longer a fixed, inherited quality associated with a country estate. It is a fluid, public, and rehearsed construct. As Darryll Grantley argues, the most important "cognitive map" in Restoration drama was the "town/country divide." This distinction, he asserts, took "precedence over class, morality or gender in the matter of successful social self-definition" (Grantley 2).
The "town" was not merely a geographical location; it was "an inherently geographical concept, which is primarily to be understood in cultural and social rather than strictly geographical terms." To be "of the town" meant possessing "an easy familiarity, with the urban landscape," which was the "natural milieu of the beau monde." This knowledge, or lack thereof, becomes a central dramatic device for defining character, sorting the sophisticated from the gullible (Grantley 8).
Case Studies in Performance (Failure):
Characters from the country are almost universally defined by their incompetence in navigating the city. Their failure to read the "social geography" renders them vulnerable.
- In Thomas Shadwell's 'The Squire of Alsatia' (1688), the plot hinges on two brothers. Belfond Senior, "reared in the country" and "never allowed to go to London," is set against his city-bred brother. When the country squire finally arrives, he is "utterly incompetent in negotiating his way in the capital." His "lack of exposure to the geographical and moral complexities of the city" makes him immediately "vulnerable," and he "becomes the quarry of parasites" (Grantley 11-12).
- Similarly, Sir Mannerly Shallow in John Crowne's 'The Country Wit' (1675) is "obsessed with its geography and culture" but proves "utterly incompetent" upon arrival. His image of London is comically outdated; he boasts of a masque where "I was London, or Augusta, and I had a high crown'd hat, to signify Pauls Steeple," a reference to the pre-Fire cathedral. His incompetence is total, and he ends up "tricked into marriage with a porter's daughter" (Grantley 12-13).
Case Studies in Performance (Success and Manipulation):
For the "town" characters, knowledge of the city is a tool, a weapon, and a mask.
- Ignorance as a Commodity: The equation between urban knowledge and sophistication is so strong that ignorance itself becomes a commodity to be guarded or feigned. In Wycherley's 'The Country Wife' (1675), the jealous Pinchwife, an old "roué who is well able to claim, 'I know the town,'" functions as the gatekeeper of this knowledge. He equates "knowledge of its places" with a "loss of innocence," desperately trying to "not teach my wife where the men are to be found," believing her "the worse for your town documents already" (Grantley 9).
- Ignorance as a Mask: The performance of identity is made explicit in Thomas Dilke's 'The Pretenders' (1698). Here, two "town schemers" manipulate the system by feigning "ignorance of the town and posing as innocents by pretending to be countrywomen" (Grantley 10). This role-reversal demonstrates that "country" and "town" are no longer fixed states of being, but roles to be adopted and performed for social and economic gain.
- Knowledge as Power: Conversely, witty characters demonstrate their agency through their mastery of the urban map. In Wycherley's 'Love in a Wood' (1671), Lady Flippant knowingly asks her hypocritical, puritanical brother to take her to "Lincoln's Inn Fields." She knows, "though he does not, that this is where one of the playhouses is situated" (Grantley 8). She uses her superior spatial knowledge to expose his hypocrisy and navigate the city on her own terms.
- Knowledge as Agency: In Etherege's 'The Man of Mode' (1676), the celebrated heroine Harriet demonstrates her ultimate sophistication by dismissing a friend's warning about the dangers of Hyde Park. Her "familiarity with the town," Grantley notes, "allows her to negotiate its spaces safely" (Grantley 9). She is not a victim of the city; she is its master.
In this new urban world, identity is not authentic or essential; it is a performance. The hypothesis that London acts as a space of social mobility and spectacle is proven in these exchanges. The script for this performance is the social map of London, and the ability to "know the town" is the price of admission.
Conclusion
The representation of London in Restoration literature reveals a culture undergoing a profound and definitive shift. While the historiographical debate, highlighted by Steven N. Zwicker, rightly cautions against viewing 1660 as a total "rupture" in all aspects of print culture (Zwicker 429), the evidence from the era's most innovative genre, the comedy, points to a new and distinct "urban self-consciousness" (Grantley 2). The Restoration may not have immediately changed the nation's taste for sermons, but it fundamentally altered the landscape of its "literary or theatricalized" representations of social life.
This paper has argued that London became an active character in these texts, its identity forged from the twin forces of commerce and spectacle. The city was, as Nuala Zahedieh's work on mercantilism shows, the economic "hub" of the nation, and its "hero" was the merchant (Zahedieh 143, 144). This new commercial ethic infiltrated the drama, where social relations, love, and identity became transactional "commodities" exchanged in new public spaces like the New Exchange (Grantley 18-19). This economic reality, built on the fragile foundation of "credit" and "reputation" (Zahedieh 150), made social performance a matter of financial survival.
Simultaneously, as Darryll Grantley details, these new urban geographies (St. James's Park, Covent Garden, the Chocolate-house) were repurposed as a "theatre of social display" (Grantley 2). This theatricality was amplified by the new material conditions of the Restoration stage, a "medium inherently split between page and stage" (Walker 205) that relied on the audience's real-world familiarity with these locations. As the "town/country divide" became the central metric for self-definition, knowledge of this urban map became synonymous with social and moral agency.
Ultimately, the Restoration writers who mapped London's streets, parks, and exchanges were mapping the new contours of English identity itself. This identity was increasingly defined not by fixed lineage or private morality, but by economic mobility, public performance, and a new, sharp, and inescapable urban awareness. In analyzing this consciousness, we see how these writers grappled with the spectacles, anxieties, and economic logics of modernity.
Works Cited
- Grantley, Darryll. "The Social Geography of London in Restoration Comedy." Kent Academic Repository, University of Kent, 2007. https://kar.kent.ac.uk/2141/.
- Harris, Tim. "What's New about the Restoration?" Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, vol. 29, no. 2, Summer 1997, pp. 187-222. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4051810.
- Walker, Robert G. Review of Restoration Drama and the Idea of Literature, by Katherine Mannheimer. The Scriblerian and the Kit-Cats, vol. 57 no. 2, 2024, p. 205-209. Project MUSE, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/967081.
- Zahedieh, Nuala. "Making Mercantilism Work: London Merchants and Atlantic Trade in the Seventeenth Century." Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, vol. 9, Dec. 1999, pp. 143-58. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3679396.
- Zwicker, Steven N. "Is There Such a Thing as Restoration Literature?" Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 69, no. 3, Sep. 2006, pp. 425-50. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/hlq.2006.69.3.425.
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