Protestantism and drama in early modern England

Abstract

Protestantism and Drama in Early Modern England, Adrian Streete. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. x + 298. Hardback $95.00. For long time now one line of thinking about modern has wanted trace its origins the Reformation; for about as long, another has found in English Renaissance tragedy, Hamlet above all, special venue for this new personage. Adrian Streete places his intricate and ambitious book in both traditions, with few modifications. First, he wants resist what he sees as the current trend toward plural, revisionist agenda, which stresses the conceptual indeterminacy (7) of any religious denomination the point that and Catholic no longer have any irreducible essence but appear instead as contingent, hybrid categories. In that case, Streete worries, critics have done little more than assert the fact of hybridity before moving on, whereas he wants contemplate seriously what identity means, notwithstanding the risk of essentialism. Second, he acknowledges the work of several medievalists, in particular the criticism of David Aers's A Whisper in the Ear of Early Modernists (13 n. 47), and so allows, at least in principle, for complex medieval that preceded modernity. By the same token, he tries avoid story of transition that would position the Reformation in a narrative of subjective emancipation toward incipient rationality (29). Streete has done large amount of reading in the primary and secondary literature, skillfully orients his reader in ongoing debates (e.g., over Calvinism, 98-101), and selects rich array of quotations from which construct his arguments. Whether one agrees with those arguments or not it is easy learn great deal from his tactics. He has an uncommon gift for taking theology on its own terms, no matter how arcane or fanciful. That gift is matched welcome appreciation for continental philosophy: Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Lacan, Adorno, Althusser, Foucault, Levinas, and z!izek all make appearances, the latter in particular having left deep mark. The book falls into two parts - one dealing primarily with theology, the second with theater (mainly Doctor Faustus, Richard II, and The Revenger's Tragedy via Hamlet), though doses of early modern religious lyric appear throughout elucidate different points. Streete keeps several threads going through all these chapters, far the most important his contention that the question of interiority or subjectivity entails debate about mimesis. It is tremendous strength of the book have shown in the depths of the most abstract theology how Protestants' rejection of images made them all the more subject the lure of simulacra. Lacking direct access their archetypal, divine model, they finally must acknowledge, Streete claims, precarious and fundamentally surrogate status of the figurai (218). As with any book in multiple parts, uniting them poses special challenge. More often than not, Streete expects his theological prelude explain the because the Reformation changes everything first and the then illustrates: so for example theology describes a tension between the ideal divine subject and its secular mimetic copy that provides one of the main sources of tragedy in the period (26). The patterns of subject formation that Streete finds in theology are repeated by (79) or deeply felt in the drama (123), even where the manages to make critical use of the theological model that it borrows (79), as in Marlowe's audacious parody (160; also 145, 158). Only rarely does Streete entertain the possibility that the influence can work the other way round: namely, that Protestant theological writers might have borrowed trick or two from the theater, that arena of studied polyvocality (116) - in which case I wondered if pluralist revisionism might not have point. At any rate some people will be disappointed see taking so passive position with respect theology, when (in my view at least) theatre has helped shape Christianity from the crown of thorns forward. …