Religion and Drama in Early Modern England: The Performance of Religion on the Renaissance Stage

296 Pages·2011·3.841 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Williamson, Jane Hwang Degenhardt (editor)

RELIGION AND DRAMA IN
EARLY MODERN ENGLAND
Offering fuller understandings of both dramatic representations and the
complexities of religious culture, this collection reveals the ways in which religion
and performance were inextricably linked in early modern England. Its readings
extend beyond the interpretation of straightforward religious allusions and
suggest new avenues for theorizing the dynamic relationship between religious
representations and dramatic ones. By addressing the particular ways in which
commercial drama adapted the sensory aspects of religious experience to its own
symbolic systems, the volume enacts a methodological shift towards a more
nuanced semiotics of theatrical performance.
Covering plays by a wide range of dramatists, including Shakespeare, individual
essays explore the material conditions of performance, the intricate resonances
between dramatic performance and religious ceremonies, and the multiple
valences of religious references in early modern plays. Additionally, Religion and
Drama in Early Modern England reveals the theater’s broad interpretation of post-
Reformation Christian practice, as well as its engagement with the religions of
Islam, Judaism and paganism.
Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Assistant Professor of English at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, and the author of Islamic Conversion and Christian
Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (2010).
Elizabeth Williamson is Associate Professor of English at the Evergreen State
College and the author of The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English
Drama (2009).
Studies in Performance and
Early Modern Drama
General Editor’s Preface
Helen Ostovich, McMaster University
Performance assumes a string of creative, analytical, and collaborative acts that, in defiance
of theatrical ephemerality, live on through records, manuscripts, and printed books. The
monographs and essay collections in this series offer original research which addresses
theatre histories and performance histories in the context of the sixteenth and seventeenth
century life. Of especial interest are studies in which women’s activities are a central feature
of discussion as financial or technical supporters (patrons, musicians, dancers, seamstresses,
wigmakers, or ‘gatherers’), if not authors or performers per se. Welcome too are critiques of
early modern drama that not only take into account the production values of the plays, but
also speculate on how intellectual advances or popular culture affect the theatre.
The series logo, selected by my colleague Mary V. Silcox, derives from Thomas
Combe’s duodecimo volume, The Theater of Fine Devices (London, 1592), Emblem
VI, sig. B. The emblem of four masks has a verse which makes claims for the increasing
complexity of early modern experience, a complexity that makes interpretation difficult.
Hence the corresponding perhaps uneasy rise in sophistication:
Masks will be more hereafter in request,
And grow more deare than they did heretofore.
No longer simply signs of performance “in play and jest”, the mask has become the “double
face” worn “in earnest” even by “the best” of people, in order to manipulate or profit from
the world around them. The books stamped with this design attempt to understand the
complications of performance produced on stage and interpreted by the audience, whose
experiences outside the theatre may reflect the emblem’s argument:
Most men do use some colour’d shift
For to conceal their craftie drift.
Centuries after their first presentations, the possible performance choices and meanings
they engender still stir the imaginations of actors, audiences, and readers of early plays. The
products of scholarly creativity in this series, I hope, will also stir imaginations to new ways
of thinking about performance.
Religion and Drama in Early
Modern England
The Performance of Religion on the Renaissance Stage
Edited by
JANE HWANG DEGENHARDT
University of Massachusetts-Amherst, USA
and
ELIZABETH WILLIAMSON
The Evergreen State College, USA
First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2011 Jane Hwang Degenhardt, Elizabeth Williamson and contributors
Jane Hwang Degenhardt and Elizabeth Williamson have asserted their right under the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Religion and drama in early modern England : the performance of religion on the
Renaissance stage. – (Studies in performance and early modern drama)
1. Theater–England–History–16th century. 2. Theater–England–History–17th century. 3.
Theater–Religious aspects. 4. Religion and drama. 5. English drama–Early modern and
Elizabethan, 1500–1600–History and criticism. 6. English drama–17th century–History
and criticism. 7. Religious drama, English–History and criticism.
I. Series II. Degenhardt, Jane Hwang. III. Williamson, Elizabeth, 1976–
792’.0942’09031-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Religion and drama in early modern England : the performance of religion on the
Renaissance stage / Jane Hwang Degenhardt and Elizabeth Williamson.
p. cm. – (Studies in performance and early modern drama)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-4094-0902-1 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Theater–England–History–16th century. 2. Theater–England–History–17th century.
