Female Chastity and Commoditized Selfhood in Bartholomew Fair

This essay argues that female chastity figures centrally in Bartholomew Fair’s exploration of early capitalist subjectivity. In the play, Jonson suggests that the market compromises masculinity and posits Grace Wellborn’s self-conscious commoditization of her own sexual agency as a strategy for navigating commercial markets. Through Grace, Jonson revises dominant models of subject formation to account for the emergence of a bourgeois self in relation to early modern commercial forces that are often understood as compromising personal autonomy. Jonson then applies this model of commoditized subjectivity to the commercial playwright, linking his own agency as an author to his ability to negotiate the market.