Performing Prayer in Early Modern England

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 25; pp. 107 - 115
• Main Author: FitzGerald, William T
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2021
• Subjects: Case studies; Donne, John (1572-1631); Drama; English literature; Milton, John (1608-1674); Prayer; Protestantism; Rhetoric; Sermons; Spirituality; Traditions; United Kingdom > UK; England
• ISSN: 0954-0970

At least, this is my recollection at the time I completed a monograph on prayer, Spiritual Modalities: Prayer as Rhetoric and Performance (Penn State University Press, 2012). [...]Parry presents a case study on the Anglican divine, Lancelot Andrewes, and a tradition of private prayer that would later take a decidedly public turn in elevating Andrewes into a major figure of an emergent high church tradition and in the celebration of canonical scripted prayer. Alison Findlay, in 'Prayer, Performance, and Community in Early Modern Drama', applies a theatrical lens to the performance of communal prayer and, reciprocally, the dramatic representation of prayer on stage, using Marlowe's Dido Queen of Carthage (1588) and his Doctor Faustus (1588) as well as Thomas Heywood's A Woman Killed With Kindness (1603) to consider the role of prayer in shaping communal sensibility, in particular in the overhearing audience of the staged drama. Christopher Hodgkins' 'Playing at Prayer: The Spiritual Failure of Performance in Hamlet directs us to consider not only Claudius's failure to deliver a proper, soul-saving prayer but also the corresponding failure of Hamlet's play within a play to enact Hamlet's designs to bring a guilty king to justice.