Theatre, finance and society is an interpretive inventory of responses to socio-economically induced stress. Not so much what early modern English people thought of their circumstances, nor solely what those exigencies felt like, my subject is the amalgam of cognition and affect that enables coping mechanisms and coping strategies – from routines that were mostly passive to those in which men and women seized the initiative. Then as now people made something of their debts, their risks, and their losses. Then as now people responded to and acted upon their economic encumbrances and opportunities in various and often unpredictable ways

There is no way exhaustively to canvass an entire historical moment's repertoire of socio-economically aroused affect. One may, however, look at particular dramatic texts, at biographical records, and at historical episodes for evidence of varieties of emotional engagement. While drama and historical narratives lend themselves to the recovery of affect, unlike an essay, a treatise, or a pamphlet, they do not and they need not self-consciously set out to know what they feel or think, although the feelings represented in them are bound up subtly with the knowledge they depend upon. Early modern English drama, biography, and history everywhere enact the likes of embarrassment and contempt and rage, but they have not often been mined for their affects.