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"Kilian Schindler examines how playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe represented religious dissimulation on stage and argues that debates about the legitimacy of dissembling one's faith were closely bound up with early modern conceptions of theatricality. Considering both Catholic and Protestant perspectives on religious dissimulation in the absence of full toleration, Schindler demonstrates its ubiquity and urgency in early modern culture. By reconstructing the ideological undercurrents that inform both religious dissimulation and theatricality as a form of dissimulation, this book makes a case for the centrality of dissimulation in the religious politics of early modern drama. Lucid and original, this study is an important contribution to the understanding of early modern religious and literary culture"--
List of contents
Introduction; 1. Religious dissimulation and toleration in early modern England; 2. From Oldcastle to Falstaff: the politics of martyrdom and conformity in 1 and 2 Henry IV; 3. Falstaff revisited: Puritan nonconformity and loyal dissent in 1 Sir John Oldcastle; 4. Silence denied: Sir Thomas More and the incrimination of inward dissent; 5. Free speech and neo-stoicist inwardness: the divided delf in Ben Jonson's Sejanus His Fall; 6. Exposing religious dissimulation: the stage Machiavel in Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta; 7. Semi-conformity, idolatrous pollution, and conversion: the permeable self in Ben Jonson's Bartholomew Fair; Conclusion.
About the author
Kilian Schindler teaches early modern English Literature at the University of Fribourg. His dissertation on religious dissimulation in early modern drama (2019) was awarded the Martin Lehnert prize of the German Shakespeare Foundation. He is co-editor of a critical edition of Sebastian Castellio's De haereticis an sint persequendi (forthcoming).
Summary
Kilian Schindler examines how playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe represented religious dissimulation on stage and argues that debates about the legitimacy of dissembling one's faith were closely bound up with early modern conceptions of theatricality. Considering both Catholic and Protestant perspectives on religious dissimulation in the absence of full toleration, Schindler demonstrates its ubiquity and urgency in early modern culture. By reconstructing the ideological undercurrents that inform both religious dissimulation and theatricality as a form of dissimulation, this book makes a case for the centrality of dissimulation in the religious politics of early modern drama. Lucid and original, this study is an important contribution to the understanding of early modern religious and literary culture. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Foreword
Kilian Schindler reveals how religious persecution in early modern England was a shaping force for drama and conceptions of theatricality.
