Reformations of the Body Idolatry, Sacrifice, and Early Modern Theater

As a cultural form that combined verbal, visual, and bodily modes of representation, theater presented a particularly complex set of problems in post-Reformation England. Opponents of the public theaters accused the very modes in which plays were presented of encouraging 'idolatry'and being 'sacrifices of the devil,'while influential playwrights repeatedly alluded to religious debates during crucial metatheatrical moments. This project takes the human body and the bodily senses as joints that articulate new kinds of connections between church and theater and overturns a longstanding notion about theatrical phenomenology in this period.

Jennifer Waldron is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.