Scorning the image of virtue: Church and theatre in post-settlement England

In 1616, the prominent theatrical player Nathan Field wrote an extraordinary letter responding to a personal attack---one wielded by the Reverend Thomas Sutton from the pulpit of a church frequented by Field and other Bankside actors. Considering Field's letter intertextually with other primary sources, this study examines how sixteenth-century English iconoclasm extended beyond the church to include the visual, literary, and performing arts as consistent subjects of theological controversy. This dissertation considers the relationship of Reformation iconoclasm to London's early modern theatre culture. It focuses on the relationship between the era's professional preachers and players from 1590 to 1620---three of the most dynamic decades for the era's prominent stage companies. Specifically, this study demonstrates how antitheatrical polemics are intrinsically related to English iconoclasm; reveals the clergy's implicit and explicit consideration of theatre as a threat to the church; determines how performers and audiences understood theatre as an edifying alternative to church; and accounts for how preachers and players differentiated between their respective professions. Using historical and intertextual analyses of literary, visual, and other primary sources, this dissertation demonstrates that church and theatre were competing kinds of performance in early modern England. Accounting for the ways in which preachers and players embodied their ideologies---while in the pulpit or on stage---further illuminates the historical relationship between church and theatre in the Reformation era. The striking convergence of religious and theatrical developments in Reformation England deserves historical investigation that deeply considers the important relationship between church and theatre, especially given their shared performative nature.