Antedating of "Working Class"

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

It's an interesting eg -- I ran into one like it the other day from a few decades later. But surely this doesn't anticipate "working class"  in the sense, e.g., that E. P. Thompson was talking about in The Origins of the English Working Class, which didn't emerge until much later. A "Class of people" isn't a social class in the important sense of the word -- the status arrangements of industrial society -- the concept simply wasn't there then. 

G

> 
> From: "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Date: February 3, 2012 7:28:05 PM PST
> Subject: Antedating of "Working Class"
> 
> 
> working class (OED 1789)
> 
> 1735 _A seasonable examination of the pleas and pretensions of the proprietors of, and subscribers to, play-houses_ 17 (Eighteenth Century Collections Online)  And tho' the Stage, under a proper Regulation, might be made a rational and instructing Entertainment, yet, as it is _now_ manag'd, and generally _has been_ order'd, we cannot help thinking it a very improper Diversion to be planted among the Working Class of People, particularly.
> 
> Fred Shapiro
> 
> 

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