3. English drama–Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500–1600–History and criticism.
4. English drama–17th century–History and criticism. 5. Theater–Religious aspects. 6.
Religious drama, English–History and criticism. 7. Religion in literature. I. Degenhardt,
Jane Hwang. II. Williamson, Elizabeth, 1976–
PN2590.R35R45 2011
792.0942’09031–dc22
2010048200
ISBN 9781409409021 (hbk)
ISBN 9781315604749 (ebk)
Contents
List of Figures vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Jane Hwang Degenhardt and Elizabeth Williamson
Part I: theatrIcal MaterIalIty and relIgIous effects
1 The Idolatrous Nose: Incense on the Early Modern Stage 19
Holly Crawford Pickett
2 Singing a New Song in The Shoemaker’s Holiday 39
Jacqueline Wylde
3 “Looking Jewish” on the Early Modern Stage 55
Peter Berek
4 Muslim Conversion and Circumcision as Theater 71
Dennis Britton
Part II: IntersectIons of PoPular theater and relIgIous
culture
5 Popular Worship and Visual Paradigms in Love’s Labor’s Lost 89
Erika T. Lin
6 “It is requir’d you do awake your faith”: Belief in Shakespeare’s
Theater 115
Susannah Brietz Monta
7 Archbishop Whitgift and the Plague in Thomas Nashe’s Summer’s
Last Will and Testament 139
Paul Whitfield White
8 “Handling Religion in the Style of the Stage”: Performing the
Marprelate Controversy 153
Joseph L. Black
vi Religion and Drama in Early Modern England
Part III: Beyond allusIon and Ideology
9 Martyr Acts: Playing with Foxe’s Martyrs on the Public Stage 175
Musa Gurnis-Farrell
10 “The Juice of Egypt’s Grape”: Plutarch, Syncretism, and Antony and
Cleopatra 195
Michael O’Connell
11 Paul Shakespeare: Exegetical Exercises 209
Julia Reinhard Lupton
coda
12 Claudius at Prayer 235
Anthony B. Dawson
Bibliography 249
Index 277
List of Figures
3.1 “Lopez compounding to poyson the Queene,” Engraved by Frederick
von Hulsen. From George Carleton, A Thankfull Remembrance
of Gods Mercy, Third ed., London, 1627, p. 164. This item is
reproduced by permission of the Folger Shakespeare Library 59
5.1 “A godly meditation day and night to be exercised” (c. 1600). This
item is reproduced by permission of the Trustees of the British
Museum 98
5.2 Stage Plans for Lucerne Passion Play (1583; revised, 1597) 99
8.1 Martins Months Minde, by “Marphoreus” (London, 1589). This
item is reproduced by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard
University
158
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Notes on Contributors
Peter Berek is Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College. His interest in
theater as both cause and effect of cultural change has led to several articles,
including an earlier essay on Jews, “The Jew as Renaissance Man” (Renaissance
Quarterly, 1998) and “Cross-Dressing, Gender and Absolutism in the Beaumont
and Fletcher Plays” (Studies in English Literature 1500–1900, 2004). His current
project on genre in the book market has recently produced an essay on domestic
tragedy, in MARDIE, and on the uses of the term “tragedy” on sixteenth-century
title pages, in Modern Philology.
Joseph L. Black is Associate Professor of English at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst. In addition to articles on various aspects of Renaissance
literature, religious controversy, and book history, he has published The Martin
Marprelate Tracts (2008), Private Libraries of Renaissance England, vol. 7 (2009)
with Robert Fehrenbach, The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, vol. 2:
The Renaissance and Early Seventeenth Century (2006) with Anne Lake Prescott,
and The Broadview Anthology of Seventeenth-Century English Verse and Prose
(2000) with Alan Rudrum and Holly Faith Nelson.
Dennis Britton is Assistant Professor of English at the University of New
Hampshire. His research interests include early modern English travel literature,
the early modern Mediterranean, and the romance genre. He is completing a book
on Islam, race, and Protestant theology in early modern romance.
Anthony B. Dawson, Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia,
has written extensively on performance history and theory, on early modern
theater and culture, especially religious culture, and on matters related to editing,
textual theory and the interrelations between text and performance. His books
include Hamlet (for the Shakespeare in Performance series, 1995), The Culture
of Playgoing in Shakespeare’s England (2001, written with Paul Yachnin), and
editions of Tamburlaine (New Mermaids, 1996), Troilus and Cressida (New
Cambridge series, 2003) and, with Gretchen Minton, Timon of Athens (Arden
Shakespeare, third series 2008). He is currently at work on a book on the Jesuit
Relations and on a multiplex edition of Hamlet for the new Norton Shakespeare.
Jane Hwang Degenhardt is Assistant Professor of English at the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst. The author of Islamic Conversion and Christian
Resistance on the Early Modern Stage (2010), she has interests in the cultural
role of drama and representations of religious and racial difference. She has also