Rise of the Merchant Class in English Renaissance Literature
Anyone who was anyone in Renaissance Europe was a merchant. Unless, of course, you were a noble. At first, merchants were the new kids on the block. But before long, even the nobility, wealthy landowners, and the farmers took notice of these dudes. Why?
People peddling their wares started accruing vast fortunes through international maritime trade. Who knew buying a boat and risking it all on the sea would be so profitable? Well, that's kind of the point. You could never really count on the good fortunes of maritime trade; at the time, sailing the high seas still involved taking huge risks. Many merchants' lives ended in bankruptcy or early death.
When things were going well, though, people were definitely talking. And the way money was spent was definitely changing. The influx of international goods to local markets, and the great fortunes that sometime came from these goods, sparked the first stock markets.
People began to speculate about what new stuff might cost. Hey, if you don't want to do the heavy lifting and brave rollicking waves, why not risk your savings on that great tip about tulips? Or the price of cheese in Denmark?
And shifting the tides of the money markets meant shifting the structure of Europe's social classes. Merchants' little ones were now able to go to school alongside kids whose parents had money from, oh, you know, looting during the Crusades a couple centuries back.
This reworking of the social hierarchy not only complicated politics, it changed the way people defined their everyday roles in society. Before, you had the king, the nobility (friends and relatives of the king), the gentry (people who owned farmland), farmers (people who rented land from the gentry and grew stuff on it), and peasants (the hungry, angry dudes and dudettes with pitchforks).
So where did the merchants fit into all of this? Well, smack dab in the middle. They were considered to be below the gentry in social status, but, wouldn't you know—a good lot of them ended up with way more wealth than the nobility.
You can kind of see how the king's friends, what with their shiny titles and new carriages and all, might get persnickety when a bunch of no-name merchants started way out-growing their assets. And then, these same merchants often turned out to be behind some of the most important movements during the Renaissance. Because what did they do with all that cash?
Become patrons of the arts, of course. They funded and operated explorations and, sometimes, wars. Oh, and they basically invented banking. No big deal.
Chew on This
The merchant class was such a big deal that there's even a Shakespeare play called The Merchant of Venice. How much of this play is really about Antonio (the merchant), though? If he's not really a major player in terms of stage time, why do you think his place in society gets top billing?
The rise of the merchant class sparked social changes within other laboring factions of society as well. Inspired by the merchants' successes, people who worked as carpenters or weavers and the like formed guilds during the Renaissance. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, a group of these tradesmen put on a play for the royal wedding. Want to talk about class conflict? Take a gander at how worried these guys get about offending the nobility. Yikes.