Early modern drama and the Bible : contexts and readings, 1570-1625 / edited by Adrian Streete.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Streete, Adrian.

Horace Howard Furness Memorial Library (University of Pennsylvania)

Series:

Early modern literature in history (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm))

Early modern literature in history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English drama--Early modern and Elizabethan, 1500-1600--History and criticism.

English drama.

English drama--17th century--History and criticism.

Bible--In literature.

Bible.

Physical Description:

xi, 267 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Summary:

Early modern drama is steeped in biblical language, imagery and stories. This collection of essays examines the extensive and pervasive presence of scripture on the early modern stage and considers a range of plays by writers such as Shakespeare, Marlowe, Middleton, Webster, Massinger and Heywood. The introduction situates the religious, political and ideological contexts within which the relationship between stage and book was negotiated. The individual essays the explore a variety of dramatic encounters with scripture, raging from material and verbal presences, iconoclasm, political theology, the Bible and the law, the domestic, religious and political controversy. In this way, the capacious and wide-spread dramatic engagement with the early modern Bible is reconsidered. These essays offer fresh and exciting readings of early modern drama by resituating the theatre as a site of public and communal engagement with, and interrogation of, scripture. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : situating the Bible in early modern drama / Adrian Streete

Enter the book : reading the Bible on the early modern stage / Michael Davies

Measuring up to Nebuchadnezzar : biblical presences in Shakespeare's tragicomedies / Helen Wilcox

'Fatal visions' : the image as actor in early modern tragedy / Patricia Canning

Political theology in George Buchanan's Baptistes / Dermot Cavanagh

The ethics of pardoning in Shakespeare's Measure for measure / Paul Cefalu

Punishing perjury in Love's labour's lost / Judith Hudson

'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 / Beatrice Groves

Marital infidelity and Christian self-sacrifice in Thomas Heywood's How a man may choose a good wife from a bad / Emer McManus

Reading the white devil in Thomas Adams and John Webster / Emma Rhatigan

Situating political and biblical authority in Massinger and Field's The fatal dowry / Adrian Streete

Afterword / Hannibal Hamlin.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780230301092

0230301096

OCLC:

748328744

Online:

Cover image