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 Advisory Board: Donna Hamilton, University of Maryland; Jean Howard, University of Columbia; John Kerrigan, University of Cambridge; Richard McCoy, CUNY; Sharon Achinstein, University of Oxford Within the period 1520 1740 this series discusses many kinds of writing, both within and outside the established canon. The volumes may employ different theoretical perspectives, but they share an historical awareness and an interest in seeing their texts in lively negotiation with their own and successive cultures. Titles include: Andrea Brady ENGLISH FUNERARY ELEGY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY Laws in Mourning Mark Thornton Burnett CONSTRUCTING MONSTERS IN SHAKESPEAREAN DRAMA AND EARLY MODERN CULTURE Dermot Cavanagh LANGUAGE AND POLITICS IN THE SIXTEENTH-CENTURY HISTORY PLAY Patrick Cheney MARLOWE S REPUBLICAN AUTHORSHIP Lucan, Liberty, and the Sublime Danielle Clarke and Elizabeth Clarke (editors) THIS DOUBLE VOICE Gendered Writing in Early Modern England David Coleman DRAMA AND THE SACRAMENTS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND Indelible Characters Katharine A. Craik READING SENSATIONS IN EARLY MODERN ENGLAND James Daybell (editor) EARLY MODERN WOMEN S LETTER-WRITING, 1450 1700 Matthew Dimmock and Andrew Hadfield (editors) THE RELIGIONS OF THE BOOK Christian Perceptions, 1400 1660 Tobias Döring PERFORMANCES OF MOURNING IN SHAKESPEAREAN THEATRE AND EARLY MODERN CULTURE Sarah M. Dunnigan EROS AND POETRY AT THE COURTS OF MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS AND JAMES VI 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 Teresa Grant and Barbara Ravelhofer ENGLISH HISTORICAL DRAMA, 1500 1660 Forms outside the Canon Andrew Hadfield SHAKESPEARE, SPENSER AND THE MATTER OF BRITAIN William M. Hamlin TRAGEDY AND SCEPTICISM IN SHAKESPEARE S ENGLAND Elizabeth Heale AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND AUTHORSHIP IN RENAISSANCE VERSE Chronicles of the Self Constance Jordan and Karen Cunningham (editors) THE LAW IN SHAKESPEARE Claire Jowitt (editor) PIRATES? THE POLITICS OF PLUNDER, 1550 1650 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 (1599 1613) 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 Jennifer Richards (editor) EARLY MODERN CIVIL DISCOURSES 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 Renaissance Texts Research Centre at the University of Reading. Early Modern Literature in History Series Standing Order ISBN 978 0 333 80321 9 (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
Shakespeare and Religious Change Edited by Kenneth J. E. Graham and Philip D. Collington
Introduction, selection and editorial matter Kenneth J. E. Graham & Philip D. Collington 2009 Individual chapters contributors 2009 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2009 978-0-230-21309-8 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 1988. First published 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, 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 10010. 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 978-1-349-30336-6 ISBN 978-0-230-24085-8 (ebook) DOI 10.1057/9780230240858 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. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
In Memory of Sydna Louise Graham (1930 2007)
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Contents Acknowledgments Note on Spelling Conventions Notes on Contributors ix x xi Introduction: Shakespeare and Religious Change 1 Kenneth J.E. Graham Part I Shakespeare and Social History: Religion and the Secular 1. Sanctifying the Bourgeoisie: The Cultural Work of The Comedy of Errors 17 Richard Strier 2. In a Christian Climate : Religion and Honor in Richard II 37 Debora Shuger Part II Dramatic Continuities and Religious Change 3. William Cecil and the Drama of Persuasion 63 Alexandra F. Johnston 4. The Queen s Men and the Performance of Allegiance, Conformity, and Difference in Elizabethan Norwich 88 Mary A. Blackstone 5. Things Newly Performed: The Resurrection Tradition in Shakespeare s Plays 110 Elizabeth Williamson 6. Staging Allegiance, Re-membering Trials: King Henry VIII and the Blackfriars Theater 133 Karen Sawyer Marsalek Part III Religious Identities 7. Mirth in Heaven : Religion and Festivity in As You Like It 153 Phebe Jensen vii
viii Contents 8. Speaking Daggers: Shakespeare s Troubled Ministers 176 Glenn Clark 9. Othello in the Wilderness: How did Shakespeare Use his Bible? 196 Tom Bishop Part IV Shakespeare and the Changing Theater: Religion or the Secular 10. Author, King, and Christ in Shakespeare s Histories 217 Jeffrey Knapp 11. The Secular Theater 238 Anthony B. Dawson Index 261
Acknowledgments Many of the essays in this collection were presented at the Seventeenth Waterloo Conference on Elizabethan Theatre, Religion and Theatre, held in Waterloo, Ontario, in June 2005. We would like to thank all the participants in that conference. We would also like to thank our families, Beth and Jimmy Graham and Tara, Emma, and Anne Collington, for their patience and support. We are grateful to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its generous financial assistance. Chapter 7 appears in expanded form in chapters 2 and 3 of Religion and Revelry in Shakespeare s Festive World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). An earlier version of chapter 10 appeared as Religious Pluralization and Single Authorship in Representing Religious Pluralization in Early Modern Europe, ed. Andreas Höfele, Stephan Lacqué, Enno Ruge, and Gabriela Schmidt (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2007), 153 73. Both appear here by kind permission of the editors and publishers of these volumes. ix
Note on Spelling Conventions In editing old-spelling texts, we have adjusted the use of i and j and of u and v to conform to modern practice, and we have expanded most contractions. x
