King Lear, Samuel Harsnet, and Jesuit Drama Teachers
- Format:
- Conference Paper
- Year:
- 2019
- Event Date:
- March 17-19
- Panel Title:
- Religious Figures in Post-Reformation English Literature
- Event Institution:
- Renaissance Society of America
- Conference Location:
- Toronto
- Language:
- Abstract:
The English Catholic colleges set up on the Continent after the Reformation made extensive use of drama. Insofar as these plays were known about on the British mainland, they fostered the standard Protestant association of popery and deceit, often giving rise to antitheatricalism. While Jesuits were not the only Catholic educators to make use of drama, they were the most strongly associated with corrupting the young through acting. Samuel Harsnet's A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures (1603) is part of this polemical tradition: a conformist account of Catholic exorcisms particularly intended to incriminate the Jesuit order, claiming that the exorcists in question had trained their youthful victims to simulate demonic possession. The fact that Harsnet's work was drawn upon in Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606) is well-known; my paper will break new ground by discussing this borrowing in relation to the contemporary nexus of Jesuits, theatricality, and the corruption of youth.
- Conference URL: