Shakespeare Harsnett And The Devils Of Denham

Part 1 of this book provides an annotated edition of Samuel Harsnett's famous attack on the practice of exorcism, which had a profound influence upon Shakespeare's conception and writing of King Lear. Part 2 explores the context of Shakespeare's reading of Harsnett's book.

The so-called "Devil Theatre" is here set against its context of non-dramatic texts on possession and exorcism, providing many new insights. Representations of demonic possession and exorcism rituals abound in English Renaissance drama, an area which this book seeks to illuminate by comparison with non-dramatic works. The author investigates stage images of possessionin relation to a range of early modern demonological, theological and medical prose texts on the subject, looking specifically at how the theatre responded to these texts. He argues that the stage appropriated debates over demonicpossession to explore the competing roles of the inner life and the body in early modern definitions of selfhood. The theatre also employed the contemporary controversy over possession and exorcism to investigate the politics ofreligion, and to consider the nature of monarchic power. Moreover, because demonic possession cases and exorcism rituals were frequently dismissed by conformist writers as a piece of theatre, they offered an opportunity to reflecton the nature of drama and role-playing. JAN FRANS VAN DIJKHUIZEN is lecturer and research fellow at the University of Leiden.

Shakespeare's Unreformed Fictions asks why Catholicism had such an imaginative hold on Shakespearean drama, even though the on-going Reformation outlawed its practice. Concentrating on dramatic impact, and integrating literary analysis with fresh historical research, Gillian Woods offers a new and engaging answer to this important question.

In 1598, the English clergyman John Darrell was brought before the High Commission at Lambeth Palace to face charges of fraud and counterfeiting. The ecclesiastical authorities alleged that he had "taught 4. to counterfeite" demonic possession over a ten-year period, fashioning himself into a miracle worker. Coming to the attention of the public through his dramatic and successful role as an exorcist in the late sixteenth century, Darrell became a symbol of Puritan spirituality and the subject of fierce ecclesiastical persecution. The High Commission of John Darrell became a flashpoint for theological and demonological debate, functioning as a catalyst for spiritual reform in the early seventeenth-century English Church. John Darrell has long been maligned by scholars; a historiographical perception that this book challenges. The English Exorcist is the first study to provide an in-depth scholarly treatment of Darrell’s exorcism ministry and his demonology. It shines new light on the corpus of theological treatises that emerged from the Darrell Controversy, thereby illustrating the profound impact of Darrell’s exorcism ministry on early modern Reformed English Protestant demonology. The book establishes an intellectual biography of this figure and sketches out the full compelling story of the Darrell Controversy.

Narratives of possession have survived in early English medical and philosophical treatises. Using ideas derived from cognitive science, this study moves through the stages of possession and exorcism to describe how the social, religious, and medical were internalized to create the varied manifestations of demon possession in early modern England.

A major study of the Elizabethan Puritan movement, as seen through the eyes of its most determined opponent, Richard Bancroft.

Mining a series of previously uncharted conversations springing up in 16th- and 17th-century popular medicine and culture, this study explores early modern England's significant and sustained interest in the hysterical diseases of women. Kaara L. Peterson assembles a fascinating collection of medical materials to support her discussion of contemporary debates about varieties of uterine pathologies and the implications of these debates for our understanding of drama's representation of hysterica passio cases in particular, among other hysterical maladies. An important aspect of the author's approach is to restore, with all its nuances, the debates created by early modern medical writers over attempts to define the boundaries and resonances of hysterical ailments, which Peterson argues have been largely erased or elided by historicist criticism, including scholarship overly focused on melancholy. One of the main goals of the book is to stress the centrality of gendered concepts of disease for the period and to reveal a whole catalog of early modern literary strategies for representing women's illnesses. Among the medical works discussed are Edward Jorden's central text A Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother (1603) and contemporary plays, including Shakespeare's Pericles, Othello, King Lear, and The Winter's Tale; Webster's The Duchess of Malfi; and Chapman's Bussy D'Ambois.

Shakespeare’s King Lear is often called his mightiest play. This comprehensive edition by S. Nagarajan (who edited the evergreen Signet edition of Measure for Measure) presents a lifetime of scholarship on Shakespeare and fifteen years of research specifically on Lear. Accessibly written, this edition serves the reader who has access to well-stocked libraries and lively theatres, as well as the student whose resources are more limited. The play-text is a conflation of the Quarto text and the First Folio text, and the notes provide a generous but discreet selection of alternative readings of lines and contexts. In ten erudite essays, Nagarajan provides a thoroughly researched picture of Shakespeare’s sources for the play, his unique use of language, Elizabethan theatre, history and values of the play, analysis of enigmatic scenes, glimpses into its performance history and other subjects, with special attention to Indian dramatic art theory. This edition is the first to bring together both the best scholarship on Lear to date and perspectives from Indian poetics and philosophy. The result is a text that robustly includes, but goes beyond, Anglophone cultures and Euro-American experiences, making it truly representative of Lear’s global stage.