Early Modern Literature in History

Transcription

1 Early Modern Literature in History General Editors: Cedric C. Brown, Professor of English and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Reading; Andrew Hadfield, Professor of English, University of Sussex, Brighton International Advisory Board: Sharon Achinstein, University of Oxford; Jean Howard, University of Columbia; John Kerrigan, University of Cambridge; Richard McCoy, CUNY; Michelle O Callaghan, University of Reading; Cathy Shrank, University of Sheffield; Adam Smyth, University of London; Steven Zwicker, Washington University, St Louis. Within the period this series discusses many kinds of writing, both within and outside the established canon. The volumes may employ different theoretical perspectives, but they share a historical awareness and an interest in seeing their texts in lively negotiation with their own and successive cultures. Titles include: John M. Adrian LOCAL NEGOTIATIONS OF ENGLISH NATIONHOOD, Robyn Adams and Rosanna Cox DIPLOMACY AND EARLY MODERN CULTURE Andrea Brady ENGLISH FUNERARY ELEGY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Laws in Mourning Jocelyn Catty WRITING RAPE, WRITING WOMEN IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Unbridled Speech Patrick Cheney MARLOWE S REPUBLICAN AUTHORSHIP Lucan, Liberty, and the Sublime David Coleman DRAMA AND THE SACRAMENTS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND Indelible Characters Katharine A. Craik READING SENSATIONS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Bruce Danner EDMUND SPENSER S WAR ON LORD BURGHLEY James Daybell (editor) EARLY MODERN WOMEN S LETTER-WRITING, James Daybell and Peter Hinds (editors) MATERIAL READINGS OF EARLY MODERN CULTURE Texts and Social Practices, Matthew Dimmock and Andrew Hadfield (editors) THE RELIGIONS OF THE BOOK Christian Perceptions, Tobias Döring PERFORMANCES OF MOURNING IN SHAKESPEAREAN THEATRE AND EARLY MODERN CULTURE Maria Franziska Fahey METAPHOR AND SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA Unchaste Signification Mary Floyd-Wilson and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr. (editors) ENVIRONMENT AND EMBODIMENT IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND Kenneth J.E. Graham and Philip D. Collington (editors) SHAKESPEARE AND RELIGIOUS CHANGE

2 Teresa Grant and Barbara Ravelhofer ENGLISH HISTORICAL DRAMA, Forms Outside the Canon Johanna Harris and Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (editors) THE INTELLECTUAL CULTURE OF PURITAN WOMEN, Constance Jordan and Karen Cunningham (editors) THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE Claire Jowitt (editor) PIRATES? THE POLITICS OF PLUNDER, Gregory Kneidel RETHINKING THE TURN TO RELIGION IN EARLY MODERN ENGLISH LITERATURE Edel Lamb PERFORMING CHILDHOOD IN THE EARLY MODERN THEATRE The Children s Playing Companies ( ) Katherine R. Larson EARLY MODERN WOMEN IN CONVERSATION Jean-Christopher Mayer SHAKESPEARE S HYBRID FAITH History, Religion and the Stage Scott L. Newstok QUOTING DEATH IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND The Poetics of Epitaphs Beyond the Tomb Jane Pettegree FOREIGN AND NATIVE ON THE ENGLISH STAGE, Metaphor and National Identity Fred Schurink (editor) TUDOR TRANSLATION Adrian Streete (editor) EARLY MODERN DRAMA AND THE BIBLE Contexts and Readings, Marion Wynne-Davies WOMEN WRITERS AND FAMILIAL DISCOURSE IN THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE Relative Values The series Early Modern Literature in History is published in association with the Early Modern Research Centre at the University of Reading and The Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Sussex Early Modern Literature in History Series Standing Order ISBN (Hardback) (Paperback) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

3 Early Modern Drama and the Bible Contexts and Readings, Edited by Adrian Streete

4 Introduction, selection and editorial matter Adrian Streete 2012 Individual chapters Contributors 2012 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6 10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act First published 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN DOI / ISBN (ebook) This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

5 For Rachel and Leah

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7 Contents Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors ix x 1. Introduction: Situating the Bible in Early Modern Drama 1 Adrian Streete Part 1 Representing the Bible in Early Modern Drama: Material and Verbal Contexts 2. Enter the Book: Reading the Bible on the Early Modern Stage 27 Michael Davies 3. Measuring up to Nebuchadnezzar: Biblical Presences in Shakespeare s Tragicomedies 48 Helen Wilcox 4. Fatal Visions : The Image as Actor in Early Modern Tragedy 68 Patricia Canning Part 2 Political Theology, the Bible and Drama 5. Political Theology in George Buchanan s Baptistes 89 Dermot Cavanagh 6. The Ethics of Pardoning in Shakespeare s Measure for Measure 105 Paul Cefalu 7. Punishing Perjury in Love s Labour s Lost 118 Judith Hudson Part 3 Biblical Readings On-stage: Pulpit, Household and Political Controversy 8. They repented at the preachyng of Ionas: and beholde, a greater then Ionas is here : A Looking Glass for London and England, Hosea and the Destruction of Jerusalem 139 Beatrice Groves vii

