How, and why, were Puritans portrayed on the Elizabethan and Jacobean Stage?

Authors Avatar

How, and why, were Puritans portrayed on the Elizabethan and Jacobean Stage?

        In discussing Puritanism in this period we are immediately faced with the problem of definition.  ‘Puritan’ was initially a term of abuse for the militant Protestants who sought further reform within the church.  Initially the reformers were strongly influenced by Calvinist doctrines and they called for increased attention to preaching, the study and interpretation of the Bible and the simplification of elaborate rights.  The Puritan movement seemed to be one of degrees rather than of type.  Within the movement, itself a branch of the Anglican church, could be found people from various classes, ranging from those with Puritan sympathies to the radical reformers.  It is seen as a religious and moral temper rather than a structured movement.  The attack on the stage was initiated by some of the more militant Puritans, but the rebuttal of the dramatists seemed to treat all Puritans in the same way.

         The attack on the playhouses began in Elizabeth’s reign with Puritans protesting against the building of theatres, although at this point their objections came to nothing.  After this many tracts were produced warning about the evil and ungodly teachings of plays.  In his Anatomie of Abuses of 1583 Philip Stubbes strongly condemns stage plays.  He claims that they ‘maintaine bawdrie, insinuate foolery, and renue the remembrance of heathen ydolatrie.’  He gives us proof by looking at the people ‘flocking and running to Theatres and curtens, daylie and hourely, night and daye, tyme and tyde to see Playes and Enterludes, where such wanton gestures, such bawdie speeches… such clipping and culling: such winckinge and glancinge of wanton eyes, and the lyke is used, as is wonderfull to behold.’ 

        Stubbes, like many other writers of these tracts, is mainly against playing on the Sabbath but in this attack we can see also the concern for the ‘idolatry’ commanded by the stage.  He is also aware of the fact that many secular plays portray loose morals and profane subjects which could corrupt the onlooker, regardless of their final outcome and the judgements passed on these ‘wicked’ characters.  He states that portraying sacred subjects is blasphemous as drama has no instructive value.  To many Puritans the very fact that these actions were being portrayed on the stage, and being given a chance to influence people, was unforgivable.  Stubbes’ work, along with several others, ends with a threat of suppression of the stage.  It seemed to many that Puritans could threaten the future of the stage and the livelihood of playwrights.  

Join now!

        The reaction of the playwrights was to ridicule these pious people on stage.  In Elizabeth’s reign there was no unity of dramatists against Puritans, although several Puritan figures cropped up in plays and were heavily satirised.  Perhaps the most well known puritanical figure of the Elizabethan stage was Shakespeare’s Malvolio.  He is, of course, not a Puritan in any historical sense, but as an incarnation of the Puritan’s besetting foible of self-righteousness, making himself a judge of others.  Sir Toby questions Malvolio’s conviction in himself in Act II saying, ‘Dost thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no ...

This is a preview of the whole essay