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’s purpose in writing the Arcadia also relies on the suitability of Greville’s ‘A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney’ for reading the Arcadia . However, given that it was completed in the Jacobean (between 1610 and 1612) rather than the Elizabethan era, in a different political and philosophical climate, its suitability is open to doubt. Greville’s early career under the reign of James I was marked by the
pass through any straits or latitudes of good or ill fortune, might (as in a glass) see how to set a good countenance upon all the discountenances of adversity, and a stay upon the exorbitant smilings of chance. 21 James’s conception of Sidney’s purpose in writing the Arcadia also relies on the suitability of Greville’s ‘A Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney’ for reading the Arcadia . However, given that it was completed in the Jacobean (between 1610 and 1612) rather than the Elizabethan era, in a different political and philosophical climate, its suitability
of the evolution of anti-theatrical writings from Plato to the present day, and contains chapters on anti-theatrical Lollardy and Puritanism. 56 Badir, The Maudlin Impression, p. 43. 57 STC 19865. 58 STC 6518. 59 STC 1059. 60 STC 6501. Though he does not treat the plays listed here, for a more extensive treatment of the secularisation of the saint play see John Wasson, ‘The Secular Saint Plays of the Elizabethan Era’, in Davidson, The Saint Play in Medieval Europe, pp. 241–60. For a consideration of The Honest Whore as a Magdalene play see Frédérique Fouassier
’, Criticism , 53.1 (2011), 53–82, which I quote below. 53 The ‘ghost complaint’, in which a female victim of male sexual violence is summoned from the dead to speak, was popularized in the Elizabethan era. The best known example outside of the Lucretia nexus is Samuel
experiment in what Richard Helgerson has called ‘forms of nationhood,’ and can arguably take their place alongside other ambitious volumes of the Elizabethan era, such as Spenser’s The Faerie Queene , Coke’s Institutes of the Lawes of England , Camden’s Britannia , Speed’s Theater of the Empire of Great Britain , Drayton’s Poly
continual wardens of the drunkards’ fraternity and corporation’, but it was a role that the English appeared keen to usurp.34 Gascoigne’s pamphlet illustrates the extent to which concerns over drinking are often overlaid with concerns over national identity. He was, of course, writing at the height of the Elizabethan era of nation-building in 12 chap1.indd 12 22/06/2009 10:52:27 A monstrous plant the political, military and cultural spheres, and he was not alone in seeing something worrisome in English attitudes to alcohol. Fifteen years later, the popular writer
only withstood the Ottoman onslaught for a year. English Orientalist texts of the Elizabethan era fed the imperial imagination. Shakespeare’s Othello was a tale of conflict on the Christian–Muslim frontier with an Oriental mercenary, who did not belong to his adopted Occidental land, trying to hold out against the Muslims during the Ottoman conquest of Famagusta in 1571. 24 Although
go well beyond the places where he cites Chaucer by name, though those moments carry particular weight and have received particular attention. As Judith H. Anderson argues elsewhere in this volume, the reflections and refractions of Chaucer’s meanings can take many forms; and even when Spenser does not explicitly name his predecessor, his references to him are usually clearly intended to be recognised by his readers. The richness and breadth of allusions to Chaucer’s work across the Elizabethan era show how deeply the
-hegemonic’ (Kaske’s term) religious position adopted by Elizabeth and that adopted by Edmund Spenser. With reference to the prevailing Puritan iconoclasm of the late Elizabethan era, Kaske notes, ‘on the Continent, Lutherans retained some images and restrained iconoclasm; but in Elizabethan England the Lutheran influence was far outweighed by iconoclastic Zwinglianism and Calvinism’. 32 For Kaske, ‘the only vocal English Protestants in Elizabethan times who tried … to conserve some images were Spenser and Elizabeth’. 33 This has been seen as Elizabeth’s preference for ‘an
closing years of the queen's reign. In recovering their history here, I hope to show that biblical drama remained a vital and enduring presence throughout the Elizabethan era, from parish communities in provincial towns to the great amphitheatres of London. The discussion which follows examines the plays in order of their civic, parish, educational, and professional sponsorship and affiliation. Civic or guilds-based biblical drama The most extensively studied biblical plays of Elizabeth's reign are the great mystery cycles