8 viii Contents 9. Marital Infidelity and Christian Self-Sacrifice in Thomas Heywood s How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad 156 Emer McManus 10. Reading the White Devil in Thomas Adams and John Webster 176 Emma Rhatigan 11. Situating Political and Biblical Authority in Massinger and Field s The Fatal Dowry 195 Adrian Streete 12. Afterword 223 Hannibal Hamlin Bibliography 230 Index 253

9 Acknowledgements I am very grateful to all the contributors to this volume for their hard work, patience and good humour while the collection was coming together. Particular thanks to Mark Burnett, Dermot Cavanagh, Michael Davies, David Dwan, Lisa Freinkel, Ivan Herbison, Andrew Pepper, Emma Rhatigan, Paul Simpson, Sue Wiseman and Ramona Wray for helpful conversations and suggestions along the way. Thanks also to the general editors of the Early Modern Literature in History Series, Cedric Brown and Andrew Hadfield, for their invaluable help in shaping the volume, to Felicity Plester and Catherine Mitchell at Palgrave Macmillan for being exemplary editors, and to Monica Kendall for her careful and judicious copy-editing of the book. I lastly want to thank my wife Theresa, not only for all her practical help in the final stages of the project, but more importantly for her support and love. ix

10 Notes on Contributors Patricia Canning is a postdoctoral teaching assistant in the School of English, Queen s University, Belfast. She has published essays on early modern literature and stylistics in journals such as Language and Literature, and her book Style in the Renaissance: Language and Control in Early Modern England will be published in Dermot Cavanagh is Senior Lecturer in English, Department of English Literature, University of Edinburgh. He is author of Language and Politics in the Sixteenth-Century History Play (2003) and co-editor of Shakespeare s Histories and Counter-Histories (2006). Paul Cefalu is Associate Professor of English, Department of English, Lafayette College. He is the author of Moral Identity in Early Modern Literature (2004), Revisionist Shakespeare: Transitional Ideology in Texts and Contexts (2004), English Renaissance Literature and Contemporary Theory: Sublime Objects of Theology (2007) and co-editor of The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies: Tarrying with the Subjunctive (2011). Michael Davies is Senior Lecturer in English, School of English, University of Liverpool. He has research interests in English literature of the Renaissance and Restoration periods, focusing especially on the literary and religious cultures of seventeenth-century England. He has published essays on a range of writers from Shakespeare to William Cowper, guest edited a special edition of the journal Shakespeare in 2009 on Shakespeare and Protestantism, and is author of Graceful Reading: Theology and Narrative in the Works of John Bunyan (2002) and Hamlet: Character Studies (2008). Beatrice Groves is Lecturer in Renaissance English Literature, Trinity College, University of Oxford. In addition to a number of articles on early modern literature, she is author of Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare (2007). She is currently working on the destruction of Jerusalem in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature. Hannibal Hamlin is Associate Professor of English, Department of English, Ohio State University. He is author of Psalm Culture and Early Modern English Literature (2004), co-editor of The King James Bible after 400 Years: Literary, Linguistic and Cultural Influences (2010), and has x

11 Notes on Contributors xi published numerous articles and chapters on early modern literature and religion. He is currently writing a book on Shakespeare and the Bible. Judith Hudson is currently completing her doctoral studies at Birkbeck College, University of London. She works primarily in the field of law and early modern literature, with particular research interests in providential pamphlet texts and popular controversies. Emer McManus recently completed her doctorate, a critical edition of Thomas Heywood s play How a Man May Choose a Good Wife from a Bad, in the School of English, University College, Dublin. Emma Rhatigan is Lecturer in English, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, University of Sheffield. She is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon (2011), is editing a volume of Donne s Inn of Court sermons for a new Oxford edition of the sermons of John Donne, and has published a number of essays and articles on early modern literature. Adrian Streete is Senior Lecturer in Renaissance Literature, School of English, Queen s University, Belfast. He is the author of Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England (2009), co-editor of Refiguring Mimesis: Representation in Early Modern Literature (2005), Filming and Performing Renaissance History (2011), The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the Arts (2011), and author of a number of essays and articles on early modern literature. Helen Wilcox is Professor of English, Bangor University, Wales. Her research interests range widely over early modern English literature: devotional poetry, Shakespearean tragicomedy, women s writing, autobiography, and the relationship of literature to theology, music and the visual arts. Her publications relevant to this volume include the annotated edition of The English Poems of George Herbert (2007; paperback, 2010), the co-edited collection Transforming Holiness: Representations of Holiness in English and American Literary Texts (2006), 1611: Authority, Gender and Textual Culture in Early Modern England (2011) and the Arden 3 edition of All s Well That Ends Well (forthcoming 2012).