London, Repentance, and Early Modern English Literature, c. 1590–1600

Abstract

In 1591, the preacher commonly known as Henry ‘silver-tongued’ Smith urged the congregation of St Clement Danes, London, to ‘restore that which you haue got by vsurie, or else you doe not repent of your vsurie’. This article contributes to understanding of repentance as a pervasive theme in early modern English religious culture in a highly specific manner, doing so by arguing that, during the 1590s, London was particularly associated with the need for repentance because of its perceived wealth and worldliness. By attending to the representations of repentance in Henry Holland’s fast-day sermon The Christian Exercise of Fasting (1596), Thomas Nashe’s prose tract Christ’s Tears over Jerusalem (1593), and William Shakespeare’s Henry IV plays (c. 1597–99), we uncover the way that the idea of London’s sinfulness attracted interest across a broad range of early modern literary forms.