Addiction and Devotion in Early Modern England by Rebecca Lemon (review)

The first three steps in the original Twelve Step program advise the alcohol addict to accept futility in the face of a higher power named "God." That the subject is free to define God as she sees fit reflects the unique religious origins of Alcoholics Anonymous, which sprang out of the Oxford Group, a nondenominational Christian organization. Alcoholics Anonymous does not attempt to Christianize subjects through its Twelve Steps, but it does suggest that a "religious" view of power is useful in freeing subjects from alcohol addiction, precisely because addiction involves much more than the body's attachment to a physical substance. Just as the appeal to a higher power in Alcoholics Anonymous blurs the boundaries between religion and science, the early modern case studies found in Rececca Lemon's new monograph complicate a purely physiological understanding of addiction. Addictions are not just material attachments to alcohol, a lover's body, or a sacred text; they involve devotion to the ideals of fellowship, romantic love, and God. Addiction and Devotion simultaneously dismantles the modern, medical definition of addiction as pathology and expertly reconstructs an image of early modern addiction as a confluence between material and immaterial phenomena.

The historical and philological thrust of the book helps Lemon uncover an alien conception of addiction. While early moderns were certainly aware that alcohol addiction could be understood as a disease rooted in compulsory behavior, they more fundamentally understood addiction as "a form of devotion at once laudable, difficult, extraordinary, and even heroic" (ix). Uniting both conceptions is the experience of the overthrown will, which, in certain settings, could be positive. Calvin and Lancelot Andrewes, for example, link addiction to the tension between works and grace in Reformation theology, suggesting that a compulsory attachment to God, Christ, and biblical exegesis could invite the irresistible power of grace into a believer's life. Emerging out of the medieval notion of the seven deadly sins, early modern addiction (especially alcohol addiction) was very much ensconced in the Puritan Reformation of Manners, spiritually fighting immoral drunkards at home and tyrannical papists abroad. Astutely, Lemon argues that early modern theologians discussing addiction constitutes a historical irony: "it is the largely religious preachers," she claims, "who explore the empirical connection between habitual drunkenness and a set of disorders linked, today, with alcoholism" (15).

In the book's first chapter (and one of its strongest), Lemon applies this novel definition of early modern addiction as (religious) devotion to a reading of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. Smartly reframing criticism of the play around "scholastic and theological commitment" (24), Lemon argues that Marlowe is less concerned with Faustus's devotion to God and/or the Devil than he is with his devotion to study. Faustus's addiction to scholarship, traced back to Cicero and Seneca, is commendable, but his tragedy consists in wrongheadedly choosing necromancy as his object of study. Addiction proves to be a useful fulcrum in thinking across the election–reprobation binary, as well as the predestination–free will binary. Faustus addicts himself to necromancy because of its seemingly limitless nature and the potential for ravishment it promises, but he is undone by his failure to fully surrender. With implications stretching beyond religious criticism of Marlowe and early modern literature, this chapter will hit home with an audience well acquainted with the existential thrills and despair of scholarly work.

Following the Marlowe chapter, Lemon offers three chapters on Shakespearean drama, covering all the major genres: comedy, history, and tragedy. It is at this point that the reader wonders what shape the book might have taken as a more specific intervention in theater studies. Surprisingly, Lemon argues that Toby and Andrew, the resident drunks of Twelfth Night, are not the play's addicts. Originally addicted to melancholy, Olivia and Orsino temper this brooding humor with vulnerability. Viola, meanwhile, is "the play's most energetic example of love as devoted service" (64). In contrast to Twelfth Night's gentle critique of drunken fellowship, the Henriad offers...