Notes on Contributors Tom Bishop is Professor of English and Head of Department at the University of Auckland, where his principal teaching is in Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, and postcolonial literature. He holds degrees from Melbourne University and Yale University. His publications include Shakespeare and the Theatre of Wonder (1996), Amores: A Verse Translation of Ovid (2003), and essays on Shakespeare, Jonson, Jacobean masques, Elizabethan music, and Australian literature. He is also coeditor of The Shakespearean International Yearbook, published annually by Ashgate Press. He is currently working on a book on the poetics of scriptural allusion in Shakespeare. Mary A. Blackstone is Professor in the Department of Theatre and Director of the Centre for the Study of Script Development at the University of Regina. Her research and teaching are concerned with the role of culture and performance in the construction of community and national identity. Her recent publications in the area of early modern cultural history explore the ways in which touring performers ranging from players to itinerant preachers catalyzed popular participation in the formation of English nationhood in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Glenn Clark is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Manitoba. He has published articles on Shakespeare, Jonson, and Massinger, and is co-editor of City Limits: Interdisciplinary Essays on the Historical European City (publication pending). Philip D. Collington completed his PhD at the University of Toronto, and is Associate Professor of English at Niagara University in Lewiston, NY. He has published articles on Shakespeare and his contemporaries in English Literary Renaissance, Comparative Drama, Shakespeare Quarterly, Studies in Philology, Early Theatre, and Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England, as well as in a number of book collections. Anthony B. Dawson is Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia and has written extensively on performance history and theory, on early modern theater and culture, and on matters related to editing and textual theory. His most recent books are The Culture of Playgoing in Shakespeare s England (2001, written with Paul Yachnin), an xi
xii Notes on Contributors edition of Troilus and Cressida in the New Cambridge Shakespeare series (2003), and, with Gretchen Minto, an edition of Timon of Athens for the Arden Shakespeare (third series, 2008). He has recently completed a series of articles on text and performance, and is currently at work on a book on memory and Elizabethan theater. Kenneth J.E. Graham is Associate Professor of English at the University of Waterloo, where he teaches Shakespeare, Renaissance poetry, and rhetoric. He has published The Performance of Conviction: Plainness and Rhetoric in the Early English Renaissance (1994), and is writing a book on the relationship between English poetry and the disciplinary culture of the English Reformation. Phebe Jensen is Associate Professor of English at Utah State University. She has published articles on Shakespeare, provincial drama, recusancy, and Catholic political controversy, and is the author of Religion and Revelry in Shakespeare s Festive World (2009). Alexandra F. Johnston is Professor Emerita of English at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. A former Principal of Victoria College in the University of Toronto (1981 91), she co-founded the Records of Early English Drama Project, which she has directed since its inception in 1975. She has written or edited six books, including York (1979) and Oxford University and City (2004) for the REED series, and she is the author of 64 book chapters and journal articles on medieval and early modern drama. Jeffrey Knapp is Chancellor s Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include An Empire Nowhere: England, America, and Literature from Utopia to The Tempest (1992) and Shakespeare s Tribe: Church, Nation, and Theater in Renaissance England (2002). A companion volume to Shakespeare s Tribe entitled Shakespeare Only is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press. Karen Sawyer Marsalek is Associate Professor of English at St Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. She has published on medieval and early Tudor biblical drama as well as on Shakespeare. Her interest in King Henry VIII and topographical mnemonics originated at the recreated Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia, during a 2004 NEH Summer Institute.
Notes on Contributors xiii Debora Shuger is Professor of English at UCLA. She is the author of Sacred Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English Renaissance (1988), Habits of Thought in the English Renaissance: Religion, Politics, and the Dominant Culture (1990), The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship, Subjectivity, and Sacrifice (1994), and Political Theologies in Shakespeare s England: The Sacred and the State in Measure for Measure (2001). With Claire McEachern, she edited Religion and Culture in Renaissance England (1997). Her most recent book, Censorship and Cultural Sensibility: The Regulation of Language in Early Modern England, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2006. Richard Strier is Frank L. Sulzberger Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of English and the College at the University of Chicago. He has published two monographs, Love Known: Theology and Experience in George Herbert s Poetry (1983) and Resistant Structures: Particularity, Radicalism, and Renaissance Texts (1995); four co-edited collections, The Historical Renaissance: New Essays in Tudor and Stuart Literature and Culture (1988), The Theatrical City: London s Culture, Theatre and Literature, 1576 1649 (1995), Religion, Politics, and Literature in Post-Reformation England, 1540 1688 (1996), and Writing and Political Engagement in Seventeenth-Century England (1999); and essays on Shakespeare, Donne, religious poetry, historicist formalism, and the canon. He is completing a book to be entitled The Unrepentant Renaissance from Petrarch to Shakespeare to Milton. Elizabeth Williamson holds degrees from Princeton and the University of Pennsylvania and teaches English literature at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Her first book is forthcoming from Ashgate s Studies in Performance & Early Modern Drama series. Early Modern Stage Properties and the Materiality of Religious Practice addresses the overlap between popular culture and popular religion by focusing on the representation of sacred objects in the London theaters. Portions of this project can be found in Studies in English Literature 1500 1900 (2007) and English Literary Renaissance (2009). Her new work on stage relics can be found in The Shakespearean International Yearbook (2007).