Shadow and Substance: Eucharistic Controversy and English Drama across the Reformation Divide by Jay Zysk (review)

Jay Zysk analyses the controversial semiotics of Jesus Christ's Eucharistic body in a wide selection of early English dramas. Previous literary studies of the Eucharist created dichotomies between medieval/early modern, religious/secular, and word/flesh, whereas Zysk favours a more fluid 'trans-Reformational course' (p. 2). He follows Sir Thomas More's rejection of interpreting the Eucharist allegorically. Instead, Zysk's trans-Reformational reading transposes the Eucharistic fluidity between the literal and figurative on to early English dramas. The fascinating aspect of Zysk's thesis is that the ambiguity over whether Christ's spiritual or physical presence is in or represented by the bread and wine creates a signifying system combining the literal and figurative to make transubstantiation possible.

The trans-Reformational semiotics of Christ's Eucharistic body enables Zysk to compare Shakespeare's Coriolanusto biblical dramas. Despite it being a Roman tragedy, Zysk argues Shakespeare's play transfers Christ's wounds on to Coriolanus to highlight their differences. Whereas Christ's wounds are displayed publicly and interpreted openly, Coriolanus's wounds are removed from social discourse. Zysk's discussion also joins recent critical studies in which biblical drama is valued as individual complex literary texts, and not dismissed as repetitive allegories.

The relationship between Christ's body and a king's mystical body are examined in the regicides of John Bale's King Johanand Shakespeare's Macbeth. In King Johan, the king's divinity is ordained by the Word of God, not the Eucharist. However, anti-Eucharistic semiotics are used by the Catholic monk who gives the anointed king poisoned wine. The connection between anti-Eucharistic semiotics and anti-Catholicism is further explored in Macbeth. Macbeth's murder of Duncan, and Banquo's ghost, engage with the semiotic confusion of whether Christ's Eucharistic body is present or absent in flesh or spirit.

The liturgy and linguistic nuances of the Mass are examined in Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. To this reviewer, this is the strongest chapter in an already engaging study, where trans-Reformational semiotics enables Zysk to ironically imply a renaming of the play as 'Father Faustus?' (p. 119). Zysk discovers that Faustus's rituals of black magic are derived from sacramental rituals, which previous criticism has not sufficiently explored. Faustus's necromantic book is compared convincingly to the missal that contains the prayers enabling 'the priest to transubstantiate bread and wine' (p. 130). Zysk argues that Faustus's necromancy is based on the divine magic of the Eucharistic ritual. His trans-Reformational approach further rationalizes Faustus's demonic spells as unauthorized liturgy that becomes a Eucharistic parody when performed on stage.

Saints' relics as body parts and objects making fleshly contact with a saint are described and examined in three dramas. Zysk draws attention to how saints' relics are easily forged for semiotic deceit. The most powerful reading is of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi. Ferdinand's waxwork bodies of Antonio and his sons that deceive the Duchess draw upon the semiotics of the Saint's synecdochic representation. Zysk also observes Ferdinand using Eucharistic language. The trans-Reformational conceit is fully realized when Zysk reveals that wax was used to preserve a saint's sanctified remains.

In the final chapter, Zysk explores how Christ's physical and spiritual bodies provide a sensual experience. Zysk's trans-Reformational semiotic fluidity is extended into the Emmaus narrative of Christ's disguised appearance, revelation, and disappearance. Zysk examines the semiotic tension of interpreting disguised and real bodies in the early Tudor play Jack Juggler. Jack Juggler steals the page Jankyn Careaway's identity for comic effect. However, Careaway's failure to recognize his own body echoes the Eucharist controversy re-represented in the Emmaus narrative.

Zysk acknowledges recent criticism of a transubstantiation parallel in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale...