the case in the context of where Rykener operated, as Cheapside was a major mercantile centre. Goldberg considers that the mayor and aldermen were most concerned with Rykener as a trader, and as a false one at that: "a tradesperson who purports to be an embroideress and a barmaid, but actually sells sex. ... Even as a prostitute he is a dishonest trader: he poses as a woman selling straight sex to male clients, whereas he is, in fact, a man masquerading as a woman." Goldberg suggests that historians may have misread the true significance of the original document. It is possible, he says, that the whole case was a fabrication by the scribes, who wanted to officially lodge an unofficial allegory against the King. Hence Rykener becomes a metaphor for Richard II following the dispute over the city's liberties and, much like Rykener was described in the accusation, Richard is "symbolically buggered" in Cheapside. Ruth Evans, continuing the mercantile theme, has said Rykener "...makes of his own body an imitation. He counterfeits the work of God." During the interrogation, Rykener's sexual act with Britby was referred to on at least one occasion as "labour". If the mayor and aldermen are concerned with Rykener's honesty (or not), says Goldberg, then it is "here a specifically bourgeois concern that grows out of the needs of trade". Judith Bennett has suggested that Rykener, through choice of work, had "taken a women's passive position in society", and that it was this—rather than the actual offences of prostitution and sodomy—that "most transfixed" Rykener's interrogators. From this, and in comparison to her own period, she concludes that "gender was no more ordered in the middle ages than it is in the twenty-first century". In popular culture A fictionalised version of Rykener appears as a prominent character in Bruce Holsinger's 2014 historical novel, A Burnable Book, set in London in 1385. Rykener (whom Holsinger renames Edgar/Eleanor) acts as the reader's guide to the "juicy places" of fourteenth-century London's underworld. A puppet show intended to explore Rykener as transgender—"combining medieval studies, drama, and puppetry"—called John–Eleanor debuted in 2011 and was performed at the Turku music festival in Finland the following year. It was later performed at the World Puppetry Festival in Charleville-Mézières, France, in 2017, with Timo Vantsi playing the title role. It was also performed in Italy, the United Kingdom and the United States. See also