A holy presence: Signifying religion on the early modern English stage

The reformations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England developed during a cultural movement towards subjectivity: the reforms were political as well as religious. Christian faithful in England found the opportunity to develop personal relationships with the divine, while their king, Henry VIII, found the opportunity to eliminate the pope's influence in his kingdom. The move towards individualized religion appeared in catholicism as well as in protestantism; the full-scale revolution was a matter of politics. One component of this "full-scale revolution"---the backlash against catholicism---is the appearance of catholic clergymen in the stage plays of the period.; Wearing vestments and collars, catholic clergymen were visible markers of the Roman institution, an outside force that held influence in England. They also represented the catholic valuation of outward religious devotion, seen elsewhere in the adoration of images, the use of prayer beads, and the privileging of good works. In the sixteenth century, protestant reformers appropriated catholic clergymen as proof that privileging good works forsook the soul: on the stage, Roman clerics personified sin and vice. Instead of signifying proximity to God, their robes became markers of deceit, hiding the truth of moral failure. Popes were the antichrist, cardinals personified pride, and local priests exhibited sins of the flesh and human frailty.; However, although vice had found life onstage in catholic clergymen, it was not new to the English stage. Liturgical theater, mystery cycles, and morality plays had been performing these Vices since the eleventh century. While the vilification of priests onstage in post-reformation England is a strong visual image of the division between catholic and protestant England, the vices they exhibit demonstrate religious consistencies that underly the division. Reformers reacted against the robes, the external signifiers of the Roman institution. Understanding the nature of this division allows modern readers to identify a lessening of hostility towards those less closely-associated with the Roman institution, so that while popes are evil, local priests are simply blind, and a lay English catholic knight is the epitome of early modern religion.