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  • Chapter 6 - Exposing Religious Dissimulation

  • Kilian Schindler, Université de Fribourg, Switzerland
  • Book:
    Religious Dissimulation and Early Modern Drama
    Published online:
    31 August 2023
    Print publication:
    28 September 2023, pp 160-188
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  • Summary

    This chapter contextualises the rise of the stage Machiavel in the suppression of the Elizabethan Puritan movement in the late 1580s and early 1590s and the period’s distrust in the hidden, inward self of religious dissenters. The stage Machiavel of the early 1590s, most prominently embodied by Barabas in Christopher Marlowe’s Jew of Malta, bears traces of anti-Puritan polemics that have been mostly overlooked so far. Hence, the stage Machiavel can be read as a predecessor of the stage Puritan and as a theatrical convention, most notably in his typical revelation of his plans to the audience, which showcases the theatre as an institution that grants access, or rather a fantasy of access, to the inward secrets of religious dissenters. Marlowe’s Jew of Malta can be read as an expression of such a desire to make windows into men’s hearts and as a poetological statement that flaunts the complicity of the theatre in this enterprise.