Stages of engagement : drama and religion in post-Reformation England

"Neuer came Reformation in a Flood, / With such a heady currance", exclaims the Archbishop of Canterbury in Shakespeares Henry V, describing the kings seemingly miraculous conversion from the reprobate prince he had been.

This description must have seemed quite apt to Shakespeares post-Reformation audience.

Religious reform in early modern England, whether driven by individual experience or by institutional theology or politics, occurred as more of a deluge than as a clearly defined or steady voyage. And the English stage -- where drama revised, resisted, and reacted against Reformation doctrine, but also reinforced it -- became a place for engaging and even navigating this heady currance of changing religious belief and attitudes. Stages of Engagement, in 12 essays from a wide range of scholars, reflects a reinvigorated concern for religions role in the early modern English stage.

The essays address reformed redefinitions of intimate, sacred experience, anxiety about Calvinist determinism, attitudes toward icons and representation, and the relationship of liturgy and performance.

Importantly, these intertextual discussions are grounded in a meticulously historicised viewpoint that acknowledges the often chaotic and multidirectional nature of Reformation in England.

Throughout, the contributors offer a corrective to the secularisation thesis by treating religion on the stage on its own terms while also challenging older histories that see professional English drama evolving from liturgical ritual.

Thus, it becomes clear that the confessional makeup of English dramas audiences cannot be reduced to Protestant and Catholic, or to recusant, Anglican, and Puritan; rather, we must explore the ways in which early modern theatre staged its religious cultures complex negotiations of ideas.

From the early Elizabethan touring companies role in disseminating reformed doctrine to the representation of Wolsey and Cranmer in Londons playhouses, English stages were potential sites of encounter -- officially sanctioned or not -- with mainstream ideology.

As Stages of Engagement demonstrates, early modern drama both conveyed and shaped Protestant beliefs and practices, and drama was itself shaped by the religion of its producers and its audiences.