Drawing on the work of the new social history, this project examines dramatic representations of revolt on the early modern English stage in light of the numerous riots, protests, and rebellions that punctuated the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This dissertation argues that the drama played a significant role in shaping the theatergoing publics’ attitudes toward lower-class resistance, and in expanding the horizons of the politically thinkable for its largely disenfranchised audience. It focuses on the imbricated representations of lower-class protest and vagrancy in the history play and domestic tragedy to show how control over the meaning of poverty—and its ability to evoke sympathy—resides at the heart of contestations over the perceived legitimacy of resistance in the period. This project traces the discursive connections between poverty and protest across the late-medieval and early modern periods forged by elites hostile to plebeian politics and by plebeians themselves who routinely justified their acts of resistance by emphasizing their suffering as the nation’s poor. It argues that by staging hostile and sympathetic depictions of poverty and protest, the drama could illuminate for early modern audiences the terrain of ideological conflict in their day, inviting plebeians to interrogate the dominant ideologies and rhetorical strategies employed by the rich and powerful for suppressing dissent. In turn, the radical sympathies enabled by enlivened performance of suffering beggars and protesting plebeians made possible a wider recognition among the variously dispossessed and oppressed members of the early modern theatergoing public of their shared exploitation.