Scorning the Image of Virtue
There survives an extraordinary letter of 1616 by the prominent English stage player, Nathan Field. His missive is one of the only extant apologies for the theater written by a player. Field’s letter is a response to a sermon preached by Thomas Sutton, and it richly characterizes Field’s relationshi...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2016
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| In: |
Religion and the arts
Year: 2016, Volume: 20, Issue: 3, Pages: 267-289 |
| Further subjects: | B
Church History
early modern sermon
antitheatricalism
English Renaissance theater
Reformation iconoclasm
Elizabethan actors
Nathan Field
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | There survives an extraordinary letter of 1616 by the prominent English stage player, Nathan Field. His missive is one of the only extant apologies for the theater written by a player. Field’s letter is a response to a sermon preached by Thomas Sutton, and it richly characterizes Field’s relationship to his parish and to the larger ecclesial powers. This discussion shows how Field ironically employs the very charges often levied by opponents of theater—deception, emotional indulgence, and idolatry—to indict Sutton for a public attack he wielded against Field from the Sunday pulpit. Field’s apology is read within the context of the era’s antitheatricalist polemics, Jacobean politics, Reformation theology, and Field’s history as the son of a radical puritan preacher. The letter invites deep consideration of church and theater—preaching and playing—as competing kinds of performance. Field’s apology also focuses attention on a neglected area in theater studies—the history of players and playing in early modernity. What was an actor’s idea of himself at a time when his profession was redefined by religious reforms? Further, this discussion offers preliminary suggestions for an early modern aesthetics of performance by inviting a dialogue between the era’s extreme antitheatricalism and concurrent prescriptions for effective oratory. |
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| ISSN: | 1568-5292 |
| Contains: | In: Religion and the arts
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685292-02003001 |