Religion and Drama in Early Modern England

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).

'This is a well-crafted and timely book; its editors have rightly recognized that the discussion of religion and early modern drama must reach beyond allusion and citation to consider the materials of the stage. The elegant and thoughtful essays collected here explore in fascinating and variegated ways the objects, artifacts, sensations and figurations that worked to activate religious habits of thought. In the process, they reveal a theater of surprising faith and wonder.' Patricia Badir, University of British Columbia, Canada 'The fourteen intriguing chapters in Religion and Early Modern Drama in England, plus the provocative Introduction by the editors, constitute a timely re-examination of the place of religion and its depiction in the drama of the period.' Theatre Research International 'The editors are right in claiming that the volume does important work toward re-theoriz[ing] what it means for the drama to engage with religious culture (3).' Shakespeare Bulletin 'Degenhardt and Williamson should be credited with composing a volume of great breadth. Scholars of early modern theatre, literature, and history alike will find within it much to inspire and fuel further work.' Notes and Queries

• 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