Few subjects of the English stage have proved more alluring and enduring than religious conversion. The emergence of the Elizabethan theatre marked a profound shift in the way in which conversion was presented. If medieval drama had encouraged conversion without reservation, early Elizabethan plays started to question it. Considering over forty canonical and lesser known works, this study argues that more so than any other medium, early modern drama engaged with the question of the possibility of undergoing a radical transformation in faith and presented the period's understanding of it as fundamentally unsettled. Offering the first cross-religious exploration of conversion in early modern English drama, and presenting a new reading of William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, Lieke Stelling reveals telling patterns in the stage's treatment of conversion and religious identity.

A cross-religious exploration of conversion on the early modern English stage offering fresh readings of canonical and lesser-known plays.

About the Author
Lieke Stelling is Assistant Professor in English at Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands. She has published articles on early modern literature in English Literary Renaissance and Shakespeare Jahrbuch, and co-edited The Turn of The Soul: Representations of Religious Conversion in Early Modern Art and Literature, with Harald Hendrix and Todd M. Richardson (2012).

Reviews
'Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama offers a wonderfully controversial and compelling account of spiritual and interfaith conversions on the early modern English stage. Reading plays like Dr Faustus, The Renegado, Othello, and many others alongside sermons, pamphlets, travel writings, and personal narratives, Lieke Stelling enriches and updates our understanding of the confluence of religion and drama in the period. A wide variety of scholars will find this an important and engaging book.' Kurt Schreyer, University of Missouri, St Louis
'Drawing on a wide range of canonical and non-canonical plays, Lieke Stelling makes a compelling case that the theatre is a central locus for debating religious conversion within and between religious faiths. This book will be of interest to scholars of early modern drama, but it should also be read by historians of the Reformation and of early modern religious identity more generally.' Adrian Streete, University of Glasgow
'Lieke Stelling's Religious Conversion in Early Modern English Drama offers a welcome addition to the active field of early modern conversion studies by focusing on plays that dramatize religious conversion on the early modern English stage.' Holly Crawford Pickett, Reformation



Book Information
ISBN 9781108477031
Author Lieke Stelling
Format Hardback
Page Count 226
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 470g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 157mm * 17mm