Focusing on the plays of Shakespeare as well as a range of other playwrights, this title explores the material conditions of performance, the intricate resonances between dramatic performance and religious ceremonies, and the multiple valences of religious references in early modern plays.

Introduction; Part I: Theatrical Materiality and Religious Effects; Chapter 1: The Idolatrous Nose: Incense on the Early Modern Stage; Chapter 2: Singing a New Song in The Shoemaker's Holiday; Chapter 3: “Looking Jewish” on the Early Modern Stage; Chapter 4: Muslim Conversion and Circumcision as Theater; Part II: Intersections of Popular Theater and Religious Culture; Chapter 5: Popular Worship and Visual Paradigms in Love's Labor's Lost; Chapter 6: “It is requir'd you do awake your faith”: Belief in Shakespeare's Theater; Chapter 7: Archbishop Whitgift and the Plague in Thomas Nashe's Summer's Last Will and Testament; Chapter 8: “Handling Religion in the Style of the Stage”: Performing the Marprelate Controversy; Part III: Beyond Allusion and Ideology; Chapter 9: Martyr Acts: Playing with Foxe's Martyrs on the Public Stage; Chapter 10: “The Juice of Egypt's Grape”: Plutarch, Syncretism, and Antony and Cleopatra; Chapter 11: Paul Shakespeare: Exegetical Exercises; Part IV: Coda; Chapter 12: Claudius at Prayer

'This is a well-crafted and timely book; its editors have rightly recognized that the discussion of religion and early modern drama must reach beyond allusion and citation to consider the materials of the stage. The elegant and thoughtful essays collected here explore in fascinating and variegated ways the objects, artifacts, sensations and figurations that worked to activate religious habits of thought. In the process, they reveal a theater of surprising faith and wonder.' Patricia Badir, University of British Columbia, Canada 'The fourteen intriguing chapters in Religion and Early Modern Drama in England, plus the provocative Introduction by the editors, constitute a timely re-examination of the place of religion and its depiction in the drama of the period.' Theatre Research International 'The editors are right in claiming that the volume does important work toward re-theoriz[ing] what it means for the drama to engage with religious culture (3).' Shakespeare Bulletin 'Degenhardt and Williamson should be credited with composing a volume of great breadth. Scholars of early modern theatre, literature, and history alike will find within it much to inspire and fuel further work.' Notes and Queries