A Different Thomas Deloney: <i>Thomas of Reading</i> Reconsidered

Abstract

Thomas of Reading Reconsidered WILLIAM DOMNARSKI Why should readers be asked to reconsider Thomas ofReading when this rarely read and discussed Elizabethan novel seldom gets first consideration? The answer is that Deloney's last novel, which was probably written in 1598, offers much to specialists and modern readers alike, with the novel's humour, vitality, and variety all sufficient to recommend it. It is the wideangled social realism coming from the novePs socioeconomic awareness, however, that should prompt us to think differently about both Deloney and Thomas of Reading. The theme of money unifies this novel that some have faulted for not having a central focus. Money touches each of the book's major elements, acting as the principal force in the King's relationship with the clothiers, the social tension caused by the intersection of higher and lower classes. Cole's murder, and the romance between Duke Robert and Margaret. The characters and plots that Deloney brings together reflect different aspects of Elizabethan society, though the focus is on the middle class. Not surprisingly, critics have examined the middle class that Deloney presents, focusing on Deloney's own background and on the deft characterizations of the tradesmen who populate his work. Deloney's other books. Jack of Newbury and the two parts of The Gentle Craft, are centred in middle class society, while Thomas of Reading examines a somewhat different subject. This causes interpretive problems for some. Merritt Lawlis, for example, finds only idealism in the novel. He writes that **In the end, Deloney is not writing about a real present or a real past so much as an ideal future."^And, he continues, if the novel's view is economic, it is also idealistic.^But Thomas of Reading is neither a mainstream middle-class novel nor a novel about idealism. Rather, it is a penetrating study of the growing pains experienced by a group of middle-class merchants who have become wealthy. Deloney analyzes rather than celebrates the rise of the middle class in Elizabethan England. His clothiers represent an ascending economic group, and in part the novel details their reaction to social tensions and to power, both economic and political.