Religion Around Shakespeare by Peter Iver Kaufman (review)

Abstract

Peter Iver Kaufman. Shakespeare. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. Pp. iii + 256. $34.95. Peter Iver Kaufmans appears as first installment in a series called Religion Around, of which Kaufman is general editor. series intends to bring religious background into foreground for cultural icons. For as recent to in studies suggests, this is no small task. difficulties, as Kaufman sees them, are first, that criticism has attended to the religion of Shakespeare rather than the religion around him (1); and second, that the ways plays are read (as laments for a religion that was lost or as intrigued, bemused, or cleverly critical reactions to religion found around him) often determine ways in which contexts are patched together (2-3). Kaufmans remedy is to begin by ignoring plays and reconstructing late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century religious milieu, and then by imagining what kind of religious views (and news) may have encountered, first in Stratford and then in London. Only after Kaufman has isolated times' religious character does he turn to Shakespeare's plays, but even here Kaufman insists he is uninterested in new dramatic interpretations, but instead docks evidence drawn from some plays alongside evidence left by preachers, churchwardens, vestrymen, polemicists, theologians, and diarists (4-5) to recover circumstance (5). Circumstance, Kaufman assures us, --the religion around playwright, not his faith or plays' proper interpretations--is my subject (5). Two chapters, Religion and Around Shakespeare, comprise book's first section. Religion begins in 1558 with establishment of a reformed church that owed due obedience to Queen Elizabeth and her bishops--a demand that challenged consciences of Catholics and Calvinists alike. Kaufman attempts to avoid contagious logophobia among historians of this contested Elizabethan Protestantism by adopting Charles Prior's choice of conformist and reformist--defined by degree of satisfaction with English church's state of reform--with caveat that puritan is useful for Calvinist pietists who internalized their dissatisfaction with reform by emphasizing their co-religionists' prodigality through excessive sermonizing and devotional literature (11). conformist/reformist binary envisions Jacobethan religion as conflicted both within church and between Protestants and Catholics. This chapter, then, considers both doctrinal differences (the efficacy of sermons versus sacraments, tensions between episcopacy and laity) and religious, or quasi-religious, political confrontations: Elizabeths conflict with Archbishop Grindal over prophesying; Pope Pius Vs excommunication of Elizabeth; Mary Queen of Scots' Catholic claim to succession; Alencon's courtship of Elizabeth framed by French wars of religion; Jesuit mission to England; Spanish threat, including Dutch Revolt, Armada, and earl of Essex's preemptive strikes against Spain and subsequent fall; and continuity into James I's reign of attitudes associated with these events, beginning with Hampton Court Conference and culminating in Gunpowder Plot. Kaufman skillfully weaves into his narration of these events their reception by Catholics, reformists, and conformists identifiable through sermons and printed texts. In considering such public responses, Kaufman is cautious about what could have known--as, for example, regarding Essex's fall, he notes, The importance of all this for a politically and confessionally non-aligned playwright living in London at time is hard to gauge (37). next chapter, Around Shakespeare begins in Stratford, where despite Shakespeare's family's possible fondness for old religion, power of local reformist notables like Robert Dudley, Thomas Lucy, and Edwin Sandys would have made outright expression of Catholic positions politically unwise. …