Elizabeth Williamson. The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama. Studies in Peformance and Early Modern Drama. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2009. ix + 232 pp. index. illus. bibl. $99.99.. ISBN: 978–0–7546–6827–5.

Abstract

The Materiality of Religion in Early Modern English Drama proceeds from the claim that religious objects had religious meanings. These meanings, Elizabeth Williamson convincingly shows, were retained, exploited, and modified in a variety of post-Reformation cultural contexts, including the early modern drama. Straightforward as this premise may seem, it runs against many recent studies of both the post-Reformation public theater and material culture; specifically, Williamson distinguishes her approach from Stephen Greenblatt's argument that the early modern stage functioned as a way of ''emptying out'' (13) the religious significance of Catholic rituals and devotional objects. Instead, she argues, playing companies actually exploited a ''complex range of emotions'' (16) that surrounded pre-Reformation forms of worship. This insight underwrites her subtle and engaging readings of many early modern play scripts. Williamson's research establishes a fruitful conversation among scholarly fields that are not always perceived as overlapping one another: Reformation studies, material culture, and theatrical history. As a result, one of the book's most attractive features is the impressive range of sources-including both early modern documents and modern critical works-on which it draws. The book is divided into four chapters, each centering on a different stage property as it appears in several different dramatic works: tombs, altars, crosses, and books. Chapter 1 treats a range of plays, focusing most extensively on scenes in Webster's Duchess of Malfi and Shakespeare's Winter's Tale. Williamson positions these plays lineally in the tradition of guild-sponsored biblical dramas, demonstrating