‘Outlandish Love’: Marriage and Immigration in City Comedies

Abstract

This article questions the orthodox reading of early English city comedies that such plays exhibit intense national or proto-national fervor, especially articulated in terms of anti-alien sentiment. A close examination of The Dutch Courtesan and Englishmen for My Money shows that English playgoers were keen to see their cosmopolitan city staged. Moreover, these plays suggest that when it came to European immigrants to England, status and wealth were far more important to the English than considerations of birthplace and ethnicity.