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

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.

Introduction; Part I: Theatrical Materiality and Religious Effects; Chapter 1: The Idolatrous Nose: Incense on the Early Modern Stage; Chapter 2: Singing a New Song in The Shoemaker's Holiday; Chapter 3: “Looking Jewish” on the Early Modern Stage; Chapter 4: Muslim Conversion and Circumcision as Theater; Part II: Intersections of Popular Theater and Religious Culture; Chapter 5: Popular Worship and Visual Paradigms in Love's Labor's Lost; Chapter 6: “It is requir'd you do awake your faith”: Belief in Shakespeare's Theater; Chapter 7: Archbishop Whitgift and the Plague in Thomas Nashe's Summer's Last Will and Testament; Chapter 8: “Handling Religion in the Style of the Stage”: Performing the Marprelate Controversy; Part III: Beyond Allusion and Ideology; Chapter 9: Martyr Acts: Playing with Foxe's Martyrs on the Public Stage; Chapter 10: “The Juice of Egypt's Grape”: Plutarch, Syncretism, and Antony and Cleopatra; Chapter 11: Paul Shakespeare: Exegetical Exercises; Part IV: Coda; Chapter 12: Claudius at Prayer

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).