Hannah Crawforth

Scholarship, Sacrifice and Subjectivity: The Renaissance Bible Today

In 1994, Debora K. Shuger published The Renaissance Bible, the 29th volume in the California University Press series, “The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics.” Shuger’s subtitle, Scholarship, Sacrifice and Subjectivity, reveals the scope of the work – at once a study of biblical poetics in early modern Europe and something far more than that. The book presents a wide-reaching and intellectually rigorous case for the centrality of the inter-connected discourses of literature and theology in the period. Early reviewers recognized the work’s monumental importance. Douglas Bruster, for instance, applauded Shuger’s “groundbreaking study” as a “provocative analysis of sacred works with questions and paradigms typically confined to studies of decidedly secular texts.” Other early reviewers noted The Renaissance Bible’s “dazzling” intellectual ambition and truly interdisciplinary scope, a “significant event” in an increasingly specialized academic climate. “Conventional scholarship should not dismiss it, or be frightened off by its unusual blending of disciplines,” wrote Peter Auski, “it is a novel and extremely useful point of departure” for further developments in this field. The Renaissance Bible proved prescient and influential, looking forward to crucial developments in early modern studies. Reflecting upon the book in 2004, a decade after its publication, Ken Jackson and Arthur F. Marotti confirmed the fundamental significance of The Renaissance Bible for the “turn to religion” in early modern studies, observing that Shuger, “more than anyone else, has forced professionals in the field to take

The Politics of Greek Tragedy in 'Samson Agonistes'

ABSTRACT This essay charts Milton’s engagement in Samson Agonistes with Greek political thought as critiqued in Athenian tragic drama, particularly that of Euripides. In early modern Europe, Euripides’ plays were not only understood to denounce tyranny but also to remain rigorously sceptical about the workings of Athenian democracy (in itself a highly limited kind of representational politics). Milton knew well the commentary tradition that framed Euripidean tragedy in such terms, and found a corollary to his own political views within it, most notably in the writings of Gasparus Stiblinus whose prefaces are included in the 1602 Stephanus edition of the playwright’s works, which he used heavily. Stiblinus shows how Euripides relentlessly scrutinizes corruption, which his tragedies reveal to be not only characteristic of tyrants but also to pervade democratic systems. Milton’s allusions to Euripidean tragic form in Samson Agonistes evoke these commentaries to denounce political corruption.

Shakespeare in London

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Note on the Text A Chronology of Shakespeares Life and Early Modern London Introduction: Shakespeares London 1. Violence in Shakespeares London: Titus Andronicus (1594) and Tyburn 2. Politics in Shakespeares London: Richard II (1595) and Whitehall 3. Class in Shakespeares London: Romeo and Juliet (1595-6) and The Strand 4. Law in Shakespeares London: The Merchant of Venice (1596-8) and the Inns of Court 5. Religion in Shakespeares London: Hamlet (1600-1) and St Pauls 6. Medicine in Shakespeares London: King Lear (1605-6) and Bedlam 7. Economics in Shakespeares London: Timon of Athens (1607) and the Kings Bench Prison, Southwark 8. Experimentation in Shakespeares London: The Tempest (1610-11) and Lime Street Epilogue: Henry VIII (1613) and the Tower of London Works Cited Suggested Further Reading Index

Court Hieroglyphics: the Idea of the Cipher in Ben Jonson’s Masques

Spies, you are lights in state, but of base stuffe, Who, when you haue burnt your selues downe to the snuffe, Stinke, and are throwne away. End faire enough. Imprisoned for killing the actor Gabriel Spencer in a duel in 1598, Ben Jonson found himself plunged into a world inhabited by underground agents and intelligencers. His famous epigram ‘On Spies’ evokes this shadowy place in which moments of illumination are fleeting and extinguished as easily as a flickering candle. Whilst waiting to stand trial for his crime at the Old Bailey Jonson seems to have encountered the Jesuit priest Thomas Wright, who lived in semi-confinement in London’s jails where he worked as an informer to the Earl of Essex, the operator of extensive intelligence-gathering networks and a brief source of hope for recusants when he appeared to champion religious toleration around this time. Wright also undertook missionary work for the Jesuit cause amongst the prisoners and appears to have succeeded in converting Jonson to Catholicism, although uncertainty surrounds the extent to which this change of faith was motivated by political convenience. Jonson‘s supposed conversion may have provided him with a cover under which to infiltrate Catholic communities, enabling him to act as a counter-insurgent agent before his overt return to the Protestant Church around 1610. The suggestion that Jonson might have accepted a plea bargain in exchange for such services during a subsequent jail-term in 1605 has never entirely gone away, and Richard Dutton concludes that ‘The suspicion that his release from prison might have been bought at the expense of an agreement to spy for Cecil, or even act as a double agent, is difficult to discount.’