Abigail under “the Livery of a Nun”: Staging Nuns in Post-Reformation England

Abstract

This essay primarily discusses that the role of Abigail in Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta embodies contemporary discomfort about femininity, theatricality and Catholicism. In-post-Reformation England, both anti-theatricalism and anti-Catholicism reflect the suspicion of clothing’s potential to misrepresent the wearers’ identity, which leads to ideologically loaded rhetoric that figured Catholic vestments as costume. Abigail, a Jewish girl converted to a Catholic nun, is exclusively depicted as free from stereotypes of either greedy Jew or hypocritical Catholic. However, in Marlowe’s sceptical dramatic world, Abigail’s corporeal presence on stage, with a nun’s habit assumed by a boy actor, summons up the negative values formerly invested in the garments; deception, hypocrisy, promiscuity and immaturity. The sacred singularity of Abigail might be valid textually at best, and the most challenging attempt, especially on Elizabethan stage, is to depict her as a consistently sacred female. In post-Reformation England, nuns on stage, including Abigail, demonstrate the representational crisis of female sacredness under contemporary anti-Catholicism, anti-theatricality and Protestant misogyny.