Crisis of Communion: Eucharistic Representations in Shakespeare's History Cycle

• Published in: ELH Vol. 89; no. 2; pp. 317 - 343
• Main Author: Zimmerman, Daniel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore Johns Hopkins University Press 01.06.2022
• Subjects: Assassinations & assassination attempts; British & Irish literature; Christianity; Critics; Dramatists; English literature; History; Imagery; Modernity; Narrative techniques; Ontology; Religion; Shakespeare, William (1564-1616); Theater

Eucharistic language and imagery are the connective tissue that unites William Shakespeare's history tetralogies into a coherent whole. Together, they depict England's communal crisis—civil war—as a crisis of Communion; eucharistic sacrilege collapses a sacramental ontology, which in turn...