The Antichrist's Lewd Hat: Protestants, Papists and Players in Post-Reformation England (review)

In his vivid title, Peter Lake refers to the denunciation of fashionable attire by the Dutch Puritan Ananias in Jonson's satiric comedy, The Alchemist (cf. 4.7.55). Lake's extensive survey of religious attitudes in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature is virtually two books in one. Lake scrutinizes sixty murder-pamphlets in Chapters 1-5. With Michael Questier, he examines Catholic martyrologies in Chapters 6-8. These chapters are flanked by two excellent historiographical essays: the Introduction, and Conclusions to Sections I and II. Lake peruses a total of twenty plays: less well-known domestic tragedies in Section I, and dramas by Shakespeare and Jonson in the last half of the book. Lake includes twenty-two woodcuts or engravings to illustrate murderers (sixteen in Section I), Catholic martyrs (four in Section II), and preachers (two in Section III).

Lake determinedly avoids the polarizations of A. G. Dickens (Reformation inspired by biblical translations and sermons) versus Christopher Haigh and Eamon Duffy (Reformation imposed by monarchs). He follows the nuanced scholarship of Patrick Collinson (godly Puritans: whether Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Congregational) and even draws Catholics from the backwater into the mainstream of Early Modern English history. Lake examines many of the pamphlets and plays studied by the feminist Frances Dolan and the cultural materialist Lena Cowen Orlin, but to their insights he adds the religious concerns of Tessa Watt and Alexandra Walsham.

Lake's analysis of the sixty murder-pamphlets is a challenge to follow because he treats his murderers like a pack of cards to be shuffled and dealt under successive headings. Lake describes "a chain of sins" (p. 47) leading to murder: drunkenness, gambling, theft, and adultery. Next he categorizes the murders according to the position of the victims: husbands, wives, children, masters, and clergy. Given his primary interest in the religious dimension of his material, Lake notes which murderers were moved to repentance by the promptings of their own conscience or by the preaching of the clergy, which ones spoke contritely in prison and on the scaffold, and which refused to admit their guilt. Pamphleteers usually claimed that murderers who were Catholic or Puritan had been led into crime by their religious beliefs. It is not easy to trace the murderers from one topic to another because some names are not listed in the Index , e.g., the historical Mrs. Brewen (p. 66) and the fictional Thomas Merry (pp. 24-26). All pamphlets are listed in the index, but not all give the name of the murderer or the victim in their titles. A bibliography, if only of secondary sources, would have been helpful.

Lake's treatment of English Catholic martyrs and Renaissance drama is more immediately rewarding. Catholic readers will be pleased to learn how much pastoral activity Jesuits and secular priests were able to exercise from Elizabethan and Jacobean prisons. Lake finds Protestant preaching and scaffold speeches to be similar in form, though different in content, for both repentant murderers and persevering Catholics. As an historian of religion, Lake illuminates the themes of sin and repentance in tragedies based on murder-pamphlets as well as the lack of repentance in Hamlet's uncle and Macbeth. Lake connects the anti-Puritan satire in The Alchemist and Bartholomew Fair to the anti-Marprelate tracts. In Shakespeare's problem-play Measure for Measure, Lake suggests that Angelo is doctrinally Calvinist, first thinking himself one of the elect, then one of the reprobate after his abuse of power is unmasked.

Peter Lake is to be commended for highlighting analogous forms in the vast repertoire of murder-pamphlets, Catholic martyrologies, tragedies, and comedies. This gargantuan work will repay the effort required...