Currently, I am doing a close reading of several different plays including The Interlude of Welth and Helth, Anon. (1554?) which features the Dutch character Hance Berepot, Like Will to Like Ulpian Fulwell (1568) featuring two Flemish characters Philip Fleming and Hance, Life and Death of Jack Straw Anon. (1591) which dramatises the murder of a group of Flemings, Play of Sir Thomas More Anon. 1592/3, which although does not feature any explicit Dutch characters expostulates on anti- and pro-alien arguments of the period and finally (my old favourite!) Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday (1599). I am repeatedly coming across the Dutch/Fleming character of 'Hans' or 'Hance' who comes on stage drunk and mutters his heavily inflected English mixed with Dutch lexicon. I am starting to see a clear evolution in the portrayl of this character from blatanly xenophobic to the altogether more likeable character which emerges in the Shoemaker's Holiday (although the Life and Death of Jack Straw portrays the very poignant murder of vulnerable Flemings). There is obvious xenophobia in these plays but a clear shift in treatment as time moves on.
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