"Literary scholars, theorists, and historians deploy New Economic techniques to illuminate English Renaissance literature in fresh ways. Contributors variously explore poetry's precarious perch between gift and commodity; the longing for family in The Comedy of Errorsas symbolically expressing the alienating pressures of mercantilism; Measure for Measure'srepresentation of singlewomen and the feminization of poverty; the collision between two views of money in a possible collaboration between Shakespeare and Middleton; the cultural spread of an accounting mentality and quantitative thinking; and money as it crosses the frontier between price and pricelessness, from early bodily-injury insurance schemes to The Merchant of Venice."--Pub. desc.