Reading Farewell Gifts in Early Modern Poetry and Drama

This study examines literary depictions of the gifts exchanged when friends and lovers part, and the impact that these gifts and the farewell during which they are given have on the reunions the texts depict or anticipate. Chapter One argues that in Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday, when Ralph Damport gives his wife, Jane, a decorative pair of shoes they position her as a gentlewoman and as a gentleman’s fiancée rather than a shoemaker’s wife. Chapter Two examines Amelia Lanyer’s "Salve" dedications, arguing that she positions herself as an intermediary between Christ and her reader and her book as a gift that demands reciprocation. Chapter Three analyzes the farewell exchange of a ring and a bracelet between newly married Innogen and Posthumus in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. While the spouses offer their gifts as pledges of love and loyalty, this exchange quickly degenerates into a competition over which gift, and which giver, is most valuable. Chapter Four examines Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, and the spontaneous exchange of a sleeve and a glove that the lovers enact when they part. In this exchange, they become agents who attempt to rewrite their well known fates.