Vanita Neelakanta

This essay argues that God is uncharacteristically absent in Samson Agonistes. Specifically, Milton's closet drama blocks out a spectator-deity. God's startling erasure may be fruitfully examined by excavating Milton's radical deployment of the classical trope of theatrum mundi, which imagined humankind as performers playing out the drama of their lives under the eye of a deity who was both audience and scripter of the action. Samson is understood to be the special recipient of God's favor insofar as he occupies God's field of vision and plays out in his life in accordance with divine prescription. When Samson drowns his heavenly appointed role in lust and self-aggrandizement, his career enacts the contrary possibility that the spectator-God might avert his gaze in displeasure or indifference. By deliberately withholding divine assurance—thereby replicating the limited perspective of the human actor upon the stage of the world—Samson Agonistes produces Milton's most complex and mature enactment of the deep anxiety rooted in the theatrum mundi trope.

William Heminge’s critically neglected play The Jewes Tragedy (c. 1628–30; pub. 1662) presents a singular illustration of the seventeenth-century preoccupation with the siege and destruction of Jerusalem described by Josephus in The Jewish Wars (75 CE). Unlike other early modern retellings which habitually interpret the tragic event as divine punishment for the Jews’ rejection of Christ, Heminge eschews the conventional Christian moral and its accompanying providentialist rhetoric in favor of a thoughtful political analysis of the Jews’ defeat at the hands of the Romans. This article analyzes Heminge’s secular focus in the context of the fraught political and religious climate of the late 1620s, when the play was composed, as well as the Restoration during which it was first published. Specifically, it investigates the contentious interrogation of providentialism and the corresponding shift away from religious etiology and a deterministic worldview (in which God assigns the outcome) to a conception of history that emphasizes human actions over divine intervention.

"Uncovers the early modern English preoccupation with retellings of the Roman siege of 70 C.E. by writers who sought to comprehend their own troubled times. Placing tales of colonialism, plague, and exile within a larger narrative of divine intervention, this book reveals the growing perception of such history as cultural capital in the seventeenth century"--Provided by publisher

This essay examines the intersection of ritual sacrifice, blood libel, and child murder in the story of Mary of Jerusalem, whom Josephus describes as having killed and eaten her own son during the 70 CE destruction of Jerusalem. While Reformation accounts of Mary’s cannibalism served, unsurprisingly, as an opportunity for satirical attack on the host, it is striking that pre-Reformation writers also relied on the same Eucharistic association. Juxtaposing medieval and early modern Protestant accounts of Mary’s cannibalism reveals a shared value system that elevates the symbolic or sacramental over the literal or corporeal. Notably, these stories overlap when they commend the religious praxis of the writers by disparaging that of their predecessors as stubbornly carnal: the Jews in the case of the medieval writers, and the Catholics for those interpreting the story after the Reformation. Although there are some key differences—Protestant texts are less implicated in the blood libel literature that dominated medieval Europe—both pre-and post-Reformation narratives confirm the overwhelming appeal of healing flesh, particularly as it pertains to the powerful mediation of Mary’s holy namesake, the Virgin. Linking pre-Reformation accounts of Mary’s cannibalism to their post-Reformation counterparts, this essay illuminates an important aspect of the Protestant reception of medieval theology: specifically, the degree to which both parties were preoccupied with the power of the Eucharist and the Virgin Mary’s part in it, how similarly they sought to expel its resultant anxieties about anthropophagy, and further, how the practical theology of the Eucharist changed in the Protestant world.

Banished is banish'd from world, And world's exile is death: then banished Is death mis-term'd. (Romeo and Juliet, 3.3.19-21) IN JANUARY 1677, The Destruction of by Titus Vespasian, written by John Crowne in two parts, premiered at Theatre Royal. (1) Performed by His Majesty's Servants, and later dedicated to Charles II's Catholic mistress, Duchess of Portsmouth, play is set against backdrop of siege of an insurgent and capture and destruction of Second Temple by Romans in 70 CE, and tells story of star-crossed lovers: Titus, Roman commander soon to be emperor, and Berenice, a Jewish princess. A tale of exotic cultures in conflict, with a hero divided between contradictory claims of desire and empire, Crowne's drama exhibits stock elements of tragedy in style of Elkanah Settles Empress of Morocco (1673) and John Dryden's Conquest of Granada (1670-71), widely regarded greatest of and valor plays popular on Restoration stage. The story of ill-fated affair between Titus and Berenice was something of a theatrical fashion in 1670s, with Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine in France producing plays on subject in same year (1670). Crowne's model was Racine, whose Berenice had been adapted by Thomas Otway for Duke's Company only previous year. (2) Both parts of The Destruction of met with such extravagant applause that play supposedly aroused envy of Crowne's patron, Earl of Rochester, who promptly commenced an enemy to bard he before had so much befriended. (3) Stuart Gillespie and David Hopkins describe it aptly a heroic extravaganza replete with sieges, battles, and feats of martial valor. (4) It boasted a stellar cast, with Edward Kynaston and Charles Hart playing Titus and Phraartes, and Mrs. Marshall and Mrs. Boutell in roles of Berenice and Clarona. The play incurred vast expense in scenes and cloathes with a series of magnificent sets: lavish Temple gates, chaotic streets of starving Jerusalem and the blazing Temple sinking to destruction in a sea of fire. (5) Despite its theatrical success, The Destruction of has been dismissed a cheap derivation lacking both Racine's complex psychology and Dryden's mastery of verse and dramatic structure. Consequently, scholars of Restoration drama overlook singular achievement of Crowne's tragedy: setting. The Destruction of is only play to set interracial love story of Titus and Berenice in war-torn Jerusalem. Unlike French plays and Otway's translation, which are set in Rome after events of 70 CE, Crowne's play positions doomed romance in during fall of Temple. (6) Historically, two events--the siege and affair--were not coterminous. The latter occurred a few years after, in Rome. Unlike Corneille, Racine, and Otway, who meticulously follow historical accounts, Crowne deliberately replaces Rome with so that fractured love story is superimposed upon saga of beleaguered city rife with conspiracy and rebellion. Furthermore, The Destruction of is only one of two seventeenth-century English plays--William Heminges's The Jewes Tragedy (1662) is other--to juxtapose Roman and Jewish society in Judea. (7) It is curious that scholars who express bafflement at success of Crowne's play should have neglected import of Jerusalem. (8) The editors of Crowne's works in nineteenth century attribute choice of setting to success of Conquest of Granada, surmising that Crowne hoped to be as successful with Jews and Romans Laureate [Dryden] had been with Moors and Spaniards. (9) Even critics who acknowledge play's theatrical appeal tend to dismiss setting mere excuse for flashy denouement. Arthur Franklin White identifies spectacular burning of Second Temple orchestrated with help of William Davenant reason for play's early popularity, but exhibits little interest in what may have signified for Crowne's audience. …