The Culture of Usury in Renaissance England

Usury is entrenched in the 21st century world. Recently, however, public opinion has been shifting back to the strongly hostile view of usury held by humanity for millennia before the rise of capitalism. This book examines the ways in which usury was perceived and portrayed at the very beginning of its rise to power. David Hawkes examines early modern English depictions of usury in a wide variety of literary media: plays, pamphlets, poems, political economy and parliamentary debates. It suggests that knowledge of such portrayals may help us settle accounts with the vastly expanded form taken by usury in our own time.