Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory Commons^™

Notions of the sacred and the profane took on a particular significance in late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth-century England. This period, chronologically circumscribed on one side by the Protestant Reformation and on the other by the Civil War, was a time of enormous religious change. These changes found articulation in the theatre of the period. Plays such as Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, Shakespeare’s Henry VIII and Middleton’s A Game at Chess make significant use of historically specific understandings of Protestantism and Catholicism. Scholars have noted the religious aspects of these plays before, but what has garnered less critical attention is the manner …