Description - Shakespeare's Tribe by Jeffrey Knapp
Most contemporary critics characterize Shakespeare and his tribe of fellow English playwrights and players as resolutely secular, interested in religion only as a matter of politics or as a rival source of popular entertainment. Yet as Jeffrey Knapp demonstrates in this radical new reading, a surprising number of writers throughout the English Renaissance, including Shakespeare himself, represented plays as supporting the cause of true religion. To be sure, Renaissance playwrights rarely sermonized in their plays, which seemed preoccupied with sex, violence, and crime. And acting then was regarded as a kind of vice. But many theater professionals used their apparent godlessness to advantage, claiming that it enabled them to save wayward souls the church could not otherwise reach. The stage, they argued, made possible an ecumenical ministry, which would help transform Reformation England into a more inclusive Christian society. Drawing on a variety of little-known and celebrated plays, along with a host of other documents from the English Renaissance, Shakespeare's Tribe will change the way we think about Shakespeare and the culture that produced him.
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